Is flight MH370 in Diego Garcia?

First topic message reminder :

Malaysia Flight 370 has now been missing for 27 days, the March 8th date of disappearance drifting further and further away. This is particularly torturous and frustrating for those with family and loved ones aboard the missing Malaysia jet and has also led to wild speculation about what happened to Flight 370.

One of the passengers, Philip Wood, has been the focus of one of the more prominent alternative theories about the fate of Flight 370. While some see this as just another Flight 370 Conspiracy Theory, a text and picture reportedly from Philip Wood, have gained a lot of traction among bloggers, on Facebook, and around the web.

The story goes that Wood, a high level IBM executive who really was on Malaysia Flight 370, sent a text from his iPhone more than a week after Flight 370 disappeared. The text reportedly read:

“I have been held hostage by unknown military personnel after my flight was hijacked…I work for IBM and I have managed to hide my cellphone… I have been separated from the rest of the passengers and I am in a cell. My name is Philip Wood. I think I have been drugged as well and cannot think clearly.”

Along with the text came a photo which, even though just a blacked out image, had lots of information attached that iPhone photos automatically include when taken. GPS coordinates of the phone’s location were most interesting and placed it, and presumably Woods, at a U.S. Naval Base on an island called Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean.


Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1199399/malaysia-airlines-flight-370-search-new-leads-technology-and-theories-abound/#EPxlWFQZcXhXqpSz.99

This is great, it is no longer Quill and me being the doubters......

I reckon an old black box has been dumped. They all seem to run on the same frequency of ..... you can google

Old box new battery, well for so many days anyways. To have all black boxes using the same frequencies...... How convenient.

" Yes we have found the box of 370 but it is so far down in the Ocean it is totally unrecoverable......" Am still an avid reader of the Beano......., used to read Knowledge and Treasure.......

Sassy wrote:

eddie wrote:

No sassy, I mean they'll tell us it's the black box, but it won't be. You never heard of cover ups?? Lol
I'm with harves. Something  smells fishy and it ain't the things swimming round a sunken wreckage.

There are special investigators who examine black boxes, each country has them I believe, and they would soon know whether it was the right one or not.    

I guess it depends on whether you can pay the right guy or not.   

Gerbs my darling, of course they all run on the same frequency, they were designed that way to make sure it was a frequency nothing else used and nothing would be built that used it, so that they didn't go trawling after any old lump of metal.

eddie wrote:

Sassy wrote:

Irn, I'm pretty sure that isn't possible, could you verify that?

No sassy, I mean they'll tell us it's the black box, but it won't be. You never heard of cover ups?? Lol
I'm with harves. Something  smells fishy and it ain't the things swimming round a sunken wreckage.

That's if there is a sunken wreckage. What I don't get is, the Australian boat picked up a signal for 2 hours supposedly, well surely that was enough time to track it? They can trace a mobile phone signal to the nearest 10 feet so surely a boat that is actually designed to pick up signals from a black box can plot it fairly accurately if its receiving a signal.

eddie wrote:

Sassy wrote:

There are special investigators who examine black boxes, each country has them I believe, and they would soon know whether it was the right one or not.    

I guess it depends on whether you can pay the right guy or not.   

They would have to pay an awful lot of people, who pride themselves of solving the problems to help both the survivors when there are any, or their dependents, in order to know where the fault is, and also the crew, to show whether or not they fucked up.

harvesmom wrote:

eddie wrote:

No sassy, I mean they'll tell us it's the black box, but it won't be. You never heard of cover ups?? Lol
I'm with harves. Something  smells fishy and it ain't the things swimming round a sunken wreckage.

That's if there is a sunken wreckage. What I don't get is, the Australian boat picked up a signal for 2 hours supposedly, well surely that was enough time to track it? They can trace a mobile phone signal to the nearest 10 feet so surely a boat that is actually designed to pick up signals from a black box can plot it fairly accurately if its receiving a signal.

In order to pinpoint it, they have to do a triangulation, exactly as they would with a mobile phone signal, this while the boat is moving, the seas are swelling and various currents under the water are moving things about.

Sassy wrote:Gerbs my darling, of course they all run on the same frequency, they were designed that way to make sure it was a frequency nothing else used and nothing would be built that used it, so that they didn't go trawling after any old lump of metal.

Sweetie Pie

I do think on this we will disagree.............

You are completely correct......... But I am of the opinion they are trawling for an old lump of metal, put there in a place that is impossible to reach just to be seen to be proactive.

The main game is being played away from the search but near enough for the players involved to react if needed.....

gerber wrote:

Sassy wrote:Gerbs my darling, of course they all run on the same frequency, they were designed that way to make sure it was a frequency nothing else used and nothing would be built that used it, so that they didn't go trawling after any old lump of metal.

Sweetie Pie

I do think on this we will disagree.............

You are completely correct......... But I am of the opinion they are trawling for an old lump of metal, put there in a place that is impossible to reach just to be seen to be proactive.

The main game is being played away from the search but near enough for the players involved to react if needed.....

Then we will definitely have to disagree on this one Gerbs.

Sassy wrote:

harvesmom wrote:


That's if there is a sunken wreckage. What I don't get is, the Australian boat picked up a signal for 2 hours supposedly, well surely that was enough time to track it? They can trace a mobile phone signal to the nearest 10 feet so surely a boat that is actually designed to pick up signals from a black box can plot it fairly accurately if its receiving a signal.

In order to pinpoint it, they have to do a triangulation, exactly as they would with a mobile phone signal, this while the boat is moving, the seas are swelling and various currents under the water are moving things about.

I don't know what a triangulation is I'm afraid Sassy, can you explain it to me in words of one syllable    I know they can do it with mobiles but I don't understand the technicalities behind it

Sassy wrote:

gerber wrote:

Sweetie Pie

I do think on this we will disagree.............

