missing plane

Byker28i said:
I must be getting old. I'm finding myself reading the Times at the weekend and listening to Radio 4 more
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I started listening to radio 4 about 3 months ago.......only from 2 o clock after Jeremy Vine as I can't stand Steve Wright......but I have always read The Times @the weekend. I love the hot of drama in the afternoon on radio 4
 
Byker28i said:
I must be getting old. I'm finding myself reading the Times at the weekend and listening to Radio 4 more
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I read The Telegraph online, and sometimes buy the weekend ones when I'm in the UK. SA radio is pretty dreadful, and I don't bother with it.
 
This thread is drifting awry again. It is about the disappearance of flight MH370 and not about all the other tangents that are surfacing. We do not need stupid personal arguments from the usual suspects.
Debate on what may have have happened to the B777 is absolutely fine, but all the rest of the codswallop and criticism of folk posting opinions (albeit some may be rather far from the mark) is worthless and disruptive.
 
arclight said:
This thread is drifting awry again. It is about the disappearance of flight MH370 and not about all the other tangents that are surfacing. We do not need stupid personal arguments from the usual suspects.
Debate on what may have have happened to the B777 is absolutely fine, but all the rest of the codswallop and criticism of folk posting opinions (albeit some may be rather far from the mark) is worthless and disruptive.
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I don't think it has drifted too much, especially while there is little else happening in the search for the aircraft other than 'potential' wreckage satellite images, none of which have been confirmed. Nor is there too much disruption from personal arguments either that I can see. Perhaps if you don't like a few of the posts, the 'report' button might be a better option :)
 
Two aspects of all this that I'm not sure I understand.

One is why there's been no reconstruction of the plane's flightpath. It's been widely reported that the plane pinged the Inmarsat satellite 7 hours after contact was lost, but it was pinging the satellite every hour. The additional data from those pings would surely provide insights into the flightpath, so where's the analysis?

The other is that that there's been no talk of searching for the flight recorder. If the floating objects that have been spotted on satellite imagery are debris, then the recorder is sitting on the bed sending out a sonar ping. I've read that the detection range of these signals is up to 15 miles, but I wouldn't mind betting that the sonar systems on submarines could do better than that. So a submarine could be sweeping a corridor 30 miles wide; that's 20,000 square miles covered per day. So why haven't the US or Chinese navies sent any subs to the area?

(One possibility is that they have, but they don't want to talk about it. Submarine warfare is all about stealth, and you really don't want to advertise where one of your subs is so that other navies can get some practice in tracking it!)
 
I'm quite sure that national interests will be taking a strong priority over any desire to find the wreckage.
 
gramps said:
I'm quite sure that national interests will be taking a strong priority over any desire to find the wreckage.
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And that would be a good reason for not advertising the fact that you'd sent a sub to the area, as I said. But it wouldn't be a good reason for not doing it.
 
I thought I read a sub was en route from somewhere, but there is so much BS to wade through who knows of its true.

Also there were some photos of one of the Search aircraft dropping sonar buoys into the ocean, presumably for that reason, unless that was just to try locate the wreckage pieces.
 
A couple of things, the pings are based on distance, hence there was actually 2 flight paths, north and south which were based on those hourly pings as I understand it and its the south one that has been favoured and followed on the search, plus the north one is over much land not owned by Malaysia. The impression I got was that radar info was asked for in those countries and possibly they even instigated some searches themselves in the possible land masses, but how much, politically, has been the subject of need to know only as far as the public is concerned.

I also suspect that subs as well as ships from the international community may well be in operation. They reported on the news last night that Germany is preparing a special sub marine vessel that will be used should they think they have found the wreckage, but it would make sense for defence vessels to already be in the area or heading that way.

The buoys I heard about were for wave/tidal analysis so they can plot the likely paths of floating wreckage, though whether they have sonar capability I don't know?
 
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Just read this too..

The US Navy has also announced it is sending one of its high-tech black box detectors to the southern Indian Ocean.

The towed pinger locator, which is pulled behind a vessel at slow speeds, has highly sensitive listening capability so that if the wreck site is located, it can hear the black box pinger down to a depth of about 20,000ft (6,100 metres).

The navy called the move a "precautionary measure" in case those sightings confirm the location of the aircraft which disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board.

US Seventh Fleet Operations Officer Commander Chris Budde said in a statement: "If debris is found we will be able to respond as quickly as possible since the battery life of the black box's pinger is limited."
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Looks like they may have found it.. Press conference at 2pm, text messages have been sent to relatives saying plane has been lost and no survivors. Of course it could all be BS again.
 
Ok, they haven't found it, but they are sure it crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean due to new satellite tracking data.
 
while I suspect they the news is correct, that the plane has been lost with no survivors, telling relatives this by text just smacks, yet again of what a farce this has become
 
Not exactly very sensitive. Sky news had a live sound feed after the conference ended, quite hard to listen too. Lots of relatives pretty much dying inside.
 
