Is the missing aircraft on land

[malaise]

in a jungle out there?

[spanone]

1. could be. it's so tragic for the families...i cannot even imagine.

[malaise]

2. Seriously

I can't imagine what they are going through these past four going five days.

[RKP5637]

26. A crash is horrible, and this is far worse. I also felt sorry for those dialing cell phones

thinking they might be ringing when in fact it was just the phone system ring. It's horrible, all of the mystery, all of the unknowns. It's tragic!

[rocktivity]

3. Wouldn't a fire, or at least smoke

have been spotted by now?

Unless it landed in a swamp?

Yesterday I heard they were looking off the southeastern tip of Viet Nam. Now I hear they're searching over the Strait of Malacca, which is WEST of Kuala Lumpur -- completely off course!




rocktivity

[malaise]

4. May have run out of fuel by then

no fire no smoke

[rocktivity]

21. It ran out of fuel one hour into a five-hour flight?

Unless the pilot dumped the fuel in anticipation of a crash landing. Or is an emergency landing in the ocean considered to be the lesser of two evils?


rocktivity

[malaise]

27. Who knows - maybe they did dump fuel

but you're right - at most two hours of fuel were used.

[WinkyDink]

54. Then they also would have left a MayDay call.

[malaise]

56. True - this one is weird n/t

[Fumesucker]

41. Here's what was left after the Value Jet crash in a swamp

[CatWoman]

43. I remember that

smack in the middle of Alligator Alley

[WinkyDink]

57. Yeah, they didn't know about the gators, I assure you.

[Skittles]

66. they had to station guys with rifles around the wreckage site

they would take potshots to scare 'em away so the authorities could continue working

[WinkyDink]

72. Yes, but the NTSB guys were alive. Nobody on that godforsaken plane was, post-impact.

[WinkyDink]

55. It was found, though. There's the difference (so far).

[Fumesucker]

59. They had a pretty good idea where the Value Jet crash site was

This time the search covers an area the size of the Caribbean.

It's going to be hard to find a random hole in the swamp like that in an area that big.

[Agschmid]

64. Also it was a much smaller plane...

[Are_grits_groceries]

75. When I heard where it crashed,

I knew there would be little left. I also knew it would be hell recovering it.
The gators weren't the only problem. Gawd knows what other creatures joined the fray.

[Cali_Democrat]

5. I just came up with an interesting theory all on my own...

Apparently sudden loss of cabin pressure can cause everybody on the plane to pass out and lose consciousness within seconds, but the plane can still fly on for great distances.

What if this happened and it flew all the way to Antarctica? What if it crashed in the one place where nobody would think about looking?

[malaise]

7. But it would not veer left

let alone sharp left

[Cali_Democrat]

10. Maybe the pilot's knee briefly hit the steering wheel as he passed out

causing the plane to veer left and eventually aim South toward Antarctica?

I dunno. It seems highly unlikely, but then again, so is losing a large passenger plane...for 5 days!!

[longship]

17. It's five days because it crashed five days ago.

All information says that this thing didn't land safely. It is most likely lost at sea. It may take a while to find it.

That's the limit of my speculations.

[Cali_Democrat]

20. Ya.....most likely the plane was in trouble and crashed somewhere around Indonesia/Malaysia

I suck at speculation anyway.

That's why I won't quit my day job.

[longship]

22. Still, you're good at DUing.

So you've got that going for you.

[madinmaryland]

30. I think at this point, that is plausible. A bit more plausible than the

plane going into low earth orbit, where everyone would have passed out from lack of oxygen, and then the plane would have disintegrated and burned up on re-entry.



Oh, and...

[Travis_0004]

48. Loss of cabin pressure would not cause you to pass out-at least not instantly

As the other poster said, the pilots have oxygen masks. Even if they didn't deploy, 30,000 feet will not make you pass out. (Mt. Everest is 30,000 feet, and you can spend a limited time up there without oxygen. There was a plane that lost cabin pressure a few years ago (2012?), and they landed safely. A few people went to the hospital to be checked out, but nobody was seriously hurt.

