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

admiralcloudberg.medium.com

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

#331

Post by bigDinosaur »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #230
nawgz wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really weird characterization of a normal airplane function. First, you are seeming to act as if the power between passengers and pilots should be equal. Why would this ever be? The pilot has all the power and the passengers none. Thinking of past hijackings, it's obvious that it must be this way. Second, the plane needs to be able to handle all sorts of 1 in a million events. Recall there were around 22 mi…

I didn't say it was a bad idea with no legitimate purpose, just that it's pretty creepy. Given that it's only been used to commit mass murder ~once (at most), it's probably not worth implementing any mitigating controls.

If the pilots want to kill you, all they have to do is fly into the ground, and there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop them and nothing short of complete automation could ever remove that risk. I can't think of scenarios where the pilots would particularly want to survive after murdering all their passengers.

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

#332

Post by joecool1029 »

IgorPartola wrote: post #313
dml2135 wrote: post #29

Fascinating article. I had a chuckle at this excerpt: >The Malaysian investigators did look into whether the cargo could have started a fire, noting that it consisted mainly of ripe mangosteen fruits along with a small number of lithium batteries. Extensive attempts by the investigators to get mangosteen juice to react with the batteries and trigger a fire were unsuccessful. I'm sure plenty of people here have spent…

It’s not that weird. Lithium (ion) batteries can catch on fire if submerged in water. Can juice do it is a legitimate question.

No, not ion. Lithium *metal* batteries can catch fire when submerged in water. Lithium ion batteries have very little lithium and lots of water is usually the best method to extinguish larger fires. More on safety including information on aircraft fire suppression systems on the more common lithium ion cells: https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-304a-safety-concern...

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

#333

Post by quickthrower2 »

markx2 wrote: post #33

I can highly recommend reading more of Admiral_Cloudberg's writings. Start at https://old.reddit.com/r/AdmiralCloudberg/ If you wish to skip any comments, https://old.reddit.com/r/AdmiralCloudberg/comments/e6n80m/pl... and use the Medium links.

Old reddit is is needed for me because current reddit mangles the imgur posts which he used to do (now he uses medium)

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

#334

Post by justsid »

threads2 wrote: post #116
EamonnMR wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one haunts my nightmares.

WOW I will never sleep on a plane again.

No worries, if pressurization is lost, your body will do the sleeping all by itself.

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

#335

Post by quickthrower2 »

dan_quixote wrote: post #80
ak_111 wrote: post #72

As someone who doesn't have intuition about these things: what are the chances that an 777 could have crashed and yet many years later very very few of its debris showed up or were spotted anywhere in the world (also factoring in intense search efforts around the most likely places where it crashed)? Is this one of these 1 in a billion chance thing or is it not as crazy as it sounds? Like even if you were intentional…

Major structures of a 777 are aluminum. I wouldn't expect many large, easily identifiable, parts to float (for long).

Aluminium floats

Edit: was wrong

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

#336

Post by Phiwise_ »

mannykannot wrote: post #117
digitalsankhara wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The methodology of using aircraft scatter of radio signals encoded in the WSPR protocol is described in [1]. I was so sceptical when I heard about this - mainly due to the normally mangled reporting in mainstream media - that I really didn't think there was any merit in it. The thought of being able to detect aircraft scatter using very low power HF signals over variable ionospheric propagation conditions at long ran…

I took a look at this a few months ago, and when I left off, I was unsure exactly how they conducted the validation of the technique. In particular, there was a test on June 3 2021 where they attempted to reconstruct the path of a flight from Samoa to Australia[1]. Certain phrases in the report leave me wondering whether the test simply amounted to looking for anomalies in the WSPRnet data in close spatiotemoral prox…

I think a hypothetical WISPRnet advocate might respond by pointing out that the plane's flight isn't unknown per se, and that they could markedly narrow the search space through first applying other information about the flight, but you're probably still right anyway in that it wouldn't be enough narrowing to get useful results. That phrasing does seem to imply needing to know just about exactly where to look already to get useful results.

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

#337

Post by stephen_g »

stouset wrote: post #26
mlyle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about that easy. Of course, masks are a-gonna drop, and flight attendants are going to put on portable oxygen bottles... and of course the crew should descend. But the whole plane architecture is built on the idea that you're trusting the people in the front with everyone's lives.

I think the point being that accidentally hitting this switch is probably of some concern.

There was a disaster where the pressurisation switch was left in the wrong position by a maintenance crew [1], and the pilots didn't realise because they thought the alarm was for something else, and by the time they realised something was wrong they were starting to suffer from hypoxia and were no longer able to react properly. Additional warning indicator lights were added to the cockpit to make the situation much more obvious.

Now pilots would hear the warning, scan the indicators and see the indicator, and are trained to put on their oxygen masks immediately. The cabin masks would deploy automatically. Then they follow the checklist which is to descend to a safe level if the pressure is uncontrollable (which it wouldn't be if it's just switched off).

It's very unlikely the pilot would turn off cabin pressurisation, but it would be pretty gentle and warning alarms and indicators would start pretty quickly (including on EICAS on newer planes like the 777). The pilots could easily fix it well before their or the passengers' oxygen ran out.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

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

#338

Post by Phiwise_ »

neilv wrote: post #198

> But Sherlock Holmes was right: once we have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. This matter isn't entertainment fiction, and nobody involved is Sherlock Holmes. Hundreds of people died. Amateurs publicly casting blame on one of the presumed dead seems unfair to the individual accused, and insensitive to the families. Especially when it depends on bits like this:…

Yeah, this article contains a bit too much editorializing for flavor for my taste. Doubly so after seeing attached patreon links. How much better than the news networks that ran literally everything they could get their hands on about the flight (even when that was nothing) are you really when you do something like this? Sure there's much more factual information present here, but if its job is to generate emotional intrigue instead of inform is there truly a difference in kind? If the facts are so compelling, just state them and at least have the plausible deniability that it's just your readers opining after seeing them.

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

#339

Post by quickthrower2 »

DogLover_ wrote: post #52
bengl3rt wrote: post #18

"Before Fariq can attempt to get back into the cockpit, Zaharie reaches up and flips the pressurization switch, cutting off bleed air to the cabin. The airplane rapidly begins to depressurize." I really want to believe that a single switch doesn't control whether people in the back of the plane can breather or not...

You might want to learn about Helios Airways Flight 522 crash

That was a missed checklist item IIRC where the ground engineer had turned off the pressurisation while trying to debug a pressure leak (ironically), the pilot was supposed to check this in a couple of lists, they did but I think they glossed over it. Plus they might have ignored some inflight warnings. This is also the one where a learning pilot (also scuba diver, probably able to handle the lack of oxygen better) tried to save it but was too late.

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

#340

Post by quickthrower2 »

ak_111 wrote: post #91

The strangeness of this story - a 777 disappearing into thin air in one of the most surveilled and monitored (due to geopolitics) places on earth leaving no traces behind - has spooked people so much that there is a section on the wikipedia page debunking theories related to black holes.

That the show Lost was the same sort of concept probably adds to it.
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