Beijing-bound MAS plane carrying 239 people missing as of 20 mins ago.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Ok, thanks. Sorry, I didn't follow the whole discussion about this topic here. When they blocked 50 seats, doesn't that mean they had a lot of cargo on board? I can only talk about my own experiences, MH006 (KLIA -> EDDF) was almost always fully booked, there were hardly any free seats (a few crew seats, maybe three or four. That's all). How close do we come to maximum take off weight with maximum pax plus luggage?

reply to post by Zaphod58

KL runs regular long haul flights to Holland.
Check KUL to AMS. Over 5000 nautical miles. 777-200.

reply to post by Tallone


By limiting passenger loads and cargo on board. You limit the weight of passengers or cargo and you put that weight into fuel.

reply to post by gisolator


You can put more cargo if you put fewer passengers, and vice versa.

You wouldn't be too close to MTOW. They would put less cargo, which saves weight. Some of that goes into fuel. They can also limit the weight of luggage you can put on board.

Hot areas have to limit payload, which means a little less revenue. That has led to Emirates wanting Boeing to put even more powerful engines on the new 777X (the 777 already has between 90-115,000 lbs of thrust). That would allow them to carry more out of desert areas.

reply to post by Zaphod58

Let me take you right back to the post of mine you decided to enter into debate over. My post to Sy.Gunson four pages earlier.

I pointed out MH 370 was able to reach the Maldives easily on the fuel it had in its tanks. That the Maldives is actually just over 600 nautical miles shorter closer than Beijing.

And - this was my reply HERE to your comment.

BTW the boeing link you post is correct of course but they are being conservative with their data. Nothing wrong with that. But just to repeat for those of us whose eyes glaze over when they see numbers. The Maldives lies 1709.5 nautical miles from KL, Malaysia. Easily within reach of MH 370 and still leaving the plane with plenty of fuel capacity on tanks not even half full ( and that's using your wrong estimate of the max range

). Or if you want to see a comparison with the original scheduled route. KL to Beijing is 2,339 nautical miles. That's right, the plane had even less distance to travel from KL to the Maldives than it did from KL to Beijing, exempting slight diversions around storm systems and passing fleets of UFOs or whatever.

That is what I am saying. MH 370 had the fuel to get to the Maldives, well past the Maldives in fact. You can draw a circle around KL set at 2,339 nautical miles and see for yourself just how many locations MH 370 could have reached, easily. The Maldives were well within its reach, well within the range of a 777-200ER all fuelled up and full of passengers set for Beijing. Surely this is clear enough.

reply to post by Tallone


I've never said they couldn't reach the Maldives. They couldn't get very far towards Africa, and certainly not to the eastern coast. And barring a hell of a tail wind, they're not going to go farther than the published range.

In the News Straits Times today it has been revealed the CO-PILOT made a phone call from his mobile, whilst plane at low altitude near Penang, but the phone call ended quickly.

Call traced to co-pilots phone

Please read article before commenting on this news.

If it is indeed accurate, then that raises further suspicion on the pilot, whether he mutineered (ie, took control of plane, to do whatever he was planning) or the pilot was injured/killed in a hijack attempt, or... gosh. Still so many variables.

Edit: From another source but quoting from the above source, about the phone/line "detaching" from telco towers and then reattaching. Did co-pilot try to make call?And I quote:

Citing sources close to the investigations, the paper said that checks on Fariq's phone showed that connection to the phone had been "detached" before the plane took off.
"This is usually the result of the phone being switched off. At one point, however, when the airplane was airborne, between waypoint Igari and the spot near Penang (just before it went missing from radar), the line was 'reattached'.
"A 'reattachment' does not necessarily mean that a call was made. It can also be the result of the phone being switched on again," the sources said.

So it is also possible that a call WAS NOT made, but the fact remains his phone was indeed switched on again around the time the plane went off radar... hmmm.

Near the beginning when the cell phone talk started I stated the cell companies should know how it works and what happened with the phones.

I appears they basically do but as usual keep it secret as long as possible.

(Yes, I know, national security and all )

reply to post by auroraaus


If it is true then it backs up the radar version of the plane's turn and low flight.

"The telco's (telecommunications company's) tower established the call that he was trying to make

But that's more fuzzy stuff since the actual company was not mentioned. This was not released due to it being part of the investigation but yet it is released. Assuming dead end.

Hopefully this thread has calmed a bit from all the arguing. Here is an update, if anyone on the thread is remotely interested.

www.theguardian.com...

MH370 co-pilot tried to make mid-flight phonecall, report claims

Malaysian paper says co-pilot's mobile phone was switched on as plane vanished from radar screens near Penang island

There have been unconfirmed reports in the Malaysian media of calls made by the captain before or during the flight but so far no details have been released.

The co-pilot of the missing Malaysian airliner MH370 tried to make a mid-flight call from his mobile phone just before the plane vanished from radar screens, according to Malaysian newspaper reports.

The call ended abruptly possibly "because the aircraft was fast moving away from the [telecommunications] tower," the New Straits Times quoted a source as saying.

