Malaysian Jet

Quote: Pacomartin

The seeming lack of any debris makes the scenario that the plane landed on water intact, and sank without breaking up.
One of the fake passport holders was a garden variety illegal immigrant whose mother was waiting for him in Germany. It is starting to look like the fakes are a dead end.

Impact water at high vertical speed while in a deep stall and there might be some debris but very little. Impact the water at a high vertical speed while nose down and there would be no debris.

Most false documents are for illegal immigration of dope smuggling, not terrorists.

Latest report is local military (Think it's Malaysian but could be another country's), which generally has a separate system from civilian ATC, thinks they tracked the flight making a hard left turn westbound without transponder (implying military had primary radar as I discussed above, and civilian system did not), and the suspect target transversed the Malay peninsula into the Western Sea before disappearing from radar. This has caused an augmented search grid to the west side (they've been concentrating on seas NE of Malaysia). Local radar reportedly had a range of 250NM offshore.

Question. In the movie Cast Away, there is a major airplane malfunction at high altitude and the plane crashes into the water at high speed and a steep angle. It breaks up into lots of pieces, most of which sink, but some of the wreckage, including lots of boxes, are strewn over the impact site. Was this realistic, or is it more likely the whole enchilada would stay together and sink?

Depends on the airframe, the angle at which it hits the water, the speed its traveling. There would be crumbling of the airframe, loss of landing gear perhaps, loss of wings possibly, tail might come off ... all these things may happen but mostly a crash at sea will leave an airframe recognizable as a crumpled airplane with some parts missing. If it strikes land, its more likely to be scattered parts that only computer software can put back together and recognize it as an airplane. Depends on size of the pieces and how they land. Some controlled crashes can be fine. It depends on absorbing the forces over time. Clip a few branches on your way in and absorb the energy. Hit smack into a stone wall and its curtains.

If a small FedEx plane were to go down in water, floating packages would be reasonable.

Quote: Wizard

Question. In the movie Cast Away, there is a major airplane malfunction at high altitude and the plane crashes into the water at high speed and a steep angle. It breaks up into lots of pieces, most of which sink, but some of the wreckage, including lots of boxes, are strewn over the impact site. Was this realistic, or is it more likely the whole enchilada would stay together and sink?

I'm usually very unhappy with the way ATC/airplane operations/crashes are depicted in the movies. Cast Away was one of the few where the aviation was very believable, including the wreckage. FleaStiff is entirely correct in what he said. As they filmed it, it was very true to what I would expect of a B727 impact in water. Water acts very similarly to air, physically, and in fact air is calculated as a fluid in some aspects of flight principles. Because of that, the airframe is hydrodynamic as well as aerodynamic, expecially the fuselage, and all of the bracing and control surfaces are structurally soundest landing forward in water.

Aircraft hitting water will generally be largely intact, with outlying surfaces (wings and empannage) most likely to be twisted, rather than torn off by impact. If a human being aka bag of jelly can survive the sudden deceleration of the water without being thrown onto a hard surface like the yoke or rupturing inside from the seatbelt compressing, it's very likely the fuselage will remain intact and the accident will be survivable. Usually, a water landing will float for at least a few minutes if not longer, and only begins to sink after the emergency doors are opened and the aircraft begins to take on water. That is:

If the airplane is able to pancake without dipping a wing and cartwheeling.

If the airplane is not at too steep a descent profile where it's forced underwater to a depth that makes it impact underwater and cracks the fuselage.

And if the airplane still has no significant breaches in the cabin, where even if it goes underwater briefly, the air remaining will bring it back to the surface.

Quote: Fleastiff

ACARS uplinks do fail from time to time.

Flightglobal asked Malaysia Airlines about signals from the 777’s Aircraft Communications and Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), but the carrier declined to comment citing “pending investigations” by Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation.

Some companies have their own in house computers to send and receive information, while others use a service(Only the biggest ones can afford dedicated systems). My company uses ARINC, Inc. for the actual uplink/downlink capabilities.

Is it possible that the airline was not using ACARS because it was too expensive and it was not required?

Quote: Pacomartin

Is it possible that the airline was not using ACARS because it was too expensive and it was not required?

I would doubt it. Its a maintenance system but it ensure that when a plane arrived at its destination maintenance personnel would have all pertinent regulations, all parts diagrams, all spare parts, all test equipment at the ready for every task that needed to be performed. That is what allows planes to be quickly turned around and reflown on revenue generating flights instead of being put into the shop or flown to maintenance facilities.

Amidst reports that military radar tracked the primary return from the fuselage it would seem that no "catastrophic" event took place since the plane was under control to have an errant track but not a poirpoisng or erratic one. It also means that the altitude being reported as zero was probably because of the transponder being in the process of being turned off.

A former FAA official says the transponder was shut
off by somebody in the cockpit. So it was hijacked,
but by who and where is it. There are reports that
some of the cell phones of passengers are still
operating, which might mean a crash on land.

Somebody dropped some "bath salts" on the captains meal, or in something he consumed, like his water bottle. Not even really kidding, because designer drugs are known for causing erratic behavior and there is need to explain the unexplainable and that could explain a lot.