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The last time I read a news title like this (where they use words like Flight Vanishes) was in 2009 about the Air France Flight 447 from Brazil to France. I st

• nemothekid 13y ago
  Shit happens. The probability of an event like this isn't 0. I hope the best for the rescue teams.
  • naterator 13y ago
    Terrorism is also a non-0 probability possibility, which must also be considered.
    • jebus989 13y ago
      That's not really how we use probability, how about we start by considering the most likely scenario and, if needed, progress to the "non-zero" probability events.
      • einhverfr 13y ago
        Exactly. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.
    • downandout 13y ago
      IMO, that's the most likely scenario. This highly advanced airplane was in clear weather in a spot where any distress signals it sent would have been received. The plane itself can send automated signals even if the pilots were incapacitated. No signals went out, and according to media reports, the plane simply "vanished" from radar (i.e. the data didn't indicate the plane descending before it disappeared). All of the data indicates a mid-air explosion. There are some possible causes of such an explosion that are not terrorism related, such as mislabeled/improperly stored explosive cargo, but IMO those causes are at least as likely as terrorism in this case. It will be interesting to see if any groups come forward claiming responsibility.
      • ewoodrich 13y ago
        Of course I may be proven wrong, but I feel that it is quite premature to make such an assumption. A plane can rapidly disappear from radar for a number of reasons: not including your suggestions of terrorism or explosive payload. A prominent example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_611#Metal_fatigue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_611#Metal...
        • downandout 13y ago
          The thrust of my comment was that the data indicates a very rapid breakup of the plane (explosion), and I indeed said that there are other possible causes of mid-air explosions besides terrorism. My mention of explosive cargo wasn't intended to be an exhaustive list of alternative causes. I just think that terrorism is certainly within the realm of possibility given the totality of the circumstances.
        • userbinator 13y ago
          From your link: Radar data suggests that the aircraft broke into four pieces while at FL350. So it seems they saw it disintegrate, whereas MH370 just... disappeared.
      • Freestyler_3 13y ago
        There is also a long stop in the flight data, is it possible this was one of the pilots trying fool a hijacker, by secretly change something so that data was sent again? Hope they find it quickly.
      • einhverfr 13y ago
        I can think of two likely possibilities. The plane might have disintegrated in midair (that is not necessarily intentional btw, and most midair breakups are bad maintenance), or something could have gone drastically wrong. For example this plane had a previously damaged wing. If something went south, it is possible that the plane could have ended up in a flat spin and crashed. Another possibility is AIRDU failures leaving the plane to fly into the sea. Before jumping to conclusions, you really need to read this piece in IEEE spectrum (I promise it isn't computer-generated nonsense): http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/automated-to-death http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/automated-to-dea...
    • aegiso 13y ago
      Your comment demonstrates how monumentally "The War on Terror" has failed, now that people have been so thoroughly terrorized that the most available explanation for a plane disappearing has become "terrorism".
      • weego 13y ago
        That depends on how you view the war on terror. If you view it as political construct of Govts. wishing to grab extraordinary amounts of power and oversight over a largely disenfranchised populace then I would say it has been remarkably successful.
      • Shivetya 13y ago
        in this day and age? Sure. With the technology behind the newer planes flying to day it would take an extraordinary event to down one without word. So the thoughts that come to me are, flew into terrain (mountain), door opened causing decompression and deformation of airframe, airframe failure, bomb, or someone took over fast enough to silence communications. What is the availability of communications to passengers in that area? Cell has to be pretty much far between?
        • marcosdumay 13y ago
          I don't think anybody can disable communications from inside the plane (but then, that's a guess, if anybody knows better, please tell so). It would be compatible with some group kidnapping the plane, and changing the route to go over the ocean. But the plane would have already appeared somewhere, so I don't think that's likely. Also, if it was a bomb, it would need to be quite a big one, to completely destroy the plane. Also unlikely.
      • melling 13y ago
        A large modern aircraft completely disappears suddenly, in good weather, without a trace. Terrorism could certainly be a logical explanation. It wouldn't be the first time. Mid-air collision, shot down, etc. The suddenness does raise extreme conclusions.
      • zacinbusiness 13y ago
    • nhaehnle 13y ago
      What siblings haven't pointed out: Terrorism is supposed to terrorize people. If this was an act of terror, it certainly did not go as planned.
