8 ms·

Is there some good explanation, show a sinking titanic was heard both in london and new york, but a modern(...ish) MH-370 can just dissapear? I'm sure that the

Is there some good explanation, show a sinking titanic was heard both in london and new york, but a modern(...ish) MH-370 can just dissapear? I'm sure that there are a bunch of factors in play, but tracking a plane seems like a relatively simple and a high priority thing to do, and relatively cheap compared to a total cost of a plane. GPS, satellite connectivity, battery backup and even in a case of a total explosion, at least you know the last location, speed and direction to try to find the wreckage.

ipython 3y ago
The difference is that the mh370 pilot deliberately took actions to avoid tracking. At some point if you can’t trust the captain of your vessel, that person can disrupt or disable most any system put in place. If the captain of the titanic intended on sinking the ship without a trace, he most certainly would have succeeded as well. A more apt comparison would be AF447, which took a few days before the wreckage was found. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
- ozr 3y ago
  Physical access can generally circumvent any security precautions, but it seems like there are some fairly simple schemes that would work well to prevent a disturbed captain. E.g.: disabling the tracking system could require accessing a section of the plane inaccessible while it's in flight. Combine that with a hardware interlock system that would prevent the plane from taking off when it's disabled, and that should be sufficient in the vast majority of cases to prevent 'lost' planes. Is there ever a valid reason to disable the recorder/tracking systems in flight?
  - logifail 3y ago
    > Physical access can generally circumvent any security precautions, but it seems like there are some fairly simple schemes that would work well to prevent a disturbed captain I can't be the only one thinking that in the situation where we postulate losing trust in the captain, whether tracking is switched on or not is a relatively minor issue, compared with - say - the captain deliberately flying the aircraft into a mountainside.
    - ozr 3y ago
      You're definitely not wrong. Most civil aviation authorities I'm aware of have some profound issues with their policies around pilots and mental health issues. Fixing that is more likely to prevent the issue in the first place. That's closer to the root cause and something that shouldn't be ignored. But parallel to that (and unfortunately-but-most-likely in lieu of): we simply shouldn't be losing large aircraft and having no idea what happened.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        The biggest issue with all policies is the same with red flag laws - and even attempted mention of potentially having an issue grounds you and you lose your job; this makes the issue that much worse.
        ipython 3y ago
        Yes. This is dangerous because pilots are afraid to disclose depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions for fear of losing their livelihood. For example, the FAA automatically considers an ADHD diagnosis disqualifying for airline pilots: https://pilot-protection-services.aopa.org/news/2018/february/01/adhd-and-the-faa https://pilot-protection-services.aopa.org/news/2018/februar.... This results in a “don’t ask don’t tell” situation which can be even worse.
      - logifail 3y ago
        > we simply shouldn't be losing large aircraft and having no idea what happened Maybe it doesn't nearly happen often enough to make this any kind of a priority?
        ozr 3y ago
        Why pay for the recorder at all then? Sub-total loss is presumably much more common and it’s useful there, but the adjustments to prevent it being disabled/make it more durable would be helpful there, too.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Captain needs to be able to pull a circuit breaker for virtually anything, in case of electrical fault, fire, misbehavior, needing to hard-reset some bit of avionics, etc. Commercial passenger aircraft have redundant systems and you can disable almost anything as needed and still fly (up to a point of course) in case of emergency.
    - ozr 3y ago
      I can understand needing to have that option for most things, but a blackbox flight recorder ought to, by it's basic design, be read-only and have little to no dependencies with the rest of the aircraft. E.g.: a failed APU should not disable the blackbox, since you want to be able to record that the APU failed.
      - SoftTalker 3y ago
        Yeah I'm sort of speculating and agree for the most part but obviously the data recorder is communicating with every other system on the aircraft for which it records data. If the data recorder had some kind of fault that was creating interference with these systems, maybe there's a scenario where you have to be able to shut it down. If I'm thousands of feet above the ground and the system keeping me in the air has some kind of fault, when I say "Hal, shut down that faulty system" I don't wan't the answer to be "I'm sorry Dave, I cannot do that."
      - refurb 3y ago
        Electrical wiring fault starts a fire. Not sure we don’t want a pilot to be able to pull circuit breakers for everything on board.
      - antonjs 3y ago
        You could always have some breakers that could only be pulled by the chief flight attendant, or at least signal to someone in the cabin they were being pulled.
        samtho 3y ago
  - ipython 3y ago