You are completely correct......... But I am of the opinion they are trawling for an old lump of metal, put there in a place that is impossible to reach just to be seen to be proactive.

The main game is being played away from the search but near enough for the players involved to react if needed.....

Then we will definitely have to disagree on this one Gerbs.

I have no problem with that. It is great nice to disagree as friends. Shows how good the forum is......

Re the last comments


Monies have been paid out but no deaths recorded, no bodies, no cause, no liability. Who is being generous.... Most unusual. Money never gets paid out until a payer can be found, ie insurance etc........

The Australian Government, Australian Transport Safety Bureau is on the scene at the moment, and they would be the people who would take over the black boxes is brought up, and probably hand them to their opposite number in Malaysia. That's a lot of people to bribe.

gerber wrote:

Sassy wrote:

Then we will definitely have to disagree on this one Gerbs.

I have no problem with that.  It is great nice to disagree as friends.  Shows how good the forum is......

Re the last comments


Monies have been paid out but no deaths recorded, no bodies, no cause, no liability.  Who is being generous....  Most unusual.  Money never gets paid out until a payer can be found, ie insurance etc........

That's normal Gerbs, interim payments. Honest Guv lol

Sassy wrote:

gerber wrote:

I have no problem with that.  It is great nice to disagree as friends.  Shows how good the forum is......

Re the last comments


Monies have been paid out but no deaths recorded, no bodies, no cause, no liability.  Who is being generous....  Most unusual.  Money never gets paid out until a payer can be found, ie insurance etc........

That's normal Gerbs, interim payments.  Honest Guv lol

I bow to your expertise. A genuine comment btw,

harvesmom wrote:

Sassy wrote:

In order to pinpoint it, they have to do a triangulation, exactly as they would with a mobile phone signal, this while the boat is moving, the seas are swelling and various currents under the water are moving things about.

I don't know what a triangulation is I'm afraid Sassy, can you explain it to me in words of one syllable    I know they can do it with mobiles but I don't understand the technicalities behind it

Ok, I'll try.   If you pick it up from one position, you only know how far away it it.   So you plot your position on a map, and a circle around it of the length of the signal.   Then you do the same from two more positions, but of course you have to pick up the signal from two more positions.   On the map, with the three positions plotted and the three circles around them showing how far the signal is, there will be a point where the circles cross each other.   Thats the position of the signal.

gerber wrote:

Sassy wrote:

That's normal Gerbs, interim payments.  Honest Guv lol

I bow to your expertise. A genuine comment btw,

I'm no expert lol, although I was involved in insurance for a while.

Sassy wrote:

harvesmom wrote:

I don't know what a triangulation is I'm afraid Sassy, can you explain it to me in words of one syllable    I know they can do it with mobiles but I don't understand the technicalities behind it

Ok, I'll try.   If you pick it up from one position, you only know how far away it it.   So you plot your position on a map, and a circle around it of the length of the signal.   Then you do the same from two more positions, but of course you have to pick up the signal from two more positions.   On the map, with the three positions plotted and the three circles around them showing how far the signal is, there will be a point where the circles cross each other.   Thats the position of the signal.

Thank you for that, I had googled but it may as well have been written in Chinese   

In the meantime, this was in the Telegraph though:

The Ocean Shield is dragging a ping locator at a depth of 3 kilometres (1.9 miles). It is designed to detect signals at a range of 1.8 kilometres (1.12 miles), meaning it would need to be almost on top of the recorders to detect them if they were on the ocean floor, which is about 4.5 kilometres (2.8 miles) deep.

From that, you would be lead to believe that the boat is right above the black box and therefore not far from the plane, as there is no wreckage in the area the plane must have sunk in one piece, and you would have thought sonar would have picked it up. I'm not a pilot, or a deep sea expert this is just my view, I may be completely wrong!

harvesmom wrote:

Sassy wrote:

Ok, I'll try.   If you pick it up from one position, you only know how far away it it.   So you plot your position on a map, and a circle around it of the length of the signal.   Then you do the same from two more positions, but of course you have to pick up the signal from two more positions.   On the map, with the three positions plotted and the three circles around them showing how far the signal is, there will be a point where the circles cross each other.   Thats the position of the signal.

Thank you for that, I had googled but it may as well have been written in Chinese   

In the meantime, this was in the Telegraph though:

The Ocean Shield is dragging a ping locator at a depth of 3 kilometres (1.9 miles). It is designed to detect signals at a range of 1.8 kilometres (1.12 miles), meaning it would need to be almost on top of the recorders to detect them if they were on the ocean floor, which is about 4.5 kilometres (2.8 miles) deep.

From that, you would be lead to believe that the boat is right above the black box and therefore not far from the plane, as there is no wreckage in the area the plane must have sunk in one piece, and you would have thought sonar would have picked it up. I'm not a pilot, or a deep sea expert this is just my view, I may be completely wrong!

The ocean that the plane crashed into is one of the worst areas in the world to crash, because there is no land for thousands of miles to break up the currents and wind etc. Hitting water from a height is like hitting concrete, the plane couldn't have been in one piece. The point of the black box is that when the plane breaks up it is armoured and independently sends out the signal.

Found this on Wiki Answers to explain what would happen to the plane:

Well if the plane was at cruising altitude, no one would survive as the ocean is hard as concrete when you hit it at over 500 mph from 30,000 feet. Look up Alaska Airlines that crashed in the Pacific a few years ago outside of LA. They literally plummted from cruising altitude nose first into the ocean. The only thing left of the plane were tiny shards.
https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081230090602AA1gLMj

And that is about what would happen when the fuel ran out. Add to that the action of the sea for a month, and the fact the fuel had run out so no oil, in any case a sea like that would break up a small oil slick within days, if not hours.

