If the pilot committed suicide like many seem to think, what did he do to his co pilot? Another question I have is it possible for a pilot suffocate everyone in cabin except himself without the passengers taking notice? I mean with the cockpit door locked there is no way to get in to prevent these incidents if a pilot decides to commit an act like this! The aviation industry needs an overhaul really bad! To hear airlines opting out of safety features due to price is absurd! There is no price you can place on human life at all! If the plane has the feature available to prevent incidents like this from happening or make investigations easier then regulations need to make those features mandatory regardless of price!

 

 

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If the plane has the feature available to prevent incidents like this from happening

 

You can't possibly create a system that would prevent crazy pilot from crashing a plane. Sure something that would make finding the wreckage easier should be created, but that wouldn't save lives. 

Like you all, this is a terrible, terrible disaster, My thoughts go to the cargo of lithium batteries ,there may have been poisonous fumes given off if these caught fire, or self ignited. Were they packed safely, vibration only wants or two to shift and short circuit, if so could possibly the gasses be induced to the air/oxygen system through out the cabin ? The pilot was very experienced, his young 2nd officer had also put in may hours flying time..Please give us a second, un switchable transponder, if the course was pre determined before flight, and loaded, could not a serious angle of deviation be alarmed say within 10 minutes of deviation, and pinged so that ATC can be alerted to keep a close watch? I re-iterate, this is only my thoughts, I am retired,65, and have loved aircraft all my life. I spend hours on x10 !! Best wishes to all readers.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts Martin. A lot more twists and turns to come yet.

I un

 

You can't possibly create a system that would prevent crazy pilot from crashing a plane. Sure something that would make finding the wreckage easier should be created, but that wouldn't save lives. 

I understand that, but just like pilots can monitor whats going in the cabin,the flight attendants should be able to monitor the flight deck also.Thats what I meant by my statement. Is this also plausible I remember this article from last year http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/11/tech/mobile/phone-hijack-plane/. With all the theories running around maybe this could be a possiblity!

I un

 

I understand that, but just like pilots can monitor whats going in the cabin,the flight attendants should be able to monitor the flight deck also.Thats what I meant by my statement. Is this also plausible I remember this article from last year http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/11/tech/mobile/phone-hijack-plane/. With all the theories running around maybe this could be a possiblity!

Whats to stop the crazy flight attendant from crashing the plane? Im assuming your saying that at least one attendant would have a secret entry code or something

Their need a to be some kind of security measure in place, whether it's a secret code or a way for flight attendants to contact ground if something is not right in flight deck! IMHO

 

 

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I want to comment, based on my 25 years experience as a remote sensor and with satellite image processing, on the recent French satellite images (processed by the Malaysians according to the title of that image), and the Thai satellite images released today.

 

Firstly, the French image is mostly cloud-covered. In the FEW gap areas there are on this image, they have located / identified 200 "objects". I ask you to consider how likely is it that objects related to debris just happen to coincide with gaps in cloud cover at the time the image was taken. Odds-on chances of zero I would say. If this was an interpretation given to me by a remote-sensing student of mine I would fail it outright.

 

The Thai image also shows nothing by many, many white flecks and speckles (600!) EDIT: sorry they say 300!,

 

Given the rough nature of the seas in this area, I think the white objects are more likely to be "white-caps" and associated foam patches, or left over foam patches from recent wave-breaks. They look more like this to me than anything else. One could obtain an image from anywhere in that area, and come up with these "objects".

 

Just to explain further. There is a reason why image analysts will be using black and white imagery (panchromatic images) to do this study. For all these satellites the panchromatic bands have a higher resolution. As an example Digital Globe's Quickbird Satellite (their imagery spotted the first objects in this area) has panchromatic bands with a 60cm resolution, but also has multi-spectral (colour and near-infrared bands) at 2.4 and 2.8 metre resolution, respectively.

 

The human eye also has greater visual acuity in greyscale than in colour (print any single image at 300dpi greyscale and 300dpi colour and the colour version will appear OK, the greyscale version will look pixellated - your eyes are screaming for more detail in greyscale - that is because the eye has many thousands more light intensity sensors than colour sensors on the retina).

 

So it makes sense, when searching for small objects to use panchromatic imagery. But not in an ocean filled with white caps and foam!

 

Now what baffles me is why they have not used well-known image processing techniques called "pan-fusion" to try to minimise this effect. This computer-process fuses the high-resolution panchromatic satellite image (called a "band"), with the red, green and blue bands, to create a colour image that has both the colour information, and the detail of the panchromatic band. With an image like that one could spot red, orange, yellow objects as distinct from white objects, and even darker grey objects. Provided coloured debris objects where of the order of 1-2 metres in size so that they contributed their colour (spectral) signal to a significant portion of the 2.4 metre pixel of say a Quickbird image, they would be detectable!

 

There are even tricks to use to mask out ocean water, using the near-infrared band (infrared "light" is absorbed by water), so that non-water blue objects could be detected.

 

So I am very skeptical about this latest flurry of satellite sightings, and personally I believe satellite data is being misused here. Sending ships and planes on dangerous missions in search of foam and whitecaps is beyond a joke!