If you were to pass out, and your knee hit the yoke, autopilot wouldn't allow the yoke to move (and you would be required to be in autopilot at that stage of the flight.)

If you did pass out and hit the yoke, you would be most likely to press it forward, and that would cause the plane to descend. If you did somehow pass out quickly (not likely) your copilot would be able to override you and fly the plane.

[jberryhill]

51. Coupla points

First, the fact that anyone can spend a few minutes at the peak of Everest has more to do with the fact that they are in top physical condition and have been acclimating to high altitudes for a long, long time at base camp before attempting the summit.

Second, when planes lose cabin pressure, the first thing the pilot does it take it down below 10,000 feet. That, and the oxygen masks, is why people make it through a loss of cabin pressure.

[30cal]

11. Wouldn't satellite imagery pick that up?

[Cali_Democrat]

15. Don't think so...

I think most aircraft like that are tracked by either radar or transponder.

This whole thing is just crazy, so I'm thinking up crazy scenarios.

[RKP5637]

32. That's what I don't get, I thought all air traffic was tracked rather carefully? Then, the

govs. have tracking devices. I think a lot of the tracking is out of control of the pilot? At least it seems radar would have seen the trajectory? And the transponders? I always thought they kept providing a signal pretty much no matter what.

I just don't understand with all of the modern technology and this being a very sophisticated plane how it just vanished. It's all getting so weird to me. If this were just a small craft and/or back years ago, I could see it lost, somehow. But today? I's just really really strange to me.

[Travis_0004]

39. Transponders can be turned off.

The plane I fly, there is basically an on off switch. In other planes it might not be as simple, but you can pull a fuse and turn it off. Its important to give the pilot the ability, in case of fire etc. If there was a short causing an electrical fire, your best option would be to turn it off, then land as quickly as possible.

And radar is ground based. When you are over the ocean, you don't have radar coverage. There are systems in planes to keep track of other planes in your area, but you can hide from that as well, just by being at a different altitude. When I'm at 15,000 feet, TCAS will not show me planes well above me, and well below me. Its not considered relevant to me.

[RKP5637]

40. Thanks for the info.!

[longship]

63. Also, it is SOP to turn off transponder upon landing.

Otherwise all the planes on the ground would be flooding the air traffic control with their IDs.

When the plane takes off again, check-off list has the pilot turn the transponder back on just before take-off. AFAIK, this is SOP.

[longship]

13. Ahem! Fuel?

All the facts point to an airplane in trouble. They normally don't go on to fly on their own anywhere. Unless the pilots get the problem in control, the end result is often a crash.

There are very few facts we know for sure. Speculating beyond the facts gets one into inevitable trouble. I try not to do it, at least not often successfully.

[30cal]

18. Why do they keep brining up the homing beacon on the black box?

I heard it mentioned a bunch of times by the MSM with experts but
they won't explain why it wouldn't be working.

Unless the whole plane maybe blew up completely.

I heard by one expert that it should be able to transmit up to 20,000 feet deep in the ocean.
The ocean there is pretty shallow from what was reported.

[RKP5637]

34. Yep, my thoughts too. I had always heard transponders are pretty much indestructible and

can function under all types of conditions. Somehow, to me at least, it seems there are big gaps unexplained that could be explained, for example, the transponders.

[WinkyDink]

60. Transponders aren't the "black boxes."

Transponder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transponder

"Black box" (Flight Data Recorder): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transponder

[RKP5637]

67. Thanks!!!

[RKP5637]

42. See Reply #39, interesting info. n/t

[WinkyDink]

58. So you just prefer to think there is no such word as "speculation"?

noun: speculation; plural noun: speculations

1. the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence.

[former9thward]

16. The cockpit has oxygen.

The pilots would not be affected.

