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20 Freescale Semiconductor Employees On Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight
NeverVotedBush writes with news reported by CNN that a passenger manifest for the flight that went missing on its way from Malaysia to China indicates that "Twenty of the passengers aboard the flight work with Freescale Semiconductor, a company based in Austin, Texas. The company said that 12 of the employees are from Malaysia and eight are from China," and writes "Apparently, at least two passengers used stolen passports to board."
The plane was carrying a cargo of 400 million dollars in Bitcoin. nuff said.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I watched a documentary about Flight 447 (the Airbus flight that was lost off Brazil) and they mentioned that modern planes send tons of position and other data per flight. Seems the current system is called ACARS.
Anyway, from a probability perspective it seems highly unlikely that a plane would disappear from radar precisely at the time that a data transponder stopped sending position fixes, unless, you know, the plane crashed right there.
I mean, the media makes it sound like the search radius is "flight speed * remaining potential flight time at current fuel burn rate".
Thank goodness that we know from almost everyone posting on Slashdot that terrorism against passenger aircraft today is impossible, that there are no terrorists, and that no terrorists are ever arrested and prosecuted. What a relief.
At least they didn't let anyone smuggle in an oversized water bottle.
Now don't get me wrong, that's not to say that the loss of these people is any less bad, but I have to wonder if we're overestimating the importance of the fact that there were Freescale employees on the flight.
Rawr
Freescale Semiconductor did not write that blurb about the stolen passports and the way it is displayed here makes it seem that there is a connection between the passports and the company's employees.
Granted, it has been a while since I worked for the part of Motorola that became Freescale, but I am fairly certain there were rules against the maximum number of employees that could take any one flight. I think it was 2 for executives and 6 or 8 for regular employees. Situations like this, rare as they are, was the reason. I wonder if Freescale still has those rules and ignored them, or didn't copy them over. Any current employees have insight?
I hope the families receive meaningful information as to what and why this happened, and don't have to spend a year or longer wondering (at least for the what, why usually takes a lot longer with airline crashes).
The 777 is one of the safest commercial planes in the aviation history, with only one accident with fatalities prior to this. Having just flown on a 777 (Cathay Pacific) out of Kuala Lumpur less than 30 days ago, however, I will say that their airport security was very lax. When I set off the metal detector and was wanded, the security person stopped at the first thing that might have set it off (I had left a metal-bodied pen in my shirt pocket) and didn't go on to find I also forgot to take out my cell phone and earphones from a different pocket (cargo pants). That was just for entry to the main concourse, though. To actually get on the plane, Cathay Pacific required a secondary screening that was much more rigorous from what I observed of how they dealt with other people (I remembered to put away my pen and phone that time). Malaysia Air did not do a secondary screening for a domestic flight when I boarded in Sandakan a few days earlier, but the concourse screening was also more intensive.
Reason why it would be a bomb is that the plane disappeared from radar without sending message to controllers. Thus the breakup of the plane is so quick that pilots couldnt send message. Only thing that can cause quick breakup of whole plane is a bomb or missile. And bomb is more likely.
Also they think there is two unknown persons on board with false passports. Maybe they never boarded the plane or left too early, and werent in the plane when it crashed. False passports sounds exactly like what is needed to get bomb on board.
As there is no American aboard that plane, move along, there is nothing to see here ...
... from a probability perspective it seems highly unlikely that a plane would disappear from radar precisely at the time that a data transponder stopped sending position fixes, unless, you know, the plane crashed right there ...
You are talking from a perspective of a Western folk who has no idea what is going on in other parts of the world.
The airplane belongs to the Malaysian Airline System (MAS). The plane took off from the KLIA airport, again, of Malaysia. That radar which did the tracking (actually there were 4 radars doing the tracking) were all operated by ... Malaysians.
Furthermore, the pilot and first officer of that plane were from Malaysia.
Everything points to the same thing - Malaysia - a country whereby RACE means everything.
That pilot is a Malay. The first officer is also a Malay. Both of them graduated from MARA college, a college which has produced the kind of graduates that the private sectors of Malaysia do not want to hire.
