
Search on after Malaysia Airlines flight vanishes - bauc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26492748
======
cstross
Would it have hurt _too_ much to have linked to a real civil aviation news
site like the Aviation Herald for your running realtime summary of
developments, rather than a generic mass media news site run by non-
specialists?

(It's about as useful as linking to the BBC for news of a new OS
vulnerability, rather than CERT, or even The Register.)

The (detailed) AvHerald coverage is here:
[http://avherald.com/h?article=4710c69b&opt=0](http://avherald.com/h?article=4710c69b&opt=0)

 __Personal observation __: I flew through KUL on Malaysian last year, and was
very unimpressed by security: it was cursory in the extreme and if I remember
correctly out passports weren 't electronically captured on entry or
departure. Reports of someone using a stolen Italian passport being among the
passenger manifest are a bit worrying (although some sort of mechanical
failure is far more likely than terrorism).

~~~
Touche
There's a submit button up top, use it. Downvoted for unconstructive comment.

~~~
tptacek
I thought it was an interesting comment, so, cancelled that out for you. :)

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level09
The last time I read a news title like this (where they use words like Flight
Vanishes) was in 2009 about the Air France Flight 447 from Brazil to France.

I still find this story extremely puzzling for many reasons:

1-Boeing 777 is one of the most technologically advanced and safe planes.

2- Malaysian Airlines are one of the best airline companies in the world.

3- The weather seemed to be clear with no storms or strong wind (unlike the
case with the French flight)

4- communication was lost completely with the aircraft. I'm not an airline
expert, but shouldn't be there at least a fallback for the communication
protocol being used e.g: radio/satellite/GSM etc .. ?

~~~
userbinator
I don't know about avionics much either, but I'm wondering why, even at the
time of AF447 if the planes do broadcast information about their current
position (including altitude and speed), there seems to be no obvious "Your
plane is dropping from the sky!" warning generated by any systems and remotely
sent. Even if it's not a continuous stream of data, planes don't fall
infinitely fast; it took a few minutes for AF447 to reach sea level.

~~~
laurencei
The A380 does this. If you watch the Air Crash Investigations episode (also
known as "Mayday) Season 13 Episode 10 - it talks about the Qantas A380 that
had an engine explosion.

All the data from the plane was being relayed back to Qantas HQ - and the
engineers at Qantas HQ were able to see in realtime all the issues facing the
plane.

Ironically there were so many issues, they actually initally thought the
system was faulty (i.e. there were too many faults, so the fault must be the
alert system).

~~~
einhverfr
That's another case of the automation paradox though, is it not? The engineers
are suddenly inundated with all kinds of information and it isn't clear what
the actual cause is. When you look at AF447, part of the problem was that the
pilots appear to have been unaware that all the errors they were seeing were
caused solely by loss of airspeed indicators.

So most of the time you aren't looking at stuff, then suddenly something
happens and you get tons of information on what exactly isn't working right
now, all of which may or may not be useful in determining what the real
problem is. And in this case humans have to step in quickly and react
flawlessly based on perfect knowledge of the failure.

------
userbinator
Governments have developed so much surveillance technology that they can
easily invade the privacy of many citizens, yet tracking the exact whereabouts
of planes flying in the sky - something that for scheduled, commercial flights
whose routes should very much be publicly known information - still seems out
of reach? I find that fact a little unsettling.

~~~
sidcool
Dude, not cool.

~~~
swombat
I don't see how that's not cool.

~~~
KMag
Presumably sldcool is objecting to using this tragedy to make a political
point so soon.

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joeconway
I appreciate that radar only works above a certain altitude, but can someone
explain to me why a vehicle worth > $200m doesn't have a GPS unit broadcasting
over longwave radio,satellite connection or some other remote communication
means. I feel like I'm missing something fundamental.

~~~
_pferreir_
All modern aircraft are equipped with Mode-S transponders [1] which broadcast
several parameters such as altitude, lat/longitude and aicraft ID info. There
are also specific messages that signal "emergency status"[2].

You can 'listen' to these messages yourself with very basic radio equipment
tuned to 1090 MHz[3].

Even though these signals can reach long distances (I remember getting ~300 Km
with my home made antenna) it's possible that the plane was going through an
area where no base stations exist.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_transponder_interrogat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_transponder_interrogation_modes#Mode_S)

[2]:
[http://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/aim/aim04...](http://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/aim/aim0405.html)

[3]: [http://www.rtl-sdr.com/adsb-aircraft-radar-with-rtl-
sdr/](http://www.rtl-sdr.com/adsb-aircraft-radar-with-rtl-sdr/)

~~~
aw3c2
Those signals are very much dependant on direct line-of-sight. Transmitted
from the ground or on the ocean the range would be very low.

~~~
_pferreir_
Sure. I find that I easily lose track of planes if they are below a certain
altitude. Still, it is very strange that the last recorded altitude is 35000
ft [1].

[1]:
[http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/mh370/#2d81a27](http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/mh370/#2d81a27)

~~~
einhverfr
The deviation from planned flight looks odd to me.

On second thought, looking at other flights, it seems not so odd.

~~~
ceejayoz
Deviation from planned flight is very, very common.

~~~
einhverfr
What looked odd to me at first was not the deviation but the fact that it
seemed almost mechanical. As I looked at other flight paths vs actual flights
however it became clear that this sort of deviation was relatively common.

