MISSING MH370: Fishermen find life raft near PD

[brooklynite]

Source: New Straits Times Kuala Lumpur)

PORT DICKSON: A group of fishermen found a life raft bearing the word “Boarding” 10 nautical miles from Port Dickson town at 12pm yesterday.

One of the fishermen, Azman Mohamad, 40, said they found the badly damaged raft floating and immediately notified the Kuala Linggi Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) in Malacca for assistance to lift the raft as it was very heavy.

"We managed to tie it to our boat as we feared it would sink due to the damages," he said.



Read more: http://www.nst.com.my/latest/font-color-red-missing-mh370-font-fishermen-find-life-raft-near-pd-1.509222

---

Port Dickson is on the Malacca Strait

[Little Star]

1. Fingers crossed. Those poor families need some answers. :(

[Yo_Mama]

2. My God, yes.

This is just torture for them.

[Lint Head]

3. Hope it's from the plane but it could be a ship or boat raft.

[Iwasthere]

4. ARRGGGHHHH

It sunk? The fisherman could manage it, then when then handed it over IT SUNK! WTF?

[Little Star]

7. WTF indeed.

[dembotoz]

5. per map it would mean it did not get far

or perhaps was almost back

[blackspade]

6. So the fishermen manage to tie the raft up...

But as soon as the MMEA take over, it sinks?
Sound like the fishermen are more competent to run the recovery effort....

[LiberalEsto]

9. That sounds extremely suspicious to me

Almost as though there was a coverup going on.

[blackspade]

21. I was thinking more rank impenitence (nt)

[Chakaconcarne]

27. I agree!!!!

Everything about this story seems fishy..

[PearliePoo2]

8. Even though it sunk, at least they got photos of it.

They should be able to do an identification from the pictures, plus now they have a location to thoroughly search.

[groundloop]

12. Yep... someone from Boeing should be able to verify if it was from the plane or not

[riversedge]

10. and the authorities lost it....

So, no one knows if it came from the plane IMHO.


............. "We managed to tie it to our boat as we feared it would sink due to the damages," he said.

When the MMEA boat arrived, the fishermen then handed over the raft into their custody.

However, a Kuala Linggi MMEA spokesman said the raft sunk into the sea while they were trying to bring the raft onboard.

Read more: MISSING MH370: Fishermen find life raft near PD - Latest - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/latest/font-color-red-missing-mh370-font-fishermen-find-life-raft-near-pd-1.509222#ixzz2vl1Zpcje

[jsr]

11. Another fishy development.

[PearliePoo2]

13. Does anyone have a map they can post?

Where is the Malacca Strait and Port Dickson compared to the planes expected flight path?

[brooklynite]

16. West coast of Malaysia, but SOUTH of Kuala Lumpur

This would not be consistent with the alleged track the Malaysian Military followed, which was going northwest...

https://www.google.com/maps/@2.5424267,101.8414254,10z

[Glassunion]

31. Don't forget the currents have had several days to move

Surface debris.

[pangaia]

18. Port Dickson is on the west coast of Malaysia, on the Malacca Strait, just south of Kuala Lumpur and

north of Singapore.

http://www.malaysia-maps.com/port-dickson.htm

[jtuck004]

32. Try this one

http://twitpic.com/dxysuk




Port Dickson is actually the other direction, to the left and down little bit from Kuala Lumpur, opposite from the direction their flight path would have taken them. Sp they would have had to climb to 35,000 feet, have a problem, fly back, overshoot the airport, and land in the Straits.

[PearliePoo2]

35. Thanks! Holy crap..that is way off the intended course!

This is indeed a tragic mystery.

[BlueStreak]

37. Remember the raft had 5 days to drift.

If this was a raft from the airliner.

[jtuck004]

48. I think they had a fire. EgyptAir burned up in the terminal when the crew's O2 caught

fire, had a loose cable securing it. It happened just as they got the last passengers seated before takeoff, so they ran everyone out, and the captain told the co-pilot to leave, then went after the fire with an extinguisher. He emptied it, with little or no effect, because the fire was being fed pure O2. It burned in place and burned part of the terminal.

That was on the ground with a fire department nearby, and it still burned.

This could have been a criminal act, but I would bet more on a mechanical\electrical failure, loose O2, something along that line. I suspect it may have caused a rupture in the skin, and the pressurized craft then suffered explosive decompression. A small bomb could have done a similar thing, but there is no evidence of anything like that other than perhaps xenophobic speculation. Maybe a wing came off (it had an earlier accident) and that caused an explosive decompression.

