Missing Malaysia plane: 'Oil slick seen'

After watching this evenings news it is becoming more apparent how badly the Malaysian authorities are handling the disappearance of the 777. I thought it was disgusting how they marched one or two of the family members out of the press conference room and how badly the government officials answered the questions of the world press. Like Mothergate mentioned, they are not very good at PR, and I think they need to import a spin doctor or two from us to at least hold the press at bay until they have some concrete evidence as to the whereabouts of the plane and as to what happened.

Yep. They don't have a very good "bedside manner". I saw that too.

Meantime the Aussies have seen large pieces of debris on satellite in the southern Indian ocean, west of Australia and are off to investigate.

"Australia is investigating two objects seen on satellite images that could potentially be linked to the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, officials say.

Planes and ships from Australia, New Zealand and the US were heading to the area 2,500km (1,550 miles) south-west of Perth to search for the objects.

The largest appeared to be 24m in size, maritime authorities said, but warned they could be unrelated to the plane."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26659951

Very interesting interview on Fox last night with Chris Laughlin, the Vice-President of Inmarsat, the British communications satellite company in which he stated that had Malaysian installed a small upgrade to their aircraft's satellite communications system, it would most likely have have been located by now. The upgrade would have cost $10 for that Kuala Lumpur - Beijing flight, or around 3 cents per passenger seat and would have meant that data, including the plane's GPS coordinates and altitude would have been transmitted automatically at frequent intervals. That upgrade is mandatory for all trans-Atlantic flights but not so elsewhere and is why rescuers were able to locate the Air France Airbus that went down off the South American coast a few years ago so quickly (although recovering the black box took several more years).

There is also a strange coincidence concerning the current search area in that if the Latitude of the centre of the current search area is changed from South to North and the Longitude remains the same, the plane would have ended-up very close to Urumqi, Xinjiang Province in western China; the airport there can easily accommodate a 777. This is an area populated by Muslim Uyghurs who the Chinese blame for the very recent terrorist attack at Kunming railway station that accounted for 29 deaths and over 130 wounded. One of the MH370 passengers was reportedly a Uyghur.

At last night's press briefing, Malaysian Airline's CEO, Ahmad Jauhari, was forced to admit that MH370's cargo did include a quantity of Lithium-Ion batteries just four days after he denied it and claimed that the cargo consisted of three or four tonnes of Mangosteens. He did claim that the batteries were packaged in accordance with ICAO regulations but nevertheless they are a very dangerous cargo. I rather suspect his packaging claim was aimed at reassuring the plane's insurers but how would anyone know for sure - the shippers are unlikely to admit any shortcomings on their part. However, if it can be proven that the batteries were responsible for causing a fire onboard the aircraft and they were incorrectly packaged, then Malaysian might have to pay at least the hull's insurance value to the company from whom it leased the aircraft as it may no longer have been insured. That could cost the airline over $110 million. That's on top of the many millions of dollars the search and rescue operation will cost - of which only about $4 million is covered by insurance; I've seen estimates of over $100 million which, given the number of countries involved and the assets being deployed, may be on the low side.

Is it not more likely to be related to the Egyptair 777 that spontaneously combusted on the ground in Cairo whilst passengers were boarding. (Link)

Less than three years ago, and the conclusion was: "The aircraft showed no defects that could have contributed to the accident."

So the same thing could easily happen again.

Yes, this is one possible scenario but it might not account for why the transponder stopped transmitting or why the VHF radio also stopped working -- when the Vietnamese controllers were unable to contact MH370, they asked another Malaysian aircraft ahead of it to try to contact them; it was unable to.

According to pilots whose comments I've read, the credo is "Aviate. Navigate. Communicate" in that order.

I'm inclined to think that fire is the much more likely cause than other scenarios. Suppose the lithium battery shipment was loaded in the forward cargo hold, it would be in a space just above several key antennae including the transponder. That hold is just behind the electrical equipment bay which is immediately below the cockpit where all the major avionics are racked. Flight crew can access that bay through the cockpit floor, apparently. If that cargo spontaneously combusted at - or very shortly after - the time of the hand-over to the Vietnamese controllers, the fire could easily damage the wiring looms causing the forward antennas to stop working. Smoke and toxic fumes very likely entered the cockpit from the equipment bay below.The cockpit crew would have set-off the fire extinguishers (CO2?) in the hold and decided to climb as high as possible to starve the fire of oxygen. However, 777 pilots that are writing on PPRuNE all say that a 777 can not climb to 45,000' even with the more powerful Rolls Royce Trent engines that were fitted to this plane. Nevertheless, the oxygen masks in the passenger cabin should have deployed at, I read, around the 40,000' level but there's only around 10 minutes of oxygen available for the passengers - the cockpit crew have about 1 hour's supply. That 10 minute supply would give just about enough time for the aircraft to descend to below 13,000. But the crew might have tried to force the plane even higher with the result that oxygen time was running out and passengers became hypoxic. In addition to the climb, the aircraft turned left and headed towards Langkawi island where there would have been a straight line approach and a long runway - this despite the fact that there are two other airports much closer (Khota Baru and Kuala Terenggani).