I think they have a thankless, impossible, terrible task, that aviation experts have said they wouldn't have been surprised if they never found anything, and I'm sorry, but I just don't get all this conspiracy theory stuff when you take into account the actual situation and what they are dealing with.

harvesmom wrote:

Sassy wrote:

Ok, I'll try.   If you pick it up from one position, you only know how far away it it.   So you plot your position on a map, and a circle around it of the length of the signal.   Then you do the same from two more positions, but of course you have to pick up the signal from two more positions.   On the map, with the three positions plotted and the three circles around them showing how far the signal is, there will be a point where the circles cross each other.   Thats the position of the signal.

Thank you for that, I had googled but it may as well have been written in Chinese   

In the meantime, this was in the Telegraph though:

The Ocean Shield is dragging a ping locator at a depth of 3 kilometres (1.9 miles). It is designed to detect signals at a range of 1.8 kilometres (1.12 miles), meaning it would need to be almost on top of the recorders to detect them if they were on the ocean floor, which is about 4.5 kilometres (2.8 miles) deep.

From that, you would be lead to believe that the boat is right above the black box and therefore not far from the plane, as there is no wreckage in the area the plane must have sunk in one piece, and you would have thought sonar would have picked it up. I'm not a pilot, or a deep sea expert this is just my view, I may be completely wrong!

Welcome to my world of difficulty in reading the expert analysis...... My main point all along, no wreakage, and I doubt the plane would have sunk complete without anything breaking off, no fuel deposit, no sonar from the subs in the area and we are not alone out there.. No debris. Nothing just a little black box at the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea, the deep blue sea..... Jettisoned from the plane as if by magic

They are designed to survive when the plane breaks up, and it would have broken up, probably in very tiny pieces depending on the height it was. Planes simply don't crash into the ocean and stay in one piece.

Exactly, so where are the big bits, the floaty bits, the fuel spillage......The evidence. All are saying it is rough down there big waves, strong winds, currents hat vary from day to day, yet flotsom and debris including pallets from cargo ships have been found and much has been there for at least a year. It is known as a dustbin......... Nothing from the plane.....

And no Sharks as one commentator pointed out.....

Sassy wrote:They are designed to survive when the plane breaks up, and it would have broken up, probably in very tiny pieces depending on the height it was.   Planes simply don't crash into the ocean and stay in one piece.

I know that, but the reason I said it was because there is no wreckage... and also we don't know how the plane got into the ocean, for all we know the pilot could have landed it like that one did on the Hudson River. That's assuming you believe the plane is under the Ocean in the first place of course.

That was a river, with no strong currents and no waves of at least 15", he couldn't have done that in the Indian Ocean, it's far too rough, and the chances are it 'fell out of the sky' when it ran out of fuel.   Don't think we are going to agree on this, in fact I get the distinct feeling that even if they find the black boxes people will be poo pooing them as well, even with a whole Aircraft Investigation Division looking at them.

Bet it's still being discussed a long time from now, it's one of those things.

You are right, we'll agree to disagree. I'm not 'poo pooing' anything, I have formed an opinion based on the few facts I have read and its different to yours... that's all. Doesn't make me right, doesn't make you right either.

harvesmom wrote:You are right, we'll agree to disagree. I'm not 'poo pooing' anything, I have formed an opinion based on the few facts I have read and its different to yours... that's all. Doesn't make me right, doesn't make you right either.

Spot on, it's one of those subjects that will carry on for ever. You'll be arguing your side, I'll be arguing mine, and without that blasted black box we will never know. That's discussion for you.

gerber wrote:This is great, it is no longer Quill and me being the doubters......

I reckon an old black box has been dumped.  They all seem to run on the same frequency of ..... you can google

Old box new battery, well for so many days anyways.  To have all black boxes using the same frequencies......  How convenient.

" Yes we have found the box of 370 but it is so far down in the Ocean it is totally unrecoverable......"  Am still an avid reader of the Beano......., used to read Knowledge and Treasure.......

HI Gerber,

The service records for the black box recorders would record the Serial No's and the date they were fitted so if and when they are recovered they would know if they came from MH370. Traceability of what work is done on aircraft is important and service records must record everything that is done in respect of equipment repair or replacement and the calibration dates.

Irn Bru wrote:

gerber wrote:This is great, it is no longer Quill and me being the doubters......

I reckon an old black box has been dumped.  They all seem to run on the same frequency of ..... you can google

Old box new battery, well for so many days anyways.  To have all black boxes using the same frequencies......  How convenient.

" Yes we have found the box of 370 but it is so far down in the Ocean it is totally unrecoverable......"  Am still an avid reader of the Beano......., used to read Knowledge and Treasure.......

HI Gerber,

The service records for the black box recorders would record the Serial No's and the date they were fitted so if and when they are recovered they would know if they came from MH370. Traceability of what work is done on aircraft is important and service records must record everything that is done in respect of equipment repair or replacement and the calibration dates.

Cam I just chip in here for a moment?  ...that's right Irn, I watch many of the aircraft investigation and everything is as right as it can , all records kept, signatures logged, inspections very strict...

There was the incident in Britain...think the plane landed in Birmingham where screw just a tiny fraction of the size it should be was fitted to a cockpit window...

It worked its way loose and captain was sucked from the window...amazingly his legs were jammed in the controls as well as his co pilot and someone else holding him down...and he lived!!..half of him was hanging out the plane, he had minor injuries but severe frostbite....

It's true..for every accident or near accident , aviation learns something new...saving more lives.

Original Quill wrote:

Sassy wrote:  As I said, when they find the black box you'll say they chucked it in the sea lol

Precisely! And the CIA is getting angry that you children don't go to sleep. Now, lights out!

Sassy wrote:Don't forget, the contact they have established lasted for two and half hours.

Yes, they came up with that one yesterday, when we mentioned that at first there were only two clicks...not a whole series.
Don't you get the feeling that they are making up this story as they go along?

