Malaysia Airlines loses contact with Flight - 239 pax/crew

[Texan Eagle]

Either my knowledge of English is not as good as I thought, or Malaysia uses a different English than I know, but can someone please explain how can the Malaysian government say the plane is confirmed to be at the bottom of Indian Ocean when there is no wreck nor black box located or retrieved?

I understand they arrived at this conclusion based on extensive analysis of satellite ping data and the fact that there are no suitable landing strips in that area, but isn't this at best a conjecture or assumption rather than "confirmed truth"?

 

[Ryan]

If the last position and time make it impossible to be anywhere else, then yeah. That's pretty much confirmation.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Pilot suicide?

Not consistent with other examples of pilot suicide. It will be years, however, before we know what happened and we may simply never know.

You care to list some examples of what you think this is event is consistent with? So far as I can tell pilot suicide makes about as much sense as anything at this point, despite your flippant and unsubstantiated reply to the contrary.

Hardly flippant or unsubstantiated. EgyptAir Flight 990, Japan Airlines Flight 350, LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470, Royal Air Maroc Flight 630, and SilkAir Flight 185 were all sudden and deliberate actions to destroy the airplane as quickly as possible. Additionally, the other members of the flight crew generally are not on board with the suicide plans (and we know for a fact that they fought it on EgyptAir 990 and Japan Airlines 350) which makes "Fly until fuel exhaustion in the middle of the ocean" rather unlikely as a means of suicide.

People who are about to commit murder and/or suicide are not always in a hurry. In fact the decision to proceed and the process of performing it may take on a ritualistic theme which could last a substantial amount of time. One thing that is extremely consistent with previous attempts of in flight suicide are measures taken to prevent or hinder the discovery of the cause. Both in the form of loss of communication and the disabling/disruption of monitoring equipment. It's also not unprecedented for the perpetrator to gain exclusive access to the flight deck or to fight with those who are either unaware of or uncooperative with their decision. For these and other reasons murder-suicide by commanded collision or via fuel exhaustion in a location that precludes easy rescue or discovery does not seem terribly far fetched to me.

 

[jis]

Interesting tidbit about the grand 777 Simulator that is being frequently used by CNN, from airliners.net:

It's not a certified simulator used for pilot training and has no motion system. It's amateur-built and cost a small fraction of the cost of the simulators used by airlines. It's referred to as an "entertainment simulator". It's used by the general public who can pay for the experience. Current price $149 (Canadian). I believe the "captain" who appears in most of the CNN simulator segments is a private pilot with no airline experience.

http://uflysimulator.ca/

 

[CHamilton]

SEAFLOOR EXPERTS PUBLISH NEW VIEW OF ZONE WHERE MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370 MIGHT LIE

27 May 2014


WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new illustration of the seafloor, created by two of the world’s leading ocean floor mapping experts that details underwater terrain where the missing Malaysia Airlines flight might be located, could shed additional light on what type of underwater vehicles might be used to find the missing airplane and where any debris from the crash might lie.

The seafloor topography map illustrates jagged plateaus, ridges and other underwater features of a large area underneath the Indian Ocean where search efforts have focused since contact with Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was lost on March 8. The image was published today in Eos, the weekly newspaper of the Earth and space sciences, published by the American Geophysical Union.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Fascinating story and thanks for the link. For some reason I cannot help but wonder if someone (presumably one of the pilots) chose this area specifically because it would be such an unlikely and enormously difficult location to search. I'm no expert in any sense of the word, but I've read about and watched documentaries on dozens of airline crashes and I keep coming back to intentional cessation of communication followed by intentional redirection. In other news they also apparently released the "raw" satellite data to the public.

Link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/27/mh370-malaysia-airlines-missing-plane-satellite-data-released

 

[Bob Dylan]

To use the old Mafia line: Flight 370 Sleeps with the Fishes!

