The only reason that there is a PBE in the cockpit is because one is required to be near every fire extinguisher

Thanks, looks like the rule is FAR 121.337 (b) (9) (ii) which requires one PBE on the flight deck. The one per fire extinguisher rule is for the passenger compartment.

Please can you be more specific which facts this does not match in your opinion, rather than offering a blanket dismissal?

The final manouvere sent by transponder just after passing waypoint IGARI was a turn west to 040 degrees:

The last location tracked by Flightradar24 was
Time UTC: 17:21:03
Lat: 6.97
Lon: 103.63
Alt: 35000
Speed: 471 knots
Heading: 40

If an electrical problem developed then that would explain a turnback southwards

If the electrical problem led to a fire in cockpit O2 lines then that would explain sudden incapacitation.

Please be more specific which facts this theory does not match?

INMARSAT Doppler tracking confirms now that the aircraft flew a steady course at a steady altitude over 30,000ft

I think your theory is plausible. I just read the Egypt Air 667's accident report. That fire quickly developed and spread throughout the cockpit. Those pictures are shocking.

Additionally, Boeing knows of 29 known cockpit fires caused by electrical arcing in the cockpit windows. In many of those cases, flames were present. One American Airlines jet used two fire bottles on a window fire during an Atlantic Ocean crossing.

I heard on the news that ATC queried the crew several times about what altitude they were at prior to the handoff. Either they were lying (knowingly switched transponder off), or there was a system failure already in progress.

Anyone is still thinking of a successful ditching should look at this Telegraph video from a ship in the IO.

GF


mod note: this was later proven to be taken from a tanker in a hurricane back in Jan 2013. Journalistic integrity!

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...psb3784ba6.jpg

You mean it would break apart after explosive decompression like those of United Airlines B771, flight 811 in 1989, or like Aloha Airlines B732, Flight 243 in 1988?

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...psf646d0b2.png

I recall American Airlines flight 96 (Windsor incident) when a DC-10 lost its rear cargo door and structural falure in the rear fuselage and continued to fly to a safe landing

Also the British Airways BAC-111, Flt 5390 in 1990, in which the the cockpit windscreen blew out and the captain was sucked out?

How about the TAM Airlines Fokker 100 in 2001, when cabin was punctured by shrapnel from an uncontained engine failure?

Please can you provide conclusive proof that an airliner will not continue to fly after structural failure?

Thank you, my belief regards the transponder is either they were in a SSR radar black spot, or they were taking advantage of a radar black spot to make an illegal shortcut from IGARI to BIBAN bypassing BITOD, or that a creeping electrical failure disabled their transponder altogether.

That after an emergency turn back to southerly heading the aircraft kept flying on autopilot with crew expired.

I read a comment recently that pilot suicide in Silk Air has since been disproven, sorry i failed to note the source.

That being so I can only think of one airline pilot suicide being the JAL DC-8-62 which a co-pilot slammed into the sea short of a runway (Narita?) back in the late sixties (1968?)

The Egyptair flight 990 crash of 1999 was hotly disputed by Egyptian crash investigators and I have personally never accepted the NTSB findings from that crash. The Captain entered the cockpit and asked the co-pilot if he had closed the throttles... that and an uttered prayer are the only real proof. I believe electrical failure is another possibility.

The scenario which I suggested was that they were dealing with one problem (electrical) when another developed (decompressio/cockpit fire).

You are talking about a cool calm situation under control when dealing with only one problem at a time and not about a cascading multiple series of issues.

Useful consciousness at 35,000ft would be 30-60 seconds so you're telling us in a confusing cascading series of event it wouldn't matter cos the guys would just pull out the QRH and methodically work through solutions?

Please don't take this the wrong way but do you fly commercially for a living? Perhaps retired from flying airliners? Just wondering. There's book smart. Then there's street smart. I see a lot of book smart in you. But………. well never mind.

I don't think that's fair. I think his comments are very interesting and plausible. I knew of the Egypt Air B772 fire, but I've never read about it. After reading the accident report, that fire erupted and was out of control in seconds as is was fed by the FO's oxygen line.

