New MH370 search zone picked using just seven satellite 'handshakes' Australia's Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has published a detailed analysis of efforts to find Malaysian Airways Flight 370. The 64-page report (PDF) explains that just seven “handshakes” between the plane and satellite systems are being analysed. The analysis is extensive: The UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch, Boeing, …
Looking at the new search area it now covers a tectonic plate boundary with its associated ridge, activity, etc.
Chances to find something down there are pretty slim. It took nearly 2 year to find the Air France black boxes in a similar location and we knew where it fell. This does not look good...
Seeing as there is a reasonable chance of a crashing international plane hitting water why not develop a simple locator that is held in a sealed recessed area of the outer body which has a switch activated when significant water pressure is detected (non-electrical)?
The flap pops open and a floating tracker beacon pops out and stays on the surface.
This would not be able to be deactivated by crew (and due to a pressure opener wouldn't be at risk of causing an electrical fire). The high pressure, only experienced underwater, would ensure non-accidental release and with an armoured housing wouldn't get destroyed on impact.
DaLo said: "Seeing as there is a reasonable chance of a crashing international plane hitting water why not develop a simple locator that is held in a sealed recessed area of the outer body which has a switch activated when significant water pressure is detected (non-electrical)?"
I was under the impression that there were Tsunami sensors all around the Pacific rim - could these not correlate the search area like you suggest?
I urge people to actually read the report, not the news articles. If you had read it, then you would see that underwater sonar equipment which is installed to detect nuclear weapons tests (who knew?) DID hear the plane going down. Unfortunately the information from this doesn't really add anything to the satellite information already being used.
These EPIRB's already exist and are in use on the crab boats in the Bering Sea, triggered when a boat goes down and stays on the surface in much the same manner as you have described.
Same old story, they exist but are not being used..........................global tech fail.
But they found wreckage after 4 days with the France flight. It's now been over 3 months. That's why I think what actually happened to flight is very different to what the authorities are telling us. There is a huge number of bits on an aircraft that are designed to float, and it would have hit the water at at least 200 miles per hour, if it had crashed there would be wreckage strewn all over the place that would have washed up somewhere by now. I think the plane was hyjacked and taken somewhere (either by terrorists or a foreign power). I think the search in the Indian ocean is a complete smokescreen
As I understand it, the Air France flight stalled, crashed into the ocean, and broke apart. If the MH370 made a "controlled" descent (even gliding on autopilot without engines), it is probable that the fuselage would not have broken open - and therefore it could well have sunk in one piece.
The Air France flight hit the water at a fairly low forward speed thanks to having stalled (and the vertical speed wan't high either), in a more or less level attitude, with the enghines turning (somewhere between 140 and 250mph)
The Malaysian airlines flight most likely hit the water at high speed in a near vertical dive and was pulverised (5-700mph). The analog for this is the swissair flight which crashed off St Johns some years back. There wasn't much found from that crash which more than 5cm across, nor was there much floating debris, let alone anything identifiable as bits of aircraft,
The reason MH370 most likely went in that way is that fuel would have cut off in one engine before the other and while the resulting thrust imbalance would have been able to be compensated for by the autopilot, that would have lost control when the remaining engine finally died (the fully dead engine would act as an airbrake, whilst the spinning down engine would still produce some thrust for about a minute. The ramair turbine (a windmill) would have deployed after a few seconds, restoring electrical power (and hence the final handshake), but once the autopilot is disengaged it has to be manually reengaged - and without someone at the controls the plain would have stayed in cruise trim
Even if the 777 hit the ocean in level attitude (unlikely), that would have been at a significant nosedown pitch in cruise configuration (remember the plane has to be trimmed to counter the tendency of engines to force the nose high, they're no longer doing that and noone's at the helm to change trim) at a speed of 400-700mph and been ripped apart anyway
Agree with the comment nearby of Glostermeteor's.
There are two major all-trumping concepts in Asia, "Responsibility" and "Face". All else is secondary.
1. The "filed" flight plan here was not necessarily the "intended" flight plan.
2. Anyone familiar with the Midnight to Eight shift knows the physical and mental conditioning required to stay alert, particularly necessary inside any radar aircraft controlling/surveillance operation.
