11 ms·

Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours

178 points by wallflower 13y ago

feverr 13y ago
That's interesting. So much information and misinformation - makes you wonder about the claims that someone saw the plane in flames on the oil rig.
harshreality 13y ago
Can India, China, and Australia be confidently dismissed as destinations, given that they're going to have pretty good air defense radar that would notice a 777 at altitude, and a 777 flying at low altitude wouldn't have nearly as much range?
- panacea 13y ago
  Australia can. We've apparently got radar coverage that can detect light aircraft take-off and landings in much of this area: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/JORS.svg/1000px-JORS.svg.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/JOR...
damian2000 13y ago
Article transcript here: http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/20apxu/wsj_breaking_news_engine_data_shows_that_plane/ http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/20apxu/wsj_breakin...
melling 13y ago
"Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program." Well, if the engines were transmitting, can't someone figure out the direction of the plane?
- itengelhardt 13y ago
  I guess it depends on the data transferred. For an engine you probably have data like altitude, revolutions/second, fuel intake, pressure, etc. To get a status on the engines you probably don't NEED long/lat data. So it might not be in the transmitted bursts. Maybe there is a way of interpreting the data that tells you when/if the plane turned. e.g. "the chamber pressure in engine 2 is 5% higher than engine 1 ==> the plane was turning left at a rate of 15° per minute". Something crazy like that
  - donbox 13y ago
    I wonder if engine data like revolutions/second etc could determine if the plane landed/crashed.
- x0x0 13y ago
  I wonder if the necessary transmission origin data wasn't recorded? I bet the fbi is right now going through boeing's network trying to figure that out though. Is it bounced through satellites? You'd think a XXX million dollar plane would have a gps beacon or something though, just like atm machines. It would be a miracle if it where hijacked and there's even a chance those people are alive.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    > It would be a miracle if it where hijacked and there's even a chance those people are alive. That's very unlikely 240 people would disappear safely without leaving any trace. SO yeah, "miracle" is appropriate.
  - notthetup 13y ago
    They have a GPS beacon. The ADS-B system is exactly that. It just stopped transmitting. Apparently it can be manually turned off from the cockpit. Or it malfunctioned.
    - red_hammer 13y ago
      Do they know for sure it stopped transmitting? The problem with ADS-B is that it is lost over large ranges, like oceans. A space-based system to track aircraft globally is currently in the works. http://www.aireon.com/Solutions/TheGlobalAdvantage http://www.aireon.com/Solutions/TheGlobalAdvantage edit: Here is an informative ADS-B coverage map I found: http://uk.flightaware.com/adsb/coverage http://uk.flightaware.com/adsb/coverage
nostrademons 13y ago
Interesting hypothesis that would square with this: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/03/a-hypothesis.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/03/a-hypoth...
- fosk 13y ago
  This is an interesting article. One of the comments also gives another plausible solution. Pasting it here for convenience: "There are a number of troubles with that theory Charles, one of which is that the plane should have followed its intended course and stayed on radar by passive reflection, but it is certainly also one of my favourite theories right now. The lack of debris near where it disappeared from the radar opens the door to more "interesting" theories, such as kidnapping or theft. First of all, identifying planes by transponder code is not hard ID. It would be perfectly possible for co-conspirator plane to fly transponder-less up to the target plane, take over the transponder code, and fly decoy on the official route, while the MH370 goes elsewhere. That means that the point of "last contact" doesn't tell us anything but the existence of an electronic device acting like a transponder at that time and place. Turning the transponder off and tailing another transpondered plane very closely is another way to disappear from ATC without plastering the surface with debris and then you are also more or less free to go wherever you want, until somebody visually spots two planes very close. The decoy plane does not need to be the same size, so the probability of such visual detection would be low. Therefore, suspecting foul play, we don't have any trustworthy information about the planes whereabouts after the last visual sighting of the plane. It would be interesting to know if there were any high-value targets on that plane, amongst the passengers or in the cargo. If the cargo was the interesting bit, killing off all the passengers by dropping pressure and oxygen is trivial. One interesting nugget is the rumour that "passengers phones are still ringing". That's sufficiently implausible that nobody would take it seriously and actually follow the SS7 data. But if true, it would be explained by the plane sitting somewhere at the edge of a jungle, for instance on the remains of an old WW2 strip, passengers dead, and cargo gone."
  - mootothemax 13y ago
    If the cargo was the interesting bit, killing off all the passengers by dropping pressure and oxygen is trivial. When was the last time a criminal killed ~240 people in order to steal some loot? The solution proposed would, at best, be extraordinary; flippantly adding mass murder makes it absurd.
digitalengineer 13y ago
So we have a plane that flew to another destination without communication and several people with bogus passports on board. Familymembers have reported cellphones that kept 'rining' instead of going directly to voicemail (as they would have if the plane was at rhe bottom of the ocean). Hijacking looks to me the only reasonable explenation.
- sitkack 13y ago
  Annnd, why aren't we reading about cell logs of every IMSI of every passenger on board. Isn't this baby stuff? Continually ringing doesn't mean the phone is still on a network.
  - mschuster91 13y ago
    Because the "cell" is the microcell generated by the plane's internal GSM/sat uplink... which has no GPS attached and cannot really be traced.
    - lucaspiller 13y ago
      Even if there is no GPS, it should still be possible to tell whether a number is registered/active on the network. When a phone connects to a network (including roaming) it's location is stored in the operator's HLR (home location register) where it is used to route calls. I'd assume it stores the time the phone was last seen as well.
