PILOT: I'm Not Surprised There Was No Mayday Call From The Missing Malaysia Plane
AskThePilot.com
Patrick Smith, AskThePilot.com
Mar. 10, 2014, 9:55 AM 56,286 19
Unless there’s some startling revelation in the coming days, there will be no fast or easy answers about the fate of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. It could be weeks or even months before we have a solid idea of what happened.
Meanwhile, about the worst thing we can do, tempting as might be, is to begin tossing out conjecture and hunches. Almost always in such cases, the earliest theories turn out to be at best incomplete; at worst totally wrong. Seeing how little is known at the moment, any speculation is really just an open guess.
All we know for sure is that a plane went down with no warning or communication from the crew. That the crash did not happen during takeoff or landing — the phases of flight when most accident occur — somewhat limits the possibilities, but numerous possibilities remain. The culprit could be anything from sabotage to an inflight fire to a catastrophic structural failure of some kind — or, as is so common in airline catastrophes, some combination or compounding of human error and/or mechanical malfunction.
Let me briefly hit some of the points I’ve been seeing and hearing in the media…
1. Lack of a mayday call
No matter an aircraft’s location, the crew is always in contact with both air traffic control and company ground staff. When flying in remote locations, however, this is often a more involved process than simply picking up a microphone and talking. Exactly how it’s done depends on which equipment the plane is fitted with, and which ATC facility you’re working with.
Flying over open ocean, relaying even a simple message can be a multi-step process transmitted through FMS datalink or over high frequency radio. In an emergency, communicating with the ground is secondary to dealing with the problems at hand. As the old adage goes: you aviate, navigate, and communicate — in that order. And so, the fact that no messages or distress signals were sent by the crew is not especially surprising or an indicator of anything specific.
2. The stolen passports
Reportedly, two of flight 370′s passengers were traveling on stolen passports. This has raised eyebrows and incited speculation about a bombing, a possible hijacking attempt or other sabotage. Is this something worth looking at? Absolutely. But so is everything else, from the weather to the cargo manifest to the aircraft’s maintenance history. For what it’s worth, I suspect there are thousands of people jetting around the world on forged or stolen documents, for a variety of shady reasons, but that doesn’t make them terrorist bombers.
3. Pilot experience
A factor? Maybe, but probably not. The captain of the ill-fated flight had logged close to 20,000 flight hours, a substantial total by any standard. The first officer (copilot), on the other hand, had fewer than three thousand hours to his name. Pilots in North America — those like me, at any rate, who come up through the civilian ranks — generally accrue several thousand hours before landing a job with a major airline. We slog our way through the industry in a step-by-step process, building experience along the way.
Thus it would be unheard of to find a Boeing 777 copilot with such a small number of hours. In other areas of the world, the process is often different. Pilots are frequently selected through so-called ab-initio programs, hand-picked by carriers at a young age and trained from the start to fly jetliners. We can debate the perils of this method, but I tend to doubt it’s anything more than a side note to the disaster. Plus, flight hours in and of themselves aren’t necessarily a good measure of a pilot’s skills or performance under pressure. And any pilot, regardless of his or her logbook totals, and regardless of the airline, needs to meet some pretty rigorous training standards before being signed off to fly a 777.
4. The Boeing 777
I see no reason for the news media to keep reminding us about last summer’s Asiana accident in San Francisco, which also involved a 777. That both crashes involved the same aircraft model means little or nothing.
5. Air France redux?
Similarly, there are no good reasons yet to be drawing parallels between the Malaysia crash and that of Air France flight 447 five years ago. Although both crashes involved airplanes going down in mid-flight over the ocean, that’s hardly a meaningful coincidence when you consider the many possible causes. And rare as airline catastrophes are, I’m sorry to say that the annals of civil aviation contain many mishaps that are similar in general profile, but vastly different in the details.
And once in a while, those details remain forever unknown. We will probably learn the full and sad story of Malaysia flight 370, but the possibility exists that we won’t. Much of what happened to Air France 447 still remains shrouded in mystery. Or consider the crash of a South African Airways 747 into the Indian Ocean back in 1987. Investigators believe that a cargo fire was responsible, but officially the disaster remains unsolved, the wreckage having fallen into thousands of feet of water, the bulk it never recovered.
No matter who or what is to blame, we shouldn’t let this latest tragedy overshadow the fact that air travel remains remarkably safe. Worldwide, the trend over the past several years has been one of steady improvement, to the point where last year was the safest in the entire history of commercial aviation. A certain number of accidents, however — and however unfortunate — will always be inevitable. Hopefully that number continues to diminish.
———
Malaysia Airlines was formed in the early 1970s after its predecessor, Malaysia-Singapore Airlines (MSA), split to become Singapore Airlines and Malaysia Airlines. Both carriers are renowned for their outstanding passenger service, and both have excellent safety records. Cabin crews of both airlines wear the iconic, floral pattern “Sarong Kabaya” batik — a adaptation of the traditional Malay kebaya blouse.
Malaysia Airlines’ logo, carried on its tails from the beginning, is an indigenous kite known as the Wau. True story: In 1993 I was in the city of Kota Bahru, a conservative Islamic town in northern Malaysia close to the Thai border, when we saw a group of little kids flying Wau kites. At the time I didn’t realize where the airline’s logo had come from, but I recognized the pattern immediately. It was one of those airline/culture crossover moments that we aerophiles really savor.
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This post originally appeared at AskThePilot.com. Copyright 2014. Follow AskThePilot.com on Twitter.
SEE ALSO: Why The Malaysia Airlines Jet Might Have Disappeared
Calgary Skeptic on Mar 10, 10:38 AM said:
With the exception of Japan, with any flight from somewhere in Asia to somewhere in Asia, it wouldn't surprise me if a few passengers had stolen passports. It's a sketchy continent.