------
jpdus
Apparently an Italian passenger on the passenger list was in fact not on the
plane[1] (and did not buy a ticket, passport was stolen), could be another
sign for a terrorist background.

For more information/speculation the airliners thread[2] is also a good
source.

[1][http://www.corriere.it/esteri/14_marzo_08/scomparso-aereo-
di...](http://www.corriere.it/esteri/14_marzo_08/scomparso-aereo-diretto-
pechino-bordo-239-persone-anche-
italiano-4340534c-a683-11e3-bbe4-676bb1ea55e1.shtml)

[2][http://www.airliners.net/aviation-
forums/general_aviation/re...](http://www.airliners.net/aviation-
forums/general_aviation/read.main/6013944#menu29)

~~~
lolo_
Don't bags that belong to passengers who don't embark get taken off the plane
as a standard security measure?

~~~
einhverfr
What we know is that two apparent passengers were on board with stolen or
forged passports. Obviously they meant mischief, since you don't travel
internationally on a stolen passport if everything is above board.

But when you think about it the sorts of mischief that could be involved are
quite many and varied. One can't rule out terrorism, but it's one possibility
among sufficiently many that this is not where I personally would start. Far
more likely you are dealing with organized criminals doing more typical
organized criminal things (like smuggling stuff).

Additionally usually if the plane is intentionally downed, someone will want
to take credit/responsibility. That this hasn't happened is an indication,
particularly absent patterns of attacks here in the past, that this is just
criminal business as usual and not related to the accident.

Finally there are early unconfirmed reports that the Vietnamese navy may have
spotted smoke columns yesterday. if that turns out to be the case, it would be
a strong indication that the plane exploded on impact with the water, not in
the air.

At present I am so far from being able to endorse the T-word explanation that
it doesn't seem worth looking further into at this point.

------
gchokov
Can't really imagine how are the relatives of all these innocent people
feeling.

And also can't imagine that in 2014 we are not really sure where an airplane
is..

~~~
JonnieCache
I thought with radar we could track every plane on earth at all times? By
bouncing it off the ionosphere or something?

~~~
level09
I had the same impression as well :

[http://www.flightradar24.com/](http://www.flightradar24.com/)

~~~
xadoc
there is a 250-400 km range for FlightRadar, it does not cover oceans very
well.

[http://www.flightradar24.com/how-it-works](http://www.flightradar24.com/how-
it-works) "Flightradar24 has a network of more than 3,000 ADS-B receivers
around the world that receives plane and flight information from aircraft with
ADS-B transponders and sends this information to our servers. Due to the high
frequency used (1090 MHz) the coverage from each receiver is limited to about
250-400 km (150-250 miles) in all directions depending on location. The
farther away from the receiver an aircraft is flying, the higher it must fly
to be covered by the receiver. The distance limit makes it very hard to get
ADS-B coverage over oceans."

------
cabbeer
Navy confirms plane crashes into the sea: [http://sg.news.yahoo.com/mas-
aircraft-goes-missing--says-air...](http://sg.news.yahoo.com/mas-aircraft-
goes-missing--says-airline-023820132.html)

~~~
mkl
Not really, no. Immediately after that statement it says "When contacted,
Malaysia Airlines declined to confirm or deny the reports", and nor has it
been confirmed in the six hours of updates to that story since.

~~~
cabbeer
You're right: [http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/08/malaysia-
airlines-c...](http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/08/malaysia-airlines-
crash-wrapup-1-picture-
idUKL3N0M508X20140308?feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews)

------
pavelrub
How difficult is it to scan the entire area using satellites? There are
civilian satellites that offer resolutions better than 30cm today, surely
enough to spot wreckage in the middle of the sea. DigitalGlobe alone has over
3 active satellites that can scan an area of over 10,000 km^2 in a single
pass, and the combined revisit times should be good enough. This should also
be possible using SAR with a good enough resolution, as the sea would appear
mostly black and anything non-smooth on top of it should stand out.

Edit: made a mistake concerning the area. Fixed now.

~~~
maxerickson
The area of sea involved quickly works out to tens of thousands of square
kilometers.

~~~
pavelrub
The whole area between Malaysia and Ca Mau is bounded within a square of less
than 500 km^2, and even that is a vast exaggeration of where the plane is most
likely to be.

~~~
maxerickson
Either I am completely confused or you are misreading something. The linear
distance is more than 300 kilometers. 500 square kilometers is only 22
kilometers on a side. It's a tiny little patch of the sea there.

~~~
pavelrub
You are right, it's my mistake. I meant 100^2 km^2 (for the satellite
coverage), and 500^2 km^2 for the bounding area. Fixed.

------
_pferreir_
Here is the flight path of MH370, before it ceased responding to tracking
stations:

[http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/mh370/#2d81a27](http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/mh370/#2d81a27)

35kft altitude.

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ajcarpy2005
Oil slicks have been spotted in the ocean.
[http://bigstory.ap.org/article/china-bound-malaysian-jet-
van...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/china-bound-malaysian-jet-
vanishes-239-aboard)

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DanBC
How many aircraft are in the air at any one time? Or over a span of 24 hours?

How much bandwidth and storage would it take to collect information about
where an airplane is at any point in time?

~~~
gchokov
How many cats pictures are currently posted online? How much clouds are being
deployed right now?

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sciguy77
I remember when this happened to Oceanic flight 815.