At 35,000 feet, (from where there is the transponder signal, so we know it was up there) a person would have been disabled within 15 to 30 seconds if they didn't have supplemental O2. If that happened in the pilots area, where the EgyptAir fire was, the pilots might have had time to turn the plane around, and then died. (If that is what happened, with any luck it happened to the passengers as well, else they got to ride it into the ground awake). Then it flew back in the direction it was pointed until something downed it.

That would put it down on the other side of the island from where it took off, as these reports are starting to suggest.

Except that none of these reports are confirmed reading of that specific plane, just radar images of an object, which could have been something else. So the plane could have gone down along it's flight path, and be in the South China Sea.

That's an incredibly huge area, both sea and land, and likely requires better coordination and perhaps more resources than what is being thrown at the search now.

[BlueStreak]

49. Could be, but if the pilots knew there was a big fire

I think they would have headed for the closest land, which was Vietnam.

If this plane did a 180 and ended up in the water near Kuala Lampur, then it clearly was under pilot control.

It is possible that a fire caused a massive electrical failure, but the pilots were not aware there was a fire, at least at first.

[jtuck004]

54. If you have a decompression that occurs at 35,000 feet, you might have as little as 8 or 9

seconds of useful consciousness, which can be shortened by the adrenaline rush and faster breathing in an emergency. If the fire or explosion came from, say, one of the flight crew O2 bottles up in the cockpit, (like the one with EgyptAir) the pilots are effectively dead, because there is no way to get O2 soon enough to keep from dying. They might have enough time to turn the plane while trying to figure out what to do next, (maybe run to the back and get something, assuming there is a clear path?), and that's about it.

Same thing could happen with cargo (like the one where they shipped O2 canisters that weren't empty by mistake and they blew up). If it took out their O2 at that altitude, or put a hole in the skin that depressurized the plane, they are dead.

A fire is bad, with the worst part being that in a pressurized, highly oxygenated atmosphere of a jetliner it has a lot of fuel that can go quickly.That fuel is what is keeping everyone else alive, and it can take less than a minute to fill a plane cabin with smoke you can't breathe in. So you grab O2 masks and it comes on, and that feeds the fire.

A fair number of things, even massive damage, etc, that are survivable at lower altitudes are certain death in the10 seconds or so you have left to think when you lose your pressurization at 35,000 ft.

[BlueStreak]

57. But it seems they flew for an hour after "the event"

That wasn't on autopilot. The route that has been reported doubled back toward Kuala Lampur. Therefore, pilots must have been at the controls and very definitely conscious.

(This assumes there was a flight path that doubled back toward Kuala Lampur. This point seems to keep changing. But if the plan headed back to Malaysia, obviously somebody was conscious at the controls.)

[jtuck004]

64. We don't know if it was on autopilot or not. But if it was flying, engines running,

and the "event" whatever it was removed their O2 at 35K feet and killed them, even without autopilot there is nothing to keep it from running until something else happens. Maybe effects of the event, fire, runs out of fuel, gravity pulls it down because they are no longer there to trim the wings, etc. It would just serve as a flying coffin until it comes down somewhere.

In that time b4 they lose consciousness there is an awake time where they can move, but their brain is starting to scramble. They could have set controls, turned on autopilot - lots of things that a person with normal functioning might not do.

They actually could execute an emergency turn fairly quickly, while trying to put masks on, only to find out they had no oxygen. The co-pilot sounds like he had trained the crap out of himself, to the point where his reactions might almost be as automatic as an autopilot, even while he was losing consciousness.

We will see, if and when they find it and get the recorders out.

[James48]

14. That photo

appears to be consistent with a DSB brand lifeboat of approximately 25 to 102 person capacity.

No idea if it came from the plane or not, but it may be possible.


See this photo for a similar design-

http://www.liferafts.asia/liferaft-dsb

and

http://www.icbrindle.com/self_righting_liferafts

[BlueStreak]

15. This was not terrorism.

The reason nobody has found a big debris field is that the plane did not explode or crash into pieces. It did a water landing and remained mostly intact.

This has been a real goat rodeo of information management by the Malaysians. I can't remember a more inept job of PR, with all of these conflicting reports of the radar activity and then retractions. One wonders if they are really that incompetent or they have some other motive for appearing inept.

