Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 missing with 239 aboard.
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Why is that? Whoever is going down with the plane probably isn't financing the venture.
You have a point there; I mean *IF* terrorism were the goal of a mission then it matters not where one sits or whatever. The goal is to get onboard the flight without setting off any alarms and wait......
I read that the individual who purchased the tickets asked for the cheapest flight available. That doesn't seem like the actions of someone planning a terrorist act.
The WTC bombers got caught when they tried to get the security deposit back on the truck they blew up.
It may have been talk about already in this thread but why do black boxes not transmit instantly to a harddrive somewhere on solid land or the cloud? It seems archaic that we have to find a physical black box to get the data on it. Is it for security reasons? If so, can it not be encrypted?
Yes, someone did ask this and I was going to answer it, but never got around to it because I was not sure of all the reasons. But since I learned so much from my attempt to answer the ELT question, I'll take a stab at this.
I believe the technology is there to do what you suggest. For example, pilots have the ability to transmit text messages to their company dispatch offices. It would not seem to be so hard to feed all the flight parameters to them automatically every few seconds. I believe the problem lies in the "bandwidth" that would be necessary to accumulate all the data from all the planes that are in the air at any moment. The system is not designed to handle all that info (as I understand it).
Also, the other poster asked about the Cockpit Voice Recorder. Continually transmitting this to ground stations would raise opposition from pilots. As you might imagine, on a long flight pilots can engage in dialog that they might not want to be heard by others, such as management.
As for being "archaic"...lol, if you only knew how archaic the technology is in some planes. Delta just retired some former Northwest DC-9s that didn't even have GPSs. Even a "modern" aircraft like an Airbus 320 is using 1980's technology. You can find more sophisticated flat panel displays in some single-engine general aviation planes.
It may have been talk about already in this thread but why do black boxes not transmit instantly to a harddrive somewhere on solid land or the cloud? It seems archaic that we have to find a physical black box to get the data on it. Is it for security reasons? If so, can it not be encrypted?
It too expensive for real time data updates to be a function that every plane be fitted with and the airlines have fought against the issue. It does not affect safety and is secondary importance. Only reason to transmit black box info would be to make it easier to figure out why the aircraft crashed.
What do people here make of the conflicting flight radar reports regarding where the plane went down? One report said it crashed off the coast of Malaysia, then 24 hours later, a different report had it disappear of the coast of Vietnam (after being closely followed by a smaller plane).
Wouldn't there have to be a massive breakup of the plane when it hit the water at hundred of miles per hour? How can the Malaysian plane plummet to earth from 30,000 feet and not break up on impact leaving floating debri.
That's true, so that's why I'm going with the theory that it landed on the water in one piece but QUICKLY sunk.
OR...
After it lost contact over the ocean, it turned back to Malaysia and crash landed somewhere in their forests (they still haven't been searching on land).
Hahahaha Giorgio Tsoukalos is a national treasure.
All web based flight tracking available to the public is just about worthless, its an estimate with about 20 minutes of lag time. For instance, I saw a Hawaiian A332 (it's the only Hawaiian flight) pass over my house and when I checked it on Flight radar, it's was just coming on shore near Newport that's about a 60 mile/10 min disparity. When it was over my house on downwind at ~3000 feet flight radar displayed 12000 feet then it said ESTIMATED, then it said 1000 feet, then it just stayed there, mean while the plane has already parked at the gate.
Remember the world dosen't stop when a plane crashes, especially on a route like Kualu Lampur/Bejing. The reason it continues past Vietnam is it's 9M MRQ, a different plane on a different day. Flight numbers stay the same even when the A/C changes. Think about when maintenance makes you switch planes. It still goes out as the same flight number even though the airplane changed.
The plane tailing, big deal, Alaska flys their planes very close on hawaii routes so they all arrive in Hawaii at the same time from PDX or SEA (there are various reasons why they do this). My last flight to Kahului there was another identical 738 just behind us and off to the right until about an hour away from the islands. We also got passed by another jet. Doesn't mean anything.
I've been following this story and I don't think we're going to hear anything with any validity until the parts of aircraft are found, and the FDR, and the CVR are recovered. We also have to remember that this incident happened with a government-operated airline, so we have no idea how this investigation will be conducted.
Searching for the missing aircraft could be very much like trying to find a needle in a large grass field.
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