The reason is simple:
Graduates from the MARA college (now promoted to become a "university") are all from the Malay race (you need to be a Malay before you can enroll into that college, btw) - which essentially means ... MARA takes in people who are NOT qualified to go to college any where else, and award them college degrees even if they can't do anything right.
In such context - your "probability perspective" will never work as the whole thing is so skewed out of whack.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
In Indonesia as well as in Malaysia I myself have carried out "experiments" when I board a plane.
I put plastic bottles (some time one, some time more than one) and filled them up with liquids, and then put them into my luggage and also carry on luggage.
They let me pass. No problem.
And as I have mentioned in another comment - I have seen with my own eyes that the airport security officers let people (supposedly female) who cover up their face to pass the security checkpoint (without having to reveal their true face) and board the planes (all the while with their face covered).
That is why I say, in Malaysia and in several other Asian countries, it will be very easy for any terrorist to board the plane.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
But while this is newsworthy, hoping that the discourse will evolve into a meritorious discussion of the technologies in use during such flights, the tech and techniques intended to prevent this specific kind of situation, and/or interesting details about the methods/tech used to aid in the resulting search seems a bit optimistic.
As far as the article goes, there's a lot to be suspicious of...it's certainly not normal to have this happen with everything that goes into making, controlling, and tracking those planes. Still, mistakes and failures occur. I am interested to know what they eventually find.
This flight it full of mysteries, how did two people board with stolen passports, and who were they really? It must have exploded to "vanish" from radar. They should have seen the plane break apart and fall, not vanish. Why are navy ships having such a hard time locating the data recorder pinger? I wonder what Freescale product will be affected? This one is curious!
I know it sounds mean and heartless but while my heart goes out to the families, I do have to ask .. I really hope it was
what kind of employees were lost. I am invested in Freescale
just people that are easy to replace (please, no offense intended, nobody is truly replaceable
outside of the business paradigm. However there is a business cost to replacing people
and sometimes replacing just one developer can be extremely hard and take a long time
and then some on top until that person is up to speed and productive).
I honestly hope that nothing happened to the technical talent or anyone else whose absence
would otherwise set projects back.
Of course I would also hope for that everyone on that flight was somehow found and
rescued, perhaps on an island in the area.
I haven't heard of a single company that doesn't have limits on how many employees can travel with the same aircraft/bus/hovercraft/whatever. It's simple, quite cheap risk management.
Two people used stolen passports and this article is about some Freescale guys. Should not those two people be the main point of the story?
Please Tell me it was sales and marketing
Signed Pissed Off Engineer
I think this may have been mentioned on /., yeah it was [wasn't being sarcastic]
I really do not care about these crashes, so I will stay dumb on this, there were American Pilots that were used to training these Asian Pilots, and they found out these Asian Pilots rely solely on the Auto Fly and really have no idea how to actually fly the damn plane(s)?
Are there still analog instruments on these planes? I think so? So if a fault happens in the planes system they can still relay via radio to the tower, and use the instruments to at least keep themselves in a general direction!
I dont disagree with you, the fact of the 'real' matter is that, this is going to happen when you have unskilled pilots, that freak out because they weren't properly trained to handle these types of situations.
Yes, Malaysia has a race-based discrimination policy (or affirmative-action, depending on how you see it). I'm a victim of this policy too. But that's not why the plane went down. Malays may be in privileged position but Malaysia Airlines is not. They need to pass ICAO safety standards like any other airline. And Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record.
Just follow the Dharma Initiative supply plane dropoff and you'll find these passengers...
Yes, Malaysia has a race-based discrimination policy (or affirmative-action, depending on how you see it). I'm a victim of this policy too. But that's not why the plane went down. Malays may be in privileged position but Malaysia Airlines is not. They need to pass ICAO safety standards like any other airline. And Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record.
The airplanes of Malaysian Airline System were maintained by whom ?
By the Malay technicians, inside Malaysia.
How was the Malaysian Airline System being run, since it split up with Singapore Airline back in 1973?
For the past 40 years since the split up, Singapore Airline (SIA) has been doing great, making profits 38 years out of the 40 years.
