Malaysia Airlines MH370: Possible debris in Indian Ocean

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-20/abbott-says-possible-objects-found-mh370/5334314

by qzervaas • 12 years ago

82 88 12 years ago

abc.net.au

antonius• 12 years ago

Hoping this is true and the plane's black box can be located as well.

laurencei• 12 years ago

Even if some debris is found, it might still take years to locate the actual aircraft wreck deep underwater, and recover the black box(s) and get any real answers (like in the Air France crash).

zxexz• 12 years ago

They still have about 2 weeks before the pinger runs out of battery. So there is a decent chance they could find it within 2 weeks, but if the wreck isn't found by then, it could definitely take years to find it, if ever.

paul_f• 12 years ago

In the case of Air France 447, it did take 2 years to recover the black box. I'm guessing this one will be quicker because of the potential terrorism angle.

kinleyd2• 12 years ago

It would mean no survivors. So sad.

hudibras• 12 years ago

Unless the debris includes a liferaft.

But I'm not keeping my hopes up.

ricardonunez• 12 years ago

Anytime an airplane disappears the probability to find anybody alive is small. The day it happened I was already feeling sad about it. I just can't imagine how the families must feel every time news are announced.

knodi123• 12 years ago

Where do you think survivors could possibly be? A mysterious tropical island, lost in time and space?

grej4• 12 years ago

Unfortunately even if this is the case (and color me skeptical given the sheer volume of media misinformation that this story has generated), the cockpit voice recorder only records the last two hours of data, so regrettably we may never know what happened in those moments when the flight was diverted, even if the wreckage is found and the black box is salvageable.

EDIT - Clarification that the cockpit voice recorder (not flight data recorder) only captures the last two hours. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockpit_voice_recorder

ekianjo2• 12 years ago

We may be able to understand what happened through the last 2 hours of data though. If there's pure silence in the cockpit we could infer a number of things about what occured, plus the debris would give additional information as well.

AlexMuir• 12 years ago

I believe the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) only keeps two hours, but the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) records for considerably longer. Both make up a black box. It will certainly be far more difficult to establish what happened without voice recordings though.

Eliezer2• 12 years ago

I guess they try to keep the airplanes cheap enough that they can't spring for a 16gb card in the CVR.

haberman• 12 years ago

Source? I know nothing about this, but Wikipedia says:

"Most FDRs record approximately 17–25 hours worth of data in a continuous loop."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_data_recorder#Design

EDIT: ah, it looks like you are talking about the cockpit voice recorder, which records 2 hours of data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockpit_voice_recorder

grej4• 12 years ago

Several sources, here's one: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/mala...

Yeah - sorry I should have clarified voice recorder not the flight data recorder. Will edit.

daturkel• 12 years ago

I think you're thinking of the cockpit voice recorder [0], the flight data recorder [1] (also referred to as the black box) contains all sorts of data about what commands were sent to plane and, Wikipedia says, records "17–25 hours worth of data in a continuous loop" (presumably overwriting the oldest data once it's reached capacity).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockpit_voice_recorder

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Data_Recorder

edit: just about everyone's beat me to it!

pasbesoin• 12 years ago

I'm not sure what the current physical medium / technology is, but with some generations, IIRC forensics could actually recover several of the most recent recording passes over the medium that travelled in a closed loop -- if there were enough incentive and resources to do so.

nerfhammer• 12 years ago

We could learn quite a bit, for instance, if the voices on the recorder were neither of the flight crew, or whatever the subject of what was said could suggest whatever had happened at the diversion

... unless whoever was smart enough to disable the transponders would disable the cabin mic, which would probably be the least informative condition

downandout6• 12 years ago

The CVR only recording two hours is absolutely inexcusable. Why does my iPhone - $850 retail - have capabilities that far surpass those of a $250 million modern passenger jet? Hopefully after this incident, public outrage over these ridiculous technological shortcomings will be the catalyst for legislation. Throwing in some extra satellite transmission, GPS, and voice recording capabilities that will hold up even in the event of an electrical issue or fire, and that cannot be disabled by bad actors, just cannot be this difficult.

In my view, the moment this plane went off course, or a fire alarm went off or any other irregularity occurred, a Malaysian Airlines control center should have been alerted and been able to bring up video of the cockpit, maybe the passenger cabin as well, and been able to remotely view diagnostic and positioning data. All of this could easily and cheaply occur via a satellite internet connection.