  - jonah 13y ago
    Continuously ringing means the network still thinks the phone's on the network. When you power down your phone it sends a signal to the network saying it's going off. If you just pull the battery or something else where it doesn't send that signal, the network still assumes (maybe only for a time) that the phone is still on but isn't connected to a tower.
    - eklavya 13y ago
      But the ringing only starts once the target phone responds to the paging from network, otherwise the network just keeps on searching and after a timeout informs that the target phone is unreachable or out of coverage area.
m_darkTemplar 13y ago
I wonder why this data wasn't available earlier. It seems like it would have been very useful in the searches.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  Probably was available to investigators and searchers just not the general public.
  - m_darkTemplar 13y ago
    The areas that have been searched are very close to where they lost contact though. I would have thought they'd be looking farther away with this information.
- mariuolo 13y ago
  Who says it wasn't? It's likely they kept it to themselves.
  - curtis 13y ago
    Who's "they"? The Malaysian government? Even if they wanted to suppress the information, they don't control the ACARS network.
alexeisadeski3 13y ago
This is some weird stuff.
devindotcom 13y ago
Still tallies with my hijacking theory. A 777ER would have had enough fuel to get to just about anywhere east of Africa, and maybe even to the horn. Honestly I think it's the simplest explanation.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  It'll be a walk in the park to track down the debris in that case. Amilia Earhart levels of mystery.
  - willvarfar 13y ago
    Yeah but we did find Amilia in the end, though.
    - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
      Well they haven't yet confirmed the wreckage to be from her aircraft. The clues are strong, but then again clues were strong in other directions in the past.
justinzollars 13y ago
Reminds me of Lost, I never thought that was a plausible plot even in 2004. I thought our technology has made losing aircraft, impossible. Very strange that the transponders were turned off. Very strange that the Rolls-Royce data wasn't released days ago. Was this an oversight?
- jw2013 13y ago
  I thought Oceanic 815 was found on the ocean floor?
  - justinzollars 13y ago
    you ruined it!
  - stephen_g 13y ago
    That one was faked by Charles Widmore.
- mseebach 13y ago
  I did not find the disappearance of the aircraft to be the least plausible plot device in Lost.
- panacea 13y ago
  If it wasn't for the truly awful reality that many real people are missing, presumed dead, there would be room for a joke about Lost 2 viral marketing.
chrismcb 13y ago
Here is what I don't get. A plane, a HUGE plane, supposedly just disappeared. Near China. So this whole "fly under the radar" is just BS? You just need to turn off your transponder, and you can fly wherever you want?
- Blahah 13y ago
  >You just need to turn off your transponder, and you can fly wherever you want? Just from reading comments in the linked piece, it seems that is true for some parts of the world. The malay military didn't have an operational air defence radar system, or they might have had a better idea where it was going. And there are areas around the Bay of Bengal with no radar coverage either, which, if the plane was hijacked, might be where it headed.
  - BorisMelnik 13y ago
    so much for China's unstoppable military
    - pjc50 13y ago
      Malaysia is not China? For most of the plane's expected flight it was outside Chinese airspace.
- hartator 13y ago
  I agree that's the weird part. Every countries spend literary billions to develop radars, stealth fighters and ways to disrupts radars. Now, we understand in a closed area watched by several nations and operating by clear weather, they can't effectively localise one big civilian aircraft? For 4 hours? Because just the guy turn off transponder? I think either we have been seriously mislead of what our technologies capabilities are or one of states of the area in knowing more than it said.
  - baddox 13y ago
    I think your last sentence might be correct, because you might be vastly underestimating the size of the ocean.
brador 13y ago
They claim some of the cell phones are still active. Can't they just "traceroute" the call to find the nearest cell tower and search around it?
- mseebach 13y ago
  Yes. If the phone is "active", ie. registered on a tower, it's within a few miles of that tower. I think that tells us all we need to know about the relevancy of that claim.
- KnightHawk3 13y ago
  I don't think they can, because the phones aren't connecting. Apparently what is actually happening is that the exchange is connecting and people are confusing that with the phone.
- borplk 13y ago
  This is a great point. Can anyone expand further?
- Raptor22 13y ago
  This blew my mind. Cell phones don't work that far out from range of towers, and they sure as hell don't work at the bottom of the ocean. I heard that those were rumors and that they were false, but if they're true, then that's a major wtf...
  - mikeash 13y ago
    It is complete bullshit. The whole story is based around the fact that some people have tried to call their relatives on the plane and have heard the line "ringing" after placing the call. This is exactly what you'd expect to happen when trying to call a phone that's at the bottom of the ocean, as the network will spend some time searching for it and you'll often hear a "ringing" while that happens, but idiots have taken this and transformed it into "the actual cell phones themselves are ringing!"
- phil21 13y ago
  Sure, if they are within range of a tower. Many people don't understand that the phone will "ring" even though the other end might not be currently registered with a tower. Almost assuredly where the confusion lies. Although, since it's a developing country it's barely plausible they haven't collected cell phone numbers from the family and run it up whatever law enforcement channels available to them.
tn13 13y ago
Why no one is paying attention to the fact that the plane was flying over South China see which China is trying to claim for itself. Could it be the case that China by mistake shot the plane down ?
- yeukhon 13y ago
