Engine Data Reveals That Flight 370 Flew On For Hours After It "Disappeared" 382
Advocatus Diaboli writes "Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program. As part of its maintenance agreements, Malaysia Airlines transmits its engine data live to Rolls-Royce for analysis. The system compiles data from inside the 777's two Trent 800 engines and transmits snapshots of performance, as well as the altitude and speed of the jet. Those snippets are compiled and transmitted in 30-minute increments, said one person familiar with the system."
Update: 03/14 11:41 GMT by S : The WSJ has since updated its report to say the data was from the plane's satellite-communication system. However, Malaysian authorities have denied both scenarios, saying neither Boeing nor Rolls-Royce received data past 1:07am (the flight initially disappeared off radar at 1:30am).
Already denied (Score:5, Informative)
... by malaysian officials: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/malaysian-officials-deny-flight-mh370-missing-plane-flew-hours
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And the story has since been updated. There were no new ACARS messages with engine data, so that is consistent with the malaysian officials.
However, what the article now says it that the airplanes satellite link was trying to connect to the satellite, it just wasn't sending any data.
Re:Already denied (Score:4, Informative)
The Malaysian Airlines 777 in question didn't have satellite ACARS capability, only VHF (and maybe HF too) radios carrying ACARS data. I'm not even sure it had any SATCOM equipment fitted at all. There was a recent airworthiness directive for 777-series aircraft about hull skin problems where SATCOM antennas are mounted on the top of the fuselage but it didn't apply to the Malaysian Airlines 777s since apparently they didn't have those antennas fitted.
If the HF and VHF radios on board were shut down for any reason then there would be no more ACARS data received by ground stations.
Re:Already denied (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, apparently the source of this information was credible enough that the United States Navy, on its own initiative, is sending a ship to the Indian Ocean.
There's clearly a ton of misinformation out there. But which is more likely--you're misinformed, or the U.S. Navy is misinformed?
Re:Already denied (Score:5, Insightful)
Having dealt with the Navy for a decade..... I'd say it's 50-50
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm with you on the 60-40
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[1] All the talk about the ocean being huge is true, but I bet if you have high res pictures of the areas for that period, it's not going to be that hard to figure out where it crashed. Start from a known position and time, find out which pic and where, then follow it. It's only a few trillion square metres after all, those billions of dollars should be able to buy some decent terapixel imaging systems ;).
Problem is that spy satellites, are expensive and as such probably weren't over the Indian Ocean taking pictures of the water when the plane was supposedly flying in that area. That could be moved and take pictures now, but if the plane crashed or landed in the water, it would have sunk by now. So, even if a spy satellite could read a newspaper from orbit, it would take a lot of newspaper sized images to cover the search area and a lot of manpower to look at them all.
Re:Already denied (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I'd like to know where you got the information on the exact equipment on board this plane?
What is being denied is that Malaysian Airlines subscribed to this monitoring program, not that it was not so equipped (*).
The latest reports [go.com] is that the radios are there and ping the satellites even when they are not going to transmit data.
U.S. officials said earlier that they have an "indication" the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner may have crashed in the Indian Ocean and is moving the USS Kidd to the area to begin searching.
It's not clear what the indication was, but senior administration officials told ABC News the missing Malaysian flight continued to "ping" a satellite on an hourly basis after it lost contact with radar. The Boeing 777 jetliners are equipped with what is called the Airplane Health Management system in which they ping a satellite every hour. The number of pings would indicate how long the plane stayed aloft.
(Sort of like a cell phone with an expired sim still talks to the towers).
This is coming from the white house.
You will remember YEARS AGO when the Russians shot down a commercial airliner [wikipedia.org], that the NSA pulled recorded conversations between the Russian pilots and their base, WEEKS after the incident, embarrassing the Russians.
The US probably has more data on this indecent than they are willing to reveal at this time.
*This makes sense, because the airlines can turn the feature on by simple writing a check.
