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MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- trhway 13y agopeople install satellite security systems on $200K cars. Couldn't airlines do the same on a $100M plane.
- JacobAldridge 13y agopeople fit 239 passengers in a plane. Couldn't manufacturers do the same with cars? Fallacy by analogy. It's a fair question (off hand), but it falls down when other factors are considered (cars don't normally drive for hours over water, for example).
- trhway 13y ago>Fallacy by analogy. or may be you just saw in my post an analogy to the fallacy by analogy >cars don't normally drive for hours over water, for example how that would affect the satellite communication?
- JacobAldridge 13y agoSee here for the long answer - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-26544554 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-26544554 The short answer, as I understand it, is: 1) Most communications technology, including satellites, is focused on where most people are communicating - ie, on land; ie, on 1/8th of the earth's surface 2) As you correctly point out, satellites over water aren't as obvious a problem as, say, mobile phone towers in the Indian Ocean, but the cost to retrofit existing aircraft is considered prohibitive given the rarity of this type of situation (ie, existing communication systems work well, and in this case seem to have been deliberately turned off anyway - so a different system is likely to have proved no more helpful).
- lostlogin 13y agoThere isn't much precedent for this, and the vague stories which do exist are uncommon. Car theft is common and is a real risk.
- jonah 13y agoYes, but due to regulations/training/maintenance/international standardization/etc. it's a major effort to do so.
- storborg 13y agoYes, and they do. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance-broadcast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillan... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Communications_Addressing_and_Reporting_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Communications_Addres... These systems were manually disabled.
- 001sky 13y agoPoint is a $100 spot device could be added (powered by Li AA's) as a backup system. This would have independent power supply and obviate the "need for cicuit breakers" being accessed. Or something like a lo-jack or whatever. Its completely embarassing to Boeing. Almost as bad as the pilot has a 64mb i phone and the [edit: voice recorders] holds only 2hrs? WTF. An Iphone might not itself survive, but the media allocations for the seem absyrdly low.
- Aloha 13y agoYes, but the FDR is designed to survive multi-g impacts - how well would that smart phone survive?
- TylerE 13y agoSolid state storage is pretty resilient.
- 001sky 13y agoThe spot device doesn't need to survive a crash, just needs to send out a GPS ping once every 10 minutes. ie to give a fix on where the crash is would be sufficient.
- TylerE 13y ago10 minutes isn't nearly enough. Remember you're talking about something moving at 8-10 miles per minute, 10 minutes, so worse case your solution will give a range about the size of Iowa.
- DigitalSea 13y agoYou make it sound so simple, when in reality it is anything but simple. Every component in a plane is tested extensively before it can be installed and used. When it comes to electronic components in a plane, things like interference to other aircraft, other components on the plane, power usage and interference to ground devices (radio stations, emergency frequencies, etc) are all tested and considered. Planes are massive powerhouses of technological wonder, adding something new into such a machine would take considerable amounts of time and even then once you've got it installed, who is going to maintain it? You've got to pay for access to a satellite for the data to be tracked, where is the data stored? Is the data encrypted? How do you make sure only the eyes intended to see the data see it and nobody else? What kind of redundancy is there if the satellite security system fails? Does the plane need bigger batteries to power such a device, where does the power come from? There are rules and processes to follow in the aviation industry and they're very strict. And that's just the hardware, then you've got to write the software, make sure it doesn't interfere with anything else on the plane, then you've got to make it work for different planes, planes wired differently, different hardware/software, controls. You're testing two different halves that make a whole. One does not simply just install a new piece of technology into a plane. There's no DIY kit you can buy from Tandy. Then there is a cost vs risk calculation thrown into the equation here. How often does a plane just vanish like this? It doesn't happen very often and probably not enough to warrant spending hundreds of millions of dollars implementing a terrorist proof tracking/data collection system. Cars are stolen everyday, it's a common thing, for planes it is not. If things were that easy, they would have already done so, trust me. Nobody wants to see their planes return more than the airline who paid for the plane, paid for the maintenance, paid for the staff & fuel and need it to help recoup the costs and make the business money. Are we also not forgetting planes have quite good data capturing and positioning systems already? The transponder was disabled which was the easy one (a flick of a switch) but the ACARS maintenance tracker was also disabled and as already highlighted, without advanced knowledge of the planes internals, isn't something you can just disable with the flick of a switch. Other advanced fall-back tracking methods were disabled, this isn't something your standard pilot would know about.