But if this raft was from the aircraft, that confirms the earlier story that the plane doubled back to the Malacca strait. I bet one will find that the currents in that strait go from north to south, having carried that raft about 75 miles since the crash. The fact that it was nearly sinking by the time it was found is consistent with it being in the water 5 days.

All of this is 100% consistent with the theory that there was a catastrophic power failure and not terrorists or a suicidal pilot. That scenario says there was a catastrophic electrical problem as the plane approached Vietnam. This caused the plane to go on battery power, which is good for about an hour. At that point, the plane had limited or no instruments and only short range radio. They were closest to Vietnam, but being more familiar with Kuala Lampur, they decided to do a 180, hoping to get back to the starting point. They got their bearings as they crossed the land mass and did a left turn over the Malacca strait. That was probably intentional for two reasons. There would have been enough lights lit along the coast for them to visually navigate to the airport, and if they had to put it down, they wanted to ditch in water, not hard ground. They just ran out of power and at that point they probably could [ed] not execute a graceful landing, so they crashed and sank.

There is nothing about these events that suggests a terrorist was in control of the ship. The only thing that points to foul play is the event that caused the loss of power. That could have been a bomb, but not a very successful one because it allowed the craft to fly for another hour.

[closeupready]

17. Plausible, but there are still aspects that don't add up, IMO.

Thanks for the post.

[BlueStreak]

23. If this is the scenario, then the aircraft must be on the bottom of the strait

and both recorders should be intact. That will answer the questions. The Malacca strait is not very deep, so salvage would be relatively easy. It is within diver range -- mostly under 100 feet.

[pangaia]

19. Battery power?

You're not referring to ram air are you?

[BlueStreak]

20. No. The 777 has an emergency power supply

It allows flight for about an hour, powering the most essential components (fuel pumps and main pilot controls). The ram air turbines only generate 7.5 kVa at peak, which may be enough for fly by wire while at full air speed, but that power would drop as the airspeed drops for landing. I believe the 777 also has a battery pack that is good for about an hour of flight. CNN had an "expert" who said that repeatedly yesterday, but I don't find a specific reference to the battery system in Boeing literature.

If there was no power available except for the ram air turbine, then they may have lost control as their airspeed dropped.

[pangaia]

22. Thanks, Blue.

[BlueStreak]

24. Here is a reference to the battery power

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CC4QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smartcockpit.com%2Fdownload.php%3Fpath%3Ddocs%2F%26file%3DB777-Electrical.pdf&ei=0HggU8_hNIj4oASc_IKYBg&usg=AFQjCNHF8FKmsuyAQjLCZaQvJxH40g20Vg&sig2=b0Pe3uF6sDC3RdurkbIjQQ&bvm=bv.62788935,d.cGU&cad=rja

From page 5: "the standby musses transfer to batter power if normal AC power is lost"

I think this is what the CNN guy was talking about. This sounds like a battery system just for the fly-by-wire cockpit systems, not for the whole aircraft. He said it was good for about an hour.

For my scenario to be correct, there had to have been a problem that knocked out the power from the two engines, the APU, and probably from the ram turbine as well. That is obviously a very bad situation, and could have been an explosion, but one that didn't bring the craft down immediately.

There was a case a few years back where pilots lost almost all controls for their 747. I think all they had was a throttle control for each engine. By adjusting the relative power to the engines, they were able to control direction and altitude for awhile -- a half hour as I recall. But I think that did end up crashing. The point is that these were very, very experienced pilots and they might have been able to fly a badly damaged aircraft for an hour.

[pangaia]

25. Thanks for taking the time for the reply and link.

There is more info from you than ANY reporters, guessers, et al.
Whether or not that is a correct scenario it at least has a lot of fact based info behind it.
I've flown on triple 7's all over the world.. and will continue to.

[Glassunion]

29. That was a hydrolic failure due to an engine breaking apart.

There were two pilots flyin the plane and a third (who was initially a passenger) workig the throttle control. IIRC, when the engine came apart it sheared through both of the hydrolic systems (primary and backup).

They could only fly in sweeping circles.

[BlueStreak]

30. It was a real heroic effort. The top pilots are on a whole different level.

Sully was not an accident. I think he is typical of many pilots.

[mn9driver]

42. The standby power system has a few sources.

It powers the captain's instrument bus, which in turn powers the FO's instrument bus and two of the three electronic flight control systems.