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Astropig on Mar 10, 11:33 AM said:
I wish every member of the media would read the above piece.It is well reasoned and very informative.
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trecer on Mar 10, 1:46 PM said:
@Astropig:
I wonder why airplanes still rely on black boxes to record flight information. The information should be transmitted by satellite to the cloud, thereby circumventing the need to find a black box after crashes.
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GelW on Mar 10, 2:20 PM said:
@trecer:
I wonder what happened to GPS. They can track you with your cellphone to a few yards, they can track ships on the oceans, don't planes have GPS?
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PrivatePilot on Mar 10, 2:41 PM said:
@trecer:
Some of the newer airliners do essentially that - transmit some data back to a central facility where it is recorded for later analysis.
And that data transmission would be nice except for the instance(s) when you lose all outside communication.
An on-board system that is (typically) separately powered provides the capability to record data that is useful.
Thank you Patrick Smith for adding a fair measure of common sense and rational information. Far too much of the main stream media tends to over sensationalize anything to do with an unfortunate disaster as this. But then again they are more interested in first to print rather than accuracy and legitimacy of what they report.
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Dee E on Mar 10, 5:24 PM said:
@GelW:
Yes they all have GPSs. Since they aren't getting the signal, it's likely the wreckage is in deep enough water to prevent it.
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Sigmund on Mar 10, 5:38 PM said:
@PrivatePilot:
Yes, Air France 447 sent several maintenance signals to Airbus HQ right before disappearing, indicating problems in pitot tubes. Also in AF 447 the pilots did not communicate with the air control during the 2 or 3 minutes it took to crash. I guess pilots are more concerned about trying to fix things instead of talking.
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DavidS on Mar 10, 5:42 PM said:
@Dee E:
They do have GPS transponders, but the one aboard this aircraft stopped transmitting data very abruptly, suggesting either immediate, catastrophic damage or that it was deliberately switched off from the flight deck.
Don't forget that there is still no evidence that the aircraft crashed.
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DavidS on Mar 10, 5:46 PM said:
@DavidS:
* or a systemic failure of all primary and backup electrical systems, which would also seem very unlikely.
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Romias on Mar 10, 5:48 PM said:
@GelW:
GPS in a plane (or your phone) know where YOU are. Nothing more.
If you want to track the one with the GPS, the GPS should communicate its possition to you in some way (Internet, radio, etc). So, to track someone/something is not just required to have a GPS... also a communication device. If you are not able to comunicate your possition, you keep it for yourself... and in this case... deep in the water.
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Euro2cent on Mar 10, 5:54 PM said:
@GelW:
> don't planes have GPS?
GPS satellite signals are received, and they allow the vehicle's device to know where it is.
The tracking is performed by GPS devices that also send out messages, usually via cell-phone radios.
Coverage anywhere would require communication back to a satellite (not GPS's job).
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Sterling on Mar 10, 11:51 AM said:
I think it is a reasonable speculation that the crew did not have time to communicate. If I am about to ditch a plane with a bunch of people on board, I would have told someone, if at all possible.
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pro-gnostic on Mar 10, 1:50 PM said:
My speculation is that someone was stupid, incompetent and/or greedy enough to provoke another avoidable accident. Yet, when one looks at a documentary such as TWA Flight 800 we know we can not trust "official information" and that we'll probably be fed some safe-in-ignorance-story. For, notice how no story on the weather or most other particulars of this flight has been revealed. This will make it easier to create a story with less holes in it.
Either way, it is unreasonable to have so little real-time information about a flight when the airplane automatically communicates directly with ground, besides the process initiated by crew described above.
All this does is reveal the face-saving culture of the flight operators. Since, from my experience, life is seen as cheaper in Asia than most everywhere else I'd not put beyond corporate interests eliminating competition.
Terrorism makes little sense, for there are no claims and the flight was between Islamic nations. Still, again, incompetence and stupidity have no limits.
Finally, we can envision divine intervention (by ET, meteorite, etc) reminding us all of the pollution we belch out when flying jets anywhere. Anyone not flying is a better person.
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As usual, the Patrick Smith summary... on Mar 10, 2:57 PM said:
….is the one to wait for after one of these aviation incidents. Nice article.
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Wright Wingnutt on Mar 10, 5:23 PM said:
A well reasoned article, but it misses the point completely. The news media is no longer in the business of news. They're in the entertainment industry. All they give a shit about is ratings
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Roger C. on Mar 10, 5:29 PM said:
Of course we had to have the arrogant Westerners make the comments that their pilots have more experience flying planes than other countries. Like American planes don't crash too, which, quite a few have. Furthermore, Malaysian Air's planes aren't falling out of the sky every week. I'm sure they have less crashes than American airlines.
Also, is making pilots get ridiculous amounts of training, at great cost, really making a difference. Maybe to Western bureaucrats, it does, but in other countries, maybe they're more concerned with actually training ENOUGH pilots, than making them slog through hours of flight time that doesn't really make them better.
Sad.
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LOL on Mar 10, 6:48 PM said:
@Roger C.:
That wasn't an arrogant comment. It was a comparison used to point out the fact that the pilots were experienced.
Weird rant and did you end by saying that flying more doesn't make you better? lol
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anas on Mar 10, 5:51 PM said:
I would also add that the Asiana crash was a clear case of pilot error. That crash does not dent the 777's record.
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asdest on Mar 10, 6:41 PM said:
stop saying malaysia has superb quality service like singapore air, its a terrible lie! MH is a bad airline with a nice airport.