    • 6d0debc071 13y ago
      Okay: Going by wiki - which I suspect isn't a complete list, but still: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_commercial_aircraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents... In 2013 there were 12 accidents concerning aircraft, none of which were related to terrorism. In 2012 there were 12 accidents relating to aircraft, none of which were related to terrorism - there was also on attempted hijacking In 2011 there were 25 accidents concerning aircraft, none of which were related to terrorism. In 2010 there were 26 accidents concerning aircraft, none of which were related to terrorism. - One of these bore some similarity to this incident, in that the aircraft was lost on radar. - Pamir Airways Flight 112, vanished from radar ten minutes after takeoff. It was eventually found 12 miles from Kabul. In 2009 there were 21 accidents related to aircraft. - There were also two terrorist incidents, one hostage taking and one attempted bombing. Air France Flight 447 was one of the planes lost that year, it was lost over the Atlantic Ocean and it took two years for the wreckage to be found and the black boxes recovered. It vanished 'without a Mayday call, a witness, or even a trace on radar [...] Flight 447 seemed to disappear from the sky' http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/magazine/mag-08Plane-t.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/magazine/mag-08Plane-t.htm... Okay, so what's the point of reciting all this? Going by those figures, a little over 3% of the incidents involving aircraft were terrorism-related. And none of those, to my knowledge, resulted in deaths, or even significant injury. 1) Accidents are frequent (and I suspect the list I've got is out by one or two since I didn't count it automatically, and somewhat incomplete in any case) - the number of planes in the sky pretty much ensures that. 2) Terrorism related to flights seems relatively rare, and most commonly relatively ineffectual as compared to things like messed up landings. 3) Planes have vanished from radar before without foul play, (and seemingly in similar conditions in the case of 447.) And that's roughly in line with what we'd expect before seeing evidence. Unless you know that the two are strongly related, the way to bet is that the intersection of two low probability events is going to be vanishingly small. So, while there's no solid proof that it isn't terrorism in this case, that's the way I'd bet if I were a betting woman ^_^
      • czep 13y ago
        You're not going back far enough! Why would you think 5 years is enough to draw conclusions? If you look back 15 years (long enough to include 9/11), then 50% of commercial aviation fatalities are due to terrorism.
• userbinator 13y ago
  I don't know about avionics much either, but I'm wondering why, even at the time of AF447 if the planes do broadcast information about their current position (including altitude and speed), there seems to be no obvious "Your plane is dropping from the sky!" warning generated by any systems and remotely sent. Even if it's not a continuous stream of data, planes don't fall infinitely fast; it took a few minutes for AF447 to reach sea level.
  • ewoodrich 13y ago
    I wouldn't rule out local adverse weather or environmental conditions that would contribute both to downing a plane and rapid loss of communication...
  • laurencei 13y ago
    The A380 does this. If you watch the Air Crash Investigations episode (also known as "Mayday) Season 13 Episode 10 - it talks about the Qantas A380 that had an engine explosion. All the data from the plane was being relayed back to Qantas HQ - and the engineers at Qantas HQ were able to see in realtime all the issues facing the plane. Ironically there were so many issues, they actually initally thought the system was faulty (i.e. there were too many faults, so the fault must be the alert system).
    • einhverfr 13y ago
      That's another case of the automation paradox though, is it not? The engineers are suddenly inundated with all kinds of information and it isn't clear what the actual cause is. When you look at AF447, part of the problem was that the pilots appear to have been unaware that all the errors they were seeing were caused solely by loss of airspeed indicators. So most of the time you aren't looking at stuff, then suddenly something happens and you get tons of information on what exactly isn't working right now, all of which may or may not be useful in determining what the real problem is. And in this case humans have to step in quickly and react flawlessly based on perfect knowledge of the failure.
  • tjohns 13y ago
    Many modern planes do have satellite uplinks, but they're mostly used for sending short text messages. Primary voice communications are still over VHF or HF radio. If you're having a mechanical problem, the pilot is going to be more focused on not crashing than composing an email. (There are some automated logs that are sent too -- and these were actually used as part of the Air France investigation -- but this is primarily for maintenance rather than real-time tracking.) Even ignoring fancy telemetry systems, planes are normally equipped with an emergency transponder (ELT) which activates if there's a sudden impact. That signal would normally be detected by a Cospas-Sarsat satellite within 1-2 hours. In this case, it's possible that the transponder didn't activate, or the signal is too weak to be detected due to being underwater.
• einhverfr 13y ago
  On #4, that's one thing I noticed too. No mayday. No emergency declared. No contact. The flight just failed to show up. I can think of three cases where this could be. The first is where the pilots tried to communicate that something was wrong and were unsuccessful, but I would expect that someone might have heard something. But the other two are more catastrophic. The plane could have disintegrated in the air, giving no time for communications. Midflight breakups are uncommon but they do happen. Finally it is possible that the pilots for some reason didn't know they were descending and could have crashed into the ocean without ever knowing they weren't at altitude. This apparently happened with AF447 to some extent. It has happened before as well (static ports get clogged, pilots get disoriented at night, etc). In this case the first sign that anything was wrong could have been impact.
  • lbsnake7 13y ago
    They were talking to a retired pilot on the news and they asked him how it was possible that no distress call was made from the plane. The pilot said that pilots are trained to keep the plane in the air, if something starts to go wrong they start troubleshooting and focus all their energy on fixing the problem. If they then have time to send out a call, they do, but their main priority is to try and keep the plane in the air. So it's possible that if the problem they experienced was complicated or happened too quickly, they never got a chance to send out a distress signal.
    • einhverfr 13y ago
      As I think about it, with the growing complexity of automated systems on the aircraft, the things that can go wrong multiply, and the chance of getting a distress call out diminish :-P
    • marcosdumay 13y ago
      The plane has a set of automatic distress signals. No pilot intervention is required for those.
      • einhverfr 13y ago
• bananas 13y ago
  Re: #1 - so far... Software updates, component changes and supplier cost cutting don't necessarily maintain safety records.