Malaysia Airlines loses contact with plane carrying 239 people

[ShowtimeSBMVP]

Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with a plane with 239 aboard enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The airline said in a statement early Saturday it was attempting to locate the Boeing 777 after it lost contact with Subang Air Traffic Control at 2:40 a.m. It was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m.

China's state-run news agency Xinhua reported the plane was lost in airspace controlled by Vietnam, and did not make contact with Chinese air traffic controllers.

The plane is carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members. The airline said it is working with authorities to locate the plane.

Boeing said on its Twitter account it is monitoring the situation, and "our thoughts are with everyone on board."



http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03...ing-23-people/









Malaysian jet probe sharpens focus on passengers, crew as new clues emerge


http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03...-indian-ocean/

[saphojunkie]

What's strange about this is that the flight path doesn't take them to open water. Air France went down flying from Fiji.

Losing a plane in the South Pacific is quite different than the Gulf of Thailand.

[htismaqe]

I don't know what the ocean is like there but some Bermuda Triangle nuts recently found the wreck of a ship off Cape Canaveral that had been sunk by a German U-boat 120 miles to the south. The gulf stream took the sunken ship that far north before it finally hit bottom.

[TLO]

This story is intriguing. I feel like they know more than they are telling us.

[GloryDayz]

Originally Posted by theelusiveeightrop

Where is all the debris. It won't all sink.

When the Aliens take the plane, they take the WHOLE plane...

[GloryDayz]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

based on my understanding, the ocean is much more giant.

Like a fifth of the whole earth man!

[Eleazar]

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared off radar screens on March 8, 2014 while flying over an area where the Gulf of Thailand meets the South China Sea. Here are five things you need to know about the region:

1. The South China Sea covers about 3.5 million sq km, more than 4,880 times the size of Singapore. Its south-western part, including where the Gulf of Thailand lies, is a submerged plain where the water is generally shallow, less than 60m deep. The north-eastern part of the South China Sea, however reaches depths of up to about 5,490m.

2. There are over 250 small islands and reefs in the South China Sea and the region is subject to violent typhoons. But there was no bad weather report or distress call from the Malaysia Airlines plane before it lost contact with ground air control.



3. The South China Sea contains some of the world’s most important shipping lanes. It also has rich fishing grounds and is believed to have potentially significant gas and oil deposits.

4. The area is a source of political tension, with simmering territorial disputes involving several countries. China has claimed sovereignty over most of the resource-rich South China Sea, including the Spratly and Paracel island chains. But Taiwan and Asean members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam have also laid claim to portions of the territories.

5. The Gulf of Thailand, which used to be called the Gulf of Siam, is an inlet of the South China Sea . It covers an area roughly 320,000 sq km in size. The gulf is relatively shallow: Its mean depth is 45m, and at its deepest, it is just 80m. There are many coral reefs in the Gulf of Thailand, making it a popular tourist destination for diving and beach holidays. Among the more popular tourist sites are Pattaya, and the islands of Koh Samui, Koh Tao and Koh Samet



Sources: Wikipedia, CIA World Factbook, The Straits Times

[kepp]

Originally Posted by Big Smoke

This story is intriguing. I feel like they know more than they are telling us.

It kind of has that feeling to it.

[GloryDayz]

Sully would have landed the bitch!

[Eleazar]

Why so few clues about missing Malaysia flight?
By Bill Palmer

Editor's note: Bill Palmer, an Airbus A330 captain for a major airline, is the author of "Understanding Air France 447," an explanation of the details and lessons of the crash of that aircraft in June 2009.

(CNN) -- Many people are wondering why there are so few clues about the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, beginning with the lack of a distress call.

This lack of a call, however, is not particularly perplexing. An aviator's priorities are to maintain control of the airplane above all else. An emergency could easily consume 100% of a crew's efforts. To an airline pilot, the absence of radio calls to personnel on the ground that could do little to help the immediate situation is no surprise.

This investigation may face many parallels to Air France 447, an Airbus A330 that crashed in an area beyond radar coverage in the ocean north of Brazil in June 2009. Like the Air France plane, the Malaysia Airlines aircraft was a state-of-the-art, fly-by-wire airplane (a Boeing 777) with an excellent safety record.

