I am surprised that a commercial flight could 'disappear' for so long. I was under the impression that they were monitored very closely and that a rescue would be put in place within minutes.

"...Thanh said Malaysian, Singaporean and Vietnamese search officials were coordinating operations in an 11,200-square-kilometer (4,324-square-mile) area where the plane was last known to be. He said Vietnamese fishermen in the area were asked to report any suspected sign of the missing plane. ..."

News reports are that the data links from the plane and radar give a good location where the plane went down. Radar tracked "a plane" (presumably the plane in question) "descending" at that location.

Even the most sudden mechanical failure or bird strike or extreme weather, generally allows time for a plane to glide for some minutes at least and transmit a distress signal.

At cruise altitude if there is a rapid decompression of the cockpit the flight crew would have less than ten seconds of useful consciousness.

I'm still in shock trying to figure out what's going on in this case. In some travels, it's probably best not to know too much. Otherwise, I would just stay home as I become more risk-averse.

Can someone here answer these questions: Would a cell phone's GPS chip be operable inside an airplane during flight? Also, would the GPS chip interfere with the airplane's communications? I'm just curious from a technological standpoint.

Recent reports indicate the Rolls Royce engines were reporting their status for four hours after the B-777 fell off the radar.

Seems unlikely to have a birdstrike shut off the transponder.
But we're having to think of every possibility.

I saw a report of an AD on the 777 describing corrosion around an antenna mounting that might lead to decompression.
Then got to thinking that if the transponder antenna mount were torn away the lack of antenna would look like loss of transponder to the ground stations.

Combine with sloppy flight deck behavior such that no pilot could get to his mask in time then you have the Payne Stewart scenario of a plane flying on autopilot with no live souls on board until it runs out of fuel.

But you'd expect one of the countries along the route to pick up the ghost plane on radar - so this theory has holes in it.

I think the high-probability one is hijacking followed by unauthorized pilot flying toward some target (like the high towers in Kuala Lumpur?) with a 911 type crash in mind.
But since this flight went out over water at night, perhaps they inadvertently descended into the water while still trying to figure out how to aim for their target?

I still find it a little amazing that in the "surveillance" world we seem to live in today, when the governments of the world know who we email, our friends on Facebook, and who we talk to on the phone that we can still manage to lose something the size of a 777.

The shock generated by the Boeing 777 mystery is largely a product of how much we’ve come to take for granted the modern superabundance of information. ..... If you log on to a flight-tracking website, you can punch in the flight number of any commercial aircraft and see its current location and direction. Seems pretty foolproof.
----------------snip-----------
Centers track each flight in a variety of ways. The first is with good old-fashioned radio calls. Controllers call up pilots to give them instructions, inquire about their intentions, and relay information. The second source of information is radar, of which there are two kinds. Primary radar tells operators where a plane is located. ......secondary radar, which pings an electronic device called a transponder inside each aircraft, which then transmits its altitude. Controllers will then be able to see on their screen the number of each flight, its location, and its altitude, derived from secondary radar.
---------------snip--------------
Together, these last two systems provide a robust and interlinking network, but they share the same limitation: They’re limited in range to somewhere between 100 to 200 miles from the nearest ground station, depending on atmospheric conditions. “In general, once you go far enough out over the water, if you don’t have a satellite link, there’s no way to talk to the ground,” says Rob Thomas,....

In such cases, the flight remains in the system, and controllers continue to see its symbol moving across their screens, based on the information obtained from the flight plan and from the last actual contact between controllers and the plane. .... They’re out of contact, and their status within the system is based on assumption until they can actually get back in contact and confirm that everything’s A-OK.

IIRC, and its been a while, is that RADAR isn't exactly hi-def, you simply see something vague which is why aircraft have transponders that reply with their ID. So if someone turns off that transponder the RADAR operators can't tell if its a plane or flock of birds or dense cloud0

Seems like they should make one transponder only accessible externally so they can't be turned off as I'm noticing that to be somewhat of a repeated theme in various hijackings and such.

The WSJ article has since been debunked.

They poo-pooped meteor strikes until that one in Russia last year. It is improbable but not impossible.

[quote]As for the 3 day late Malaysian Supposed RADAR contact of an aircraft without an active commercial airliner Transponder, overflying one of the worlds most important shipping routes, that wasn't investigated at the time, I found a little hard to believe considering the Su30s and F-18s that the Air force has available for an intercept, especially shortly after this would have been after the disappearance/loss of contact of one of the countries commercial airliners.

Someone isn't telling what they know.

As no one else is saying what some of us are thinking -

Scenario A - Hijack by external elements, plane is forced to fly to some remote spot and lands; or crashes at sea, straight in.

Scenario B - Hijack with pilot's help. Lands some remote place. Passenger's fate unknown, plane to be used at a later time for a terroristic mission.

Just thinking out loud.

This aircraft disappearance is looking to become a bigger mystery than the aircraft which struck the world trade centre or the Pentagon on the 11th September 2001, the shoot down of TWA 800 or even the Lockerbie Pan Am Flight and the hunt for its missing nuclear payload or even the air crash of Payne Stewart after his Golfing visit to Cuba just after Hurricane Irene.