Boeing builds it into the fleet on the hopes of selling the service.
Re:Already denied (Score:5, Funny)
Speaking of which, Malaysia simply needs to request #NSA for the black box backup.
Re:Already denied (Score:5, Insightful)
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IMO It's not done because unless you legislate this stuff private companies are not going to something that doesn't have a reasonable return on investment.
Basically there's no money in it.
And I bet the airline isn't paying for squat when it comes to search & rescue fees, that'll all be coming out of the taxpayer's pocket I bet.
woo capitalism. .
I bet if you enforced a €10,000,000 daily file for every day the plane's not found, then you'd see so many tracking equipment blisters and antenna spikes on
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Actually, I'd like to know where you got the information on the exact equipment on board this plane?
Uh, duh!
He is obviously the one who has the plane hidden somewhere!
Re:Already denied (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn you auto-correct!
Note, it occurred to me later that the one country that has had airplanes flown into buildings might very well develop means of tracking planes that intentionally go off the grid, either by additional transmitters hidden in diagnostic gear, or other means.
Since the SAR beacons haven't gone off or haven't been heard, they too might have been disabled.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Already denied (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, with the amount of conflicting and inaccurate information/speculation coming from all corners about this matter, I'm just tuning out for a week or two until something more concrete is discovered.
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I've updated the summary to reflect this.
Maybe it's just Little Country Syndrome? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Maybe it's just Little Country Syndrome? (Score:4, Insightful)
Say they are doing their best to reassure the domestic population that they are in competent control of the disaster, but they're in over their heads...
Not quite.
MAS is owned by the Malaysian Government holdings company (either wholly or majority, I cant remember which) and the airline has recently had another period of unprofitably. This is less about assuring the Malaysian people of anything and more about trying to do damage control to the rest of the world. Sadly they're doing it in SE Asian style which is more about maintaining face than fixing issues.
In addition to this, MAS is getting a lot of competition from Malaysia's low cost airline Air Asia and anything else that could eat into the MAS's revenue is detrimental to the Malaysian Govt so they're dialling the damage control up to 11.
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Malaysia is a country which is filled with lies.
Really what do you expect from an Islamic state? Name one that isn't!
Re:Already denied (Score:5, Funny)
You can't make a triangle out of a single point.
Back to Intro Geometry with you!
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To be honest, all you really need is to put a sick
Napkin time (Score:5, Interesting)
~500 mph * 5 hours = 2500 mile radius = 19.6 million square miles.
That's about 10% of the surface of the planet. They're going to need some sort of heading information; you can permanently hide a 777 in that much ocean/mountain/jungle/etc.
Anyone know if the radar hits were meaningful yet?
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I think you need a new napkin. It's fair to think they flew in a reasonably straight line, so you don't have a circle of area, you have a donut. The width of the donut is the % deviation from "straight line" that you think is fair.
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The straighter the line the bigger the circle....
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The straighter the line the bigger the circle....
Yes, and no. If the engines ran for 4-5 hours and they flew in a straight line, then you can rule out anything inside the 4 hour circle. It will be in the ring between 5 hours out, and 4 hours out.
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If the engines ran for 4-5 hours and they flew in a straight line
I think you missed that bit.
Assume there exists a spherical cow in a vacuum...
In five hours... (Score:3)
You could fly from San Francisco (SFO) to Orlando (MCO) That's a pretty big search radius, if this story is true.
Correction: Signal NOT from the engine monitors (Score:5, Informative)
It wasn't the engines sending data (Score:5, Interesting)
Even though Malaysian Airlines didn't have an online service monitoring plan for this specific plane, the plane still performs periodic searches/connections to satellite data communication providers - akin to an unregistered cell phone searching and connecting to a cell tower but without licensed service. This periodic connection occurs approx once every hour on the plane, and by counting the number of attempts (4), authorities believe the plane was either flying or in-tact for at least 4 hours from the last secondary radar ping.