Most certainly!


A plane doesn't hit the ocean without breaking up and resulting in loads of debris floating about, if it didn't break up then surely it would float in one piece and be easy to find?



I don't know for sure what happened to the plane, but I am sure that the official story is bollocks!

Tommy Monk wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Sassy wrote:  As I said, when they find the black box you'll say they chucked it in the sea lol

Precisely! And the CIA is getting angry that you children don't go to sleep. Now, lights out!

Sassy wrote:Don't forget, the contact they have established lasted for two and half hours.

Yes, they came up with that one yesterday, when we mentioned that at first there were only two clicks...not a whole series.
Don't you get the feeling that they are making up this story as they go along?

Most certainly!


A plane doesn't hit the ocean without breaking up and resulting in loads of debris floating about, if it didn't break up then surely it would float in one piece and be easy to find?



I don't know for sure what happened to the plane, but I am sure that the official story is bollocks!

US Airways Flight 1549 managed to land and not break up on the Hudson River in 2009 but unlikely in the South Indian ocean.

Just an observation.

Tommy Monk wrote:

Original Quill wrote:
Precisely! And the CIA is getting angry that you children don't go to sleep. Now, lights out!

Yes, they came up with that one yesterday, when we mentioned that at first there were only two clicks...not a whole series.
Don't you get the feeling that they are making up this story as they go along?

Most certainly!


A plane doesn't hit the ocean without breaking up and resulting in loads of debris floating about, if it didn't break up then surely it would float in one piece and be easy to find?



I don't know for sure what happened to the plane, but I am sure that the official story is bollocks!

Would the loads of debris not be as needles in a field of haystacks when one considers the physical scale of the search?

lovedust wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:



Most certainly!


A plane doesn't hit the ocean without breaking up and resulting in loads of debris floating about, if it didn't break up then surely it would float in one piece and be easy to find?



I don't know for sure what happened to the plane, but I am sure that the official story is bollocks!

Would the loads of debris not be as needles in a field of haystacks when one considers the physical scale of the search?

Nail, head! Not to mention the winds and weather and the size of the waves etc. The impact would have crushed it, and any debris would have been scattered very quickly by the ocean.

lovedust wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:



Most certainly!


A plane doesn't hit the ocean without breaking up and resulting in loads of debris floating about, if it didn't break up then surely it would float in one piece and be easy to find?



I don't know for sure what happened to the plane, but I am sure that the official story is bollocks!

Would the loads of debris not be as needles in a field of haystacks when one considers the physical scale of the search?

It definitely would LD, some things have never been recovered, the ocean is massive with so many miles between countries...and with the change if wind speed,tide etc,,,the Denis will now be split up and scattered who knows who many nautical miles anywhere...

You get any gyp LD, just give me the nod   

Jings Sassy!!anyone would think we rehearsed that on the blower!!  

Joy Division wrote:Jings Sassy!!anyone would think we rehearsed that on the blower!!  

Shhhh! I won't tell lol!

lovedust wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:
Most certainly!
A plane doesn't hit the ocean without breaking up and resulting in loads of debris floating about, if it didn't break up then surely it would float in one piece and be easy to find?
I don't know for sure what happened to the plane, but I am sure that the official story is bollocks!

Would the loads of debris not be as needles in a field of haystacks when one considers the physical scale of the search?

Not really, when you think about all the technology available, satellites, radar etc, the lack of definitive information is very telling.


Satellites have spotted loads but all found to not be from plane.



If it hit the ocean from 10 miles up, then it would have broken up, and there would be debris, and It would have been found by now.



The new York plane is a totally different scenario.



I find it hard to believe that military radar didn't track this plane and it's movements.


The lack of any of this data is also very telling.

Sassy wrote:

eddie wrote:

No sassy, I mean they'll tell us it's the black box, but it won't be. You never heard of cover ups?? Lol
I'm with harves. Something  smells fishy and it ain't the things swimming round a sunken wreckage.

There are special investigators who examine black boxes, each country has them I believe, and they would soon know whether it was the right one or not.    

Yes, but would they tell you the truth?  What if they had a stake.  Someone led that aircraft off course.

Irn Bru wrote:You need to think out of the box on this quill. The script is good and if you want I could get my people to have a word with their people who could have a word with your people to see if they could fit in a role for your movie star girlfriend that you told us about. She could be the caring flight attendant that looks after all the passengers and keeps them calm throughout the ordeal by building up a dialogue with the hijackers. Or, she could even be a guitar playing singing Nun that they often seem to have in these aircraft drama’s.
This is Hollywood Quill and no doubt they would even add an American somewhere along the line that makes a valiant attempt to save the plane.

Lol. Irn, Becky wouldn't be interested. She's a double...different job. She is the double for Charlize Theron, so you might call her agent. Lol.

No, what I am asking are the logical questions. So you don't have the answers either? The mystery thickens.

Sassy wrote:

Found this on Wiki Answers to explain what would happen to the plane:

Well if the plane was at cruising altitude, no one would survive as the ocean is hard as concrete when you hit it at over 500 mph from 30,000 feet. Look up Alaska Airlines that crashed in the Pacific a few years ago outside of LA. They literally plummted from cruising altitude nose first into the ocean. The only thing left of the plane were tiny shards.
https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081230090602AA1gLMj

And that is about what would happen when the fuel ran out.   Add to that the action of the sea for a month, and the fact the fuel had run out so no oil, in any case a sea like that would break up a small oil slick within days, if not hours.

Not quite, sass.  Alaska Airlines flight 261 was a mechanical failure of a unique aircraft design.  The MD-80 has a horizontal tail stabilizer at the top of the tail.  Like this:



It rotated according to a large internal screw, causing the piece to go up and down.  The screw went off the track and stuck at the top, causing the horizontal stabilizer to freeze and force the aircraft into a direct vertical dive.  It went vertically into the sea.  I have flown that flight many times...believe me, I paid attention.