3. IMHO, this was a hijack with unintended consequences.
4. The Malay and/or Vietnamese en route traffic controllers were not up to European standards. The major flight path deviation/alteration on the radar scopes went unnoticed for an unknown period of time during which the aircraft's IFF or whatever it's called now had been turned off.
So, all of this futile west-of-Perth search effort, based upon those increasingly vital "pings" from the engines has been, and remains a tragic wast of time and expensive facilities.
Methinks the intended destination was an abandoned Brit colonial airfield in Muslim Bangladesh. Dispose of the asphyxiated/dead passengers after a short-field landing after jettisoning unnecessary fuel, remove all passenger cabin fixtures/galleys/etc. Then effect a short field takeoff with vastly reduced weight. Head for another Muslim/Terrorist controlled facility for refitting as an aerial bomb.
The wise and wonderful Aussies are most sensibly having nothing to do with being the sole arbiters of what went wrong and bearing the sole party expected to yield results/opinions. Hence, their wise referral back, right back to the Malay Civil Aviation authorities for the official conclusions. The Malay authorities have the ultimate responsibility here.
There is no shifting away of this to save "face".
The Malay and/or Vietnamese en route traffic controllers were not up to European standards. The major flight path deviation/alteration on the radar scopes
There weren't any because the plane went off primary radar, then the transponder went suspiciously at the time handover to VIetnam would be happening.
went unnoticed for an unknown period of time
17 minutes before Vietnam asked Malaysia whether there shouldn't be a plane or something, an interval described as "peculiarly long" by I-don't know who.
during which the aircraft's IFF or whatever it's called now had been turned off.
See above. It's called a transponder.
This is pregnant ......" an interval described as "peculiarly long" by I-don't know who....."
----and I maintain that this interval is the primary cause of all of this face-saving-over-to-you-Aussies-right-back-to-you Malaysia, all based upon this engine ping analysis.
Let's face it [no pun intended here] the main thing is to penetrate this Malay/Vietnamese vacuum.
Good luck with that.
And, that's a vital seventeen minutes at modern jet transport speeds. More than enough time to be well to the NorthWest and Bangladesh or elsewhere in Muslim controlled territory.
Re: "transponder"......thanks, I remember now.
The pings detected were of the wrong frequency. And with a frequency offset that makes it likely it was coming from the detection equipment itself (possibly echoing off the seafloor) If I remember correctly the frequency was such that adding a real ping and the signal together would produce an audible tone.
Interesting. Not sure why the original poster of this thread got 2 downvotes. Is it not reasonable to ask that question given the importance to the search. Maybe it's the slight hint at collusion etc. from the last sentence.
However, if the pings were the wrong frequency, why did the investigation continue with them for so long? Surely this would have been obvious early on and they would have been discounted and a large amount of time saved and the investigation could move onto better areas, maybe even with the batteries still running and pings still being produced?
The problem is that the pings can change frequency as the batteries run down, it is quite easy for a 37.5kHz pinger to drift down to 33kHz once the batteries are nearly dead. In addition the water pressure also affects the frequency a little, so the frequency can change depending on the depth.
it is quite easy for a 37.5kHz pinger to drift down to 33kHz once the batteries are nearly dead.
And the evidence for this claim is?
If the frequency dropped from 37.5kHz to 33kHz during the minimum 30 day battery life then it would seem the ULB was not performing to specification.
The pings detected were of the wrong frequency. And with a frequency offset that makes it likely it was coming from the detection equipment itself (possibly echoing off the seafloor)
An interesting theory were it not for the fact that the towed pinger locator carries a passive listening device for detecting pingers. (My emphasis.)
If the detection equipment was not generating the false pings then who or what was?
(And thanks for the downvotes.)
All the available evidence suggests they don't really have a clue.
They thought they'd got black box pings, but now seem to have discounted them. So, what were they? How could they not know they were/weren't from black boxes. Defies belief. The search area (caused by the pings) never did coincide with the expected location from the satellite information, so why did that not cause worries.
The area they're trying to search is so large, only amazing luck can possibly allow them to stumble upon the wreckage or black boxes. The batteries on the black boxes must have run out by now, so no signals can be expected from them.