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Great explanation.
It sounds more like like the fuselage floating with battery power available for 4 hours, but time will tell on that one.
Re:It wasn't the engines sending data (Score:5, Informative)
I would be a little surprised if the engine monitoring and satellite link circuitry would be on battery backup since it is unlikely engines and passengers would have much use for satellite link after the plane hits water. For the satellite link to work, the antenna would also need to remain above water since submersion adds horrible attenuation to radio signals. Additionally, cabin electronics aren't water-tight so submersion in ocean water would ruin them in fairly short order.
Monitoring module only functions when engine is on (Score:5, Informative)
The on board engine monitoring module is only *ON* when the engine is turned on.
When the engine is off, the transmission module goes to sleeping mode, relies on it's tiny battery backup on keeping the date/time current.
Saying that the module keeps on transmitting AFTER the plane has broken up is not only inaccurate, it's downright irresponsible !
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How often have pilots successfully landed large aircrafts on water? AFAIK, the Hudson landing is the only time pilots have managed to pull off a perfect landing where the plane stayed in one piece and everyone survived - they did not call it the "Miracle on the Hudson" for nothing and the only reason they managed to pull that off is because the river was perfectly still at the time. All other water landings I remember seeing footage or reconstructions of had various degrees of severe disintegration either o
Re:It wasn't the engines sending data (Score:5, Informative)
The 777's two NiCad batteries have enough juice to power the essentials for about a maximum of 5 minutes in a complete electrical failure, which is simply unheard of on the 777. If you need the ship's batteries, you are far beyond being well and truly fucked. The airplane has 7 sources of electrical power. These include two engine driven 120KVA alternators, one 90KVA APU alternator, two 20KVA engine driven backup generators, an pnuematically driven generator, and a ram air turbine. There are also a permanent magnet alternator on each engine to power the FADECs. In addition, each flight control actuator has its own battery pack.
Re:It wasn't the engines sending data (Score:5, Informative)
OP has it right, but we can add more information. I've been following the discussion over at www.airliners.net [airliners.net] where some people know more about this plane's electronics.
First some back story. The SATCOM system is sort of like your cable modem, or more accurately a cell data stick for a laptop. It's a sort of modem that knows how to connect to the satellites. Like a unprovisioned cell phone it still reaches out and says "can I have service", and then gets no answer. ACARS is an application that runs on another computer in the plane. It's sort of like a "twitter feed" for a plane. Short messages can be placed on it and routed off to other places. Boeing offers a service where the plane reports its health back to boeing using this application. Rolls Royce offers a service where the engines report back to them using this service. Pilots can even send short text messages over the service back to their HQ. The GPS system can send a message with its position. ACARS knows how to transmit over HF, VHF, and SATCOM. It also goes through a cleaning house (think twitter again) who routes the individual messages to the right party.
Mayalsia Airlines apparently bought the "limited" package of monitoring. As such ACARS was programmed to send no information to Boeing, and only limited information to Rolls Royce. Compare with the Air France crash in the Atlantic where they subscribed to the "full" suite of monitoring and 29 messages were generated. Further, Mayalsia apparently didn't pay for SATCOM airtime, instead letting it report over HF and VHF. If it was far enough out over water these methods would not be within reach of the radios.
However, the plane still had a SATCOM system on it (comes standard), and it was still like an unprovisioned cell phone saying "can I have service", apparently once per hour. Further the satellites in orbit have directional antennas that cover a particular section of the ground. It appears in this case ACARS was disabled (either intentionally, a small switch in the cockpit) or via failure (fire, or whatever).
The key detail is that while ACARS and many other functions can be turned off from the cockpit, the only circuit breaker for the SATCOM systems are NOT in the cockpit according to experts. It would require going to the electronics room on the plane which is not easy to reach in flight, and more importantly would not be possible to reach if a individual had taken over the plane.
