So What Happened To The Plane?

[LostLocke]

It's on an uncharted, remote island in the South Pacific.

[KichigaiNeko]

You underestimate how big and deep the ocean actually fucking is!

I fly planes.. I know the capability that they have.. and the ocean has nothing to do with that capability. .

But trying to find one that is downed?

THAT is when you realise just how fucking big the ocean is.

[pocaracas]

I've been following a bit of this incident on the news... it seems the plane just disappeared when it was still at cruise altitude.
If anything had happened, there would have been some sort of distress call while the plane was going down, but nothing.
So, my theory is:
Pirates with an EMP gun disabled the thing and then went fishing for it.

Was it "Oceanic Flight 815"?

[Clueless Morgan]

A very specific rapture?

THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I THOUGHT!!!!




Seriously, though, I think they flew into the Pacific's version of the Bermuda Triangle.






Okay, seriously, I heard a story on the news recently about a French (I think) plane that was crossing the Atlantic that suddenly went missing and no one knew why. I can't remember if they had sent out a distress call or not, but I think air traffic control knew they were having problems.

In that case, they think it was pilot error and overcompensation in the wrong direction that crashed that plane - they were going too slowly and the pilot thought they were going too fast so slowed the plane and they fell out of the sky.

I think it was this flight I was hearing about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

Perhaps some similar pilot error occurred with the Malaysian flight.

Were the pilots in radio contact with the ground up until the moment they disappeared? That's the one thing I've heard nothing about - the level of regular communication with the plane before it went down.

Also, I heard that a Chinese satellite might have found some debris that could be from the plane, but as of yet there has been no confirmation that the debris is actually from the downed plane.

[Jackalope]

Think about this.. we have $ 200 cell phones that we can ping anywhere and find it.. but a half of billion dollar huge hunk of metal that can fly itself is unable to be found.. WTF!!

Neither of which will work if the power fails. Just sayin'.

[Jackalope]

It's on an uncharted, remote island in the South Pacific.

Man, that would make a great TV series.

[Minimalist]

I can see an update of Gilligan's Island in the future.....

[JesusHChrist]

Man, that would make a great TV series.

Just make sure to include some babes, lots of guns and a monster or two.

[Autumnlicious]

Many airliners do not equip a beacon that transmits to the Iridium satellite array, although regulations in the US are slated to force airlines to upgrade.

The challenge with tracking aircraft over oceans is difficulty in communicating back home reliably and often enough to make position tracking useful.

That's where Iridium comes in - uploading continuously a plane's gps position to globally available satellites would make losing a plane like this dependant upon losing the transceiver.

Suitably protected and hardened, only a missile could destroy such.

Great technology.

If only the airlines considered their passengers last position was of higher import to purchase Iridium transceivers voluntarily.

[Autumnlicious]

Another thing of note is that the Chinese jam a lot of communications near their borders – talking to a satellite is easier in those circumstances than any ground station.

As a futher note, over the water even in ideal circumstances, there are few ground stations if any that can receive such data. Space, on the other hand, is almost always available.