Also, it all went very quiet, very quickly and the Chinese haven't been making anywhere near as much noise as one might expect. The whole of the known circumstances are weird to put it mildly. Information has been kept secret for periods of time. A good example of the US Navy searching the west coast of Malaysia when the investigation was insisting there was no reason to. Did the US Navy have information that hadn't been passed onto the investigation? Did the investigation have the information, but kept searching in the wrong place for some reason?
All through this, there's been a stench about it. The whole circumstances of the disappearance, the complete and utter incompetence of the investigation. It all really, really stinks. Air defence radars all over that area simply must have followed the aircraft. Any US Navy ships at sea nearby would have been tracking it. As the transponders were turned off, it would have assumed to be hostile by everyone.
So, do they really not have a clue, or maybe they absolutely know, but don't want to tell.
Well of course they don't have a clue. Apart from these very fine slivers dragged out by smart people and organisations giving their time and energy not just to solve a mystery but to help bring closure to fellow human-beings.
In the meantime, this is what I want you to do.
I've parked my car in France. I need you to find it please.
I find it interesting how hard most of us want to search for a deliberate explanation. The idea that there are large areas of the earth's surface that we know almost nothing about and that are not constantly surveyed seems to concern a lot of people. There is a great fear that nobody is in charge, that events can be truly contingent.
The world is a big place in which accidents happen. Sometimes a tragedy is just a tragedy and that is the human context in which you need to look at it.
If there is a terrorism element to this, it is most likely to relate to the cabin being isolated entirely from the crew compartment so if there was a problem in there nobody would be able to do anything about it. Finding what went wrong is the part of this search that would make the biggest difference for everyone not directly linked to the flight.
"Finding what went wrong is the part of this search that would make the biggest difference for everyone not directly linked to the flight."
Totally agree, but how can they find out what went wrong without finding the wreckage and trying to get information from there? At the moment, they have no idea what happened. Plenty of guesses and conjecture etc., but very little real facts.
I don't think the issue is areas of the planet not surveyed and constantly monitored, but the idea that a plane (wherever it may be) can suddenly pretty much disappear. A few faint radar returns is all we know about. Most people would assume civilian airliners are constantly monitored and their position is known at all times. It's this that's worrying people more than not knowing much about the seabed west of Australia.
"Most people would assume civilian airliners are constantly monitored and their position is known at all times. It's this that's worrying people more than not knowing much about the seabed west of Australia."
There are large areas of land where aircraft operate off radar coverage, let along ocean areas.
As I recall, it took over two weeks of the 30 day window of the pinger to start to search in the area, even though the initial satellite data was available in days. A lot of the reason I believe is that they did not want to believe that the pilots were responsible, which is now most likely.
Incidentally, talk of asphyxiation due to Oxygen shortage is nonsense. It might have happened late in the flight, but it in no way explains the very odd course changes.
And why are we still wasting millions on tying to find the aircraft. Most unlikely to succeed without the pinger. And what would we learn? That pilots are human?
P.S. My preferred conspiracy theory is that a Stuxnet2 virus accidentally escaped into the wild and took over the flight control systems. The powers that be are desperately trying to cover that up.
My preferred conspiracy theory is that a Stuxnet2 virus accidentally escaped into the wild
Here's another conspiracy theory to put out there: What if the downing of MH370 was a demonstation of capability by Chinese betting syndicates wanting match-fixing compliance from various teams taking part in the World Cup? As in: "Give us the result we want or you won't be arriving home from Brazil."
And why are we still wasting millions on tying to find the aircraft. Most unlikely to succeed without the pinger. And what would we learn? That pilots are human?
You could argue that it's not really a waste of millions, rather a real-life training exercise (the best kind) - think how much the rescue teams and other organisations are learning from all of this. Also that's the reason for finding the plane (apart from closure for the families), finding out what went wrong (be it system failure or terrorism) is important so we can try and prevent it happening again. If all we learn is that the pilots were human it could be an argument for taking even more control away from the pilots...
