Wow... I just read the most recent updates at Av Herald, and it looks pretty certain now that the flight crashed in the remote south Indian Ocean. There have been debris sightings from aircraft, and a new analysis of the INMARSAT data also indicates that area.

I wonder if we'll ever find out just what the hell happened aboard that aircraft.

I wonder if we'll ever find out just what the hell happened aboard that aircraft. -- Cousin Dave at March 24, 2014 9:17 AM

Very doubtful. The cockpit voice recorders are on like a two hour cycle. The plane flew for about three-four hours after the course change. So even if it is recovered it probably won't say anything.

A suggested theory is that the the pilot or co-pilot made the change, then there was a fight between the two. That's the rise to 45K ft and subsequent drop to 25K after the autopilot kicked off. One of them survived it but is injured. So he resets the autopilot and then either loses consciousness and/or dies. The plane then flies until it runs out of fuel and then it crashes.

Malaysian Public Relations is right up there with German Pornography and British Cooking.

Note that Malaysia is not the United States.

SMS, I'm led to believe, is a primary communication tool in Malaysia, not "OMG! ur kiddn".

Mail is almost certainly right out (Malaysia, as an archipelago, doesn't have the US's luxury of three day first class mail anywhere).

Voice? Some of the Malay dialects are almost mutually-unintelligble when spoken.

SMS is probably the best tool for initial notification, Western Sensibilities be damned.

The perception there, as I understand it, is not that of a "OMG! ur kiddn" kiddie-talk tool.

Tempest in a teapot:

"Malaysia Airlines themselves informed the public why they had gone with these text messages, while also clarifying that this wasn't a mass text that went out to all families with no other action taken. The texts were an opt-in decision by families that could not be met face to face at hotels or support centers. They wanted the families of the victims to get the news first before reporters got a hold of the story.

(Source: Techdirt)

[Cousin Dave:] I wonder if we'll ever find out just what the hell happened aboard that aircraft.

I very much doubt it, but for different reasons than Jim P. suggested.

The CVRs in modern airliners capture far more than two hours. I don't recall exactly, but if my memory serves, it is upwards of 8 hours.

However, that doesn't really matter.

The simplest theory that fits the known facts is that one of the pilots commandeered the airplane and then committed suicide. (My reasoning is here.)

Which makes it entirely possible that the only thing we will be able to hear is the sounds attending whatever one pilot did to kill or incapacitate the other, before shutting off the CVR. (A switch that remains from the days of limited recording duration, in order to preserve what happened en route until landing on a lengthy flight).

Most importantly, though, the odds of finding the wreckage are near as dammit to zero.

1. Read the Guinn piece, linked directly above.

2. Watch 30 minutes of this video, which promises that every inch of the ocean floor is likely to be accurately and inexpensively explored within the next few years.

3. Conclude: Within our lifetimes, certainly within the lifetimes of younger readers, that airplane will be located.

Let's not forget that the US government used the telegram to notify families of killed in action or missing in action soldiers during WWII.

Western Union thought they were getting a great big government contract without realizing how their business would be perceived when the public came to associate "the boys on the bicycles" with death notices.

Not trying to justify this stupid act; just pointing out that stupid is as stupid does and never seems to learn.

THIS WAS NOT STUPID.
How the hell else are you going to beat the reporters, eager to sell an image of a crying survivor, to each address?
Snail mail? No. Personal messenger? Just spiffy: lead the reporters right to the victim.

Come on. Think.

SMS text is a method of communication.
Because it is affordable and ubiquitous, it is frequently used for social media purposes by bored teenagers, Much like landlines were used back in my day.
Most Asians don't have landlines. They are horribly expensive, and tend to charge by the minute.
The cell phone industry revolutionized communications in Asia.

Jeff, I read your analysis. I think you are spot on.

The floor of the Indian ocean may indeed be completely mapped someday, but it is a deep one, and finding the black box after it stops sending a signal, and before the data is lost, will be a difficult task.

