Australia Rebooting Search For MH370 92
McGruber (1417641) writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that two months after pausing its search for the missing Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200ER, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is ready to reboot its search. The ATSB is poised to select among bids from the world's most-advanced deep-water specialists, including offshore oil-and-gas companies, maritime research institutions and treasure hunters eager to use their technologies and experience to solve the Flight 370 riddle—and potentially raise their own profiles in the process. ... With no hard evidence of where the plane went down, the search will test the recovery industry's abilities like nothing before. In June, Australian authorities shifted the search zone for a third time — by about 600 miles to the southwest — after reanalyzing satellite transmissions. Even then, they said it was impossible to know whether the fresh search area would prove correct."
Time for Restart (Score:4, Funny)
Mustn't lose heart
For Malaysian air dart
That went all Earhart [wikipedia.org]
Burma Shave
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"Where is it?" you wonder
Its black box was plundered
Don't refrain
Look in Ukaine
I know what happened. (Score:1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_(film)
More information (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm sorry about all the people who were on the plane, but if there's any bright side in this it is that the world will get to map a bit more of what's around us. It's shocking how little we know about the depths of the oceans.
So I hope all the multibeam data collected about the sea floor features gets published to free and open databases like GMRT:
http://www.marine-geo.org/port... [marine-geo.org]
ANOTHER reboot? (Score:4, Funny)
Is J.J. Abrams going to direct the search this time?
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MH370, brought down by excessive lens flare.
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Makes as much sense as the rest of that screed.
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Hey, at least everyone shut up about everything being Bush's fault!
I hope they find it (Score:2, Interesting)
Just so that people stop sending me links to conspiracy theories about it. The problem with all of the conspiracy theories about MH370 that I have encountered so far is:
1. There is no motive for a conspiracy.
2. There is no evidence of a conspiracy.
Other than that all of the conspiracy theories are "interesting".
Re:I hope they find it (Score:5, Insightful)
Just so that people stop sending me links to conspiracy theories about it.
Since when did facts put an end to conspiracy theories?
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1. There is no motive for a conspiracy.
2. There is no evidence of a conspiracy.
We should be honest in our assessment of what these people think, even if we disagree with their conclusions. The predominant theory [ibtimes.com] holds that MH370 was hijacked to Diego Garcia for future use as a false flag operation (motive). They point to things like the window configurations being the same in the MH17 wreckage and MH370 but different in ground shots of MH17, or rotten corpses in the wreckage (evidence, if it were true).
Th
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The "rotten corpses" is more likely to be due to the 1300kg of Lithium batteries that were on board that flight. Interestingly both flights were carrying lithium batteries and travelling towards the Far East.
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Just so that people stop sending me links to conspiracy theories about it. The problem with all of the conspiracy theories about MH370 that I have encountered so far is:
1. There is no motive for a conspiracy. 2. There is no evidence of a conspiracy.
Other than that all of the conspiracy theories are "interesting".
Well, you don't really know any motive until you can identify who did it.
While I'm not one for conspiracies, I think the MH370 incident is a prime example of what could be the next "9/11" - hi-jack an airline in remote region, kill everyone on board, transport it somewhere where you want to make a statement, then load with explosives and make your statement; only after which you announce you were behind it. Such a task could take years to carry out, so it's not going to be evident for potentially a long
Re:How much have they spent already? (Score:5, Insightful)
Still no clue whatsoever?
And this is exactly why we should keep searching for the wreckage and find it. Knowing what happened is the key to prevent it from happening again. More than in any other fields, aviation safety is build upon knowledge gained from past incidents and accidents. This is why it is worth investing both the time and the money to understand the events that lead to the crash.
Re:How much have they spent already? (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's my problem.
It went into the ocean. Everyone is pretty certain of that. Since it did, it either broke up, or was able to remain intact. Highly unlikely it remained entirely intact, statistically speaking, given what we know about pilots, aircraft, water landings.... So, that means it broke up. Now I imagine most debris would sink. Most! However, there was quite a bit of material on that plane that wouldn't, or shouldn't sink. Ever! I realize the ocean is big, and search efforts are rather small comparively, but I have a hard time believing we haven't found a single shred of debris from the plane. Maybe it's just a matter of time, but to me, the most disconcerting things is that we've found no trace of it, at all! Nothing!
