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Engine Data Reveals That Flight 370 Flew On For Hours After It "Disappeared"
Advocatus Diaboli writes "Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program. As part of its maintenance agreements, Malaysia Airlines transmits its engine data live to Rolls-Royce for analysis. The system compiles data from inside the 777's two Trent 800 engines and transmits snapshots of performance, as well as the altitude and speed of the jet. Those snippets are compiled and transmitted in 30-minute increments, said one person familiar with the system."
Update: 03/14 11:41 GMT by S : The WSJ has since updated its report to say the data was from the plane's satellite-communication system. However, Malaysian authorities have denied both scenarios, saying neither Boeing nor Rolls-Royce received data past 1:07am (the flight initially disappeared off radar at 1:30am).
... by malaysian officials: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/13/malaysian-officials-deny-flight-mh370-missing-plane-flew-hours
~500 mph * 5 hours = 2500 mile radius = 19.6 million square miles.
That's about 10% of the surface of the planet. They're going to need some sort of heading information; you can permanently hide a 777 in that much ocean/mountain/jungle/etc.
Anyone know if the radar hits were meaningful yet?
It was the SATCOM system of the plane itself, which has the capability of transmitting health and positional data of the entire plane's system for analysis by third-party service and maintenance providers. Airliners have the option to purchase service plans for that but Malaysia Airlines chose to only purchase a separate plane related to data the engine's themselves can transmit (from Rolls Royce, the engine's manufacturer).
Even though Malaysian Airlines didn't have an online service monitoring plan for this specific plane, the plane still performs periodic searches/connections to satellite data communication providers - akin to an unregistered cell phone searching and connecting to a cell tower but without licensed service. This periodic connection occurs approx once every hour on the plane, and by counting the number of attempts (4), authorities believe the plane was either flying or in-tact for at least 4 hours from the last secondary radar ping.
The United States was founded on a conspiracy. Literally.
That the people are being conditioned to automatically consider anything labeled a "conspiracy" automatically laughable says a lot about the degeneration of the U.S.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Evidently the aircraft had enough power to run the pinging transmitter for over 4 hours after the transponder went dead (or was turned off). This implies that the aircraft also had enough power and structural integrity for at least some of its communication systems to work. But the experienced pilots did not make even one distress call or issue a single distress code. Why not? What prevented them from doing it?
Come on guys, it's been DAYS already! How come aliens still not in the picture???
Ignoring all the speculation for a bit, let me present a few completely irrefutable facts that point to a different theory of what happened to the plane.
Fact 1: There are many active volcanoes in this region of the world.
Fact 2: There were virgins on the airplane.
Fact 3: The Great Old Ones have not arisen to destroy us all.
We should thank them for ensuring the continued existence of the human race.
The phones weren't "ringing." the ring tone the relatives heard was supplied by Central Office Equipment to give the illusion that the phones were "ringing." That's what happens when someone picks up the phone and you say, "But it hadn't started ringing yet." Yes, it had. It's just that your simulation-ring hadn't reached you yet--two different tones. Think about it. There is only a single cable pair that hooks up a typical phone. How could you possibly "hear it ring"?
The cell network mimics the POTS network. It's just part of the "aural interface" phones have used for over a hundred years.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
The on board engine monitoring module is only *ON* when the engine is turned on.
When the engine is off, the transmission module goes to sleeping mode, relies on it's tiny battery backup on keeping the date/time current.
Saying that the module keeps on transmitting AFTER the plane has broken up is not only inaccurate, it's downright irresponsible !
The aircraft is currently parked on a remote jungle runway in Sumatra taking Grand Theft Auto to a whole new level..
Actually air traffic control radars ARE radars, the transponder merely fills in the ID data (as a beacon as you said). Aircraft without transponders show up as unidentified targets with a heading, range, and speed. Transponders work are farther ranges because there is only a one way free space loss to the aircraft, when relying only on a radar "echo" the loss is both directions
This is what we know so far, a good summary ...
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Not quite correct. The situation is quite a bit more complex than that.
ATC obtains information about aircraft in the area in a number of ways.
One is primary radar - which is in fact radar. It generally has a limited range - maybe 50 miles or so. Usually civilian equipment cannot detect altitude either, and of course it picks up noise from birds and weather and such.
The more useful source of data is secondary radar, which relies on transponders. The transponders generate a pulse when they are interrogated - the aircraft doesn't need to know its own location for this to work - the ground station works it out from the time to receive the reply. The transponder can encode a code to identify the aircraft, and it can also encode the altitude (or at least what the plane thinks its altitude is).
The more recent development is ADS-B via UAT and ES. These involve the aircraft broadcasting its position as determined by GPS. It can be sent out as part of the transponder reply, or it can be sent out without any need for secondary radar at all, potentially even being picked up by satellite.
So, radar is used to track aircraft, but with its limited range civilian radar would not detect an airliner out at sea unless it had a cooperative transponder. Even with a transponder range is only 100 miles or so. You can get much longer ranges with military radar, especially if it is airborne. However, stumbling on one of those would require luck, and a military aircraft probably wouldn't be on the lookout for rogue airliners.
AK Marc: I'm a licensed pilot, aircraft mechanic, and avionics technician, and have worked on FAA radar systems. What you say is completely untrue. Aviation surveillance radar worldwide is RADAR with capital letters. There is no WiFi involved, no AP, nothing like you describe. The system was designed in the 1960s and, except for some incremental enhancements, has been largely unchanged since then.
It consists of a ground based antenna system that transmits sweeping RF energy beams that bounce off metal objects such as aircraft (and occasionally flocks of birds) and reflect back to the antenna. The radar electronics complex processes digitized radar data streams from multiple antennas and generates a synthesized image, which appears on controller screens. Controllers can see this basic radar "blip" if they choose, although generally it's displayed as a faint background trace to keep the screen uncluttered.
The transponder system works by sending a coded signal that rides on the radar energy beam. When the beam paints an aircraft, the on-board transponder receiver decodes this as an "interrogation".
In its most basic form, called Mode C, the aircraft answers the interrogation with a data packet containing the a four-digit code assigned by a controller to the aircraft (which the pilot typically sets manually after receiving the "squawk" code verbally from the controller), and the aircraft pressure altitude. In the more recent Mode S, this packet contains additional data, such as the GPS location, airspeed, etc. Aircraft can overhear each others' Mode S replies and use that information to build an internal model of occupied airspace; this process is the foundation of the Terminal Collision Avoidance System (TCAS).
The transponder data gets painted on the controller's integrated radar display to make it easier to track targets. This is called "narrowband" mode because a this system can filter out a lot of clutter, leaving the controller with only verified targets to track. But if the narrowband system fails, which happens on occasion, controllers are all trained to revert to an old manual system using paper markers that they stick to their screens to track aircraft.
All commercial aircraft and many general aviation aircraft use Mode S today, and thus we collect quite a lot of data about flights in progress. In the Malaysian case, the aircraft was in radar coverage, receiving interrogations and responding, when they lost contact with it. Although the actual radar data hasn't been revealed, the sense of what has been shown so far is that the raw radar return, or echo, as well as the transponder Mode C, stopped simultaneously. It's possible that the controllers were not displaying non-transponder returns on their screens, so it may turn out that there was a raw signal for some time. That's the big question that, once answered, will indicate whether there was a deliberate action to turn off the transponder or a cataclysm turned it off. People can turn off transponders, but they cannot turn off raw radar signatures.