Malaysia Airlines Says It Lost Contact With Plane Carrying Over 200

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-says-plane-with-over-200-aboard-is-missing.html?referrer=

by r0h1n • 12 years ago

139 96 12 years ago

mobile.nytimes.com

te_chris• 12 years ago

Edit: the top reply made me realise what has probably happened. Awful :(

rayiner• 12 years ago

GPS position must be calculated on the plane and transmitted off the plane. You can't see how that connection might be interrupted?

magic_haze• 12 years ago

GPS just means the plane knows where it is. The equipment necessary for the plane to inform the airline ops about its location is still vulnerable to all sorts of problems, even with the kind of anal development practices required by FAA and equivalent agencies. Airports usually have have radars that track nearby airspace, but otherwise, I think most planes are tracked by the ADS-B signals that they actively transmit (insecurely).

jfoster• 12 years ago

Does that mean that they pretty much know where the plane is likely to be? I recall from previous accidents that sometimes they can't find the plane very quickly. I don't know much about this subject, but what stops them from locating the plane within just a few hours?

slurry• 12 years ago

Normally, you are right.

'Lost contact' therefore suggests something very wrong has happened.

robzyb• 12 years ago

Generally the tracking doesn't work so well after the plane has crashed into the ocean.

Saying that you've lost contact with a jet is another way of saying that "it's probably crashed, but we don't have any solid proof yet."

sidwyn• 12 years ago

Looks like they just located it, and are sending emergency teams now: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=vi&tl=en&js=n&prev=...

theboss• 12 years ago

those reports were already confirmed false (insane, less than a minute later)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/08/malaysian-airli...

fname• 12 years ago

EDIT: The Guardian has a pretty good live blog feed giving constant updates - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/08/malaysian-airli...

Very sad. Only the third crash of a 777 since being introduced in the 90s.

[1]Confirmed 14 nationalities amongst the passengers, including:

    China - 153 (including 1 infant)
    Malaysia - 38
    Indonesia - 12
    Australia -7
    USA - 4 (including 1 infant)
    France - 3
    Canada - 2
    New Zealand - 2
    Ukraine - 2
    Russian - 1
    Italy - 1
    Taiwan -1
    Austria - 1
    Netherlands - 1

[1]: http://www.malaysiaairlines.com/my/en/site/dark-site.html

pcurve• 12 years ago

Captain had almost 20,000 hours under his belt. (Btw, I'm not sure why the airline web site used that particular html file name.)

tkrajcar• 12 years ago

Likely a reuse of their "site down for maintenance" functionality.

gregman• 12 years ago

Looking at the update at 2.32pm AEST makes me sad. Two people mourning over the loss of their relatives and everyone in the airport takes pictures of them. Here is the image (although I'm just spreading it around more): http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/20...

baby• 12 years ago

Taking pictures of suffering people is so inhuman, we rarely see this side when we look at the news.

obituary_latte2• 12 years ago

It's not clear from the article: what happened to the flight?

Flammy• 12 years ago

It isn't known or at least not yet announced. If it crashes into the ocean (or somewhere remote) this isn't surprising. As for the cause, that will likely take months for a comprehensive report.

obituary_latte2• 12 years ago

Yeah, it does seem to be the assumed case. Hope not. Thanks.

Oculus• 12 years ago

Can't begin to imagine how horrible it must be to be the one informing next of kin of what just happened.

whbk• 12 years ago

Or, you know, to be next of kin. :( The last time Twitter was taken over by a Friday night flight was much more enjoyable, thoughts go out to all those affected.

jonah• 12 years ago

FlightAware track of the flight: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370

EDIT: And track log: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140307/1...

einhverfr6• 12 years ago

The flightaware track for flights in the area doesn't tell much because apparently ground radar is relatively limited, unfortunately.

lostlogin• 12 years ago

After a few days of interesting aviation related stories here, this happens.

BorisMelnik• 12 years ago

3:30am update:

At Beijing airport authorities have provided buses for relatives to go to a hotel about 15 kilometres away for further briefings. Associated Press reported one woman on the bus was weeping while saying on a mobile phone, “They want us to go to the hotel. It can’t be good!”

khc• 12 years ago

That seems to be a very sensible thing to do though. Consider that there are 153 Chinese nationals, the number of relatives waiting at the airport is probably at least couple hundreds. Since the event is ongoing and they have no idea how long it will take to have new updates, moving them to a place where they can be better accommodated while freeing up resources at the airport for its normal duties is probably a good thing.

8ig8• 12 years ago

UPDATE [12:37]: Tuoi Tre, a leading daily in Vietnam, reports that the Vietnamese Navy has confirmed the plane crashed into the ocean. According to Navy Admiral Ngo Van Phat, Commander of the Region 5, military radar recorded that the plane crashed into the sea at a location 153 miles South of Phu Quoc island.

http://my.news.yahoo.com/mas-aircraft-goes-missing--says-air...

