
Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours - wallflower
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304914904579434653903086282-lMyQjAxMTA0MDEwMzExNDMyWj
======
nostrademons
Interesting hypothesis that would square with this:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2014/03/a-hypoth...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2014/03/a-hypothesis.html)

~~~
ekianjo
> * On February 22nd, aircraft 9M-MRO underwent maintenance. During this, or
> during a previous maintenance cycle, an empty oxygen bottle was installed by
> mistake for a full one, or a valve was jammed, or some other undetected
> fault rendered the flight deck crew's emergency oxygen supply inoperable.

That sounds extremely unlikely. Standard procedures for equipment checks in
plane are usually done at 9 sigma standards, i.e. they involved numerous
checks by different people. We're not talking about an amateur doing
maintenance at home during the weekend. And I doubt there would be a single
oxygen source in the cockpit since airplanes are usually built with multiple
redundancies.

I don't really buy that one. Plus the plane did not make it to any military
radar either - so where did it fly for 5 hours?

~~~
nostrademons
The other thing to consider is that there are roughly 90,000 flights/day and
365 days in a year, so even if such an event has a probability of 1 in a
billion (that's roughly 9 9s reliability), you'd expect it to happen once
every 30 years on average. Extremely unlikely events become plausible when
large numbers are involved.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
You're showing one botched flight deck O2 tank per 30 years? That's how I read
it but I may be wrong.

What are the odds that that one botched O2 tank happens to be on a flight with
high altitude decompression?

~~~
akiselev
If the cause of the accident is in any way related to "human error" instead of
unpredictable failure (unpredictable as in photons causing a bit flip that
can't be caught in error correction, not something like a part with a 15 year
life span being used for 20), chances are that error is the result of an
institutional problem. With 90,000 flights a day I can imagine plenty of
people making mistakes during maintenance and flight checks because they're
tired, having trouble with at home with the family, etc. but that's why we
have so many levels of review and confirmation, checking to make sure it all
goes according to plan. If the airline (the asset/floor managers specifically)
don't enforce a culture that takes safety and aircraft operation seriously, no
amount of reviewers will help them and when things fall apart, they do so in
spades.

It's not really a question of "what's the chance that this will break in 30
years." It's a question of the part's function, the added complexity/failure
points it adds to the design, and the chances that the added complexity will
exacerbate flaws in management when it all goes haywire.

~~~
ekianjo
> I can imagine plenty of people making mistakes during maintenance and flight
> checks because they're tired, having trouble with at home with the family,
> etc. but that's why we have so many levels of review and confirmation,
> checking to make sure it all goes according to plan. If the airline (the
> asset/floor managers specifically) don't enforce a culture that takes safety
> and aircraft operation seriously, no amount of reviewers will help them and
> when things fall apart, they do so in spades.

If that was really the case, planes would be failing every single day and air
crashes would be as common as train wrecks and car accidents. It's far from
being the case, so it says a lot as to how reliable planes are made to be, and
how serious the maintenance is done on planes. Besides, companies have no
incentive to _skip on safety checks_ because they know a crash would have
immediate, and serious impact on their image and direct sales of tickets.

------
chrismcb
Here is what I don't get. A plane, a HUGE plane, supposedly just disappeared.
Near China. So this whole "fly under the radar" is just BS? You just need to
turn off your transponder, and you can fly wherever you want?

~~~
elemeno
The range at which Radars can detect planes is a lot shorter than most people
seem to believe. Ground based Radars have an effective range of something in
the region of 200miles due to the earth's curvature. To get around that you
either have to have air based Radars (such as the E2-Hawkeye used by US
carrier groups), or more exotic/experimental types of radars which bounce off
the ionosphere.

The limitations of radar are part of the reason why Aircraft have transponders
- you can pick up an actively broadcasting radio from far greater range, and
you're not relying on getting a clean bounce back from the aircraft. They're
also the reason why carriers carry multiple E2s - a radar on the top of a mast
on a ship simply can't see far enough.

