Generally, terrorists care little about collateral damage.
No, it was not a bomb. Any aircraft accident has a unique string of events that we try to learn from.
In this case, it was an empty fuel tank that was still full of vapors. You take any container and fill it full of gas fumes, and it’s in danger of exploding if you introduce a spark. Now, airlines had obviously done this for a long time, but in TWA800’s case, it was believed that the electrical wiring for the fuel sensors inside of the tank frayed, and it introduced the spark.
We learn from every accident, and so the lessons after that were regulations to address issues with the wiring and the fuel tank design (and, of course, after everyone had forgotten, industry got the FAA to rescind those regulations about 5 years ago). The NTSB also recommended that airlines introduce nitrogen systems that fill empty tanks with inert nitrogen so they can’t explode, but that would cost a lot of money, and the airlines wanted to know who was going to pay for it.
Woolen, you sound like an expert in this area so I am wondering if a pilot is able to turn off all communications including radar and what not? I mean, if a hijacker threatens to kill passenger one by one until he turn off, I am sure he would have done so to prevent death. But shouldn’t airlines be equipped with communications devices that is beyond what a pilot could turn off from within the cockpit to prevent hijacking?
I have a morbid fascination with airplane crashes, possibly because I absolutely hate to fly, and I used to fly a ton. Knowing the worse case scenarios was my twisted way to cope.
Airliners don’t really have “radar” as you think of it. It’s mainly weather radar to detect wind sheer and storms, but they don’t have what fighter jets have in terms of tracking other planes in the air; they rely on air-traffic control for that.
Pilots can shut off communication with the ground. That’s what’s believe to have happened in the SilkAir incident. The cockpit voice recorder had been turned off just minutes before the crash, and the pilot had previously been disciplined for fucking around with the CVR on earlier flights.
Your theory about the hijacker threatening passengers unless the pilot does what he’s told is contrary to what every pilot (and every passenger) believes in the post-9/11 world. Assuming the pilots are secure in their cockpit like they should be, they’d absolutely report the issue to the ground. Everyone learned the lesson. Pre-9/11, it was don’t resist and do what the hijackers want; the priority is to land the plane and wait for the cavalry. Post-9/11, no one trusts that the hijackers actually want the plane to land; you must not surrender control at all costs.
Hmm, that is true. I forgot about the post 9/11 scenarios where even if the pilots do what they want, the hijacker’s plan is bigger body counts and therefore it makes sense not to surrender. Then I am more mystified in how MH370 could just disappeared unless it is mechanical or explosion. The early version of the news was that after it left Malaysia airspace, Vietnam is supposed to pick it up but that never did. That means, the hijackers also have intimate knowledge of how air tracking works and they knew exactly when to attack, provided it is still hijackers is the theory.
So it turns out the oil was not from an aircraft.
And the Vietnamese couldn’t find that possible aircraft door the aircraft spotted. And what was thought to be a life raft was just regular trash.
They have dozens of ships and dozens of aircraft sweeping the area for 3 days, and they still confirm if the plane crashed. This is definitely weird.
I’m wondering if they’re even looking in the wrong place. In other words, did the plane crash in the jungle? But the odds of that are slim. For one, it’s a crowded part of the world. Someone would have seen/heard something. Plus, someone’s radar would have picked it up if it flew over a country.
A terrorist wouldn’t care when the handover to Vietnamese airspace would happen. Seems if it was terrorist related someone would have claimed responsibility by now.
As WH said, if an airplane as large as a 777 disintegrates at altitude, the debris field should be impressive, just with the interior components, such as overhead baggage bin doors, interior reveal panels, service items, ceiling panels, insulation blankets, etc., blowing across many miles. With no debris field (and apparently no oil slick yet, even), it appears that the aircraft was mostly intact when it impacted the water.
This airframe had previously suffered damage to a wing but it’s not looking likely that it’s related to the incident. I think that because as you move outboard on the wing, it’s called upon to do less and less. Wings are also not exposed to pressurization cycles that cause fatigue. Being in compression, the upper wing on Boeing airplanes rarely gets cracks, and when they do develop, it’s near the area where the main landing gear trunnion is attached. Although anything is possible, I’d think that even if that repair came apart, the rest of the structure wouldn’t just toss it in and cause the wing to snap. This structure isn’t as rigid as previous designs, either, as aeroelasticity is part of the design concept from start to finish.
