Live data from Hacker News

Final two communications from MH370 support controlled descent scenario (2021)

researchgate.net

111–120 of 126 posts

Re: Final two communications from MH370 support controlled descent scenario (2021)

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aeroperu 603.

Not knowing your altimeter is connected to your transponder, and that you provide the altitude along with your squawk to the atc screens is a pretty glaring wtf.

I can forgive the pilots for not knowing that ATC is getting altitude information from the plane. They're not air traffic controllers after all, and the training back then was a lot less thorough than it is today.

What's more alarming is that they had a perfectly functional radar altimeter and ought to have known that this is a completely self-contained system; it doesn't depend on the flight computers, the pitot-static system, or any external information such as your current position or a programmed flight plan. If it's telling you that you're only a couple thousand feet above terrain, you really should listen to it and respond accordingly.

Neither of the pilots did.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIz6vODilro

Re: Final two communications from MH370 support controlled descent scenario (2021)

#112
post #41

There is a very good book by the french journalist Florence de Changy about MH370, which "solves" all the issues with most of the theories out there and proposes what really happened. So far I've not come across a more sophisticated theory that still passes Occam's Razor.

Changy recently claimed on BFM TV that she made her scenario up after being pressured by her editor.

Good to know. Thanks for pointing it out.

Re: Final two communications from MH370 support controlled descent scenario (2021)

#113
post #41

There is a very good book by the french journalist Florence de Changy about MH370, which "solves" all the issues with most of the theories out there and proposes what really happened. So far I've not come across a more sophisticated theory that still passes Occam's Razor.

US shooting down a civilian passenger liner because of hypothesized secret cargo headed for China, and successfully covering it up for 10 years doesn't sound like something that passes Occam's Razor at all -- sounds like the very opposite, in fact. One should look for theories with less sophistication, not more.

The US has done much much more nefarious things. I think it is totally possible – and convincing for that matter.

But another commenter already pointed out that she was pressed to write the book like that.

Re: Final two communications from MH370 support controlled descent scenario (2021)

#114
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible for the pilot to depressurise the plane and use their dedicated oxygen system to breathe while everyone else on board will pass out after using their individual masks. Doing so will give them 60-90 minutes of extra air, the passengers' masks don't last that long.

What legitimate reason would a pilot have to depressurize a plane at altitude, incapacitating or killing the passengers? Just wondering if and if so why that system / function is available.

The pressurization system takes bleed air from the jet turbines so they need to be able to shut it down in the case of an engine fire

Re: Final two communications from MH370 support controlled descent scenario (2021)

#115
It was most probably a mass and self suicide attempt by the pilot. The known plane trajectory is compatible and as a mental health professional I confirm there is an unconscious depression state that can be hidden from anyone while leading to such crazy behaviour.

Re: Final two communications from MH370 support controlled descent scenario (2021)

#116
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Malaysia Airlines operations…were tracking the plane on the Flight Explorer website, which, as they would only realize hours later, simply continued to display an aircraft’s projected path if its transponder stopped broadcasting position information.” What in the actual fuck. “…the supposed signals from the black boxes must have been false. Only much later was it discovered that the signals had probably come from th…

That top one really gets me. That employees in flight operations wouldn't understand the concept of dead reckoning is used in a flight tracker. Well not that some would have been confused... But that nobody in the room would have raised that over a several hours span.

Even on a pure UI level, any software used in such a role really ought to warn the user somehow for "this aircraft has been X hours out of contact" in a world where this isn't supposed to happen anymore.

Re: Final two communications from MH370 support controlled descent scenario (2021)

#117
post #86

The more certain it seems that MH370 was a murder-suicide scenario, the less comfortable I am with the media's preoccupation with it. News reports about such events may contribute to copycats: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17750236/ > Airplane accident fatalities increase just after newspaper stories about murder and suicide D P Phillips. Science. 1978. > Abstract: Fatal crashes of private, business, and corporate-…

There have been other murder/suicides of this kind (assuming that the theory is correct). Particularly SilkAir 185 and Germanwings 9525 (I think there is at least another one, but at the moment it is escaping me). In fact, my impression has been, for a long time, that MH370 is itself a copycat of SilkAir 185 where the suicide corrected the mistakes that led to the discovery that the accident was in fact caused by the…

Wikipedia says this was walked back, unfortunately.

> Aviation authorities swiftly implemented new recommendations from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency that required two authorised personnel in the cockpit at all times but, by 2017, Germanwings and other German airlines had dropped the rule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

Re: Final two communications from MH370 support controlled descent scenario (2021)

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aeroperu 603.

Not knowing your altimeter is connected to your transponder, and that you provide the altitude along with your squawk to the atc screens is a pretty glaring wtf.

On general aviation planes there are usually two altimeters that are independent. The instrument a pilot uses to fly with (round dial gauge or digital version in glass cockpit) and one inside the transponder itself. If you lose your altimeter you actually can call up atc if you have a mode-c transponder and have them read it to you. It’s separate.

No idea how it works on a passenger jet, but I would be shocked if it was different.

Re: Final two communications from MH370 support controlled descent scenario (2021)

#119
post #2

If the descent was controlled gliding, the passengers (at least some of them) should be alive upon landing, shouldn’t they? Where are they now? Which theory could explain the absolute silence?

If the pilot tried to kill all the passengers to cover his tracks and then killed himself, as many here have commented (which TBH is extremely cruel and insidious), why did he bother trying to land the plane at all? Why not just cut the engine and dump it in the sea? People who commit suicide are the most depressed. They don't care what other people think!

Why of all the possibilities, you choose the most vile one and present it as if you know the facts?

I'm not making any assumptions about the pilot's motives or the final circumstances. I just wondered about the implications of a controlled glide, as the paper suggested. Is there any uncertainty, any margin for error? There certainly is.

Re: Final two communications from MH370 support controlled descent scenario (2021)

#120
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That top one really gets me. That employees in flight operations wouldn't understand the concept of dead reckoning is used in a flight tracker. Well not that some would have been confused... But that nobody in the room would have raised that over a several hours span.

Even on a pure UI level, any software used in such a role really ought to warn the user somehow for "this aircraft has been X hours out of contact" in a world where this isn't supposed to happen anymore.

Agreed, just odd in a room full of experts.
Post reply on HN