Malaysian Airlines flight

[PIR4TE]

I just read elsewhere that information is being sent to the engine manufacturers at all times.....i.e. Rolls Royce as in this case, and that data can't be turned off.
By this report there is evidence that the aircraft had engines running on the ground for some time before shut down.
Can only assume, IF this report is correct then it's down and hidden away somewhere.......by WHY?

Regarding engine data regularly beamed to satellite, back to Rolls Royce, there was no location fix, only the time and distance from the single satellite.....hence the red arc of uncertainty on the map I posted earlier.
If they were at cruising speed, how many miles could they cover with the additional seven hours?
If the plane were taken over at 0107hrs., most passengers would have been asleep... with regard to the cell phone issue, supposedly at the altitude of the plane and distance from land, the cell phones would not have worked.
Officials now say that the climb to 43K feet, could have been used in conjunction with rapid decompression of the cabin, to kill the passengers. Until clear and confirmed location of wreckage, anything remains a possibility at this time.

 

[Immortality]

Since you asked so nicely...

The statements that have been repeatedly mentioned on here that Civilian RADAR systems are passive and only Military are Active are incorrect

ATC operates on two systems, Primary and Secondary RADAR.
Primary is the system that actually detects the aircraft as it comes into range, it relies purely on the reflection of the radio waves that it emits. This is your typical RADAR system that people think of. The downside of this is the range and lack of positive id of an particular airframe, all the operator sees is a "blip" on the screen.

Secondary RADAR or Secondary Surveillance RADAR (SSR), works to overcome this. A SSR ground station fires an interrogation pulse which is detected by the Aircrafts on board system (aka Transponder), the aircraft frames a response (this response contains the unique 4 digit code assigned to it by ATC, along with its pressure altitude) and sends it back to the ground station.
The ground station processes this reply and overlays it on the blip that is on the consoles operator screen, this allows ATC to positively ID the airframe.
SSR has a greater range in theory than that of Primary RADAR do to the interrogation / reply process.
SSR came about from the Military and the need to positively identify whether an airframe was friendly or not. It was developed into the civilian system in use today post war.

As you can see, both systems are active, in that both systems transmit, and then await a reply. Whether that reply is the reflected energy off the airframe (Primary RADAR) or its the framed data from the transponder (SSR). No reply, no data to display. Neither system would work in a passive manner.

So what can be done from inside the cockpit? Well basically, the SSR side of the system can be disabled usually by the selection of one rotary switch. This will remove the ID and height information from the console operators screen, but not the "blip" as this cannot be "switched off", as long as the airframe is in range of the ground transmitter it will show up.
This is likely why the airframe has reportedly ascended to 45,000 ft for a period of time, to get out of useful Primary RADAR range thus making the aircraft "disappear"

How then did they figure out where it went and how high etc? Well the aircraft is fitted with other systems that feed data back to ground stations about the aircrafts location and performance etc. This is what airlines use to track the progress of the flight to confirm it will arrive on time / early / late etc this system can also report back data regarding maintenance and faults. But yes this system too can be turned off.
Some modern airliners also have a satellite system on board which provide internet, media and other data services.
It is my understanding that what the "authorities" are saying is that it was turned off, but the satellite uplink wasn't, which resulted in the aircraft being "pinged" at regular intervals. Using this "ping" they claim that they have extrapolated approximate positions and heights as it travelled.

I firmly believe that there is more to this story than is being revealed. Hence the numerous conspiracies out there.

There ya go, does that help? I thought this was a car forum, not an aviation technical one.

So what your saying is that either the Malaysian ATC operators are useless as they should have been able to track the aircraft after the transponder was switched off or as I say the system is passive because it requires a signal from the aircraft for the radar system to interpret? Active/passive, Primary/secondary radar. Sorry, I might not have my terminology 100% but it seems that Malaysian ATC lost the aircraft after the transponder was switched off.

The pilots (or whom ever was in control) was obviously smart enough to switch the transponder off at or after they signed off from the Malaysian controllers so that they no longer took an interest in the aircraft. However, once it was noted that the aircraft was missing, would (or should) the Malaysian authorities not have checked the recordings of the nights activities? If they had and as you say, although no transponder signal was present they would still have a "blip" on the radar which they would have been able to track. Seems to me this didn't happen either because they are incompetent or there was nothing for them to see until they checked with a military tracking station.

Going of the most recent info, the aircraft ascended to 45,000ft and then came back down to 22,000ft rapidly and then returned to cruise altitude while flying back over Malaysian territory. As you say the civilian radar system should have been able to track the aircraft. Seems though that isn't the case from the info the Malaysian authorities have released.

I believe the military version of the transponder system is referred to as IFF.

I'm still of the belief that the ascent and then rapid descent was to either to incapacitate the passengers or at least indicate to the passengers that the flight was in serious trouble (to get compliance). The Boeing 777 systems are good enough that in a emergency situation it can put the aircraft into a rapid descent to get down to a safe altitude (like in the case of a de-pressurisation) all without input from the pilots.