So the stories line up. Boeing received no messages as the plane was not programmed to send them any. Rolls Royce received two during the normal part of flight, and then nothing as the system was turned off or disabled. However that SATCOM modem apparently continued, once per hour, to look for service. I guess the US authorities were able to talk to the satellite provider and get logs of it making those requests, and perhaps even narrowing it down to a specific antenna on the satellite.
On power; the experts say the plane has ~30 minutes of battery in the case of total electrical failure. In flight it also has a ram air turbine (think mini-windmill) that can generate enough power. If it did a "miracle on the hudson" style landing in water and it somehow stayed afloat (being under water even 1' makes the sat signal too week) batteries would only last ~30 minutes.
One of the most bizarre incidents ever recorded. The outcome of this is going to be very interesting.
The plane was pinging hours after it disappeared (Score:2)
What about radar? (Score:4, Insightful)
Something I don't understand is how the plane disappeared from radar yet kept flying. Switching off a transponder does not make a plane disappear from radar, it just means there is a blip on the radar without the data a transponder provides. The fact that no one is bringing this up leads me to believe I'm missing something big here, because as far as I know the only way that plane could have disappeared completely from radar was if it disintegrated.
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Something I don't understand is how the plane disappeared from radar yet kept flying. Switching off a transponder does not make a plane disappear from radar, it just means there is a blip on the radar without the data a transponder provides. The fact that no one is bringing this up leads me to believe I'm missing something big here, because as far as I know the only way that plane could have disappeared completely from radar was if it disintegrated.
A blip is just a blip among presumably hundreds of other blips. Without a transponder, you're going to have a hell of a time identifying a particular blip as the aircarft that you're searching for.
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There are a lot of reasons. Air traffic control is about 90% reliant on transponders. Without a transponder, an aircraft is just a "primary target" or blip on the scope. In most cases there is no computerized synthetic track associated with a primary target. Remember, air traffic control radars are designed to track cooperative targets, not like a military radar designed to track non-transponding, uncooperative targets. Yea, if they had an AEGIS it would be able to track the airplane exactly, but they didnt
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I blame TV. Apparently everyone thinks we are actively tracking every single object flying through the air everywhere, every second of every day...
Re:What about radar? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually air traffic control radars ARE radars, the transponder merely fills in the ID data (as a beacon as you said). Aircraft without transponders show up as unidentified targets with a heading, range, and speed. Transponders work are farther ranges because there is only a one way free space loss to the aircraft, when relying only on a radar "echo" the loss is both directions
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ATC radars are very short range. Once the plane was 50 miles form the airport it would not be seen.
Re:What about radar? (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite correct. The situation is quite a bit more complex than that.
ATC obtains information about aircraft in the area in a number of ways.
One is primary radar - which is in fact radar. It generally has a limited range - maybe 50 miles or so. Usually civilian equipment cannot detect altitude either, and of course it picks up noise from birds and weather and such.
The more useful source of data is secondary radar, which relies on transponders. The transponders generate a pulse when they are interrogated - the aircraft doesn't need to know its own location for this to work - the ground station works it out from the time to receive the reply. The transponder can encode a code to identify the aircraft, and it can also encode the altitude (or at least what the plane thinks its altitude is).
The more recent development is ADS-B via UAT and ES. These involve the aircraft broadcasting its position as determined by GPS. It can be sent out as part of the transponder reply, or it can be sent out without any need for secondary radar at all, potentially even being picked up by satellite.
So, radar is used to track aircraft, but with its limited range civilian radar would not detect an airliner out at sea unless it had a cooperative transponder. Even with a transponder range is only 100 miles or so. You can get much longer ranges with military radar, especially if it is airborne. However, stumbling on one of those would require luck, and a military aircraft probably wouldn't be on the lookout for rogue airliners.
