[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by anujmishra

Why Pilots are allowed/equipped to turnoff ACARS/Transponder ? Is it not Security Threat? ACARS should work itself and no-body from ground or from cockpit able to switch off Transponders which are vital for communication.

For various reasons virtually all (electrical) equipement can be switched on/off from the cockpit. You only switch on the transponder when you have talked to ATC and have been given a squak code as part of clearing your intial flight plan. Untill you do it needs to be switched off or in stand by mode. Also, there might be a need to switch to a different squak code during the flight. Depending on your transponder, it might be advisable to switch off or go to stand by first, punch in the new squak code and switch on again. If you sort of "toggle" in a new squak code that will show up on ATC radar. You could also accidently squak an emergency code. So good reasons for the pilots to be able to switch on/off the transponder. Similar story for ACARs but different reasons. Also, nearly all electrical equipment can be switched off by pulling circuit breaker. If anything for trouble shooting.

Originally Posted by Fillmore

Also if the phone did ring that means end to end n/w connectivity was established in which case they can trace the towers.

If this were not the case at least they could have released a statement saying the reports of passengers phones ringing is a hoax we checked that out. But I don't see any such statements either.

Just because you hear a ring tone in your mobile phone doesnt mean the mobile phone on the other end is ringing necessarily. That's just how the mobile networks work. And if you look for it, you will find articles that explain in detail this.

For instance: http://mashable.com/2014/03/11/why-m...s-phones-ring/

Jeroen

[WindRide]

The Americans certainly would like to eliminate the possibility of a theft here, Malaysia being an islamic country and all that. Repeat of 9/11 with a stolen aircraft would be a nightmare!

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by coolbareilly

Sorry for lame query : Aren't airplanes equipped with GPS transmitter which should have forwarded its co-ordinates and also it is not possible to power off the device

Please check the earlier posts in this thread. GPS equipment only receives GPS signals. The position, speed and such can then be displayed on say a monitor, or it can be transmitted by some other system. On a commercial airliner location information could/is transmitted in various ways with various different systems, such as ADS, ACARS to name a few. Lots of post and speculation in this thread, or any thread in any forum on MH370. On the power off thing, see my earlier post

Jeroen

[RGK]

Originally Posted by skanchan95

The captain of MH370, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was an avid flight sim enthusiast, as is evident from his flight sim setup- Saitek Flight Yoke, rudder pedal, throttle quadrant with multiple screens, he had his own personal fantastic flight simulator.

Sorry to ask about this.
Is there any chance that an avid enthu guy would have experimented some new things on a live flight?
Will automated critical settings be allowed to override by pilots in a flight?

[saket77]

Originally Posted by RGK

Sorry to ask about this.
Is there any chance that an avid enthu guy would have experimented some new things on a live flight?
Will automated critical settings be allowed to override by pilots in a flight?

Still as confusing as ever. Chinese are suspicious about uyghurs, then they notice a 'see-event' which might be caused by the MH370 crashing into sea. Another angle will be how soon Malaysia refutes both these theories as well.

To answer your questions, my opinion is that since it is all speculation, but yes, the pilot may have tried something out of the books and manual override can overrule autopilot.

Also have a feeling that if some solid result does not show up in a day or two, most countries would be thinking again on whether to continue the search operation or not.

[Warwithwheels]

Latest update:

Radar data suggests missing Malaysian plane was deliberately flown towards Andamans

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/w...w/32003860.cms

[autobalan]

Originally Posted by Warwithwheels

Latest update:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/w...w/32003860.cms

Yes,the news came out from Reuters, i believe
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/0...A2D05S20140314
if thats the case, then the Indian Navy would have the headache, right.
This case is heading into lot of confusions

[download2live]

There is more to this than meets the eye. There is definitely a lot more information out there than is being made out. The problem is that the countries are not really willing to share the military radar data since it will reveal the defense capabilities.

A thing as big as a Jumbo jet does not simply disappear. There are eyes everywhere.

[autobalan]

Until now, i believed it could be the decompression related accident and the aircraft would have been into the Indian Oceans. Then came the report of the flight towards Andaman and finally the latest one saw in ABC news that the transponder and data communication equipments were deliberately switched off at 2 different times leading to a possible manual intervention.
Hijack attempt?

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...ry?id=22894802

[srishiva]

Hopefully they will add transmitters which cant be switched off to relay identification and co-ordinates (then not everyone should be able to access this information).
Engines and some other equipment did send some satellite based pings to ground.