    One could say that about all sorts of capabilities in an aircraft that, in normal operation, seems insane. Is there ever a valid reason to fly a cargo plane inverted? See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705 for the answer.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Airliners are simply not designed to fly inverted. In Tex Johnson's famous barrel roll of a 707, he kept positive g on the airframe at all times. One problem with flying inverted is the bottom of the airplane tends to accumulate junk - nuts, bolts, dropped tools, lunch boxes, dead mice, etc. Turning the airplane over means all that junk falls into the machinery, potentially jamming it.
      - ipython 3y ago
        Right- in the FedEx case it was a last ditch effort to literally knock the suicidal flight crew member off his balance and regain control of the aircraft. If you have a 'nanny' computer telling you that you're unable to do that, those crewmembers may have ended up dead instead. Point being, in an unforeseen emergency, allowing crews to override the normal safety mechanisms may in fact save lives.
        askvictor 3y ago
        I guess the question is what's the likelihood of such a situation, vs the likelihood of the situation where a 'nanny' computer prevents the crew doing something dangerous?
        ithinkso 3y ago
        And then we have 'nanny' computers of 737 MAX that caused crashes (more than one) against the pilots actions to save it
        3y ago
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    Do we care about preventing a disturbed captain from preventing recording? They can already crash the plane and kill everyone on board. I don't really care about their record keeping in that instance.
    - pas 3y ago
      it seems much more important to have a clean and unambiguous record than to start the usual finger pointing
    - sidlls 3y ago
      It's necessary to rule out mechanical and other system failures, i.e., to provide evidence that it was a disturbed pilot and not some other cause. Aviation incident investigations are quite thorough--orders of magnitude more rigorous than in the software industry in general.
- Jyaif 3y ago
  > A more apt comparison would be AF447, which took a few days before the wreckage was found it took more than a year to find the wreckage of AF447 and the black box (as per both TFA and your wikipedia link)
  - ipython 3y ago
    Thank you. I can’t edit my post now to correct myself unfortunately.
- hungryforcodes 3y ago
  > The difference is that the mh370 pilot deliberately took actions to avoid tracking. I'm sorry, when did we decide this? As far as I can tell this is just one of a number of different theories on MH370s disappearance.
  - ipython 3y ago
    It’s obvious that we cannot know for sure since we have not found the wreckage, but no other theory I’m aware of can fit the facts as we know them.
    - hungryforcodes 3y ago
      It's because he's Muslim huh? I mean there are lots of theories. https://www.salon.com/2023/03/10/mh370-malaysia-plane-disappeared-netflix/ https://www.salon.com/2023/03/10/mh370-malaysia-plane-disapp... My favorite is still the one about the fire caused by the windshield electrical heater. There is precedence on other Boeing 777s for this to have played out. It was a known problem. If it really was a suicide drop into the ocean...why wait 8 hours...just...do it...
      - ipython 3y ago
        Wow. That escalated quickly. It has nothing to do with the fact he was Muslim and everything to do with the fact that there were no attempts to contact other planes or atc for help. I do not appreciate your false assertion and encourage you to retract your statement. I am not an expert in the 777 electrical systems but the two minute delta between the last radio transmission - where there were no audial warnings and the pilots were calm - and the transponder ceasing to transmit seems unreasonable for a catastrophic event to take out these systems.
        hungryforcodes 3y ago
        > The difference is that the mh370 pilot deliberately took actions to avoid tracking. I'll bother to defend myself here -- we don't know what happened. It could have been hijacked, it could have been a CIA operation, it could have been many different things. That you conclude it was the captain doing a suicide run does smell of something strange, considering the plane was in the air for 8 hours before disappearing from satellite contact. That's all I will say on this. Downvote me as much as you want.
- tristanb 3y ago
  We absolutely do not know the captain did anything malicious , and he could have been a hero. So let’s not make statements like that.
- mariuolo 3y ago
  > A more apt comparison would be AF447, which took a few days before the wreckage was found. Days? I thought it was found after two years.
valval 3y ago
I imagine most airlines have operated at unsustainably low margins for the past however many years, at least here in Europe. Ticket prices have gone way up now, and I suppose it’s getting better for them.
nix0n 3y ago
The current theory is that the pilot of MH-370 was able to disable most of the tracking equipment, while the plane moved away from any major population centers. The radio operator of the Titanic was trying very hard to let everybody know where they were.
- faangsticle 3y ago
  Why was he able to? Isn't the black box supposed to be a black box?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The black box doesn’t transmit its location. If they find it, it would/will tell you some of what happened, but if you sink it in the Mariana Trench and they can’t find it, you’ve “won”.
    - kube-system 3y ago
      The black box can also transmit its location, albeit only after the plane hits the ocean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_locator_beacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_locator_beacon
