Malaysian Boeing 777 missing

[BleAivano]

The latest thing I've heard is that the engines have their own data transmission and continued to send information for six hours. No idea whether that's true or not.

WSJ reports 4 hours: http://online.wsj.com/news/article_emai ... MzExNDMyWj

[Rollo]

What happens if say, there was an issue with the guidance system and/or other electrical faults?

The aircraft might not even be within a projected area of where it's supposed to be.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/missi ... cle-2014-3

This is one of those occasions where I wish that I hadn't said what I did because I might be right. If there was a guidance system fault and it flew on for hours in a radio "black spot" then that explains the complete disappearance perfectly and that's a worry.

[anfield5]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but it is my understanding that commercial planes have a locator beacon that activates if the plane crashes, they usually last for up to a month sending out a 'ping'. Why has nobody heard anything. From what I know, it indicates that it is under water and the transimiision cant be picked up, unless a receiver is basically directly over it, but I would have though someone some where would have heard something.

[BleAivano]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but it is my understanding that commercial planes have a locator beacon that activates if the plane crashes, they usually last for up to a month sending out a 'ping'. Why has nobody heard anything. From what I know, it indicates that it is under water and the transimiision cant be picked up, unless a receiver is basically directly over it, but I would have though someone some where would have heard something.

Yes they have Emergency Locator transmitter but it only works if the aircraft crashes on land.
If the airplane crashes in water the transmitter might not be able to send out information.
Since the antenna would be below water and radio or satellite signal does not work under water.
Perhaps you are confuse it an underwater locator beacon used the the flight data recorder?
an ULB uses audio pings when they are underwater.

There are also most likely smaller hand-held devices like EPIRBs on board the aircraft,

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missin ... ing-n49216

[Starter]

It's looking more and more like:
A) There was some sort of decompression in the cabin which incapacitated the pilot and copilot and the plane flew on until it ran out of fuel.
B) Human intervention, terrorist or otherwise.

[Mark]

So it could be in Perth, can anyone in Perth check if there's an aircraft there pls?

[Storm]

or even in Tibet?

[driveace]

The pilot decides how much fuel he wants to take on .And they took on far more fuel than was needed for that journey too, I am told you only usually only take on extra fuel ,if you are tankering cheaper fuel from your departure airport to an airport where fuel is a lot more expensive.So was this detour planned from the start by the pilots ?
And the last pilot they spoke to on the last communication was the younger First Officer,SO if it was flown to another country,was the older pilot attacked by the FO ,who then took over the command of the plane ?
All speculation,but is this plane really ever going to be located ?
I do not think it was blown out of the sky !

[BleAivano]

driveace, no on the contrary the investigators specifically said that they didn't have more fuel the normal
which means that they had around 140-145''000KG fuel on board which would give them a total range of
about 2600nm-3000nm or around 7 hours from where there radio comm was lost.

However, it is a very likely guess that the plane did not explode or suffer any sudden catastrophic failure
because then it wouldn't have kept flying for 7 hours.

[minardi]

Current search area is 2.24 million square nautical miles. Needle. Haystack.

Thoughts are with the friends and family of the missing, who simply cannot get closure until they find the plane, but sadly, I've got a strong feeling they won't find it for a very, very long time.