[canucklad]

Reported today in the Malaysian press

“But the government has hit back saying it released MH370’s full manifest on May 1, which showed the cargo included four tonnes of mangosteen fruit and lithium batteries. It accused Ibrahim of trying to smear his country’s reputation further in the media.

The supposition I’ve heard from people in the industry is as my previous post above, the crew did not switch off the transponders deliberately, rather the fire caused by the lithium batteries burnt through the controls that manage all the communications on board, rendering them inoperable. The crew tried to land , probably at Langkawi as has previously been assumed but became incapacitated due to smoke inhalation after they made the turn , the fire burns itself out and the aircraft continues to cruise on its new course until it runs out of fuel and glides to a controlled crash in the ocean, thus sizeable area of scattered debris just doesn’t exist.

Sadly, what I’ve written is just theory based on “guesstamation” Apologies to English language scholars at me making up a new word.
What is fact and quite indefensible, especially for the relatives is this ….Why in this day and age ,and with all the technology at hand it takes weeks after the ping story for the American Navy ( The same navy that hunts Russian submarines” ) to conclude these pings are not from MH370 !

The inability of the “Superpowers” to actively use all their tools in a timely manner to resolve this tragedy is damming and says more about the importance of secrecy than it does about the feelings of humanity ( relatives) and as TerryMcManus and dutchyankee allude to only encourage conspiracy theories to flourish. Again not fair on the relatives!

[SimonS1]

Hearing that the Air Asia plane has been found cast my mind back – has anyone heard anything on this recently?

More than 9 months passed now – is there still a search ongoing? The media seems to have moved onto other things and it all seems to have gone very quiet.

Very dispiriting for relatives I can imagine.

[EruditeSheep]

The most recent information is probably that listed on the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) website, see:
http://www.atsb.gov.au/mh370.aspx

This has various links that you can access – also see those on the Fugro website. Operational updates are provided every week.

[SimonS1]

So a year on and the interim report is out but appears not to say very much, apart from the battery in the locator beacon expired a year before the flight.

http://mh370.mot.gov.my/download/InterimStatement.pdf

http://mh370.mot.gov.my/download/FactualInformation.pdf

Shame that despite the plane travelling to Beijing and many passengers being Chinese they could not even translate the report into Chinese. Sad but I suppose the Malaysians are being consistent with the disrespectful way they treated the families at the time.

[rferguson]

There has been a few documentaries on this week I guess in consideration of the one year anniversary.

I watched one last night on 5 OD it was interesting. This disaster is just without comparison. Some were made with the AF447 disaster where it took two years to recover the wreckage and black boxes – but in fairness debris was found floating within a week of that crash so at least the victims family knew there was no real hope.

With MH370 – still NADA. Not so much as a floating seat cushion washing up somewhere. Absolutely bizzare.

The program I watched last night raised a few theories – the two most plausible to me were a catastrophic electrical fire that quickly incapacitated the pilots and knocked out the ACARS and transponder (but then somehow the aircraft flew on for seven more hours!). Or (and I must admit that as sceptical as I am this does kind of make sense) – a cyber hijack where a passenger on board or someone on the ground had managed to take control of the aircraft and dismantle communication systems. The only hole in that theory is that hijackers usually like to take credit for their actions after the event. This obviously hasn’t happened.

For anyone at home in the UK tonight there is another new MH370 doco on Nat Geo channel tonight at 8pm.

[SimonS1]

Must be devastating for the families to find out that after all the combing of the seas, hoping that a signal from the underwater locator beacon, that actually the battery was more than a year past its expiry and may not even have been emitting a signal.

[AnthonyDunn]

And the entire episode serves only to underline, yet one more time, that with the satellite positioning systems, satcomms and onboard telemetry that are already in place, the utterly ludicrous state of affairs whereby we try and track down a flight recorder and cockpit voice recorder in order to determine what happened.

