MH 777 missing - MH370 media statement

[Happy Trails]

Angus Houston's an Air Marshal.

 

[prozac]

Angus Houston's an Air Marshal.

To be precise he is an Air Chief Marshal...no-one any higher.
Air Chief Marshal Allan Grant "Angus" Houston, AC AFC

From wikipedia - Angus Houston - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Houston was born on 9 June 1947 in Ayrshire, Scotland and educated at Strathallan School in Forgandenny, Perthshire. He emigrated to Australia in 1968[SUP][1][/SUP] to work as a jackaroo on a cattle station in north-west Western Australia. It was there that his workmates dubbed him "Angus", due to his strong Scottish accent.

Must be the only Scot who no longer has a discernible accent.

 

[Archphoto]

How long would the search continue, if the black box is not located before the battery expires?

Would it then be up to MH/Malaysian Government/Boeing to dig deep into their (possibly collective) pockets to continue, or would it be resigned to the "Mysteries & Unsolved Secrets" series? (Does that even still exist????!!!)

Would Australia continue with the search (on the off chance they stumble upon the aircraft) or be forced to wait for instructions from the above parties to request the search continues?

Curious, as I thought I read up-thread that private funds were raised, to continue searching for the Air France flight, which took 2 years to find, and wondered if similar would be undertaken for MH370, or if AMSA (and the other nations involved) would continue regardless.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

A non-calamitous decompression still possibly fits on all but the way point course alterations. Is it possible an autopilot may make those alterations whilst trying to make sense of the original flight path and current bearings? Electronics can be confused at times.

Is it possible that both pilots were sucked out due to a broken coughpit windscreen? Do pilots always wear belts/harnesses and only release them one at a time? Could pax/crew attempt the heading changes without the pilots?

No...you are ignoring the comms matters AND that the plane kept flying for so long afterwards.

Anything catastrophic enough to take out the pilots, and the comms together....would have taken out the plane. It did not. It kept flying.

 

[Deleted member 29185]

No...you are ignoring the comms matters AND that the plane kept flying for so long afterwards.

I'm not ignoring anything. Just asking questions which paint a scenario about as realistic and as silly as all the other suggestions. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're not. I don't know, nor do I profess to know but I admit that. You however just made a statement of fact....

Anything catastrophic enough to take out the pilots, and the comms together....would have taken out the plane.

are you sure that's fact, or is it conjecture?

 

[RooFlyer]

Here's an idle question while we are filling in time.

What debris from an airliner crash, could remain buoyant ('floating') after 3 or 4 weeks in (often) rough seas?

I'm thinking anything with 'trapped air' like suitcases, tanks or containerised fuselage that weren't ripped apart on impact, loose clothes etc would become waterlogged over an extended period and at best be neutrally buoyant and hover beneath the surface, or sink. I think, without knowing, that most of the plastic components like cabin fittings would sink?

What's the largest component which could be liberated in a crash and would definitely still be floating after this time in the Southern Ocean?

Just wondering if anyone can recall any investigation of this in past crash investigations, that could be referenced.

 

[markis10]

Seat cushions float, there were 300 odd.

 

[RooFlyer]

Seat cushions float, there were 300 odd.

Yeah, thought of those naturally. Would they still be floating after being in a washing machine for a couple of weeks? Or waterlogged and neutrally buoyant? I don't know, just wondering if anyone has studied / tested it.

 

[markis10]

Yeah, thought of those naturally. Would they still be floating after being in a washing machine for a couple of weeks? Or waterlogged and neutrally buoyant? I don't know, just wondering if anyone has studied / tested it.

They are made of latex so buoyancy would be inversely proportional to material durability, I suspect it would be a long time.

 

[whatmeworry]

According to Presstv.com, they reckon an analyst says the CIA know exactly what has happened to the plane. Probably a conspiracy theory. But I still think the Chinese and the Yanks know more then they lead on.

“The CIA base in Alice Springs, Australia, knows precisely what happened to that plane,” said Kevin Barrett in a Press TV interview on Monday, pointing to the base’s access to military radar and satellite coverage in the area.
He also stated that it would be impossible for radar systems in the region not to have picked up the whereabouts of the missing plane.

“It cannot have just disappeared. This makes no sense.”​

Barrett said it only takes “a second or two” to squawk an emergency code “so there is no way that a plane is going to start having problems that are going to lead to a crash and it is not going to squawk that code.”

The American writer added that "the plane turned and flew in a westerly direction and must have been under some kind of control and “yet there was no emergency code, there was no hijack code, nothing like that.”
​

“This is very, very strange,” Barrett said.
He also dismissed official suggestions that the plane had crashed during its flight, reasoning that “passengers’ cell phones were ringing out days after the plane disappeared, meaning that they were not under water and they were powered on.”