However, the Malaysian daily also quoted another source saying that while Fariq Abdul Hamid's "line was reattached", there was no certainty that a call was made from the Boeing 777 which vanished on 8 March.

The report - titled a "desperate call for help" - did not say who the co-pilot was trying to contact.

The NST report said that after turning off course MH370 flew low enough near Penang island on Malaysia's west coast for a telecom tower to pick up the co-pilot's phone signal.

The phone line was "reattached" between the time the plane veered off course and blipped off the radar, the government-controlled paper quoted the second source as saying.

"A 'reattachment' does not necessarily mean that a call was made. It can also be the result of the phone being switched on again."

Malaysia's transport ministry said it was examining the NST report and would issue a response.

reply to post by theabsolutetruth

Was previously posted and under discussion, but given the subject, for only half a page. So many articles are never linked back to a real source so is any of it true?

Why can't they say 'Bang and Gong' telco or 'We B Malaysia Phones' be named and the company people explain what they detected and believe.

The Malaysia Air system, the part with people flying the planes, blew a gasket and they are hoping the tragedy can be labeled otherwise.

reply to post by roadgravel


I suspected it might have been posted but refuse to read the thread anymore.

Who knows how valid it is, though perhaps the Malaysian investigators are getting round to analysing or at least talking about the analysis of phone data, which has been conspicuously absent so far.

So much more should be released from this investigation. There has to be a data track showing every phone connection when in range. If there is a co pilot phone trace there will be other phone traces, these will show a pattern if there was any, for example of all the phones within range pinging the tower, attempted calls made, phones switched on from airplane mode etc when in range or if they all went off range as would normally occur, either way there will be a pattern, anomalous or not.

reply to post by theabsolutetruth

Right and of course it has not be stated. Lack of many connections might point to part of the crew versus a third party terrorist running around the plane.

roadgravel


I appears they basically do but as usual keep it secret as long as possible.

(Yes, I know, national security and all

)

What could be of such a national security matter with a civilian flight, unless
of course there is something otherworldly going on.
But I do remember on cnn in the very early days, the guy who headed the search
for air france 447 saying ' we do not know what the TPTB will decide to do next',
which sort of alerted or startled me.

reply to post by Nochzwei

My point is that we constantly are not given all the facts and most often the term "national security" is used as the reason.

Just mainly poking at the point here for fun. But why are parts OK, other not? Why can't actual people's names be used? I suspect because people are willing to let it go on this way. Malaysia is covering up something - most likely that some of the flight crew blew a gasket and made the plane go away with paying passengers on board. The airline - government part might be the big cover up.

At this point, my interest in the tragedy of MH370 is strictly personal. I travel internationally often which means I see the inside of many, many B-777's from different countries and companies.

If this is a Jack-screw, Rudder hard-over or other finicky type of problem that was discovered and corrected in other situations, that is what I want the industry and Boeing to know.

Planes crash and until there is a definitive cause everything else is conjecture, speculation and noise. The human brain's need for an answer is not an excuse for unsubstantiated plots - pre or post crash. That will do nothing to stop people - and apparently the media now - to engage in speculation as "FACT!!", "PROOF!".

There is always a cover-up. It is built into any operation, especially like this one. Each level, or tier as you might call it, is instructed to only let the information pass through one channel to the next tier. The channels are a person, or group of people responsible as the management of that tier.

While this makes things easier for the top levels to manage the entire situation, a great deal of filtering of information is done at each channel when communicating to the next, and this is where critical information gets distorted, misinterpreted and outright lost as information flows to each end.

A better solution is a matrix management scheme where information is allowed to go sideways as well. However, most PTB hate this approach, because they view information as power, and they are all about power. For this reason, the public has a very limited, almost gagged view-port on what is really going on, and this leads of course to wild speculation and conspiracy theories abound.

In essence, we create problems that are more complicated than the one we want to solve.

The statement that someone isn't/doesn't read the thread anymore, simply because they don't want to read arguing, is just ignorant in my opinion. Peer review isn't always going to be roses and lollipops.

People need to be put in check when they misrepresent information. People also need to be checked if they are plagiarizing someone else's words. People need to be checked when they are presenting opinion as fact. And people need to be checked when they overlook factual information right in front of them, because they have a need or want to believe conspiracy above all.

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Now as for the new phone call info, it's interesting. Like someone said, if true, it does indeed give credibility to the turn around and low altitude flying. But with that said it again is not verified by any official agency, so we need to take it with a grain of salt.

I say this because it should be noticed that in this new article the timeline for the Captain's last messenger use is given, yet there is not one mention of the previously suspected/rumored phone call that supposedly took place 8 min before takeoff.

So right there we have two conflicting reports where neither of them have been given any credence by official statements or acknowledgement.

Fariq Abdul Hamid’s cell phone reportedly connected with a telecommunications tower in the Malaysian city of Penang on March 8, according to a newspaper with ties to the Malaysian government. Malaysian authorities haven't verified the report.

Co-pilot of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have made desperate phone call seconds before plane went off radar: report

reply to post by OatDelphi


Or he could have realized they were in trouble and tried to use his cell phone to let someone know. There could be other reasons than immediately jumping to "the copilot did it".