A 777 has entirely different flight dynamics.  A Boeing 777 would descend with a much less severe glide ratio, meaning it would hit the water more like the US Air flight that went into the Hudson River.

Of course, with Flight 1549 Captain Sullenberger was alive and pulled the nose of his A-320 up at the last second, creating a softer glide. Nevertheless, that is 180-degrees different from the way Flight 261 went into the drink.

But why are we talking about this? I think the whole south Indian Ocean ditch is a ruse from the beginning. They will never find the aircraft down there.

MH370 Search Chief 'Optimistic' Of Finding Jet
Search teams hunting for the missing Malaysian Airlines plane believe they are a step closer to locating the aircraft.

A navy ship has picked up two further signals from what could be the black boxes of missing flight MH370.

The "reacquiring" of sounds on two more occasions by search teams is being described as "encouraging".

Australia's Ocean Shield navy ship first detected the sounds late on Saturday and early Sunday before losing them.

Search coordinator Angus Houston said the ship relocated the signals on Tuesday afternoon and then later that night.

An analysis of the earlier signals found they were stable, distinct, and clear sounds that had a consistent pulse, indicating they were from a plane's black box.

"They (the analysts) believe the signals to be consistent with the specification and description of a flight data recorder," he added.

The new signals may allow the search to be concentrated on a much smaller area of the southern Indian Ocean, and open the way for the use of an unmanned submarine to look for wreckage.

Mr Houston said: "Now hopefully with lots of transmissions we'll have a tight, small area and hopefully in a matter of days we will be able to find something on the bottom.

"I'm now optimistic that we will find the aircraft, or what is left of the aircraft, in the not too distant future - but we haven't found it yet, because this is a very challenging business."

Earlier, it was feared the audio signal from the plane's black boxes may have died.

And Mr Houston acknowledged time was running out, noting the signals picked up on Tuesday were weaker and briefer than those heard over the weekend.

"So we need to, as we say in Australia, 'make hay while the sun shines'," said Mr Houston.

10:18am UK, Wednesday 09 April 2014
http://news.sky.com/story/1239322/mh370-search-chief-optimistic-of-finding-jet

BTW Quill, you do realise that the Aircraft Investigations team are part of a very large government department and a world wide organisation?

harvesmom wrote:If you think about it logically, if there is no explanation for the plane suddenly and drastically changing course right after the pilots said goodbye, and severing all contact with the ground,  then someone hijacked the plane, either the pilot or a third party.

So what explanation could there be for it changing course and running on autopilot? fire? well it wouldn't have flown for hours after if that were the case. Lack of oxygen? The transmitters wouldn't have been turned off. And anyway, autopilot wouldn't have turned the plane around would it, it would have continued in a straight line from where it was pointing!

Someone hijacked that plane, why is another question. And my guess is that someone knows exactly what happened to it but for some reason we are all being fed misinformation .

Exactly. We know whatever happened was deliberate, I cannot imagine any reason it would have flown until it ran out of fuel.

Sassy wrote:BTW Quill, you do realise that the Aircraft Investigations team are part of a very large government department and a world wide organisation?

Hi Sass,

The area being searched is about 15,000 ft. in depth.  

They are using a towed skate, called a towed pinger locator used to detect black box recorders, that looks like this:



When and if they find something substantial, they will deploy an underwater sub remotely controlled, known as the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), like this:



Unfortunately, the AUV can only go to about 14,500 ft.  The aircraft debris will undoubtedly fall to the ocean floor at 15,000 ft., meaning it is unlikely to be reached, much less filmed.

This is according to ABC News as of this morning.  My own look at the web, gives even more modest estimates.  The REMUS 600, for example, has been designed to operate to depths of 600 meters. The system can also be configured for 1500 meter operations.

I don't find the one that can go to 14,000 ft.

Air Chief Marshal Houston said the position of the signals would need to be fixed before an autonomous underwater vehicle ‘Blue Fin 21’ could be deployed to locate wreckage.

“The area in which the signals have been received has a depth of approximately 4,500 metres,” he warned, adding it is also the “limit of capability of the autonomous underwater vehicle.”

http://www.news.com.au/world/asia/mh37o-angus-houston-confirms-signal-detected-by-ocean-shield-are-consistent-with-black-box/story-fnh81fz8-1226876318133

Spec of the Bluefin-21

http://www.bluefinrobotics.com/products/bluefin-21/

Nems wrote:

harvesmom wrote:If you think about it logically, if there is no explanation for the plane suddenly and drastically changing course right after the pilots said goodbye, and severing all contact with the ground,  then someone hijacked the plane, either the pilot or a third party.

So what explanation could there be for it changing course and running on autopilot? fire? well it wouldn't have flown for hours after if that were the case. Lack of oxygen? The transmitters wouldn't have been turned off. And anyway, autopilot wouldn't have turned the plane around would it, it would have continued in a straight line from where it was pointing!

Someone hijacked that plane, why is another question. And my guess is that someone knows exactly what happened to it but for some reason we are all being fed misinformation .

Exactly. We know whatever happened was deliberate, I cannot imagine any reason it would have flown until it ran out of fuel.

But that's not what the investigators have concluded unless... they're all in on the conspiracy?

lovedust wrote:

Nems wrote:

Exactly. We know whatever happened was deliberate, I cannot imagine any reason it would have flown until it ran out of fuel.

But that's not what the investigators have concluded unless... they're all in on the conspiracy?

And that's a hell of a lot of people, including the Australia Air Investigations Department etc.