... To say nothing of the grandaddy (grandmother?)of them all -Amelia Earhart.

One has to love the smell of runaway speculation in the morning....

...Either that, or some key data that has been released as fact is actually false....

Taking all that we think we know, Charles Hugh Smith who blogs on oftwominds.com lays out his analysis in What Happened to Flight 370? An Analysis of What Is Known . One key thought is that: You don't know what you don't know. People who do know deliberately hold back information all the time because of security or because they are embarrassed or for a number of other reasons -- basically they don't want us to know or they don't want to confirm what we think we know. We can't take everything at face value.

You don't want to cause panic, wild speculation, knee-jerk reactions, etc.

But you have to admit, the story gets "curious-er and curious-er" as more details are revealed. I vote that the plane was diverted to some little island in the Indian Ocean, and some or all of the passengers and crews are "re-educated" and then they are miraculously found a couple weeks from now adrift in the plane's lifeboats. Think Manchurian Candidate.

As the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet expanded into the daunting vastness of the Indian Ocean, a satellite communications company confirmed on Friday that it had recorded electronic “keep alive” ping signals from the plane after it disappeared, and said those signals could be analyzed to help estimate its location.

The information from the company, Inmarsat, could prove to be the first big break in helping narrow the frustrating search for the plane with 239 people aboard that mysteriously disappeared from radar screens a week ago, now hunted by a multinational array of ships and planes that have fanned out for thousands of square miles.

Inmarsat, a Britain-based satellite communications provider of systems to ships and airplanes, had equipment aboard the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 jetliner, said David Coiley, the vice president of the company in charge of the aviation business. The equipment automatically communicates with satellites, much as a mobile phone would automatically connect to a network after passing through a mountain tunnel, he said.

This latest information obviously works against possibilities that the plane vanished from radar coverage because it blew up -- via bomb, some structural failure, missile strike, meteorite, what have you. The fact that the plane kept flying, with its transponders turned off, also works against any "pilot hypoxia" assumptions. (The idea that the pilots somehow both lost their oxygen supply and passed out, as happened in different circumstances 15 years ago in the Payne Stewart crash and in a crash in Greece in 2005.) If two pilots were simultaneously nodding off at the controls, there is no reason why their last conscious act would be to disable the transponders -- rather than radioing for help, descending into thicker air, reaching for the emergency oxygen bottles, etc. Possibilities involving deliberate destruction -- by the flight crew on its own, or by attackers who got control of the plane -- thus become more likely.

. . . i'm thinking it's straight out of james bond. ernst blofeld, dr no.....

Except for Bond, James Bond. . .

In all fairness, I do feel for the families and friends who are still distraught and grieving, and here we are saying flippant stuff like this. Normally I am sensitive to that, but this is just a WEIRD unfolding story.

What is the down side for anyone IF the USA treats it as a threat?

At this point I would consider this as a Nat. Security matter.

I would be checking some of the larger hangers at Kabul Airport for the missing Malaysian airliner.
...
2700 miles would be approx 5 hours flight time.

Just a guess here, but the course shown would have taken it across and near some sensitive border areas of India, e.g. China and Pakistan. I would think these areas would be well covered by Indian Air Defense radars, and a big plane like a 777 would gain some attention.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday that the plane bound for China was still flying at 8:11 AM, about seven hours after it took off from Kuala Lumpur and about half an hour after it was expected to land in Beijing. This last data point, from a satellite trying to communicate with the plane, indicates that the 777 was still in the air when it might have been running dangerously low on fuel, raising the possibility that a possible hijacking might have ended with a crash.

The precise location of the flight at 8:11 AM is still a mystery. But officials provided a map (above) that shows the plane's possible location along one of two red semi-circles, based on a "ping" from a satellite orbiting 35,800 kilometers above the Indian Ocean. As you can see, this final data point indicates two possible flight paths: one northwest stretching toward Kazakhstan and another southwest into the Indian Ocean.

The northern flight path is above land, which would raise the odds that officials find the plane or its remnants. But The New York Times points out that it's unlikely that air-defense networks in India, Pakistan, or Afghanistan failed to pick up on a rogue 777. This makes the southern path more likely.

I'm betting a Navy CT on Diego Garcia knows the answer

This Map Outlines the Last Known Position of the Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight

No doubt there is also a INMARSAT ping time radius line at the last known RADAR position, altitude, time and velocity of the missing airliner (A Vector quality) measured by the Malaysian air force.

There should be an easily calculable track of the missing aircraft. Finding the last vector intersection of the final position radius would indicate the last known position on that last radius. There should be a mathematically sound solution, made even easier if the Rolls Royce Data is available for the engine performance.

Again why this has taken 7 days so far? All the electronic data pertaining to the missing aircraft needs to be released publically, the solution of where the aircraft ended up would be computed within hours.

