off subject. theory on malaysian flight

Jim,

Great theory...How old would they be in that scenario?  6 hours older or 6 years older?

 

i hate flying, I fly tomorrow. Postop got it right.

Trust me a Mayday would have been transmitted via radio and/or transponder code 7700, I don't care how busy they were, they are trained and adhere to training in emergencies. A mayday is a cry for help and they do it instinctively even when. they know the situation is beyond help. The transponder code 7700 blinks brightly with bells and whistles on the controllers display. the pilot knows even if a lost cause re. a crash, folks will at the least have an idea where thy will crash, casen survivors of said crash. It takes an act of will to break years of training, special 18000 hours, thats a heap of hours It was an act of terrorism to a 99, percentile. Now as to whether it was the pilot. copilot ,both or someone who took control of the cockpit, I have no value of certainty on that one. The co-pilot via voice recognition, was id'ed as the one who signed off in on unorthodox and non professional way and was either under duress and involved or as signal that something was up. I doubt this, as, like in a emergency there is a discrete code 7500{not classified} to alert the controller of an hijacking. Outside terrorists could have easily known this and if it was them turning off the Transponder, it would have been the first thing they would have done, though that would present problems for them also, signaling to the ground somethings up. They in all likelihood, would have prevented the crew from messing with it. The pilots, if involved, would have done it when they thought appropriate. It appears it was the last thing they did, as they reportedly disabled other devices, less alerting to the ground prior to shutting the transponder down. I do think the mystery will be solved, if they find the main carcass on the ocean floor and deep water ac crashes have been salvaged be fore. PanAm 800 near long island comes to mind as one.

There was a piece on the internet, that said the pilots were trying to save the plane, based on some evidence indicated. It reminded me of a short story I read years ago , " Girls in their summer dresses ". the title is more intriguing than warranted. the denouement of the plot simply was that a group of men came upon a man a dog and a girl in a summer dress. The men saw the man attacking the girl and the dog is in the mix trying to help the girl. They proceeded to beat the man mercilessly. As it turned out, the man was trying to help the girl who was being attacked by the dog.
Actually the fact that the passangers were apparently docile, gives credence to pilot involvement, unless there were multiple terrorists, some in the cockpit, others in the back controlling the passengers. The pilots are the final authority in a plane. They could have easily have concocted stories to placate the flight attendants and passengers leary of the movements of the plane. In one of my earlier pieces, I opined that the A/C was placed in a slow descent, which I realize now would have been counter productive to the deed. The 'fact' that there is some evidence the a/c leveled @ 12000' at a point is puzzling. As the short story told. Perspective can change what the facts are saying , when all the facts are not in…and even when they are. Is there a quantum link there?
The ability to put a transponder on "standby", which is what is actually happening, not turned off, has a role in communication between pilot/controller. If the pilot has lost ability to transmit due to radio failure, but still has receiver capability ,i.e, can hear, but not speak. Controllers can communicate by posing different instructions which the pilot can hear, but not acknowledge. So the controller will tell the pilot, to squawk standby if you understand or squawk normal I have worked a/c successfully many times thu my sector and from there,others will also sector to sector, till on the ground. Many tools are available, your mind being the best. I, once in an emergency, had a pilot who was not qualified to fly in bad wx,get stuck in such with 10minutes fuel. He was close to NAS Alameida, in the bay area of SFO. They had ground control aprroache capability, no knowledge of instruments required to fly the approach, just do exactly what the controller says. Well we had no final approach course etched in to the display to find NAS's pickup point. It was used rarely. I grabbed a grease pencil and straight edge quickly drew one , then guided the a/c to a point of p/up. It was a save, I was debriefed and was awarded, more more negative comments than positive ones from the suits, who usually were suits cause they couldn't separate the cheeks of their a.. any better than airplanes. So as you can see, I am well used to rebukes. PS. Hey, I like "logos's", what can I say? hard for me to stop the word flow.

Have a good flight, plenty seats for sleep.

"Jim
Great theory...How old would they be in that scenario? 6 hours older or 6 years older?"

Who are you asking Jerry? Jim in Beijing .. or Jim in Pa?

interesting theory, The cat failure could have disabled everything so they could have never notified anyone in any way. I like it. I still have problems with the unauthorized climb to FL450. Tho they could have risked that as they know there is very little traffic up there to interfere with, as they tried to fix the problem. Ah the dialetic is alive and well on this thread. It occurred to me the dialetic and scientific method are the same, with the same end point, true knowledge.

