The Best Flight 370 Scenario So Far - Theory of an actual pilot

Zaphod58
reply to post by sy.gunson

 

Except that early in the flight they couldn't get to 45,000. They were too heavy.

Don't shoot the messenger.... Military radar at Butterworth detected the aircraft climbed to this quoted altitude.

I understand the physical limitations for a heavy airliner. Take it up with RMAF Butterworth.

MH370 was also tracked until 1840 GMT by Vietnamese military radar (but not civil ATC radar).

Before the transponder stopped sending data to Secondary Surveilance Radar at Kuala Lumpur, the last transponder signal recorded a turn 40 degrees east of previous track at UTC: 17:21:03, Lat: 6.97, Lon: 103.63, Alt: 35000, Speed: 471 knots, Heading: 40 and this seems to indicate a track from waypoint IGARI direct to BIBAN bypassing BITOD. BITOD was the next expected waypoint on their flightplan.

The airspace between IGARI and BITOD is a notorous black hole for radar lacking civil ATC radar coverage. For Vietnamese military radar to have detected MH370 suggests the aircraft was further north than BITOD and reached BIPAN which is also the where the oil rig worker sighted an aircraft on fire.

The short duration of the fire sighted by this oil rig worker is explained by what happened to Flight 667 when electrical arcing under the copilot seat was fed by a leaking oxygen hose which became a blowtorch against the cockpit wall. It is conceivable the 10-15 seconds of flame seen was actually the pilot's emergency oxygen supply being exhausted through a hole beside the co-pilot's position.

Post Script

Incidentally Vietnamese radar tracked the aircraft until 1840 GMT whilst Malaysian authorities claim they lost contact with MH370 climbing west in the Straits of Malacca at 2:15am local (Malaysia) time which does not make sense.

Malaysia says it lost contact with MH370 west of Malaysia when Vietnam says they were still observing it to the east of Malaysia.

In my honest opinion given the lack of any terrorist group claiming credit, nor any suicide note by a pilot and given the nonsensical fate after 7.5 hours flying to the most remote part of the Ocean, the explanation being talked about by experienced pilots outweighs pure speculation about terrorism.

MH370's crew were struggling to cope with an electrical emergency when they were overtaken by a depressurisation emergency. It is a question of sequence of events.

This is what is known as a cascading sequence of events.

Usually aviation disasters are not caused by one single failure but by the compounding of multiple failures.

If one accepts the sighting of an aircraft on fire and assumes it was a cockpit fire like that on Egyptair Flight 667, then at 35,000ft useful consciousness is just 30-60 seconds so pilots possibly could not don oxygen fast enough, or else had their oxygen eliminated by the fire. Probably they were too busy fighting the first emergency to make a distress call.

Fire in the avionics bay below the cockpit is strongly suggested like the Flight 667 incident in 2011 where an electrical fire was fed by oxygen lines to the pilot oxygen supplies which melted part of the cockpit's metal skin. This is corroborated by the oil rig worker, Mike McKay's sighting of an aircraft on fire for 10-15 seconds.

Crew appear to have been trying desperately to save the aircraft in a cockpit fire situation. My personal theory is that crew were trying to enter a new L-Nav instruction to the autopilot to acquire a new waypoint and succumbed before completing that instruction. The autopilot thereafter went off flying around the globe trying to acquire a new waypoint wandering from one waypoint to another at random until fuel exhausted. All aboard were probably dead within the first few minutes.

reply to post by sy.gunson


That was kind of the point I was making. Either the data is bad, or it's faked. As far out as they were from the antenna, most likely the data was bad.

sy.gunson--->Crew appear to have been trying desperately to save the aircraft in a cockpit fire situation. My personal theory is that crew were trying to enter a new L-Nav instruction to the autopilot to acquire a new waypoint and succumbed before completing that instruction. The autopilot thereafter went off flying around the globe trying to acquire a new waypoint wandering from one waypoint to another at random until fuel exhausted. All aboard were probably dead within the first few minutes.

edit on 24-3-2014 by sy.gunson because: (no reason given)

That doesn't make sense.
With an out of control fire any line pilots instinctive reaction would be, get on oxygen, turn of airway (heading select on the mode control panel), speedbrakes, autothrottle off, throttles idle, flight level change, then put the plane down on a relatively flat surface within 20 minutes.
That be runway, ocean or land.
Fiddeling around with the FMC in LNAV is not what i would have done in a situation like that.

reply to post by sy.gunson


I need to correct myself I was trying to refer to Waypoint BIBAN (Ca Mau Point, sth Vietnam) and misread it as BIPAN.