  - dghlsakjg 3y ago
    The black box has nothing to do with the transponders and tracking equipment. The black box can’t be disabled AFAIK. The argument in favor of disabling tracking is that the equipment itself could potentially malfunction in a way that disabling it would be safer (if it were interfering with voice communications or transmitting an emergency code inappropriately). I fly small planes and it is not unheard of for ATC to ask pilots to cycle the power on a transponder that isn’t responding as expected. I assume that airline grade equipment is more reliable, but the same principle applies
    - MAGZine 3y ago
      AFAIK, the FDR and CVR can both be disabled by crew to some degree. I think they can be disconnected from the aircraft's power system (by fuse/breaker), but they also have some amount of battery backup. Part of Federal Express Flight 705's whole debacle was that the hijacker tried to pull the breaker on the CVR. And the investigation into SilkAir 185 was hampered because the recorders had their power pulled as a apart of load shedding while trying to resolve issues onboard the aircraft.
teraflop 3y ago
> show a sinking titanic was heard both in london and new york, but a modern(...ish) MH-370 can just dissapear? What do you mean by "heard both in London and New York"? The Titanic was actively sending out distress signals via telegraph as it sank, but those signals weren't strong enough to reach land. They were picked up by other nearby vessels and relayed.
- FreshStart 3y ago
  So why can't we have aircraft screams some data in a last ditch effort?
  - touisteur 3y ago
    As long as you trust the pilot with absolute authority over which equipment is running, this isn't going to happen. If something can catch fire (as in, any electronics?), it needs to have some kind of local breaker that the flight crew can switch off. The only trusted equipment there is one doing passive recording of some elements (the flight recorder).
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The airframes do usually have various ELTs and beacons that can activate in a crash, but some (most?) can be disabled in some way (in case they’re accidentally on) - and others are only short range/directional.
  - dghlsakjg 3y ago
    We do. The radios they use can be heard for quite a distance at the altitudes they operate at
- Gordonjcp 3y ago
  It was night time. Titanic's radio transmitter could work on both 500kHz and 1MHz, pretty advanced stuff for the time, and the bands were far quieter. It would have been hard *not* to hear it on both sides of the Atlantic, even with the primitive receivers of the day.
pmarreck 3y ago
MH-370 was a suicidal pilot who deliberately disabled tracking mechanisms, my dude. Not sure if you got the memo
- Gud 3y ago
  We don’t know that.
  - IMSAI8080 3y ago
    Indeed. Pilot suicide is just one theory and is not proven fact. Almost everyone thinks there was a decompression event on the aircraft. Another possibility is hypoxia causing pilot impairment as a result of decompression. Hypoxia severely inhibits brain function and turns you into an incompetent. It's similar to being extremely drunk or high on drugs. This happened on the Greek Helios flight that decompressed. The pilots can be heard on the recording becoming gradually unable to competently fly the plane and making ridiculous decisions due to brain impairment.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      > Almost everyone thinks there was a decompression event on the aircraft. I would wager that far more people believe in the suicide theory than an un-commanded decompression event.
      - IMSAI8080 3y ago
        It's a fairly common incident. There's a list of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression
        sokoloff 3y ago
        As is pilot suicide. There's a list of them as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot
antonjs 3y ago
I was surprised after MH370 that there isn't a beacon or flight recorder on the surface of the plane, that's buoyant and detaches on immersion. Though I assume the engineering and regulation means such a thing has a decade+ lead time and then would only exist on new planes.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  Aircraft have ELT that broadcast location. They are similar to the marine EPIRB or hiking PLB. MH370 had 4 ELT, 2 on life raft, 1 in cabin, and 1 mounted to aircraft. The latter would have activated on crash but it was designed for ground crash not ocean. It would have sunk with plane. The life raft ones are water activated but probably sunk. ELT are more meant for finding survivors and not the crash site. There are ejectable beacons but they are probably not required. It would make sense to add one for water crashes.
nine_k 3y ago
Titanic was in the middle between London and NYC, relatively easily within reach of either by using longer waves. Titanic actively sent distress signals. MH-370 has flown into the uninhabited area of Southern Indian ocean, far away from any places where a shorter-wave signal would be easy to receive, due to the curvature of Earth. MH-370 apparently did not send any distress signals; if it did, these would likely be received and relayed.
rocket_surgeron 3y ago
>Is there some good explanation, show a sinking titanic was heard both in london and new york, but a modern(...ish) MH-370 can just dissapear? If Titanic had sunk in the Indian Ocean, it would probably still be lost. By sinking in the North Atlantic it was within radio range of dozens of other ships and ground stations. Carpathia got to it in 3 hours. The part of the Indian Ocean that MH370 is thought to have gone down in is second only to the South Pacific in emptiness.

