Topic: Malaysia Airlines loses contact with plane carrying 239 people

[rob1408]

RIP.  Hopefully the families get some semblance of closure.

[theredguy03]

  I feel devastated that this news has come out. RIP to all the passengers, hope the press give the families some privacy to grieve.

[Malaysian Kopite]

RIP

[Sir Harvest Fields]

What does that mean? It happens. Planes have technical problems, they hit bad weather, pilots make errors, people hijack planes. It's incredibly rare but it happens, and we don't even know what happened yet in this case. If you can't believe it you really should make yourself a little bit more aware of the world around you.

I see what you are saying Alan but lets be honest here. With all the technology we have at our fingertips it is hard to understand how a plane got ' lost ' .

[jordyball10]

I see what you are saying Alan but lets be honest here. With all the technology we have at our fingertips it is hard to understand how a plane got ' lost ' .

As i have said above the authorities know more than what's being given out.

[Broad Spectrum]

I see what you are saying Alan but lets be honest here. With all the technology we have at our fingertips it is hard to understand how a plane got ' lost ' .

The transponders were turned off by the pilot (or perhaps malfunctioned?) so it is very easy to understand how they lost track of the plane, particularly as it deviated thousands of miles off the intended flight course.

Posted this earlier in the thread:

Heard an interesting point last night on the radio from an American guy who either ran, or was heavily involved, in the US Department of Transportation at some point over the last decade or two. He was explaining how the Canadians developed these flight transponder devices in the 1970's, which have subsequently been implemented by ALL aircraft within the U.S Air Force since the 1990's. They cannot be turned off by the pilot and can be used to track an aircraft's location, supposedly without fail.

He then went on to explain how the International Civil Aviation Organisation should make it a mandatory requirement in all commercial airliners to install such a device as those seen in the U.S Air Force. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but maybe in the future if such events occur again, it'll take only days to find the approximate location of the aircraft's wreckage with the implementation of this technology.

[Welshred]

As i have said above the authorities know more than what's being given out.

Of course they do, that's why this was part of today's statement.

We will be holding a press conference tomorrow with further details.

[The G in Gerrard]

RIP

[PhilV]

I see what you are saying Alan but lets be honest here. With all the technology we have at our fingertips it is hard to understand how a plane got ' lost ' .

I mean no offense by this but I don't think people who share your view have a grasp on how vast our world is.

A plane as seen from space is miniscule and I know there are satellites taking pictures of people at ground level, but that is a stationary target and they know it's location to begin with.

Looking for a small white thing in the middle of the Indian Ocean is a HUGE task, technology failed in this case and they had to look the old way, it takes so much time and resources, like they said, the closest point, Perth, was a 4 hour flight away itself.

GPS transponders, etc can fail just like your phone can fail, just because, or simply turned off, no one knows why.

All we can hope for now is that they find wreckage and the data boxes and get some info if a retrieval is possible, lets not forget how many months it took to recover the ones from the Air France crash near Brazil. The money and effort involved in recovering something from the bottom of the ocean is enourmous.

RIP to all passengers and crew, very sad.


PS: To the person who mentioned the transponders that are faultless, many technologies have existed for decades that could save lives in certain situations, but if those situations are so rare then the aviation head honchos don't deem the cost of installing it worthy, a good example of this was the DHL plane that lost hydraulics over Iraq or something and had to land by manually adjusting engine power, to turn and descent even though decands prior a computer version of this system was inveented but was deemed not necessery due to cost and rareness of such an event.

[Dread Breath]

Its doubtful they ever "lost" the plane - I'm pretty sure they've had a very good idea where its final resting place is, in a broad sense, for at least a week. But 98% sure isn't a 100% sure and hence they've waited until they've had more data to confirm something they likely were fairly certain about. The information released to the public has obviously been tailored for a ton of reasons, but frankly this outcome was inevitable once the search "shifted" to the southern Indian Ocean.

Extremely sad, if expected, news for the families and friends. RIP. Hopefully now they can find the plane itself and work out what exactly has gone wrong to prevent it doing so in future, and also to give those connected to the passengers some final closure on this devastating disaster.

[Sir Harvest Fields]

I mean no offense by this but I don't think people who share your view have a grasp on how vast our world is.

A plane as seen from space is miniscule and I know there are satellites taking pictures of people at ground level, but that is a stationary target and they know it's location to begin with.

Looking for a small white thing in the middle of the Indian Ocean is a HUGE task, technology failed in this case and they had to look the old way, it takes so much time and resources, like they said, the closest point, Perth, was a 4 hour flight away itself.

GPS transponders, etc can fail just like your phone can fail, just because, or simply turned off, no one knows why.

