Malaysia Airlines Says It Lost Contact With Plane Carrying Over 200

[8ig8]

> UPDATE [12:37]: Tuoi Tre, a leading daily in Vietnam, reports that the Vietnamese Navy has confirmed the plane crashed into the ocean. According to Navy Admiral Ngo Van Phat, Commander of the Region 5, military radar recorded that the plane crashed into the sea at a location 153 miles South of Phu Quoc island.

http://my.news.yahoo.com/mas-aircraft-goes-missing--says-air...

[ChuckMcM]

Well that is good to know, the Air France jet took a long time to find because there was no radar information about where it went down. Large jets actually crashing feels very jarring these days to me, whereas 20 years ago it seemed much more common of an occurrence. Could just be a form of survivor bias though.

[wavesounds]

Does anyone know if there's a possibility for survivors? Could a highly skilled pilot glide the plane to a safe crash landing on the water given ideal conditions for an engine failure (assuming thats what happened)? Or does a crash landing over the ocean basically mean the worst? My thoughts and prayers go out to those involved.

[ekianjo]

The aviation website Leeham news has posted a list of the standard possible causes that will be investigated in an incident of this nature. They stress that these are not specific to this case, but include:

• Catastrophic structural failure

• Dual engine flame-out

• Clear air turbulence

• Human intervention, such as penetration of the cockpit or a bomb

• Accidental shooting-down

• Suicide of the pilot

[jimmies]

Tuoitre's news link: http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/18157/missing-malaysia-airline...

[fname]

EDIT: The Guardian has a pretty good live blog feed giving constant updates - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/08/malaysian-airli...

Very sad. Only the third crash of a 777 since being introduced in the 90s.

[1]Confirmed 14 nationalities amongst the passengers, including:

    China - 153 (including 1 infant)
    Malaysia - 38
    Indonesia - 12
    Australia -7
    USA - 4 (including 1 infant)
    France - 3
    Canada - 2
    New Zealand - 2
    Ukraine - 2
    Russian - 1
    Italy - 1
    Taiwan -1
    Austria - 1
    Netherlands - 1

[1]: http://www.malaysiaairlines.com/my/en/site/dark-site.html

[gregman]

Looking at the update at 2.32pm AEST makes me sad. Two people mourning over the loss of their relatives and everyone in the airport takes pictures of them. Here is the image (although I'm just spreading it around more): http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/20...

[pcurve]

Captain had almost 20,000 hours under his belt. (Btw, I'm not sure why the airline web site used that particular html file name.)

[jonah]

FlightAware track of the flight: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370

EDIT: And track log: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140307/1...

[einhverfr]

The flightaware track for flights in the area doesn't tell much because apparently ground radar is relatively limited, unfortunately.

[meritt]

Philip Wood, an IBM Technical Storage Executive, was one of 3 Americans on the flight manifest.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/philip-wood/3/a46/4a9

[chaostheory]

What bothers me aren't so much the adults on the flight. They've more or less lived full lives, especially the ones from the US. What eats me is thinking that there were two babies on that flight =(

[joering2]

Without disrespecting victims (RIP), can someone briefly explain how and why people die during plane crash? Is it lack of oxygen, or cold temperature or actually a hard landing on the water surface? AFAIK most studies conclude there is no good place on the plane to be safer than other, whether its front, back, left side or right. Any ideas how to expand ones survival chances? Will TSA let you in with parachute -- is it even worth carrying one??

[balladeer]

> parachute

That would mean an opening if there's an opening in the plane, while still above the ground, the plane is done anyway.

I think it's the fire or suffocation (the plane is sealed) if it falls in the water. I really don't know. Go over to reddit, there people there are better chances of an answer.

[amix]

This is sad, but kind of strange with all the fear and media publicity of an airplane crash. For example, 1.2million people lost their life in road traffic in 2010 alone... We rarely read or fear about this fact.

[fragsworth]

Yeah. Every day, more than ten times as many people die in traffic accidents than in this single plane crash.

[caf]

I'm sure we would read about a single road accident claiming a few hundred lives as well.

[te_chris]

Edit: the top reply made me realise what has probably happened. Awful :(

[robzyb]

Generally the tracking doesn't work so well after the plane has crashed into the ocean.

Saying that you've lost contact with a jet is another way of saying that "it's probably crashed, but we don't have any solid proof yet."

[magic_haze]

GPS just means the plane knows where it is. The equipment necessary for the plane to inform the airline ops about its location is still vulnerable to all sorts of problems, even with the kind of anal development practices required by FAA and equivalent agencies. Airports usually have have radars that track nearby airspace, but otherwise, I think most planes are tracked by the ADS-B signals that they actively transmit (insecurely).

[slurry]

Normally, you are right.

'Lost contact' therefore suggests something very wrong has happened.

[rayiner]

GPS position must be calculated on the plane and transmitted off the plane. You can't see how that connection might be interrupted?