  Impossible. The consequence of hiding the truth is an international shame. And do you really think any country launching a missile can go unnoticed? You know that area is under dispute and nearby countries are claiming ownership, meaning they are actively monitoring all military actions. There are satellites watching that area too. No. No. And why China? I think this is more of an anti-China/China conspiracy. You got Philippines and Vietnam right over there. In fact, Vietnamese navy was the first appeared on the newspaper claiming it had detected a crash before the Chinese.
  - KhalPanda 13y ago
    I don't disagree with you, but this part got me: "And do you really think any country launching a missile can go unnoticed?" A few days ago... no, I didn't think so. But apparently a massive xxx ton airliner can go for hours unnoticed, so...
    - keeperofdakeys 13y ago
      If anyone saw an airliner on their radar, they probably wouldn't even try to confirm what it was. If they saw an unidentified object, then they'd call someone.
      - phil21 13y ago
        It's not like the radar systems tracking these things on a day to day basis automatically classify something as a certain type or even size of aircraft. Even if it were tracked by something, in that area of the world I bet there are quite a few "unscheduled" flights and it perhaps became something of routine. Or some remote radar operator is paid to look the other way on some flights, and mistook this for one of those. Most likely is that it simply wasn't tracked by anyone who cared, and especially not by anyone who recorded the data.
mahyarm 13y ago
So will autopilots include a mode to drop to an altitude where people can start breathing again if depressurization occurs and is not fixed within 2 minutes?
- Dogamondo 13y ago
  I'm really interested in this. Anyone?
- mikeash 13y ago
  Sure, then someday an airliner crashes into a mountain because this system got triggered accidentally and it wasn't fixed in time....
  - mahyarm 13y ago
    That would be part of the autopilot. It will probably use a combination of GPS, maps, and radar to avoid this. And it would fly in circles waiting for people to wake up.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Sure, you can come up with a solution to any objection, but the problem is failure modes you haven't thought of. The overall point is that any safety measure brings its own dangers along, and you have to be very careful when adding stuff to make sure that you've solved more problems than you've added. It's not at all obvious.
yeukhon 13y ago
As I said before, our best hope is digging all the satellite images from that day. There are private and military grade satellites taking pictures in that area.
mutert 13y ago
Biggest mystery.
- clef 13y ago
  Indeed. It looks like everything either malfunctioned or was intentionally turned off all at once. A long time ago one of my servers had a very crude monitoring system, it would send me an email every half hour saying "I'm still alive!". Hard to believe that kind of simple thing can't be implemented on a 21st century airliner ( or maybe it is, then forgive my ignorance please). A simple beep beep signal saying "I'm still flying!", every minute or so, with the plane's location as a bonus. Edit: that said, if the plane starts breaking apart at cruising altitude, it wouldn't help much with finding it...so maybe self-powered transponders in nose, tail, wings, engines etc etc, nicely sealed in "black box" style casings might help. Or maybe they have that already and I know absolutely nothing about modern planes (or planes in general).
  - hrkristian 13y ago
    Planes do have that, the engines also report automatically to a ground base every thirty minutes. The aforementioned trackers can be shut off in the cockpit, however, which seems to have happened. It's unclear whether or not the engines actually have been reporting for hours, as Rolls Royce are apparently denying it according to some comments further up.
downandout 13y ago
This begs the question: why on earth is it even possible to turn off a transponder mid-flight on a commercial plane carrying hundreds of human beings? I also don't understand why, if we can send bursts of engine data every 30 minutes from the middle of the ocean, we can't send a GPS location every couple of minutes. Maybe even throw some GPS data in with the engine data - at least we would know where it was within a 30 minute window. We're talking about a few extra bytes.
- andr 13y ago
  The simple answer is you have dozens of planes on the ground at airports, which you don't want to appear on all the radars. Yes, a technological fix would be trivial, but those systems were designed decades ago, when being a pilot was quite prestigious and well paid. The thought of a rogue pilot never occurred, I guess. Locaiton data is sent by the ACARS system, which was apparently turned off.
  - TheAnimus 13y ago
    You don't need a transponder to show up on radar, it just makes it a lot easier. Radar operators have a hard job telling a plane from clouds or echos. A transponder makes that job a lot, lot easier. However, if you have a good radar system, you can happily track the contact without a transponder. In fact this happens all the time, I had a very nice chap at Farnbourgh West LARS (Low Altitude Radar Service) do this for me, when the shed I was flying had a little bit of a failure. For newewer systems such as those used by NATS automatically keeps the data assigned with the trace, using their proprietary algos to filter the noise. If this happened over the UK, the transponder went off, ATC couldn't reach them, then a couple of Typhoons would be sent up to go have a look, and if need be escort. With this background understanding of how modern Radar services are used piratically, taking into account a bit of background of the Malaysian authorities (short version: no terrorist attacks have ever happened even with our extremist religious views, honest.) Then this article will make some more sense: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/mh370-satellite-images-show-possible-crash-debris-in-south-china-sea-live http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/mh370-satellite... It is becoming clear they knew full well what was going on. They had the ACARS data. They had contacts on their radar, which they would have understood to be the plane, if not at the time, soon after. (But they really should have understood at the time!). This stuff happens all the time in air safety investigations. See Egypt Air, or Air France!
venus 13y ago
The Malaysian transport minister has just denied this article's accuracy at a press conference in KL. Which is interesting. The WSJ isn't just some random blog. I wonder where they got their information.
- panacea 13y ago
  They also put three journalists in the by-line. Is that typical?
  - joshgel 13y ago