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The first things we'd expect to find or see from satellite photographs are bits of wing and tail. The shock of a crash-landing would fracture them off. Then if the fuel tanks were ruptured, those would create oil slicks even if they were underwater. Live vests and seat cushions should also float, as well as bits of trimming from the passenger cabin. Then all sorts of passenger belongings should also float.
So the chances are the pilot aimed for a controlled landing in the ocean. There were witnesses who clai
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Where is the Indian Ocean Gyre? Bits and pieces might be there by now.
Re:How much have they spent already? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, pieces of debris should start washing up on beaches, but it can take a while. The first of the "lost rubber duckies" of 1992 took ten months to be found, and finds continued for at least fifteen years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
Also, the floating debris won't include a lot of specifically airplane material. It will be seat cushions, clothing, plastic bottles...and the sea is already full of floating crap, so an object isn't certain to be recognized even if it appears on Waikiki Beach.
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You are of course correct for the initial search, but at some point you hit diminishing returns. Even if the failure were a technical one, the value of locating the wreck and determining the cause is likely of limited value. There are only so many systems that can fail, and we already do thorough failure modes analyses when designing aircraft. That's why flying is so safe these days.
The 777 has a pretty good track record with 1,212 units built and five hull losses, only two of which [wikipedia.org] were due to failure of f
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You are of course correct for the initial search, but at some point you hit diminishing returns. Even if the failure were a technical one, the value of locating the wreck and determining the cause is likely of limited value. There are only so many systems that can fail, and we already do thorough failure modes analyses when designing aircraft. That's why flying is so safe these days.
You forget to factor in that sometimes the point of the search will (has, likely, already) become more than anything else a way to improve and prove the techniques used to search, and hopefully they're keeping good records.
There will, I assure you, be scientists waiting patiently to mine the data for things useful to their own research, that they would have been unable to justify the costs of doing themselves. It's like basic research that way.
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You don't need a downed aircraft to do that kind of research though, you can just go out and look for something, maybe something that isn't even there.
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You don't need a downed aircraft to do that kind of research though, you can just go out and look for something, maybe something that isn't even there.
You do, however, need funding, and which means that you have to pick a something that people will fund you looking for. Securing the money necessary to do basic research is amazingly difficult, especially when the honest answer is that your work is not expected to be of practical use to anybody but fellow researchers for whom it will lower the costs of doing their research.
Thus, it needs to have a good perceived value, and people need to believe there is a good chance it will be found. Getting money to se
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I think one thing we learned from this disaster is that black box recorders are not good enough on their own. We need flight data and cockpit recordings to be sent to satellites in realtime.
Or, at a minimum, real-time position telemetry.
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More than in any other fields, aviation safety is build upon knowledge gained from past incidents and accidents.
Say what? More than in any other field, like automotive technology? Fail, fail.
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Very funny.
hahaha
not
Why the Australians? (Score:4)
Re:Why the Australians? (Score:5, Informative)
Because it's in Australia's maritime search zone - see https://www.amsa.gov.au/search-and-rescue/sar-in-australia/arrangements-in-australia/ for more info.
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That says why Australia, but a more important question is why at all?
This isn't a search and rescue mission. There's no one to rescue. How long and how much money should be dedicated to finding why 239 people drowned, and how much is there really to be gained from knowing this information in full?
Re:Why the Australians? (Score:5, Insightful)
It took 2 years of searching before the black boxes from Air France flight AF447 were found, and during that period there was a massive amount of speculation and doubt about what happened, leading to total uncertainty about how to prevent another crash. Airbus took a beating as everyone assumed it was an aircraft fault which led to the crash.
When they found the black boxes, the real problem turned out to not be a systems fault (although there was a momentary loss of air speed data due to icing, it didn't cause the crash) but a crew training problem so spending the time and money to find and recover them after 2 years has lead to small systems changes but significant pilot training changes.
So while everyone assumes that MH370 crashed due to the pilot committing suicide, there is always that element of doubt because we really don't know what transpired until we have evidence - so what happens if that assumed 0.001% chance of this particular crash being caused by something else, something mechanical or systems related, comes real and it causes another crash?
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Using your number of 0.001% probability of this crash being something technical, and my estimated value [slashdot.org] of MH370 of $2.6B, then $26,000. The 777 has a lot [boeing.com] of flight hours; if there's a technical problem with it, its a corner-case quirk, not a fundamental design issue. Maybe it doesn't sit well with you, but it is not reasonable to expect 100% safety from any system -- it would be prohibitively expensive.
