Malaysia Airlines 777 missing

brent p h said:
So let me get this straight....on the 777 and all Boeing aircraft there is no triple redundancy?
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Have ever flown ANY aircraft? I don't understand why you are arguing the fact that a transponder on a 777 can not be turned off.

Triple redundancy?? That means nothing when the system is turned off. Is there 3 standby switches? I think not! It's all controlled by the standby as well as a circuit breaker! If you pull the circuit breaker...the system will NO LONGER WORK! Do you have no understanding of the circuit breaker system? Have you ever used fuses in a car??

Please stop making yourself look uneducated. It's embarrassing!
 
The media is starting to paint a sophisticated approach to the disabling of the transponder, right at the handoff point, to help make the jet go "stealth". IF that was what was going on I don't think it makes sense for it to just be fuel starved and flown into the ocean. Who knows if it made it to land but if the investigation is heading down the correct path, it seems like there were at least intentions to make it back to land undetected.
 
From a friend who is a B777 legacy airline captain: "You can turn the switch to standby, pull the circuit breaker, or lose AC power. All would stop transponder operation."
 
I haven't flown a transport category aircraft without two transponders. If an aircraft has a third, whooptydoo.

Personally, I think the media is focusing too much on this particular issue.

If the pilots, or whoever, wasn't able to turn off a transponder, it wouldn't make a bit of difference as there are large swathes of the world where there's no radar coverage at all.

In my opinion, the plane was either commandeered or had a massive abnormal in flight.
 
BeReal said:
Curious. Given the circumstances of this week, does anyone see a downside to preventing transponders from being disabled on commercial aircraft?
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May be giving off erroneous information? I have no idea.

But again, if it's out there in the Arabian Sea, all the transponders in the world wouldn't have made a difference.
 
As an aside, this is why when users complain that JC is too quick to descend upon disagreeing members in a group attack, I roll my eyes. It never starts that way. It always goes just like it did in this thread. Someone argues a point, those in the know tell them politely that their information is invalid, and then they continue to insist that everyone else is wrong. At that point, everyone gives up on correcting the person and starts having fun at their expense. We're all wrong sometimes, I've been proven wrong many times on this site. Just own it, and everyone will move on.
 
I have worked on airliners for many years, and I've never seen 3 transponders. There are usually 2 transponders installed with a switch to select which one you want to use. There are also c/b's for transponders 1, and 2.
 
ChasenSFO said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've read thus far, the only facts we have publicly are:
-MH370 was on course for an hour, then went off radar and never checked in after a hand off.
-Debatable parameters which may or may not have included position reports continued for several hours after the disappearance.
-The range which the plane could have flown in any given direction with the fuel on board.

In addition, the following are potential facts but can't yet be proven with 100% accuracy:
-Another airliner may have gotten a reply from MH370 after ATC communications ceased.
-A primary target West of the Malay Peninsula may have been MH370, indicating a possible Northwesterly course reversal.
-Means of communication may have been shut down separately, deliberately.

But that's really it. The rest is hearsay, and the only verified facts I've seen thus far are the first 3. Given the wild media speculation, and even announcements from government officials, these conclusions seem premature and unfounded. That is, of course, unless information is being withheld from the public. But calling it a hijacking, bomb, pilot suicide, structural failure, or on board fire seems ludicrous given the confirmed facts at this point. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but at this point, I think the world just needs to sit back and wait weeks, months, or years for more information. As hard as that may be.
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This.
 
BeReal said:
Curious. Given the circumstances of this week, does anyone see a downside to preventing transponders from being disabled on commercial aircraft?
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Yes. Sometimes things need to be turned off.

But the next thing coming will be cameras in the cockpit.
 
ChasenSFO said:
As an aside, this is why when users complain that JC is too quick to descend upon disagreeing members in a group attack, I roll my eyes. It never starts that way. It always goes just like it did in this thread. Someone argues a point, those in the know tell them politely that their information is invalid, and then they continue to insist that everyone else is wrong. At that point, everyone gives up on correcting the person and starts having fun at their expense. We're all wrong sometimes, I've been proven wrong many times on this site. Just own it, and everyone will move on.
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You're wrong. No if ands or butts about it. This post is wrong.
 
ChasenSFO said:
Yep. With such a huge search area, and so much of it being water, I'm not at all surprised we haven't found it yet. Its a big airplane, but when you think about it in square miles, its a needle in a haystack. I'll be shocked if its never found, but I doubt it'll be anytime soon if it hasn't been found already.
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Correct. Depending on the information you go off of, we could be talking about a realistic search area of about 50million sq miles. This won't be fast or easy.
 
Pilot Fighter said:
As some might think my thoughts about ACARS data logging are somewhat obtuse I'll share some recent experiences I've had with data logging.

I am working with a client in the oil services industry. We are using an off-the-shelf product to test the composition of accumulated gases in storage tanks.

The hardware is placed in a tank and logs data for up to 30 days. Afterwards, we pull the unit and download the data. The data is expressed in charts and graphs.

Over time, we had questions about the data we were generating. We learned that the sampling rate wasn't quick enough to accurately record brief spikes AND we saw that sometimes the device choked and got stuck on one gas and not the others. One reason we didn't notice it earlier was that we were interested in the presence of one gas as a percentage. Since the levels of other gases were changing, the percentage of the one gas we were interested in was continuing to change. It took awhile for us to realize what was happening as it was stuck on a level that made sense. Also, the maker didn't understand there were actually two samplings going on. The sensor was sampling the environment at a certain rate and the device was sampling the data collected by the sensor at a certain rate. Nobody at the manufacturer actually knew how their device worked, the original engineer was long gone and no customers were complaining.

How does this apply to this case? Data is not reality, it is a modeling of reality. The data doesn't always tell you what you think it is telling you. It is usually a simplification, an abstraction.

In the case of ACARS, we KNOW that a plane is flying if we are getting engine and location data, that's pretty obvious. If we have data that says an aircraft is in stand-by mode, it is fair to ask if that data is accurate. All the hardware could be working fine and a programming error could result in erroneous data. It happens. I can give examples of it happening on military aircraft where a malfunction was not recognized because the bad data was reasonable and had been accurate before failure.
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I hope you didn't take my post that way. That was not my intent. The conversation has been enlightening.

But, for the record, this is only the second time I've witnessed the use of the word "obtuse." The other was by Andy Dufresne. :D
 
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