Thought this was interesting, the view of a commericial pilot:

The Mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
UPDATE: April 4, 2014

THE MEDIA really needs a chill pill. And for the love of heaven, would people please stop talking about transponders. National Public Radio host Robert Siegel was on the air yesterday, the latest in a know-nothing chorus complaining about the ability of pilots to turn transponders off, clearly possessing little or no idea how the devices actually work.

The ability to turn off a transponder exists for three reasons:

The first one is operational: to avoid cluttering up air traffic control radar, the unit is turned off when parked at the gate. We switch it on shortly before taxiing, then switch it off again (actually it’s moved to a standby mode) after docking in. Second, in the interest of safety — namely, fire and electrical system protection — it’s important to have the ability to isolate a piece of equipment, either by a standard switch or, if need be, through a circuit breaker. And third, transponders will occasionally malfunction and transmit erroneous or incomplete data, at which point a crew will “cycle” the device or swap to another unit. Typically at least two transponders are onboard, and you can’t run both simultaneously. Further, there are various transponder subfunctions, or “modes” as we call them — mode C, for example, or mode S — responsible for different data, and these can be turned off separately.

In any case, with respect to the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, a discussion of transponders is only partly relevant in the first place. For air traffic control purposes, transponders only work in areas of ATC radar coverage. Once beyond a certain distance from the coast, the oceans are not monitored by radar, and transponders are not used for tracking. We keep the units turned on because the TCAS anti-collision system is transponder-based, but we rely on satcom, ACARS, FMS datalink, and other means for position reports and communications. Thus transponders are pertinent to this story only when the missing plane was close to land. Once over the open water, on or off, it didn’t matter anyway.


UPDATE: April 3, 2014

ACCORDING TO Reason.org, a new Reason-Rupe poll finds 35 percent of Americans think a mechanical problem caused Malaysia Airlines flight 370 to crash; 22 percent believe the pilots crashed the plane intentionally; 12 percent feel it was destroyed by terrorists; 9 percent say the plane landed safely and is in hiding; 5 percent believe the disappearance is related to supernatural or alien activity; and 3 percent think it was shot down by a foreign government.

That’s slightly more encouraging than I expected, with some 57 percent of people overall hewing to what have been, from the start, the two most credible avenues of possibility: mechanical problem or rogue crew hijacking.


UPDATE: March 30, 2014

I’VE READ AND HEARD some pretty asinine characterizations of airline pilots before, but rarely have I come across anything as absurd, inaccurate, or irresponsible as what was printed on the front page of the March 28-30 weekend international edition of USA Today.

I’m talking about the story by Mahi Ramakrishnan headlined, “Flight Change Blamed on Pilot.” (A slightly different version of this story ran in the March 27th U.S. edition.)

“The pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet is believed to be solely responsible for steering the flight hundreds of miles off course…” begins the story. Right away I feel an ulcer coming on.

I find it almost inconceivable that after decades of covering commercial aviation, USA Today would fail to understand there is always a minimum of two pilots in the cockpit: a captain and a first officer. The latter is known colloquially as the copilot, but they both are fully qualified pilots. They both perform takeoffs and landings, and both are certified to operate the aircraft in all regimes of flight. A first officer is not an apprentice. In fact, owing to the quirks of the airline seniority system, it is not unheard of for the first officer to be older and more experienced than the captain. More here.

How many times have I been through this? I’ve explained it repeatedly in blog postings, articles, and in my book. I have no idea how many people have been listening, but in one fell swoop USA Today has misinformed hundreds of thousands of readers.

But wait, it gets worse…

Later in the same story we are told that one of the Malaysian investigators said of the crew, “Only the captain possessed the experience and expertise to fly the plane.”

I’m not sure what disturbs me more: that an accident investigator would say such a nonsensical and untrue thing, or that USA Today didn’t have the common sense to vet it. I can’t believe that nobody on the editorial staff of a paper that runs so many airlines stories, and that caters to travelers, didn’t at least flag this statement for review.

The idea that a first officer on a Boeing 777 wouldn’t have the experience or expertise to operate the aircraft on his own is beyond preposterous. Why the investigator would assert otherwise, if in fact the quote was interpreted correctly, I have no idea.

The details of the Malaysia Airlines mystery have been subject to enough misinterpretation and general media overboiling as it is. This puts things over the top, into the realm of total and complete nonsense.

And hang on, there’s more…

The same issue of USA Today, on page 10A, features a letter to the editor by a man from Minnesota named Tom O’Mara. His topic is the tracking of commercial flights. He asks that we “demand that airlines track all their flights from takeoff to landing.” Five dollars per passenger, he submits, ought to be invested in a “tracking system for commercial flights over the ocean.”

The problem here is that commercial flights are tracked over the oceans. Air crews must always be in contact with both air traffic control and company dispatchers on the ground. Most intercontinental aircraft have datalink or satellite communications systems that allow for constant real-time tracking.

Of course, this equipment works only so long as it’s powered. A fire, failure, or act of sabotage can render it inoperative — no different, I would presume, from any piece of equipment in any application in any industry. Maybe that’s O’Mara’s point; possibly he’s arguing for some type of fail-safe tracking mechanism that can’t be destroyed or turned off? But he doesn’t say so, and the tone and implication of his letter is simple and clear enough: planes are not tracked.

Which is untrue. And here the newspaper again drops the ball, by publishing a letter based on a false premise.


UPDATE: March 27, 2014

THE GRAPHICS ON CNN say “Breaking News…” followed by, “There is no new information in the disappearance of flight MH370.” Can’t make this up.

Malaysian authorities, meanwhile, have put out the blockbuster announcement that they are confident the plane crashed into the sea. Damn, and all this time I believed the jet was hidden away in a hangar somewhere on a “remote airstrip.”