There was some initial doubt about where they should be looking so at least a day or two would be lost due to that problem. As it became cl;ear that the flight path was not as expected a search area had to be worked out. From what I remember the first scientifically plotted idea took about 2 weeks to emerge using a technique that was at the time cutting edge and not used before. It was only thought up almost be chance when the 7 data bursts were confirmed.
The plane might appear large when you stand next to it, but in a huge mass of water it is frankly tiny. The fact that no one usually visits the area is a drawback. Most people know more about the inside of their colon than the world knows about the area in question. Sure planes have bits that might float. They might float very well if broken into tiny fragments free of anything that would make them sink. How many 1 cm bits would you spot in an area the size of the area now being considered? Anyone ever misplaced their car keys or phone in their own house? Earlier someone asked if anyone could find their car somewhere in France - possible too easy a task compared to this one, though we know that this particular 'car' is likely in an underground (water) garage bigger than Europe. Just for good measure, should anything escape from this underwater garage no one knows the currents, storm patterns or anything else about the area.
Frankly I do not like theories, they disrupt careful thought and delay progress. The only facts are, the plane took off and did not arrive as planned. What is more it can be see that it did not follow the correct flight path. We have the result of ground breaking mathematical study by Inmarsat to give a rough idea of a possible location. The wild theories are worse than reading Enid Blyton and expecting to find the answer.
Modern air crashes are always researched by cold, logical analysis to find the cause of the disaster and in the hope of preventing any risk factor that could affect other flights.
Uncertainty is hated.
"Frankly I do not like theories, they disrupt careful thought and delay progress. "
Theories are hypotheses with a good deal of supporting evidence.
People taking wild-eyed hypotheses and running with them despite no supporting evidence is common and counterproductive. If anything the Internet has made it easier to debunk such things.
There is no evidence of pilot (or anyone else) malfeasance and given the abysmal recent industrial history of MAS (massive layoffs, dispirited workforce, fires in maintenance depots destroying documentation (caused by a cigareete in areas where smoking is prohibited), a number of safety incidents - and all thie BEFORE MH370 went missing) everything points towards a massive cockup leading to tragedy, followed by conspiracy afterwards to cover up and deflect blame.
This kind of thing isn't new. Air New Zealand did exactly the same thing in 1979 after they managed to fly a DC10 into Mt Erebus (in that instance, someone in the maintenance base altered the programmed flight path on the flight computer without telling the pilots and becase of whiteout conditions they didn't see the mountain until 2 seconds before they hit it.)
They expend those millions looking for the craft so that they can determine what exactly brought the plane down. You can say pilot error was "most likely" but you can't know that's what brought it down.
There are plenty of instances in which pilot error was assumed to be the cause of a plan crash, only for the subsequent investigation to discover extremely dangerous flaws in the aircraft design, or in operating procedures, or flight operation manuals, or any number of other things.
The possibility that there are planes flying around with potentially fatal design flaws is why they keep looking until all options are exhausted.
Even if it turns out to be pilot error, the money wasn't wasted. They can then understand why the pilots made their mistakes and mitigate that in future with improved training.
"And why are we still wasting millions on tying to find the aircraft. Most unlikely to succeed without the pinger. And what would we learn? That pilots are human?"
The engineering lessons from aircraft failures like this have led to the steady, enormous drop in flight fatalities between the 1920 and today, and those lessons have led to commercial flight being the safest form of transport on the planet. The formal flight regulatory bodies like the FAA have the power to take those lessons and force them on both aircraft manufacturers and operators.
Which leads to a matter of cost-benefits of these expensive searches. This search, expensive as it is, is still cheaper than one new jumbo jet (like another 777). If there's a recognizable flaw in aircraft construction (like the sorts that doomed Comets and DC-10s), or an identifiable mistake in pilot behavior, then the lessons learned from this aircraft recovery will pay for itself by preventing so much as a single other hull-loss accident.
The crashes of Air France 447, Asiana Flight 214, and British Airways Flight 38 all taught lessons and brought (or are bringing) tangible, actionable* changes to aircrew training and engineering. Boeing is changing aircrew training and maybe autothrottle interfaces, Rolls Royce is changing fuel heat exchangers, and Air France finally installed heated pitot tubes. These all apply to problems that are not unique - prior to Air France 447's crash, Airbus had 9 prior pitot icing incidents. Boeing's had plenty of autothrottle mishaps. Rolls Royce had two other heat exchanger problems on its Trent 895 engines. Even the most expensive investigations, like the recovery of Air France 447, pay for itself by reducing the number of similar accidents.