ipython 3y ago

The difference is that the mh370 pilot deliberately took actions to avoid tracking. At some point if you can’t trust the captain of your vessel, that person can disrupt or disable most any system put in place. If the captain of the titanic intended on sinking the ship without a trace, he most certainly would have succeeded as well. A more apt comparison would be AF447, which took a few days before the wreckage was found. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

ozr 3y ago
Physical access can generally circumvent any security precautions, but it seems like there are some fairly simple schemes that would work well to prevent a disturbed captain. E.g.: disabling the tracking system could require accessing a section of the plane inaccessible while it's in flight. Combine that with a hardware interlock system that would prevent the plane from taking off when it's disabled, and that should be sufficient in the vast majority of cases to prevent 'lost' planes. Is there ever a valid reason to disable the recorder/tracking systems in flight?
- logifail 3y ago
  > Physical access can generally circumvent any security precautions, but it seems like there are some fairly simple schemes that would work well to prevent a disturbed captain I can't be the only one thinking that in the situation where we postulate losing trust in the captain, whether tracking is switched on or not is a relatively minor issue, compared with - say - the captain deliberately flying the aircraft into a mountainside.
  - ozr 3y ago
    You're definitely not wrong. Most civil aviation authorities I'm aware of have some profound issues with their policies around pilots and mental health issues. Fixing that is more likely to prevent the issue in the first place. That's closer to the root cause and something that shouldn't be ignored. But parallel to that (and unfortunately-but-most-likely in lieu of): we simply shouldn't be losing large aircraft and having no idea what happened.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The biggest issue with all policies is the same with red flag laws - and even attempted mention of potentially having an issue grounds you and you lose your job; this makes the issue that much worse.
      - ipython 3y ago
        Yes. This is dangerous because pilots are afraid to disclose depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions for fear of losing their livelihood. For example, the FAA automatically considers an ADHD diagnosis disqualifying for airline pilots: https://pilot-protection-services.aopa.org/news/2018/february/01/adhd-and-the-faa https://pilot-protection-services.aopa.org/news/2018/februar.... This results in a “don’t ask don’t tell” situation which can be even worse.
    - logifail 3y ago
      > we simply shouldn't be losing large aircraft and having no idea what happened Maybe it doesn't nearly happen often enough to make this any kind of a priority?
      - ozr 3y ago
        Why pay for the recorder at all then? Sub-total loss is presumably much more common and it’s useful there, but the adjustments to prevent it being disabled/make it more durable would be helpful there, too.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Captain needs to be able to pull a circuit breaker for virtually anything, in case of electrical fault, fire, misbehavior, needing to hard-reset some bit of avionics, etc. Commercial passenger aircraft have redundant systems and you can disable almost anything as needed and still fly (up to a point of course) in case of emergency.
  - ozr 3y ago
    I can understand needing to have that option for most things, but a blackbox flight recorder ought to, by it's basic design, be read-only and have little to no dependencies with the rest of the aircraft. E.g.: a failed APU should not disable the blackbox, since you want to be able to record that the APU failed.
    - SoftTalker 3y ago
      Yeah I'm sort of speculating and agree for the most part but obviously the data recorder is communicating with every other system on the aircraft for which it records data. If the data recorder had some kind of fault that was creating interference with these systems, maybe there's a scenario where you have to be able to shut it down. If I'm thousands of feet above the ground and the system keeping me in the air has some kind of fault, when I say "Hal, shut down that faulty system" I don't wan't the answer to be "I'm sorry Dave, I cannot do that."
    - refurb 3y ago
      Electrical wiring fault starts a fire. Not sure we don’t want a pilot to be able to pull circuit breakers for everything on board.
    - antonjs 3y ago
      You could always have some breakers that could only be pulled by the chief flight attendant, or at least signal to someone in the cabin they were being pulled.
