Missing Malaysian A...
 

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[Closed] Missing Malaysian Aircraft - is it possible...

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at this point one of them would have text somebody they love just incase worse case scenario

I don't think we can draw too many conclusions from this - mobile phones don't work everywhere!

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 12:18 pm
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The only scenario that seems to hold water is the robbery scenario, something valuable in the hold so make the plane dissapear while half inching it.

I think you're missing another highly plausible and sensible scenario:
[img] [/img]

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 12:20 pm
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no conclusions nope - but given the plane did a uturn over malaysia for no reason what so ever (at present and the transponder was turned off just before), if it had been alight and on fire at that point (which you'd expect given thats where it suddenly diverted back on itself), the passengers would have been informed something was wrong surely?? or even if they were still unaware the pilot or similar would have been able to do so? even with a mobile, id have thought in those 8 hours flying, especially at the start of the u-turn they would have had some form of signal between 240 people to make an emergency call!

and theres the co-pilot too, unless of course both of these people were under the influence of somebody else and instructed not to do anything

its just very very fishy, i think theres already been to many variables to ever say this was just a disaster, and mechanical failure or smoke overcome everyone, if there was smoke and it continued for hours surely there was a fire, and fires spread, they dont last for 8 hours continuoulsly flying with god knows how much fuel in the tanks, surely they would have blown too

again its baffled everyone really, and as its so baffling it probably suggests foul play somewhere, probably via a very very clever pilot who knew what he was doing

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 12:26 pm
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How does onboard fire + venting cabin pressure and climbing to starve it of oxygen + onboard oxygen runs out before they can safely descend = incapacitated crew/unconcious passengers/fire out, and a ghost flight to nowhere that disappears without trace?

Just call me Columbo. 🙂

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 12:35 pm
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The thing the fire theory doesn't take into account is the fact that contact was lost at the point of comms transfer between Malaysia & Vietnam. That timing may be coincidental, but if I was trying to make a plane vanish, that would be the best time to do it as there is going to be a longer period before anyone notices that they aren't in contact. You'd have to be on the flight deck at this point waiting for this to happen. I think that is suspicious, but anyone who thinks that we are doing anything but guessing at this point is deluding themselves.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 1:03 pm
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CobraKai - London.

The Megashark is as likely as most of the other theories being spouted!!!!! Says it all really.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 1:14 pm
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How does onboard fire + venting cabin pressure and climbing to starve it of oxygen + onboard oxygen runs out before they can safely descend = incapacitated crew/unconcious passengers/fire out, and a ghost flight to nowhere that disappears without trace?

Build in the turns after it had crossed Malaysia into that scenario (as confirmed by Thai and Malaysian miliatry radar).

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 1:28 pm
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Build in the turns after it had crossed Malaysia into that scenario (as confirmed by Thai and Malaysian miliatry radar).

Oh, that was megashark.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 1:31 pm
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I have wondered in general...

What happens if both the Captain and Co Pilot both die on the flight deck whilst the door is locked?

Does the cabin crew know the code for the door?

Or does the aircraft just keep flying until it runs out out of fuel with lots of people trying to break the door down? Horrible way to go...

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 1:33 pm
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Does the cabin crew know the code for the door?

They know how to get in, yes.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 1:34 pm
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Does that not make them a target for hijackers then? Open the door or I'm gonna cut your face off scenario?

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 1:37 pm
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Holy shit I've just read that link. What a way to die for the guy trying to save that flight! Gutting!

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 1:44 pm
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id hope if it was oxygen loss that the passengers were also all unconscious rather than awake for the entire flight

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 1:44 pm
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id hope if it was oxygen loss that the passengers were also all unconscious rather than awake for the entire flight

Emergency supply only lasts long enough for a descent to below 10,000', so if it stayed at cruising altitude they'd all be unconscious / dead.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 2:14 pm
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^^^ the link to the greek one, stated an air steward entered the cockpit 2 hrs after air loss!

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 2:32 pm
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Dan, I work LL buz/wob and bpk's and lam/bnn inbounds. Don't have much to do with kk.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 2:37 pm
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[quote=toys19 ]

such as ACARS being turned off before the last radio comms and several changes of course being made after last contact.

This has been clarified and is not proven.

Both pretty well established facts - the turns based on radar tracks from 2 different countries. I'd suggest that scenarios which don't allow for those happenings are far, far less likely. No matter how implausible a deliberate flight into the South Indian Ocean might seem, it's about the only one which does fit with the known information, so anything else is less likely.