*Apologies for the buzzword, but it works here.
This mystery has got all the conspiracy nuts out in force, the more I read the more I feel they may be justified.
That's how conspiracy nuts reproduce: they flood discussion of a topic with cleverly crafted wild theories.
At first, you read these theories with a mind to debunking them, and often you can do so easily, or someone else already has. But that's beside the point: The words are now in your brain.
As you read more conspiracy theories, the echoing insanity convinces you to work harder to debunk what you're reading.
This debunking instinct spills over to the rational explanations, which, while most likely correct, are usually not expressed quite precisely enough to be immune to debunking.
So now your brain is actively debunking the rational explanations, based on nothing more than a poor choice of words or misplaced punctuation.
Eventually, your brain realizes that if everything sane is false, than the insane must be true, and a new conspiracy nut is born.
Since this is all a side effect of the natural evolution of our brains, the only preventative is to kill enough brain cells to prevent that critical mass of critical cynicism to develop.
So have another one!
I watched the Panorama about MH370 - the main chap from Inmarsat did say they tested their calculations etc on data from something like 8 other 777-200's with known tracks on that day, in that region using the same satellite and found good correlation.
You mean you never bothered to actually search;
http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2014/considerations-on-defining-the-search-area-mh370.aspx
Burst Timing Offset (BTO)
The BTO is a measure of the time taken for a transmission round trip (ground station to satellite to aircraft and back) and allows a calculation of the distance between the satellite and the aircraft. Based on this measure, a possible location ring can be mapped on the surface of the earth (Figure 3). An analysis of SATCOM system parameters showed that the accuracy of the rings was ± 10 km. This analysis was validated using recorded BTO values from the initial stage of the flight when the aircraft’s position was known.
Read the ATSB report, there are two or three examples of other commercial flights being tracked using the same Inmarsat systems and their ground tracks being plotted within a quite small error in comparison with their position recorded from GPS coordinates. That should mean that data captured from the MH370 aircraft is valid and relatively accurate.
"...possible to test these techniques... ...No report I have read..."
So you haven't even opened the 64-page report that is the subject of this article. Page 31: "Using nine previous flights of the accident aircraft (registered 9M-MRO) and 87 other aircraft with the same SATCOM terminal equipment in the air at the same time as MH370, some path prediction analysis techniques were verified."
I still can't help thinking that all these rogue pilot theories are a bit too unlikely to be true. If anybody had caused this deliberately then the truth would have come out by now.
I think the plane crashed due to an major electrical fire. Probably the pilots got incapacitated from the smoke and the autopilot flew the plane around randomly following incorrect data from failing sensors.
The plane, if a major electrical fire occured, would NOT have flown for as long as it had (based on Inmarsat data). The autopilot would have disengaged due to the system being burnt up, along with other controls such as hydraulics. The engines, I would assume, could still run but the control surfaces wouldn't be responsive and could be blown out of shape from turbulence or other factors.
The rogue pilot theory is a bit daft too. It's easy to see why the theory has been made, remove evidence of what happened to the plane which could then lead to a life insurance payout. But there would be evidence of this at the pilots home, even with his bank accounts and/or other dealings.
The thing that bugs me most about this is when the flight is compared to the Air France flight that crashed in Brazil. Airbus received a tonne of messages from the plane listing failures, this didn't happen on the Boeing flight - and if it did Boeing haven't said anything about it. I don't think Airbus planes are any more advanced than Boeing planes, so Boeing could have these systems in place. And even if the systems were turned off so that they stopped reporting on the plane, that would immediately alert either the Malaysian Airlines ground crew or Boeing themselves. Even with the theory of a fire, systems dropping out all over the shop would be reported back to Boeing. I'm fairly sure even Rolls Royce get data fed back to their company in regards to engine performance.