On the other hand, the Malaysian Airline System (MAS) has been making LOSSES 35 years out of the same 40 years time span.
You want to talk about safety standards ?
How safe is the airplane when the airline itself has been making HUGE LOSSES 35 out of the 40 years since the split-up ?
How much money do you think MAS allocates for the proper maintenance of their airplanes when all the money has been swallowed up by cronies and the greedy employee union ?
And the fact that MAS has a "good safety record" is not due to MAS --- but due to the INCREDIBLY SAFE PLANES that have been built by both Boeing and Airbus.
Furthermore, the same plane that has gone missing had an accident not that long ago --- ended up with a broken wingtip when it collided with another plane, in Shanghai.
And do you know whose fault was it, in that accident ?
MAS !!
It was the pilot (not the same pilot, but yes, another MALAY pilot) of the Malaysian Airline System plane who was the one causing the accident.
Spare us your *Malaysia Boleh* bullshit, please ! This is Slashdot, not some Malaysia's two-bit umno-run pro-government blog.
That maybe true but they operated internationally
Tell you what ...
You go try checking with other International Airlines ... and here is a short list of International Airlines that you can call up or write to ...
Singapore Airline, or Cathay Pacific, or Dragon Air, or United Airways, or British Airways, or American Airline, or Quantas
Go check with them exactly how many of their Pilots and/or First Officers were graduates of the MARA college.
Go check now, and then come back and tell us how "international" the MARA graduates are.
The truth is, out of the hundreds of airlines all over the world, only TWO airlines employ graduates from MARA as pilots / first officers.
One is MAS, and its subsidiaries.
The other is AirAsia, and its subsidiaries.
Only these two airlines are reckless enough to employ graduates from MARA as pilots / first officers.
As for the others ... why are they not hiring MARA graduates ? Why ???
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"Malaysia - a country whereby RACE means everything."
Thats in 3 weeks time, and since everything in Formula 1 is different this year who knows whats going to happen
I watched a documentary about Flight 447 (the Airbus flight that was lost off Brazil) and they mentioned that modern planes send tons of position and other data per flight. Seems the current system is called ACARS.
I posted this on a Reddit thread on the topic:
ADS-B is only useful if you have a receiver nearby to pick it up. Hard to keep track of a plane over remote regions of the globe.
This will be taken care of in a few years' time by Aireon, a joint venture of Iridium (the sat phone people) and NavCanada (who run the air traffic control system in Canada).
There will be satellites with ADS-B receivers on Iridium's second-generation "NEXT" satellites so planes with the ADS-B transmitters can basically be tracked over every point on the planet.
While Aireon was started by Iridium and NavCanada, other ATC organizations are planning on using it, e.g., NAV Portugal, Irish Aviation Authority, ENAV (Italy), Naviair (Denmark), and NATS (UK). The ownership structure will be Nav Canada holding 51 percent, Iridium with 24.5 percent, Enav at 12.5 percent and the Italian Aviation Authority and Naviair each holding 6 percent.
What many of these organizations have in common is that they are all in charge of portions of the trans-Atlantic air routes where radar coverage is impossible. Italy probably has to cover portions of the Mediterranean, with similar radar holes. Denmark has the North Sea and the areas around Greenland (which are beside NavCanada's and NATS' areas of responsibility).
As a bored alien pre-PhD researcher monitoring primitive communications of species who inhabit this planet, who calls themselves humans, many on this site wouldn't be a good representative sample. Far too many outliers. I submitted a PhD paper on how our bias toward human intelligence are skewing the sampling models. I'm hopeful that people on this site will be "abducted" on my study of human outliers. Soon as thesis is approved and research grant raised.
All your baggage are screened even when you give them up at itnernational airport. It is nigh impossible to smuggle a bomb thru baggage. For that you would need itnernal complicity among the baggage crew at the airport.