[Cali_Democrat]

23. Oh

[NutmegYankee]

70. The cockpit isn't seperately pressurized.

There have been cases where the pilots didn't realize they were not getting oxygen and passed out. They have to know to use the masks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

[NutmegYankee]

31. No, there have been incidents that incapacitated the crew.

Helios Airways Flight 522

[question everything]

33. It would be detected by a radar station somewhere (nt)

[edbermac]

69. That happened to the golfer Payne Stewart.

On October 25, 1999, a month after the American team rallied to win the 1999 Ryder Cup in Brookline, Massachusetts, and four months after his U.S. Open victory at Pinehurst No. 2, Stewart was killed in the depressurization of a Learjet flying from Orlando, Florida, to Dallas, Texas, for the year-ending tournament, The Tour Championship, held at Champions Golf Club in Houston that year. Traveling on a Monday morning, Stewart was planning to stop off in Dallas to discuss building a new home-course for the SMU golf program.[24] The last communication received from the pilots was at 9:27 AM EDT, and the plane made a right turn at 9:30 AM EDT that was probably the result of human input.

At 9:33 AM EDT the pilots did not respond to a call to change radio frequencies, and there was no further contact from the plane. The plane was, apparently, still on autopilot and angled off-course, as observed by several U.S. Air Force (and Air National Guard) F-16 fighter aircraft[25] as it continued its flight over the southern and midwestern United States. The military pilots observed frost or condensation on the windshield (consistent with loss of cabin pressure) which obscured the cockpit, and no motion was visible through the small patch of windshield that was clear.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators later concluded that the plane suffered a loss of cabin pressure and that all on board died of hypoxia. A delay of only a few seconds in donning oxygen masks, coupled with cognitive and motor skill impairment, could have been enough to result in the pilots' incapacitation. The NTSB report showed that the plane had several instances of maintenance work related to cabin pressure in the months leading up to the accident. The NTSB was unable to determine whether they stemmed from a common problem – replacements and repairs were documented, but not the pilot discrepancy reports that prompted them or the frequency of such reports. The report gently chides Sunjet Aviation for the possibility that this would have made the problem harder to identify, track and resolve; as well as the fact that in at least one instance the plane was flown with an unauthorized maintenance deferral for cabin pressure problems.

According to a USAF timeline, a series of military planes provided an emergency escort to the stricken Lear, beginning with an F-16 from Eglin Air Force Base, about an hour and twenty minutes (9:33 EDT to 9:52 CDT – see NTSB report on the crash) after ground controllers lost contact. The plane continued flying until it ran out of fuel and crashed into a field near Mina, South Dakota, a town ten miles (16 km) west of Aberdeen, after an uncontrolled descent.

[longship]

6. Who knows?

I don't think anybody has any facts that would tell them where it is. I imagine it's getting daylight soon there, so they'll start again for another day of searching. My speculative opinion is that it's lost at sea. I say that because there's a lot more sea than land there. As it looks like it's crashed, it is most likely to be at sea. Just the odds.

[quinnox]

8. No clue

I am just really interested to see what the truth about this whole mystery will turn out to be. It has been years since a mystery like this, the last one I remember was from at least 5 years ago or longer, an Australian yacht that was found deserted in good sea worthy condition, with three guys who were on board mysteriously disappeared. It was a classic "ghost ship".

[malaise]

12. I can't wait to see what happened here

It's more than a mystery

[Warpy]

9. My guess is a landing on a too-short airstrip

in some godforsaken place when the plane ran low on fuel.

This sort of thing never turns out well.

[penultimate]

14. I'm thinking it went too high and is floating in space.

It could be half way to the moon for all we know. Those poor people must be so scared.

[longship]

19. As long as they don't run out of pre-moistened towelettes for the passenger's comfort.

(Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy allusion.)

[WinkyDink]

61. I'm thinking it's going to Mars.

[mnhtnbb]

24. Let's see...Amelia Earhart has been missing since 1937

That plane may never be found.

[blkmusclmachine]

25. LOST

[Warren DeMontague]

28. Unless I'm mistaken, "Malacca" is very similar to the Greek slang word for "asshole"

I dont know, maybe that helps.

[mainer]

29. had eniugh fuel for 3000 miles

I saw one article that said it could have reached india or china.