Ivar_Karlsen

sy.gunson--->Crew appear to have been trying desperately to save the aircraft in a cockpit fire situation. My personal theory is that crew were trying to enter a new L-Nav instruction to the autopilot to acquire a new waypoint and succumbed before completing that instruction. The autopilot thereafter went off flying around the globe trying to acquire a new waypoint wandering from one waypoint to another at random until fuel exhausted. All aboard were probably dead within the first few minutes.

edit on 24-3-2014 by sy.gunson because: (no reason given)

That doesn't make sense.
With an out of control fire any line pilots instinctive reaction would be, get on oxygen, turn of airway (heading select on the mode control panel), speedbrakes, autothrottle off, throttles idle, flight level change, then put the plane down on a relatively flat surface within 20 minutes.
That be runway, ocean or land.
Fiddeling around with the FMC in LNAV is not what i would have done in a situation like that.

Ivar it does make sense if you consider what happened to Egyptair Flight 667 at the gate awaiting pushback in 2011.

In that instance electrical arcing burned through an oxygen feed hose and resulting flame burned a hole in the cockpit like a blow torch.

Were those events of Flight 667 to occur on MH370 at altitude the oxygen hose would act like a blow torch melting the aircraft skin and exhausting a plume of flame until the Oxygen cylinder was empty.

Pilots would be deprived of the very oxygen needed to survive and function and indeed it could have been so sudden that the co-pilot was burned alive in his position.

If like Flight 667 the problem to commence with electrical arcing the pilots would have been fixated on dealing with an electrical failure and taken by surprise by a sudden cockpit fire and deprived of the very Oxygen needed to function.

Re fiddling with L-Nav, with respect you are talking about a normal situation but if an electrical fault developed first their mind may have been on power failure at night and trying to actually find an airport to land at. I think it is self evident from this being the most extraordinary aviation mystery in decades that these pilots were confronted with a situation far beyond ordinary.

Usually a single system failure will not overcome pilots or down a plane, because training and procedures can isolate the problem, but most aviation disasters are caused by the effect of multiple failures cascading out of control.

Zaphod58
reply to post by sy.gunson

 

That was kind of the point I was making. Either the data is bad, or it's faked. As far out as they were from the antenna, most likely the data was bad.

Hey Zaphod58 actually I am coming to agree with you about this 45,000ft claim.

You are right that it did not make sense for such a heavily laden aircraft and this purplexed me enough to go digging for more information so I went digging for the source of the claim.

It appears that the military use two primary radar systems one for azimuth (range) and another narrow vertical beam for Zenith (angle above horizon) to triangulate height by comparing angle and range data continuously.



A well know example is the system used on early SA-2 Guideline missiles, with the PV-10 Konus height finding radar:



Apparently over longer ranges this system can be inaccurate about altitude data.

It would be reasonable to assume therefore that the military height finding radar tracked MH370 at 35,000ft. The Vietnamese Military however also tracked MH370 and one assumes they used the same PV-10 Konus system from Vietnam War era inventory. The nearest likely site would be an air base at Can Nam, in the Ca Mau Peninsula. Vietnamese military radar did track MH370 for some time.

If we exclude the 45,000ft claim on the basis of unreliable military radar height readings we still have an aircraft decompression at 35,000ft.

Breaking news revealed now that INMARSAT data analysed for doppler shift helped the British calculate the track.

This aircraft did indeed turn right and flew south over eastern Sumatra to the Indian Ocean location. This may also add credence to the oil rig worker sighting since a right turn would have taken it closer to the oil rig.

Not even one of The several ELts did not sing at all.
So no crash. Period

sy.gunson--->Ivar it does make sense if you consider what happened to Egyptair Flight 667 at the gate awaiting pushback in 2011.

In that instance electrical arcing burned through an oxygen feed hose and resulting flame burned a hole in the cockpit like a blow torch.

In that scenario they wouldn't be flying for hours, so very unlikely.

Re fiddling with L-Nav, with respect you are talking about a normal situation but if an electrical fault developed first their mind may have been on power failure at night and trying to actually find an airport to land at. I think it is self evident from this being the most extraordinary aviation mystery in decades that these pilots were confronted with a situation far beyond ordinary.

No, i'm talking about an emergency where getting the plane on the ground or water within 20 minutes is required.
Pilot input is needed to land the plane anyway, so pushing buttons on the FMC is a waste of critical time.
I've been doing similar scenario traning in the sim in B777's and other Boeing Products.

Usually a single system failure will not overcome pilots or down a plane, because training and procedures can isolate the problem, but most aviation disasters are caused by the effect of multiple failures cascading out of control.