Except of course that plenty of people really do subscribe to such an idea. And it’s this conspiracy mongering that’s the most discouraging and distracting aspect of this entire story. How it got there we don’t yet know — and we may never know — but there is an extremely high certainty that the plane is in the Indian ocean. This is by far the likeliest possibility, and I wish the TV networks would cease and desist from giving further credence to notions of a kidnapping conspiracy. There is zero evidence to support such a claim, and analytically it makes no sense. Some buffoon was on Fox News the other night saying, “This has all the makings of a hostage situation.” Actually, it has none of the makings of a hostage situation.

Not that I’m shocked that so many people are willing to accept these ideas. What is it about our society nowadays that foments such fanciful and illogical lines of thinking?

Meanwhile, here’s a bullet-point look at some of the topics and theories we’ve been hearing about from the start:

TRANSPONDERS The media has been throwing this term around without a full understanding of how the equipment works. See my explanation at the top of this post.

“ALL RIGHT, GOOD NIGHT” If I hear one more person attempt to make something of the first officer’s final words to air traffic control — “all right, good night” — I’m going to hit the roof. There is nothing unusual about this salutation. While it sounds cryptic in the context of the ongoing mystery, it’s a perfectly normal sign-off — the kind of thing pilots say to controllers all the time.

THE RADAR RUSE I’m talking about this post, by an aviation enthusiast named Keith Ledgerwood. His hypothesis is that the missing Malaysia Airlines jet had tucked up underneath a Singapore Airlines 777, causing the two planes’ radar signatures to appear as one. Thus disguised, the Malaysia jet flew on, undetected for hours before eventually breaking off and landing at an airfield in…? See that’s what I don’t like about this idea. It fails to offer any explanation as to how, once separating from the Singapore flight, the Malaysia jet could have completed its secret diversion without being seen — to say nothing of why such a difficult and elaborate plot would be put in motion to begin with. It makes very little sense, other than it allows an aviation hobbyist to show off a little, and provides more fodder for a media starved of useful information. Beyond that, if the Malaysia plane had been directly below the Singapore 777, the latter’s radar altimeter would have shown it. The radar altimeter is a device that displays physical distance, in feet, to an object below. (They differ from a plane’s main altimeters, which reference height above sea level.) In normal operations that object is the ground, but during cruise they commonly pick up crossing traffic, momentarily showing planes as they pass beneath. So, ask the Singapore crew: was your radar altimeter flashing on and off, showing some sort of object below you?

FIRE OR FUMES? This theory has gotten a ton of attention thanks to a Wired magazine story penned by a general aviation pilot named Chris Goodfellow. He proposes that the flight’s sudden turn off course was a response to an inflight emergency — an intentional deviation forced by an electrical or cargo fire. While headed for an emergency landing, the crew was overcome by smoke or fumes. Its autopilot on and course reprogrammed, the plane then continued on for a time before crashing. The theory is described in the headline as “startlingly simple,” though in fact there’s nothing startling about it, and Goodfellow more or less repeats what I said in a post back on March 14th. That a fire would be potent enough knock out communications and incapacitate the crew, yet not destroy the aircraft very quickly, is certainly a sticking point, but neither is it impossible.

THE TERRORIST PLOT If indeed this was a hijacking, did the plane land somewhere, as some are suggesting, possibly to be used later as an airborne weapon of some kind, perhaps loaded with a nuclear or biological weapon? I seriously doubt it. Remote as some airports are, the task of stealing and then secretly landing and hiding a 777 would be exceptionally difficult. But more than that, what sense would it make for a terrorist group steal a commercial jetliner full of passengers from one of the most prestigious airlines in the world, guaranteeing that everybody on the planet will be looking for it? There are hundreds or even thousand of cargo planes and business jets that move around the world each day more or less anonymously, any one of which would do the job equally as well as well, with only a small fraction of the attention. That’s not to discount the possibility of a hijacking outright, but I can’t imagine the plane actually landed somewhere. As to other motives, remember that the long, long history of air piracy did not begin and end with September 11th, 2001, so it’s important not to view every hijacking through the crucible of the 9/11 template. People hijack planes for different reason. It may even have been a rogue crewmember.

REMOTE CONTROL This one is full-on James Bond. We’re told how the plane’s “flight computer,” whatever that is, was hacked, allowing the plane to be flown remotely, like a drone, either to crash it into the ocean or carry it to a secret airstrip somewhere. I’m frustrated by how often this is suggested, because there is simply no way to remotely pilot a Boeing 777 or any other commercial plane. People seem to have a vastly exaggerated idea of how modern jetliners are flown — that is, they vastly exaggerate the capabilities of cockpit automation, and what a person with access to this automation, whether from inside or outside the plane, would be able to do with it. People read and hear things out of context — simplified explanations and experimental applications of technology — and they extrapolate unrealistically. And it’s not as if the pilots don’t monitor and crosscheck a plane’s progress when its autoflight system is engaged. We are constantly doing that. If something were messing with one or more of the system’s modes, we’d know it, and could easily disengage that mode and fly using basic course, altitude, or power commands. Worst-case, we can switch the automation off completely and do everything by hand.

WHY NO PHONE CALLS? Some have wondered why, assuming the jet was hijacked, passengers did not place cell phone calls to loved ones, as occurred during the 9/11 attacks. Does the absence of call records suggest the passengers had been incapacitated somehow, or that the plane had met a sudden end? No. Unless an aircraft is flying low and within range of a cell tower, cellular calling from a plane does not work. Your phone will not maintain a signal. Some airplanes are equipped with special technology that permits calling via satellite or using radio frequencies to transmit cellular calls, but I’m uncertain if Malaysia’s 777s have this technology. Even if they do it could have been intentionally turned off or suffered a power failure, no different from the plane’s other communications equipment.