    On a story that is big news like this, but not big enough to dominate coverage: yes. There are so many moving parts that they likely have several reporters on it with the goal of being the first to break the story. But it's not a big enough story that they feel they need 3-4 separate stories on the front page. At last until there is some resolution.
- checker659 13y ago
  Can't find where I read, but I think it was Rolls Royce. Every thing seems to be speculation in this case.
  - panacea 13y ago
    Presuming snark... it wasn't RR it was "sources".
brianpgordon 13y ago
> U.S. counterterrorism officials This is a Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing... why is this a matter for US counterterrorism officials?
- panacea 13y ago
  Because Boeing? Because they have the resources? Because a re-appropriated civilian Airliner is a potential attack vector?
DangerousPie 13y ago
I can't seem to find a source for this right now, but this claim has apparently just been denied in a press conference by Rolls Royce, Boeing and Malaysia Airlines.
raverbashing 13y ago
Yeah, however China (and other countries) never saw an unidentified aircraft in their (primary) radars? Seeing that would raise several flags
smcl 13y ago
Looks like this was a mistake according to the Guardian - http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2014/mar/13/mh370-no-sign-of-debris-detected-by-chinese-satellite-live-updates http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2014/mar/13/mh370-no-s...
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  WSJ tends to be pretty accurate on fact based scoops.
Korona007 13y ago
Special Ops fly NORDO-IFF/SIF off all the time. Check for activity at Oceana NAS and Diego Garcia NS for response. Like the Alitalia DC-9 out of Napoli that got splashed by the Brigade Rosa, no news is not good news.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jfoster 13y ago
Now this is being denied: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-13/malaysia-airlines-mh370-deny-plane-flew-hours-after-contact/5319716 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-13/malaysia-airlines-mh37... The same happened with the reports of the radar capturing it drastically off-course. First it looked like a sure thing, and then it was eventually completely denied. Perhaps that's just a symptom of such an intensely-analyzed ongoing news story, though. I do feel a bit sorry for the Malaysian government. They don't get to control what the media prints, but are expected to immediately confirm/deny everything (difficult with the volume of reports they are likely dealing with!), and to some extent get chastised when the media prints stuff that later gets busted.
- pdabbadabba 13y ago
  Yes, though the off-course radar contacts were eventually acknowledged after having been reported, and then completely denied. From the New York Times: "On Wednesday, after four days of reticence and evasive answers, the Malaysian military acknowledged that it had recorded, but initially ignored, radar signals that could have prompted a mission to intercept and track the missing jetliner. The radar data vastly expanded the area where the plane, which took off early Saturday from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, might have traveled." http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-370.html?hp&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/missing-malaysi... With that track record it's hard to know whether to credit the Malaysian government's vehement denials.
TomGullen 13y ago
I remember watching a "Mayday: Aircrash Investigation" episode (awesome series by the way) from the 80's I think. It involved an Eastern passenger plane that had miscalibrated it's guidance system and strayed into Soviet(?) territory during a politically tense period at the same time a US spy plane was in the area. The Russians(?) shot the plane down and it nearly started a war. The country the plane was from didn't believe it had strayed as far as the Russians(?) said it did. Eventually, the US government released radar data showing the position and path of this plane so that it would avoid a war. It showed this particular plane had grossly gone off course and entered Russian territory. The radar they had was capable of tracking every plane in the world 24x7. This was back a couple/few decades as well! Turned out the plane has set the wrong guidance system pre takeoff which was a terrible and extremely rare mistake. The US held out until the last moment to release this data as they didn't want anyone to know they had the capability. This leads me to believe some people somewhere know where this plane went down. I am not sure if I am recalling this precisely, but I 100% remember that the US government back then apparently has this radar tech.
- throwaway092834 13y ago
  It sounds like you're describing KAL007: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 There's a larger list of airliner shootdowns here, and this is the only incident which seems to match your recollection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inci... There's nothing in the wikipedia article about the USA's ability to track planes. We did have a radar station in AK, which may be what you're thinking of? According to wikipedia it didn't produce useful information, and wasn't necessarily tracking the plane at all points anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#U.S._Air_Force_radar_data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#U.S... I don't think we've ever had the ability to track all planes in the world.
  - TomGullen 13y ago
    It'll take me ages to go through all the episodes of Mayday, but I'm certain in one of them the US released highly classified radar data to prevent a wider political catastrophe, and that the narrator described the source of the data was from a new type of radar that had the capability to track every plane in the world. The series is exceptionally well researched and presented.
msantos 13y ago
IMO Boeing and Rolls-Royce (the engine manufacturer) know more about that plane than Malaysia Airlines is letting off right now. Ref: (43:18) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2LosYIFUSEE&t=2598 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2L... Digging an oldie, Boeing still runs SCADA on both 747 and older 777. Going as far as reading engine stats in realtime via telnet.(http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/16696-FACT-CHECK-SCADA-Systems-Are-Online-Now.html http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/16696-FACT-CHECK-SCADA...)
rangersteve 13y ago
Is it possible to hack a transponder and make it appear to ATS that a plane is a legitimate craft? Would it be possible to have someone on the ground act as "ATC" and pass off the plane to an unsuspecting ACT so it can enter another countries air space?

