This missing plane..

[tut]

No way does a pilot with that much experience not know where his emergency landing airport is while in cruise.

A pilot does not have an emergency landing airport, he has an alternate in the event of his destination being not available because of weather conditions/power failure/loss of ILS etc. This is why extra fuel is always carried to enable him to divert to the alternate.

tut

[fd]

Fire .. leading to sequential systems failure .. Pilot turned back to long runway with easy approach ( which was the direction he first turned ) .. Didn't make it .. The sea is a big place .. Everybody likes a conspiracy but this is probably 'just' another crash ..

Sent from my Nexus 7

[hendeg]

There's a good commentary available from the Telegraph

A fire seems like a logical explanation then the pilot changes course. Everyone is unconscious pretty quickly and the plane just keeps going which is backed up by the sighting over the Maldives.

Whatever has happened, I still can't believe it hasn't been found yet.

[Dark]

No way that a fire which instantaneously disabled all the radios & flight locators went out again and left the plane flying for another 6-7 hours!
These planes have automatic fire suppression systems in the equipment bays & hold. So if it was a fire, it would have been major and quickly catastrophic. No way the engines would have kept pinging.

On the other hand I don't think it's landed intact in the jungle as the Daily mail are suggesting this morning!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... radar.html

[graeme]

No way does a pilot with that much experience not know where his emergency landing airport is while in cruise.

A pilot does not have an emergency landing airport, he has an alternate in the event of his destination being not available because of weather conditions/power failure/loss of ILS etc. This is why extra fuel is always carried to enable him to divert to the alternate.

tut

OK, so it's not officially in the flight plan, but that's not the same as not knowing exactly where the long runways are around a route you've probably flown hundreds of times before. Pilot would know exactly where he wanted to go as soon as he was alerted to the fire.

Also, I didn't mean the transponder loss was an emergency, I meant whatever caused it was an emergency, i.e. fire.

Right or wrong, I still think it's the simplest answer.

[tenkfeet]

No way that a fire which instantaneously disabled all the radios & flight locators went out again and left the plane flying for another 6-7 hours!
These planes have automatic fire suppression systems in the equipment bays & hold. So if it was a fire, it would have been major and quickly catastrophic. No way the engines would have kept pinging.

On the other hand I don't think it's landed intact in the jungle as the Daily mail are suggesting this morning!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... radar.html

Generally only engines, cargo bays and toilet waste bins have automatic fire extinguishers . Avionics bays on some aircraft may have smoke detectors.

Most systems have different power supplies eg radio com 1 and com2. There is also the APU to supply power and in an emergency the Ram Air turbine.

All you ever wanted to know about Boeing 777 systems http://www.smartcockpit.com/plane/BOEING/B777.html Its for pilots so not that in depth.

[pete]

The epitome of wrongness. If this is the quality of "facts" that are fuelling the speculation then that plane is never being found.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/opini ... inion&_r=0

[fd]

I wonder whether the crew would be able to navigate without modern aids .. perhaps they lost a lot of the cockpit instrumentation, at night, and could do nothing other than keep it in the air for as long as possible .. this all happened under darkness didn't it ? .. In a glass cockpit is there a good old magnetic compass ?

Sent from my Nexus 7

[David]

Even the most modern glass cockpit has a good old compass and electro/vacuum/pressure/gyro instruments. The compass is in the traditional place at the top of the screen pillar. The others are in between the 'glass' displays. They would also have a full set of paper charts for navigation, approach, and landing for their part of the world. My feeling now is that this was a suicide - the intention being to make it a mystery. Latest is wreckage has be been spotted and to be investigated south of Perth, Australia.

[tut]

Pretty sure there would be Fergus, the S76 had a glass display but also a good old reliable magnetic compass.

When I first started flying I was in Singapore and we used Bell 47G's, which had no navigation instruments at all other than an altimeter and a bubble compass. We had to do night flying exercises across in Malaysia, and it was bloody scary. We were flying under VMC conditions so you could see the surface and were clear of cloud, but it was also amongst mountains, not a pilots best friend. However on one flight I got into cloud without seeing it, and the next minute I had no reference at all and could feel the panic creeping in. You can not fly by the seat of the pants to try and stay straight and level, the inner ear is fooled and tells you that you that you are in a turn which you try to correct with inevitable consequences. I locked onto the bubble compass to keep on the same heading, left the collective lever and pedals where they were, and used the liquid as a spirit level until I came out of the cloud.