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At 0.001%, that's $26,000 of increased risk PER FLIGHT. With a thousand 777s flying daily, that's $9 billion in losses PER YEAR.
Might be worth spending some money on investigating...
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It took 2 years of searching before the black boxes from Air France flight AF447 were found, and during that period there was a massive amount of speculation and doubt about what happened, leading to total uncertainty about how to prevent another crash. Airbus took a beating as everyone assumed it was an aircraft fault which led to the crash.
When they found the black boxes, the real problem turned out to not be a systems fault (although there was a momentary loss of air speed data due to icing, it didn't cause the crash) but a crew training problem so spending the time and money to find and recover them after 2 years has lead to small systems changes but significant pilot training changes.
So while everyone assumes that MH370 crashed due to the pilot committing suicide, there is always that element of doubt because we really don't know what transpired until we have evidence - so what happens if that assumed 0.001% chance of this particular crash being caused by something else, something mechanical or systems related, comes real and it causes another crash?
There is a serious control fault with the Airbus that did result in the crash of AF447. One pilot was nosing the plane up as hard as he could. The other was nosing it down as hard as he could. There was absolutely no feedback from one pilot to the other indicating that they were fighting each other. Instead, the control system took the stronger force and allowed the plane to continue to try and climb and eventually stall and fall from the sky. Was there a huge mistake on the part of the pilots? Absolut
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Damn, I didn't know that, I thought the only problem was the pilot's terrifyingly noobish response to an incorrect airspeed indication. If this is a fly-by-wire system, it might be best to mechanically interlock the two sets of controls. This worked well for decades with hydraulic controls.
Re:Why the Australians? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, no, your description of what happened was completely wrong. Airbus side sticks have a "priority" button, there is no "fighting each other" - if a pilot wants to take over command then all he has to do is press the priority button and he has command authority.
What happened to AF447 had little to do with how the Airbus controls are set out - after all, the exact same thing (pilots stalling the aircraft because they were unsure as to what was happening) has happened on both the 767 and the DC-9, which both have linked control columns.
What really happened to AF447 is that the pilots lost their situational awareness, they didn't carry out the right procedures in the case of an airspeed mismatch, they didn't recognise that they were approaching a stall, and then they disregarded further airspeed warnings after the airspeed issue was resolved - by reacting badly to the initial fault, they stalled the aircraft and didn't realise until far too late.
The right hand seated pilot kept his stick hard back, which is against all of his training - he shouldn't have been trying to raise the nose that much at all, and yet he kept the stick hard back for minutes at a time. It wasn't until the senior pilot, being summoned from the cabin where he was resting, queried the action being taken that the pilot flying stopped his action, but by then they were seconds away from hitting the water.
There is no issue with the Airbus flight controls, despite what many anti-Airbus people say - as I said above, the same issue has happened on non-Airbus aircraft.
Also a side note - at abso-fucking-lutly no time should two pilots be "fighting for control over each other". Should never happen. The designated pilot flying should be the only one on the controls, the designated pilot-non-flying should be doing the instrumentation and only ever have his hands on the controls at the explicit request of the pilot flying. Your "description" of what happened would be a huge failure of training and crew relationships.
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The right hand seated pilot kept his stick hard back, which is against all of his training - he shouldn't have been trying to raise the nose that much at all, and yet he kept the stick hard back for minutes at a time. It wasn't until the senior pilot, being summoned from the cabin where he was resting, queried the action being taken that the pilot flying stopped his action, but by then they were seconds away from hitting the water.
There is no issue with the Airbus flight controls
The issue is that neither of the other 2 pilots in the cockpit visually observed what the junior pilot was doing with his stick. If it had been visually obvious to the other pilots that the junior pilot was pulling his stick hard back then they would have corrected his mistake and the plane would not have crashed.. They couldn't see what the junior pilot was doing with the stick. Lack of control input visibility would seem to be an issue.
That's what I read on the internet, anyway.
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You would see that both the pilot flying (junior) and the pilot non flying (senior) successively had the controls. You would also see that they had the same reaction: pull back on the stick.