178 points by wallflower 13y ago

That's interesting. So much information and misinformation - makes you wonder about the claims that someone saw the plane in flames on the oil rig.

harshreality 13y ago

Can India, China, and Australia be confidently dismissed as destinations, given that they're going to have pretty good air defense radar that would notice a 777 at altitude, and a 777 flying at low altitude wouldn't have nearly as much range?

panacea 13y ago
Australia can. We've apparently got radar coverage that can detect light aircraft take-off and landings in much of this area: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/JORS.svg/1000px-JORS.svg.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/JOR...

damian2000 13y ago

Article transcript here: http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/20apxu/wsj_breaking_news_engine_data_shows_that_plane/ http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/20apxu/wsj_breakin...

melling 13y ago

"Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program." Well, if the engines were transmitting, can't someone figure out the direction of the plane?

itengelhardt 13y ago
I guess it depends on the data transferred. For an engine you probably have data like altitude, revolutions/second, fuel intake, pressure, etc. To get a status on the engines you probably don't NEED long/lat data. So it might not be in the transmitted bursts. Maybe there is a way of interpreting the data that tells you when/if the plane turned. e.g. "the chamber pressure in engine 2 is 5% higher than engine 1 ==> the plane was turning left at a rate of 15° per minute". Something crazy like that
- donbox 13y ago
  I wonder if engine data like revolutions/second etc could determine if the plane landed/crashed.
x0x0 13y ago
I wonder if the necessary transmission origin data wasn't recorded? I bet the fbi is right now going through boeing's network trying to figure that out though. Is it bounced through satellites? You'd think a XXX million dollar plane would have a gps beacon or something though, just like atm machines. It would be a miracle if it where hijacked and there's even a chance those people are alive.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  > It would be a miracle if it where hijacked and there's even a chance those people are alive. That's very unlikely 240 people would disappear safely without leaving any trace. SO yeah, "miracle" is appropriate.
- notthetup 13y ago
  They have a GPS beacon. The ADS-B system is exactly that. It just stopped transmitting. Apparently it can be manually turned off from the cockpit. Or it malfunctioned.
  - red_hammer 13y ago
    Do they know for sure it stopped transmitting? The problem with ADS-B is that it is lost over large ranges, like oceans. A space-based system to track aircraft globally is currently in the works. http://www.aireon.com/Solutions/TheGlobalAdvantage http://www.aireon.com/Solutions/TheGlobalAdvantage edit: Here is an informative ADS-B coverage map I found: http://uk.flightaware.com/adsb/coverage http://uk.flightaware.com/adsb/coverage

nostrademons 13y ago

Interesting hypothesis that would square with this: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/03/a-hypothesis.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/03/a-hypoth...

fosk 13y ago
This is an interesting article. One of the comments also gives another plausible solution. Pasting it here for convenience: "There are a number of troubles with that theory Charles, one of which is that the plane should have followed its intended course and stayed on radar by passive reflection, but it is certainly also one of my favourite theories right now. The lack of debris near where it disappeared from the radar opens the door to more "interesting" theories, such as kidnapping or theft. First of all, identifying planes by transponder code is not hard ID. It would be perfectly possible for co-conspirator plane to fly transponder-less up to the target plane, take over the transponder code, and fly decoy on the official route, while the MH370 goes elsewhere. That means that the point of "last contact" doesn't tell us anything but the existence of an electronic device acting like a transponder at that time and place. Turning the transponder off and tailing another transpondered plane very closely is another way to disappear from ATC without plastering the surface with debris and then you are also more or less free to go wherever you want, until somebody visually spots two planes very close. The decoy plane does not need to be the same size, so the probability of such visual detection would be low. Therefore, suspecting foul play, we don't have any trustworthy information about the planes whereabouts after the last visual sighting of the plane. It would be interesting to know if there were any high-value targets on that plane, amongst the passengers or in the cargo. If the cargo was the interesting bit, killing off all the passengers by dropping pressure and oxygen is trivial. One interesting nugget is the rumour that "passengers phones are still ringing". That's sufficiently implausible that nobody would take it seriously and actually follow the SS7 data. But if true, it would be explained by the plane sitting somewhere at the edge of a jungle, for instance on the remains of an old WW2 strip, passengers dead, and cargo gone."
- mootothemax 13y ago
  If the cargo was the interesting bit, killing off all the passengers by dropping pressure and oxygen is trivial. When was the last time a criminal killed ~240 people in order to steal some loot? The solution proposed would, at best, be extraordinary; flippantly adding mass murder makes it absurd.

digitalengineer 13y ago

So we have a plane that flew to another destination without communication and several people with bogus passports on board. Familymembers have reported cellphones that kept 'rining' instead of going directly to voicemail (as they would have if the plane was at rhe bottom of the ocean). Hijacking looks to me the only reasonable explenation.