- trhway 13y ago>Cars are stolen everyday, it's a common thing, for planes it is not. from time to time planes crash over ocean and search for black boxes may take years like Air France 447 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Underwater_search http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Underwate...)
- quaunaut 13y agoFar as I know, if your car goes over the Indian Ocean you're gonna lose signal pretty quick, right?
- adamnemecek 13y agoIf only airlines employed someone with your acumen. You are most definitely the first person ever to have that thought. But now that that is out of the way there is nothing in the way.
- BadassFractal 13y agoIgnoring for the sake of argument the tragedy of hundreds of people getting murdered / kidnapped, this is the most captivating news event we've had in a while.
- carlosdp 13y agoSeriously though, nearly every unlikely theory has ended up being the truth. That just doesn't happen very often.
- confluence 13y agoWe really don't know much more than comms went down, no problems were reported, plane went up/down in altitude in the extreme (killing passengers?), headed west into the Indian ocean and either headed north or crashed into the ocean.
- mehwoot 13y agoUm... every unlikely theory except for one is going to turn out to be wrong, and we don't know what happened yet.
- courtneypowell 13y agoI'm curious, is the possibility that the passengers are still alive being discussed by any major news outlet? I have read tons of coverage but the authors implicitly state the passengers are lost.
- lucaspiller 13y agoAfter all that has happened, anything seems possible. Don't give up hope.
- fiatmoney 13y agoThe only circumstances in which they would be alive would be if it was a hijacking, the plane landed relatively safely, and they were being held hostage & incommunicado somewhere. It does seem the unlikeliest of possibilities at this point.
- pizza 13y ago> Today, Reuters reports that the last words from the cockpit of missing MH370 – "all right, good night" – were uttered after someone on board had already begun disabling one of the plane's automatic tracking systems.
- jonah 13y agoI wouldn't necessarily read that in and of itself ominously. They said that as they were leaving Malaysian air traffic control jurisdiction. That the ACARS had already been disabled is what's interesting.
- agwa 13y ago> Both the timing and informal nature of the phrase, spoken to air traffic controllers as the plane was leaving Malaysian-run airspace could further heighten suspicions of hijacking or sabotage, it said. I've listened to a fair amount of air traffic control[1] and a phrase like that, especially when signing off of a frequency, is not at all unusual so I don't know why they're focusing on its informality. [1] thanks to United offering it on one of their inflight entertainment channels
- devindotcom 13y agoI think they mean that because this casual phrase came after the deactivation of the ACARS system, it implies the guy who said "good night" knew it was disabled and likely had done it himself and concealed the fact.
- plorg 13y agoI was under the impression that this was supposed to imply that, because the transponders were off, the pilot would likely be aware of _something_ being awry (if even just that the transponders were acting up). Thus, an informal, nonchalant response might suggest that the transponders were intentionally disabled, and that would feed a suspicion of foul-play.
- exDM69 13y agoIf you want to practice your radio comms skills or just want some soothing radio chatter to calm your mind, you can get live air traffic control feeds from here: http://www.liveatc.net/ http://www.liveatc.net/ Indeed, informal greetings like the one mentioned in the article are not at all rare. Real life ATC communication is not the robot-like mechanical talking you might be used to from video games or movies.
- confluence 13y agoI'd still bet on ocean crash. Flying low or not, heading across the Bay of Bengal towards land, and you're going to get pinged with military radar.
- jonah 13y agoIndia claims to not have their military radar on all the time. "Too costly."
- pinkskip 13y agoSource?
- jonah 13y agohttp://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/15/us-malaysia-airlines-defence-idUSBREA2E0JT20140315 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/15/us-malaysia-airlin... via http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10700892/Malaysia-Airlines-MH370-plane-crash-live.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/1070...
- pinkskip 13y agoThanks.
- sidww2 13y agoThat's only for the Andaman and Nicobar islands though which are very far from the mainland. I'd be surprised if there's no 24/7 radar for the mainland.
- confluence 13y agoStill have to hit landfall. The chance of them threading that needle is low. I highly doubt the south east Asian mainland coast is not fully monitored.
- l33tbro 13y agoGetting rather bored with folks around me who seem to be treating this like it's another HBO boxset. I agree with you - and I think a lot of people just really seem to enjoy the experience of speculating and entertaining these fantastical, mysterious theories. The reality is that it probably landed in the drink some time ago.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- elwell 13y agoThat's not that low.
