Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

admiralcloudberg.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 457 posts

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#301

Post by ipnon »

washywashy wrote: post #293

Once on a flight headed west I happened to look out the window and just then another plane flew beneath the plane I was on headed north-ish and quickly off into the distance. I remember thinking two things: 1. It was far away from us so quickly it kind of shocked me, although it makes perfect sense of course. 2. I felt like i got a really good view of it. It didn’t look far away at all altitude-wise as it passed bene…

Planes on intersecting paths will be placed in separate flight levels. The standard is 35,000ft or “FL35”, and usually East bound traffic gets odd FL and West bound gets even. It’s likely the plane you saw would have collided with yours had it been on the same FL, but it was likely off by 1,000ft. The relative addition of two cruising speeds make it more dramatic too.

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#302

Post by ufmace »

fosk wrote: post #119
LatteLazy wrote: post #65

To me, the most interesting thing about all of this is that civilian airports don't really have radar. You can disappear from an ATC screen just by turning off a transponder. If they'd had radar we would at least of known which way the plane went. A curious controller could have asked "unidentified object at height X, region Y" who they were and why they were in controlled airspace without a transponder on. The artic…

Radar is not exactly “new” technology, to your point I wonder why airports are not equipped with one. Shouldn’t break the bank. Plus don’t militaries have radar anyways for air defense? How is it possible that no radar from multiple countries picked up a silent Boeing 777 flying to nowhere?

They did write about the military angle in the article. It seems they saw it and either weren't paying attention or didn't bother to do anything. I guess it would be kind of a pain in the ass for a military primary radar to attempt to correlate every contact with known flights operating normally and to send up interceptors for anything that didn't seem to match. It's not clear if they would even have interceptors at a sufficient readiness level to actually catch a jetliner at cruising speed and altitude near the edge of their coverage.

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#303

Post by pmarreck »

listenallyall wrote: post #278
yellowapple wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> I created an OpenAI account solely so I could ask was it worth it? no. Feel free to ask OpenAi whatever happens to amuse you. Please don't waste the rest of our time or attention or bandwidth on it. Nobody cares.

I care, because I think OpenAI is still endlessly fascinating.

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#304

Post by nicky0 »

listenallyall wrote: post #278
yellowapple wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> I created an OpenAI account solely so I could ask was it worth it? no. Feel free to ask OpenAi whatever happens to amuse you. Please don't waste the rest of our time or attention or bandwidth on it. Nobody cares.

I also appreciated the post, however, I did not appreciate yours.

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#305

Post by edrxty »

loeg wrote: post #220
ceejayoz wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to rapidly depressurize is fairly critical; the doors are prevented from opening in flight by a pressure differential and their construction. In an emergency, being unable to depressurize would mean being unable to evacuate the aircraft. Passengers would've had their oxygen masks deploy, which works in normal circumstances, but they only last 12 minutes; intended to give the crew time to descend. When the…

In an evacuation event, the aircraft would be at sea level and the interior would not be pressurized relative to outside air. You only need to depressurize if you're going to parachute out, which... is not an option in commercial aviation.

Pressurization is relative, aircraft can end up pressurized on the ground. Next time you fly, note the warning beacons in the windows of all the doors. They indicate the cabin is pressurized alerting rescue crews that attempting to open said door will either A: not work or B: kill them, as has happened before with a G150 [1]

Also, there are other situations where you may be inclined to disable bleed air, such as in a fume event where an engine is releasing turbine oil into the bleed air stream due to a mechanical failure or fire.

[1] https://www.flightglobal.com/g150s-pressurised-door-fatally-...

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#306

Post by loeg »

edrxty wrote: post #305
loeg wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an evacuation event, the aircraft would be at sea level and the interior would not be pressurized relative to outside air. You only need to depressurize if you're going to parachute out, which... is not an option in commercial aviation.

Pressurization is relative, aircraft can end up pressurized on the ground. Next time you fly, note the warning beacons in the windows of all the doors. They indicate the cabin is pressurized alerting rescue crews that attempting to open said door will either A: not work or B: kill them, as has happened before with a G150 [1] Also, there are other situations where you may be inclined to disable bleed air, such as in a…

> Pressurization is relative

I mean, that's literally what I wrote.

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#307

Post by gnutrino »

washywashy wrote: post #293

Once on a flight headed west I happened to look out the window and just then another plane flew beneath the plane I was on headed north-ish and quickly off into the distance. I remember thinking two things: 1. It was far away from us so quickly it kind of shocked me, although it makes perfect sense of course. 2. I felt like i got a really good view of it. It didn’t look far away at all altitude-wise as it passed bene…

I’ve seen this before and was shocked as well. Really gave me some perspective on how much trust we put in pilots and airlines to keep us safe while hurtling through the air at hundreds of miles per hour.

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#308

Post by EamonnMR »

MisterTea wrote: post #254

"For the reasons listed above, most experts believe MH370 was the victim of some kind of deliberate action." What if the plane was struck by a meteorite? It certainly sounds like there was some kind of incident that caused them to turn around abruptly to head back but they were disabled. It is possible they experienced an extreme rare event. Rare dpesnt mean impossible, just highly unlikely.

The author addresses this. Such a scenario requires explaining why comms systems were turned off one by one as if by a person rather than an instantaneous event like an asteroid strike. Also, it would be a very big coincidence for not only an asteroid to strike an aircraft and cause it to drift aimlessly (rather than just rapidly disassembling), but also for that aimless drift to randomly line up with a course plotted by one of the pilots of that plane with no apparent purpose.

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#309

Post by yellowapple »

listenallyall wrote: post #278
yellowapple wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> I created an OpenAI account solely so I could ask was it worth it? no. Feel free to ask OpenAi whatever happens to amuse you. Please don't waste the rest of our time or attention or bandwidth on it. Nobody cares.

Thank you for your contribution to this discussion.

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#310

Post by jjav »

ceejayoz wrote: post #238
jjav wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd rate the ability of the US Gov't to successfully keep something like that a secret to be roughly zero, plus or minus zero. You'd be very wrong. There are hundreds (thousands? tens of thousands?) classified missions going on all the time involving large amount of people. And aside for the exceedingly rare whistleblower, all of them are kept secret for decades or more until they get declassified (sometimes never)…

> There are hundreds (thousands? tens of thousands?) classified missions going on all the time involving large amount of people. Not many of them involve murdering an entire planeload of civilians.

> Not many of them involve murdering an entire planeload of civilians.

You of course don't know that, not having access to compartmentalized top secret material.

If you did, you couldn't post here (or anywhere) about it.

Post reply on HN