Wyoming is completely mapped, but finding a black box embedded in the bottom, of an unknown lake, would still be an almost impossible mission.

[Crid:] Within our lifetimes, certainly within the lifetimes of younger readers, that airplane will be located.

It took three weeks to find Asiana 991, a B747F that crashed between Korea and China. It was in 300 feet of water, and was on radar most of the way down. (Searchers never did pick up the pinger).

AF 447, pieces of which were found in a day or so, took two years to find.

The search area for MH370 is so huge that, while it is certain that given enough time and effort, we would find it, I think the latter ultimately will be lacking.

(Full disclosure: I haven't had time to look at the video yet.)

Amy, you are relying on Jezebel? Buzzfeed?

I see your marijuana card came through.

> I think the latter ultimately
> will be lacking.

The ocean west of Perth is deep, but not the deepest.

If I remember correctly, you're a strapping young buck, a fool for fitness, vigor and vim, with at least 30 non-smoking years left on your warranty.

I'm good for at least another 8-to-10.

Wanna wager? What odds will you give me on

Whoops, Amy's blog thought my notation was HTML markup.

What odds will you give me on location of the wreckage before New Year's Day 2025?

(Also, that wasn't the Jones video where he promised to chart the oceans. It was another one. I'm sorry. I feel bad.)

You too Isab... You wanna piece of this, bring your checkbook. 2020, 2025 tops. They'll recover luggage & wristwatches for the families, just you wait and see.

The simplest theory that fits the known facts is that one of the pilots commandeered the airplane and then committed suicide. (My reasoning is here.) -- Jeff Guinn at March 24, 2014 1:55 PM

Whether the pilot or the co-pilot was alive or dead it doesn't really matter. The point being that one probably killed the other and set the course. So if the surviving pilot had made a choice at the three hour mark that he wanted to live he was committed by that point. Turning back at that point would have been useless for lack of fuel.

Basically when an attack occurs unexpectedly, in a civilized environment, the bad guy has the advantage. Sort of like the CSI motto on attacks using striking weapons "The first one is a freebie." So whichever pilot grabbed the crash ax or other weapon got the first strike in at no cost.

Most people, not trained, will fail to kill or totally incapacitate on the first strike. That is why I talk about the rise and fall of the aircraft as an indication of combat in the cockpit.

The CVRs in modern airliners capture far more than two hours. I don't recall exactly, but if my memory serves, it is upwards of 8 hours.

No, it is still two hours for the CVR. The FDR (Flight Data Recorder) is generally in the 25 hour range.

avstop.com/history/flightrecorder.htm
www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Cockpit_Voice_Recorder_%28CVR%29
www.uasc.com/products/cvfdr.aspx

You too Isab... You wanna piece of this, bring your checkbook. 2020, 2025 tops. They'll recover luggage & wristwatches for the families, just you wait and see.

Posted by: Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 24, 2014 8:00 PM

If the bet is, that they will find bits and pieces, and personal effects, I am not a taker.
They have already probably located one of the wings, and there are all sorts of plane parts that will float.

If the bet is finding the black box, in working condition, you are on, for a hundred bucks on my part, that they won't.

[Crid:] The ocean west of Perth is deep, but not the deepest.

Area, not depth, is the tyrant here.

I have absolutely no idea what the Immarsat's fix accuracy is, but I wouldn't be surprised at no less than a 1,000 miles. Measuring distance isn't exactly the systems core expertise, after all.

Side scan sonar is the tool of choice for sea floor imaging. Resolution is proportional to height above the floor, so there is a tradeoff between resolution and area covered.

In the search for AF447, the scanners were situated to cover a 1.5 mile wide swath.

They found it on the third go, because the combination of uplinked aircraft data showing such a rapid descent that the aircraft "caught the cabin" and the last known position gave an extremely high probability that the wreckage was within 20nm of the last known position.