Edit: For the record, I am not suggesting that plugging a commercial iPhone into a cockpit would work - I'm comparing the capabilities of consumer technology to cockpit technology, which seems woefully inadequate to me.

learc83• 12 years ago

Why does my iPhone - $850 retail - have capabilities that far surpass those of a $250 million modern passenger jet?

Because your iPhone isn't designed to survive a plane crash.

The requirements for both design and certification are so different that comparisons to consumer electronics (especially regarding price) are meaningless.

grej4• 12 years ago

Not sure why you're getting downvoted for this comment, but I agree with what you're trying to say regarding storage. Granted, of course there are some survivability and hardening considerations to take into account for this application vs. your iphone, but at it's core we're talking something not too dissimilar in concept. For reference, this is the link to one of these products: http://www.uasc.com/products/cvfdr.aspx

It clearly states that the data for modern CVRs are held in flash storage. For something that costs thousands of dollars, and is absolutely critical to after action flight accident discovery, there's no excuse not to capture the voice data from every flight in full given the current prices of flash storage.

chaz2• 12 years ago

I think it's worth having the discussion of having a permanent locator on aircraft that can't be disabled, remotely-triggered hot mikes, and longer CVRs. But I downvoted you for falling into the "if we can send a man to the moon, why can't we ____" argument trap, which is more or less the straw man.

just cannot be this difficult ... easily and cheaply

Ever get a feature request from someone who, in a single sentence, describes months or quarters of development time and introduces all kinds of risks and dependencies, but thinks it can be done by next Tuesday?

davidmr3• 12 years ago

Legislation is what set the CVRs at two hours in the first place. §121.359(i)(1) [1] sets the minimum. It should hardly be surprising that these manufacturers don't exceed it. My strong suspicion is that there's a design that meets the requirements and people aren't putting money into developing better ones until more regulation requires it. Obviously I know nothing about international law, but given how closely developed nations seem to coordinate commercial air travel regulation, I would suspect that changing this would take forever.

[1]http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/121.359

objclxt2• 12 years ago

I'll bite.

Why does my iPhone - $850 retail - have capabilities that far surpass those of a $250 million modern passenger jet?

It is not unheard of, or unknown, for iPhones to crash, have unrecoverable data loss, or suffer from hardware issues like defective flash. A CVR needs to work all the time, without fail. People will excuse their iPhone crashing out from time to time. This is inexcusable on a CVR. You're talking about planes that run flight computers with three different CPUs and instruction sets to prevent bugs in the underlying silicon from manifesting.

fire alarm went off or any other irregularity occurred, a Malaysian Airlines control center should have been alerted and been able to bring up video of the cockpit

Even without the technical constraints it's simply not worth it. Why would a control centre need live video of the cockpit in the case of a fire alarm going off? If there's a fire the crew are not phoning home. Communication with people outside the plane is a low priority. The 'Malaysian Airlines control center' is not going to be getting in touch with the pilots. That's not how it works.

Hopefully after this incident, public outrage over these ridiculous technological shortcomings will be the catalyst for legislation

I have worked on hardware that goes into commercial jets. These rules may seem silly to outside observers, but those observers frequently don't realise exactly how harsh the environment is, and the constraints you're dealing with. What they are not are 'ridiculous technological shortcomings'. Commercial airline safety is already one of the most highly regulated forms of travel out there.

We don't use 'domestic' components for the same reason they don't use them for satellites: failure is not an option. The 'live video feeds' and 'constant satellite links' people keep bringing up are only of use in relatively minor emergencies. They serve no purpose during things like catastrophic mechanical failure, because you've already lost the satellite link at that point. The plane is going to go down. We will find the plane. We will find the CVR.

weaksauce• 12 years ago

Does the voice recorder still function if they pull all the fuses? It's possible, if that's the case, that they will get the lead up to the event on voice recorder. seems like planes have redundancy though and this particular system is probably on a different power supply.