Again it looks like the Malaysian authorities appear to be stalling for time for some reason, despite the denials.

I suspect it is rather more likely a result of incompetance, bureaucrtic turf, inertia, and inefficiency in a third world country.

Yes, that is a mystery just as with the Royal Malaysian Air force didn't scramble a fighter jet to confirm the bogie's identity on its military prime RADAR as it passed into the Malacca Straits.

This information released by the Malaysian authorities today should have been established within the first 24hrs. There still appears to be some deliberate obfuscation going on here.

Perhaps hundreds of kilometers wide.

Moreover a flight in the direction shown is obviously no threat to Malaysia but would be highly concerning to everyone else along the way.

A 10 Km difference perpendicular to radius line is around 3-4 microseconds.

Easily calculable? ...... The map shows a nice sharp red line. I rather suspect it should be a very wide fuzzy line. Perhaps hundreds of kilometers wide.

We can see that the search locations are based on exactly these curves at a given distance from the sub-satellite point. However, it is unlikely that the measurements are more accurate than within say 100 miles.

Latest reports on BBC news website state that wreckage has been sighted, including one piece about 24 meters accross.
Looks likely to be the missing plane, though one must remember that previous reports of wreckage turned out to be unrelated.

edit to add link

BBC news

Latest reports on BBC news website state that wreckage has been sighted, including one piece about 24 meters accross.

Sounds like another deadend despite multiple planes and ships converging on the area. Incredibly remote area of the planet.

I read this the other day, and I though it was the best analysis out there. Apparently, there's some people who are saying that the left turn was programmed into the nav computer like 11 minutes before the final "Good Night" voice message, which tends to knock a hole in this theory.

That could be a SOP. The guy I flew with had two radios and would look ahead and the next frequency he needed and program it into the non active radio until he was ready to switch to it then it was a simple flip of a switch. Likewise the "go around" button which would automatically set everything to the pre-set optimal position to abort a landing and go around for another pass rather than manually having to change the throttle, flaps, steer, etc all at the same time.

I'd bet the pilots do the same, they look ahead and the next landing spot and program into the computer then in an emergency all they would have to do is hit enter to run it. Then if no emergency you clear that one and program in the next and repeat as you travel. Much the same as when I travel I think ahead to the next restroom knowing my kids will need it as soon as I pass by the previous one.

...the ocean is very big, and the weather down there sounds like it is rather gnarly.

It may sound like a lot of ships and planes, but the ocean is very big, and the weather down there sounds like it is rather gnarly.

With surface ships from America and China around - and with all of them having underwater listening gear to hear pings - there won't be any subs on the scene. This is not a rescue effort and not worth exposing any secrets.

If there really is a desire and need for a sub search all surface ships in the area will be ordered away first "to avoid surface vessel noise interference". But I doubt it gets to that any time soon.

By the time all error bars are considered INMARSAT ping estimates may point to lines hundreds of miles wide, or wider. It's possible the equipment has never been calibrated for this, meaning they won't know how wide the lines even are without careful and slow testing.

No way would pilots not report fire first before turning off electrical stuff.

Apparently, there's some people who are saying that the left turn was programmed into the nav computer like 11 minutes before the final "Good Night" voice message...

But.. they've gotten the timing wrong on so many other things in this investigation, that I don't trust much of anything I am hearing now...

In the thread about PLBs in slot canyons I wrote-

"US Navy NAVSAT of the 1970's used observed doppler shift to provide location information to vessels. The rate shape of the frequency shift curve (it would be an S from high to low like listening to a locomotive horn going past you) reveals the distance from the observer to the ground track of the satellite. (still have to choose which side you are on from it)"

This is the principle that INMARSAT folks applied to the flight tracking. Only in this case the satellite was "stationary" and the airplane beacon was moving.

This is quite a feat of measurement considering that the airplane is mostly flying ACROSS the line of sight (from 22,500 miles EVERYTHING is across the LOS!) and the doppler effect only applies to the component of velocity IN the line of sight.

Found an online calculator- assuming 400kt aircraft speed the biggest doppler shift would be 0.27Hz. That's quite a measurement feat!

unimogbert,

I think you will find they did not use doppler, but time delay from the outgoing signal to the incoming signal. Gives you distance toward or away from the satellite. Longer interval = further away. That is why they were not able to initially tell the northern from the southern route.

Respectfully,

Jerry

I think you will find they did not use doppler, but time delay from the outgoing signal to the incoming signal.

Was just reading that the first submarine has joined the search, the British Royal Navy's HMS Tireless. Another British Royal Navy ship should arrive shortly.

Regardless of what batteries are used in any generation of device why
not install a timer circuit as a quick, perhaps easier to test and prove alternative?
IE Set a timer to offer different ping rates as battery life declines.
7 day's normal rate, 8-20 days 50% rate, 20-40 days 25% rate,
40- end of life 10% just to put a number there.

But ultimately, IMO, the era of the on-board voice and data recorders should be declared to be over and everything real-time data linked to the "cloud" should start.

Dolphins? Can they find stuff at that depth?