Re:What about radar? (Score:5, Informative)
It consists of a ground based antenna system that transmits sweeping RF energy beams that bounce off metal objects such as aircraft (and occasionally flocks of birds) and reflect back to the antenna. The radar electronics complex processes digitized radar data streams from multiple antennas and generates a synthesized image, which appears on controller screens. Controllers can see this basic radar "blip" if they choose, although generally it's displayed as a faint background trace to keep the screen uncluttered.
The transponder system works by sending a coded signal that rides on the radar energy beam. When the beam paints an aircraft, the on-board transponder receiver decodes this as an "interrogation".
In its most basic form, called Mode C, the aircraft answers the interrogation with a data packet containing the a four-digit code assigned by a controller to the aircraft (which the pilot typically sets manually after receiving the "squawk" code verbally from the controller), and the aircraft pressure altitude. In the more recent Mode S, this packet contains additional data, such as the GPS location, airspeed, etc. Aircraft can overhear each others' Mode S replies and use that information to build an internal model of occupied airspace; this process is the foundation of the Terminal Collision Avoidance System (TCAS).
The transponder data gets painted on the controller's integrated radar display to make it easier to track targets. This is called "narrowband" mode because a this system can filter out a lot of clutter, leaving the controller with only verified targets to track. But if the narrowband system fails, which happens on occasion, controllers are all trained to revert to an old manual system using paper markers that they stick to their screens to track aircraft.
All commercial aircraft and many general aviation aircraft use Mode S today, and thus we collect quite a lot of data about flights in progress. In the Malaysian case, the aircraft was in radar coverage, receiving interrogations and responding, when they lost contact with it. Although the actual radar data hasn't been revealed, the sense of what has been shown so far is that the raw radar return, or echo, as well as the transponder Mode C, stopped simultaneously. It's possible that the controllers were not displaying non-transponder returns on their screens, so it may turn out that there was a raw signal for some time. That's the big question that, once answered, will indicate whether there was a deliberate action to turn off the transponder or a cataclysm turned it off. People can turn off transponders, but they cannot turn off raw radar signatures.
Re:What about radar? (Score:4, Informative)
There is no parallel with WiFi. WiFi broadcasts are just data packets; radar interrogations are directional energy beams that locate aircraft in distance and azimuth. WiFi broadcasts are no different from the packets the client sends back to the AP: the framing, timing, and encoding is identical. But radar interrogations are tri-pulse trains on a common global frequency, with unique timing to identify the type of interrogation. Transponder replies are at a different common global frequency transmitted in as TDM-encoded data frames. Replies are omnidirectional and only pass data generated by cockpit instrumentation back to the radar station.
Thus transponder data is only used by controllers for identification and altitude, and some ancillary data. Mode S GPS content in transponder replies is used by other aircraft for TCAS, not by controllers for position information. If the aircraft is outside reflection range, it won't transpond. By definition if the transponder replies to an interrogation, it was because the aircraft was being painted by a radar's "skin" beam, which at microwave frequencies means there is line of sight between the aircraft and ground antenna. The radar echo is guaranteed to make it back to the station because of this line of sight. On an aircraft the size of a 777, very little energy needs to be reflected to generate position data, and I've never seen a situation where transponders don't have a corresponding primary radar blip.
All these differences between reality and your analogy lead to radically incorrect conclusions about system capabilities and behavior. I can say the earth is like and egg, because they're both round, but that doesn't make it a good analogy.
Re:What about radar? (Score:4, Informative)
But BOTH raw radar data and transponder replies are recorded at the controller's station (actually by he computer, of course). This way aviation authorities can reconstruct exactly what the controllers saw on their screen. I worked on software for the original version of this system, which was written in the Jovial programming language and IBM basic assembly language (BAL). The software and computers have changed, but amazingly the radar system itself has evolved very little, other than wth the addition of more stations and better data collection networks.
