Posted on 03/13/2014 5:02:50 PM PDT by mandaladon
Two U.S. officials tell ABC News the U.S. believes that the shutdown of two communication systems happened separately on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
One source said this indicates the plane did not come out of the sky because of a catastrophic failure.
The data reporting system, they believe, was shut down at 1:07 a.m. The transponder -- which transmits location and altitude -- shut down at 1:21 a.m.
This indicates it may well have been a deliberate act, ABC News aviation consultant John Nance said.
U.S. investigators told ABC News that the two modes of communication were "systematically shut down." That means the U.S. team "is convinced that there was manual intervention," a source said, which means it was likely not an accident or catastrophic malfunction that took the plane out of the sky.
U.S. officials said earlier that they have an "indication" the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner may have crashed in the Indian Ocean and is moving the USS Kidd to the area to begin searching.
It's not clear what the indication was, but senior administration officials told ABC News the missing Malaysian flight continued to "ping" a satellite on an hourly basis after it lost contact with radar. The Boeing 777 jetliners are equipped with what is called the Airplane Health Management system in which they ping a satellite every hour. The number of pings would indicate how long the plane stayed aloft.
It's not clear, however, whether the satellite pings also indicate the plane's location.
The new information has greatly expanded the potential search area into the Indian Ocean.
(Excerpt) Read more at gma.yahoo.com ...
WSJ just issued a fresh story on this with new details ... looks like the aircraft actually left quite an electronic trail ...
Yes I would post but don’t have WJ access if someone does please post breaking news
... phones do not work well at cruising altitude ...
“My head is exploding with all these theories!!!”
Well, no hard facts, so this is how we play here, sometimes.
This could be the biggest alien abduction yet, for all we know.
I think the info is badly explained or knowing ABC, deliberately mis-interpreted to fuel speculation in order to grab web hits which generates advertising income.
Concentrate on how the article is written and presented; it’s clear that nobody official made the “juicy” statements, those interpretations are all added by experts and sources or consultants. That’s just BS reportage.
Here is a bit more of the story:
Originally Posted by Wall Street Journal
Updated March 13, 2014 8:43 p.m. ET
Communication satellites received intermittent data “pings” from a missing Malaysia Airlines jet, giving the plane’s location, speed and altitude for at least five hours after it disappeared from civilian radar screens, people briefed on the investigation said Thursday.
The final satellite ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a “normal” cruising altitude. The people declined to say where specifically the transmission originated, adding that it was unclear why the transmissions stopped. One possibility one person cited was that the system sending them had been disabled by someone on board.
The automatic pings, or attempts to link up with satellites operated by Inmarsat PLC, occurred a number of times after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370’s last verified position, these people said, indicating that at least through those hours, the Boeing Co. 777 carrying 239 people remained intact and hadn’t been destroyed in a crash, act of sabotage or explosion.
Malaysian Airlines said it hadn’t received any such data.
If the plane remained airborne for that entire period it could have flown more than 2,200 nautical miles from its last confirmed position over the Gulf of Thailand, these people said.
- - - - - - - -
Looks like periodic ‘registration’ attempts or handshakes by an Inmarsat data terminal were taking place ... why it stopped, the aircraft may have finally run out of fuel, descended, etc. (RIP) ... reg attempts might have been once very 10 min or 30 min or an hour ... at which times ‘data’ e.g. location? was sent.
Or they determined it was transmitting and simply logged it off, not hard to do.
Yeah (cough cough) after 5 hours ...
I looked at it, the rest of the article doesn’t really have anything new that is more specific than in the first two sentences.
The fact that the plane was at normal cruising altitude is interesting.
Also, that the data included the plane’s location. They must have known that days ago!
Do you know what the filed flight plan called for as far as total elapsed time?
5 hours of ‘pinging’ plus the time already in the air puts them outside that figure ...
In yet another oddity the cast for that was on MH370: Jet Li's stuntman is/was one of the passengers.
Look, there is no way the transponders would have quit 15 mins apart because of a power failure and then the plane fly for five hours. Maybe it landed, who knows this is quite unusual.
I am not a pilot ,but since they want an 8,000 ft or longer runway to take off with fuel and passengers I would think a lightened 777 could take of in 5500 feet.
You don't have to worry about passenger comfort. I believe passenger comfort and safety is why runways are so long. You don't want to terrorize the flying public on landings and takeoff on short runways.
There must be some Freeper commercial pilots or airport people who can better answer the Question. - Tom
Indeed not.
In spite of your tag line.....
Is it not of interest that the Malaysian authorities have been totally uncooperative, given out misinformation, bad information, conflicting information, etc?
It would be interesting to know who the Chinese passengers are, what their jobs are and whether the Malaysian government would have any desire to be rid of them....without starting a war with China.
That airplane is on some remote military airbase in some country friendly to Malaysia.
You’re right. I read at one point that it had enough fuel for about 4200 miles, but then other posters said it had only enough for a relatively short trip (for a plane that size) and that the Philippines would be beyond that. I never checked.
So it could be out there on one of those islands. But if Diego Garcia is involved, I’d bet it’s Somalia or maybe Madagascar.
My guess is it was diverted and then shot down.
Some unnamed US official is saying they think it is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Implication per reporting that they strongly believe this.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/
No.
Runway length required for airline aircraft is a simple mathematical calculation.
How long required to reach Vmc (minimum controllable airspeed with one engine inoperable) and distance to reach that speed and abort and come to a full stop and remain on the runway.
The distances vary with field altitude, temperature, weight, runway gradient and wind direction/velocity.
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