Originally Posted By fkurucz >>If there was an electrical fire that knocked out certain things, is it possible the "crash ping" would be among the things knocked out? (i.e. no electrical power, no ping?) Or is a "crash ping" something impervious to an electrical outage?<< I would expect the beacon to have a battery backup of some sort, as after a crash an aircraft's electrical system would be fried.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan As everyone knows by now, possible debris found in the Indian Ocean by satelite imagary. Should know more in the days ahead.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan It's amazing that every news channel is able to bring on expert after expert all saying essentially the same thing for over 12 hours now, "We won't know until the pieces can be located and inspected." What can these grainy images tell us? "Well, they're quite grainy, so it's hard to know." Could it be the plane, and if so, what part? "Well, it's hard to know because these are just grainy satellite images, but it could be a wing or part of the fuselage, I suppose, but we won't know until the pieces are found and inspected." Thank you, Dr. Cyrus Avitron. Next we have Capt. Revell Wingtip with us. Dr., what can these grainy images tell us? "Well, we won't know for sure until the pieces can be retrieved and identified." Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Does anyone else think it's a waste of time and money to continue looking for the plane? Whatever happened, the people are gone and nothing will bring them back. What difference does it make?
Originally Posted By fkurucz >>What difference does it make?<< The would find out why it crashed and perhaps find a way to prevent that failure from happening again.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip At this point does anyone really think it was anything other than a hijack attempt gone bad or something the pilot intended? The only other possibility seems to be the Payne Stewart scenario of sudden loss of oxygen, but then how would you explain controlled direction changes and communication shutdowns hours later? Personally, I still think it was an alien capture. But that is just me.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Technical difficulty is still a maybe. The link ecdc posted from an aviation expert posited that the pilot knew something was wrong, and intentionally headed west because that was where the nearest landing strip was. Then the situation went from "something wrong" to "something VERY wrong," which depressurized the cabin, leading to pilot (and perhaps passenger) unconsciousness, and the plane just flew along on auto-pilot till it ran out of fuel. But unsatisfying as this is, we have to accept that we may never actually know for sure what happened.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer By finding evidence of where the plane went down then we can have a better idea of what happened, whether there is a new type of terrorist attack to be prepared for or whether there was a mechanical or pilot failure of some sort. I do think we will see changes from this in required telemetry during flights, though. I think in a year or two every commercial airliner will be required to ping its position to satellites every minute or so, if not more frequently. And it wouldn't surprise me if the data included a basic string of information about airspeed, altitude, attitude, and compass heading along with GPS coordinates.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I agree with that. That seems to me the most likely structural change to come from this. Perhaps even making disabling such pinging next to impossible.
Originally Posted By ecdc That's partly what surprised me the most about this. "What? You can just lose an airplane?" My cell phone can say where I'm at within a few feet. Obviously this is more complicated, involving satellite or other transmission technology, but the ability to do it is there, and it's hard to believe it wasn't standard before. Of course, perhaps it is standard in U.S.-based planes, but not some international airlines?
Originally Posted By Tikiduck Part of the mania in finding this plane is in solving the mystery. Add to that the legal implications involving family members who may or may not be entitled to huge compensations. Is it a Boeing problem or the airline? There can be no lawsuits without evidence. There are people out there, desperate for answers, but there are also people who may be hoping this mystery is never solved.