Since you brought it up, what is he missing that doesn't make him street smart?

If there was an electrical problem it may be related to a possible oxygen-fed fire. In the Egyptair accident the fire was caused by a wire chafing inside the oxygen hose. The AD note replaces the hose with one that does not have a metallic wire. If the wire was shorting out you would expect a period of heating of the surrounding area (including wire bundles?) before the fire actually broke out.

Sy,

None of those structurally damaged planes would have flown for about 7 hours, as has been pretty much proved by INMARSAT engineering analysis. None failed to send out radio distress calls, none has their transponders disabled.

You seem to have a preconceived bias against human intervention, esp suicide by pilot (s). The NTSB opinions on both Egypt Air and Silk Air were pretty convincing on suicide with more data than you presented.

GF

Jon Stewart Just Said What Everyone's Thinking About The Coverage Of The MH370 Fiasco | Elite Daily

Yeah... that!

Except that video was posted onto YouTube in January 2013. It is a gas tanker, not a rescue vessel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aow2ErSP3dQ

The Telegraph have made fools of themselves.

Indeed they have! Learned of BS after posting

MODS: please delete.

GF

U.S. law firm plans to bring suit.......
 

:rolleyes:

(Reuters) - A U.S.-based law firm said it expects to represent families of more than half of the passengers on board the missing Malaysian Airlines flight in a lawsuit against the carriers and Boeing Co, alleging the plane had crashed due to mechanical failure.

The Beijing-bound flight MH370 disappeared more than two weeks ago, and was announced to have crashed into the remote southern Indian ocean with all 239 on board presumed to have died.

Chicago-based Ribbeck Law has filed a petition for discovery against Boeing Co, manufacturer of the aircraft, and Malaysian Airlines, operator of the plane in a Cook County, Illinois Circuit Court. The petition is meant to secure evidence of possible design and manufacturing defects that may have contributed to the disaster, the law firm said.

Though both Boeing and Malaysian Airlines were named in the filing, the focus of the case will be on Boeing, Ribbeck's lawyers told reporters, as they believe that the incident was caused by mechanical failure.

"Our theory of the case is that there was a failure of the equipment in the cockpit that may have caused a fire that rendered the crew unconscious, or perhaps because of the defects in the fuselage which had been reported before there was some loss in the cabin pressure that also made the pilot and co-pilot unconscious," Monica Kelly, head of Global Aviation Litigation at Ribbeck Law, told reporters.

"That plane was actually a ghost plane for several hours until it ran out of fuel."

Kelly said the conclusion was made based on experience on previous incidents, dismissing the possibilities of hijacking or pilot suicide.

The lawsuit, soon to be filed, would seek millions of dollars of compensation for each passenger and ask Boeing to repair its entire 777 fleet.

The law firm said it expected to represent families of more than 50 percent of the passengers on board the flight, but declined to give details on how many families have sought their representation in the case.

The court filing was not immediately available.

The petition was filed on behalf of Januari Siregar, whose son was on the flight. Siregar, a lawyer, had known Ribbeck's staff when working on a case involving Garuda Indonesia a few years earlier, Ribbeck said.

Additional pleadings will be filed in the next few days against other potential defendants that designed or manufactured component parts of the aircraft that may have failed, Kelly said.

Ribbeck is also asking that U.S. scientists be included in the search for wreckage and bodies, the firm said.

A spokesman for Boeing declined comment. A spokesman for Malaysian Airlines could not immediately be reached for comment.

Ribbeck is also representing 115 passengers in the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 in San Francisco in July.

Ribbeck only plans to file the case in the United States.

The absence of an identical precedent does not exclude a novel emergency scenario.

Aloha Airways' 737 as I understand was not at 35,000ft and electrical faults or fires were not an issue. Of course they made a distress call.

The United Airlines 747 out of Hawai was climbing through 17,000ft and did not have any electrical failure or fires. Nothing prevented them making a distress call.

With Egyptair 667 there was a loud popping sound and smoke... within 22 seconds there was flame and discharge of a fire extinguisher. The Co-pilot recalled later that as soon as he heard the popping he looked down and saw a 10 centimetre hole in the fuselage beside him. This was at sea level. Translate this to the same experience at 35,000ft.

