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

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

#81

Post by pfdietz »

rdtsc wrote: post #28
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20

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…

You look for the keys only under the light pole where there is light. If you can’t find them there assume a black hole materialized and swallowed them then disappeared. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

More generally, sticking with an approach that "works" by some shallow criterion, even though on deeper analysis it doesn't work, because the alternatives are not as good by the shallow criterion.

The example I point to is tokamaks for fusion energy.

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

#82

Post by krisoft »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #71
krisoft wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WAT. What what? Do you want to pay for the search? How much do you want to pay for it? Every human endeavour is constrained by resources. The art of doing anything is figuring out how to best employ the available resources to achieve goals. > What in the actual fuck. Is this your first time hearing about humans being confused by complicated technology?

> Every human endeavour is constrained by resources There is a difference between constraining activities based on resources at hand and adopting a hypothesis because it favours your resource constraints. (Searching for keys under the light is reasonable. Concluding the keys must be under the light is not.) > Is this your first time hearing about humans being confused by complicated technology? An airline using a fre…

> Searching for keys under the light is reasonable. Concluding the keys must be under the light is not.

Yes. And there is nothing to indicate that they concluded that the keys must be under the lights. In fact there is every reason to assume that they choose this assumption to fit their resource constraints. Because the other option would have been to not even start searching.

But turns out if you assume people are stupid, then they will appear stupid.

> An airline using a free consumer tool [1] to track its planes is not a problem of complicated technology.

Everything about aviation is complicated technology. The fact that there are free tools which provide almost the same answer the professional tools do, but can be misleading in edge cases is further evidence that the technology is complicated.

Also this is the problem with vacuous statements. The statement, I quote "What in the actual fuck." does not let us know what the commenter found curious about the situation. I thought it was that an operator misread the display. You think it is that the operator's had a "free" display instead of a professional one. But who knows. We could even ask why is it the airline who was bumbling around instead of just calling the ATC that the airplane is overdue and letting them figure out with their professional tools and training. Or maybe they are just surprised that airplanes sometimes fly and sometimes not. Who knows.

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

#83

Post by tyingq »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20
sofixa wrote: post #17

If anyone is interested in recently made content that recaps the whole thing, all the available information, some of the speculation, including the most recent news/information: * video by Mentour Pilot - https://youtu.be/Y5K9HBiJpuk * great read, as usual, by Admiral Cloudberg, slightly older: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/call-of-the-void-seven-y...

“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.

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

#84

Post by thyristan »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #49
Ringz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you get a sailing license, you learn that if a man goes overboard, it's best to be (at east) three. One goes overboard, one orders the other never to let the overboard man out of sight and to point with his arm outstretched in his direction, and the boatman uses the outstretched arm to the man overboard. It is impressive how quickly you lose sight of someone even in light waves.

This is absolutely correct, but is in part due to the complicated nature of getting a sailing vessel to a fixed location in the sea behind the current location of the boat and in such a manner that allows for the boat to be put directly into the wind at the right time to kill forward motion.

Only very small motor boats are agile enough that you can turn on a dime and not loose sight of a man-over-board. And even then, it strongly depends on wind, current and boat speed. Also, orientation on the seas, sense of direction and getting to a remembered position again is very very hard to impossible. Especially when agitated. You might try using compass and GPS, but those are imprecise, overwhelming and useless when there is any kind of waves or current.

It is absolutely vital to keep the man-over-board in sight. Practically no exceptions.

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

#85

Post by JumpCrisscross »

krisoft wrote: post #82
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every human endeavour is constrained by resources There is a difference between constraining activities based on resources at hand and adopting a hypothesis because it favours your resource constraints. (Searching for keys under the light is reasonable. Concluding the keys must be under the light is not.) > Is this your first time hearing about humans being confused by complicated technology? An airline using a fre…

> Searching for keys under the light is reasonable. Concluding the keys must be under the light is not. Yes. And there is nothing to indicate that they concluded that the keys must be under the lights. In fact there is every reason to assume that they choose this assumption to fit their resource constraints. Because the other option would have been to not even start searching. But turns out if you assume people are s…

> there is nothing to indicate that they concluded that the keys must be under the lights

"ATSB chose to assume that the plane spiraled in close" based on their resource constraints. The resources are the light. They ruled out--according to this source--a hypothesis based on where the light was.

> the other option would have been to not even start searching

Why?! Even when ATSB chose their hypothesis the entire area wasn't searched.

> there are free tools which provide almost the same answer the professional tools do

Not for flightops! (And not this one.)

> but can be misleading in edge cases is further evidence that the technology is complicated

Have you flown a plane? This isn't an edge case issue, it means MA flightops was always blind on takeoff and approach for its entire fleet. That they thought this website was appropriate for the task represents a massive lack of training and protocol, let alone tooling or oversight.

> You think it is that the operator's had a "free" display instead of a professional one. But who knows

The article said MA flightops "were tracking the plane on the Flight Explorer website" (top comment). I pointed out that FE doesn't have a web-based professional app (comment you responded to). This isn't a "who knows" situation.

> We could even ask why is it the airline who was bumbling around instead of just calling the ATC that the airplane is overdue

Read the article at the top of this thread. Dempsey/Cloudberg goes into this in detail.

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

#86

Post by EdiX »

lupusreal wrote: post #23

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 captain.

I'm not particularly concerned about this, after the germanwings incident in europe and US (and possibly everywhere else as well) flight decks are required to always have at least two people: if one of the pilots wants or needs to leave one of the flight attendants must take his place.

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

#87

Post by beerandt »

aaronmdjones wrote: post #80
lxgr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which incident are you referring to with the altitude confusion example?

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.

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

#88

Post by nprateem »

Hackbraten wrote: post #21
heavenlyblue wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean underwater? Apologies it's not clear if it's a joke?

Most people can’t breathe at high altitudes due to insufficient air pressure. That’s why airplanes are usually pressurized. If that extra pressure goes away for whatever reason, people are handed oxygen masks and tanks to help them stay alive. What the GP comment says is that the plane may have been depressurized at one point at high altitude. The pilot’s oxygen mask is usually designed to last longer than any of the…

I think I saw a YouTube video of a guy in a chamber simulating what happens. Basically you have less than 30s before you enter a state of delirium in which it doesn't seem important to put your mask on, so then you die.

That's why they tell you in safety briefings to always put your own mask on before helping others.

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

#89

Post by imglorp »

In context of the paper, "high-speed gravitationally accelerated dive following fuel starvation", it bears mentioning the L/D ratio of a 777 is around 20. Which means if you lose power at 35,000 feet, you can have at most 132 miles of glide to the surface if well piloted.

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/56420/lift-to-d...

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

#90

Post by DiggyJohnson »

Sakos wrote: post #40
krisoft wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know why I thought a controlled landing of a plane on water was generally possible. Because it is possible and foldr is incorrect in stating that it is not possible. On the video he linked panicked hijackers were fighting with the pilots for the controls. Clearly that is not an ideal scenario for any kind of landing. Even more so for a tricky water landing one. But that is more of a reason to avoid hijacker…

I'm looking at how many fatalities many of those incidents had and I'm not sure I'm convinced. They're not impossible, but the odds don't look great.

Well that would be exactly right. I think people are confused because of some of the language you're using. Ditching is extremely dangerous and usually results in fatalities, but it's not impossible. There's a checklist for it.
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