BTW the pilots didn't deliberately climb to starve a fire of oxygen - that's not in any standard procedure for fire.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 2:52 pm
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I didn't think it was likely, to be fair - but this whole thing is such a mystery, the only scenario that seems entirely unlikely is that the culprit will be unmasked by Scooby Do, and he would have got away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 2:56 pm
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low oxygen due to fire, pilots tried to reprogramme plane to fly back knowing O2 was short, but messed it up/ never finished it?

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 2:57 pm
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ACARS wasn't definitely turned off before the last Tx. The last recorded response was beforehand, but it only pings every hour, therefore it could have been turned off at any point in between the two pings, which takes in the period both before and after the last voice contact.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 3:11 pm
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CobraKai - I fly both LL & KK, so no doubt we've spoken!

ACARS is a satellite communication system used when out of normal radio range - basically a satellite based txt msg system. It automatically sends a report from the a/c to ATC when a waypoint is crossed. Over the Atlantic, for example, waypoints are often 45 min apart, so no msg for 45 min doesn't necessarily mean it was switched off 45 min ago. If the link is actually terminated, the other party is notified, so ATC will know exactly what time the link terminated.

As for mobile phones, there is NO Mobile coverage at high altitude. Also, more than 5 miles offshore I doubt you'd get a signal either, so no matter what happened you wouldn't get people using mobiles.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 3:23 pm
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Helios522- That is a very sad read. At least he went down fighting, if you could say that with decorum.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 3:36 pm
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[quote=dantsw13 ]ACARS is a satellite communication system used when out of normal radio range - basically a satellite based txt msg system.

I accept that you're a pilot of these things, so maybe should know, but I'm afraid that is incorrect - ACARS is a datalink protocol which is used over VHF and HF as well as Satcom - in fact from the information provided Malaysian had no contract to send ACARS over Satcom, so updates were only via VHF.

Can't find a reference right now, but I'm fairly sure they did determine that ACARS was acually turned off before the last radio message, rather than it simply failing to report again - there was much discussion of this issue on pprune. I think they also determined that the transponder was turned off before the last radio message, but less sure about that. I believe it was also suggested that the last ACARS report had the programmed turn back in it (well before the last radio message), but that may have been a rumour.

Oh and kimbers, as already discussed above that scenario doesn't fit in with the very well established fact of the turns after passing over the Malaysian peninsula.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 3:54 pm
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Aracer - you are correct. ACARS is being used as a term to cover all datalink communications between the aircraft and ground agencies, whereas in reality there are many independent systems, all controlled and linked through central processors. I was trying to talk in laymans terms, as being discussed elsewhere.

I don't know exactly what Malaysian Airlines 777's have on board, but I'm pretty certain what we are talking about is the CPDLC system, used to keep datalink comms between the a/c and ATC in remote areas, such as the South China Sea. It's pretty hard to tell, as much of the info released is from news agencies, on whom the intricacies of such details are lost.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:07 pm
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[quote=dantsw13 ]It's pretty hard to tell, as much of the info released is from news agencies, on whom the intricacies of such details are list.

It's worse than that - most of them seem to be willfully ignorant of many of the important details of how aircraft systems (and comms systems in particular) work, hence are actually misreporting stuff. I should point out that whilst I don't have any direct experience of the aircraft systems we're talking about, as mentioned upthread I have worked on comms systems on military aircraft and know quite a bit about stuff like this in general (apart from being an aviation fan and so knowing quite a bit from that perspective).

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:12 pm
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aracer, I was only talking about the acars not the turns. I'll find you the link, clarified by the malaysians that they do not know for sure if the ACARS was deliberatly turned off before the last transmission.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:14 pm
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Thanks Imnotverygood.

Quote below from [url= http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/18/-sp-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-how-the-search-has-unfolded-day-by-day ]here, scroll down to Monday[/url]

Malaysia said it believed the final spoken words from the plane came from Fariq, the co-pilot, not his colleague or an intruder on the flight deck. However, they appeared to backtrack from their earlier belief that the words were spoken after communications devices were deliberately switched off.

The co-pilot of the missing Malaysian plane’s last words heard from the cockpit were ‘all right, good night’, according to the airline’s chief executive
The voice communication came at 1.19am, two minutes before the plane’s transponder was seemingly turned off. While the last signal from the Acars data communication system came earlier, at 1.07am, it was not due to transmit again until 30 minutes later, Hishammuddin, the interim transport minister, told reporters, meaning that could have seemingly been turned off at any point before 1.37am.