Regarding phones ringing, once the called party is identified in a location and notified of the call, the ring tone is given back to the calling party. There could be something buggy also But the called party wouldn't have been at 30,000 feet mostly.

[patron]

Unfortunately, as intriguing as this is, it could turn out to be something of an anti-climax.

I have had a first hand experience of losing some dear friends in a mysterious plane crash, a journey I should have taken too had I not been denied boarding for being late to arrive at the airport. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya_Airways_Flight_507 After 3 days of franctic searching it was discovered that the plane crashed very close to the end of the runway and barely seconds away from the take off point and barely 10 minutes drive from my place and yet...

[vnabhi]

Originally Posted by patron

Unfortunately, as intriguing as this is, it could turn out to be something of an anti-climax.

I have had a first hand experience of losing some dear friends in a mysterious plane crash, a journey I should have taken too had I not been denied boarding for being late to arrive at the airport. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya_Airways_Flight_507 After 3 days of franctic searching it was discovered that the plane crashed very close to the end of the runway and barely seconds away from the take off point and barely 10 minutes drive from my place and yet...

Very sorry to hear this. I could see that 5 Indians were listed in the article,and some of them could be your friends.

Coming to the topic, I wonder how long it will take. I can imagine the agony of friends and relatives.

[RSR]

What I find baffling is that in this day and age, when even a cheap Chinese white-box smartphone that is lost can be found, or even a wild animal can be precisely tracked with a simple collar, a large commercial airliner that costs a quarter of a billion dollars just vanishes into thin air without a trace (as the Malaysians would want us to believe).

A humble hiker or mountaineer wandering off the beaten path can use a satellite-based tracker which would enable each and every step of his/hers to be tracked by family and friends, and locate him/her to a precise spot in most parts of the world, should the need arise. All this for a mere 179 EUR, which converts to 15k INR:

http://www.findmespot.eu/en/index.php?cid=100

Why can't airlines have something much more sophisticated and capable than this humble device in each plane of theirs?

Even small local taxi and truck operators seem to have real-time GPS tracking for their fleet consisting of a handful of vehicles. Why wouldn't a large international airline want to secure it's very expensive assets (planes) and the lives of hundreds of its customers and employees?

I know, they already do have this accomplished by some alphabet soup devices on board. But it turns out that these have NOT been of any use in this case, or that they were simply switched off (by someone), or they conked off, or were destroyed in a catastrophic event, or whatever - I'm not going into the theories that have been put forth to explain MH370's baffling disappearance.

Why can't they just have a global tracking system built into every commercial airliner in a secure place, that cannot be reached (or switched off or tampered with) by anyone (including the pilots) from inside the plane? A system that would have its own back-up battery and enable the plane to be located anywhere in the world and its flight path tracked, at any time chosen by the airline/insurer/civil aviation fellows? It should be sturdy enough to withstand a crash and secure enough to be able to function when it's underwater or buried under snow, sand or debris.

In no way should such a tracking system prove to be difficult to implement!

On another note, the tomnod site is working perfectly fine. It's very easy to start searching the high resolution photos and tag suspicious objects - no registration, nothing required (so it must have been the enormous traffic that made the site almost inaccessible earlier).

Actually being able to spot something is a very different story though. All one sees is vast, empty stretches of water. In some places, cloud cover prevents one from viewing stuff on the surface of the ocean. Considering the huge expanse of ocean, it's difficult to spot any object (ship or boat), let alone MH370 or any debris. Still, crowdsourcing the search efforts by sharing those high resolution images online is a brilliant idea!

[hardoop]

NASA joins search


http://www.firstpost.com/world/live-...o-1424627.html

[one-77]

Originally Posted by RSR

Why can't they just have a global tracking system built into every commercial airliner in a secure place, that cannot be reached (or switched off or tampered with) by anyone (including the pilots) from inside the plane? A system that would have its own back-up battery and enable the plane to be located anywhere in the world and its flight path tracked, at any time chosen by the airline/insurer/civil aviation fellows? It should be sturdy enough to withstand a crash and secure enough to be able to function when it's underwater or buried under snow, sand or debris.

In no way should such a tracking system prove to be difficult to implement!

Read somewhere that Boeing 777s have black boxes that can emit signals and can be tracked for upto 30 days even if the plane had fallen into the ocean.

Don't know the authenticity of this info though.