Page 27 (of the PDF):
Page 39 (of the PDF)
So they think it is 5+ hours of autopilot flight with the crew dead. But then why no debris?
Call me mad or whatever you want, but I’m still not convinced this airplane is in the Southern Ocean. There are just too many inconsistencies within the various reports and the total lack of debris is weird at least. If the pilot really wanted to fly it somewhere in Australia or one of the Indian Ocean islands, then he of all people would have known how to calculate the fuel burn and fly there. I don’t buy the suicide mission either. OK, you could argue hijack by someone who was good, but not good enough, in flying a T7, but that doesn’t make much sense either, as the pilots would have communicated that or at least set the transponder. Instead it was turned off / stopped functioning.
What strikes me is that to this day the cargo manifest has not been released. Suspicious – moi?
So they think it is 5+ hours of autopilot flight with the crew dead. But then why no debris?
I wonder how much of the ocean have they actually looked at for debris? Could it simply be the case of a ‘big ocean’ and small debris field?
My gut feelings is that it was an emergency onboard which cut comms, and they attempted to return to the field. Sometime after getting back they crew passed out and the plane just kept on the heading/altitude.
I admit that there are some problems with that. eg why no comms if auto pilot working. Why further turns near Malaysia.
But to me it’s the best fit.
If you have not seen this interview with the Emirates’ CEO:
Quite a worthwhile read, giving his views as a major airline CEO on what the industry should do about it.
“I’m still struggling to find why a pilot should be able to put the transponder into standby or off. "
I’ve been instructed to do so when mine was malfunctioning and pushing out the wrong code. Don’t know if this ever happens in commercial aircraft but suspect there may be cases where the equivalent of “stuck Mike” syndrome might occur.
Makes sense, but either way, I don’t understand why the ACARS could be disabled as the airline would surely want to have the data it provides if only for their maintenance records?
He implies that information is being held back by pretty much everyone including the NTSB which of all organisations, you would think would be the most determined.
David, you must be able to turn off the transponder in case it malfunctions, airliners have two transponders so you simply turn the other one on, any bit of kit on an aircraft has to be able to be isolated if only in case of fire.
CKN, for the very same reason you have to be able to turn off the ACARS in case it malfunctions and catches fire.
I once was presented with an airliner that had four or five compleatly differedt systems malfunctioning, after days in the hangar we traced the problem to one electrical connector in the space between the passenger floor and the roof of the forward cargo bay at which all the systems came together, the electrical cables had suffered a very minor fire and burnt out disabling the systems all as a result of a spilled glass of coca cola in the passenger cabin, this was helped along by the ( now banned) Kapton wire used in the electrical loom.
I can think of number of ways MH370 could have been disabled that do not involve criminal action as long as the holes in the Swiss cheese line up. I see all of these being more likely than criminal action.
You could easily have a transponder which cannot catch fire – by having thermal fuses inside, etc. I do not think a transponder needs to have a CB to protect it from fire. Especially a pilot-accessible CB.
But MH370 was out of radar range on most of its flight, so it’s really down to the satphone link to Immarsat (ADS-B, in effect) being always-on that would count.
I think it was depressurised to kill everybody and then very carefully ditched. That’s the only way to get zero debris. The other possibility is that it is somewhere else altogether – a possibility which that Emirates guy doesn’t seem to rule out.
Ok Peter, would you not want to turn off the operating transponder if it was putting out inaccurate data ? Mix inaccurate data and TCAS in busy airspace and you have chaos.
Taking control of the aircraft from the pilot is the top of a very slippery slope that ends in the remote control of aircraft.
Taking control of the aircraft from the pilot is the top of a very slippery slope that ends in the remote control of aircraft.
Which, of course, is every airline CEO’s dream…. Where I think he is absoluteley correct, is on the topic of withholding of information. It is – in my mind – blatantly obvious, that at least one, if not several, involved parties are more than economical with the truth. The entire role of the Malaysian Air Force is murky at best, AFAIK the Malaysians have also never released the cargo manifest. I’m not normally given to conspiracy theories, but I am far from convinced that this a/c really is in the Southern Ocean. Even less convinced that if it is – and is miraculously found – we’ll ever know what really happened on board.
As for the transponder issue. Of course it has to be controlled from the cockpit.
