Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is Missing

delft

Brigadier
In the old days there were a pilot, co-pilot, navigator, and flight engineer on board every flight. Then with radio aides they did away with the navigator? with increased cockpit automation and switching they finally did away with the flight engineer, this is an illustration of a situation where in the old days the FE would have been way ahead of the game sitting back there at the big panel with all the equipement switches, et al?? He would have diagnosed and fixed the problem, the average FE was in touch with his aircraft, and knew the little kinks and quirks of each bird, as well as each Captain, and FO. If his bird was broke he could chew butt with the maint chief, give the Captain a rundown on the aircraft?? now the FO has to do that, off one bird, onto another, problem, roll out another bird, fuel it, load it fire it, fly it. Not a good system, both the navigator and the flight engineer earned their keep, but didn't put money in the revenuers pockets???

progress sucks!
You're too young to remember that on longer flights there were a radio telegraphist and a navigator. And on long flights a couple of extra pilots.

And just an anecdote about a flight engineer:

On a BOAC VC-10 flight from Hong Kong or Manila to Tokyo in the middle of the night the FE was managing the fuel in the tanks. At a certain time he had all four engines feeding from the small wing centre section tank which they sucked dry causing an sudden silence. The way to get power to restart the engines was to extend, by gravity, an emergency wind turbine. That turbine couldn't be retracted so it continued running until it failed before the aircraft reached Tokyo.
 
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Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
You're too young to remember that on longer flights there were a radio telegraphist and a navigator. And on long flights a couple of extra pilots.

And just an anecdote about a flight engineer:

On a BOAC VC-10 flight from Hong Kong or Manila to Tokyo in the middle of the night the FE was managing the fuel in the tanks. At a certain time he had all four engines feeding from the small wing centre section tank which they sucked dry causing an sudden silence. The way to get power to restart the engines was to extend, by gravity, an emergency wind turbine. That turbine couldn't be retracted so it continued running until it failed before the aircraft reached Tokyo.

Actually Delft my old Air Force Pappy was an enlisted radio operator on the C-119 in the early 50s, they flew all over the US and to the UK, and all over Europe... having two years of college, he applied for, and was accepted into the Cadet Program, and flight school.

He flew the T-6, C-45, B-25, and the A-26, at some point he flew the C-119, and the poor little ugly C-123, an airplane that he loathed, but survived. As the Lockheed C-130 was rolled out, and put into production, he became a C-130 Command Pilot.

He had flown the C-119 all over Europe on a sixth month TDY to Germany, he navigated with an ADF, and spent almost the entire six months on instruments, IFR, nearly every day. He told me a couple of years before he died, that if you could fly six months of solid IFR, with only an ADF for navigation, and not kill yourself or others, he was confidant that he was ready to go!:D

My Dad LOVED the C-130A, with its three bladed props, and hydraulically boosted elevator, rudder, and ailerons the 130 could be flown with abandon, in fact the Four Horsemen were an Air Force Flight demo team that traveled on week-ends demonstrating the "tight formation" style of flight in the C-130, that the Blues and Thunderbirds flew in Fighter Aircraft.

In fact if given a choice of watching any flight Demo Team, I would pick the Horsemen, very few aircraft have the presence and power of the C-130. As the A models began to proliferate, the USAF had requested an upgrade, and the B model with additional fuel, power, better radar, and restyled radome, and those beautiful four bladed props was rolled out and slated to replace the Horsemen's little hotrod As, after his first transition flight, Lead came back to the group and stated, "its over fellows, they took away our hotrod, and gave us a truck instead???":mad::mad:

So back in the good old days, everyone had a navigator, radio man, and flight engineer, and those gents knew and understood their equipment, my Dad came home all the time bragging on his F/E, cranking the gear down by hand, and chaining it in place when it refused to "LOCK", so no green light, but the gear was safely chained down and locked!:eek::eek:
 
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AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
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Whatever happened to Occam's razor? If they want a conspiracy, I can think of one much more plausible. This is obviously just an excuse to vilify Putin. Think of the conclusion first and then draw a path that leads to it. Yeah an area where Indian and China can got to war easily, an airliner can slip through?
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
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Whatever happened to Occam's razor? If they want a conspiracy, I can think of one much more plausible. This is obviously just an excuse to vilify Putin. Think of the conclusion first and then draw a path that leads to it. Yeah an area where Indian and China can got to war easily, an airliner can slip through?