With MH370, we are faced with something like 8,000 times as much area to search.

Wanna wager? What odds will you give me ...

My wager is that we will not find it within 10 years. If we do, then I will pay $300 to your favorite charity.

If not, you owe nothing.

I'll bet you like those odds.

(Full disclosure: I hope I lose.)

So whichever pilot grabbed the crash ax or other weapon got the first strike in at no cost.

I don't know where the crash axe is stored in the 777, but in my airplane it is in a holster on the aft bulkhead about five feet directly behind the Captain.

It would be easy (in my plane) for one of the pilots to get out of the seat on a pretext, and unholster the axe without the other pilot knowing.

Which means the first strike would be the last.

No, it is still two hours for the CVR.

You are correct, which will teach me (although not likely for the last time) not to rely on hazy memory.

> Area, not depth, is the tyrant here.

Well, if it were on land of any kind, you'd expect to see it soon. Planes are big.

Now I really wish I could find the correct link of video from Jones, who's certain that we're going to find everything on the bottom of the ocean in years just ahead... Including Earhart's plane, and including every pile of garbage dropped from the back of a carrier in World War Two.

The effort he describes for ocean-charting is like the one mentioned for tracking boats of all kinds: Open-source, commodity hardware, deployed with relentless patience by privateer/hobbyists, their proficiency dwarfing anything the US military could pull together...

...Because government has too many procurement and careerist hindrances to actually, y'know, innovate.

(Faded memory: Telemetry devices the size and shape of scuba spears, with a few microprocessors, inexpensive motors and the kind of thoroughness that comes from not having a deadline. I'll keep looking for the speech where he mentions it.)

(Ballard has been making similar noises in recent years... The envy with which he speaks of the explorers [his students] who'll soon claim his office is poignant, even if they'll never experience the physical proximity to deep marvels which made his own career such a wonder.)

And as I think about it tonight, recent viewing of all these speeches honed my amazement at this missing airliner... There's so much tech in the hands of everyday people —including uneducated fisherman and field-tilling aviation buffs in the developing world— that I'd not thought it possible to deftly remove a working airliner from civilization's oversight.



> $300 to your favorite charity.

Done, Buddy! It's on! Amy, draw up the paperwork.

BTW Jeff, your check will probably go to Fisher House. Who gets mine?

I'm still guessing at what the motive might have been. My pet theory: The captain was distraught over the jailing of the Malaysian oppsition leader, which had occurred only hours before departure time. On the spur of the moment, he launched a half-baked scheme in which he would commandeer the aircraft and then use the pax as hostages to negitiate with the government. But once he got out into the Indian Ocean, he realized that there was no way to communicate using the aircraft radios without someone being able to get a direction finder on him. At that point he became despondent, and flew off towards the south trying to think of what to do next. And he was still trying to think when the aircraft ran out of fuel.

Dave, it's posts like this that really makes me wonder how organized a thinker you are.
Are you really telling me that a qualified airline pilot has to wait till they get in the cockpit to realize that about radios?

And was there really anything to indicate this in the investigation of the pilot(s)?

Raddy, most pilots are not engineers. There are exceptions, but most of them generally only know as much about the characteristics of the aircraft systems as they have been taught in their training. (This isn't intended to be a slam on pilots... it isn't usually necessary for them to know all the intricities of the aircraft systems. Similarly, there aren't a lot of Boeing engineers that know a lot about Airbus sytsems, or vice versa.) Since pursuit and evasion isn't something that airline pilots are generally trained in, the ability to track the aircraft by radio direction finding may not have occurred to him at the time he dreamed up the idea. Especially since he may have been in an emotionally distraught state and not thinking too clearly at the time.

And in relation to that last bit, there have been photos published and statements by relatives that the captain was a strong political supporter of the jailed opposition leader. I've seen at least one report claiming that witnesses have said the captain was very disturbed when he found out about it. That was in the afternoon before the flight.