So they say the last transmission was made between the possible window of when ACARS went off..
It still leaves the window open for accident rather than deliberate.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:21 pm
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& the part of the system they seem to be referring to is the FMS interface automatically reporting the a/c health to Airline Ops.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:25 pm
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Ah, fair enough - I'd missed that. I'll take back my comments about ACARS being turned off (what is explained there is what I assumed the situation was before it was stated that they knew it had been turned off). It seems I was also incorrect about the transponder.

We are however still left with the turns, confirmed by two sets of radar, which do not correspond with any scenario involving the pilots being disabled.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:28 pm
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We are however still left with the turns, confirmed by two sets of radar, which do not correspond with any scenario involving the pilots being disabled.

No but they do not preclude some kind of evolving diasater..

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:30 pm
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What sort of evolving disaster would result in a series of turns and the aircraft then flying on for another 7 hours? All of this with the pilots incapacitated.

Whatever explanation you might have for that, it is doubtless far, far less likely than the more straightforward explanation of it all being flown deliberately. I'm still not sure why people are so reluctant to accept that explanation.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:35 pm
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I suspect there was a zombie out break on the plane and to save civilization as we know it the pilots flew it out over the most remote bit of ocean they could find before crashing it into the sea.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:37 pm
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It's the apparent lack of motive aracer

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:39 pm
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Ming the Merciless - Member

I suspect there was a zombie out break on the plane and to save civilization as we know it the pilots flew it out over the most remote bit of ocean they could find before crashing it into the sea.

Anyone who's read World War Z knows that an ocean isn't enough to stop teh zombies!

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:43 pm
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I do not have an explanation, I have absence of evidence, therefore it is all conjecture.
Could have been deliberate, could have been an accident.

I'm happy to accpet whatever conclusion comes out of the investigation.
Right now I am not 100% convinced that the investigators have got it all correct and I think there is still a possibility that none of the "debris" identified so far is from mh370.
That may well change in the next few hrs..

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:44 pm
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What sort of evolving disaster would result in a series of turns and the aircraft then flying on for another 7 hours? All of this with the pilots incapacitated.

two assumptions there.

The plane was powered up for 7 hrs
The pilots may not have been incapcatiated.

Imagine somehow losing all comms, and only having partial control of the aircraft, and gradually bleeding to death..
All are possible.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:46 pm
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I suspect there was a zombie out break on the plane and to save civilization as we know it the pilots flew it out over the most remote bit of ocean they could find before crashing it into the sea.

You've clearly failed to take the megashark into account there. 🙄

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:47 pm
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eg united airlines 232 had engine failure which flung engine parts into the controls, and hence [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 ]suffered loss of flight controls[/url] and was crash landed using the engines to adjust lift etc (read the link).
The same could have happened and the pilots could have been injured and struggled to regain control, and gradually bled out..

Preposterous as it sounds, there are many possibilities. What is believable? Dunno, whatever the evidence shows us.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:49 pm
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or this one, air transat [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_961 ]flight 961[/url] which lost a rudder but landed safely hrs later.

This makes you wonder if there might be wreckage off malaysia and off australia..

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:54 pm
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Any theory I come up with would be pure speculation. I am pretty certain, on the back of the INMARSAT* data, that the aircraft flew off into the Southern Ocean, at which point it lacked the fuel to reach land. How, why, or who put it there, I haven't the foggiest.

* a highly reputable satellite company, who wouldn't make statements like they have without being very sure of their data.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 4:59 pm
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Dan, I am pretty certain too. And I am not dissing Inmarsat, but given the fast moving nature of this investigation and the limited data they had I would not be completly suprised if they were discover an error at some point in the future.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 5:04 pm
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It makes sense though, in as much as an aircraft flying anywhere else would have been detected by that nations military.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 5:20 pm
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Just to throw in my twopenneth. Another ATCO here, and what I find most interesting is, if the debris site is confirmed to be at the furthest limit of the endurance of the flight then I'd assume the aircraft continued at its optimum flight level to be most efficient. If the aircraft was down at 5A then there's no way it would have made it so far unless it's climbed back up to its planned level. I'm no expert in how autopilot would control in this situation, but I reckon both pilots were overcome by fumes and the autopilot has resumed a 'normal' flight profile. Or the whole 5A thing is a red herring to explain the lack of primary ident.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 5:42 pm
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It makes sense though, in as much as an aircraft flying anywhere else would have been detected by that nations military.