3327• 12 years ago

Well, Finally a credible source of information. Things we take granted in "western" news organizations and research come to light when you see how investigation is done in the hands of some people. No disrespect to the Malaysians I love their country and culture but the authorities did a disaster of a job handling it all. More disinformation than anything.

oliyoung4• 12 years ago

"credible source of information"

you're not Australian are you? ;)

ghiculescu• 12 years ago

I think the Australian Maritime Safety Authority is a pretty credible source.

jfoster• 12 years ago

More seriously, does anyone find it odd that the PM of Australia is making this announcement? For example, if the US Navy found something, I would not expect President Obama to announce it.

nsoonhui• 12 years ago

I am a Malaysian, and I concur with your assessment on Malaysian "authorities".

yen223• 12 years ago

As a fellow Malaysian, we should cut the government some slack. This was a thoroughly difficult case - even with international assistance, we still couldn't locate the airliner.

That said, our government is incompetent, that can't be denied.

danbmil99• 12 years ago

Good thing we've got this covered here on HN, because there's been like a media blackout on this subject...

oh_sigh• 12 years ago

New theory #239858935: The copilot killed the pilot with an axe, set the plane onto auto pilot towards the southern seas, then cut his own throat and let the rest of the passengers die helplessly.

r0h1n• 12 years ago

[EDIT] Adding a couple of more recent tweets from Micah Grimes indicating this may be the end of the search for MH370:

JUST IN: @WrightUps from above Indian Ocean says US P-8 crew "getting radar hits of significant size;" trying to get visuals on hits.
Australian maritime authority official calls objects credible and of "reasonable" size; largest object about 24 meters.

======================

ABC journalist David Wright [[0] is currently on the P8 plane that is searching for the debris.

Here's a tweet [1] from ABC's social media editor who (apparently) must have spoken to him over voice comms:

.@WrightUps from Navy P-8 search plane: "We are just descending through clouds right now ... about 1,300 miles southwest of Australia."

[0] https://twitter.com/WrightUps

[1] https://twitter.com/MicahGrimes/status/446501269155618816

sien• 12 years ago

It'd be really interesting to know if Australia picked up some trace of the plane on the Jindalee over the horizon radar. [0] Check the range there.

The path of the plane may just have touched the radar's range at some point or some idea of the track may have been worked out.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jindalee_Operational_Radar_Netw...

hartror• 12 years ago

Possible. Our Foreign Minister wouldn't comment except to say that the government is providing all resources at our disposal in the search.

Some more info: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/could...

demallien• 12 years ago

Probably not. The aircraft would have been at the extreme edge of the radar's range, and in an area that is probably not getting scanned terribly often.

Jindalee uses a directable beam to scan the area or interest. It takes hours to do a full sweep of its entire range (bear in mind that with over the horizon radars you have to do a 2D sweep, not the 1D sweep of a standard line of site radar). Generally speaking, the radar tends to be targeted on areas of specific interest, not just randomly sweeping (the sweep pattern depends on current threat profiles). Maybe if Malaysian authorities alerted Australia quickly enough they may have pointed the beam to the right area, but as I understand it the alert didn't start going out until much later. Disclaimer: ex RAAF radar engineer...

Steko• 12 years ago

Largest piece is 24 meters, location in the zone identified by the NTSB.

madads• 12 years ago

What are the chances that it is just ocean debris? I would say it's quite high.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_garbage_patch ?

damian20002• 12 years ago

24m is too large for some junk?

NamTaf3• 12 years ago

As per that, the vast majority of mass is small and sub-surface, not visible from satellite or ship.

damian20002• 12 years ago

AMSA: One of the objects on the satellite image has been assessed to be 24 metres in size #MH370 #Malaysia

Src: https://twitter.com/ABCNews24/status/446508379783974912

From their press conference, held about 30 mins ago.

triggercut• 12 years ago

From the photos of the two objects posted on @MicahGrimes (https://twitter.com/MicahGrimes)

http://t.co/gFZJhGfTNG http://t.co/SRYeeZfkc2

Distance between: 43:58:34S 090:57:37E 44:03:02S 091:13:27E

is 22.72km according to WolframAlpha

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between+43%3A...

minusSeven• 12 years ago

There are just so many stories in the media it is hard to know what to believe. This airline disappearance is becoming a place for all sorts of conspiracy theories.

I hope people take cognizance from the disappearance and learn how such a thing was even possible in our high tech world of today.

Malaysia Airlines MH370: Possible debris in Indian Ocean

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