The Air France flight's string of events was precipitated by onboard faults that were automatically transmitted to the airline's headquarters during its final minutes. While they lacked any flight parameters, these maintenance fault messages gave key clues, though not a definitive cause of that accident, before any wreckage was found.

Flight data recorders are key

The recovery of the Malaysia aircraft's flight data and cockpit voice recorders would be important in determining the cause of the accident.

Flight data recorders contain data from more than 1,000 aircraft parameters, including altitude, vertical speed, airspeed, heading, control positions and parameters of the engines and most of the aircraft's onboard systems, captured several times per second.

The cockpit voice recorder archives the last hours of not just cockpit voices and sounds but also all radio and onboard inter-airplane communications.

A multinational team of expert investigators will be looking far beyond just the flight recorders. The detailed history of the flight crew and the airplane will be closely reviewed as well who was traveling on two reportedly stolen passports.

Once the wreckage is located, an examination of the debris and its distribution will tell investigators if the airplane was intact upon impact and the angle at which it hit.

Metallurgical and chemical analysis of the parts will determine the stresses and angles that caused the parts to fail, and if explosives were present. These findings of fact will drive the creation of theories by investigators about what caused the loss of the airplane and its passengers.

As an example of investigators' capabilities, we can look at the case of Pan Am 103, a B-747 brought down over Scotland in December 1988. Investigators were able to identify in amazing detail the sequence of events and even the individual suitcase and radio that held the explosives that destroyed the airplane.

Opinion: When passenger jets mysteriously disappear

Difficulty of the search

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's route heading north from Kuala Lumpur was over sparsely populated and heavily forested mountainous areas of Malaysia and the Gulf of Thailand.
Reports of a possible course reversal observed on radar could be the result of intentional crew actions but not necessarily. During Air France 447's 3½-minute descent to the Atlantic Ocean, it too changed its heading by more than 180 degrees, but it was an unintentional side effect as the crew struggled to gain control of the airplane.

The distance between the north shore of Malaysia and the southern shore of Vietnam of 250 miles is about equal to the distance between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The flight's last telemetry data, as reported by flightaware.com, shows the airplane at 35,000 feet.
Even with a dual engine failure, a Boeing 777 is capable of gliding about 120 miles from that altitude. This yields a search area roughly the size of Pennsylvania, with few clues within that area where remains of the aircraft might be.

The visual search for any pieces of the airplane that may be floating or visible through dense jungle is under way and indeed a daunting task.

In the case of the Air France plane, it was five days of intensive searching before the first floating wreckage was found. It took nearly two years to locate the remains of the aircraft on the ocean floor 12,000 feet below, broken into thousands of pieces by the impact with the water.

Location of the wreckage may be aided by underwater locator beacons on the airplane's flight recorders, if they have not been damaged in the impact like those on the French plane were.

In contrast, the Gulf of Thailand has a maximum depth of only 260 feet, with the average being about 150 feet. If the aircraft is in the water, it should make recovery easier than the long and expensive effort to bring up key parts of the Air France plane from the 2½-mile deep ocean, where most of the airplane and many of its victims remain.

The wreckage of the Air France flight was located in April 2011, with the flight recorders recovered and analyzed that May. The cause of the crash was the crew's loss of control of the airplane after the speed sensor probes became clogged while flying through a storm in the tropics. It caused the loss of reliable airspeed indications, the autopilot to disconnect and the flight controls to degrade.

The investigation of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will be sure to take many months, if not years. We will know the truth of what happened when the aircraft is found and the recorders and wreckage are analyzed. In the meantime, speculation is often inaccurate and unproductive.

[Donger]

I would imagine the wreckage is in Cambodia

[Reerun_KC]

It landed in North Korea....

Wouldn't that be some shit.

[GloryDayz]

Originally Posted by Reerun_KC

It landed in North Korea....

Wouldn't that be some shit.

This just in.... Crap!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Eleazar]

Originally Posted by Donger

I would imagine the wreckage is in Cambodia

Wouldn't there be some record of it entering their airspace, then?

[Reerun_KC]

Originally Posted by Cochise

Wouldn't there be some record of it entering their airspace, then?

Most countries have ATC radar now...

IF it entered any country, people would know it.

[Sully]

Originally Posted by GloryDayz

Sully would have landed the bitch!

Nah