- qoo 13y agoIt crashed. If the hijackers have landed the plane successfully, they would have made their motives and demands known to the world by now.
- lfuller 13y agoI may be missing something, but this seems like a very misleading headline. The actual article states that the plane "dropped 5,000 feet (1,500m)" and later that the "twinjet descended 1,500m or even lower". This simply means that the plane descended by a relatively small amount compared to 35,000 - 40,000 foot cruising altitudes, not that it was skimming the ground at 5,000 feet.
- 001sky 13y agoConfirmed here, you may just be picking up a typo: "There are reports around in the last hour or so, claiming new information that the plane dropped <to> an altitude 5000 feet" http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/17/mh370-contact-missing-plane-communications-disabled http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/17/mh370-contact-m...
- lutusp 13y agoYes, noticed this also, but I think the headline was written by someone other than the source of the article. I think the article is meant to say descended 1500m, not descended to 1500m. Nothing in the article body suggests a descent to 1500m, and that would be a very inefficient altitude to fly a big jet.
- 001sky 13y agoThis is the article referenced by the guardian, its language is (properly) articulared in much better english. Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 dropped to altitudes as low as 1524 metres (5000 feet) using a dangerous flying technique called “terrain masking” to avoid radar in at least three countries, investigators believe. http://www.smh.com.au/world/missing-malaysia-airlines-jet-may-have-flown-under-radar-investigators-20140317-hvjlf.html http://www.smh.com.au/world/missing-malaysia-airlines-jet-ma...
- lutusp 13y agoThanks for this update and clarification.
- geuis 13y agoHonest question. Would it have been possible for the plane to make it to North Korea?
- Cowen 13y agoNot without refueling somewhere. They didn't have enough gas to make it too far past Beijing. [0] [0]- http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/interactive/2014/03/world/malaysia-flight-map/media/mh370-range.jpg http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/interactive/2014/03/world/malays...
- tim333 13y agoActually according to the Washington Post they did have enough fuel for N Korea http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/new-twist-in-the-hunt-for-missing-plane/2014/03/13/dcee10da-aae6-11e3-98f6-8e3c562f9996_graphic.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/new-twist-in-the-hunt-fo...
- lutusp 13y agoNo, too far away -- the possible flying radius after contact was lost has been pretty well established, and North Korea is well outside that radius. Also, when last detected, they were flying in the opposite direction.
- geuis 13y agoSee tim333's reply and link. It had enough fuel to reach NK
- yongjik 13y agoChina is pretty much the only (reluctant) sponsor of the abomination that is NK. They wouldn't kidnap a plane with 100+ Chinese citizens. Frankly, I think they'd rather try to nuke Seoul first. (Just my two cents.)
- devindotcom 13y agoMore likely to land somewhere small and tumultuous, a decommissioned airbase in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. NK is too closely monitored.
- gklitt 13y agoWhat a poorly written article. It twice says that the plane "dropped/descended 1500m," when it should be written "dropped TO [an altitude of] 1500m." (assuming I'm understanding the article correctly). A newspaper should at least have sufficient grammar standards to clearly convey the main point of a story.
- lutusp 13y ago> What a poorly written article. It twice says that the plane "dropped/descended 1500m," when it should be written "dropped TO [an altitude of] 1500m." As it turns out, only the headline suggests that the plane descended to an altitude of 1500m, not the article body, which always says the aircraft descended 1500m. The headline includes the words "MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection" [emphasis added], but this language is never repeated in the article itself. It's important also to say this article may have been translated from Malay, which could affect its readability. > A newspaper should at least have sufficient grammar standards to clearly convey the main point of a story. Fair enough, but I think the headline didn't originate with the source of the article.
- gregsq 13y ago"Descended 1500 meters, or even lower" has less substantive meaning than "descended to 1500 meters, or even lower". The same is true of the other phrase containing the 1500 metre measure. Bad construction, but I'll assume they simply left out the 'to' in both instances.
- yen223 13y ago>It's important also to say this article may have been translated from Malay, which could affect its readability. The article was from the New Straits Times, which is an English-language newspaper. The initial report may have been written in Malay though.
- suyash 13y agoMy wild guess: I think the plane was hijacked and taken to Iran (as there were iranians in the plane with stolen passport) or to Pakistan.
- confluence 13y agoThis is probably the dumbest theory I've heard so far. You can just render them in Europe and corporate jet them to anywhere on the planet. No, let's take the entire god damn airliner! /sarcasm Do conspiracy theorists even think their theories through before they say them? I'm guessing no.