ChuckMcM2• 12 years ago

Well that is good to know, the Air France jet took a long time to find because there was no radar information about where it went down. Large jets actually crashing feels very jarring these days to me, whereas 20 years ago it seemed much more common of an occurrence. Could just be a form of survivor bias though.

dchuk• 12 years ago

You realize a bunch of people died in this right?

Myrmornis• 12 years ago

For the record, I also found the tone of your post inappropriate.

jimmies• 12 years ago

Tuoitre's news link: http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/18157/missing-malaysia-airline...

wavesounds• 12 years ago

Does anyone know if there's a possibility for survivors? Could a highly skilled pilot glide the plane to a safe crash landing on the water given ideal conditions for an engine failure (assuming thats what happened)? Or does a crash landing over the ocean basically mean the worst? My thoughts and prayers go out to those involved.

jamesaguilar• 12 years ago

Possibly so, but it's unlikely. I have some notion that emergency transponders would have been activated if the plane was brought down safely.

refurb• 12 years ago

It's a very different scenario, I know, but when Ethiopian Airlines flight 961 crashed into the ocean because it ran out of fuel during a hijacking, 50 out of a total of 163 people survived.

Of course that crashed happened close to shore and rescues started quite quickly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961

einhverfr6• 12 years ago

Does anyone know if there's a possibility for survivors?

I doubt it. No emergency transponder recorded. No mayday heard. It was at night. This suggests one of two things to my mind:

1. catastrophic failure with no real time to adjust, like an inflight breakup, or

2. A lack of knowledge that the flight was flying into the ocean (AF447 comes to mind there but there are other cases).

Ditching a commercial aircraft in the ocean is not easy. It's going to be rediculously difficult at night, and right now there is no indication that the pilot was even trying to go for an emergency landing.

I wish I could be hopeful, but it really doesn't look good.

ekianjo2• 12 years ago

The aviation website Leeham news has posted a list of the standard possible causes that will be investigated in an incident of this nature. They stress that these are not specific to this case, but include:

• Catastrophic structural failure

• Dual engine flame-out

• Clear air turbulence

• Human intervention, such as penetration of the cockpit or a bomb

• Accidental shooting-down

• Suicide of the pilot

nthitz• 12 years ago

Could it be a deliberate shooting-down?

meritt• 12 years ago

Philip Wood, an IBM Technical Storage Executive, was one of 3 Americans on the flight manifest.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/philip-wood/3/a46/4a9

chaostheory5• 12 years ago

What bothers me aren't so much the adults on the flight. They've more or less lived full lives, especially the ones from the US. What eats me is thinking that there were two babies on that flight =(

wyager• 12 years ago

What bothers me aren't so much the adults on the flight.

Why? The first years of life aren't disproportionately more valuable than the last.

especially the ones from the US.

Does that really imply that they've lived "more" than everyone else on the aircraft?

adventured• 12 years ago

The ones from the US, as opposed to Canada, France or New Zealand? What a bizarre thing to say.

apacexpat• 12 years ago

That's a horribly insensitive comment. If Mr. Wood were your husband, son, or sibling I seriously doubt you'd feel that way. Also, why is an American adult's life any less valuable than any other age or nationality? You should think before you post next time.

mindcruzer• 12 years ago

You realize that once you are dead it makes no difference how long you were alive right? When you are dead there is no inherent regret that you didn't live longer. Whether you were 67 or 3, you're still dead--the end result is the same. No one life is more valuable than the next. Think about that before you make any more short sighted comments.

balls187• 12 years ago

This is very sad. My thoughts with all those involved and those related. :(

United857• 12 years ago

Last transponder position of #MH370 was Lat: 6.90 Lon: 103.57

http://pic.twitter.com/PVsNuYtbtS

homakov• 12 years ago

This is one of the scariest thing i read on the internet in a while... I feel so sorry.

mukeshsharma• 12 years ago

Well this is very bad news that plane lost its contact with control rum, and its taking over 200 passengers. Hope for the best that they can contact soon with them.

CoachRufus87• 12 years ago

Why is black box data only stored locally, thus requiring investigators to recover the box in order to figure out what happened?

awakeasleep• 12 years ago

Is intercontinental wireless communication reliable?

adamcanady• 12 years ago

I don't have a ton of information to back it up, but I imagine they record a ton of data and it would require a pretty constant and huge data transmission from the airplane to get it all to the ground in near-real-time.

objclxt3• 12 years ago

Because transmissions are unreliable. If you're over the ocean there is no ground to send your transmission to. Black boxes store considerable amounts of data - telemetrics, voice recordings for the past two hours...stuff that to be useful you really have to stream.

So the only viable option for streaming that kind of data is over a satellite link, except it should come as no surprise that when you most need the data the uplink won't work (maybe something ripped the fuselage and damaged the transmitter, power was lost, you no longer had line of site to the satellite because the plane rolled, etc).

