Malaysia Airlines loses contact with Flight - 239 pax/crew

[Ryan]

As it turns out, the ocean isn't blanketed with cell towers the way land is.

Who knew?

I guess you really do have to have been on a ship in the middle of the ocean to truly appreciate how utterly massive and desolate the ocean really is. It's somewhat awe inspiring.

 

[jis]

The mystery of flight MH370: How on earth, with all our technology, do we lose a giant plane?

This article in the last paragraph says

With the Air France AF477 [sic!] FDR never recovered,

Clearly the author had not been paying attention to what came of the AF 447 FDR. It was recovered as this report from Air Transport World would strongly suggest:

Air France 447 FDR data show aircraft remained stalled in final minutes of flight

Air France 447 took less than four minutes to fall from approximately 38,000 ft. into the waters of the South Atlantic following the disengagement of the autopilot on the Airbus A330-200, according to an interim report released by the French BEA Friday that is based on CVR and FDR analysis.

Further discussion in the comments section shows that the author still is not sure whether what he calls AF 4777's FDR was recovered or not. Oh well.... doesn't help his credibility much, does it? Looks like he had a slow day and wanted to knock off an article without spending too much time researching it.
Here is a definitive report on the recovery of the FDR and CVR of AF 447:

http://www.flyingmag.com/news/air-france-447-cvr-fdr-recovered

Actually the FDR was recovered before the CVR, undermining the lame excuse for the error that the author came up with suggesting that the FDR was recovered sometime after the CVR. He would have been better off simply taking the lumps and saying that he did not know.

 

[Ryan]

Looks like he had a slow day and wanted to knock off an article without spending too much time researching it.

Mission accomplished!

 

[SarahZ]

It took them five days to find Air France Flight 447 after it crashed into the Atlantic, and even then, it took another three weeks to locate most of the wreckage and 50 bodies. Some of those bodies were spread upward of 50 miles apart.

This is like finding a needle in a haystack. The ocean is deep and has currents. If the plane broke apart before impact, it's going to be even harder. I don't know why so many people think this aircraft should have been found within 24 hours.

Edit: I was posting right along with Jis. Nice.

 

[Paulus]

Guys, they do not know even roughly where the plane went down. The circle is hundreds of miles in diameter, in an area not conducive to finding the black boxes (shallower water=less sonar range), and they do not have sophisticated search vessels for the most part (many of these ships could pass right over a fully intact airliner and they would be completely unable to spot a thing). Maritime search, for fully intact vessels with clear weather, is a very difficult problem; when you are searching for debris that is often indistinguishable from normal flotsam and spilled oil in the sea, it gets significantly harder.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

As it turns out, the ocean isn't blanketed with cell towers the way land is. Who knew? I guess you really do have to have been on a ship in the middle of the ocean to truly appreciate how utterly massive and desolate the ocean really is. It's somewhat awe inspiring.

Nonetheless I believe we're approaching the point where an MH370 that had lost power/control at the same time it lost communication would have been located in some form by now. This is not the Atlantic or Pacific ocean we're talking about. Nor is it a conventional search effort. Every vessel and every aircraft in this very busy area is either actively or passively watching for any trace of this flight. We're talking dozens of active search parties and potentially thousands of passive participants keeping an eye out for anything the slightest bit unusual. AF447 didn't have anything like this level of continuous surveillance.

On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I wasn't terribly surprised that zero evidence had emerged. On Monday I'm slightly more surprised. If we still don't have any corroborated evidence by the end of the week I will be genuinely shocked, despite the aircraft apparently being lost at sea. In any case it makes for juicy (if highly unlikely) speculation. When was the last time people were contemplating airborne disasters involving meteors or unmanned drones? Regardless of your particular position this turning out to be one curious result compared to virtual every other major incident involving modern aircraft.

 

[jis]

They have apparently determined from lab tests that the oil slick was not connected with the lost aircraft.

 

[Ryan]

shallower water=less sonar range

This isn't entirely accurate.

 

[Paulus]

shallower water=less sonar range

This isn't entirely accurate.

Sonar definitely gets funky but my understanding is that it is an accurate simplification for finding the black boxes.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

My understanding is that sonar could find a large debris field but identifying a specific device such as the FDR or CVR would come from divers or submersibles, either locking on to the homing beacon during the first 30 days or rummaging through the wreckage piece by piece thereafter.

 

[Ryan]

<- Former ASW officer

That understanding isn't accurate. Picture a sphere. That represents the volume where the black box can be heard.

Picture that sphere in the deep ocean, where the top of it just barely breaks the surface. Now picture it in shallow water. Which one is easier to find?

In practice there are a lot more variables. Temperature/Salinity differences, background noise, and a bunch of other things can muck things up. Shallow water ASW can be a real pain in the neck against a submarine that's quiet enough to blend in. But a black box pinging away is another story entirely.

 

[Ryan]

My understanding is that sonar could find a large debris field but identifying a specific device such as the FDR or CVR would come from divers or submersibles, either locking on to the homing beacon during the first 30 days or rummaging through the wreckage piece by piece thereafter.

You're thinking about active sonar that's mapping the bottom and looking for airplane shaped stuff.
Listening for the homing beacon is as easy as sticking your head underwater. The trick is being in the right place when you do that. Using a hydrophone so you don't get your hair wet makes the process a little easier too.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

My understanding is that sonar could find a large debris field but identifying a specific device such as the FDR or CVR would come from divers or submersibles, either locking on to the homing beacon during the first 30 days or rummaging through the wreckage piece by piece thereafter.