      - samtho 3y ago
- ipython 3y ago
  One could say that about all sorts of capabilities in an aircraft that, in normal operation, seems insane. Is there ever a valid reason to fly a cargo plane inverted? See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705 for the answer.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Airliners are simply not designed to fly inverted. In Tex Johnson's famous barrel roll of a 707, he kept positive g on the airframe at all times. One problem with flying inverted is the bottom of the airplane tends to accumulate junk - nuts, bolts, dropped tools, lunch boxes, dead mice, etc. Turning the airplane over means all that junk falls into the machinery, potentially jamming it.
    - ipython 3y ago
      Right- in the FedEx case it was a last ditch effort to literally knock the suicidal flight crew member off his balance and regain control of the aircraft. If you have a 'nanny' computer telling you that you're unable to do that, those crewmembers may have ended up dead instead. Point being, in an unforeseen emergency, allowing crews to override the normal safety mechanisms may in fact save lives.
      - askvictor 3y ago
        I guess the question is what's the likelihood of such a situation, vs the likelihood of the situation where a 'nanny' computer prevents the crew doing something dangerous?
        ithinkso 3y ago
        And then we have 'nanny' computers of 737 MAX that caused crashes (more than one) against the pilots actions to save it
        3y ago
- HWR_14 3y ago
  Do we care about preventing a disturbed captain from preventing recording? They can already crash the plane and kill everyone on board. I don't really care about their record keeping in that instance.
  - pas 3y ago
    it seems much more important to have a clean and unambiguous record than to start the usual finger pointing
  - sidlls 3y ago
    It's necessary to rule out mechanical and other system failures, i.e., to provide evidence that it was a disturbed pilot and not some other cause. Aviation incident investigations are quite thorough--orders of magnitude more rigorous than in the software industry in general.
Jyaif 3y ago
> A more apt comparison would be AF447, which took a few days before the wreckage was found it took more than a year to find the wreckage of AF447 and the black box (as per both TFA and your wikipedia link)
- ipython 3y ago
  Thank you. I can’t edit my post now to correct myself unfortunately.
hungryforcodes 3y ago
> The difference is that the mh370 pilot deliberately took actions to avoid tracking. I'm sorry, when did we decide this? As far as I can tell this is just one of a number of different theories on MH370s disappearance.
- ipython 3y ago
  It’s obvious that we cannot know for sure since we have not found the wreckage, but no other theory I’m aware of can fit the facts as we know them.
  - hungryforcodes 3y ago
    It's because he's Muslim huh? I mean there are lots of theories. https://www.salon.com/2023/03/10/mh370-malaysia-plane-disappeared-netflix/ https://www.salon.com/2023/03/10/mh370-malaysia-plane-disapp... My favorite is still the one about the fire caused by the windshield electrical heater. There is precedence on other Boeing 777s for this to have played out. It was a known problem. If it really was a suicide drop into the ocean...why wait 8 hours...just...do it...
    - ipython 3y ago
      Wow. That escalated quickly. It has nothing to do with the fact he was Muslim and everything to do with the fact that there were no attempts to contact other planes or atc for help. I do not appreciate your false assertion and encourage you to retract your statement. I am not an expert in the 777 electrical systems but the two minute delta between the last radio transmission - where there were no audial warnings and the pilots were calm - and the transponder ceasing to transmit seems unreasonable for a catastrophic event to take out these systems.
      - hungryforcodes 3y ago
        > The difference is that the mh370 pilot deliberately took actions to avoid tracking. I'll bother to defend myself here -- we don't know what happened. It could have been hijacked, it could have been a CIA operation, it could have been many different things. That you conclude it was the captain doing a suicide run does smell of something strange, considering the plane was in the air for 8 hours before disappearing from satellite contact. That's all I will say on this. Downvote me as much as you want.
tristanb 3y ago
We absolutely do not know the captain did anything malicious , and he could have been a hero. So let’s not make statements like that.
mariuolo 3y ago
> A more apt comparison would be AF447, which took a few days before the wreckage was found. Days? I thought it was found after two years.