~~~
munkeegutz
In addition, the critical frequency for the ionosphere is ~10MHz (that is,
above that frequency, you can't really bounce a meaningful amount of energy
off the ionosphere, most passes through). 10MHz = a wavelength of 30m. So in
general, you'll only be able to detect things about 100ft or larger in size
(and that's a lower limit-- practical is probably bigger). I'm not at all
surprised that you'd need line of sight to _track_ a plane. Knowing that
there's _something_ there is easier, but tracking is trickier.

------
downandout
This begs the question: why on earth is it even possible to turn off a
transponder mid-flight on a commercial plane carrying hundreds of human
beings? I also don't understand why, if we can send bursts of engine data
every 30 minutes from the middle of the ocean, we can't send a GPS location
every couple of minutes. Maybe even throw some GPS data in with the engine
data - at least we would know where it was within a 30 minute window. We're
talking about a few extra bytes.

~~~
andr
The simple answer is you have dozens of planes on the ground at airports,
which you don't want to appear on all the radars. Yes, a technological fix
would be trivial, but those systems were designed decades ago, when being a
pilot was quite prestigious and well paid. The thought of a rogue pilot never
occurred, I guess.

Locaiton data is sent by the ACARS system, which was apparently turned off.

~~~
TheAnimus
You don't need a transponder to show up on radar, it just makes it a lot
easier.

Radar operators have a hard job telling a plane from clouds or echos. A
transponder makes that job a lot, lot easier.

However, if you have a good radar system, you can happily track the contact
without a transponder. In fact this happens all the time, I had a very nice
chap at Farnbourgh West LARS (Low Altitude Radar Service) do this for me, when
the shed I was flying had a little bit of a failure. For newewer systems such
as those used by NATS automatically keeps the data assigned with the trace,
using their proprietary algos to filter the noise.

If this happened over the UK, the transponder went off, ATC couldn't reach
them, then a couple of Typhoons would be sent up to go have a look, and if
need be escort.

With this background understanding of how modern Radar services are used
piratically, taking into account a bit of background of the Malaysian
authorities (short version: no terrorist attacks have ever happened even with
our extremist religious views, honest.) Then this article will make some more
sense:
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/mh370-satellite...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/mh370-satellite-
images-show-possible-crash-debris-in-south-china-sea-live)

It is becoming clear they knew full well what was going on. They had the ACARS
data. They had contacts on their radar, which they would have understood to be
the plane, if not at the time, soon after. (But they really should have
understood at the time!).

This stuff happens all the time in air safety investigations. See Egypt Air,
or Air France!

~~~
cjrp
This is my issue - an aeroplane disappearing from SSR and not making contact
on the next frequency = sends up someone to have a look. Perhaps Malaysia's
air force isn't as trigger-happy as here in England?

P.S. Never thought I'd see Farnborough West mentioned on HN! Hello fellow
South Eastern pilot.

------
justinzollars
Reminds me of Lost, I never thought that was a plausible plot even in 2004. I
thought our technology has made losing aircraft, impossible.

Very strange that the transponders were turned off. Very strange that the
Rolls-Royce data wasn't released days ago. Was this an oversight?

~~~
jw2013
I thought Oceanic 815 was found on the ocean floor?

~~~
stephen_g
That one was faked by Charles Widmore.

------
TomGullen
I remember watching a "Mayday: Aircrash Investigation" episode (awesome series
by the way) from the 80's I think.

It involved an Eastern passenger plane that had miscalibrated it's guidance
system and strayed into Soviet(?) territory during a politically tense period
at the same time a US spy plane was in the area.

The Russians(?) shot the plane down and it nearly started a war. The country
the plane was from didn't believe it had strayed as far as the Russians(?)
said it did.

Eventually, the US government released radar data showing the position and
path of this plane so that it would avoid a war. It showed this particular
plane had grossly gone off course and entered Russian territory. The radar
they had was capable of tracking every plane in the world 24x7. This was back
a couple/few decades as well! Turned out the plane has set the wrong guidance
system pre takeoff which was a terrible and extremely rare mistake. The US
held out until the last moment to release this data as they didn't want anyone
to know they had the capability.

This leads me to believe some people somewhere know where this plane went
down.

I am not sure if I am recalling this precisely, but I 100% remember that the
US government back then apparently has this radar tech.