StewartR said:
One is why there's been no reconstruction of the plane's flightpath. It's been widely reported that the plane pinged the Inmarsat satellite 7 hours after contact was lost, but it was pinging the satellite every hour. The additional data from those pings would surely provide insights into the flightpath, so where's the analysis?
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Wow. Do I get some sort of prize for punditry?

I've just seen a replay of the press conference held by the Malaysian prime minister a few minutes ago. Apparently Inmarsat were doing exactly what I had wondered about, and they have concluded that the last ping was definitely from a location in the southern Indian Ocean. That's why the authorities are now saying that it is "beyond reasonable doubt" that the aircraft has been lost.

[Edit: Prime minister, not transport minister. A few minutes ago, not a couple of hours ago. BBC news is on a loop and I was confused about which press conference I was watching.]
 
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Yv said:
I don't think it has drifted too much, especially while there is little else happening in the search for the aircraft other than 'potential' wreckage satellite images, none of which have been confirmed. Nor is there too much disruption from personal arguments either that I can see. Perhaps if you don't like a few of the posts, the 'report' button might be a better option :)
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Think I had too much red vino with my dinner last night:confused:
 
Hopefully the facts will emerge as to whether it really is wreckage from the missing flight so the families will at least have closure. Still very sad for them of course but knowing their loved ones are dead will probably be better than wondering whether they could still be alive. It's possible that there could be survivors even if it's extremely unlikely but I wouldn't put a brass farthing on it. Thoughts with the families.
 
Well, they are now saying its official, all the data is pointing to a a southern oceans crash and that the families have been formally informed that he plane is lost at sea with no survivors [by text message ffs, could they have got this whole thing more wrong if they tried?]
 
Yv said:
Well, they are now saying its official, all the data is pointing to a a southern oceans crash and that the families have been formally informed that he plane is lost at sea with no survivors [by text message ffs, could they have got this whole thing more wrong if they tried?]
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To be honest I can sort of see the logic, your going to be looking at notifications all over the world in different times zones, an actual phone call may invite further questions that they just cannot answer now, plus say there are some they cannot reach on the first call, you then might have people finding out through the media instead..this to me makes a text or email the most logical form of communication...lets face it a call would also open up calls of being a little detached/heartless the only truly personal way would be to arrange local authorities to visit and by the time that was put in place even putting aside diplomatic red tape your going to have the media finding out and reporting the story
 
MWHCVT said:
To be honest I can sort of see the logic, your going to be looking at notifications all over the world in different times zones, an actual phone call may invite further questions that they just cannot answer now, plus say there are some they cannot reach on the first call, you then might have people finding out through the media instead..this to me makes a text or email the most logical form of communication...lets face it a call would also open up calls of being a little detached/heartless the only truly personal way would be to arrange local authorities to visit and by the time that was put in place even putting aside diplomatic red tape your going to have the media finding out and reporting the story
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Most of the relatives are all in one place. Or they were, until the Malaysians gave them a good kicking for daring to ask questions. Sadly, it's been an almost farcical demonstration of how to deal with people
 
boyfalldown said:
Most of the relatives are all in one place. Or they were, until the Malaysians gave them a good kicking for daring to ask questions. Sadly, it's been an almost farcical demonstration of how to deal with people
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Are they? I know that the families of the crew were moved to a hotel, not so sure about the families of passengers though not read anything along those lines
 
MWHCVT said:
Are they? I know that the families of the crew were moved to a hotel, not so sure about the families of passengers though not read anything along those lines
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The Chinese relatives and relatives of several others on board are all in a hotel in Beijing and have been since this all started.

This is a quote from a Telegraph corespondent there

Inside the conference room at the Lido hotel, phones began to beep with text messages first in English then Chinese.

After 16 days of suffering, as relatives endured a series of calamitous misjudgements by the Malaysian authorities, the text message was the final insult.
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boyfalldown said:
Most of the relatives are all in one place. Or they were, until the Malaysians gave them a good kicking for daring to ask questions. Sadly, it's been an almost farcical demonstration of how to deal with people
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It's not that bad. Has it been Ryanair you would have probably been sent a premium rate text costing a fiver.
 
From what I've read the relatives are spread a lot further than Malaysia and China, but that's not really a good excuse for sending the news by text.

I can't see any reason why they needed to announce anything until they had contacted each relative. Then again, different organisations and Countries have different ways of doing things. My ex wife is a nurse, and they would tell relatives their nearest and dearest had fallen off the twig by phone. We, the Old Bill never would, it was always face to face.

In answer to the point about the black box, there's little point in looking for it until they have a rough idea where the aircraft went down. The 'pinger' on it is very short range. It's not audible apparently to submarines either, without software changes to them. Besides, the depth's round there are very much beyond the depth to which anyone's submarines can go. So it's much more efficient to find the wreckage, work out roughly where it went in, and then go looking for the black boxes, which are orange and there are 2 of them.
 
cambsno said:
It's not that bad. Has it been Ryanair you would have probably been sent a premium rate text costing a fiver.
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In WW1 and WW2 relatives got a telegram saying XXX is missing presumed dead. No easy way of passing on such bad news. Bloody dreadful however we view it.

