• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Malaysia Airlines tragedies

i was boarding my plane in Korea to come home the morning this plane went off the map. I remember talking to my wife from the sky lounge in the airport at Incheon. She told me there was a plane missing. It wasn't very comforting to hear that right before my long flight home.

I originally thought terrorist plot all the way. I still think there could be a small amount of terrorist activity involved. No one will ever know though unless those recorders are found.

either way its tragic for the people that were on board and is just sad to think about what they must have went through. At least one passenger on that plane had to know they were going the wrong way.
 
Almost assuming those dear souls have passed, we need to find the plane just to see if our 'hopes' that was an accident can be confirmed. Because if they're not confirmed, worse yet, we never find the thing, terrorism shoots back up to the top of the list of likelies.
 
jefboyardee said:
Okay, I also have the terminology crosseyed, not to mention the possible locations. I'll start over with my crazy theory:

Somewhere in the area between Malaysia and Vietnam, knowing people on the 777 turned off the transponder and the ACARS systems, rendering the plane invisible to the rest of the world. At that point, they landed the plane in that area. Then they physically transferred the transponder and ACARS systems to, say, a tiny drone.
Click to expand...

The area between Malaysia and Vietnam is the South China Sea.

The time to the military radar tracks over the Malacca Strait and then south, over the Indian Ocean West-Northwest of Indonesia, are consistent with the travel time required from the last known location without time for any touchdowns.

Transponders are programmable. No transponder signals are involved past the first hour of flight over the South China Sea, so that's of no consequence.

ACARS is not a single box.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Communications_Addressing_and_Reporting_System

Fields capable of landing a 777 are limited. I don't see any within a time range between the military radar and the following signal returns evaluated by Inmarsat to allow for the possibility.

I won't say that anything is impossible.

Just that giving that an honest go, I don't see how it could be - without throwing out data that the investigators say they trust.
 
trophynuts said:
i was boarding my plane in Korea to come home the morning this plane went off the map. I remember talking to my wife from the sky lounge in the airport at Incheon. She told me there was a plane missing. It wasn't very comforting to hear that right before my long flight home.

I originally thought terrorist plot all the way. I still think there could be a small amount of terrorist activity involved. No one will ever know though unless those recorders are found.

either way its tragic for the people that were on board and is just sad to think about what they must have went through. At least one passenger on that plane had to know they were going the wrong way.
Click to expand...

Perhaps based on the time. But on anything else? At altitude you would never know the plane had turned if they take it wide enough.

It is uncanny though how you'll hear about these things more when you are about to fly somewhere. I was about to leave for the Philippines when the miracle on the hudson occurred. And there was a 'hard landing' at Laguardia the same day that I landed at JFK last summer.
 
Just that giving that an honest go, I don't see how it could be
Click to expand...

I can't really argue with that, just trying to think of something no one else has, since we all appear to be wrong at this point.
 
jefboyardee said:
I can't really argue with that, just trying to think of something no one else has, since we all appear to be wrong at this point.
Click to expand...

No, I can dig where you're coming from.

It's anywhere from hard to impossible for any of us to be right with so little data and even less derived and verified information from the data we know about.

I'm with you in that I'd very much like to know what happened - I just don't know where to guess.

Although - I'm still confident that no black holes or space aliens were involved.

I will go that far. :D
 
i just find it hard to believe it was an accident that the ACARS was turned off and that the plan flew for so long after dropping off the map.


I know this may sound cliche but does the plan not have any onboard flight tracking in the personal entertainment monitors in the headrests? I realize not all carriers equip their planes with that but i've been on two diff carrier 777's that did have them.
 
I can't imagine being one of the relatives and being forced to endure all of these stories that have no substance, hoping that one of them is based on more than pure speculation and spin.

Keeping that in mind I believe there was a story on Fox that the langoliers may be involved..or was it CNN... :-P

In all seriousness though I hope something comes to light soon to give all those folks some much need relief
 
trophynuts said:
I know this may sound cliche but does the plan not have any onboard flight tracking in the personal entertainment monitors in the headrests? I realize not all carriers equip their planes with that but i've been on two diff carrier 777's that did have them.
Click to expand...