There's no benefit. You are going to be sending people out to the plane anyway. If the plane is under the ocean you're going to investigate regardless. Flight recorders are designed to last - the Air France 447 recorders were finally found two years later, 4000 meters under water. Data links are unreliable, not there when you most need them, and not worth the trouble.

Zancarius4• 12 years ago

There's no benefit. You are going to be sending people out to the plane anyway.

This is a fantastic point. I can't think of many accidents that were resolved by the FDR alone. The FDR tells a substantial part of the story, obviously (flight control positions, instrumentation data, etc), but the wreckage suggests where potential points of failure occurred. The importance of this cannot be understated, and I'd highly recommend watching (albeit rather dramatized) Crash of the Comet [1] and related videos for how important wreckage and metallurgical analysis has been in resolving otherwise difficult accidents.

To add to your comment, the FDR and CVR have demonstrated that they can function up to the point of impact (with some exceptions, such as a few accidents caused by severe in flight fires), which yields some very important telemetry as to the attitude of the aircraft, state of the engines, etc.

So really, if it's not broke...

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws-GAiQKsBs

Zancarius4• 12 years ago

Telemetry isn't as easy as one might think. Airbus, AFAIK, is one of the pioneering manufacturers in this regard, as we witness in the crash of AF447, but given the amount of data that FDRs record, I'd imagine it wouldn't be a simple feat.

And in part, the reliability of FDRs and CVRs has been such that a comparatively small number of those recovered were void of retrievable information. So my guess is that replacing them would require satellite links (which obviously exist) but 1) have complete coverage of the globe (remember, aircraft like the 777 have a huge range) and 2) would be recording real time flight data for every single aircraft in the air. Then you have the issues of costs, approval from the various industry regulators (FAA, etc), and probably no less than 5-10 years before acceptance. And that's being hugely optimistic. In many ways, there's a point where carting around your telemetry-recording device is actually the cheapest and most effective method. It's counter-intuitive to some, but again: Telemetry isn't easy. Or cheap. And it needs to be reliable.

It does appear that Iridium Satellite is proposing something of the sort [1]. And trawling the Interwebs yields some [2] interesting [3] discussions [4].

But chiefly, I think the limitation is mostly cost, and as objclxt points out, reliability is another issue that would need to be addressed. There are a lot of planes in the sky. [5]

[1] http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=6174

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/business/global/22blackbox...

[3] http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110620151102AA...

[4] http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/58733-Why-plane-...

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NFGD9cglb4&t=43s

lvs• 12 years ago

The critical data for accident investigation is acquired during and after an incident of some kind, which by definition precipitated or was precipitated by system failures. The failsafe data store in a failure condition is by necessity local.

balladeer6• 12 years ago

So, they made an announcement after 5 hours?

Lost contact: 2:40 AM

Announcement: 7:30 AM

callesgg• 12 years ago

Well it could have been so that they just lost their radio due to malfunction.

And after 5 hours i imagine the fuel would be about out so after that one can with a very high accuracy say that it was worse that just a radio glitch.

It would not look good to say that the plane crashed and then one hour or so later it lands on some remote runway.

balladeer6• 12 years ago

But they could say after 30 minutes or 45 or hell, 60 minutes, "guys, we lost contact with our plane and that happened sixty minutes ago".

amix2• 12 years ago

This is sad, but kind of strange with all the fear and media publicity of an airplane crash. For example, 1.2million people lost their life in road traffic in 2010 alone... We rarely read or fear about this fact.

fragsworth• 12 years ago

Yeah. Every day, more than ten times as many people die in traffic accidents than in this single plane crash.

caf2• 12 years ago

I'm sure we would read about a single road accident claiming a few hundred lives as well.

amix2• 12 years ago

Each day about ~100.000 people lose their life in road accidents...

bariswheel• 12 years ago

This is very unfortunate, but why is it on Hacker News?

tomrod• 12 years ago

Because a lot of hackers care.

joering2• 12 years ago

Without disrespecting victims (RIP), can someone briefly explain how and why people die during plane crash? Is it lack of oxygen, or cold temperature or actually a hard landing on the water surface? AFAIK most studies conclude there is no good place on the plane to be safer than other, whether its front, back, left side or right. Any ideas how to expand ones survival chances? Will TSA let you in with parachute -- is it even worth carrying one??

balladeer6• 12 years ago

parachute

That would mean an opening if there's an opening in the plane, while still above the ground, the plane is done anyway.

I think it's the fire or suffocation (the plane is sealed) if it falls in the water. I really don't know. Go over to reddit, there people there are better chances of an answer.

joyofdata• 12 years ago

Why is stuff like this on HN?

einhverfr6• 12 years ago

Malaysia Airlines has a reasonable safety record. The 777 has a very good safety record. This specific plane apparently had damage to the wingtip from a previous on-ground incident/collision. It's a big mystery.

Malaysia Airlines Says It Lost Contact With Plane Carrying Over 200

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