Malaysian B777 missing!

[chrisward123]

Reports of an Boeing 777 gone missing on route to Beijing with 227 on board, thoughts with everyone on board...

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26492748

[G-CVIX]

Hoping for a happy ending but that seems very unlikely.

Thoughts to everyone involved.

I wonder what went wrong.

[Maisie]

http://my.news.yahoo.com/mas-aircraft-g ... 20132.html

[craig.mason]

http://news.sky.com/story/1222674/malaysia-airlines-plane-crashes-in-vietnam
thoughts go to the families of the passengers on this missing aircraft

[boff180]

Images on Twitter taken by a Vietnam AF pilot taking part in the search of an Oil Slick off the Vietnamese coast.

A tragic loss.

Andy

[neilos]

It must have been a catastrophic mishap for them not to give out a distress call....

[itfcscott]

Sean Maffett is on Radio 2 talking about it in a minute

[AlexC]

Just reported that the oil slick is not connected with this B777.

[spirit of walingford]

what strikes me is that there wasn't any mayday calls or signals that it was in trouble I hope they find the plane but its hard come to a conclusion as to what really happened

[tommo999]

Bizarre to say the least.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pac ... um=twitter

http://www.maldivesfinest.com/hotnews

These also make intriguing reading...

[Homer]

http://www.maldivesfinest.com/hotnews

These also make intriguing reading...

Hijacked and landed on a grass strip in the jungle? A bit James Bond that one.

FR24 only reports where the plane thinks it is, if it isn't where it thinks it is then it is useless. Do they have an actual radar track of it? Wouldn't be the first time that there was an unhappy coincidence of a plane going missing on the day the radar was out of action.

[tommo999]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2 ... ve-updates

This is the latest.

Hijacked and landed on a grass strip in the jungle? A bit James Bond that one.

FR24 only reports where the plane thinks it is, if it isn't where it thinks it is then it is useless. Do they have an actual radar track of it? Wouldn't be the first time that there was an unhappy coincidence of a plane going missing on the day the radar was out of action.

The longer it goes on the more incredible stories will appear. Have also read about 'invisibility hexagonal-shape glass' and aliens...

If it had gone down in the Malacca Straits, a busy shipping lane, then surely somebody would have seen it or found debris by now!?

[stonojnr]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2014/mar/11/malaysia-airlines-mh370-search-refocused-on-malacca-straits-live-updates

This is the latest.

Hijacked and landed on a grass strip in the jungle? A bit James Bond that one.

FR24 only reports where the plane thinks it is, if it isn't where it thinks it is then it is useless. Do they have an actual radar track of it? Wouldn't be the first time that there was an unhappy coincidence of a plane going missing on the day the radar was out of action.

The longer it goes on the more incredible stories will appear. Have also read about 'invisibility hexagonal-shape glass' and aliens...

If it had gone down in the Malacca Straits, a busy shipping lane, then surely somebody would have seen it or found debris by now!?

it just seems so weird that it was flying normally in this one direction towards China, whatever happened disabled all the standard radar tracking/contact with it, and yet theyve reported it was able to continue flying for another 500kms from that point in a different direction that put it on the other side of Malaysia/Thailand from where theyve been looking for two days, but then it still completely vanished above one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

I cant work out if its just a general lack of information sharing thats making it seem weirder than it really perhaps is.

[Brevet Cable]

You could always work your way through the discussion on PPRuNe :
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost.html
It's up to almost 2000 posts at the moment , the vast majority being repetitive garbage & SWAG , but there are some sensible posts there.

[Bucky P]

If this aircraft was not in radio contact and then changed its routing and flew for up to 400 miles on a totally different heading back over the Malaysian peninsular, surely the Malaysian Air Force would have been scrambled to intercept an unidentified or out of radio contact aircraft on an unscheduled flight path? If this happened anywhere in Europe or the US it would have sounded alarm bells and triggered a QRA response, I can't believe Malaysia would be any different.

[Rule 27]

If this aircraft was not in radio contact and then changed its routing and flew for up to 400 miles on a totally different heading back over the Malaysian peninsular, surely the Malaysian Air Force would have been scrambled to intercept an unidentified or out of radio contact aircraft on an unscheduled flight path? If this happened anywhere in Europe or the US it would have sounded alarm bells and triggered a QRA response, I can't believe Malaysia would be any different.

But you'd need to be able to see it on radar first.

[Bucky P]

If this aircraft was not in radio contact and then changed its routing and flew for up to 400 miles on a totally different heading back over the Malaysian peninsular, surely the Malaysian Air Force would have been scrambled to intercept an unidentified or out of radio contact aircraft on an unscheduled flight path? If this happened anywhere in Europe or the US it would have sounded alarm bells and triggered a QRA response, I can't believe Malaysia would be any different.

But you'd need to be able to see it on radar first.

Over the sea there would probably be limited coverage but if it came back into Malaysian airspace, as they now believe it did, there should have been radar coverage over land?