 

[Immortality]

Regarding engine data regularly beamed to satellite, back to Rolls Royce, there was no location fix, only the time and distance from the single satellite.....hence the red arc of uncertainty on the map I posted earlier.
If they were at cruising speed, how many miles could they cover with the additional seven hours?
If the plane were taken over at 0107hrs., most passengers would have been asleep... with regard to the cell phone issue, supposedly at the altitude of the plane and distance from land, the cell phones would not have worked.
Officials now say that the climb to 43K feet, could have been used in conjunction with rapid decompression of the cabin, to kill the passengers. Until clear and confirmed location of wreckage, anything remains a possibility at this time.

Cruising speed is about 900km/h. Max aircraft range is about 14,000km for a 777 - 200ER

 

[Tasmaniak]

I'm still of the belief that the ascent and then rapid descent was to either to incapacitate the passengers or at least indicate to the passengers that the flight was in serious trouble. The Boeing 777 systems are good enough that in a emergency situation it can put the aircraft into a rapid descent to get down to a safe altitude (like in the case of a de-pressurisation) all without input from the pilots.

There stinks of to much likelyhood in this scenario but I think you might be right. Depressurize at 45,000 and it won't take long before everyone in rear compartments is killed.

My understanding of IFF is that the planes transponder needs to be operational for it to identify the friend or foe. Aircraft with active transponder is friend. Aircraft with no transponder, potential foe.

-edit- What that means is, if the transponder is off, the military can only see the "blip" on the screen and have no other identifying details on it. They will know, direction of travel, speed and altitude. It stops there. I believe civil air authorities will lose it all together... but heres another interesting thought, given the tension that we see with many countries in those areas at this point... if one of those countries had detected an aircraft travelling through their airspace and it did not respond to communication attempts, would they not have scrambled a flight to check it out?

 

[Rajesh Koothrappali]

Just to clarify, I was flying light aircraft before I was legally entitled to drive a car. Due to my young age I was given the opportunity to learn about ATC including spending time in a regional control centre and Auckland international airport control tower as well as time in a training facility actually working on a genuine ATC simulator, aircraft maintenance and all sorts of other interesting stuff that I'm not going to bore you with.

Regardless, as someone with a father who is a former civil ATC and retired recently from a very senior ATC licencing and standards position, as well as having my sister's husband flying MRH-90s in the Navy and girlfriend's brother just graduated from 2FTS in the RAAF on his way to flying Hornets, as well as being a former RAAF ATC myself, I can safely say there are a lot of inaccurate statements in this thread.

There is no such thing as "ATC radar" as a stand alone system. Today ATCs use "ATC systems" that provide information from multiple sources.

TAAATS (civil) and ADATS (military) are both used in Australia although ADATS is being phased out along with all military ATCs. Both systems use information from (including but not limited to) aircraft transponders, radar, and flight plan information to present information to ATCs in real time or with a small delay. Radar has limited coverage and satellites are used passively by aircraft and for communication between ATCs around the globe. Without transponders and flight plan information, ATCs have limited visibility (if any a lot of the time) of aircraft in the air most places in the world. They know where they are based on flight plans, transponders and radio voice communication. With little effort, an air crew can make their aircraft disappear from ATC systems, or even identify themselves as something they're not (eg: AF1 going to the middle east for a surprise visit from GWB when he was President was identified to ATC everywhere as a private contractor's Gulf Stream for security reasons - ATCs on the ground in Iraq only realised what it was when they had visual on final approach). Avoiding radar detection is also not very hard. Fly low. Yeah the military will find you if you're in an airliner, but they need to be looking while you're still flying. Civil radar sites don't see/search/monitor below set altitudes for the airspace they're monitoring.

Bottom line - it's not hard at all for any aircraft to go missing and never be seen or heard from again.

Any speculation is just speculation. Until wreckage or the in-tact plane is physically located, any reports should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

[PIR4TE]

^^ I think you are making this all up, like your car and your job.

 

[mr calais 5.0]

I was reading on another forum that the pilot can turn the air off to the passangers.. IF this is true the he would of waited till they were sleeping cut the air and let them die and then land the plane and do what ever tey want with the plane and bodies..

 

[Rajesh Koothrappali]

^^ I think you are making this all up, like your car and your job.

DILLIGAF? It is what it is. I don't care if you believe it or not. My cars are my cars and my job is my job.

 

[nes138]

Well military atc's are not being phased out.... I know that for sure

 

[Calaber]

In 2001, Bin Laden demonstrated to the world what a potent weapon an airliner can be. The "success" of those flights would have to be at the back of the minds of the Taliban or whomever replaced Bin Laden and with the large number of sympathisers to the Taliban (ie anti-Western society) cause, it is feasible that reputable pilots from airlines could be recruited/coerced/brainwashed into diverting a normal flight to a predetermined location for future use.

I find it difficult to accept that the transponders and other communications equipment were disabled some minutes apart, yet military radar was able to track the aircraft for some time after the last transmission, and well after civilian radar had lost contact with the plane, and the plane has simply crashed. The whole thing reeks of pre-planning for an indeterminate cause. The fact that satellite "pings" continued for up to six hours adds to the mystery.

Let's face it, after 9/11, the chances of getting trained suicide pilots on-board as passengers is far more difficult to achieve, but getting the actual flight crew to "steal" the plane would be quite feasible. It just amazes me that in this day and age of satellite observation, Global Positioning and advanced radar and communications, it is possible to take control of an aircraft and make it disappear, without apparently crashing it. Whether it has crashed has yet to be proven, so we al have to wait either for the crash site to be located, or the plane to appear on its next "mystery flight".