New Thai satellite images show possible 300 piece debris field over 100 miles from French sighting. One other setback if true, CNN is reporting a Malaysian mechanic is reporting that the black boxes, may have not been installed/maintained properly on that plane, and the batteries may already be dead.

Their need a to be some kind of security measure in place, whether it's a secret code or a way for flight attendants to contact ground if something is not right in flight deck! IMHO

 

 

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But then the next logical step would be that you need someone from the flight attendends to be able to fly the aircraft otherwise you wouldn't gain much ^_^

Not sure this has been reported but this came out Tuesday regarding the Inmarsat data:

 

"determined that the pings offered two potential directions for the flight, one on a northerly arc and the other on a southerly one. It wasn't possible to say precisely which direction because the time that the pings took to reach the satellite would be equal from the northern or southern hemisphere."

 

They go on to say that they picked the southern route ONLY because no country in the northern route reported seeing the aircraft on radar - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/25/airliners-should-broadcast-location-every-15-minutes-says-inmarsat-expert. This was brought out in a report I saw with Megyn Kelly last night on Fox News in an interview with Lt General McInerney last night. Fortunately, according to General McInerney, the US is still protecting our security interests by continuing to look for clues in the northern route.

 

Again, I prescribe to the northern route. It makes no sense the pilot or copilot would have taken the aircraft 7 hours south into the Indian Ocean, in the middle of nowhere, just to commit suicide. It makes no sense that if there was a fire on board caused by batteries (or anything else) that the aircraft did not get completely consumed by fire and taken down sooner. It makes no sense that if the aircraft was somehow decompressed due to a structural failure that it would have survived in tact for another 7 hours and changed its course from a northerly route to the southerly route. There are other theories too but I don't think we can ever remove the northern route theory until the aircraft is found.

 

I do hope we employ some type of technology to pinpoint the location of aircraft from Point A (takeoff) to Point B (landing or crashing).

 

Best regards,

Not sure this has been reported but this came out Tuesday regarding the Inmarsat data:

I think you are right, Jim!

Nobody knows what happend that night. I personally believe that slow decompression is a very likely answer to a lot of questions.

In this video there is an impressive example what happens then:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTNX6mr753w

Edited March 27, 201412 yr by n4gix
Removed excessive quote!

 

 

Again, I prescribe to the northern route. It makes no sense the pilot or copilot would have taken the aircraft 7 hours south into the Indian Ocean, in the middle of nowhere, just to commit suicide.

 

Makes perfect sense if the pilot wanted to make sure nobody will ever know if was him who caused the plane to crash. Indian Ocean is just perfect for that, a vast Ocean with great depths.

In this video there is an impressive example what happens then:

Excellent video! I have the same problem when I first wake up in the morning with sleep apnea! Very groggy! :wacko:

Makes perfect sense if the pilot wanted to make sure nobody will ever know if was him who caused the plane to crash. Indian Ocean is just perfect for that, a vast Ocean with great depths.

The South China Ocean has great depths too. Slamming into terrain at over 500 mph would have removed all kinds of evidence too.

 

Best regards,

I think the suicide theory can be discounted unless wreckage is found much closer to home. So to speak. It is highly unlikely that a pilot would be able to fly for at least 7 hours without the cockpit being broken into by cabin crew or pax. Many cockpits have a security code which is also know by the cabin crew.

No, if a pilot were intent on taking his life he would lock himself in and do the deed quickly.

 

As for the post further up with 25 years experience of looking at satellite photos. Unless he has been given exclusive access to both the French and Thai original satellite images then then I tend to disbelieve his theory. They don't look like white horses at all!

 

The problem now is that 'if' the debris field(s) are that of the aeroplane then they have drifted a very long way from the original impact point. If he did come down in that vicinity did he try to ditch? Even if he did the aircraft would most likely have broken up as they are not designed to take those kind of impact stresses. The Airbus on the Hudson river was (a) much smaller and (b) the river is not an ocean. He was very lucky.

 

Assuming that there may have been some survivors immediately after, as each day passes their chances as less. Sadly efforts have to be concentrated to identifying debris to prove that that is where the a/c went down. Only then can they instigate a proper search.

And it is past dusk in that vicinity as another day passes by with nothing credible pulled from the ocean.  Incredible that the satellites are seeing so many potential items.  Are there reports of anything at all, MH370 or not, being discovered on the surface other than the one reported whale carcass?

 

 

It makes no sense the pilot or copilot would have taken the aircraft 7 hours south into the Indian Ocean, in the middle of nowhere, just to commit suicide.

 

That assumes he rode it out to the end...  Another suicide scenario could be hypothesized that he set the plane on a course, configured it as stealth as possible to make it difficult to track, and then committed suicide.  Might have shut off the oxygen, decompressed the cabin, whatever, after setting the plane on course.  Then of course it begs the question of how did one pilot deal with the other given such an hypothesis.  

 

Just seems odd that in doing something like that someone would head the plane into the middle of nowhere.  It is plausible to assume anyone committing an act like that would really envision what has actually happened in this case with the uncertainty it has created and the futile search?