It is then reported that the aircraft descended to (iirc) 23,000' as it crossed the peninsular and that may have been an attempt to save passenger lives - the flight crew knowing or suspecting that hypoxia may have set in. Having crossed the peninsular, the aircraft then turned right which would be entirely consistent with lining-up with the runway at Langkawi. I think it is possible that the crew oxygen ran out and they became hypoxic and mistakenly reprogrammed the flight management computer with the wrong coordinates which took the plane into the wide blue yonder rather than making an instrument landing at Langkawi.

Yikes.

I have two 777 long-haul flights booked in the next fortnight...

And in the meantime, back to Andaman Islands...



http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nati...onvinced-I-saw-aircraft-near-Andaman-islands/

And now the Chinese have satellite images of a large "debris" object in the southern corridor... 22.5 x 13m

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26697048

I agree, the 777 still has one of the best safety records of any aircraft, start worrying when they start issuing flame retardant overalls and parachutes at check in

Years ago I was working on a ROV survey v/l in the southern sector of the north sea when a helicopter went down within sight of the platform after it had just taken off from near Yarmouth. We responded to the mayday calls as did all the other vessels in the area. We found the helo with our ROV after nearly 8 days!! Remember this went down within sight of the platform and the heli-deck crew in fairly shallow water. We went off on wild goose chases looking at debris, jetsom etc. Eventually we found it by luck more than anything. I must say though that if the shell rep onboard has let us do our job properly we'd have probably found it within 4 days but he wanted to be the hero and claim he found it. Bravest man there? The air investigator that joined us by helicopter with gear to help find the downed helo.

Basically I'm saying that due to winds, currents, time since this has happened if any debis is found it'll by many miles from the crash site, if indeed the plane has crashed.

Where there many on board Stu? Did they survive?

A colleage of mine went in the sea under very similar circumstances, probably about 20 years ago now. But I think it was further north. Close to a mobile rig and platform. The helicopter turned upside down. They all evacuated in the conventional way. The seas were reasonably calm. All survived. He, was a skinny bloke with not an ounce of fat on him and the temperature got to him pretty quickly. They fished them out and got them onto the platform and he had to be "thawed" out in a hot bath . I think the helicopter did sink but had landed with little impact, pretty close to the rigs and didn't break up as such. So no, not the same occurrence. Long time ago now.

If MH370 did make it to SW of Perth then the search area is in one of the more inhospitable parts of the world; it's not called the Roaring Forties for nothing! Swell and wave height measured in metres making searches by surface craft very difficult to almost impossible, all the more so if the wreckage is awash. My hat's off to the twenty man all-Filipino crew of the Heogh St Petersburg which was the first surface on the scene.

Or was it?

I read on PPRuNe that someone had checked the maritime equivalent of Flightradar24 and there was a Chinese ship, the Hang Seng, in the vicinity of the search area when the flight went missing.

You're mate was very lucky. They are bringing in new regs for the north sea limiting pax numbers etc. Unfortunately no one survived the crash I attended, it was fully loaded. The helo hit the sea at approx. 120kts (cruising speed) so its like hitting concrete. The divers that recovered the helo (off the Aquamarine I think) said trying to get the bodies out of the helo was bad as the force of the impact had liquefied their insides!! Most bodies where recovered bar one I think. We found 2 with our ROV rolling along the bottom!! Not very nice. BP put on a free bar for us at the Short Blue pub afterwards. Think that was their idea of therapy for us! We did 6 grand over the bar by the end, not bad for a crew less than 40!! The actual cause of the crash which I don't think was made public was a known fracture in one of the main rotor blades. It had been changed out from another helo.

I did 4 months in the Falklands a few years ago as a baby 3rd mate and I was quite scared being on watch in the weather down there on a (at the time) 28yr old RFA tanker that was falling apart at the seams. I'm impressed by anyone who operates in that neck of the world after having done it myself. That's why I'll be surprised if they find anything down there, if it is in that area of course.

Yes. Definitely not the same one then. I had been on the same rig just a week or so earlier. They had a controlled ditching. So yes, lucky.

LOL. Yes, some therapy at the bar.