On the debrief it then became apparent as to why we had lost two pilots at night in unexplained crashes. After that we had training sessions with two pilots, the handling one wearing a visor so that he could only see the compass, and he had to be able to fly for five minutes without the other pilot taking control before he was allowed to fly at night again. It was not until I got to Oman that I flew a helicopter that could fly under IMC and do an NDB letdown back at the airfield after an OP.

There is so much redundancy in the electronics nowadays that although a complete failure is possible, it is not out of the question. I keep come back to the pilot not putting out a MAYDAY or even any call, unless it was deliberate or the aircraft exploded, which if it had they would have known the position and found the debris. He had as many hours as I have, and if you think about all the emergencies, crashes, fatalities, we have had over the forty years in the North Sea, the only times that a transmission was not made was when the pilot had no chance, gearbox failure, transmission failure, blade detaching, blades meshing, or actually flying into the sea.

tut

[tenkfeet]

777 has an integrated standby instrument which has everything a pilot would need to navigate ?

If you loose your nav sources its stby compass time.

[sendmyusername]

Is it not possible, as has been previously stated -
1) Decompression leading to major electronic control failure
2) pilot tries to get to easiest landing strip (the one he initially heads for
3) becomes incapacitaed himself on way
4) plane passes over and just keeps on going ?
Also just seen where it "could" have gone - anywhere - but also over a quarter of austrailia. So well within other landing areas

[tut]

2) pilot tries to get to easiest landing strip (the one he initially heads for

Decompression would not affect the radios, so on the above he would have had no problem putting out an emergency call and stating his intentions. Many of the so called experts are/were not pilots so miss the actual actions of the pilot in these circumstances. Obviously the first one is to try and control the aircraft from what ever caused the emergency. The handling pilot will do this and also give the co-pilot instructions if he is able to do so to help him, but the other pilot would have immediately put out a MAYDAY call. They seem to forget that there are two pilots who each have their own course of actions.

Most emergencies at height give the pilots time to get their emergency check list out and go through it methodically so they do not miss anything, in fact nowadays it will come out on the screen as opposed to using a manual. However any emergency they can think of is covered in training in the simulator no matter how unlikely it may be, so the pilots have been put through them numerous times, and have to be able to cope with them to pass their twice yearly base checks.

Todays news of the debris spotted off Australia if it is confirmed as the 777 again reinforces my own view, the pilots deliberately did not put out a call for whatever reason that may be, and the only other one that I can realistically put that down to is that the aircraft exploded which would now be ruled out if the above is confirmed.

tut

[woody]

Is it not possible, as has been previously stated -
1) Decompression leading to major electronic control failure
2) pilot tries to get to easiest landing strip (the one he initially heads for
3) becomes incapacitaed himself on way
4) plane passes over and just keeps on going ?
Also just seen where it "could" have gone - anywhere - but also over a quarter of austrailia. So well within other landing areas

Who knows? No one. No one on a forum or on the TV news is likely to solve it either.


To paraphrase a bit, never in the field of media reporting has so much been reported on by so many who know so little.

[pete]

2) pilot tries to get to easiest landing strip (the one he initially heads for

Decompression would not affect the radios, so on the above he would have had no problem putting out an emergency call and stating his intentions. Many of the so called experts are/were not pilots so miss the actual actions of the pilot in these circumstances. Obviously the first one is to try and control the aircraft from what ever caused the emergency. The handling pilot will do this and also give the co-pilot instructions if he is able to do so to help him, but the other pilot would have immediately put out a MAYDAY call. They seem to forget that there are two pilots who each have their own course of actions.

Most emergencies at height give the pilots time to get their emergency check list out and go through it methodically so they do not miss anything, in fact nowadays it will come out on the screen as opposed to using a manual. However any emergency they can think of is covered in training in the simulator no matter how unlikely it may be, so the pilots have been put through them numerous times, and have to be able to cope with them to pass their twice yearly base checks.

Todays news of the debris spotted off Australia if it is confirmed as the 777 again reinforces my own view, the pilots deliberately did not put out a call for whatever reason that may be, and the only other one that I can realistically put that down to is that the aircraft exploded which would now be ruled out if the above is confirmed.

tut

What he said.