re: Official Thread: Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

BROS,

I live in Malaysia. Its a great place to live.

If you have any questions feel free to ask

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If you have any questions feel free to ask

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What happened to the plane?

Looks like a plane to me

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Do we have some aviators that can answer these questions for me

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Earlier answer says transponders may incorrectly squawk an emergency signal and need to be turned off

- 777 heading from KL, Malaysia to Beijing in the middle of the night disappears from radar and stops transponding its position over the gulf between Malaysia and Vietnam a few minutes after nonchalantly replying 'good night' and being transferred from KL ATC to Ho Chi Minh ATC. Cannot be reached via radio.
- Search beings for debris in the Gulf of Thailand, believing is must have crashed into the ocean or blown up sometime immediately after dropping off radar and cessation of transponding, but nothing is found
- All sorts of erroneous debris reports go out, but the Vietnamese investigate them and they turn out to be junk
- People start to go WTF? Because the initial area was relatively small and the sea there shallow enough that they should have found it
- Chinese people report being able to ring their families phones but get no answer. Later reported to be caused by cell provider/network switching
- Two passengers were discovered to have been traveling on stolen passports. They were Iranian. People initially think terrorism, but it turns out they were really just illegal immigrants.
- Malaysian authorities report three days after the fact that some radar images from the night in question showed that the plane may have doubled back and re-crossed the Malay peninsula. Searches begin in the Strait of Malacca.
- Malaysian authorities say never mind, we were wrong, it didn't double back and cross the peninsula. People everywhere say WTF?!?!
- Malaysians urge the Indians to begin searching the Eastern Indian Ocean anyway
- A Kiwi on an oil rig reports seeing a flaming plane crashing, Vietnamese investigate the area and find nothing
- Vietnamese get fed up with Malaysians and quit
- Despite the naval and air resources of 14 nations and 10 Chinese satellites, still nothing is found

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Why would any commercial airliner have the need to ever turn off their transponder? From my understanding, the black box and flight recorder cannot be cut off, so if the transponders are so important, why do they have the ability to be switched off at all?

Do we have some aviators that can answer these questions for me

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Turned off after you land, if requested to turn it off by ATC to clear up room on their maps in congested areas, or it is sending faulty messages. There are a few reasons to do it.

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Maybe tgis question has been answered,but I will pose it anyway: Why would any commercial airliner have the need to ever turn off their transponder? From my understanding, the black box and flight recorder cannot be cut off, so if the transponders are so important, why do they have the ability to be switched off at all? Do we have some aviators that can answer these questions for me

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Because when the planes are on the ground at the airport if all the transponders were on ATC couldn't see through the clutter to manage the airspace. So it has to have a switch so you can turn off on the ground. ATC sometimes has them switch off in the air for a bit for the same reason.

But would there be a need to see clean airspace regarding a red eye flight over the gulf of Thailand?

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But would there be a need to see clean airspace regarding a red eye flight over the gulf of Thailand?

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There was no reason for it to go off in this case, there was also no reason to go completely radio silent especially if you made a loop back around.

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Turned off after you land, if requested to turn it off by ATC to clear up room on their maps in congested areas, or it is sending faulty messages. There are a few reasons to do it.

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Gotch.

Thanks


The whole transponder thing is just puzzling to me. It just screams of some foul play on the aircraft. No distress calls, no data that plane was in trouble...just a very crazy situation

With 7.5 hours of fuel, that plane could be anywhere, if it did indeed land somehwhere if it was untracked for that long.


If it ditched into the ocean, I just cant get around that a passing ship or another plane would have seen some debris by now. Its a heavily used waterway from what I understand