Cousin Dave:

Interesting idea about motive, but I don't think the rest of it hangs together too well.

I would guess practically all pilots understand that it is easy to get a bearing off a VHF radio transmission. After all, that is how VORs (a kind of nav beacon) work.

I am not at all sure (as in "I don't know") if that applies to HF transmissions. Because HF bounces off the ionosphere, he could choose to talk to an agency thousands of miles away, and (SFAIK) not be trackable in any meaningful way.

Here's a cite for that thing mentioned earlier. More later.

Guys, think about it.

Who's your best blog friend?

Who's the commenter who's always offering a parade of compelling insights, novel perspectives, and indisputable truths, the kinds of outlook-nourishing and character-forging discussions that make your online life so vivid and rewarding?

Crid. That's who.

Dear Masculine Tech/Aviation Manly Men:

Consider the last line of Jones' bio--

A prolific inventor and computer programmer since the fourth grade, Michael has developed scientific and interactive computer graphics software; held engineering and business executive roles; and is an avid reader, traveler, and amateur photographer using a home-built four-gigapixel camera made with parts from the U2/SR71.

Emphasis: Uncle Crid

Turn in your dicks, girly-men.

I don't believe Malaysia is an archipelago. There is the Malay archipelago which includes the island of Borneo which, in turn, has the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak. Minor point perhaps to the greater comment however.

In case anyone is still watching this thread, there's a report in the New Zealand Herald (currently Drudge is linking to it) from a fellow pilot stating that the captain was very despondent over a variety of personal issues and "not in a state of mind to fly". It's not clear how reliable the report is; there's a sentence suggesting that the source didn't actually see the guy that often. But what he speculates is that the flight was basically one last joyride, a chance for the captain to do things with the 777 that he'd never had the chance to do (e.g., take it up past the service ceiling), and see parts of the world he had not seen before, on his way out. That makes a fair amount of sense.

If this is all true, it's the second airliner pilot suicide within the past year.

Speaking of inappropriate technology, a lot of people seem to think these days that just because they always have their phones with them, there's somehow nothing rude with being absorbed with them instead of paying attention to the people they're with - or with using them to cancel going to a dinner they were invited to just because they're suddenly not in the mood to go. (Not that people never phoned and did that before cell phones existed, but the temptation is greater now - especially if you're already out the door and driving far off in the wrong direction.)

Trouble is, the more parents let their KIDS do the former, especially (often so the kids won't be bored - heaven forbid!) the more kids will refuse to believe there's anything rude about it! Luckily, their employers, at least, won't be so forgiving.

BTW, Miss Manners, in her short 1998 book, "Miss Manners' Basic Training: The Right Thing to Say," gave a guide on what types of media are acceptable to deliver certain types of news. For example, when telling a patient he/she has a terminal illness, only the face-to-face method is acceptable. (I can only hope that any adult would know that already.)

OK, Cousin Dave, and thank you – but it has not escaped me that right there in the instant panel, there are radio direction finders. At least there used to be - and navigation is a principal area of pilot training.

BTW, Miss Manners, in her short 1998 book, "Miss Manners' Basic Training: The Right Thing to Say," gave a guide on what types of media are acceptable to deliver certain types of news. For example, when telling a patient he/she has a terminal illness, only the face-to-face method is acceptable. (I can only hope that any adult would know that already.)

Posted by: lenona at March 26, 2014 12:10 PM

Sure, in that case, dealing with "one" potentially dying individual, Miss Manners would be correct.

However, logistics are your enemy here when you are dealing with several hundred individuals, from twenty different countries.

If they signed up to receive status updates from the Airline by text message, however grim the news, then give them what they signed up for.

Little more than a week left on the battery for the black box flight data recorder.

They are going to have to get very lucky at this point to find that plane.

Still no actual wreckage found. I think the odds of Crid losing his bet are starting to go way up.