Yeah on primary inspection, but lots UK and US military analysts think that there are holes not just in coverage, but in how flights are monitored.

eat_more_cheese if you look at maps of where the first debris was reported that got the aussies all excited, its at about 80% of range. The later "finds" are after days and days of drifting..

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 6:13 pm
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I agree, but when all those military nations going back over primary radar footage, finding nothing, and add that to the INMARSAT data, I think we get "beyond reasonable doubt"

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 6:20 pm
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[quote=toys19 ]Imagine somehow losing all comms, and only having partial control of the aircraft, and gradually bleeding to death..
All are possible.

Except it is well documented that they didn't lose all comms.

I don't see why motive is such a big deal. It being deliberately flown to crash land in the Southern Indian Ocean fits all the known facts. Pretty much none of the other theories do. Personally I prefer a theory which fits the known facts where you only have to come up with a motive - it's really not so hard to imagine somebody being mad enough to do that, not given all the cases of blokes driving into rivers with their kids on their cars, or jumping off balconies holding their kids.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 7:16 pm
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Except it is well documented that they didn't lose all comms.

how so?

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 8:49 pm
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What was it they were picking up 7 hours into the flight?

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 9:17 pm
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that was the automated ping from the satelite
that checks if the planes computer is still on every hour, im not sure exactly what computer that is!

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 9:22 pm
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Engine data

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 9:25 pm
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yes well that may have been one of only few systems working after something catastrophic occurred. The point is that your "theory" is just as invalid as any of the others proposed on here, there is very little to go on.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 9:26 pm
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[quote=toys19 ]yes well that may have been one of only few systems working after something catastrophic occurred.

I thought under your theory they pulled all the plugs and lost everything? Again this fails Occam's Razor - the likelihood of that system remaining live (well that and the autopilot and everything else required for that to keep working) in the event of a catastrophic failure sufficient to take out all other means of comms, including the front end needed to use Satcom for vox is so implausible that it can't have possibly happened. Not when compared to the pilot doing something mad, which is both totally plausible, but fits all known facts without the need for any unlikely scenarios.

I'm [b]still[/b] not sure why the pilot doing something mad is such a difficult concept for so many.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 9:38 pm
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so what did he do to the co-pilot?

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 9:43 pm
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Locked out of the cockpit when he went to powder his nose.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 9:45 pm
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Stabbed him?

The homicidal/suicidal pilot seems to be the most probable to me as a total ignorant amateur.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 9:46 pm
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It's happened before.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 9:49 pm
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Again this fails Occam's Razor - the likelihood of... is so implausible that it can't have possibly happened.

C'mon, you're better than that!

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 9:55 pm
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This just came up on my Facebook, read it with a pinch of salt but it seems quite compelling.

http://beforeitsnews.com/politics/2014/03/rothschild-takes-down-malaysian-airliner-mh370-to-gain-rights-to-a-semiconductor-patent-getting-rid-of-those-who-stood-in-his-way-2607888.html

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 11:00 pm
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[quote=schrickvr6 ]it seems quite compelling.

To a conspiracy theorist. Not read anything apart from the URL on the basis that 90%+ of stuff like this in FB is conspiracy theory, but the fundamental flaw on the basis of the URL is that the semiconductor folks on the plane weren't all that high powered and just a handful of the thousands in the company.

 
Posted : 25/03/2014 11:26 pm
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I thought under your theory they pulled all the plugs and lost everything?

I do not have a theory, not enough evidence. I raised those points to show you what is possible.

I do not have a problem with the suicide theory. I'm just pointing out that aircraft are complex and designed with many failsafes in mind. Hence the likely hood of an outlier (or what you call implausible) event causing the crash is quite high, whether thats pilot suicide or a perfect storm of failures is going to be tough to determine.

PS I think you misunderstand William of Ockham slightly.

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 7:24 am
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Once again I am underwhelmed by the quality of the "debris" finds, these look like waves, taken on a stormy day. No wonder they cannot find anything, seconds after these images were tken the "debris" ie froth has dissapeared. taken from [url=

of Transport Malaysia's facebook feed.[/url]

[img] [/img]

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 1:32 pm
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I think you are going to have to assume that these images have been studied by people who are used to analysing satellite photos.....

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 1:41 pm
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And the quality of images they have will be far higher than what they release to the public.