The movie "Pushing Tin" (Angelina Jolie, John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton) is actually a pretty accurate depiction of how it all works. Not a lot has changed since that movie was made. The movie's title comes from slang for what controllers still do today when they lose their computer capability and have to deal with just primary radar returns. They push little paper markers around on the screen and keep track of flight information with paper data strips, and that serves as the emergency backup mechanism in the event of a computer failure.
Re:What about radar? (Score:4, Informative)
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The real puzzle (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The real puzzle (Score:4, Interesting)
The obvious implication is they were hijacked. The not so obvious explanation is hypoxia-induced dementia in the pilots.
I've yet to see anything that eliminates either possibility.
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The not so obvious explanation is hypoxia-induced dementia in the pilots.
There's precedent for that scenario [wikipedia.org]. But it's hard to see that happening on a modern jetliner which has cabin pressure warnings.
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Hard to see indeed, but warnings can be overlooked/ignored. C.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org] from 2005. It flew for another hour after most everyone fell unconscious before it crashed into a mountain.
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2005: Greek 737 crew succumbed to cabin de-pressurization, plane flew on until out of gas & crashed. Helios Airways Flight 522: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
Story of multiple pilot errors on top of ground mechanic's stunning mistake. I suspect something similar happened in this case.
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There are ways for pilots to secretly send out a message when hijacked.
No alien abduction theories?! (Score:5, Funny)
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It's not a real conspiracy theory if you can't bring the Knights Templar into it in some way.
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https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/5... [chzbgr.com]
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http://cheezburger.com/7701692... [cheezburger.com]
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Because, those aliens having left with the plane and all, have immediately left the picture!
I mean, of course it's aliens that did it. It's the least unlikely explanation. We're just waiting for them to return the plane, so it can continue it's journey. I just hope they'll remember to give it enough forward momentum or it'll after all fall out of the sky.
Don't know what to believe anymore (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone else has already mentioned, this has been denied by Malaysian officials. Just like China has now said that those satellite images which were supposed to show plane debris did in fact not show debris, but indeed, said satellite images were "released by mistake". Just like that admiral of the Vietnamese Navy saying they had lost radar contact with the plain just over the Gulf of Thailand, but apparently it was just incorrect information (another mistake).
It seems clear that no-one knows where the fuck that plane is, but due to the pressure to find something, ANYTHING to satisfy the media as well as political pressure (not to mention relatives of those missing), anything that could be seen as a clue is pushed out as something important before it's even checked or verified.
At least it can be assumed that those on the flight must be well and truly dead by now, if only because the alternative would be more horrifying...
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It is the media that has "the pressure to find something, ANYTHING to satisfy" themselves to fill the air time and hopefully get the "scoop". Those looking for the crash site (and I have zero doubt there is one) and the politicians do not benefit from wasting time propagating and dealing with incredible theories.
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Indeed the main complaint from relatives of the plane's passengers is lack of information, and lack of updates. It's of course a tough situation - they don't really know anything, a plane disappears without distress call in good weather, and then there is no wreckage or anything to be found. So yes, the pressure is immense to come with new information. Any new information.
It's indeed quite sure the people on board are dead. And I'm also quite sure the plane landed in the sea, not on land, as in the second c
Satcom (Score:4, Interesting)
Some overlooked facts suggest a new theory (Score:5, Funny)
Ignoring all the speculation for a bit, let me present a few completely irrefutable facts that point to a different theory of what happened to the plane.
Fact 1: There are many active volcanoes in this region of the world.
Fact 2: There were virgins on the airplane.
Fact 3: The Great Old Ones have not arisen to destroy us all.
We should thank them for ensuring the continued existence of the human race.
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It's been revealed that there were several electrical engineers on the plane.
Case closed on the virgin front, I fear.
ABC News: Comm systems shut down separately (Score:5, Interesting)
"Two U.S. officials tell ABC News the U.S. believes that the shutdown of two communication systems happened separately on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. One source said this indicates the plane did not come out of the sky because of a catastrophic failure.