Flight EY-461 recently had some weird stuff going on in mid-flight with an arsonist setting fires repeatedly in the flight and not getting caught. http://www.avherald.com/h?article=4703db82&opt=0
It will be interesting to see the ACARS data, if released, and what sort of debris field they do find. Some people have reported a large debris field over 300 miles from the last known location, but everything at this point is speculative. The search area itself if huge.
I’m following this topic over at the Jetcareers forums and it was mentioned that Boeing would have the ACARS data. If that’s the case then they would know the plane’s last reported position, wouldn’t they?
The lavatory fires on that Ethihad flight is fucking crazy. Two fires started in the lavs, the captain decides to land in Jakarta, everyone gets off and is interrogated by police after which everyone gets back on to resume the flight to Abu Dhabi but while enroute 3 more fires are started? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
When I was in college, someone pulled the fire alarm in the middle of the night during finals week. We had to get up, evac, wait for the fire department to check out every floor, then go back to our rooms. Then the fucker pulled it again a little later that night. Get up, go out, wait for FD to give all clear, then go back to our rooms. AND THEN THE FUCKER DID IT A THIRD TIME THAT NIGHT, at which point, I think we were going to beat to death anyone standing near a fire alarm.
If I was on that plane, I’d be organizing a standing watch of multiple people at the bathrooms. One person goes in, fire alarm goes off, we beat the fucker to death.
IRT ACARS, none of us, at least, know what was being transmitted, when, and to whom. It is interesting to note that the search area is not confined to where we logically think it “should” be, so the governments in that area may have more information than us which they haven’t released. For example, it was also said that another MH flight was asked to contact 370 when ATC lost contact with them, but that the reply was very distant. That’s interesting, but it could be totally bogus, it could have been a different airliner responding, etc.
From what I can tell, the aircraft doesn’t appeared to have plowed it in near the IGARI waypoint, was last “captured” turning, and that’s it. However, the area has no primary radar coverage, I don’t think. It looks like it’s all ADS-B, which could have been disabled, but like the other speculation, it’s hard to tell. The primary signatures would most likely be sketchy at best, and that’s why transponders are so great, minus the fact that they are easily disabled.
There are so many rumors that it’s really impossible to tell anything definite, other than that the airplane disappeared and we’re not looking in the right place.
^ That!
Isn’t starting a fire on a plane akin to attempted terrorism… which would then necessitate a multi-year jail sentence?
Also, is there any possibility, with the South China Sea being such a firestorm of controversy, possibly being the most contested Sea Zone in the world for oil and fishing rights from the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, and Indonesia… That maybe one of those governments knows something and is not reporting it? Even North Korea sends their fisherman to do illegal fishing in those waters, so it’s not like any Asian nation is out of bounds when it comes to that area. I’m thinking of some kind of accidental missile strike, whether surface to air, or air to air.
As far as I know there’s no such controversy of which the airplane flew; even then, the military “tensions” these hot spots generate have never included any direct military action that I know of. Only North Korea has been known to militarily engage other nations in SE Asia.
— Alan
The only sensible explanation for this is that they’ve got to be searching in the wrong place.
If the plane was able to descend in any sort of reasonably intact state, some data would have been transmitted. And given that no data about a problem was transmitted, it seems a given that the plane suffered a sudden catastrophic failure at altitude. In which case there should be debris scattered everywhere, but they’re simply not looking in the right place to see it. Am I missing some step in what should be a logical chain of conclusions?
-TomYeah, that’s the puzzling thing. You’d expect large amounts of debris everywhere if it broke up at altitude, but we’re not seeing that. But how did it end up so far off course during a cloudless daylit sky? Triple Sevens have aviation-grade GPS systems, and there are two of them, so there’s redundancy, and there was no reason to detour for something like a storm system. Possibly for turbulence, but it doesn’t seem like that’s an issue if no other flights reported it.
It took 6 days to locate any major part of Air France 447, though bits and pieces (and a few bodies) were discovered days days after the plane disappeared. That flight was probably the most well known “disappearance” of recent memory since it took so long to locate, deep in the central Atlantic.
Searches can be incredibly difficult. Oceans are moving surfaces that can hide floating materials very well to most forms of observation.
— Alan
Depending on how small the pieces were, and how far from the search area they landed, and how far the currents took those pieces after they landed, and how quickly pieces sank, it could be expected to take a while before they found something.
Right, but there have been literally zero traces of the Malaysian flight found. By this time in the search for the Air France flight, there was a clear indication it had broken up in-flight. In other words, if the searches for the Malaysian flight were being conducted in the right place, wouldn’t the “bits and pieces and a few bodies” have been found by now?
-Tom
Well, Air France 447 didn’t break up in flight, it broke up on impact.
— Alan