I think, really, that this was a massive set up by a particular group of people or government. There have been a number of theories surrounding this, all plausible. The best one surrounds the theft of drone equipment in Afghanistan, which was then sold to the Chinese who were transporting it back on MH370. Only then for the USA to "take control" of the plane mid flight (aparently they have been able to do this since 9/11), fly it to their little island base and then unload the drone equipment. They then sent the plane back up in to the air with the cabin depressurised and let the plane fly until it ran out of fuel. Another theory surrounds Freescale Semiconductor, but you can Google this yourself.
The amount and type of data sent back from the aircraft is determined by the customer (the airline) options selected; i.e kit fitted and service level agreements with Inmarsat, etc.
If I recall correctly, MAS had opted for only very basic data reporting services through Inmarsat, so once the aircraft was out of range of land based VHF ACARS sites options for transmission of data was limited. Add to this that the ACARS system on board appears to have been disabled, either through deliberate interference or accident, then the lack of data from the aircraft isn't surprising.
Some insist that the fact that ACARS was disabled, but not the SATCOM radio points to deliberate interference; it's possible to just log off ACARS from the flight deck, but disabling SATCOM would have involved a trip to the aircraft's avionics bay (located below deck and accessed via a hatch outside of the flight deck) to pull circuit breakers. It's been suggested that any fire would have taken down all systems equally, including (as you pointed out) the autopilot, causing the aircraft to crash a lot sooner than it did.
It's a weird case and I don't think we'll ever know the full story, even if the flight recorders are recovered. The CVR has a loop time of 3 hours, so any voice recordings of the beginning of the incident has likely been lost. The investigation will have to rely upon the FDR, that has a much longer recording period.
Only then for the USA to "take control" of the plane mid flight (aparently they have been able to do this since 9/11
Let me guess... a theory by Thierry Meyssan of "no plane hit the Pentagon, it was a cruise missile, the color of the flames on this photo proves it" fame?
Black helicopter of course. Which needs a paintjob.
A fire can be contained sufficiently that it does not impact all aircraft systems. I speculate that there was a contained fire that generated noxious smoke. It was either an electrical fire or the pilots believed it to be electrical and so they pulled breakers that incapacitated radios and transponder while they attempted to deal with it, initially setting course for an alternate airport before succumbing to the smoke (oxygen for the pilots does not last all that long).
"The thing that bugs me most about this is when the flight is compared to the Air France flight that crashed in Brazil. Airbus received a tonne of messages from the plane listing failures, this didn't happen on the Boeing flight"
Live telemetry is an optional extra. Malaysian airlines didn't install it.
Intuitively, Ac, I would agree with you. A catastrophic fire or air pressure failure disorienting and then killing the crew as they set up for an emergency landing feels most plausible.
However. Amazingly, planes and emergency protocols so reliable nowadays that based on the numbers, it's actually far more likely that it was a rogue pilot, suicidal pilot, or attempted hijacking.
This is why the rogue pilot theory refuses to die.
Solving most aviation accidents is a matter of painstaking puzzle solving. It isn't unlike finding a nasty bug in your code. Once you find it, all the weird behaviour makes sense, but before then, it is bewildering, with perhaps some ideas, most leading to wrong conclusions.
Conspiracy theories are like blaming a compiler bug for your program's weird behaviour. Sure, they happen, but 999 times out of 1000 the bug is your fault.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpfYvGWt8qo
I pay my licence fee to watch stuff like this instead of the terrible 'conjecture based' bullshit from most other broadcasters (i.e. ask a few 'experts' their opinion with zero research into the actual story).
It's worth a watch. It's got more technical detail than all the other coverage I've seen put together.
*definitely* worth a watch.
I can't remember whether it's made very clear in the programme, but one of the major contributors, Tony Cable, is a former top bod at the UK's AAIB. He continued that line of business when he founded AFTA Ltd http://www.afta-ltd.co.uk/ He's also known for his role in the Chinook investigations, amongst others.
From memory, one of the other major contributors in that Horizon is associated with AFTA Ltd too.
Still a bit dramatic with emotionally correct voiceover, but a good résumé. Also, fuck hell, the tools around us are Jetson-style amazing but one never even notices them anymore.
The idea of the electronics rebooting after the plane begins to roll post flame-out, giving the engine a last squall of fuel is probably not needed: the plane has an emergency ram air turbine for electricity generation.