If it did, the record of the flight is saved on a hard drive located about 15,000 ft under the Indian Ocean.
 
trophynuts said:
i just find it hard to believe it was an accident that the ACARS was turned off and that the plan flew for so long after dropping off the map.
Click to expand...
Probably all of the freak accidents compounded by human error are hard to imagine before knowing what happened. And I'd guess that the same would be true for criminal acts as well.

I know this may sound cliche but does the plan not have any onboard flight tracking in the personal entertainment monitors in the headrests? I realize not all carriers equip their planes with that but i've been on two diff carrier 777's that did have them.
Click to expand...

So far as I've seen, those are usually readouts from Flightracker or some other subscription service. Position is apparently estimated during flight as general speed vs planned flight path during the middle of the flight, especially when transoceanic flights are involved.

You may have noticed that as you approach the destination, your position either freezes or jumps ahead as the estimate gets replaced with the data. I've seen that more often than not.

Anyway, those are just displays to help pass the time and to help you prepare for landing - they're not independent location transmitters.
 
Some of them do pull real-time data from the on-board sensors.


My last flight to Germany they had additional info like outside air temp, current altitude that was being updated about every 10 seconds in addition to the flight tracker data that is provided by a 3rd party.

Unfortunately there is no data stored within the monitors themselves. They are just dummy terminals that tie into multi-media head-end that distributes services to all the passenger m monitors.
 
My last flight on Delta had the in flight entertainment. We landed 30 minutes early, and the "tracking" still said we were at 20,000 feet

Numbers from my fallible memory, but it seemed like it was playing pre-recorded information based on takeoff and estimated arrival time and not actual data.
 
I was on a United flight. Ours was pretty accurate with the altitude and temp data, the plane's position on the other hand was not updated at the very end of the flight
 
i realize that the flight tracker data displayed on the personal monitors at the seat would reside on the black box. My point of if it though was that if it showed the plane being in the wrong spot then there had to be some of the passengers that knew they were going the wrong direction.


Early,

based on what you're saying ( which i definitely see the logic and your point) If a plane takes off and it's supposed to fly from Cali to Ny but instead flies to Hawaii are you saying the flight tracker would just take in the airspeed and time flown and still show you as heading towards NY?

fwiw you're correct that i have seen many times the flight tracker data being inaccurate specifically when getting closer to the destination. This pretty much happens every time I fly to Korea.
 
Yeah, I don't know of every possible flight display or subscription service, so I'm biased towards thinking that they just approximate along the route.

I've never been on a diverted flight with the service so I don't know firsthand if its capable or not.

Are any entertainment displays tied to actual nav data?
 
No they don't tie directly to nav data. Per FAA rules the IFEC (in flight entertainment and communication ) systems have to be completely independent of the avionics systems in the plane.

They can pull information from a few sensors like ambient air temp and altitude that can be placed in the un- pressurized cargo section. Other than that they just use tracking data obtained from 3rd party sites. They lag about 10 minutes behind the actual plane location.

Some flight trackers also go the extra mile and monitor for landing and take off notifications from ground control. You won't see this info though since IFEC only provides basic data.


If a flight is rerouted the nav screen in the IFEC will reflect this, it will be delayed, but as sites are updated with ground radar information the screen will show your new direction
 
SolApathy said:
If a flight is rerouted the nav screen in the IFEC will reflect this, it will be delayed, but as sites are updated with ground radar information the screen will show your new direction
Click to expand...

great info. So two things.

1. It would have likely shown if they were rerouted.
2. Number 1 may not have happened if it is dependent on a third party site being updated with ground radar info.

Since obviously there was no ground radar tracking for much of when the flight went off course.
 
Yeah. It doesn't look too good to me. No more ping clicks, no debris, no jet fuel. This could go a long time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom