Malaysia Airlines MH370

maybe they ran away

in 2014 I find it hard to believe that the plane hasn't checked in on foursquare AT ALL in this time I mean cmon

how long would it take to find a downed airplane in that area in the united states? 2 hours max? ok, so obv the issue isn't the size of the area at all but the kind of technology we have available in that area to track these things. a large body of water in the indian ocean poses different problems than the continental united states + bc of coverage issues different problems than maybe the atlantic ocean. so the question isn't whether the area is too big to search - it's about our capacity to search it. politics for sure plays a role, but it's hard to imagine knowing the little i do about the state of first world military technology that it couldn't be found in this long period of time unless a) it didn't want to be found or b) <tinfoil> it has been found and for whatever reason it's being kept out of the news? </tinfoil>

Mordy did you not see the infographic about the tens of aircraft disappeared over the last few decades?

i did not miss this lede:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-17/australia-to-lead-hunt-for-jet-in-southern-indian-ocean.html

Malaysian Air Flight 370’s disappearance became the longest in modern commercial aviation as investigators lacking new information to back other theories explored the possibility of pilot suicide.

mysteries are exciting, it's true

i mean that if your point is that this is precedented, that lede should indicate that it is actually unprecedented.

nah, the lede says it's the longest disappearance in modern commercial aviation, that's a statistical truth perhaps but doesn't give any sense that this is uniquely inexplicable

i didn't say the disappearance was inexplicable! what would that mean? magic? divine intervention?

idk it feels like all kinds of hubris to say that technology CAN find this plane, but the govmint or military or whoever WON'T find this plane or won't reveal it to we sheeple

the whole 'we live in 2014' thing kinda bugs me. like ok we have cool phone and google glasses and there's drones delivering amazon packages but that doesn't rule out shit going pearshaped. technology fucks up ALL the time, the sheer fact of 'having' technology isn't a guarantee of anything

I mean, there's a lot of assumptions you have to get past to even cross over into the conspiracy tinfoil theme park...

if you're cool making that leap then have fun on the rollercoaster but yr hittin the pipe a little hard imo

/end rant

this: it's hard to imagine knowing the little i do about the state of first world military technology that it couldn't be found in this long period of time etc, i'm saying i don't think it's "hard to imagine" at all because i think the difficulties are probably greater than you realise

i say this as somebody who's absolutely not any kind of expert but feels like lots of journalists and other people who are not any kind of expert are making a bunch of over-confident assertions

^^^

well, i did acknowledge that there is a political component. i'm sure jurisdiction + information sharing is a huge clusterfuck. maybe the countries who could find it don't care enough to do so.

that said, we can bug Merkel's private cell phone, we have drone coverage over remote tribal areas of Pakistan and Yemen, we have all kinds of tracking + radar equipment. i don't think the problem is lack of technological sophistication available worldwide. i guess there's a remote chance it fell into some deep abyss where the passengers are now chilling w/ a civilization of sea aliens and we just can't get down there (nb maybe no sea aliens)

you're not comparing like for like - Merkel's phone, selected military targets, those things' locations are already known

As far as I know searches are still done via the human eye (no transmitters except the black box ping, which isn't strong enough to carry much distance), and in that vast of an area, where the big pieces are surely out of sight by now, it is next to impossible. Other wreckage gets found because the searchers know the direction and last know position, speed, etc and can therefore extrapolate to a relatively small area.

jesus christ mordy this is the dumbest i've ever seen you

lol

these graphics are supposed to convey the enormity of the area it could be but i don't find them convincing

That is not what "enormity" means jftr.

Seems like searching for a needle in a haystack to me. I hope they do find it, for the sake of the families of those aboard.

Figure all we need to do is to tap the underwater sea aliens' seashell phone and we can find the plane... should be pretty easy for the US military to do in 2014!!

"But enormity is also frequently used interchangeably with enormousness, which means the quality of being great in size, number, or degree. This is not wrong, nor is it a new development; the OED lists examples of enormity used this way from as far back as the late 18th century, and plenty more examples are easily found in historical searches."

i axed the website grammarist- they said don't worry, its' cool.

xp

enmordyty

Biggitude

Gave up the enormity fight long ago

Ginormity

Interestingly énormité in French means both enormousness and something smaller than enormity, more like bad fuck-up or glaring mistake.

If it flew over the Maledives, isn't that towards Somalia, where pirates like to hijack oil tankers for money? Maybe they're diversifying into planes now?

the so-called "occam's razor" theory of an electrical fire that incapacitates the pilots while the plane continues on autopilot (after that sharp turn) brings to mind a horrifying scenario: is there any chance the plane carried on pilot-less for 7 freaking hours with alive/conscious passengers? please say no.

see the info on helios 522 above. it has happened before.

^ This scenario is similar to the one that was proposed in the first few days, of a hole in the front of the plane disabling the transponder / causing hypoxia in the cockpit / causing the plane to fly for 7 hours into the Sea of Japan

missed that. thanks. also: jfc

I keep thinking about Payne Stewart's hypoxia-related crash, where everyone on board was out and yet the plane stayed on autopilot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_South_Dakota_Learjet_crash

Coincidentally, the plane continued on autopilot roughly the length of one huge circle drawn over the eastern us.

I think the problem is each new lead seems to embiggen the search area

Wouldn't hypoxia affect passengers also? I didn't think there was an airtight seal between the cockpit and the passenger area? In the Greek flight a non-cockpit crew member was seen going into the cockpit after the pilots were out, but he was soon overcome, which I took to mean he was already affected, but had more stamina than the pilots.

I keep on thinking of the ship of fools, though it is totally not fair to the passengers or to what has happened

I watched an ACI episode about that ill-fated Greek flight that was doomed by hypoxia. It was a horror show, literally more horrifying than some of the more dramatic crashes.

"embiggen the search area"

i believe you mean "enormen the search area"
xp

that hores was breathing i swear

At this point most inclined to believe the version of scenario that there was some kind of cabin fire which led to the electronics going off either directly or as some sort of procedure, then crew turned the plane around to point at nearest landing strip but then what, immediately lost oxygen along with all the passengers so nobody radioed or cellphoned status. Some seem to say this with debunked because why I don't get exactly: Keystroke course change instead of manual? Should have radioed first?

If it landed anywhere near Perth our navy will have picked everyone up and locked them up on Nauru so you know, maybe look there.

/sorrycrudehumour

One thing I keep coming back to (and why I'm not buying into the whole "this retired pilot from the 70s says there's one simple explanation for MH370's behavior!!!1" angle):

777 communication radios are quadruple redundant. 4 different types of communication powered by 4 separate/unlinked power sources located in 4 entirely different parts of the plane. Why would Boeing design that? Exactly because of emergency scenarios when part(s) of the aircraft is/are disabled mechanically, electrically or electronically. There is basically no chance that a 777 could lose power to all 4 methods of communication unless the entire plane was vaporized (which we know it wasn't as the engines continued pinging and it was picked up on radar for quite some time later).

Whomever would not be flying the plane (pilot or copilot) would be on the radio, in the very worst case scenario sending out a mayday/distress call on whichever comms method was available (I believe you can choose all available in the 777). But that of course is if both pilots were still piloting the plane.

It was leaked yesterday that the plane diverted from its intended course via a programmed code into the flight computer shortly after turning off the transponders/ACARS. That form of piloting is not an action taken out of desperate distress and speaks volumes about the why the investigation has been focusing on the pilot/copilot and anyone on the plane who has advanced knowledge of flying.

yeah, the only thing i feel certain about is that this was intentional.

It is certainly quite plausible that it was intentional. Think that some part of me wants to believe the hypoxia version because at least then there is some minimal closure to the story, whereas in the other version there are so many questions about why it was done and how did it play out.

Programming a code into the flight computer can be as simple as entering the call letters of the desired airport and pressing a git-r-done button. I think if the crew wanted to devote their time to fighting a fire (for example) this is what they'd do. No need to manually steer the plane while things are falling apart around you.

lol mordy fyi they can land a man on the moon but they can't cure the common cold

but that's because curing the common cold is more difficult

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Fantasticvoyageposter.jpg

I think you meant to post this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3QAHZicSjQ

man we 20 yrs deep on coolio's dream, needs a remake.

Programming a code into the flight computer can be as simple as entering the call letters of the desired airport and pressing a git-r-done button. I think if the crew wanted to devote their time to fighting a fire (for example) this is what they'd do. No need to manually steer the plane while things are falling apart around you.

― nickn, Tuesday, March 18, 2014 6:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

looks like according to some new info the route change was programmed n 12 min before their final verbal communication.