Don't see how individual contact with relatives would have worked, Bernie. Contact the first one and the news would then instantly blow open and the world would know before the rest of the relatives could be directly contacted. No win situation for the Malysian government. Always going to be dire news for the relatives no matter how it was presented.

Your points about the FDR/Voice recorders ar well taken. Oceanographers now have their work cut out to plot the likely locus of the main wreckage and from that the sonar surveys will then take place.
 
Don't see how individual contact with relatives would have worked, Bernie
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There's nothing you can do to prevent the first ones told speaking to the press, but thats still no reason for not doing it in person. The reality is of course that it's been obvious for the last 2 weeks there was zero chance of there being any survivors, so one would hope that the families would have been prepared for the the worst news.

Having done the long walk up a garden path to deliver that sort of news a few times, you're right there's no good way of doing it, but there are some ways better than others.
 
There's never going to be an easy or good way to tell people that those dear to them are dead, although it may be a bit less traumatic when the deceased is very old, or terminally ill. In a case like this one, people will always hang on to their fading hopes, but I think most of them knew, deep inside, that it was over and just wanted confirmation and closure.

I delivered death messages when I was a police officer too. We didn't get any training on how to do this back in the 70s, and you just had to use common sense. Some cops didn't want to do it at all, others made a bog of it, and the rest of us did the best we could. The worst case I remember was going to see a young mother at about eight o'clock in the morning, to explain that her husband - whom she'd said goodbye to less than an hour earlier - had been killed in a road accident on his way to work. There was nothing to prepare her for this, just the shattering news that he would never come home again. It doesn't haunt me, but it was pretty difficult at the time.
 
I don't understand why it has taken over two weeks to use the data from the Inmarsat. satellites. It could have been obtained at the outset.
 
The latest findings do seem to give credence to Mr. Goodfellow's theory, that there was a fire, the pilot climbed in an attempt to starve the fire of oxygen and altered course in an attempt to make an emergency landing at Langkawi. He lost communication and sadly, ran out of time too.

I suppose there is hope that if they ever find the black box, it may or may not confirm what actually happened.
 
Big Andy said:
"I think" and don't blame me if I'm wrong, that they had to reprogram the computers to look at the data in another way not just the standard data as normal.
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arclight said:
I don't understand why it has taken over two weeks to use the data from the Inmarsat. satellites. It could have been obtained at the outset.
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Well it didn't apparently, they had the data that showed the two possible flight paths within a day or two, but the argument seems to be that the Malaysians had so much info coming in from various international sources, it was a week or so by the time they looked at it and another few days to verify it with other sources. Meanwhile, Inmarsat and AAIB had rejigged and relooked at the data in a totally new way and had established that it had indeed taken that southern route and even had an area marked where they thought it must have have gone into the sea but again, the same problems with getting the Malaysians to receive and then understand the information. All based on what is said in this article btw, so don't shoot me, I am just passing it on ;) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...centre-of-blame-game-over-crucial-delays.html
 
The Malaysians appear to have really struggled to get a grip of this investigation.
 
arclight said:
The Malaysians appear to have really struggled to get a grip of this investigation.
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Looks like they were swamped with data. I've seen some suggestions that it doesn't help that they don't get on very well with China.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Looks like they were swamped with data. I've seen some suggestions that it doesn't help that they don't get on very well with China.
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Yes, and it is not helping. China is demanding the Inmarsat data from them which suggests that they are suspicious of the conclusions reached.
Don't think that the press conferences have done them much good. They were a bit of a circus with much waffling when there was no news to give.

Unfortunately for the Malaysians they are now in the situation of being damned when they do say something and damned if they don't.
 
Garry Edwards said:
The latest findings do seem to give credence to Mr. Goodfellow's theory, that there was a fire, the pilot climbed in an attempt to starve the fire of oxygen and altered course in an attempt to make an emergency landing at Langkawi. He lost communication and sadly, ran out of time too.

I suppose there is hope that if they ever find the black box, it may or may not confirm what actually happened.
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Huh

How does wreckage in the indian ocean considerably beyond Langkawi substantiate that theory ? if he'd been aiming to make an emergency landing there he wouldnt have been anyway where near where the wreckage was found
 
From BBC News :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26503141

02:15: Malaysian military radar plotted Flight MH370 at a point south of Phuket island in the Strait of Malacca, west of its last known location. Thai military radar logs also confirmed that the plane turned west and then north over the Andaman sea.

08:11: (00:11 GMT, 8 March) Seven hours after contact with air traffic control was lost, a satellite above the Indian Ocean picked up data from the plane in the form of an automatic "handshake" between the aircraft and a ground station.
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I wonder what happened in those 6-7 hours? Wouldn't a jet fighter be scrambled to investigate?
 
well it would in the UK / Europe / America etc but malaysia doesnt have much of an airforce and its doubtful they have jets sitting on alert status for scrambles
 
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