~~~
throwaway092834
It sounds like you're describing KAL007:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007)

There's a larger list of airliner shootdowns here, and this is the only
incident which seems to match your recollection:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inci...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents)

There's nothing in the wikipedia article about the USA's ability to track
planes. We did have a radar station in AK, which may be what you're thinking
of? According to wikipedia it didn't produce useful information, and wasn't
necessarily tracking the plane at all points anyway:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#U.S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#U.S._Air_Force_radar_data)

I don't think we've ever had the ability to track all planes in the world.

~~~
TomGullen
It'll take me ages to go through all the episodes of Mayday, but I'm certain
in one of them the US released highly classified radar data to prevent a wider
political catastrophe, and that the narrator described the source of the data
was from a new type of radar that had the capability to track every plane in
the world.

The series is exceptionally well researched and presented.

------
melling
"Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew
for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to
the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance
and monitoring program."

Well, if the engines were transmitting, can't someone figure out the direction
of the plane?

~~~
dingaling
> Well, if the engines were transmitting, can't someone figure out the
> direction of the plane?

Unfortunatley not; the flight-data transmitting systems ( ACARS and ADS-B )
that do include position data appear to have been turned-off or disabled
deliberately.

The engine telemetry feed is part of Rolls-Royce's 'Power by the Hour' system,
which aims to identify faults or under-performance in the engines whilst still
in-flight so that an engineer can tune and correct when the aircraft arrives.
It doesn't care _where_ the aircraft is.

Though... it might include environmental data such as inlet pressure and
temperature, which could help to determine altitude.

~~~
melling
What is it transmitting to every 30 minutes (fixed: seconds)? If more than one
satellite was involved, that might give direction. traceroute?

~~~
ars
Minutes, not seconds.

~~~
sentenza
Wait a minute. WTF?

If the system sends signals EXACTLY every 30 minutes, then a very careful
reconstruction of signal running times (combined of course with the positions
of the recieving antennae and the EXACT times the signals were recieved) can
reveal information about the heading and position.

~~~
ericd
That's a good point, if the timestamps have the necessary precision and their
clock drift info hasn't been lost by a resync since then. I'd guess that since
exact time isn't crucial to the purpose of these messages, though, that they
probably don't have very high precision timestamps. :-(

------
brador
They claim some of the cell phones are still active. Can't they just
"traceroute" the call to find the nearest cell tower and search around it?

~~~
Raptor22
This blew my mind. Cell phones don't work that far out from range of towers,
and they sure as hell don't work at the bottom of the ocean. I heard that
those were rumors and that they were false, but if they're true, then that's a
_major_ wtf...

~~~
mikeash
It is _complete_ bullshit. The whole story is based around the fact that some
people have tried to call their relatives on the plane and have heard the line
"ringing" after placing the call. This is exactly what you'd expect to happen
when trying to call a phone that's at the bottom of the ocean, as the network
will spend some time searching for it and you'll often hear a "ringing" while
that happens, but idiots have taken this and transformed it into "the actual
cell phones themselves are ringing!"

------
venus
The Malaysian transport minister has just denied this article's accuracy at a
press conference in KL.

Which is interesting. The WSJ isn't just some random blog. I wonder where they
got their information.

~~~
panacea
They also put three journalists in the by-line. Is that typical?

~~~
joshgel
On a story that is big news like this, but not big enough to dominate
coverage: yes. There are so many moving parts that they likely have several
reporters on it with the goal of being the first to break the story. But it's
not a big enough story that they feel they need 3-4 separate stories on the
front page. At last until there is some resolution.

------
msantos
IMO Boeing and Rolls-Royce (the engine manufacturer) know more about that
plane than Malaysia Airlines is letting off right now.

Ref: (43:18)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2L...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2LosYIFUSEE&t=2598)

Digging an oldie, Boeing still runs SCADA on both 747 and older 777. Going as
far as reading engine stats in realtime via
telnet.([http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/16696-FACT-CHECK-
SCADA...](http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/16696-FACT-CHECK-SCADA-
Systems-Are-Online-Now.html))

------
tn13
Why no one is paying attention to the fact that the plane was flying over
South China see which China is trying to claim for itself. Could it be the
case that China by mistake shot the plane down ?

~~~
yeukhon
Impossible. The consequence of hiding the truth is an international shame. And
do you really think any country launching a missile can go unnoticed? You know
that area is under dispute and nearby countries are claiming ownership,
meaning they are actively monitoring all military actions. There are
satellites watching that area too. No. No.

And why China? I think this is more of an anti-China/China conspiracy. You got
Philippines and Vietnam right over there. In fact, Vietnamese navy was the
first appeared on the newspaper claiming it had detected a crash before the
Chinese.