Compare with ABC's "Researchers now have new theory about where the plane went: It might have descended in a spiral before hitting the water, OMG!"
When I first read about the flight I had thought it was a simple accident rather than malice:
Wiring catches fire, knocking out transponders and other comm gear
Smoke fills cockpit blinding and suffocating pilots
Panicking pilots accidentally turn the plane eastward
Pilots fall unconscious and let go of the stick
Aircraft engages auto-pilot since pilots are no longer responding
Aircraft keeps going until it runs out of fuel and crashes into the ocean
Sounds most plausible, and I also heard that the new theory was that some Li ion batteries it was transporting caught fire - apparently the fumes alone are super toxic.
PS: I also know a Chinese lady who was in China at the time of the incident; her relative is a fighter pilot, and according to him, China shot the plane down.
China shot the plane down
Fighter pilots are not the brightest sparks. Everybody would know about that kind of event (even in the 80s, it was quickly evident what happened to KAL007). Kerry would be shuttling all over the planing, handing out warnings and admonitions like they were going out of fashion.
"No they didn't. It reasonably looked like a US interloper to them."
The transcripts make it clear they knew it was a 747 and that they could see civilians sleeping on seats through various open blinds. They had to be ordered 3 times to shoot it down before they actually did it.
The only thing they didn't know was who the aircraft belonged to, as they couldn't see the paintwork in the dark.
There was some doubt about the satellite data early on because Inmarsat wasn't releasing any details, and the aircraft flight path that it indicated was so unlikely that it was hard to believe without any corroborating information or any good theory of how it could have happened.
There is still no corroborating information, and still no good theory about what happened, but enough experts have gone over the satellite data in detail now to confirm that the flight path is almost certain to be approximately correct. It's not impossible to find other flight paths that could produce the same readings, but they are very unlikely. The problem is that there are enough unresolvable uncertainties in the calculation that the area of ocean to be covered is still huge.
We'll probably never know what happened until the wreckage is found - and even then it might still be difficult. Shattered debris from a high-speed crash into the ocean, scoured by currents for months or years, black boxes that would have recycled every 2 hours during the flight even if they can be found - they might not tell enough of the story. Unfortunately the best chance to figure out what went wrong would be if there's a similar initial incident on another 777.
One of the more interesting theories I've heard regarding this is the possibility of a software bug in the aircraft control systems and autopilot.
It has been said the plane followed a known standard 'arc'. Are autopilot systems programmed with these as presets? Could a software fault have locked the autopilot to an undesired default path and overridden the pilots ability to disengage it? If the systems onboard the plane had failed in some capacity that might explain why there are reports of things being intentionally disabled; it might have been a futile attempt to regain control of the plane by pilots who were not trained to handle that situation.
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And what would it do in Turkmenistan?
Note that these are not the wilde countries of yore, with unfriendly, bearded and fierce people on horseback shouting at whiteners in guttural voices. You can now place mobile calls to airports and ask for whether there is a plane too many on the tarmac, thank you very much.
I strongly recommend reading the report. I've been following the news on this quite closely, but I didn't realise they now have the flight on primary (active) radar for an hour after it initially 'disappeared' (see map on p3 of the ATSB(AU) report - apologies if I've simply missed this, I admit I've tuned out a lot of crap in the MSM). It clearly shows that the flight wasn't following a simple route, it rather looks (to my untrained eye) like it was steering a course over water to make detection more difficult.
This definitely rules out theories along the lines of: "they had an emergency and turned back to try to land at the nearest airstrip, but the pilots were overcome and the plane continued on autopilot for a further 7 hours until fuel exhaustion".
On page 38:
Radar data showed that after take-off MH370 tracked in accordance with its flight-planned route to waypoint IGARI and then turned right towards waypoint BITOD. Secondary radar data was lost shortly afterwards. Primary radar data then showed that MH370 deviated from its flight-planned route. Primary radar data showed that the aircraft tracked along the Malacca Strait. During this time the aircraft passed close to waypoints VAMPI, MEKAR, NILAM and possibly IGOGU along a section of airway N571.
So possibly following a set of waypoints picked from the standard waypoint database (but why)?
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