Nor was Flight 667 a unique event...On 28 June 2008 an oxygen fed fire destroyed flight deck of a 767 awaiting departure at San Francisco.



Galaxy Flyer I am not here to debate Silk Air, or Egyptair Flight 990 and that is a distracting debate for another time and another place.

My bias against human intervention is simple psychology 101. If a single suicidal pilot or even a terrorist group wanted to destroy a planeload of people it would be based on a grievance and designed to send a message.

Western Intelligence sources have detected no internet or phone chatter about this crash as normally accompanies a significant act of terrorism. There has been no claim of credit by any terrorist organisation, no Jihadist message from a Martyr encouraging followers posted on Youtube. Nor any suicide note left by a pilot.

Were it either of the pilots with a grudge you would expect them to leave a recriminatory letter against those perceived to have wronged them.

When people create such grandiose acts it is an attention seeking move.

They don't disappear to the farthest corner of the earth with barely a peep of protest. Furthermore once committed to an act of suicide why wait 7.5 hours. Why not roll it on her back and pull it nose down straight into the sea?

The track of MH370 had nothing to do with an unidentified aircraft flying around the Straits of Malacca which climbed west towards the Andaman Islands. The Malaysian Government totally threw searchers off the trail.

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...ps94f5b8be.jpg

This image describes the approximate path to the Indian ocean as determined by Doppler analysis of signals received at INMARSAT.

Whilst authorities claim satellite signal analysis tipped them off it should be noted MH370 was probably observed in real time by Australian OTHR radar:

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...ps44a5d79f.jpg

Just so I understand, you're perfectly willing to consider a novel set of physical circumstances and outcomes, but the people involved must always act in a certain, preconceived way?

I will repeat, again, my position:

There is no factual information or intelligence-wise "leads" based information, or any indications, that this was terrorist related.

Because a bunch of rocket scientist self-appointed internet crash experts on APC have decided "it must be terrorism" and same group has reviewed past accidents and since "this has never happened" before, have concluded it is terrorism, does not make it so.

Again, as of now (03-26) we have no, none, zero, indications of terrorism (or suicide or similar mal-intent by people occupying the cockpit).

You are correct, there is no evidence of terrorism.


There is also no evidence of aircraft malfunction.

Nobody has come to a conclusion, they have offered their best guess to explain the several possible ways an aircraft like the 777 may go off the tracks and vanish.

If there are actual intel leads, you are not going to hear them on the news or from a paid general on cnn.

If there was an oxygen-fed fire in the cockpit that was caused by a short with the metal spring in the oxygen hose chafing with a wire bundle I can see how the transponder head and radio control heads could become disabled. It was not a case of the pilots turning off the transponder and not making radio calls, it was an instance of the wiring to those components being melted and burned. The pilots may well have put in an emergency transponder code and tried to make an emergency radio call to no avail.

So you use a few examples where structural failure DID NOT cause the loss of the aircraft and then want "conclusive proof" that it would happen?
So if you were to find some examples where structural failure DID cause the loss of the aircraft would you accept that as conclusive? :rolleyes:
You seem to like research.
I'll start you off with China Airlines 611 and JAL 123.
EasternATC nails it with respect to your ideas of psychology 101.
Always and never seldom work out. Try and remember that when you write your story.

If you did have a fire in the cockpit you would not necessarily have a structural failure. You would expect the pilots to depressurize the aircraft, descend, and head for the nearest suitable airport. The aircraft did descend, and did a 120 degree left turn in the general direction of an airport with a 12,500 foot runway.

An otherwise perfectly normal jumbo jet in the ocean is "evidence of an aircraft malfunction", at least for me. And the terrorist/suicide theory has gained a lot of fans on this thread, and in the media.

Absent information of that, the focus should be on mechanical problems/crew physiological impairment issues/etc

On what basis did you decide to focus on only one set of possible and plausible explanations?

Is it not possible to focus on all plausible explanations until they are proven to be incorrect?