The data reporting system, they believe, was shut down at 1:07 a.m. The transponder -- which transmits location and altitude -- shut down at 1:21 a.m."
-- ABC News, Thursday March 13, 2014 [go.com]
Curiouser and curiouser.
Why is everybody so hung up on terrorist? (Score:5, Informative)
My money is on something like what heppend to flght ZU 522 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
Nonsense (Score:3)
$100K? (Score:2)
Yesterday the discussion seemed to center on how bloody expensive it would be to track the planes and how special equipment and etc. would be required. Now everyone seems to understand that messages can come from the planes ... indeed, it would have been trivial (although it would have involved a fee) to record the rest of the plane sensor data.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, and making some magical device to transmit just before an accident ... the folks who maintain the current system record the last 5
What we know so far ... (Score:5, Informative)
This is what we know so far [bbc.co.uk], a good summary ...
Possibly diverted to the Nicobar / Andaman islands (Score:4, Informative)
Already confirmed by satellite (Score:3)
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Re:Here's What Will Happen (Score:5, Insightful)
The United States was founded on a conspiracy. Literally.
That the people are being conditioned to automatically consider anything labeled a "conspiracy" automatically laughable says a lot about the degeneration of the U.S.
Re:Here's What Will Happen (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here's What Will Happen (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope.
It's a "conspiracy theory." when you have no actual data to back up a statement. Usually note be the ever expanding circle the conspiracy must encompass when you raise questions about the person uttering the conspiracy theory.
I'm sorry* reality doesn't coincide with your pet narrative. Doubly sorry* you seem to be aware of critical thinking, yet have no idea how to use it or what it actually is.
*I'm no really sorry.
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Ah yes, the spelling ad hom and no actual refutation.
Brilliant!
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Maybe if that wasn't actually the case, the "critical thinkers" would get a bit more respect.
Re:Here's What Will Happen (Score:5, Insightful)
It's when a theory is implausible and the "critical thinkers" spend years obsessed with beating a dead horse they get labeled conspiracy nut tinfoil hat wearing wackos, like the 911 truthers, the we-didn't-go-to-the-moon people, or the nutbags who are still asking for Obama's birth certificate. Critical thinking is fine and welcome in this country. Obsessing about implausible made up scenarios driven by agendas or outrage isn't.
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Such people are a distinct minority. There are people who believe in anything you can imagine. The fact that they are not ignored by the mainstream media but are in fact paraded in front of society for the purposes of mockery and as an example to all is telling.
The fact is, these imbeciles are used as material to condition people to automatically reject ANY possibility of ANY conspiracies, by their idiocy, when in fact most of history is the history of conspiracies.
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More importantly, when something is very important it is impossible for general people to know of its truths through the traditional investigation and media mechanism.
At every stage of the fact copying process between persons, there is a huge incentive to distort facts. Distortion could be in any direction.
Given this, it is a waste of the time by the "critical" thinkers to worry too much about learning the truth. There can be no hope of the truth in really important matters. That is why such people are nutj
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Re:Combined with the ringing phones ? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Combined with the ringing phones ? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Combined with the ringing phones ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes that is interesting. Although we are just going on hearsay to an extent. Is there PROOF that passengers' phones were ringing (i.e. those phones were definitely on the plane, and definitely rang)? Or is it just a case of some relatives believing what they want to believe (which I don't blame them for, in the traumatic situation they are in).
Furthermore there are other potential explanations for that, including phones auto-forwarded to other numbers or diverted to a malfunctioning voicemail or answering machine system when not in range of a tower. This is especially possible for internationally routed calls (which sometimes do some pretty weird things).
If it is true, it certainly does suggest that the plane remained flying (and at a low altitude) for some time after 'disappearing', or at least that the plane crashed somewhere within range of a cell tower and some phones survived the crash.