The first emergency power source is either one of the two independent backup generators, powered by the engines. These are PMG powered and should put out electricity any time the engines are turning. The second power source is the RAT generator which should deploy and power up automatically assuming the airspeed is reasonable. The last source is the main battery. The Boeing manual I have says it is good under these circumstances for "at least ten minutes". Not a lot of time, but long enough to get one of the other sources back, I guess. The Airbus batteries are capable of powering essential busses for a longer time, which may be why these experts are saying that.

All of these sources have multiple independent paths to get to the standby system and power it. The level of redundancy is huge. There is no way to manually turn off the standby system as one of the supply paths is from the hot battery bus.

Even after the battery dies, there is a mechanical backup system for limited pitch and roll control. Boeing says it is "adequate" for straight and level controlled flight while the crew works to restore some power. The implication is that it isn't adequate for a controlled landing.

I sure hope they find the black boxes.

[SansACause]

28. Vietnam has many airports.

If they were closer to Vietnam, why not land at one of Vietnam's many airports?

[BlueStreak]

33. Just a theory ...

It was dark. They lost all their instruments. Their radio was only the low power system -- only good for 20 miles or something -- not enough to talk to ATC where they were when the problem happened.

They were from Malaysia and had flown for decades. They made a decision that if they had to navigate by sight at night, they wanted it to be on approach to Kuala Lampur. Their flight path (assuming the reports they headed back to Malaysia are correct) was consistent with this thought process. On a clear night, they should have been able to see some light from Malaysia and they headed for an approach over the strait then turned left. If there are any international pilots out there, maybe they can tell us if that would be the normal approach to Kuala Lampur -- heading south down the strait. Even if it isn't the normal approach, it would be a good way to navigate visually because these pilots were intimately familiar with that coastline.

And they probably didn't know exactly what was wrong with the aircraft. When they made the turn-around, they may not have made conscious calculations as to whether they had enough juice to make it to Kuala Lampur. They may have just thought. "OK, this is a really crippled craft and we have to fly by the seat of our pants, but for now we are able to control this. Let's head back to home base."

As I say, it is just a theory, but I can easily see this happening under the circumstances.

[RobinA]

38. Related Question

Why would Boeing put an emergency back-up system in the aircraft that would allow it to fly for an hour, but then hamstring them with a weak radio. It wasn't like they were in the middle of the Pacific when whatever happened. They could have made it somewhere in an hour, but they didn't have a radio that could make it possible for them to get somewhere in that hour?

[BlueStreak]

40. I suppose the regular radio modes take a lot more power.

Remember that early on there was a report where ATC asked other aircraft to contact the plane and one other pilot mentioned that he was able to hear something, but it was very faint? This is consistent with a low power radio.

[Yo_Mama]

44. Kuala Lumpur is the standard emergency airport for that area.

I am sure it made sense to go back rather than continue to fly over water if they had some severe emergency (and it's obvious they did).

What was confusing was the story (both confirmed and denied by the Malaysian AF) that the aircraft was tracked to a point so far north of KL.

[BlueStreak]

50. I am just speculating that the pilots had no instruments

And they were navigating visually in the dark. It looks to me like there are hills above Kuala Lampur. If they were flying without an altimeter, they might have felt a lot better crossing the land where there are not big hills and then approaching from the strait. This would also give them the option to ditch in the water, which normally is a better bet than crashing on land. The path that was reported yesterday (then retracted, but seemingly confirmed by today's news) looks like a very logical flight path to me.

[Anansi1171]

43. indeed great post. I hope there was no foul pkay -nt

[EX500rider]

56. The transponder going off looks a little suspicious..

....plus I believe that model has a sat phone in the cockpit and certainly lots of cel phones in the back...seems at some time they could have tried to make a mayday...the batteries go a hour or two and a large commercial aircraft can be capable of producing, depending on the generator, from 5 to 70 kW with the ram air turbine. Hard to believe they wouldn't call in a fire before it got out of control but maybe.

I am leaning towards inside-job crash ala Egypt 900 or incapacitation of the crew due to hypoxia ala Helios 522 except with auto pilot off.

[BlueStreak]

58. Again, that all depends on the flight path, which still seems uncertain

I agree that if the plane went down somewhere near the place where the transponder went dark, then you can support any scenario -- terrorists, bombs, suicidal pilot. etc.