valval 3y ago

I imagine most airlines have operated at unsustainably low margins for the past however many years, at least here in Europe. Ticket prices have gone way up now, and I suppose it’s getting better for them.

nix0n 3y ago

The current theory is that the pilot of MH-370 was able to disable most of the tracking equipment, while the plane moved away from any major population centers. The radio operator of the Titanic was trying very hard to let everybody know where they were.

faangsticle 3y ago
Why was he able to? Isn't the black box supposed to be a black box?
- bombcar 3y ago
  The black box doesn’t transmit its location. If they find it, it would/will tell you some of what happened, but if you sink it in the Mariana Trench and they can’t find it, you’ve “won”.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    The black box can also transmit its location, albeit only after the plane hits the ocean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_locator_beacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_locator_beacon
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  The black box has nothing to do with the transponders and tracking equipment. The black box can’t be disabled AFAIK. The argument in favor of disabling tracking is that the equipment itself could potentially malfunction in a way that disabling it would be safer (if it were interfering with voice communications or transmitting an emergency code inappropriately). I fly small planes and it is not unheard of for ATC to ask pilots to cycle the power on a transponder that isn’t responding as expected. I assume that airline grade equipment is more reliable, but the same principle applies
  - MAGZine 3y ago
    AFAIK, the FDR and CVR can both be disabled by crew to some degree. I think they can be disconnected from the aircraft's power system (by fuse/breaker), but they also have some amount of battery backup. Part of Federal Express Flight 705's whole debacle was that the hijacker tried to pull the breaker on the CVR. And the investigation into SilkAir 185 was hampered because the recorders had their power pulled as a apart of load shedding while trying to resolve issues onboard the aircraft.

teraflop 3y ago

> show a sinking titanic was heard both in london and new york, but a modern(...ish) MH-370 can just dissapear? What do you mean by "heard both in London and New York"? The Titanic was actively sending out distress signals via telegraph as it sank, but those signals weren't strong enough to reach land. They were picked up by other nearby vessels and relayed.

