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Papas Fritas writes:
"Bill Palmer, an Airbus A330 captain for a major airline, and author of the book 'Understanding Air France 447.' has an interesting read at CNN on why there have been so few clues about the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, beginning with the lack of a distress call. According to Palmer the lack of a distress call is not particularly perplexing. 'An aviator's priorities are to maintain control of the airplane above all else. An emergency could easily consume 100% of a crew's efforts. To an airline pilot, the absence of radio calls to personnel on the ground that could do little to help the immediate situation is no surprise.'
Reports of a possible course reversal observed on radar could be the result of intentional crew actions but not necessarily says Palmer. During Air France 447's 3-1/2 minute descent to the Atlantic Ocean, it too changed its heading by more than 180 degrees, but it was an unintentional side effect as the crew struggled to gain control of the airplane. The Malaysian flight's last telemetry data, as reported by flightaware.com, shows the airplane at 35,000 feet. Even with a dual engine failure, a Boeing 777 is capable of gliding about 120 miles from that altitude yielding a search area roughly the size of Pennsylvania, with few clues within that area where remains of the aircraft might be. "This investigation may face many parallels to Air France 447, an Airbus A330 that crashed in an area beyond radar coverage in the ocean north of Brazil in June 2009. Like the Air France plane, the Malaysia Airlines aircraft was a state-of-the-art, fly-by-wire airplane (a Boeing 777) with an excellent safety record," says Palmer. 'We will know the truth of what happened when the aircraft is found and the recorders and wreckage are analyzed. In the meantime, speculation is often inaccurate and unproductive.'"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by isostatic on Monday March 10 2014, @11:17PM
He didn't specify this flight, he asked the ta for the cheapest tickets to two places (Copenhagen and Frankfurt I think), which happened to be kul-pek-ams-xxx
I suspect criminality, possibly just illegal immigration, maybe drugs, but nothing more sinister.
There was a third passport used, the number entered in the system was that of a Chinese national that still has his passport. Possibly a mis-entry.
The big question is, where the hell is the plane. If it was stolen, what's the motive? If it was blown up, where's the wreckage?
Most likely situation to me is a Helios 522 situation, gradual loss in pressure, autopilot carries it way off course before crashing (6 hours of fuel, could be anywhere in 3,000 miles), and poor radar coverage overnight meant no one saw it.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday March 11 2014, @12:15AM
The whole passport thing is easy to solve.
Just authenticate again.
Assume all passengers are fake, look up passport info, cooperate with governments, identify contact information, call person listed on passport.
Somebody Answers?
"Where the hell are you right now? Were you on the flight from Malaysia Airlines?"
"Yes- Fantastic. Start waving your arms. We're on the way"
"No- Fantastic. Glad you're safe"
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by isostatic on Tuesday March 11 2014, @12:43AM
Mr Wu books a flight
Passport number 123456789 - Mr Wu
MH accidentally write down 123456798 - Mr Wu
Therefore the passport number in their system is wrong, but doesn't mean that the person boarding the plane had a forged passport.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday March 11 2014, @01:14AM
Doesn't matter.
Only two possibilities exist:
1) It's Mr. Wu indicated from the passport
2) It's Mr. Chang and his passport was wrongly entered.
We want to identify all people on the plane, and there is question about the passports. Eliminate the question.
Contact Mr. Wu, since he is listed. If Mr. Wu is alive and answers, we know Mr. Wu was not on the plane. Whoever was in that seat, or on the plane, is not listed.
We identify Mr. Chang by cross-referencing all payments. Most will be eliminated due to matching payments in the records. That's just superficial. No invasion of privacy. Just ask Visa if Mr. Wu paid for a flight to Malayasia Airlines.
You will have sparingly few cases where the payments are untraceable, people are located (meaning you have an unknown passenger), and you can positively identify most people and eliminate the question of the passports entirely.
From what's left you can start concentrating on visual recordings in the terminal and other meta data that you have available, even data that is somewhat superficial and not invasive of privacy.
There's really no reason to go on at all about the passports being the issue. That's my point. Bringing up the passports like it's a big deal or anything, or a hindrance to the investigation, smacks of FUD to me.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by gottabeme on Wednesday March 12 2014, @11:43AM
At cruise, autopilots are controlled by the FMS which has basically the entire route of the flight programmed in, even the most likely STAR. For it to go off-course into the middle of nowhere would require the flight crew to intentionally delete all the programmed waypoints.
Even a gradual loss of pressure would trigger alarms and the oxygen masks.
A complete electrical failure would result in an uncontrollable aircraft and no communications. But that's extremely unlikely with all the redundancy in its systems.