I agree, but in an out of control fire situation the only procedure is get down and land.

reply to post by Nochzwei


By that logic Air France 447 didn't crash either, despite finding the records, the floating debris, the crushed fuselage, and the bodies. The ELTs in that crash didn't sound once.

Nochzwei
Not even one of The several ELts did not sing at all.
So no crash. Period

ELT locators are radio beacons. Where the aircraft is located now is under 26,000ft of water. Radio does not transmit through water.

Ivar_Karlsen

sy.gunson--->Ivar it does make sense if you consider what happened to Egyptair Flight 667 at the gate awaiting pushback in 2011.

In that instance electrical arcing burned through an oxygen feed hose and resulting flame burned a hole in the cockpit like a blow torch.

In that scenario they wouldn't be flying for hours, so very unlikely.

Except that you don't seem to take into consideration that at 35,000ft a fire would only be sustained with a supply of oxygen or inside a pressurised cabin. In Egyptair 667 the co-pilot's oxygen line fed the fire. In MH370 the oxygen could also have fed the fire but once exhausted the fire in a depressurised aircraft would die away.

If on autopilot it will just track in one direction until fuel is exhausted.

Re fiddling with L-Nav, with respect you are talking about a normal situation but if an electrical fault developed first their mind may have been on power failure at night and trying to actually find an airport to land at. I think it is self evident from this being the most extraordinary aviation mystery in decades that these pilots were confronted with a situation far beyond ordinary.

No, i'm talking about an emergency where getting the plane on the ground or water within 20 minutes is required.
Pilot input is needed to land the plane anyway, so pushing buttons on the FMC is a waste of critical time.
I've been doing similar scenario traning in the sim in B777's and other Boeing Products.

Except that fire and depressurisation may not have been the original emergency and the aircraft may have been turned around for Singapore before the fire and explosive decompression event.

Thus it is an issue of sequence of events.

When the emergency began turning the plane was the immediate response, then overtaken by a new fire emergency and whilst trying to address that a third issue of explosive decompression. Useful consciousness was only 30-60 seconds in that event. No time to get the aircraft down and you do not seem to consider Ivar if pilots themselves were engulfed in flames?

Usually a single system failure will not overcome pilots or down a plane, because training and procedures can isolate the problem, but most aviation disasters are caused by the effect of multiple failures cascading out of control.

I agree, but in an out of control fire situation the only procedure is get down and land.

And if the entire cockpit is engulfed in flames and the co-pilot is a human torch, with all pilot oxygen supply exhausted with 20 seconds to think of a solution what is the correct procedure then?

reply to post by Zaphod58

Im not entirely certain that they didnt, or that fact was kept hidden for some reason. Or They may have had the older 121.5 MHz elts, whose reliability was suspect.

sy.gunson

Nochzwei
Not even one of The several ELts did not sing at all.
So no crash. Period

ELT locators are radio beacons. Where the aircraft is located now is under 26,000ft of water. Radio does not transmit through water.

It is definitely not in the water. Take it from me.
Elts trigger on a crash due to G forces

reply to post by Nochzwei


And they sometimes fail due to G forces.

I think they're trying to frame one or both pilots. Rather than blame it on mechanical errors where they have to cough up money to pay the families lawsuits.

It's why we haven't heard about the plane's maintenance records.

Nochzwei

sy.gunson

Nochzwei
Not even one of The several ELts did not sing at all.
So no crash. Period

ELT locators are radio beacons. Where the aircraft is located now is under 26,000ft of water. Radio does not transmit through water.

It is definitely not in the water. Take it from me.
Elts trigger on a crash due to G forces

I know how ELT triggers, I'm a pilot.

An aircraft entering the water at 450+ knots is underwater before there is any worthwhile transmission.

Well if is definitely not in the water provide credible proof, not theories.

violet
I think they're trying to frame one or both pilots. Rather than blame it on mechanical errors where they have to cough up money to pay the families lawsuits.

It's why we haven't heard about the plane's maintenance records.

precisely, if this were the United States we would have maintenance records and know any faulty generators, engines etc and the history of the whole airframe maintenance for the past five years.

Malaysian Authorities are hiding these records from public scrutiny. It is a nation run by a bunch of medieval Sultans and all high positions in the government are granted on the basis of sycophantic nepotism.

Everything from airline management to airline safety in that country is based on lies incompetence and deception.

reply to post by sy.gunson


I must say that living in Australia and subjected to the constant news feeds here and from the U.S, it makes better news for the stations to imply a sinister cause instead of an unfortunate accident.

A lot of information in regards to the pilots personal life has been raised but this thread and your posts have raised my interest as to why Malaysian Airlines have not released any maintenance records, I am starting to move toward thinking that there was something wrong with that plane.