 

[caravanman]

My gut feeling on this is that a major sudden calamity affected the plane... After all, there were hundreds of passengers, and many flight attendants not on the flight deck. Given that the plane was supposed to have flown back over land at some point, someone could have used a mobile phone if they were all still alive?

Let's hope they find its location soon.

Ed

 

[jis]

Looks like a flaperon that could be from a 777 has been found on the beach of Reunion Islands in south west Indian Ocean, and is causing some amount of excitement....

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/07/29/mh370-experts-analyse-wreckage-plane-wing-found-reunion-island_n_7896548.html

Another article http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ca0fe9f3e1c34132894f28433992b9fb/us-official-debris-photo-belongs-boeing-777

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Saw it on Airliners. Can't they find a serial number of something?

 

[Bob Dylan]

Sadly the plane and all aboard are Sleeping with the fishes!

I would think there should be some kind of # or markings so as to be able to trace this part as SH said?

 

[SarahZ]

And now I know "flap" is actually an abbreviation. I thought they were just flaps, period. :blush:

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

No, it's not a flap. Flaps are not flaperons. I believe flaperon means "flap-aileron". Ailerons control the roll of the aircraft.

 

[Ryan]

Ailerons control the plane in the roll direction. Flaps change the shape of the wing to generate more lift at low speed. This magical floating part can do both.

I'm sure they'll be able to find a serial number and track it down. It's way out in the middle of nowhere, going to take a little bit of time to get the right experts in place.

 

[tp49]

It was bound to happen sooner or later but I'm hopeful that with this discovery if it is in fact MH 370 that the families can finally get some closure.

 

[SarahZ]

Okay, so "flaps" on their own are a real thing. Also, the thing I call the "flap" is, indeed, a flap (I looked it up), so I was basically just confusing myself.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Okay, so "flaps" on their own are a real thing. Also, the thing I call the "flap" is, indeed, a flap (I looked it up), so I was basically just confusing myself.

Stop flapping your lips about these flaps. :lol: Don't you have more packing to do?

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Let's hope this piece gets confirmed to be something soon. It could still be from a Yemenia A310 that crashed.

 

[tp49]

Let's hope this piece gets confirmed to be something soon. It could still be from a Yemenia A310 that crashed.

Based on the currents and the location the Yemenia plane crashed it's not likely to be that aircraft.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

It was bound to happen sooner or later but I'm hopeful that with this discovery if it is in fact MH 370 that the families can finally get some closure.

Did the families of MS990 or MI185 receive closure? I think we're an awful long way from closing the case of MH370. If anything we may simply be scratching the surface of many more questions to come.

 

[Texan Eagle]

They don't even have to match it specifically to plane operating the MH370 flight, even if it can be established that the flaperon-like piece belongs to a 777, that is pretty clear evidence it came from MH370. After all, no other 777 has ever crashed into the sea, and a part as big as a flaperon would not just fall off from a regular flight without anyone noticing it amiss.

 

[jis]

No, it's not a flap. Flaps are not flaperons. I believe flaperon means "flap-aileron". Ailerons control the roll of the aircraft.

A flaperon is a double purpose control surface. It is used as the inboard aileron on a 777 (777s also have a outboard pure aileron). It is also used as a low speed lift enhancement control surface like the other slotted flaps on the wing for that purpose. At low velocity it is deployed as a lift flap while it still deflect up and down in conjunction with the aileron motion needed.

 

[Rover]

Why We Never Found The Malaysian Flight MH370

Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappearance, also called MH370 disappearance, is the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet on March 8, 2014, during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The disappearance of the Boeing 777 with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board led to a search effort stretching from the Indian Ocean west of Australia to Central Asia. The perplexing nature of the loss of flight 370 is such that it has become one of history’s most famous missing aircraft.

 

[jis]

How nice of them to use the image of a 737 to talk about a flight that was flown by a 777

 

[Old MM]

Weird documentary. Appears thorough in how they point out the flaws of every theory. But they left out several details regarding the suicide theory, such as the 41000 feet and other stuff he practiced on the sim.