"The ticket numbers are contiguous, which indicates the tickets were issued together" actually no. That is not certain. Tickets are organized so : 3 digits airline code (nuemrical) 10 digits form code, and 1 digits checksum. The form code is increased by the number of "books" (stapple of 4 segments) after each sales. So if you buy a ticket with 4 segments it will have number X. If it has more, (forming what we call a conjunction tickets) it will take up more of the numbers. For example if you buy up to 16 segments (the maximum from a IATA etickets) then you will have X,X+y,X+2,X+3 as etickets associated with your PNR (passenger name records). But what happens when somebody is beyond you ? What numbers will it get ? Easy. For all airline i knows of it simply get a number +1 for the form code associated with that office, no matter if you are with that persons or not. So it could simply be accidental that those two got the 2 etickets with contiguus tickets number. One would have frankly to first look at other factors before deciding.
Hey, look! Slashdot mods as informative racist rants against Malaysians!
I know we're a bit of a groupthink crowd, but seriously. Stop. Just stop.
Do you believe this "story" carried widely. I question the 30 minutes as 30minutes x500kts = 250 Knots
ahead of the doomed aircraft. Seems like the Vietnamise ATC would have a better chance to communicate than an A/C 450km ahead. Am I wrong?
http://www.nst.com.my/nation/general/font-color-red-missing-mh370-font-pilot-i-established-contact-with-plane-1.503464
For those not in the know, "Malaysia Boleh" means "Malaysia Can". Basically a national appeal to say that Malaysia can do what it wants without external help. I'm US, my wife is Malay....
That being said my impression is that most native Malays are fairly lazy and depend on the gov race policies to live a good life. With any stereotype there are exceptions. For example my FIL is a retired VP from Bank Negara and continues to get degrees and educational certificates just to keep himself busy in retirement and his mind sharp....
The airplanes of Malaysian Airline System were maintained by whom ?
By the Malay technicians, inside Malaysia.
Sometimes it must be horribly nice to completely let go, mustn't it!? With all the frustrations that a 'non' (I guess you are Malaysian and understand what this means) can accumulate over time... .
But don't overdo it! I once met a couple of totally frustrated Mat Salleh in Sri Petaling, who were only too happy to drown their frustration with a couple of beers. They were actually the responsible maintenance people paid for highly by MAS, in order to keep their fleet up to par. The stories were hilarious, and we enjoyed for a long evening the distilled excerpts of a totally inane set of Malay mechanics who would try to 'improvise'; preferably with duct tape! :-)
What they did confirm, however, was that MAS was totally after safety, despite of all the people monkeying about. Their stress and major stress was, to be responsible for a fleet to be maintained top quality and prevent unsafe planes from flying.
Discard this bit, at least, in your assumptions on the downing of MH 370.
Even a plane held together with said duct tape has no reason to disappear all of a sudden, without anyone ever able to send out a distress call. Not at a flying height of 35000 feet.
Ship oil spills big enough for the NOAA OR&R team to respond to happen about 200 times a year off the coast of the United States so that's like one every two days off just the US coasts.
I read a report that this particular 777 airplane may have suffered a significant wingstrike damage in the past ( botched crosswind landing?) and the repairs may have been done hastily or not up to proper Boeing standards. I'm trying to locate more accurate info on this, but if this is true, then this airplane may have broken up in flight because of this previous damage and such kind of incidents are usually very sudden and very catastrophic.
I see we have never been to Malaysia.
I remember the first time I was in Kuala Lumpur, I was shocked to see newspaper ads for apartments that openly declared "Chinese only" or "Malay Muslim woman only, 18-25" or some such. The racism is all out in the open and codified in law. Every citizen's mandatory ID card has a field for race and religion. Race is there because different people's votes count differently come election time, and religion is there so that when you're eating during the day on Ramadan, when the religious police come into the restaurants you show them and you don't get arrested.
Did we learn something today? Much better than just ignorantly shouting "RACISM!" at a culture with which we are unfamiliar.
Actually, racism is still racism even when and if it is openly endorsed by society.
What does 100000 bitcoins, 20 technology company employees, Google and a rise in metal trading have in common?
NeverVotedBush writes that twenty semiconductor scientists were on board the missing flight. Well there's a trust inspiring credible name. Trying to link CNN credibility by making his "twenty scientist" statement in the same sentence as CNN's statement regarding the passenger manifest. Get a life and do something else less creative.