~~~
KhalPanda
I don't disagree with you, but this part got me:

"And do you really think any country launching a missile can go unnoticed?"

A few days ago... no, I didn't think so. But apparently a massive xxx ton
airliner can go for hours unnoticed, so...

~~~
keeperofdakeys
If anyone saw an airliner on their radar, they probably wouldn't even try to
confirm what it was. If they saw an unidentified object, then they'd call
someone.

~~~
phil21
It's not like the radar systems tracking these things on a day to day basis
automatically classify something as a certain type or even size of aircraft.

Even if it were tracked by something, in that area of the world I bet there
are quite a few "unscheduled" flights and it perhaps became something of
routine. Or some remote radar operator is paid to look the other way on some
flights, and mistook this for one of those.

Most likely is that it simply wasn't tracked by anyone who cared, and
especially not by anyone who recorded the data.

------
harshreality
Can India, China, and Australia be confidently dismissed as destinations,
given that they're going to have pretty good air defense radar that would
notice a 777 at altitude, and a 777 flying at low altitude wouldn't have
nearly as much range?

~~~
panacea
Australia can. We've apparently got radar coverage that can detect light
aircraft take-off and landings in much of this area:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/JOR...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/JORS.svg/1000px-
JORS.svg.png)

------
damian2000
Article transcript here:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/20apxu/wsj_breakin...](http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/20apxu/wsj_breaking_news_engine_data_shows_that_plane/)

------
DangerousPie
I can't seem to find a source for this right now, but this claim has
apparently just been denied in a press conference by Rolls Royce, Boeing and
Malaysia Airlines.

------
mahyarm
So will autopilots include a mode to drop to an altitude where people can
start breathing again if depressurization occurs and is not fixed within 2
minutes?

~~~
mikeash
Sure, then someday an airliner crashes into a mountain because this system got
triggered accidentally and it wasn't fixed in time....

~~~
mahyarm
That would be part of the autopilot. It will probably use a combination of
GPS, maps, and radar to avoid this. And it would fly in circles waiting for
people to wake up.

~~~
mikeash
Sure, you can come up with a solution to any objection, but the problem is
failure modes you haven't thought of. The overall point is that any safety
measure brings its own dangers along, and you have to be very careful when
adding stuff to make sure that you've solved more problems than you've added.
It's not at all obvious.

------
m_darkTemplar
I wonder why this data wasn't available earlier. It seems like it would have
been very useful in the searches.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
Probably was available to investigators and searchers just not the general
public.

~~~
m_darkTemplar
The areas that have been searched are very close to where they lost contact
though. I would have thought they'd be looking farther away with this
information.

------
yeukhon
As I said before, our best hope is digging all the satellite images from that
day. There are private and military grade satellites taking pictures in that
area.

------
smcl
Looks like this was a mistake according to the Guardian -
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2014/mar/13/mh370-no-s...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2014/mar/13/mh370-no-
sign-of-debris-detected-by-chinese-satellite-live-updates)

~~~
alexeisadeski3
WSJ tends to be pretty accurate on fact based scoops.

------
jfoster
Now this is being denied: [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-13/malaysia-
airlines-mh37...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-13/malaysia-airlines-
mh370-deny-plane-flew-hours-after-contact/5319716)

The same happened with the reports of the radar capturing it drastically off-
course. First it looked like a sure thing, and then it was eventually
completely denied. Perhaps that's just a symptom of such an intensely-analyzed
ongoing news story, though.