All we can hope for now is that they find wreckage and the data boxes and get some info if a retrieval is possible, lets not forget how many months it took to recover the ones from the Air France crash near Brazil. The money and effort involved in recovering something from the bottom of the ocean is enourmous.

RIP to all passengers and crew, very sad.


PS: To the person who mentioned the transponders that are faultless, many technologies have existed for decades that could save lives in certain situations, but if those situations are so rare then the aviation head honchos don't deem the cost of installing it worthy, a good example of this was the DHL plane that lost hydraulics over Iraq or something and had to land by manually adjusting engine power, to turn and descent even though decands prior a computer version of this system was inveented but was deemed not necessery due to cost and rareness of such an event.

No offence taken mate.  I do understand the vastness of our planet, i also know that technology is not infallible. Saying that, surely you can see how its hard to understand how we lose a plane.

[Pricey]

The cynic in me always thinks there's more than meets the eye with things like this happen, i really struggle to take things at face value, especially when it comes to stories given out by media and government. There's no one more full of shit than a politician. My thoughts are with the families of the lost.

A lot of news stations are reporting families of the lost were informed via text message. If that's true, it's utterly appalling. "Assuming" the plane is gone and the passengers are dead is fine with me but a lot of people find that bad, as soon as the plane was missing over a portion of ocean the size of Europe i think even the biggest optimist would have to say the plane is below water and no one survived, however to inform people of this via text message is beyond insensitive.

Apparently miracles do happen, there could be a small island somewhere. They could still be alive in rafts drifting across the sea waiting to be found.

As for searching the base of the sea for a plane, i'll be amazed if that's even possible in water that deep. Mind you, my knowledge on deep sea exploration is zero.

God bless all those on board.

[PhilV]

No offence taken mate.  I do understand the vastness of our planet, i also know that technology is not infallible. Saying that, surely you can see how its hard to understand how we lose a plane.

I do, I think that is why there are so many theories as to what it could of happened, I mean, I am very curious myself at to the story behind it all, that sharp left and then down a corridor to the Indian Ocean with no land to speak of around?

Bizarre at best and indeed very hard to grasp what could of caused the plane to fly this way and to this location, the biggest tragedy is of course all the people trapped in this who have unfortunatly lost their lives.

Hopefully they do find the wreckage and determine the fault, unfortunate to say but sometimes it takes an accident for the whole industry to be made aware of certain faults and made safer.

[Sir Harvest Fields]

Very true mate. I must say i feel for the families having to go through all this. Its very strange.

[soxfan]

As for searching the base of the sea for a plane, i'll be amazed if that's even possible in water that deep. Mind you, my knowledge on deep sea exploration is zero.

It is possible with remote deep sea subs, but they need to determine a fairly small area to search first. Right now they're looking at thousands of square miles. They need a big stroke of luck to find the approximate area, never mind the exact spot. The odds are not good.

[surfer. Fuck you generator.]

I guess we all knew that this was the likely outcome, but there was always the small hope of some sort of miracle and that they would find the passengers stranded on a remote island somewhere.

RIP 

Not much hope in 2014, with the communication technology available even to the average citizen, if there hasn't been any sort of dialogue within a day or two to be honest.

RIP.

I'm based out of the region for work, people do care and want to show they care, but I would happily round up every possible instigator of #Pray for Flight MH370 and throw them after the plane into the Indian Ocean if it were possible.

Just shut up and let the work be done.

[PhilV]

It is possible with remote deep sea subs, but they need to determine a fairly small area to search first. Right now they're looking at thousands of square miles. They need a big stroke of luck to find the approximate area, never mind the exact spot. The odds are not good.

IIRC with the Air France issue, they had to spend a few months just trying to find the Black Boxes via Sonar and that was with a small area to search narrowed down, they sent a Nuclear Sub and even that only covered something like 10 square miles a day, the whole recovery took a year I believe.

They will probably use Sonar and Deep Sea Subs to try and find the wreckage, but back then they had an approximate location to begin the sonar search, in this situation they don't seem to, it's so much worse than needle in a haystack!

[JerseyKloppite]

RIP, horrible.

[Dread Breath]

The cynic in me always thinks there's more than meets the eye with things like this happen, i really struggle to take things at face value, especially when it comes to stories given out by media and government. There's no one more full of shit than a politician. My thoughts are with the families of the lost.

A lot of news stations are reporting families of the lost were informed via text message. If that's true, it's utterly appalling. "Assuming" the plane is gone and the passengers are dead is fine with me but a lot of people find that bad, as soon as the plane was missing over a portion of ocean the size of Europe i think even the biggest optimist would have to say the plane is below water and no one survived, however to inform people of this via text message is beyond insensitive.