PressTV - CIA knows what happened to Malaysia plane: Analyst

 

[markis10]

According to Presstv.com, they reckon an analyst says the CIA know exactly what has happened to the plane. Probably a conspiracy theory. But I still think the Chinese and the Yanks know more then they lead on.

Its a pity most of the world cannot view internet content all the time with the same scepticism they hold for items published on April 1!

 

[whatmeworry]

I never heard of this PRESSTV but a quick net search reveals it is funded by the Iran government...

 

[lovetravellingoz]

I'm not ignoring anything. Just asking questions which paint a scenario about as realistic and as silly as all the other suggestions. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're not. I don't know, nor do I profess to know but I admit that. You however just made a statement of fact....


are you sure that's fact, or is it conjecture?

There are a number of means that were available to the pilots to use to communicate. None were used.

Two or more devices including the transponder needed to either be turned off manually, or to have suffered catastrophic failure. Indeed as there were evidently two transponders, both had to fail. Modern jetliners make substantial use of redundancy

The electrical system aboard the plane is so robust and the transponder draws so little power that it would be one of the last pieces of equipment to go dark, even after a catastrophic event like an engine explosion or a breach of the cabin and rapid decompression, he said.
"I'm in a head-scratching mode," Nance said. "The most likely probability is that a human hand turned that off. Then you get into the logic tree of who and why and there aren't that many channels in that tree."
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-transponder/

But despite the catastrophic failure wiping out all of the above you would have it as:

* The plane could still communicate with its pings?

* The auto-pilot, the engines and all flight controls remained working perfectly enough for a very long and stable flight.

* That the auto-pilot by itself managed to create a new course to fly South. According to pilots this is not at all likely http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/14/opinion/goyer-malaysia-flight/

In my view as I have already posted earlier, without knowing who, the most likely scenario is some form of manual intervention. Hijacker, pilot, co-pilot, or anyone else, I know not who.

In my view your scenaro is not as realistic as others.
As for sillyness. Given the information currently known, I think personally that the least silly scenario is human intervention.

 

[browski]

We are not sure it went south, we have taken that as fact, but even Inmarsat would feel uncomfortable with that characterisation. Just remember that we only assume it made the original left turn because a few days later, after a review, an object on the radar was spotted moving west.
With the 2 PMs in Perth today let's hope it's a staged performance and they miraculously pull a boarding pass out of the water.

 

[Deleted member 29185]

I think personally that the least silly scenario is human intervention.

Ah yes. So conjecture rather than fact, which is the point I was making in my last post.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Ah yes. So conjecture rather than fact, which is the point I was making in my last post.

Yes aliens may have abducted them, yes the pilots may have turned off the transponder as they were being sucked out whilst also reprogramming also the autopiliot, snakes on a plane may have run riot.....

However as a professional engineer I am happy to stand by what I wrote which is based on the expert opinion to date of crash experts and pilots, and of my own knowledge of how systems with multiple redundancies work.. And before you selectively quote or re-imagine what I wrote, by flying I am including the changes made to the auto-pilot after the comms black out, including all of its subsequent route (and not just that it stayed airborne for a bit), which is when your catastrophe would have needed to have occurred.

I will go with human intervention over a catastrophe that selectively sucked out the pilots, selectively disabled the transponders (low power devices) and other electronics while leaving other more complicated and power hungry systems intact...while also creating a unique glitch in the auto-pilot so that it could reprogram itself onto a new and very unusual course ( I have yet to read anything on how this route could have occurred without human interaction). That it kept flying in this manner is key, and was my point. If it had of kept flying on the original path, catastrophe may have been more plausible, but this is not what happened in this tragedy.

 

[SeatBackForward]

I wonder if MH has considered simply re-tracing the known route, then following a straight line in the possible directions from that last known point? I know its cluthing at straws, but given how little else is known, why not.

 

[straitman]

To be precise he is an Air Chief Marshal...no-one any higher.
Air Chief Marshal Allan Grant "Angus" Houston, AC AFC

From wikipedia - Angus Houston - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Must be the only Scot who no longer has a discernible accent.

Continuing OT briefly.
A mild accent only that has not changed much in the 40+ years that I have known him.

 

[Deleted member 29185]

And before you selectively quote or re-imagine what I wrote,

The selectivity is simply used to highlight a discrepancy in your posts...those being at one point you stated fact when in fact you meant conjecture. You've since clarified your meaning and agreed you meant conjecture. I also have not stated any such catastrophe that you contribute to me. I did however ask questions .

 

[mikenz]

Do we know that the auto pilot was on?
If something happened that disconnected comms, could that have also disconnected A/P?
If A/P was disconnected, and (say) all electrics were out, could the pilots have flown the plane, or would it have continued in a straight line until they ran out of fuel?