[politicman]

35. Anyone remeber this movie?

This reminds me of a movie I watched decades ago, it was about a plane that ended up in an alternate dimension.
The story was about how a bunch of passengers fell asleep on the plane and woke up with everyone else missing on the plane. When they landed at an airport, still there was no one else around. The world around them was exactly the same but no people to be seen anywhere.
Anyway, they found some sandwiches and chocolate bars at the airport they landed at but when they went to eat them, the food had no taste whatsoever. The soft drinks had no fizz when they opened them.
That's when they discovered that they were in some alternate dimension where everything was back to front, at the end they had to get back on the plane and take off because the world was collapsing on itself.
To get back to their normal dimension they figured out they had to be asleep, but they needed someone to turn the oxygen back up before they suffocated to death in their sleep. The pilot volunteered.
When they woke they were back in the dimension again, but the pilot has disappeared.

Has anyone heard or watched this movie I'm talking about? If so, do you remember the name of the movie?

[penultimate]

36. The Langoliers

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112040/

[Liberal In Texas]

38. Ah, that's it, had the wrong King story. n/t

[politicman]

45. thanks.

Thanks, you are a legend

[politicman]

47. thanks.

Thanks.

They say that sometimes life imitates art, who knows

[RKP5637]

44. Yep, and it was great, was extremely well done and certainly anxiety provoking! I loved the

guy that kept shredding the paper, and yelling about missing his destination.

[Myrina]

46. ... or the Twilight Zone eppy

... where a passenger jet went thru a rip in time & ended up 100 years earlier.

[lapislzi]

77. SPOILER ALERT

IIRC, it wasn't the pilot who sacrificed himself. He had to land the plane. It was one of the passengers who had a passing knowledge of physics and aircraft.

[Rene]

49. whatever happened had to be very sudden and conpletely done/over in seconds

No communication. I believe pilots, crew and ALL passengers didn't realize there was any problem.
I'm speculating that their altimeter was not functioning properly and at full throttle they flew directly into the ocean
What if they were slowly losing altitude but the instruments weren't telling them that.

If anything was going on and the people had a few minutes, they would have all tried to make phone calls etc....pilots would have been on radio. No one had a chance to speak a word.
I think that plane drove directly into water on a slight angle and went to the bottom of the ocean.
If comments I read on this thread are true....the ocean is not too too deep in that area and I think cameras photographing the bottom will eventually find the plane and all those people,
If it went in at full power, it probably drove too deep for any attempt to exit.

[politicman]

50. at that speed, would be like hitting concrete

A plane flies at over 800km, and if they flew at full throttle into the ocean, it would be the equivalent of the plane flying into concrete.

No matter what angle the plane hit the water, it would break up at that speed and debris would be all over the place.

[WinkyDink]

62. From 35,000 feet the plane would have broken like an egg. We've no wreckage.

[oldandhappy]

52. At this point, I am guessing the Indian Ocean.

Strange happening. I am really sad for all the families.

[TeeYiYi]

53. Why isn't anyone looking in the Bermuda Triangle? ..nt

TYY

[africanadian]

65. The Smoke Monsters have clouded everyone's mind...

[840high]

68. If the cell phones are

working - would that not rule out being in water? I keep thinking they crashed on land.

[jberryhill]

71. The cell phones are not working

If the cell phones were working, then the tower they are connecting to could be identifed.

Just because you get a ring does not mean the cell phone is even connected to the network.

[malaise]

73. I just watched the update press conference from

Malaysia. I can understand the frustration for the families, but the media don't seem to understand that the authorities simply don't know where the fugg this aircraft went down.

[dipsydoodle]

74. You may be basing that on what happens in the US

In Europe for example, or at least the UK, no connection takes you straight through to voicemail - no ring at all.

[Are_grits_groceries]

76. Here is a link to an article

that explains why the phones are ringing:
http://on.mash.to/1g6nQyg

[840high]

78. Thanks.

[Capt. Obvious]

79. Yes

The passengers need to work together and beware of the Smoke Monster.