Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is Missing

After a yearlong investigation, investigators say they are unable to pinpoint exactly what caused the crash that killed golf champion Payne Stewart and five others last year.

In a final report released today, the National Transportation Safety Board said the probable cause of the crash was the loss of consciousness of two pilots caused by a loss in cabin pressure and a failure to get emergency oxygen. However, NTSB officials were unable to determine what caused the cabin pressure to drop. The investigation, the NTSB Chairman Jim Hall noted, was hampered the extensive damage to the plane and the fact that it was not equipped with a flight data recorder.

“The airplane was not equipped with a flight data recorder, an invaluable tool in most major investigations, and it had only a 30-minute cockpit voice recorder,” Hall said.

Hall noted that Payne’s Learjet 35 hit the ground at near supersonic speed and at an extremely steep angle, leaving nearly none of the plane’s components intact. The board also could not determine whether an emergency oxygen bottle had been as fully charged as it should have been or whether the pilots had lost their capability to perform before or after donning oxygen masks.

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joshuatree said:

It's not really about giving too much credence but rather a real incident revealing the true capacity and operational readiness of each state in the area. For those that take lessons learned to heart, they will build upon this experience.

As for the article about engine info indicating the plane may have flown for hours more, I don't get it. How is it if the engines are transmitting back data, we can't get the last known area of data transmission?

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Jeff Head said:

The Engines do indeed transmit various data, separate from the other transponders on info regarding their operation. But no GPS or location data other than altitude and air speed at the time, and various data about engine operations. My understanding is that this data does not stream real time, but goes out in burst on regular intervals.

Boeing is saying they got this data for 4.5 hours after the last transponder indications. But Rolls Royce is indicating that they did not.

More intrigue and mystery in that...from a couple of very credible sources...but that contradict one another.

There were also reports tonight that the normal transponders were turned off manually from within the aircraft (either by switching, or breakers aboard the aircraft), indicating either a take over of the aircraft, or complicity by the crew.

Finally, the USS Kidd, one of the AEGIS destroyers involved in the search has now been immediately ordered by the US Navy to steam into the Indian Ocean and to search at specific locations there. A former US Navy officer indicated tonight how such an order does not happen on a whim, or on a "hunch," but is happening because some specific information, from some credible source, has caused the Navy to send her there.

The mystery deepens...but a lot of US Navy and US security specialists now are apparently seriously considering that the aircraft was intentionally either taken over or co-opted, intentionally turning off various transponder comms, going silent on other radio communications, and then flew down below radar coverage and over the Malacca Straits and into the Indian Ocean for several hours. With the amount of fuel she had on board, the search area is huge.

Where specifically the Kidd is going to search is unknown, and I can bet that a number of US satellites have now been re-tasked to also be looking at any place within that area that could possibly accommodate an aircraft like that...as well as searching for debris on the water.

This is a very serious, and very strange case. Sadly, the family and loved ones of the 239 people aboard are being taken through an emotional roller coaster as the story unfolds.

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Jeff Head said:

Boeing is saying they got this data for 4.5 hours after the last transponder indications. But Rolls Royce is indicating that they did not.

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chuck731 said:

If one were looking for hostages then why has no one announced they have the hostages?

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joshuatree said:

You're assuming the hijackers were successful. If they were trying to fly below radar, maybe they FUBAR in the process.

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Jeff Head said:

Or, perhaps it was the aircraft they wanted all along and were able to get the Malaysian aircraft easiest because of more lax security and because of its departure point being in range of wherever it was they wanted to go.

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joshuatree said:

Question is, if it was a hijack attempt where they weren't planning to fly the plane into something, where would they go in that range that is friendly to them? Where could they land without radar detecting them? Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos? Can't think of a reason why. Philippines? North Borneo Dispute? Who has grudges with Malaysia?

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bd popeye said:

I've not read this thread.. so if my remarks have been covered so be it.

I just read that a satellite relieved signals from the 777 for several hours after it was missing.

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Could it be that the aircraft lost cabin pressure unfortunately killing all aboard and flew until it ran out of fuel? This is not unprecedented. In 1999 the same situation may have happened to PGA golfer Payne Stewart private jet.

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t2contra said:

Not in this case
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Missing MH370: Transponder may have been shut down deliberately, say experts

KUALA LUMPUR: New evidence has suggested that communication from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have been deliberately cut off.

ABC news said US investigators now believe the aircraft's data reporting system and its transponder - which reports its position in flight to ground-based radar - shut down separately.

The fact that the devices appear to have been shut off at a 14-minute interval from one another suggests that they may have been deliberately disabled or at any rate did not fail as a result of a catastrophic airframe incident, the US network said.

The transponder was switched off 30 minutes after the final voice communication from the cockpit, around the same time that Malaysia believes the plane may have inexplicably started to turn back, the Washington Post said.

Taken together, that "suggests that someone unauthorised took control of that airplane, like an intruder or one of the pilots", the Post quoted one US flight crash expert as saying.

According to data obtained, the reporting system was shut down at 1.07am (Malaysia time) and the transponder at 1.21am.

The plane lost radar contact at around 1.30am, less than an hour after take-off, according to Malaysian officials.

They have confirmed that the last words heard from the cockpit were a relaxed "Alright, good night" as the plane was due to pass from Malaysian to Vietnamese air traffic control. The night was clear and the weather was fine.

"The last (data) transmission from the aircraft was at 0107 hours which indicated that everything was normal," Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters on Thursday. - ANN/The Singapore Straits Times/AFP

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