sitkack 13y ago
Annnd, why aren't we reading about cell logs of every IMSI of every passenger on board. Isn't this baby stuff? Continually ringing doesn't mean the phone is still on a network.
- mschuster91 13y ago
  Because the "cell" is the microcell generated by the plane's internal GSM/sat uplink... which has no GPS attached and cannot really be traced.
  - lucaspiller 13y ago
    Even if there is no GPS, it should still be possible to tell whether a number is registered/active on the network. When a phone connects to a network (including roaming) it's location is stored in the operator's HLR (home location register) where it is used to route calls. I'd assume it stores the time the phone was last seen as well.
- jonah 13y ago
  Continuously ringing means the network still thinks the phone's on the network. When you power down your phone it sends a signal to the network saying it's going off. If you just pull the battery or something else where it doesn't send that signal, the network still assumes (maybe only for a time) that the phone is still on but isn't connected to a tower.
  - eklavya 13y ago
    But the ringing only starts once the target phone responds to the paging from network, otherwise the network just keeps on searching and after a timeout informs that the target phone is unreachable or out of coverage area.

m_darkTemplar 13y ago

I wonder why this data wasn't available earlier. It seems like it would have been very useful in the searches.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago
Probably was available to investigators and searchers just not the general public.
- m_darkTemplar 13y ago
  The areas that have been searched are very close to where they lost contact though. I would have thought they'd be looking farther away with this information.
mariuolo 13y ago
Who says it wasn't? It's likely they kept it to themselves.
- curtis 13y ago
  Who's "they"? The Malaysian government? Even if they wanted to suppress the information, they don't control the ACARS network.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago

This is some weird stuff.

devindotcom 13y ago

Still tallies with my hijacking theory. A 777ER would have had enough fuel to get to just about anywhere east of Africa, and maybe even to the horn. Honestly I think it's the simplest explanation.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago
It'll be a walk in the park to track down the debris in that case. Amilia Earhart levels of mystery.
- willvarfar 13y ago
  Yeah but we did find Amilia in the end, though.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    Well they haven't yet confirmed the wreckage to be from her aircraft. The clues are strong, but then again clues were strong in other directions in the past.

justinzollars 13y ago

Reminds me of Lost, I never thought that was a plausible plot even in 2004. I thought our technology has made losing aircraft, impossible. Very strange that the transponders were turned off. Very strange that the Rolls-Royce data wasn't released days ago. Was this an oversight?

jw2013 13y ago
I thought Oceanic 815 was found on the ocean floor?
- justinzollars 13y ago
  you ruined it!
- stephen_g 13y ago
  That one was faked by Charles Widmore.
mseebach 13y ago
I did not find the disappearance of the aircraft to be the least plausible plot device in Lost.
panacea 13y ago
If it wasn't for the truly awful reality that many real people are missing, presumed dead, there would be room for a joke about Lost 2 viral marketing.

chrismcb 13y ago

Here is what I don't get. A plane, a HUGE plane, supposedly just disappeared. Near China. So this whole "fly under the radar" is just BS? You just need to turn off your transponder, and you can fly wherever you want?

Blahah 13y ago
>You just need to turn off your transponder, and you can fly wherever you want? Just from reading comments in the linked piece, it seems that is true for some parts of the world. The malay military didn't have an operational air defence radar system, or they might have had a better idea where it was going. And there are areas around the Bay of Bengal with no radar coverage either, which, if the plane was hijacked, might be where it headed.
- BorisMelnik 13y ago
  so much for China's unstoppable military
  - pjc50 13y ago
    Malaysia is not China? For most of the plane's expected flight it was outside Chinese airspace.
hartator 13y ago
I agree that's the weird part. Every countries spend literary billions to develop radars, stealth fighters and ways to disrupts radars. Now, we understand in a closed area watched by several nations and operating by clear weather, they can't effectively localise one big civilian aircraft? For 4 hours? Because just the guy turn off transponder? I think either we have been seriously mislead of what our technologies capabilities are or one of states of the area in knowing more than it said.
- baddox 13y ago
  I think your last sentence might be correct, because you might be vastly underestimating the size of the ocean.

brador 13y ago

They claim some of the cell phones are still active. Can't they just "traceroute" the call to find the nearest cell tower and search around it?

mseebach 13y ago
Yes. If the phone is "active", ie. registered on a tower, it's within a few miles of that tower. I think that tells us all we need to know about the relevancy of that claim.
KnightHawk3 13y ago
I don't think they can, because the phones aren't connecting. Apparently what is actually happening is that the exchange is connecting and people are confusing that with the phone.
borplk 13y ago
This is a great point. Can anyone expand further?
Raptor22 13y ago
This blew my mind. Cell phones don't work that far out from range of towers, and they sure as hell don't work at the bottom of the ocean. I heard that those were rumors and that they were false, but if they're true, then that's a major wtf...
- mikeash 13y ago
  It is complete bullshit. The whole story is based around the fact that some people have tried to call their relatives on the plane and have heard the line "ringing" after placing the call. This is exactly what you'd expect to happen when trying to call a phone that's at the bottom of the ocean, as the network will spend some time searching for it and you'll often hear a "ringing" while that happens, but idiots have taken this and transformed it into "the actual cell phones themselves are ringing!"
phil21 13y ago
Sure, if they are within range of a tower. Many people don't understand that the phone will "ring" even though the other end might not be currently registered with a tower. Almost assuredly where the confusion lies. Although, since it's a developing country it's barely plausible they haven't collected cell phone numbers from the family and run it up whatever law enforcement channels available to them.

tn13 13y ago

Why no one is paying attention to the fact that the plane was flying over South China see which China is trying to claim for itself. Could it be the case that China by mistake shot the plane down ?