The point is at no time, any of the 3 pilots were aware that they were in a stall, despite the stall warning sounding repeatedly. They were just puzzled at what was happening. And one of the main rea
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Yes, the internet is full of anti-Airbus shite these days, a lot of it centred around the flight systems - and yet Airbus aircraft are not crashing with any more frequency than Boeing aircraft...
When you next get on a Airbus aircraft, ask for a cockpit visit - sit in either of the pilots seats and then look over at the other pilots seat. When you are normally seated, and there is someone in the other seat, you can still see the other pilots control stick, so a quick glance over would be enough to tell you
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The inability for people to read an entire paragraph is simply astounding....
Oh, and the pitot tube icing issue had been highlighted nearly a year before, and Air France aircraft were undergoing staged replacements under an Airworthiness Directive at the time of the AF447 crash.
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And the Airbus crashed in a more known search region in far shallower water. Before we found the black box air travel was the safest form of travel available. After we found the black box nothing changed. Statistically with enough planes in the air eventually one would fall from the sky. Now if every plane from that model starts exhibiting a problem then you damn well want that flight recorder.
But right now, how much money do you want to our into the search for this plane for the potential to find out that
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For AF447, wreckage was spotted 2 days after the plane went missing, and bodies of passangers were recovered 4 days after that. That gave a rough area to search for the black boxes.
Not a single piece of wreckage from MH370 was found to give a clue on roughly where it went down.
The area is vast, so it is a mind boggling task.
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So while everyone assumes that MH370 crashed due to the pilot committing suicide ...
Who is this everyone of which you speak? A pilot committing suicide drops the plane into water/ground when he decides it is time to go. MH370 flew until it ran out of fuel and then went down. That does not seem like what a pilot committing suicide would let happen.
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So while everyone assumes that MH370 crashed due to the pilot committing suicide,
You might believe that but the majority don't.
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That says why Australia, but a more important question is why at all?
This isn't a search and rescue mission. There's no one to rescue. How long and how much money should be dedicated to finding why 239 people drowned, and how much is there really to be gained from knowing this information in full?
Because if an Australian airline went down in Chinese waters they'd expect China to expend the same amount of effort. In the modern world we don't just let people vanish if we can help it.
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No of course. We make a reasonable effort. In just asking you to define reasonable. How many millions so we spend for the sake of the 0.1% of people who died that day? How many more people could be saved if those resources were allocated else where?
Honestly I expect if a plane went down of the Chinese coast that they'd look for 2 weeks and declare it over.
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I'm all for that idea except that thinking anything is foolproof is naive at best.
Lets dedicated resources to the problem, but first define the upper limit. How much is it worth investigating this issue which has led to the deaths of 239 out of 2.5 billion people who took to the air last year.
You're disproportionately spending money on what is already the safest form of travel. Now if you spend the same money per person on the road toll you would bankrupt entire nations.
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I think of Abbot as a wannabe Putin. But without the power [worldaffairsjournal.org]. Or the looks [dailymail.co.uk]. Or the ability to kill someone with his bare hands [wordpress.com]. Or shoot tigers [telegraph.co.uk]. Or rescue babies and dolphins [topekasnews.com]. But asides from all that, he's just like Putin.
Re: Why the Australians? (Score:2)
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See also the first entry in this list [cracked.com].
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Serious question, why are the Australians taking the lead in this? [...] I'm suprised no-one has come up with a conspiracy theory on this point
Because they're the only nation missing people which is not involved in the conspiracy?
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Hey, MH370: (Score:2)
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Ya flamin' galah.
REBOOT (Score:1)
Can this just die already?
Oh no! (Score:2)
Whatever you do, don't switch to CNN.
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Whatever you do, don't switch to CNN.
Can't. CNN has been removed from basic cable around here. We're down to less than a dozen real channels (about half of which are alternate language channels), and a dozen "infotainment" channels (Weather, Business, local news, and infomercial channels). There is literally almost nothing worth watching unless you get a digital set-top box.
They knew roughly where AF447 was (Score:1)
AF447 transmitted ACARS data via either satellite or HF with trouble codes when the aircraft began having trouble with iced-up pitot tubes and the resulting issues from the pilots' errors. Along with this data was GPS coordinates. They found the wreckage about 5-6 miles from the last reported position sent via the aircraft's ACARS system.
MH370's last-known position is a series of educated guesses at best. If it hit the water like US Airways 1549 did in the Hudson, it may have landed relatively intact, bu