But if the plane doubled back toward Kuala Lampur, most of those scenarios become quite unlikely. And what becomes most likely is an extremely crippled aircraft with pilots fighting to get it back to the Kuala Lampur airport.

[EX500rider]

65. But a terrorist hi-jacker would kill the transponder asap and lose alt and turn also..

...some speculation over at Airliners.net that the worlds current highest twin towers, the Petronis Towers in Kuala Lampur might have been a possible target. But didn't make it for what ever reason (ie, inept pilot or storming of cockpit forcing a dive)

[BlueStreak]

62. My theory above is based on the reporting that the craft was seen to have doubled back

to the Malacca strait. If that didn't happen, then all bets are off. If it went down soon after the transponder went dark, then any of the ugly scenarios could fit the facts we know so far (which are almost none.)

[The Stranger]

26. This is right by the Kuala Lumpur airport.

They almost made it back.

[BlueStreak]

34. In 4 days, that raft could have moved a long distance

I bet the currents run form north to south because the raft was south of Kuala Lampur and yesterday's (now retracted) report was that the last radar sighting was about 100 miles north of the airport.

[itsrobert]

51. But if it is so close, the airport should have been able to pick up the plane on radar

don't you think?

[Tsiyu]

36. Body wearing lifejacket reportedly found near Malacca strait

The Beijing News has reported that a source claiming to be local volunteer assisting in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has found a dead body wearing a lifejacket in an area of the Malacca Strait. In a single-paragraph report, the website of the Chinese-language newspaper said that it was seeking to establish the reliability of the claim.

The unconfirmed report is said to have come via a new operations center established in Malacca after the search for the flight was expanded to both sides of the Malaysian peninsula in response to reports that the plane may have diverted from its planned course. The report was first passed to the center of operations for search and rescue efforts on Vietnam's Phu Quoc island.

http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20140312000154&cid=1103


Didn't wnt to start a new thread in case this is BS, but thought it was related

[Drale]

39. There is something weird going on with this entire thing.

I don't know what it is but its almost like either they are covering something up or they really do not care about any of the people or the plane.

[Tsiyu]

41. Oil Rig Worker Thinks He Saw Malaysia Air Flight 370 Go Down in Flames

From the Wire:


http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/03/oil-rig-worker-says-he-saw-malaysia-air-flight-370-go-down/359093/#ixzz2vlcmxJIF



Just adding different news stories...it is all so strange indeed

[Sunlei]

46. looks like a legitimate observation.

I hope they find something soon.

[Tsiyu]

47. I second that

The loved ones of crew and passengers are living a nightmare, no doubt.

With 911, people held out hope long after the Towers went down that loved ones were still alive, and it broke my heart. Same here. Some have to be wondering if their loved one is clinging to life in the sea or jungle.

[eppur_se_muova]

55. Wow, this guy really included all the info he could.

Included lots of details most people wouldn't think of.

A shame no one snapped a picture. Wouldn't the oil rig have security cameras ?

[BlueStreak]

59. It does seem credible, but why did he wait?

The email was dated the 12th and he said he tried to contact people a couple of days ago, which would have been 2 or 3 days after the crash. If a person believed he had that knowledge, why would he wait?

I guess is it possible he assumed what he saw would quickly be discovered through radar and ATC systems. Maybe he thought he wouldn't be adding anything. And he only spoke up after he saw what a Keystone Cops thing this has become.

[Tsiyu]

61. who knows?

All sorts of crazy in this missing plane biz.

[BlueStreak]

63. I guess this is what you get when dealing with a bunch of countries that aren't used to a free press

Individually most of these countries are pretty advanced technologically, but it seems they don't work well together, and most of them are probably not accustomed to dealing openly with the press.

It all seems very strange to us that there could be so much confusion and such difficulty establishing some of the most basic facts. But these aren't really open societies (China, Vietnam, Malaysia).

[Sunlei]

45. do these large planes even carry such a life raft? or is this more seajunk?

[cloudbase]

52. They carry rafts,

but it's yet to be determined if this one is from an aircraft

[countryjake]

53. On CNN, they are now saying that China has satellite imagery...

from Sunday, March 9, of something in the sea close to the original spot where the Malaysian Air Control last had the missing jet on the correct flightpath. Three large objects, to the southwest of Vietnam.

Chinese agency says that satellite "observed a suspected crash area at sea" on Sunday morning, local time.

[BlueStreak]

60. How can it possibly take 5 days for something like this to surface?