Oberleutnant posted:

how many 'various means' are there to call a plane? i mean all they have is a radio what else did they do? shout at the sky or somethin i gues

WastedJoker posted:

Tail flaps

Zeno-25 posted:

Some country's military screwed up and shot it down just like with KAL 007 and it went nose-in, there's nothing left but a few scraps of metal on the seafloor lot of poo poo that leaves a floating debris trail, there may even be a nautical name for such floating debris

maxidious posted:

You had me going until sea dye, I am pretty sure there is not enough dye to change the colour of the sea.

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

almost... like someone trying to fly without instruments after an electrical failure

flavor posted:

Maybe somebody pushed (cracked?) his buttons or he pushed the wrong one. I'd rather someone craig d. current case.

Northjayhawk posted:

As soon as they said good night to Malaysia and disappeared off civilian radar, the plane climbed to 45,000 feet, stayed there for a while, and descended to a normal altitude, then changed direction before going out of range of military radar. That is way above the altitude limit for this plane. One theory floating around is that if you could somehow depressurize the cabin and had your own oxygen, flying up to 45k is one way to kill all the passengers.

The Casualty posted:

I'd normally throw this theory right out the window with it being a POST 9/11 WORLD what with sealed cockpit doors and all, but that story about the co-pilot inviting total strangers up front because he thought they might bang him makes this depressingly plausible.

toggle posted:

If the cabin was depressurised at 40k feet, what would the passengers be feeling? As in, do they just pass out straight away, or get a nasty head ache then pass out? Yawning? Bleeding ears?

Elysiume posted:

Would the passing out feel more like being light headed until you conked out, or more like suffocating

toggle posted:

So this would be the more pleasant way to die on a plane.

Rather than being a firey meteor or being sucked out of the toilet rear end first.

Prop Wash posted:

Well since nobody who has a clue what they're talking about has responded to you yet I'll give it a shot! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_useful_consciousness is the wikipedia page for Time of Useful Consciousness, it matches up with Air Force charts pretty well so I'd consider it a reliable source. At 40,000 feet you have 15-20 seconds. That can vary based on whether or not it was a rapid decompression or you're moving or burning oxygen (which could drop it to single digits). A rapid decompression will not harm you unless you had some kind of nasal blockage, in which case life will seriously suck for you.

Within that 15-20 seconds you will become hypoxic. The symptoms you immediately display vary by person but generally include light-headedness, fatigue, cyanosis (your fingertips/lips turn blue), tingling feelings and nausea. US Air Force aircrew are required to go through the altitude chamber, which includes a trip without oxygen up to very high pressure altitudes, and that's where this video is from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN3W4d-5RPo It's important to know your symptoms or you end up like that guy!

So to answer your question, they'd start getting headaches and fatigue and then they'd probably pass out eventually. Those passengers with nasal blockages would suffer extreme pain, as would those with a lot of gas. This would all happen very quickly.

edit: a note about that video, the point of the training is to understand your own symptoms so that you'll recognize when you're becoming hypoxic. The reason the instructor keeps hammering on that black box (which is the oxygen regulator) is because if you don't do it yourself then you fail.

My Imaginary GF posted:

No loving way, is that even in the range for the aircraft?

Sinjang posted:

Does climbing above max altitude really lead to depressurization? I thought it just caused a stall.

bad day posted:

This was the first thing I thought about and I have been making Langoliers jokes all week but nobody laughs because only like ten people saw that movie.

Vin BioEthanol posted:

Would it kill/incapacitate passengers significantly faster at 45k than whatever's normal? Those altitude chamber videos posted, those guys seemed like would still have some fight left in them for a minute or 2.

Vin BioEthanol posted:

I'd just hold my breath!

Schwarbage posted:

How exactly would you deliberately depressurize the cabin in mid-flight? Would you need to puncture the fuselage somehow or is there a mechanism for it?

Schwarbage posted:

Man you think they'd keep the 'kill everyone' switch disabled or something during flight.

SuppressdPuberty93 posted:

how it could fly north and not get picked up by radar is bizaar unless it was fly low....... ...

Lolie posted:

One thing which has been said repeatedly on news reports is that until this happened commercial pilots weren't even aware that the pings from their engines could be picked up by satellites (which is what happened in this case - Malaysian Airlines wasn't signed up for the extended services where data is relayed back to Rolls Royce). So it's probably not a case of "allowing" the pings (which aren't a whole lot of use in real time anyway) - apparently they can occur whether the aircraft is flying or not and even after it has crashed.

Even the pilot who was flying about half an hour ahead of the Malaysian Airlines flight didn't think it was especially unusual when Vietnam couldn't make contact with it and he could hear only muffled sounds because apparently it's something which happens often enough to not raise suspicion on its own.

In hindsight, the "clues" may seem obvious but it sounds like very little happened which should have raised alarm in real time (and certainly nothing which indicated the plane had "disappeared" rather than simply crashed into the ocean). At the time this was occurring, no-one had access to all of the data which is now available.

PleasureKevin posted:

That's the headline at the Mirror, but I have no idea why.

PleasureKevin posted:

A few days ago the idea that the plane didn't crash between Vietnam and Malaysia was crazy. But that turned out to be true. And so it follows that any of the theories that sound crazy today, must also turn out to be true.

PleasureKevin posted:

When they unplugged their transponder, maybe they plugged a different one in. So they looked like a different plane to everyone. They could then go into other airspace.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I thought it was a thing among airline pilots to do something like bring a laptop on-board a long trans-Atlantic flight and play flight sims on it on the flight deck watch movies. Just something anecdotal I read once.

Disconnecticus posted:

Sadly this has been in development for eighteen months and now everyone thinks they're just ghouls.

rocket_man38 posted:

Armchair aviators shed more light on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6HIqxq1Umc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn8TSIWL6V8

Also funniest poo poo ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VQqIHppQ7M

bathroom sounds posted:

Anyone else think its weird that at the same time Putin is annexing Crimea, an entire plane goes missing??

Spaced God posted:

How long do the CVR and FDR have before they die?

Rick Rickshaw posted:

Chinatown posted:

Its...gone, guys.

Chinatown posted:

Its loving gone, guys.

Chinatown posted:

Guys its gone.