I do feel a bit sorry for the Malaysian government. They don't get to control
what the media prints, but are expected to immediately confirm/deny everything
(difficult with the volume of reports they are likely dealing with!), and to
some extent get chastised when the media prints stuff that later gets busted.

~~~
pdabbadabba
Yes, though the off-course radar contacts were eventually acknowledged after
having been reported, and then completely denied.

From the New York Times: "On Wednesday, after four days of reticence and
evasive answers, the Malaysian military acknowledged that it had recorded, but
initially ignored, radar signals that could have prompted a mission to
intercept and track the missing jetliner. The radar data vastly expanded the
area where the plane, which took off early Saturday from Kuala Lumpur for
Beijing, might have traveled."
[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/missing-
malaysi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/missing-malaysia-
airlines-flight-370.html?hp&_r=0)

With that track record it's hard to know whether to credit the Malaysian
government's vehement denials.

------
Korona007
Special Ops fly NORDO-IFF/SIF off all the time. Check for activity at Oceana
NAS and Diego Garcia NS for response. Like the Alitalia DC-9 out of Napoli
that got splashed by the Brigade Rosa, no news is not good news.

------
brianpgordon
> U.S. counterterrorism officials

This is a Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing... why is this
a matter for US counterterrorism officials?

~~~
panacea
Because Boeing?

Because they have the resources?

Because a re-appropriated civilian Airliner is a potential attack vector?

------
digitalengineer
So we have a plane that flew to another destination without communication and
several people with bogus passports on board. Familymembers have reported
cellphones that kept 'rining' instead of going directly to voicemail (as they
would have if the plane was at rhe bottom of the ocean). Hijacking looks to me
the only reasonable explenation.

~~~
United857
It's possible in some cases for phones to "ring" even if they're
off/disconnected, as the tone is generated by the network, not the device
itself.

~~~
agildehaus
In my experience the network won't ring if it hasn't seen the device in a
certain time period. "Straight to voicemail" for that. I'm no expert though,
maybe rings are still possible.

But if the network is seeing these phones, it seems to me it'd be pretty
simple locate these people by just querying the provider for the tower
location. This hasn't happened, so the only conclusion is all the phones were
destroyed, disabled, or out of range.

~~~
hueving
>In my experience the network won't ring if it hasn't seen the device in a
certain time period. "Straight to voicemail" for that. I'm no expert though,
maybe rings are still possible.

You are correct, rings are still possible regardless of the state of the phone
connection.

------
rangersteve
Is it possible to hack a transponder and make it appear to ATS that a plane is
a legitimate craft? Would it be possible to have someone on the ground act as
"ATC" and pass off the plane to an unsuspecting ACT so it can enter another
countries air space?

------
devindotcom
Still tallies with my hijacking theory. A 777ER would have had enough fuel to
get to just about anywhere east of Africa, and maybe even to the horn.
Honestly I think it's the simplest explanation.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
It'll be a walk in the park to track down the debris in that case.

Amilia Earhart levels of mystery.

~~~
willvarfar
Yeah but we did find Amilia in the end, though.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
Well they haven't yet confirmed the wreckage to be from her aircraft. The
clues are strong, but then again clues were strong in other directions in the
past.

------
raverbashing
Yeah, however China (and other countries) never saw an unidentified aircraft
in their (primary) radars? Seeing that would raise several flags

------
alexeisadeski3
This is some weird stuff.

------
mutert
Biggest mystery.

~~~
clef
Indeed. It looks like everything either malfunctioned or was intentionally
turned off all at once. A long time ago one of my servers had a very crude
monitoring system, it would send me an email every half hour saying "I'm still
alive!". Hard to believe that kind of simple thing can't be implemented on a
21st century airliner ( or maybe it is, then forgive my ignorance please). A
simple beep beep signal saying "I'm still flying!", every minute or so, with
the plane's location as a bonus.

Edit: that said, if the plane starts breaking apart at cruising altitude, it
wouldn't help much with finding it...so maybe self-powered transponders in
nose, tail, wings, engines etc etc, nicely sealed in "black box" style casings
might help. Or maybe they have that already and I know absolutely nothing
about modern planes (or planes in general).

~~~
hrkristian
Planes do have that, the engines also report automatically to a ground base
every thirty minutes. The aforementioned trackers can be shut off in the
cockpit, however, which seems to have happened.

It's unclear whether or not the engines actually have been reporting for
hours, as Rolls Royce are apparently denying it according to some comments
further up.

