Re: Planespotting
 

Indeed - its pretty impossible to prove what was in someone's head, and there were plausible alternatives for both.

Re: Planespotting
 

The Egypt Air one was definitely considered a pilot suicide by everyone but the Egyptians.

Re: Planespotting
 

If it was the pilot(s), my guess is that he(they) had "a plan", because if it had been simple suicide they'd have just crashed it. But whatever the plan was (assuming it wasn't suicide), it appears to have failed, and MH370 is likely at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, IMO not that far from Africa.

Re: Planespotting
 

On the suicide thing, if it was that, who knows what was going through their mind(s). Maybe they didn't want to leave the relatives with the guilt of taking 238 other folk out with them. Maybe suicide is taboo in their religion, so they wanted to make it look like anything but suicide. Maybe it was something as simple as not voiding a life insurance policy. Maybe it was not having the balls to push the stick forward and fly it down...rather kid themselves into a soft option finish by simply flying past the point of no return.....who knows. Too many maybes which may never be answered.

I tend to agree with you about the outcome. I find it hard to believe that it landed and was hidden somewhere. I think it is probably at the bottom of the ocean somewhere by now, and if so, I guess the chances are pretty good that it may never be found.

Re: Planespotting
 

Even if they find the plane and the black boxes, it will likely shed very little light on what happened since 1970s technology is used for the black boxes. The black boxes still use tape and is over recorded every two hours so only information for the last two hours will be available.

Re: Planespotting
 

Technology has moved on a little, though your description is correct for modern solid state cockpit sound (voice) recorders (the most recent two hours of cockpit sound recording, compared to only 30 minutes for magnetic tape recorders which are no longer manufactured).

Solid state flight data recorders (FDR) were developed in the 1990's, and record many more parameters than the magnetic tape recorders did, upto 700 (the minimum for a large passenger jet is 88 parameters). The data does over-write, but most FDRs can now hold 17- 25 hours of data. FDRs using magnetic tape are no longer manufactured.

With the 777 being a modern aircraft, I have no doubt that the FDR has 17+ hours of data covering several hundred parameters.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/tra...black-box5.htm
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_data_recorder

Re: Planespotting
 

The 777 was originally introduced in 1995 so it is not that new and the average age of the Malaysian airline 777s are about 15 years old. I'm not sure if older planes were upgraded with the newer black boxes.

Also it has been less than 10 years that high capacity non volatile solid state memories have been economical and is likely that was not a high priority for the airline industry to upgrade the black boxes since 30 minutes to 2 hour recordings were generally considered sufficient. Also it was probably later that military specification parts were available that could withstand the shock and heat caused by a crash. It is probably unlikely that the FAA and/or other world regulatory agencies required the upgrade when they became available.

Finally from reports, it appears that MH370 only had 2 hour recording abilities.

Re: Planespotting
 

You may be right, but 9M-MRO wasn't manufactured until 2002.

BTW Media reports are often garbage, especially on technical matters. :nod:

Re: Planespotting
 

To build 25 hours of recording using non volatile memory in 2002 would have probably have required several large printed circuit boards and I'm not sure it that would have been considered reliable.

Today, it can probably be produced with 1 chip with multiple chips as backups in case the primary chip is damaged. It doesn't matter if the board is damaged as long as long as any one of the chips is not damaged.

Tape was originally considered suitable since even if part of the tape is damaged, some data can be retrieved from the tape but usually with solid state, if the chip is damaged, all data is lost. Hard drives probably wasn't suitable since a head crash could easily destroy all the data by hitting the surface of the platters (hard drive heads must never touch the surface of the platters and always float slightly above the platters).

Re: Planespotting
 

Interesting throw away comment I saw earlier today on one of the reports ( thought it was BBC, but can't find it now ) that the captains wife and family moved out of the family house a couple of days before the flight left...

Also that "they" are now investigating his home- made flight simulator to see if it could have been used to plan a takeover of the cockpit

Re: Planespotting
 

Intriguing! :unsure:

The Gateway Pundit
Stomp/ Singspore Seen

Re: Planespotting
 

Thanks for that.....I couldn't find it, and was starting to wonder if I dreamed that bit......:unsure:

The downside of your references is that it appears to give the impression I frequent the websites of the Mirror and the Mail...:o

In my searches, I did come across another comment that his kids were grown up and he had grand-kids, so not sure how accurate or relevant the original report is, which seemed to imply that the wife was leaving with young children.

Re: Planespotting
 

The part that I am still confused about is how the possible flight arc has been determined for MF370. I believe ACARS data has GPS coordinates but ACARS data was disabled. Also it is my understanding that GPS coordinates are produced by three different satellite IDs along with a time stamps that produce three different circles and the point that the circles intersect produces the GPS coordinates.

However even though ACARS data was turned off, apparently the ACARS low level handshaking (referred to as a ping) still occurs between the plane and satellites and it appears that someone figured out how long it took for the handshaking to occur allowing a circle from one satellite communications to take and therefore allowing a GPS circle to be created. A circle is created since all points on that circle have the same delay time. Apparently if they can find more satellites that communicated with MF370 ACARS, the GPS position of the plane can be determined (3 satellites required to get exact GPS coordinates).

How the circle was technically produced appears to be a secret and that is why everything is so vague.

Re: Planespotting
 

I have been thinking the same thing myself as there are a number of discrepancies and uncertainties in the "satellite ping" story, not least that it seems extremely improbable that a plane, any plane, would track a fictitious circle on the surface of the earth unless specifically programmed to do so, and in this case I don't think anyone on the plane even knew the satellite was there, tracking it. Also I assume there is some margin of error, so it would be interesting to know what the corridor width is, and whether a straight line (great circle) could have created the "circular" flight path implied by the satellite data.

Another piece of interesting information posted on CNN this evening is the suggestion that because of the flight stabilization algorithms in the 777 control software, that at least some of the movements of MH370, including substantial changes in altitude, and occasional changes in direction are consistent with uncontrolled flight without the autopilot engaged. This leaves the possibility of either a murder suicide on the flight deck, or one pilot barricading the other off the flight deck, perhaps followed by suicide. And as previously mooted, the possibility of the plane being taken to high altitude, whether accidentally or deliberately, would have caused everyone to pass out. Given that there doesn't appear to be a happy ending possible for this story, I believe that knowing that everyone on board flight MH370 was unconscious is perhaps as good an ending as we can now hope for? :unsure:

Pilot: there are other explanations.

Re: Planespotting
 

I think the circle is based on the 7th hour ping indicating that the plane was someplace on the circle during the 7th hour. Since they don't know where the plane was on the circle, the direction of the airplane, and the amount of fuel remaining, the search area would need to account for all of those unknowns. If they could get a second ping from another satellite during the 7th hour, the search area would be significantly narrowed and a 3rd satellite would tell them exactly where the plane was on the circle.

I suspect as they sift through the data, they will make a more accurate guess where the plane might have been reducing the search area. Currently all they know is that the plane was someplace on east half of the circle since there wouldn't have been enough time/fuel to get to the other half. However if the plane was consistently flying at 550 mph in one direction, it likely crashed in the south Indian ocean or in China. If they can create ping circles from earlier hours, that should then give the direction and speed of plane and possibly even the GPS coordinates of the 7th hour ping.