It appears you are doing exactly what you are complaining about.:D

What about FedEx 705? In that incident there was a pilot who had a grudge against the company who tried to hijack the aircraft and crash it. His plan was to make it appear to be an accident so his family could collect his life insurance. He left no note or message of any kind behind.

I'm not saying this is definitely what happened to the Malaysian aircraft, but at this point we don't know enough to discount any theory.

I suspect I have a pretty good idea of how it all went down, but there's no way to know how it got started (accidental fire or deliberate action).

99% of the time there is time for at least one mayday mayday call out flying over the ocean that would be the first thing I would do. Very few malfunctions would take out all three radios, but going silent is the one of the things that can happen during a hijack or crew involvement.

Thank you for highlighting my point.

It is a possibility that the airframe would break up but not an absolute.

We all know with JAL 123 that the real problem there was loss of most of the tail fin and all hydraulics to flying controls.

With CAL 611 that was not just a mere decompression, but a failure to correctly stitch back the belly after a tailstrike concealed under a lap plate. That aircraft did not merely decompress, it unzipped. That is not a relevant example either because that was not an incident where the aircraft continued to fly.

What we are debating here is whether an aircraft that survives the initial decompression event would stay together structurally for another 7+ hours?

It is not 100% certain it would, but it is not 100% certain it would not.

It was you who demanded it was 100% likely to break up and I cited four examples where aircraft which survived horrific structural impairment continued to fly.

At 17:19 Zulu MH370 turned over IGARI from the previous 25 degree track to 40 degrees suggesting it was taking a shortcut to BIBAN bypassing BITOD. Last airspeed given by the transponder was 471 knots at 35,000. The reconstruction of INMARSAT data concluded it continued into the southern Indian Ocean in steady flight "above 30,000ft" and at an average 450kt. That might be a clue that all else being equal it suffered a 20kt decrease in speed.

I'm not sure I highlighted any point you made but gave my own that since very little (to nothing) is known for certain - that you can't make such statements either.

And it wasn't ME who demanded anything - - - so your reporting continues on an inaccurate path ;)

You were asked in a previous post if you were a professional pilot (or had been). Will you be sharing your experience with us?

I'll tell you what I would consider is a suicide note.

Not quite so. There was a sighting by oil rig worker Mike Mackay, on Song Mercur oil rig, who noted at the requisite time an aircraft west of himself in the vicinity of Ca Mau peninsula (circa waypoint BIBAN) on fire for 10 or 15 seconds before the flames went out. He said it continued to fly and did not seem to deviate left [south] or right [north] either coming towards him or going away. He said it was about 70 kilometres distant.

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...ps03ad7272.jpg


http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...psd9ebf4f9.jpg

That was the bogus story generated by the Malaysian Authorities, that it climbed to 45,000ft, turned west, then descended to 5,000ft "using terrain masking" and popped up again off Sumatra zig-zagging all over the Straits of Malacca before heading west climbing at 29,500ft.

No doubt it had a comic book hero at the controls.

Really? I'm looking at our Oceanic Driftdown Checklist, which have about 11 steps before making calls and touching the transponder.

You fell for that? There are volumes of UFO sightings you may want to look into. Any real aviation investigator or trial lawyer will tell you that eyewitness accounts are almost worthless, even those from otherwise well-qualified individuals.

Courtney Love claims she saw the wreckage from her aircraft complete with latlongs, are you going to buy that?

Big assumption, suicides don't always leave notes, terrorist do not try to take credit for failed missions, and nut cases always defy logic.

So this guy made the observation of a burning, intact plane, 30+ miles away, in the middle of the night? With what, Gen 3 NVG binoculars?

I hate to put it this way, but to back up what you are saying, I would find it highly unlikely a crew from Malaysia would deviate from the assigned flight path without notifying or getting permission from ATC. A US crew would have no problem immediately deviating in order to fight the problem (system failure, fire etc) and get pointed towards an emergency field, but I think it unlikely a crew from that part of the world would do something like that on their own.

Most US crews, facing (for instance) a fire, would immediately turn towards the emergency field, work the problem and tell ATC what they were doing when they had time (which could be a quick call simultaneously and "I'll get back to you in a minute").

That is why it makes sense that the turn was deliberate.