yeukhon 13y ago
Impossible. The consequence of hiding the truth is an international shame. And do you really think any country launching a missile can go unnoticed? You know that area is under dispute and nearby countries are claiming ownership, meaning they are actively monitoring all military actions. There are satellites watching that area too. No. No. And why China? I think this is more of an anti-China/China conspiracy. You got Philippines and Vietnam right over there. In fact, Vietnamese navy was the first appeared on the newspaper claiming it had detected a crash before the Chinese.
- KhalPanda 13y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but this part got me: "And do you really think any country launching a missile can go unnoticed?" A few days ago... no, I didn't think so. But apparently a massive xxx ton airliner can go for hours unnoticed, so...
  - keeperofdakeys 13y ago
    If anyone saw an airliner on their radar, they probably wouldn't even try to confirm what it was. If they saw an unidentified object, then they'd call someone.
    - phil21 13y ago
      It's not like the radar systems tracking these things on a day to day basis automatically classify something as a certain type or even size of aircraft. Even if it were tracked by something, in that area of the world I bet there are quite a few "unscheduled" flights and it perhaps became something of routine. Or some remote radar operator is paid to look the other way on some flights, and mistook this for one of those. Most likely is that it simply wasn't tracked by anyone who cared, and especially not by anyone who recorded the data.

mahyarm 13y ago

So will autopilots include a mode to drop to an altitude where people can start breathing again if depressurization occurs and is not fixed within 2 minutes?

Dogamondo 13y ago
I'm really interested in this. Anyone?
mikeash 13y ago
Sure, then someday an airliner crashes into a mountain because this system got triggered accidentally and it wasn't fixed in time....
- mahyarm 13y ago
  That would be part of the autopilot. It will probably use a combination of GPS, maps, and radar to avoid this. And it would fly in circles waiting for people to wake up.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Sure, you can come up with a solution to any objection, but the problem is failure modes you haven't thought of. The overall point is that any safety measure brings its own dangers along, and you have to be very careful when adding stuff to make sure that you've solved more problems than you've added. It's not at all obvious.

yeukhon 13y ago

As I said before, our best hope is digging all the satellite images from that day. There are private and military grade satellites taking pictures in that area.

mutert 13y ago

Biggest mystery.

clef 13y ago
Indeed. It looks like everything either malfunctioned or was intentionally turned off all at once. A long time ago one of my servers had a very crude monitoring system, it would send me an email every half hour saying "I'm still alive!". Hard to believe that kind of simple thing can't be implemented on a 21st century airliner ( or maybe it is, then forgive my ignorance please). A simple beep beep signal saying "I'm still flying!", every minute or so, with the plane's location as a bonus. Edit: that said, if the plane starts breaking apart at cruising altitude, it wouldn't help much with finding it...so maybe self-powered transponders in nose, tail, wings, engines etc etc, nicely sealed in "black box" style casings might help. Or maybe they have that already and I know absolutely nothing about modern planes (or planes in general).
- hrkristian 13y ago
  Planes do have that, the engines also report automatically to a ground base every thirty minutes. The aforementioned trackers can be shut off in the cockpit, however, which seems to have happened. It's unclear whether or not the engines actually have been reporting for hours, as Rolls Royce are apparently denying it according to some comments further up.

downandout 13y ago

This begs the question: why on earth is it even possible to turn off a transponder mid-flight on a commercial plane carrying hundreds of human beings? I also don't understand why, if we can send bursts of engine data every 30 minutes from the middle of the ocean, we can't send a GPS location every couple of minutes. Maybe even throw some GPS data in with the engine data - at least we would know where it was within a 30 minute window. We're talking about a few extra bytes.

andr 13y ago
The simple answer is you have dozens of planes on the ground at airports, which you don't want to appear on all the radars. Yes, a technological fix would be trivial, but those systems were designed decades ago, when being a pilot was quite prestigious and well paid. The thought of a rogue pilot never occurred, I guess. Locaiton data is sent by the ACARS system, which was apparently turned off.
- TheAnimus 13y ago
  You don't need a transponder to show up on radar, it just makes it a lot easier. Radar operators have a hard job telling a plane from clouds or echos. A transponder makes that job a lot, lot easier. However, if you have a good radar system, you can happily track the contact without a transponder. In fact this happens all the time, I had a very nice chap at Farnbourgh West LARS (Low Altitude Radar Service) do this for me, when the shed I was flying had a little bit of a failure. For newewer systems such as those used by NATS automatically keeps the data assigned with the trace, using their proprietary algos to filter the noise. If this happened over the UK, the transponder went off, ATC couldn't reach them, then a couple of Typhoons would be sent up to go have a look, and if need be escort. With this background understanding of how modern Radar services are used piratically, taking into account a bit of background of the Malaysian authorities (short version: no terrorist attacks have ever happened even with our extremist religious views, honest.) Then this article will make some more sense: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/mh370-satellite-images-show-possible-crash-debris-in-south-china-sea-live http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/mh370-satellite... It is becoming clear they knew full well what was going on. They had the ACARS data. They had contacts on their radar, which they would have understood to be the plane, if not at the time, soon after. (But they really should have understood at the time!). This stuff happens all the time in air safety investigations. See Egypt Air, or Air France!

venus 13y ago

The Malaysian transport minister has just denied this article's accuracy at a press conference in KL. Which is interesting. The WSJ isn't just some random blog. I wonder where they got their information.