- rphlx 13y agoMy guess is that the US, Russian, and Chinese militaries have the interest, and operational ability, to track every in-flight commercial jet all over the world. The IR signature alone makes a commercial jet obvious at any altitude as long as the engines are running. So MH370 is probably not lost; its final position is just being concealed by military protocol to avoid confirming satellite capabilities that have, in all likelihood, existed since the 1960s.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoWhy would the US deploy such satellites to view the southern Indian Ocean? I could understand deployment in potential areas of interest, but that particular area is about as boring as it gets. My point is that even if those capabilities exist, it's not clear that they would be able to help in this particular case.
- adamcanady 13y agoUnless the satellites are in geosync, it's likely they are orbiting and could just randomly come across the correct area at that time. If not, I'm wondering why people like Skybox [1] didn't deploy resources immediately to start covering ground. It seems like that approach would be much more effective than ships in the ocean? [1] http://skyboximaging.com/ http://skyboximaging.com/
- Maxious 13y agoThere is a protocol to task satellites to cover emergencies which was used in this case http://www.disasterscharter.org/web/charter/activation_details?p_r_p_1415474252_assetId=ACT-482 http://www.disasterscharter.org/web/charter/activation_detai... Skybox is also contributing and has this visualisation of the Search Efforts with Satellites to date including those that are needed to cover the expanded search area http://www.skyboximaging.com/news/in-search-of-malaysia-airlines-flight-370 http://www.skyboximaging.com/news/in-search-of-malaysia-airl...
- sigterm 13y agoI would think nuclear submarines can just pop up anywhere in the ocean.
- zaroth 13y agoWould have to be a pretty hardened pilot to take a 777 down to FL 50 and keep her there anywhere except approach. "Experts said flying a Boeing 777 in such a way would be dangerous, stressing the airframe and possibly causing those on board to be air sick and suffer from spatial disorientation." This truly meets the definition of incredible. How could you be that good, but then end up crashing the plane? If you are that good, then you are not going to crash that plane.
- sidww2 13y agoUnless you're trying to commit suicide. But then why would fly northwards instead of southwards if you want to commit suicide? I've a hard time believing the 5000 ft statement. But if it's true, then well, damn.
- raquo 13y agoHaving read the article, I think the journalist got confused – what is stressful and requires insane skills is flying very low, following the terrain between mountains/hills. However, flying a mile high is only slightly different from flying 6 miles high in terms of stress experienced or skill required.
- chrissnell 13y agoMilitary-style nap-of-the-earth flying, à la the raid on the bin Laden compound. Those SOAR pilots surely have practiced this stuff for years. How would a civilian pilot (or hijacker pilot) acquire these skills? Flight simulator perhaps? The pilot had a fancy flight simulator at home. Now, there are plenty of legitimate reasons that a pilot would have a simulator at home, so we can't pin too much to this discovery. Lots of pilots buy small planes after they retire because they still love flying and he might have built this simulator because it was fun. Other articles describe him as a hardware geek and mention his YouTube videos demonstrating his homebrew simulator consoles. Still, it seems suspicious to me, especially in context of the recent revelation that the transponder and tracking systems were disabled prior to MH370 signing off with Malaysian ATC. Four days ago, I thought that a Central Asian hijacking scenario was next to impossible. Today, I'm not so sure.
- Ryel 13y agoWhen things like this happen I always wonder if there are any agencies that still consult "psychics"
- tim333 13y agoBetter written version of the story: http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/9836664/Malaysian-jet-avoided-radars-in-three-countries http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/9836664/Malaysian-jet-avoi...
- cookingrobot 13y agoWhy would it be hard to fly at an altitude of 1.5km over the ocean?
- lutusp 13y agoIt's not a question of hard, it's just not an efficient way to fly such a big jet and it uses up fuel at a high rate. But various sources suggest that the plane really did fly this low, in order to evade radar, and the confusion surrounding this particular article is resolved elsewhere to mean "descended to 1500m" at least for a while.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoEinstein-Rosen Bridge transported it to ancient Prylaxo Civilization on Sa03-P5 of Sector 401B.
- jnsaff2 13y agoThis article lost me midway second sentence. "to evade commercial (secondary) radar coverage after it turned back from its flight path en route to Beijing." Secondary (used by ATC) radar is based on transponders responding (the very thing that was switched off). Primary radar is usually military and does not need any device being on or off.