Apparently miracles do happen, there could be a small island somewhere. They could still be alive in rafts drifting across the sea waiting to be found.

As for searching the base of the sea for a plane, i'll be amazed if that's even possible in water that deep. Mind you, my knowledge on deep sea exploration is zero.

God bless all those on board.

Of course there is more than meets the eye with these types of things, for a start, in this particular instance, do you think all the information, a lot of it garnered from security sources, is going to be released to the public? Not going to happen for obvious reasons.

As for any survivors, there are none - this isn't the tropics where conditions for a potential survivor are ideal - its in a massive expanse of ocean where exposure for less than a day means death in basically all cirumstances.  They would have had as much chance of surviving the surface of Mars as out there. Having flown out to remote islands in the Indian Ocean, albeit far further north, you don't realise the scale of it until you've seen it - the vastness is something you can't describe to those who've never been there.

[viteslesrouges]

Its doubtful they ever "lost" the plane - I'm pretty sure they've had a very good idea where its final resting place is, in a broad sense, for at least a week. But 98% sure isn't a 100% sure and hence they've waited until they've had more data to confirm something they likely were fairly certain about. The information released to the public has obviously been tailored for a ton of reasons, but frankly this outcome was inevitable once the search "shifted" to the southern Indian Ocean.

Extremely sad, if expected, news for the families and friends. RIP. Hopefully now they can find the plane itself and work out what exactly has gone wrong to prevent it doing so in future, and also to give those connected to the passengers some final closure on this devastating disaster.

I hope so too otherwise those crazy fuckers in North Korea will be making Boeing 777-shaped ICBMs.

[Alan_X]

As i have said above the authorities know more than what's being given out.

And what exactly would that be then?

[Alan_X]

Its doubtful they ever "lost" the plane...

Can people not post nonsense like this please. If you have any evidence that this is the case then please feel free to let us all know.

[jordyball10]

And what exactly would that be then?

Well if i knew that i would know where the plane is

[Skidder.]

Dead classy Sky...

Well had various packages produced in the event of each outcome...

[tacklemyballs]

Its doubtful they ever "lost" the plane

No less than 26 countries, 43 ships, 58 planes, the FBI, Interpol, and special services are all looking for the missing Boeing... they must all be in on it.

[Alan_X]

Well if i knew that i would know where the plane is

In other words you have no idea whether they have or haven't kept things back. It was a pointless statement because it immediately suggests cover-up.

[Alan_X]

No less than 26 countries, 43 ships, 58 planes, the FBI, Interpol, and special services are all looking for the missing Boeing... they must all be in on it.

And Inmarsat... it's so fucking tiresome and so predictable.

[alfonso]

IIRC with the Air France issue, they had to spend a few months just trying to find the Black Boxes via Sonar and that was with a small area to search narrowed down, they sent a Nuclear Sub and even that only covered something like 10 square miles a day, the whole recovery took a year I believe.

They will probably use Sonar and Deep Sea Subs to try and find the wreckage, but back then they had an approximate location to begin the sonar search, in this situation they don't seem to, it's so much worse than needle in a haystack!

The Black boxes landed on sand and they were lucky. They said if it was essentially a mountain they went down in the ocean, they probably wouldn't have been able to retrieve/find them.

Which got me thinking to the Egyptian flight that crashed years ago. The US claimed it was pilot suicide, the Egyptians claimed it was engine malfunction (if I remember correctly).
I think we may never really know what happened with this Malaysian plane even with the black boxes. The cockpit recorder wouldn't have recorded any conversations. Maybe future black boxes should have the capability of filming the cockpit and passenger areas. Surely they can do that.

EDIT - regarding recording images I found this:

Cockpit image recorder recommendation

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has asked for the installation of cockpit image recorders in large transport aircraft to provide information that would supplement existing CVR and FDR data in accident investigations. They also recommended image recorders be placed into smaller aircraft that are not required to have a CVR or FDR.[13] The rationale is that what is seen on an instrument by the pilots of an aircraft is not necessarily the same as the data sent to the display device. This is particularly true of aircraft equipped with electronic displays (CRT or LCD). A mechanical instrument is likely to preserve its last indication but this is not the case with an electronic display.

Such systems, estimated to cost less than $8,000 installed, typically consist of a camera and microphone located in the cockpit to continuously record cockpit instrumentation, the outside viewing area, engine sounds, radio communications, and ambient cockpit sounds. As with conventional CVRs and FDRs, data from such a system is stored in a crash-protected unit to ensure survivability.[

[Red Genius]

In other words you have no idea whether they have or haven't kept things back. It was a pointless statement because it immediately suggests cover-up.