[BorisMelnik]

3:30am update:

At Beijing airport authorities have provided buses for relatives to go to a hotel about 15 kilometres away for further briefings. Associated Press reported one woman on the bus was weeping while saying on a mobile phone, “They want us to go to the hotel. It can’t be good!”

[khc]

That seems to be a very sensible thing to do though. Consider that there are 153 Chinese nationals, the number of relatives waiting at the airport is probably at least couple hundreds. Since the event is ongoing and they have no idea how long it will take to have new updates, moving them to a place where they can be better accommodated while freeing up resources at the airport for its normal duties is probably a good thing.

[einhverfr]

Malaysia Airlines has a reasonable safety record. The 777 has a very good safety record. This specific plane apparently had damage to the wingtip from a previous on-ground incident/collision. It's a big mystery.

[lostlogin]

After a few days of interesting aviation related stories here, this happens.

[obituary_latte]

It's not clear from the article: what happened to the flight?

[Flammy]

It isn't known or at least not yet announced. If it crashes into the ocean (or somewhere remote) this isn't surprising. As for the cause, that will likely take months for a comprehensive report.

[United857]

Last transponder position of #MH370 was Lat: 6.90 Lon: 103.57

http://pic.twitter.com/PVsNuYtbtS

[sidwyn]

Looks like they just located it, and are sending emergency teams now: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=vi&tl=en&js=n&prev=...

[theboss]

those reports were already confirmed false (insane, less than a minute later)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/08/malaysian-airli...

[CoachRufus87]

Why is black box data only stored locally, thus requiring investigators to recover the box in order to figure out what happened?

[objclxt]

Because transmissions are unreliable. If you're over the ocean there is no ground to send your transmission to. Black boxes store considerable amounts of data - telemetrics, voice recordings for the past two hours...stuff that to be useful you really have to stream.

So the only viable option for streaming that kind of data is over a satellite link, except it should come as no surprise that when you most need the data the uplink won't work (maybe something ripped the fuselage and damaged the transmitter, power was lost, you no longer had line of site to the satellite because the plane rolled, etc).

There's no benefit. You are going to be sending people out to the plane anyway. If the plane is under the ocean you're going to investigate regardless. Flight recorders are designed to last - the Air France 447 recorders were finally found two years later, 4000 meters under water. Data links are unreliable, not there when you most need them, and not worth the trouble.

[Zancarius]

Telemetry isn't as easy as one might think. Airbus, AFAIK, is one of the pioneering manufacturers in this regard, as we witness in the crash of AF447, but given the amount of data that FDRs record, I'd imagine it wouldn't be a simple feat.

And in part, the reliability of FDRs and CVRs has been such that a comparatively small number of those recovered were void of retrievable information. So my guess is that replacing them would require satellite links (which obviously exist) but 1) have complete coverage of the globe (remember, aircraft like the 777 have a huge range) and 2) would be recording real time flight data for every single aircraft in the air. Then you have the issues of costs, approval from the various industry regulators (FAA, etc), and probably no less than 5-10 years before acceptance. And that's being hugely optimistic. In many ways, there's a point where carting around your telemetry-recording device is actually the cheapest and most effective method. It's counter-intuitive to some, but again: Telemetry isn't easy. Or cheap. And it needs to be reliable.

It does appear that Iridium Satellite is proposing something of the sort [1]. And trawling the Interwebs yields some [2] interesting [3] discussions [4].

But chiefly, I think the limitation is mostly cost, and as objclxt points out, reliability is another issue that would need to be addressed. There are a lot of planes in the sky. [5]

[1] http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=6174

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/business/global/22blackbox...

[3] http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110620151102AA...

[4] http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/58733-Why-plane-...

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NFGD9cglb4&t=43s

[lvs]

The critical data for accident investigation is acquired during and after an incident of some kind, which by definition precipitated or was precipitated by system failures. The failsafe data store in a failure condition is by necessity local.

[adamcanady]

I don't have a ton of information to back it up, but I imagine they record a ton of data and it would require a pretty constant and huge data transmission from the airplane to get it all to the ground in near-real-time.

[awakeasleep]

Is intercontinental wireless communication reliable?

[Oculus]

Can't begin to imagine how horrible it must be to be the one informing next of kin of what just happened.

[whbk]

Or, you know, to be next of kin. :( The last time Twitter was taken over by a Friday night flight was much more enjoyable, thoughts go out to all those affected.

[homakov]

This is one of the scariest thing i read on the internet in a while... I feel so sorry.

[mukeshsharma]

Well this is very bad news that plane lost its contact with control rum, and its taking over 200 passengers. Hope for the best that they can contact soon with them.

[balls187]

This is very sad. My thoughts with all those involved and those related. :(

[balladeer]

So, they made an announcement after 5 hours?

Lost contact: 2:40 AM

Announcement: 7:30 AM

[bariswheel]

This is very unfortunate, but why is it on Hacker News?