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Flight 370
- Thread starter Fiatpuntomk2b
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Flight 370
I think they had to physically look for the plane as it had stopped sending. It took a couple of years I think. Please check.
that was my understanding of the Air France search,
thanks Andy for the "black-box" info..,
FAR more than I'd found elsewhere.
Charlie
thanks Andy for the "black-box" info..,
FAR more than I'd found elsewhere.
Charlie
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Although widely and incorrectly believed by many to be: "Methinks the lady doth protest too much."Its a bastardised quote from a play/film I once saw in the dim and distant past and means someone loves the thing they are ridiculing I don't think its that secret if I'm honest
It's a quote, or misquote, from Hamlet by some bloke called Bill something or other and.............what the hell am I going on about?
This story (of MH370, not Lady Macbeth.......obviously) is continuing to develop day by day and more information is slowly coming to light.
Speaking to a colleague today who is ex-Royal Signals who was trying to explain how these satellites work, said that unless they cover a region that is under intense scrutiny, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine or Syria for example, the satellites will not be actively monitored round the clock, so the images of floating wreckage would have to looked for after the aircraft was reported missing. Remember, the aircraft would be reported overdue before it officially went missing. Questions may be asked why the alarm wasn't raised earlier as after passing from Malaysian ATC it would have been taken over by Vietnamese Controllers.
It's also worth remembering that the Chinese, Indonesian and whoever else is a regional superpower would be trying to assess how advanced Malaysia's radar systems are so they wouldn't have been over keen to give all their secrets away.
My knowledge of radar technology is pretty scant, but it's also worth remembering that radar actually works by line of sight. The horizon is roughly 3 miles away if someone is standing on a beach looking out to sea. If the radar installation is raised above sea level that increases the range and if the object is flying at 35,000 feet that also makes it easier to be picked up by radar.
During the Battle of Britain the early radar stations could pick up aircraft at about 100 miles but the further away the object is, the more vague the image will be.
However, while boats and ships over a certain size are required to be fitted with a transponder, known as AIS, commercial aircraft are also required to be fitted with something similar which is where the so-called "Pings" picked up by Inmarsat's satellites came from.
There were also media reports that said the presence of 200kgs of Lithium Ion batteries which have, in the past, caught fire. I put this to an aquaintance who works for an air freight handler and he said that almost every aircraft flying carries Li-ion batteries. He also said that the batteries in the bar-cart reader that the cabin crew use when you buy your duty free has more powerful batteries than those used in laptops and other devices and just as likely to burst into flames. When that has happened in the past the Press jumps on the bandwagon and people remember those incidents.
We'll have to wait until the wreckage is located and can be examined. Hopefully the Cockpit Voice and Flight Recorders can be found and then we'll find out why the electronics were turned off and the aircraft changed course.
In the meantime, perhaps we need to remember that over 200 people have lost their lives and that for those among us who feel it is appropriate, we should remember them and pray for them.
That would explain why I couldn't remember where I heard it from that Bill fella was an overated hack who was good at self promotion :devil:
Back on topic
I'm not sure if we will ever know the truth about this plane. The cost of the search will become too prohibitive and as hope for finding survivors deminishes then the will to keep looking will fade. Unless there is still a suspicion that the plane has landed somewhere and is being hidden.
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I think the co pilot has either taken out "the infidels", tried to find Atlantis or has decided to commit suicide and vanish in mystery assuming no one would ever find them as he didn't factor in the British being right clever, hence gaining a sort of notoriety.
The search will definitely go on, although quite possibly at a reduced intensity. They'll have to keep going even if it takes decades, they'll need to find the answers otherwise they'll never know if there was an engine, avionic, hydraulic or airframe failure; or if indeed it was down to hi-jacking or suicide.
In the late 1940s Britain led the commercial aviation world with the de Havilland Comet 1. Unfortunately, several fell out of the sky and, although it took a while, they eventually worked out that it was metal fatigue. If you look at that aircraft you can see it had square windows (portholes) which is the area where the failures occurred. Which is why you'll never see an airliner nowadays with square windows.
On the Air France Airbus that crashed into the Atlantic en-route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro a Pitot Tube became blocked by ice and as this was a method of measuring airspeed the Autopilot disconnected because the electronics believed the speed had dropped too much and the crew would have to take over. Alas, when they did, they didn't carry out the correct actions. At this point it all got too technical for me, but as far as I remember, because the (very experienced) crew didn't deal with the situation correctly and the aircraft stayed in a "stall" attitude and gradually lost speed and altitude until it hit the water.
When the aircraft was found on the bottom of the sea it was in a very compact area which was mainly, if my memory serves me correctly, due to the plane hitting the aircraft at a remarkably low speed. In fact below the speed at which it would have normally landed. If the Malaysian 777 ran out of fuel or the pilot decided to fly into the sea it would have struck the water at a much higher speed and be broken up over a wider area than the French jet.
A comparison was made earlier in this thread with the US aircraft that came down in the River Hudson in New York a few years ago. If you look at this well known clip of a hi-jacked aircraft that ran out of fuel........and then put it into deep water 1,500 miles from land with very high winds and the chance of anyone surviving will be very remote. On the smooth water in the You Tube clip many people still died.
In the late 1940s Britain led the commercial aviation world with the de Havilland Comet 1. Unfortunately, several fell out of the sky and, although it took a while, they eventually worked out that it was metal fatigue. If you look at that aircraft you can see it had square windows (portholes) which is the area where the failures occurred. Which is why you'll never see an airliner nowadays with square windows.
On the Air France Airbus that crashed into the Atlantic en-route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro a Pitot Tube became blocked by ice and as this was a method of measuring airspeed the Autopilot disconnected because the electronics believed the speed had dropped too much and the crew would have to take over. Alas, when they did, they didn't carry out the correct actions. At this point it all got too technical for me, but as far as I remember, because the (very experienced) crew didn't deal with the situation correctly and the aircraft stayed in a "stall" attitude and gradually lost speed and altitude until it hit the water.
When the aircraft was found on the bottom of the sea it was in a very compact area which was mainly, if my memory serves me correctly, due to the plane hitting the aircraft at a remarkably low speed. In fact below the speed at which it would have normally landed. If the Malaysian 777 ran out of fuel or the pilot decided to fly into the sea it would have struck the water at a much higher speed and be broken up over a wider area than the French jet.
A comparison was made earlier in this thread with the US aircraft that came down in the River Hudson in New York a few years ago. If you look at this well known clip of a hi-jacked aircraft that ran out of fuel........and then put it into deep water 1,500 miles from land with very high winds and the chance of anyone surviving will be very remote. On the smooth water in the You Tube clip many people still died.