FreshStart 3y ago
So why can't we have aircraft screams some data in a last ditch effort?
- touisteur 3y ago
  As long as you trust the pilot with absolute authority over which equipment is running, this isn't going to happen. If something can catch fire (as in, any electronics?), it needs to have some kind of local breaker that the flight crew can switch off. The only trusted equipment there is one doing passive recording of some elements (the flight recorder).
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The airframes do usually have various ELTs and beacons that can activate in a crash, but some (most?) can be disabled in some way (in case they’re accidentally on) - and others are only short range/directional.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  We do. The radios they use can be heard for quite a distance at the altitudes they operate at
Gordonjcp 3y ago
It was night time. Titanic's radio transmitter could work on both 500kHz and 1MHz, pretty advanced stuff for the time, and the bands were far quieter. It would have been hard *not* to hear it on both sides of the Atlantic, even with the primitive receivers of the day.

pmarreck 3y ago

MH-370 was a suicidal pilot who deliberately disabled tracking mechanisms, my dude. Not sure if you got the memo

Gud 3y ago
We don’t know that.
- IMSAI8080 3y ago
  Indeed. Pilot suicide is just one theory and is not proven fact. Almost everyone thinks there was a decompression event on the aircraft. Another possibility is hypoxia causing pilot impairment as a result of decompression. Hypoxia severely inhibits brain function and turns you into an incompetent. It's similar to being extremely drunk or high on drugs. This happened on the Greek Helios flight that decompressed. The pilots can be heard on the recording becoming gradually unable to competently fly the plane and making ridiculous decisions due to brain impairment.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    > Almost everyone thinks there was a decompression event on the aircraft. I would wager that far more people believe in the suicide theory than an un-commanded decompression event.
    - IMSAI8080 3y ago
      It's a fairly common incident. There's a list of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        As is pilot suicide. There's a list of them as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot

antonjs 3y ago

I was surprised after MH370 that there isn't a beacon or flight recorder on the surface of the plane, that's buoyant and detaches on immersion. Though I assume the engineering and regulation means such a thing has a decade+ lead time and then would only exist on new planes.

ianburrell 3y ago
Aircraft have ELT that broadcast location. They are similar to the marine EPIRB or hiking PLB. MH370 had 4 ELT, 2 on life raft, 1 in cabin, and 1 mounted to aircraft. The latter would have activated on crash but it was designed for ground crash not ocean. It would have sunk with plane. The life raft ones are water activated but probably sunk. ELT are more meant for finding survivors and not the crash site. There are ejectable beacons but they are probably not required. It would make sense to add one for water crashes.

nine_k 3y ago

Titanic was in the middle between London and NYC, relatively easily within reach of either by using longer waves. Titanic actively sent distress signals. MH-370 has flown into the uninhabited area of Southern Indian ocean, far away from any places where a shorter-wave signal would be easy to receive, due to the curvature of Earth. MH-370 apparently did not send any distress signals; if it did, these would likely be received and relayed.

rocket_surgeron 3y ago

>Is there some good explanation, show a sinking titanic was heard both in london and new york, but a modern(...ish) MH-370 can just dissapear? If Titanic had sunk in the Indian Ocean, it would probably still be lost. By sinking in the North Atlantic it was within radio range of dozens of other ships and ground stations. Carpathia got to it in 3 hours. The part of the Indian Ocean that MH370 is thought to have gone down in is second only to the South Pacific in emptiness.