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The Annoyed Man wrote:

philip964 wrote:https://en-maktoob.news.yahoo.com/myste ... nance.html

Piece of airplane wreckage found on beach on Indian Ocean.

Interesting. Would that number "BB670" on the piece of wreckage be some kind of a part# or something? I know bupkis about building aircraft, but it would seem a smart idea to record component part #s when building a plane against just such an event as this.

I believe all the parts are serialed so that they can identify wreckage and track parts for recall and service life and such. I think.

philip964 wrote:We need our subs in the area listening.

I'd be slightly surprised if we didn't have a few over there anyway.

jmra wrote:

RoyGBiv wrote:Lost shipping container?

[ Image ]

Trying to figure out what part of the plane would still be afloat that would measure 80 feet. According to the experts about the only part of the structure that would float would be a wing. Any part of the cabin area would have sunk by now. The problem with it being a wing is the total wing span (wing tip to wing tip) is only 119 feet. 20 feet of that total is fuselage which means each wing is a max of 50 feet. Of course the only way a wing could be floating is if the engine detached from the wing.

IIRC, the picture was taken on Sunday. Does that change anything?

I was playing table tennis with a few friends today, and one of them had an interesting theory. He thinks whoever stole the plane knew about the satellite thing, landed the 777 right after a "ping", transferred said satellitey bits to a drone, and flew that out over the ocean to crash.

Dunno how much that antenna weighs, or how much a drone can lift these days.

CHLLady wrote:I'm just dumbfounded that you can lose a plane in this day and age.

These poor family members are stuck between fear and hope.

Why didn't other pilots see this plane in the air? Someone's radar had to have seen it. If not, I guess China is not watching as much as we think they are...

I believe most commercial planes only have weather radar. There's TCAS, but that can be turned off.

WildBill wrote:

Dave2 wrote:

WildBill wrote:

strider67 wrote:Just heard on the news that the tracking signals aboard the plane stopped sending information sequentially. They said that means that they had been turned off on purpose...

I heard that too, but I am surprised that a pilot would be able to turn off the signals on purpose.

Pilots have to be able to turn any system off, if for no other reason than to help deal with electrical problems.

Which, come to think of it, might've been what happened.

Could they turn off the black box? I don't think so.

Yep. They're on their own circuit breakers.

Actually, let me double-check that... BRB

I can't find a document that lists the circuits on a 777, so I can't point to the button that turns it off, sorry. I'll look again when I get home and don't have use my phone.

How would the pilot cut off power to the Flight Data Recorder or Cockpit Voice Recorder if one of them develops a short circuit and it's not on a circuit breaker?

WildBill wrote:

strider67 wrote:Just heard on the news that the tracking signals aboard the plane stopped sending information sequentially. They said that means that they had been turned off on purpose...

I heard that too, but I am surprised that a pilot would be able to turn off the signals on purpose.

Pilots have to be able to turn any system off, if for no other reason than to help deal with electrical problems.

Which, come to think of it, might've been what happened.

thenick_ttu wrote:Secondly and more importantly, wouldn't the Chinese government pick up the plan on radar at some point since it is flying over mainland China (and presumably very close to Beijing)?

Yep. I would be pretty shocked if nobody had noticed an unresponsive 777 flying over one of the busiest airports in the world.

philip964 wrote:There is now a report that the Rolls Royce engines transmitted maintenance data for four hours after they lost contact.

Which Malaysia is denying, but I haven't heard a retraction or anything from the WSJ or Rolls Royce yet. You'd think that RR would jump to deny the story if it wasn't true.

Right after news of missing plane first came out, there was a report — quickly denied by Malaysia — that it'd landed in Nanning. Has anyone swung by that airport just to see what's going on?

I could believe the plane was stolen/hijacked, but by who? All the "usual suspects" either already are, or are trying to become, allies with China.

txnative1951 wrote:It does seem a bit odd that all data from the aircraft just stopped without any sort of distress indication from the aircraft.

You know, if it were me, I'd at least try to design those transmitters with big enough caps that they could send a final "emergency" transmission if it was suddenly disconnected from everything, independent of the actual distress signal from the computers. I wonder if Boeing felt the same way? Because, if, say, the plane broke in half, I bet that would generate enough error messages that there wouldn't be time to push them all through... there might not even me time for the computer to prioritize them in preparation for transmission. But if there was a kinda "reflexive" transmission that originated within the transmitter itself, it might be practical to have enough reserve power to be able to send it even if it's been suddenly removed from the plane.

Keith B wrote:Definitely had to have a been a catastrophic event. I feed ADS-B received signals to the a couple of the Internet flight tracking services.

Do you know where that data comes from? If it's an actual radar track, then I'm pretty confident that "it" happened where the track ends. But if they're basing that flight path on broadcasts from the plane, well those can be turned off or fail, in which case we might be looking thousands of miles away from where the plane/wreckage actually is.

I can't remember if it's been mentioned in this thread, but those oil slicks -- the only actual evidence of a crash location we had -- turned out not to be from the missing plane.

What a nightmare.

baldeagle wrote:They have now discovered that two stolen passports were used to board the aircraft, and they are investigating foul play.

Apparently it might not just be the two that have already been publicized.
http://news.yahoo.com/interpol-says-exa ... ector.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

When it was just two, well, that's less than 1% of the passengers. I think it's plausible, without actually looking up any stats, that maybe there just happened to be two drug mules/fugitives/whatever on the same flight. But if we're talking three or more, that scenario starts seeming less and less plausible. At least in my uneducated opinion.