Re:Combined with the ringing phones ? (Score:5, Informative)
The phones weren't "ringing." the ring tone the relatives heard was supplied by Central Office Equipment to give the illusion that the phones were "ringing." That's what happens when someone picks up the phone and you say, "But it hadn't started ringing yet." Yes, it had. It's just that your simulation-ring hadn't reached you yet--two different tones. Think about it. There is only a single cable pair that hooks up a typical phone. How could you possibly "hear it ring"?
The cell network mimics the POTS network. It's just part of the "aural interface" phones have used for over a hundred years.
Re: Combined with the ringing phones ? (Score:5, Informative)
One bit of info that *might* be of interest... cell phone towers beacon to announce their presence to phones, but individual phones actually *poll* towers every few seconds. The reply from the tower lets them know when there's an incoming call, deliver SMS & voicemail notifications, etc. In theory, at least, if the mobile phone of any passenger came within range of a cell tower it was allowed to poll, there's probably a log of it somewhere.
That said, if the jet was at cruising altitude, the likelihood of a phone on board *doing* that is almost nil, because tower antennas are generally aimed downwards... partly, to minimize interference from airborne mobile phones that could otherwise splatter noise over a 40-100 mile radius (the line of sight when your transmitter is 5+ miles up in the air).
Re: Combined with the ringing phones ? (Score:5, Informative)
On original POTS circuits the ring tone was actually the 25Hz signal sent to the phone with the phone's bell coils supplying some of the ringback harmonics along with a ring generator. With a good ear you could estimate how many phone sets were ringing. The audio path was already set-up while the phone rang. If the called party was too near an AM broadcast transmitter you might even hers some of the program between rings. The off-hook condition on the called party just disconnected the ring generator at the CO and started any billing equipment.
Of course this all ended with the last of the Stroger and crossbar offices.
Re: (Score:3)
"individual phones actually *poll* towers every few seconds"
I highly doubt that. A 2G gsm phone left next to an audio cable will only generate the familiar "bidibip" noise once an hour or so. I assume it does that in response to an "are you still there" request from the tower.
The radio transmitter in a cellphone is about one watt. For battery lifetime, you really don't want the transmitter to activate every few seconds.
Re: Combined with the ringing phones ? (Score:4, Informative)
Not completely correct, but on the right lines...
GSM and 3G phones listen to the cell tower's Pilot carrier, which contains a whole bunch of data (which network, neighbouring cells etc). thenetwork will broadcast a request for a particular phone to contact it when there is incoming traffic (eg call or SMS) for that phone.
To reduce the volume of traffic, it only broadcasts this request over a small(ish) no of cells, called a Location Area (LA). And how does it know which LA to poll - because part of the broadcast data on the pilot channel is the LA identifier - so when a phone switches from listening on one cell to listening on another (which it doesn't inform the network about unless it is mid call) it checks the LA number, and then updates the network with it's new LA when the LA identification changes.
So if anyone on the plane left their mobile switched on (and with a couple of hundred people on the plane this is a racing certainty), then by checking the operater records for all the phones, LA updates will be there (and yes, operators are required to keep this meta-data for the intelligence services).
In consequence, I would be extremely surprised if the NSA / GCHQ / KGB and Chinese Military Intelligence did not already have a good indication off where the plane was (or was not).
Re:Combined with the ringing phones ? (Score:4, Funny)
Really small. I'll bet the number of floating cell towers in the middle of the South China sea is an integer that approaches zero.
Re:Turns out, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Authorities quickly debunked this story this AM.
Denied, not debunked. Big difference.
Re:Turns out, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Picking up signals transmitted over the open ocean by military vessels in international waters isn't illegal.
Re: (Score:2)
> i hear they were trying to start fires on board earlier by putting in bad batteries
Wrong plane.
Re: (Score:2)
Providing they store that information. Also for customers who didn't subscribe to the service.
Re:Technically illiterate nonsense (Score:4)
Completely correct - for 1930.
Getting progressively wronger over time till it's now brimming over with wrongness.