You're thinking about active sonar that's mapping the bottom and looking for airplane shaped stuff.
Listening for the homing beacon is as easy as sticking your head underwater. The trick is being in the right place when you do that. Using a hydrophone so you don't get your hair wet makes the process a little easier too.

Are the FDR/CVR homing beacons setup to be easily detected by even rudimentary outdated technology such as that which may be possessed by pre-industrialized countries?

 

[Ryan]

I was a little flippant, the "ping" is at a higher frequency than you can hear, so it does take a little more than just sticking your head in the water.

But the gear isn't terribly complex, so if there isn't one readily at hand one can be shipped out pretty quick. The idea is to make them as easy to find as possible, so the bar is pretty low.

 

[jis]

Are the FDR/CVR homing beacons setup to be easily detected by even rudimentary outdated technology such as that which may be possessed by pre-industrialized countries?

As it turns out, one of the pre-industrialized countries involved with significant asset deployment now is the United States

"Also, as I think you probably know, the [Defense Department] said over the weekend that the 7th Fleet has sent assets to search efforts, including the USS Pinckney, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, which is now in the vicinity and has two MH-60R helicopters equipped for search efforts on board," Carney continued. "Additionally a P-C3 Orion aircraft from our base in Okinawa is now in the region, and that's long-range search, radar and communications capabilities. So we're providing assistance."

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/transportation-report/aviation/200349-wh-not-enough-info-on-missing-jet#ixzz2vavw4QoX

Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

In addition Australia has also apparently deployed some assets.

So rest assured that they have equipment available that is a bit more sophisticated than a tin can and bailing wire, and even more sophisticated than a stethoscope.

 

[CHamilton]

Chinese satellites deployed in search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370

 

[jis]

There were no ACARS messages received after contact was lost according to Reuters.

The Malaysian passenger jet that disappeared on Saturday did not make automatic contact with a flight data-monitoring system after vanishing from radar screens, two people familiar with the matter said.

The Boeing 777-200ER is equipped with a maintenance computer capable of talking to the ground automatically through short messages known as ACARS.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/10/us-malaysia-airlines-idUSBREA291D520140310

Here is another chart showing the location at which contact was lost according to Flightradar24:

 

[RRUserious]

The coverage on Bloomberg says the security at the Kuala Lumpur didn't even bother to check the database of stolen passports.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

The coverage on Bloomberg says the security at the Kuala Lumpur didn't even bother to check the database of stolen passports.

In my experience the international arrival process is where most of the security is leveraged while the departure process is generally little more than a simple formality. Unless you broke the law in the country you're about to depart you're generally free to leave without much in the way of expectations or complications. The *airline* is generally the one who worries about the suitability of your departure documents, mainly because they want to avoid having to return you on the next flight or paying a large fine for failing to abide by their legal obligations.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

From Flyertalk.com

"A large field of debris has been reported by a CX flight at position N9.72 E107.42 about 80nm southeast of Ho Chi Minh City, about 50nm off the south-eastern coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea and about 281nm northeast of the last known radar position. Ships have been dispatched to the reported debris field."

As someone who is trained in Search and Rescue. Find someone alive is the best outcome, find a body is still a success. Not find anything is the worse.

 

[Ryan]

Agreed, and we've pulled both out of the water.

 

[SarahZ]

As someone who is trained in Search and Rescue. Find someone alive is the best outcome, find a body is still a success. Not find anything is the worse.

Agreed. If anything, it would be best for the families. I know it gives a lot of people comfort to be able to bury their loved ones instead of an empty casket or some memento.

I really hope they're able to find something soon and figure out what happened, if anything to give their loved ones some peace. I can't imagine what they're going through right now. I would be out of my mind with grief and worry.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Finding something relevant is probably in the range of a couple days to a couple weeks. Figuring out what actually happened is probably months or even years away. At least if other lost aircraft are any indication. Personally I'm finding this event more and more interesting, but even as our curiosity skyrockets the fate of the plane itself seems to be playing a smaller and smaller role in this story. Yes lives were probably lost, but we lose multiple MH370's worth of people on the road each and every day and nobody seems to be sobbing over them or worrying about what their families are going through. While we're freaking out about MH370 thousands of other people are starving to death or being bonded into slavery or tortured or terrorized and yet so very few of us seem to care or even notice. Our whole concept of life and death and risk and suffering is so confused and convoluted that I can scarcely comprehend it. We are all going to die. Most of us are going to suffer extreme loss at some point in our lives. Who among us has managed to make it to adulthood without realizing this? In most respects we just move along like nothing happened, which is already pretty extreme if you think about it, but then one very specific type of transport suffers an unusual failure and suddenly billions of people are demanding answers. Fleets of every sort are deployed. Tools and experts from around the world are brought in. Surveillance technology of every form is leveraged. Wall to wall coverage is maintained every minute of every hour for days on end. Not because we're actually going to save anyone, but just because we want to find out where they went. I'm not sure what to make of it but this is the first news story in a rather long time where absolutely everyone I know is aware of it, including the people who never read or listen to the news.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

They're expanding the search area to a 100-nautical mile radius. Meanwhile, the oil slick has been found not to be from the plane.

http://time.com/#18231/malaysia-arlines-flight-mh-370-china-action/

 

[RRUserious]

The coverage on Bloomberg says the security at the Kuala Lumpur didn't even bother to check the database of stolen passports.

In my experience the international arrival process is where most of the security is leveraged while the departure process is generally little more than a simple formality. Unless you broke the law in the country you're about to depart you're generally free to leave without much in the way of expectations or complications. The *airline* is generally the one who worries about the suitability of your departure documents, mainly because they want to avoid having to return you on the next flight or paying a large fine for failing to abide by their legal obligations.

How did they depart without first arriving? And did they arrive under a false identity?