panacea 13y ago
They also put three journalists in the by-line. Is that typical?
- joshgel 13y ago
  On a story that is big news like this, but not big enough to dominate coverage: yes. There are so many moving parts that they likely have several reporters on it with the goal of being the first to break the story. But it's not a big enough story that they feel they need 3-4 separate stories on the front page. At last until there is some resolution.
checker659 13y ago
Can't find where I read, but I think it was Rolls Royce. Every thing seems to be speculation in this case.
- panacea 13y ago
  Presuming snark... it wasn't RR it was "sources".

brianpgordon 13y ago

> U.S. counterterrorism officials This is a Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing... why is this a matter for US counterterrorism officials?

panacea 13y ago
Because Boeing? Because they have the resources? Because a re-appropriated civilian Airliner is a potential attack vector?

DangerousPie 13y ago

I can't seem to find a source for this right now, but this claim has apparently just been denied in a press conference by Rolls Royce, Boeing and Malaysia Airlines.

raverbashing 13y ago

Yeah, however China (and other countries) never saw an unidentified aircraft in their (primary) radars? Seeing that would raise several flags

smcl 13y ago

Looks like this was a mistake according to the Guardian - http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2014/mar/13/mh370-no-sign-of-debris-detected-by-chinese-satellite-live-updates http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2014/mar/13/mh370-no-s...

alexeisadeski3 13y ago
WSJ tends to be pretty accurate on fact based scoops.

Korona007 13y ago

Special Ops fly NORDO-IFF/SIF off all the time. Check for activity at Oceana NAS and Diego Garcia NS for response. Like the Alitalia DC-9 out of Napoli that got splashed by the Brigade Rosa, no news is not good news.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jfoster 13y ago

Now this is being denied: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-13/malaysia-airlines-mh370-deny-plane-flew-hours-after-contact/5319716 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-13/malaysia-airlines-mh37... The same happened with the reports of the radar capturing it drastically off-course. First it looked like a sure thing, and then it was eventually completely denied. Perhaps that's just a symptom of such an intensely-analyzed ongoing news story, though. I do feel a bit sorry for the Malaysian government. They don't get to control what the media prints, but are expected to immediately confirm/deny everything (difficult with the volume of reports they are likely dealing with!), and to some extent get chastised when the media prints stuff that later gets busted.

pdabbadabba 13y ago
Yes, though the off-course radar contacts were eventually acknowledged after having been reported, and then completely denied. From the New York Times: "On Wednesday, after four days of reticence and evasive answers, the Malaysian military acknowledged that it had recorded, but initially ignored, radar signals that could have prompted a mission to intercept and track the missing jetliner. The radar data vastly expanded the area where the plane, which took off early Saturday from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, might have traveled." http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-370.html?hp&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/missing-malaysi... With that track record it's hard to know whether to credit the Malaysian government's vehement denials.

TomGullen 13y ago

I remember watching a "Mayday: Aircrash Investigation" episode (awesome series by the way) from the 80's I think. It involved an Eastern passenger plane that had miscalibrated it's guidance system and strayed into Soviet(?) territory during a politically tense period at the same time a US spy plane was in the area. The Russians(?) shot the plane down and it nearly started a war. The country the plane was from didn't believe it had strayed as far as the Russians(?) said it did. Eventually, the US government released radar data showing the position and path of this plane so that it would avoid a war. It showed this particular plane had grossly gone off course and entered Russian territory. The radar they had was capable of tracking every plane in the world 24x7. This was back a couple/few decades as well! Turned out the plane has set the wrong guidance system pre takeoff which was a terrible and extremely rare mistake. The US held out until the last moment to release this data as they didn't want anyone to know they had the capability. This leads me to believe some people somewhere know where this plane went down. I am not sure if I am recalling this precisely, but I 100% remember that the US government back then apparently has this radar tech.

throwaway092834 13y ago
It sounds like you're describing KAL007: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 There's a larger list of airliner shootdowns here, and this is the only incident which seems to match your recollection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inci... There's nothing in the wikipedia article about the USA's ability to track planes. We did have a radar station in AK, which may be what you're thinking of? According to wikipedia it didn't produce useful information, and wasn't necessarily tracking the plane at all points anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#U.S._Air_Force_radar_data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#U.S... I don't think we've ever had the ability to track all planes in the world.
- TomGullen 13y ago
  It'll take me ages to go through all the episodes of Mayday, but I'm certain in one of them the US released highly classified radar data to prevent a wider political catastrophe, and that the narrator described the source of the data was from a new type of radar that had the capability to track every plane in the world. The series is exceptionally well researched and presented.

msantos 13y ago

IMO Boeing and Rolls-Royce (the engine manufacturer) know more about that plane than Malaysia Airlines is letting off right now. Ref: (43:18) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2LosYIFUSEE&t=2598 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2L... Digging an oldie, Boeing still runs SCADA on both 747 and older 777. Going as far as reading engine stats in realtime via telnet.(http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/16696-FACT-CHECK-SCADA-Systems-Are-Online-Now.html http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/16696-FACT-CHECK-SCADA...)

rangersteve 13y ago

Is it possible to hack a transponder and make it appear to ATS that a plane is a legitimate craft? Would it be possible to have someone on the ground act as "ATC" and pass off the plane to an unsuspecting ACT so it can enter another countries air space?