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Missing Flight Mh370

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Eve | 10:06 Sun 09th Mar 2014 | News
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Just unimaginable thinking about the loss of life in this tragedy.

There are thoughts, obviously just that at this stage, that terrorism may be a possible cause, especially now they have identified four stolen passports having been used by passengers on the flight.

I will be honest in that I don't have much knowledge of politics in that part of the world. I know that there have been terrorist incidents but who could be behind this kind of a tragedy, if it does turn out to be an act of terrorism?
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SJ, AF447 wasn't caused by a catastrophic event, but by human error in the face of a situation the crew hadn't been trained for (loss of reliable airspeed information, failure to appreciate effect of "alternate rules" of the flight controller and failure to realize the aircraft had stalled, until it was too late to recover).
how long would it take for a plane to flood, or would it retain an air pocket ?
Mushroom I said a catastrophic series of events. Its rarely one event. The Air France was still transmitting ACARS data through all of that so Im not sure what info they have from this aircraft.
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They said it was, I think, at cruising altitude and in a comparatively "less" dangerous stage of flight and no reports of any distress call. Makes you wonder why and in what circumstances the plane just turned back then if that is the case.

Interesting the two on board with stolen passports had consecutive seat numbers!
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It is alleged in the media that the tickets were bought at the same time through the same agency, one was apparently stolen last year, one in 2012.
according to this, ditched planes can float for 20mins....plenty of time for passengers to SOS with their mobiles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing
Surprisingly to many, the glide ratio for a transport category jet liner is quite good… in the area of 18:1, whereas in most small airplanes it's around 9:1. Most of the disparity is due to the aerodynamic drag producing appendages on most small aircraft… jetliners are very clean in that respect.

The glide performance does change with altitude as well as airspeed. Additionally, most twin engine large jets (read B-777) are equipped with a RAT… an emergency ram air turbine that extends automatically in the event of loss of both engines. It provides emergency electrical and/or hydraulic power but adds a lot of drag and the glide ratio would suffer dramatically. It cannot be retracted except on the ground. (Seen here:

The glide would not be expressed in time, but rather distance in most cases, since the surface over which the a/c is flying has to be taken into consideration. Also depends a lot on flying technique and aircraft configuration.

The "black boxes" (they're actually International Emergency Orange in color) do differing things. The "ELT" (emergency locator transmitter) is a separate "box" (required even on small airplanes here in the U.S.) and begins transmitting when activated by "G" forces. It cannot be turned on from the flight deck… It transmits on a specific international emergency frequency used to guide rescue or search aircraft, but is usually has only a 50 nautical mile range or so. Satellites can pick up the signal, assisting rescue aircraft in guidance. All airliners (and many private a/c) fly with a receiver tuned to the emergency frequency (121.5kHz or 243.0 MHz) while en-route to pick up such signals.

There are several other boxes, including data transmission for all the systems on the aircraft which transmit continuously via ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) to which all airlines subscribe and has various modes of messaging, even satellite and are primarily utilized by non-air traffic control, commercial units of participating countries. These are sending and receiving messaging almost continuously.

While I'm not qualified on the B-777, it's similar in many respects to the B-757 and it's inconceivable that, absent a truly immediate catastrophic destruction of the airplane, such a "sudden" disappearance could occur.

One of the problems in understanding what may have occurred is that ground based air traffic control receives information in 2 formats, so to speak. It receives a signal from the transponder but it also "paints" a primary return of the aircraft itself reflecting from the "skin" of the aircraft. So… even if a bomb had been exploded the left over debris raining down from such a high -altitude would have been observed by radar at least for a while… in my opinion.
This plane is the same one that lost its wing tip when it hit another plane on the ground a couple of years back.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576353/Malaysian-Airlines-Boeing-777-centre-crash-probe-collided-plane-two-years-ago-breaking-wingtip.html
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Thanks for that Clanad.

Sky News has now flashed up that suspected fragments have been spotted.

http://news.sky.com/story/1222942/malaysia-airlines-suspected-fragments-found
This is the worlds busiest shipping lines; most container ships from China pass this route.

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

A ditched plane will only float if it's landed on the sea at the correct angle and speed (ie flown/glided down by a pilot). This would also allow for mobile use if people actually knew it was going to happen (like that terrible Japanese disaster).A plane crashing into the sea from 5 or 6 miles up is far more likely to break up as it hits (if it wasn't in bits already).
If it was terrorists, say a suicide attack, surely the associates of the terrorists would have claimed it by now ?
Anyone who was prepared to send 2 colleagues to destroy themselves, an aircraft and many dozens of people would surely want to gloat to the world about how clever they had been ? And to make threats of further action if they didn't get what they wanted ? Isn't that what terrorists do ?
Looks more like an accident than terrorism at the moment.
You'd have thought atalanta but did anyone really claim Lockerbie or 9/11 for that matter?
Lockerbie was a retaliation for the US shooting down an Iranian civil airliner. States, even rogue ones, do not admit such things.
Al qaeda did admit the 9/11 acts.
Even on a catastrophic engine failure from 35000 feet, it would still have taken some 15 minutes to descend, ample time for emergency messages to go out.

This involves something like a bomb or an incident that completely shut down the power of the plane. The water that the plane is in is pretty shallow in comparison to that of the Air France situation and the black box (orange) should be easier to find and ditto, once they have it located, to recover along with bits of the plane.
The fact that the plane had an inspection/maintenance last week may be significant.

There was the Greek plane a few years ago that slowly decompressed and intercept jets could see the pilots slumped over the controls before it crashed.
Even with a total power failure, aircraft are fitted with emergency location transmitters which have their own power supplies.
I`d like to know how much of an arc the aircraft did when (or if) it turned back. That makes me think it might have been hyjacked but I was talking to a b777 pilot last night and he said "If you`ve had your tail blown off, you`re not going to fly in a straight line, are you".

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