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 1:53 pm
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Its not the quality of the images, its the fact that it just does not look like debris any more than the millions of white things in all the other satellite images of other regions. Spend an hour on tomnod looking at the sea, there is shed loads of white stuff like this.

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 2:30 pm
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And to the untrained eye, a bike is a bike is a bike. 😉

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 2:40 pm
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Before you assume/accept that I am a pillock and have no idea what I am talking about, just do as I ask and spend some time on tomnod and see what you find in the ocean. Loads of images like those ones.

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 2:58 pm
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Before you assume/accept that I am a pillock...

Nah man, I respect your point of view - but I don't think there's any value in me going on tomnod and having a scout. This isn't like keeping an eye open for a missing cat, I ain't gonna have a clue what I'm looking at - it's not like the plane's gonna be floating there with people waving frantically at the passing satellite.

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 3:01 pm
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I don't think you are a pillock, but I do think you are a bloke browsing the internet who is seeking to pass judgement on the work of professionals.....

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 4:25 pm
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The chinese and Malaysian professionals thought this was it did they not?
Just because someone has a job and a title doesn't neccesarily make them experts. I'm just applying a bit of skepticism.

[img] [/img]

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 4:32 pm
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Has [url= http://www.eutimes.net/2014/03/malaysia-airlines-suspicious-cargo-destroyed-in-massive-new-mexico-explosion/ ]this[/url] been done yet?

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 5:00 pm
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Looks legit Bazz

The GRU had previously, on 14 March, reported their “puzzlement” as to why the United States Navy “captured and then diverted” this Malaysia Airlines civilian aircraft from its intended flight-path to the Diego Garcia atoll, an assessment that has subsequently been verified by radar tracks showing the mysterious US military flights moving about this aircraft immediately prior to its “disappearance.”

😉

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 5:09 pm
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Thats some crackpot conspiracy theory there!

What puzzles me is why these nutters thing that if the US miliatry had something so valuable/important that they would be willing to hijack a plane to get it back that they would just load it onto a civilian container ship with only 2 seals to protect it.

Mental.

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 5:17 pm
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Has this been done yet?

Someone put a lot of time into putting that "theory" together.

The "photo second right" was from one of the long-ago, above-ground nuclear weapons tests, likely at either the Nevada Test Site or in the S. Pacific, (i.e. Eniwetok or Bikini atolls)---long before the cruise missiles depicted in the photo even existed.

I live in New Mexico and the purported massive explosion hasn't been reported by any news agencies in the state.

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 5:31 pm
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Before you assume/accept that I am a pillock and have no idea what I am talking about, just do as I ask and spend some time on tomnod and see what you find in the ocean. Loads of images like those ones.

Do we think satellites only work in the visible spectrum? Might they work in different frequencies that are capable of highlighting differences in, say, material densities, and be able to differentiate between, say, metal and seawater?

I'm no satellite expert, but I used to work in a field where all manner of images were produced (tranmission electon microscopy and associated techniques), if I stuck my results on a website you'd probably completely misinterpret them. No ones saying youre a pillock, just having a debate.

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 6:12 pm
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Infred does temp. Any bit of aircraft that has been in the sea for more than a few hrs will be the same temp as the sea.
I am not an expert in satellites, I know a little about it through a previous job, but not much. I am fairly sure we have, as yet, to develop an optical method of measuring density. There is XRF to do elemental analysis, but I don't think satellites send Xrays (yet). (I could be wrong).
There is satellite based radar for interferometry purposes, used fro topology mapping. I do not think it could detect half submerged moving around stuff though.
There might be other methods, but we would have heard about it, the reporters are desperate to find a new way of explaining this. The images released are optical,and it is inferred that the "debris" has been spotted optically.

What I am not sure about is I think that the observation satellites are making passes, so they only take one image, and then on to the next sector. So they cannot discriminate if an object appears/disappears (ie the white tops on a wave). If they could take lots of images of one spot I think we would have seen them too. But I am not 100% sure about this..

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 7:18 pm
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There is also the issue of resolution, I am sure that the best resolution MIL sats have is about 0.3m, which is the max resolution we are seeing on all those images. it does not get better than that.Commercial resolution is about 0.5m which is probably what most of the of the images are.

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 7:32 pm
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Until something is found, it is just "possible debris". The fact everybody is in this one area says they must be fairly confident of it.

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 7:39 pm
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Most satellites aren't taking snapshots but scanning along track. Transients such as whitecaps wouldn't persist for long enough.

 
Posted : 26/03/2014 8:24 pm
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