As with comments about PCa I'll preface this with an "I'm not expert"...But as we are trying to speculate while using some sense how about this:

There was a fire in the cockpit of a 777 in 2011. That fire was thought to be an electrical fault in the cockpit oxygen supply, but that fire also occured on the ground in Egypt and thus worked out more or less okay. But imagine a repetition of that kind of fire at altitude, it could fill the cockpit with toxic fumes at the same time as disabling the crew's oxgyen and disrupting the electrics. So very quickly you have a crew that can't breathe. If they can think clearly and decide to try and hold their breath, then they can't talk to use radio. In those few seconds available before they collapse they to try set controls, auto pilot etc to head for nearest place to land, and to loose altitude, but if they can't see due to smoke, then perhaps they accidentally set wrong altitude on autopilot and climb, and in grabbing at switches blind they also accidentally turn off one signal (transponders) in an attempt to signal the emergency. The cabin crew and passengers could also rapidly be overcome by fumes, but then after everyone on board has passed out it becomes one of those fires that self extinguishes and the plane carries on on the course that has been set until the fuel runs out.

I've noticed when I watch "Air crash Investigates" that accidents are very often not so much a case of pilot error as a case of a pilot mis-interpreting the assorted signals he is getting from his aircraft and responding to a problem that doesn't exist and not responding to the problem that does exist. Perhaps there was a minor failure that became a catastrophic one due to making the wrong decision initially. Bt if a crew have no oxygen and are being poisoned by fumes they'd be lucky to be able to make any decsion let alone the right one. And what would be the right action anyway? open the window and dive to 10,000, while holding your breath?

If the black boxes are found and only have data for the two hours prior to a crash after a nine hour flight, then I do not think they will help explain what happened one hour into the flight.

I have also seen concerns about the cost of the search and rescue operation and the possibility that it may result in massive financial problems for Malaysian Airlines.

Glad to see that a bit of off-topic stuff here is interesting and stimulating.

Alf

jnf's theory is basically the same scenario I painted in my reply. went off course for whatever reason, decompressurized, simply ran out of fuel over endless empty ocean, and crashed into the sea.

If that ends up being the case, Casper, its a shame the guy didn't simply kill himself, why take out almost 300 innocent people? Would make him a mass murderer.

We can only hope for the passengers sake, that the plane depressurized, and they passed out and died long before the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea. Hate to think they were all conscious that they were on a death flight, and had to endure all those endless hours until the end came.

I kind of think so, because its odd that not a single cell phone call went out, to my knowledge. Even on United flight 93, during 9/11, many passengers had cell phone contact and air phone contact right until the moment of impact.

The fear of knowing this plane was going to crash would have been such an emotional event, if they knew it, and were waiting hours for it to crash. I would rather think my first theory.

David

I had a thought/s about the transponder being complicated to "turn off". I f the experts were talking about disabling the transponder, well that is a horse of a different color. Im sure it would be complicated to totally disable a transponder as that would mean, undoing the electrical systems that would power it. That makes no sense, as all they had to do, and they, the crew know this, was turn the switch to standby.
To disable it completely would require screw driver s and other tools to accomplish what a flick of a switch would accomplish. Experts hired by networks, must provide information of some sort "related" to the issue or why put hem on the air. The complications of disabling the transponder was that sort of information. Is it related?. Yeah but so remotely as to be misleading. Networks and paid experts, know this but if you are getting paid to provide, you will provide, regardless if it is a red herring. The avoidance of others radar is the same principal. Sure vietnam era pilots can do it, and are trained to. But is it relevant to the issue. No! They are providing various "sums of all paths" of which millions of paths are available. I think it was physicist Richard Feynman who worked out the equations to accomplish this so as to reach the optimum probable path in his work. The sum of all paths is finite, and with the power of math He did accomplish exactly that, and in as an offshoot Einsteins E=mc2 was also revealed, again. For those who who think there lack of knowledge is limiting in solving things of nature. It was none other than Egdar Allen Poe, in a poem , I believe, discovered unknowingly, why, when you look up at the sky on a clear nite, you can see any darkness at all. with billions, trillions of stars and galaxies the sky should be lit up totally. Sure we know why now, the speed of light is finite. Most of the light in the universe hasn't arrived as other stars are going lites out into black holes. Google Poe and physics theories some time. As jack palace would say " Believe it or not " I have caused the thread to drift into other worlds. My contributions are done, others are welcome to continue. But it could be time for it to drift in the archvival black hole. Its been fun. Thanks Ps I am aware that I have provided , evidence of knowledge and evidence of fame, probably equally. I am still becoming…….

They can no longer be clocked from our position in the here and now. They run parallel to us but obscure... like arrows fired from adjacent bows into the evening sky. Needless to say this hypothesis is rather fragile and could easily be refuted by physical evidence to the contrary, but until such time, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

And who would have though that the old Doppler effect is back in vogue... or perhaps its one of those Ripley's Believe it or not episodes. Until they find concrete evidence the rest is purely speculation.

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