THE MISSING MAYDAY Lack of a mayday call: No matter an aircraft’s location, the crew is always in contact with both air traffic control and company ground staff. When flying in remote locations, however, this is often a more involved process than simply picking up a microphone and talking. Exactly how it’s done depends on which equipment the plane is fitted with, and which ATC facility you’re working with. Flying over open ocean, relaying even a simple message can be a multi-step process transmitted through FMS datalink or over high frequency radio. In an emergency, communicating with the ground is secondary to dealing with the problems at hand. As the old adage goes: you aviate, navigate, and communicate — in that order. And so, the fact that no messages or distress signals were sent by the crew is not surprising or an indicator of anything specific.

INTO ORBIT Of the wackier ideas I’ve been hearing, my favorite is the one that goes like this: Would it be possible for the 777 to have climbed clear out of the atmosphere, so high that “it disintegrated,” went into orbit, or otherwise became impossible to track or locate? In normal circumstances I wouldn’t burden the rest of you with an answer to such nonsense, except that no fewer than five readers already have asked some version of this question. The answer is no. It is totally impossible for that to happen. At a certain altitude, a plane’s engines will no longer provide enough power and the wings will no longer provide enough lift. The plane will no longer be able to sustain flight. All commercial passenger jets have maximum certified cruising altitudes below 50,000 feet or so. And even this altitude isn’t always reachable. The maximum altitude at a given time depends on the plane’s weight, the air temperature and other factors.

HYPOXIA Could a rapid loss of cabin pressure, perhaps as a result of a fire or some other problem, rendered the flight crew, and possibly everyone else on the plane as well, incapacitated, at which point the plane continued on before eventually crashing. This is conceivable, yes (though maybe no more so than assorted other scenarios). Depressurizations by themselves are perfectly manageable and almost never fatal (see chapter two of my book for a story about the time it happened to me), and something that all airline crews train for, but only if the crew understands the problem and does what it’s supposed to do. See Helios Airways.

THE STOLEN PASSPORTS Interpol says the Iranians with stolen passports were migrants hoping to be smuggled into Europe. There are thousands of people jetting around the world on forged or stolen documents, for a variety of shady reasons, but that doesn’t make them terrorist bombers.

PILOT EXPERIENCE It’s doubtful this was any factor. The captain of the ill-fated flight had logged close to 20,000 flight hours, a substantial total by any standard. The first officer (copilot), on the other hand, had fewer than three thousand hours to his name. Pilots in North America — those like me, at any rate, who come up through the civilian ranks — generally accrue several thousand hours before landing a job with a major airline. We slog our way through the industry in a step-by-step process, building experience along the way. Thus it would be unheard of to find a Boeing 777 copilot with such a small number of hours. In other areas of the world, the process is often different. Pilots are frequently selected through so-called ab-initio programs, hand-picked by carriers at a young age and trained from the start to fly jetliners. We can debate the perils of this method, but I tend to doubt it’s anything more than a side note. Plus, flight hours in and of themselves aren’t necessarily a good measure of a pilot’s skills or performance under pressure. And any pilot, regardless of his or her logbook totals, and regardless of the airline, needs to meet some pretty rigorous training standards before being signed off to fly a 777.



All we know for sure is that a plane went missing with no warning or communication from the crew. The culprit could be anything from sabotage to fire to a bizarre mechanical problem — or, as is so common in airline catastrophes, some combination or compounding of human error and/or mechanical malfunction.

And all the while people keep asking “how can a plane simply disappear?” It’s an idea that to many makes no sense in an age of instant and total connectivity. But consider: if somebody yanks the power cord out of your computer, suddenly all the wonderful immediacy and connectivity of the internet is effectively vanished. Similarly, all of the fancy equipment in a 777′s cockpit is only useful if it’s actually running. Thus, together with an absence of primary radar over much of the ocean, the idea that a plane can disappear becomes a lot more conceivable.

http://www.askthepilot.com/malaysia-airlines-flight-370/

They are looking in the south Indian Ocean for an aircraft that started out north of the equator.

I think the operable assumption--to which I do not subscribe--is that the plane was run south on autopilot until it exhausted its fuel.

I'm with you, Nems.  If the excursion began with evidence of intelligence controlling the aircraft, why does it seemingly end with no one in control and the plane left to run out of fuel?  Maybe there was some transition (such as Irn's hypothesis of hijackers skydiving out of the plane), but there is absolutely no proof of that.  And no one is taking credit for a deliberate act.

lovedust wrote:

Nems wrote:

Exactly. We know whatever happened was deliberate, I cannot imagine any reason it would have flown until it ran out of fuel.

But that's not what the investigators have concluded unless... they're all in on the conspiracy?

So why have they concluded its in the southern Indian ocean?

Original Quill wrote:They are looking in the south Indian Ocean for an aircraft that started out north of the equator.

I think the operable assumption--to which I do not subscribe--is that the plane was run south on autopilot until it exhausted its fuel.

I'm with you, Nems.  If the excursion began with evidence of intelligence controlling the aircraft, why does it seemingly end with no one in control and the plane left to run out of fuel?  Maybe there was some transition (such as Irn's hypothesis of hijackers skydiving out of the plane), but there is absolutely no proof of that.  And no one is taking credit for a deliberate act.

I cant imagine how a planeful of people were incapacitated and just sat there while the aircraft changed course and headed south.

Nems wrote:

lovedust wrote:

But that's not what the investigators have concluded unless... they're all in on the conspiracy?

So why have they concluded its in the southern Indian ocean?

Sorry - my mistake. I've just seen the Malaysian Police Chief's announcement.

lovedust wrote:

Nems wrote:

So why have they concluded its in the southern Indian ocean?

Sorry - my mistake. I've just seen the Malaysian Police Chief's announcement.

Which one and where?

Sassy wrote:

lovedust wrote:

Sorry - my mistake. I've just seen the Malaysian Police Chief's announcement.

Which one and where?

Had looks can't find anything.

Most annoying things posted and no links.......

^ The one where he announced the investigation was criminal in nature