[andygolfer]

If this aircraft was not in radio contact and then changed its routing and flew for up to 400 miles on a totally different heading back over the Malaysian peninsular, surely the Malaysian Air Force would have been scrambled to intercept an unidentified or out of radio contact aircraft on an unscheduled flight path? If this happened anywhere in Europe or the US it would have sounded alarm bells and triggered a QRA response, I can't believe Malaysia would be any different.

and also that as it went west of the Malasian peninsular it then passed through a busy airlane going roughly north - south at about 30000' , initially the Malaysians said it decended about 10% of it's original height and later I believe they said that it was at 29000' when they last tracked it, and gave it's track as Kota Bharu (east coast) Perak (west coast) and finally Pulau Perak (a small island in the centre of the striaght of Malacca) where they gave as the final point where they tracked it two flights were passing south to north at around that height at the approximate time the aircraft would have passed and I would have expected one or the other to have been aware of it via it's ACAS radar although (I dont know exactly how ACAS works) would it require MAS 370 to be transmitting as well ordoes it work totally independently of all other aircraft to allow it to be effective if another aircraft has suffered a system failure - that would seem more logical.

The flights (both 777s) are visible on a FR24 playback UAE405 at approx 32000' and KLM 836 at 30000' very close to Pulau Petak at the time given by the authorities so the most likely candidate as it was a bit lower. There were other flights passing around 30000' a bit earlier and later but I selected these as the closest based on the authorities' information

[ArabJazzie]

I have probably got this wrong, but eyewitness reports now coming out of a flaming object 200km further on up the route and Chinese authorities carrying out searches on land!

Probably just someone carrying on the myth and rumour though!
Arabest,
Geoff.

[Vodka]

For those outside of London may not of seen this report in yesterdays eEening Standard on the Air France - 447 crash.

Absolutely incredulous!!!

Hardly reassuring on any level

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/damn-it-were-going-to-crash-this-cant-be-happening-air-france-447s-eerie-echo-of-malaysian-flight-disappearance-9184212.html

[RRconway]

If this aircraft was not in radio contact and then changed its routing and flew for up to 400 miles on a totally different heading back over the Malaysian peninsular, surely the Malaysian Air Force would have been scrambled to intercept an unidentified or out of radio contact aircraft on an unscheduled flight path? If this happened anywhere in Europe or the US it would have sounded alarm bells and triggered a QRA response, I can't believe Malaysia would be any different.

and also that as it went west of the Malasian peninsular it then passed through a busy airlane going roughly north - south at about 30000' , initially the Malaysians said it decended about 10% of it's original height and later I believe they said that it was at 29000' when they last tracked it, and gave it's track as Kota Bharu (east coast) Perak (west coast) and finally Pulau Perak (a small island in the centre of the striaght of Malacca) where they gave as the final point where they tracked it two flights were passing south to north at around that height at the approximate time the aircraft would have passed and I would have expected one or the other to have been aware of it via it's ACAS radar although (I dont know exactly how ACAS works) would it require MAS 370 to be transmitting as well ordoes it work totally independently of all other aircraft to allow it to be effective if another aircraft has suffered a system failure - that would seem more logical.

The flights (both 777s) are visible on a FR24 playback UAE405 at approx 32000' and KLM 836 at 30000' very close to Pulau Petak at the time given by the authorities so the most likely candidate as it was a bit lower. There were other flights passing around 30000' a bit earlier and later but I selected these as the closest based on the authorities' information

Andy,
I think you're confusing ACARS and:
TCAS. Traffic Collision Avoidance System.Yes both aircraft have to have it fitted and working for them to see each other.

[andygolfer]

I'd seen it called both ACAS and TCAS and am awre that ACARS is something quite different, sorry for confusion.

re the other part of your response - thanks for confirming that both aircraft need it to be working - rules my idea out but if it did cross the airway it was taking a bit of a chance if crew were still in control

[Rule 27]

ACAS and TCAS are complimentary but distinctly different. ACARS is something entirely different.

TCAS III v7 doesn't need the other aircraft to have a working TCAS (it doesn't even need to be fitted) but it does need the Mode-A/C transponder to be active. In this case, it was turned off, hence the primary radar contact only, and not secondary radar contact.

[parsley]

AV Herald have posted 3 Chinese satellite shots on their site of 3 large objects located 121nm eastsoutheast of the last known secondary radar position...I wouldn't like to comment on what they might be but the third one in particular looks ominous

http://avherald.com/h?article=4710c69b&opt=0

[Homer]

You could always work your way through the discussion on PPRuNe :
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost.html
It's up to almost 2000 posts at the moment , the vast majority being repetitive garbage & SWAG , but there are some sensible posts there.

The gist of which is it's not unusual to take several days to find an aircraft at sea, even if they know where it went down. And if the transponder wasn't working then the plane would be invisible to air traffic control. Also some question over just how much radar coverage there is and whether the military would have paid it any attention even if they did see it.