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Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours

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Re: Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours

#4

Post by melling »

"Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program."

Well, if the engines were transmitting, can't someone figure out the direction of the plane?

Re: Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours

#5

Post by itengelhardt »

melling wrote: post #4

"Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program." Well, if the engines were transmitting, can't someone figure out the direction of the plane?

I guess it depends on the data transferred. For an engine you probably have data like altitude, revolutions/second, fuel intake, pressure, etc. To get a status on the engines you probably don't NEED long/lat data. So it might not be in the transmitted bursts.

Maybe there is a way of interpreting the data that tells you when/if the plane turned. e.g. "the chamber pressure in engine 2 is 5% higher than engine 1 ==> the plane was turning left at a rate of 15° per minute". Something crazy like that

Re: Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours

#6

Post by x0x0 »

melling wrote: post #4

"Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program." Well, if the engines were transmitting, can't someone figure out the direction of the plane?

I wonder if the necessary transmission origin data wasn't recorded? I bet the fbi is right now going through boeing's network trying to figure that out though. Is it bounced through satellites? You'd think a XXX million dollar plane would have a gps beacon or something though, just like atm machines.

It would be a miracle if it where hijacked and there's even a chance those people are alive.

Re: Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours

#8

Post by dingaling »

melling wrote: post #4

"Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program." Well, if the engines were transmitting, can't someone figure out the direction of the plane?

> Well, if the engines were transmitting, can't someone figure out the direction of the plane?

Unfortunatley not; the flight-data transmitting systems ( ACARS and ADS-B ) that do include position data appear to have been turned-off or disabled deliberately.

The engine telemetry feed is part of Rolls-Royce's 'Power by the Hour' system, which aims to identify faults or under-performance in the engines whilst still in-flight so that an engineer can tune and correct when the aircraft arrives. It doesn't care where the aircraft is.

Though... it might include environmental data such as inlet pressure and temperature, which could help to determine altitude.

Re: Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours

#9

Post by digitalengineer »

So we have a plane that flew to another destination without communication and several people with bogus passports on board. Familymembers have reported cellphones that kept 'rining' instead of going directly to voicemail (as they would have if the plane was at rhe bottom of the ocean). Hijacking looks to me the only reasonable explenation.
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