All this information should be being beamed, in real-time, direct to the operating airline plus the engine and airframe manufacturers so that everyone knows where a plane is and what is happening onboard.

[LuganoPirate]

I’ve also read that in case both pilots are incapacitated there exists a way to bring the plane down safely by remote control. I believe this already exists on the space shuttle. I realise this could lead to cyber hijacking but would hope if it becomes common the security protocols would be so high as to prevent this from happening.

[EruditeSheep]

The ATSB continue to provide regular updates on the search via their web-site (see my earlier post), and now estimate that the planned area will be covered by May. It is not certain whether or not this includes the estimated splash point of S38.082 E87.400 calculated by Simon Hardy, an experienced B777 captain, although his ingenious analysis appears to be gaining some traction. For details see:
http://www.flightglobal.com/features/mh370/

[K1ngston]

I am, and always will be a huge supporter of MAS I lived in Malaysia and used them extensively and I was actually flying between LHR and SYD with MAS the weekend that 370 was lost a whole year ago!

I was recently chatting with a A330 pilot of theirs on a flight to HKK and he was telling me that amongst pilots there is a belief that the oxygen supply to the pilots (Separate to the rest of the aircraft) may have exploded and rendered the pilots incapacitated and could support the theory of a fire in the hold as mentioned by others!

What he was was scathing about the Malaysian Military and how slow they were to respond, and could not comprehend that someone did not muster the military before 6 hours had passed….. This is one of Malaysians finest suggesting this!

Whatever the circumstances I cannot begin to comprehend the pain and grief the poor relatives are going through, and I read a heartbreaking article in the International News today about a French man who lost his wife and 2 of his three children, and even though he knows and fears the worst, he still holds on to the faint notion that they are still alive…

My heart bleeds for them all…….. One year on lest we not forget!!!!

[LuganoPirate]

Erudite sheep, could you put a line break between the last para and the link as you can then be taken directly to the website rather than copy and paste.

Having read this article and many more, I’d like to know why the plane made a left turn at ANOKA. Is there any evidence it did turn here?

I’m also wondering what happens if the crew were incapacitated and the plane runs out of fuel. It will stall for sure but does the aircraft just fall out the sky? If so it will crash and there will be debris. If the ocean was smooth the aircraft could land intact, then I’m sure passengers would exit the plane before it sunk?

I don’t know, but I cannot help but feel they’re all looking in the wrong place and it’s much closer to home than many realise!

[rferguson]

Last nights new MH370 doco on National Geographic was interesting. The program had a lot of experienced 777 pilots and crash investigators giving input as well as considering each of the main theories.

In nearly all the main theories there was a hole – for example if the aircraft was hijacked the flight crew would have had time to relay a distress or ‘squark’ a special frequency. The fire theory that knocked out the ACARS/transponder was a plausible one although the fact that the aircraft had continued to fly for seven hours dispels this. If there was a fire, it would have brought the aircraft down pretty quick.

Nearly all the experts/pilots commentating believed that the disaster was the result of deliberate action – likely by one of the pilots. In the final scenario shown on the doco, the captain locks the first officer out of the flight deck when the f/o briefly steps out. The captain then programs new co-ordinates into the autopilot and pulls the circuit breakers for the communication systems. Following this, he switches off the oxygen supply leaving all on board dead while the aircraft continued to fly until it ran out of fuel.

[MartynSinclair]

Hope this is the right thread to resurrect…. but … following the recent event of some wreckage being found…. its gone very very quiet again.

Does anyone know if there has been any further progress or is this very sadly, likely to remain the “Titanic” of the aviation world..?

So many experts felt so confident of finding the answer as to what happened.

I just feel, we should not forget about this…

[CharlesRhona]

While in Oz recently press reports were spoke of a large object being spotted in the sea off Reunion. Never heard anything more about this.

[CharlesRhona]

While in Oz recently press reports spoke of a large object being spotted in the sea off Reunion. Never heard anything more about this.

[Author]

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