I do not think that airing this guy's obsession is too worthwhile for SD.

He in fact says in his article that although he feels very strongly about his theory in his gut, that despite what his gut is telling him, he would be wrong to trust his gut. He also indicates that his wife...who has heard the whole thing from the start, tells him there is only a 5% chance that he is right.

The money quote for him, when looking at his own theory is this:

Article said:
The more I discovered, the more coherent the story seemed to me. In fact, I wrote the whole thing up in an e-book, The Plane That Wasn’t There: Why We Haven’t Found MH370. I found a peculiar euphoria in thinking about my theory, which I thought about all the time. One of the diagnostic questions used to determine whether you’re an alcoholic is whether your drinking has interfered with your work. By that measure, I definitely had a problem."

So, by his own admission he is so obsessed with this that he is like an alcoholic.

Probably best to just leave it alone.

Clearly, having that aircraft safely navigate, completely undetected, the mountains between China and Indian on a path to Kazakhstan, is so far fetched as to be pure fiction.
 

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
I do not think that airing this guy's obsession is too worthwhile for SD.

He in fact says in his article that although he feels very strongly about his theory in his gut, that despite what his gut is telling him, he would be wrong to trust his gut. He also indicates that his wife...who has heard the whole thing from the start, tells him there is only a 5% chance that he is right.

The money quote for him, when looking at his own theory is this:



So, by his own admission he is so obsessed with this that he is like an alcoholic.

Probably best to just leave it alone.

Clearly, having that aircraft safely navigate, completely undetected, the mountains between China and Indian on a path to Kazakhstan, is so far fetched as to be pure fiction.

I concur, given what we do know, it is very unlikely that MH-370 will ever be found, except by chance??? as technology improves, the suspected far South Indian Ocean will provide lots of advertising text for new technologies?? I would remind everyone, that we are still looking for Amelia Earhart???, but who knows, the loss is fairly recent??? but given the pilots divorce, other serious concerns and likely state of mind, well lets just say that seem to be the logical although extremely distasteful "possibility"?
 

Brumby

Major
Ok kids, fasten your seatbelts, this is about to get interesting??? that fancy FCS was "glitchy" and as no one employs "flight engineers" any longer , (ignorant, but a money saver), the Captain had left his seat in order to shut down the whole FCS system,,,, media is blathering on and on, but no doubt to kill the FCS, power down, and have master reset upon reboot, in order to return the system to function? The co-pilot lost control of the aircraft apparently, stalls it, and is unable to lower the nose and allow the airspeed to build, prolly in cloud and severe turbulence? as I said this will get very interesting, as this airplane had apparently already had issues with the FCS.
Now the airplane is very capable of being flown without the FCS, but the copilot failed to maintain flying speed, it is counter intuitive, but you must release back pressure on the stick, the copilot had likely not flown the aircraft with the FCS disabled?

AFB,
Do you think what you just described might be verifiable like say from the black box recording or some other means? It sounds to me like potentially opening up pilot error and consequently liability compensation rather than just weather induced accident.
 

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
AFB,
Do you think what you just described might be verifiable like say from the black box recording or some other means? It sounds to me like potentially opening up pilot error and consequently liability compensation rather than just weather induced accident.

No doubt from the cockpit voice recorder, and the black box, we will have a very complete picture of what went on in the cockpit that night? Readings from flying magazine as well as many NTSB reports are often pitifully heart-wrenching and anguishing, I believe the voice recorder is a continuous loop recording, recording the last 30 minutes of cockpit conversations, so yes, they likely already know what they have hinted may have happened. Its been a while since I read the prelim, but there is system redundancy on the FCS, in order to do a hard reset, you have to shut them both down and allow them a "clean reboot"

In the good old days the "flight engineer" would have managed those systems very deftly, while the pilots would have been free to attend to "airmanship".

In reality the decision to proceed into heavy weather is "pilot error", as a pilot will avoid a mature CB, as you will recall Air France 447 was also weather related, over water, and at night, a magic combination. Yes lots of folks cheat, and they hate to be late, but from a pilots perspective, time is all you have, you better take the time to be safe, you will live to fly another day??? just maybe for a different airline??? The traveling public rates being on time as most important, because they are totally ignorant of the consequences of "get there itus"??? truth that.
 

delft

Brigadier
There was a news item a few days ago that according to an Australian minister Australia wants to end the search for MH370. I don't think either Malaysia or China will want to end the search, not for years if it would take that long.
 
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