In fairness i think we can safely assume the media has not been given all information regarding this operation. Cover up? doubt that... but there are certainly parties here that will be looking to cover their arses, both legally and reputationally (not sure thats even a word!) In the abyss of actual fact, its inherent human nature to speculate.

[Dread Breath]

Can people not post nonsense like this please. If you have any evidence that this is the case then please feel free to let us all know.

What I'm referring to is that for most of the time they've had some idea of the plane's general direction through satelite imagery, surveillance whatever, if they didn't they wouldn't have opened up a search area in the south Indian Ocean, what was it, over a week ago? I've also referred to the vastness of the space they are searching in - so when I say "lost" I mean they have a very good idea where it is just not the exact location, hence the inverted commas.

Also, could you perhaps be a little less confrontational as a rep of RAWK? I'm not a conspiracy theorist and unlike you I've actually been to that general vicinity so have an idea of the scale of the actual search. You are jumping on posters for no reason other than to show that you want to be a know-all; read the full posts next time before you do actually reply yourself.

[Dread Breath]

In fairness i think we can safely assume the media has not been given all information regarding this operation. Cover up? doubt that... but there are certainly parties here that will be looking to cover their arses, both legally and reputationally (not sure thats even a word!) In the abyss of actual fact, its inherent human nature to speculate.

Forget it, Alan is in one of his dickhead phases - not really worth engaging with him when he only wants to read what he only wants to read.

[Dread Breath]

No less than 26 countries, 43 ships, 58 planes, the FBI, Interpol, and special services are all looking for the missing Boeing... they must all be in on it.

Fuck me, another Alan acolyte, seriously read the full posts before you reply. I've made no reference to any conspiracy theory whatsoever. My take is plane flew off course for whatever reason and crashed into the south Indian Ocean, just as has been reported today. Capiche?

[eirwen]

RIP.

Does anyone find it a weird they are giving out the news now, before identifying the debris? Or maybe that's what they will explain in tomorrow's press conference.

[Red Genius]

RIP.

Does anyone find it a weird they are giving out the news now, before identifying the debris? Or maybe that's what they will explain in tomorrow's press conference.

They must have sufficient facts to suffice the identification of debris, it'd be a monumental fuck up of epic proportions if they told families the demise of their loved ones on an 'assumption' - with the global scrutiny on this case, i can't see that error in judgement being made. I'm sure over the upcoming weeks / months, when appropriate the relevant facts will disseminate.

[conman]

RIP to all, and condolences to their families & friends. YNWA

[jordyball10]

Did we ever find out what happened once air traffic lost the plane? I know that the air traffic changed once it left the airspace but what happened once they realised there is no communication? Also how long after the plane went missing did they make it public?

[Sir Harvest Fields]

Forget it, Alan is in one of his dickhead phases - not really worth engaging with him when he only wants to read what he only wants to read.

Whoa, lets not degrade this thread please.

[Alan_X]

What I'm referring to is that for most of the time they've had some idea of the plane's general direction through satelite imagery, surveillance whatever, if they didn't they wouldn't have opened up a search area in the south Indian Ocean, what was it, over a week ago? I've also referred to the vastness of the space they are searching in - so when I say "lost" I mean they have a very good idea where it is just not the exact location, hence the inverted commas.

Also, could you perhaps be a little less confrontational as a rep of RAWK? I'm not a conspiracy theorist and unlike you I've actually been to that general vicinity so have an idea of the scale of the actual search. You are jumping on posters for no reason other than to show that you want to be a know-all; read the full posts next time before you do actually reply yourself.

I'm confrontational because sadly the internet is full of shit and we prefer to keep it to a minimum on here. I have deleted a load of posts in this thread which you can't see because they veered off into fantasy land.

When you post that 'its doubtful they ever 'lost' the plane' it reads like conspiracy bollocks and I responded accordingly. I am not a mind reader and if that wasn't your intention you should possibly read what you've written in future before posting.

As for having been in the 'general vicinity' of the Indian Ocean I'm not sure that makes you an expert and it certainly doesn't give you the justification to dish out insults to the moderation team.

Wind your neck in.

[Dread Breath]

Whoa, lets not degrade this thread please.

Bit too late for that, and I didn't start it.

[thegoodfella]

RIP, such a sad news this.

Also you hope that the airliners, airports and plane makers will learn from this and make sure something like this never happens again. One also hopes that the 'news' channels and the wannabe clever websites will just admit that they aren't as bright as they think they are and stop the 24 hour speculation clusterfuck that does no good.