MH370 Beacon Battery May Have Been Expired

New submitter Limekiller42 writes Malaysia's transport ministry released its preliminary report on the disappearance of MH370 that disappeared almost a year ago during flight and has yet to be located. The report states that the maintenance records for the solid state flight data recorder underwater locater beacon [indicate that its battery] expired in December of 2012 and there is no evidence it was replaced prior to aircraft going missing.

Comments

And that's half the story

[garyisabusyguy]

They were also carrying a load of lithium batteries, which other passenger airlines refuse to carry due to past accidents

"It confirms that a large consignment of lithium-ion batteries was aboard the Boeing 777 and outlined in a red box was the warning: “The package must be handled with care and that a flammability hazard exists if the package is damaged. Special procedures must be followed in the event the package is damaged, to include inspection and repacking if necessary.”"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...

Re:And that's half the story

[Richard_at_work]

They were also carrying a load of lithium batteries, which other passenger airlines refuse to carry due to past accidents

You make it sound like Malaysian Airlines is the odd one out in allowing shipments, when infact the norm at the time of MH370 was to allow lithium battery shipments - sure, some airlines had bans in place already (Cathay, BA) but others such as United Airlines put their restriction in place just this month, while Delta put theirs in during February.

Re:And that's half the story

[Zontar The Mindless]

Yep because speculation and conjecture will really help at this point.

Large consignments of lithium-ion batteries get carried all the time without issue.

It's not just "speculation and conjecture" As the Daily Beast's companion article states (emphasis mine),

One item in particular jumps out from the cargo manifest: a consignment weighing 5,400 pounds that included a large number of lithium-ion batteries, radio accessories and chargers.

Tests conducted on a similar consignment of batteries in a cargo hold by the Federal Aviation Administration have shown that they are vulnerable to a “thermal runaway” when one battery overheats and a chain reaction occurs. In several of the tests, smoke and fumes reached the airplane’s cockpit in less than 10 minutes. Another test caused an explosion that blew open the cockpit door. This week United Airlines joined Delta in deciding to no longer carry shipments of the batteries in the cargo holds of passenger flights.

This issue was also brought up quite recently in a related discussion right here on Slashdot.

Re:And that's half the story

[thsths]

It's not just "speculation and conjecture" As the Daily Beast's companion article states (emphasis mine),

One item in particular jumps out from the cargo manifest: a consignment weighing 5,400 pounds that included a large number of lithium-ion batteries, radio accessories and chargers.

Tests conducted on a similar consignment of batteries in a cargo hold by the Federal Aviation Administration have shown that they are vulnerable to a “thermal runaway” when one battery overheats and a chain reaction occurs. In several of the tests, smoke and fumes reached the airplane’s cockpit in less than 10 minutes. Another test caused an explosion that blew open the cockpit door. This week United Airlines joined Delta in deciding to no longer carry shipments of the batteries in the cargo holds of passenger flights.

Yes, and that is a perfectly rational risk assessment. It is not possible to say how big the risk is exactly, but it is easy to avoid for a moderate additional cost, and therefore I would expect any airline to come to the same conclusion - unless maximising profit is the only significant consideration.

However, that does not really explain what happened, because it seems that the aircraft did not blow up, but it just followed a rather strange and irregular flight path.

Re: And that's half the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post is much better if I substitute "lions" for "Li-ions".

Re:And that's half the story

[AC-x]

The standard procedure, as far as I know (not being an expert), is upon noticing the fire, the pilots would have shut down all the circuits on the plane in order to find out if one was responsible for the fire.

They don't turn off all circuits, only non-essential ones. For example as in this crash caused by an in-flight fire the standard procedure is to switch off power to the cabin but not the cockpit, as without power to the cockpit you'll barely be able to fly. The radio was also kept on at all times as you're less likely to be able to make a successful emergency landing without being able to talk to ATC to make sure the runway is clear and prepared.

Re:And that's half the story

[garyisabusyguy]

The priorities of a pilot are Aviate, Navigate, Communicate
https://www.faasafety.gov/gsla...

Aviate
It does seem that they kept the plane in the air, even climbing to a higher elevation for some time, pure speculation here, but they may have thought to use the high altitude to help extinguish the burning batteries

Navigate
There has been mention of them following waypoints to another airport, whether this navigation consisted of punching the numbers inot the autopilot or a pilot guiding the plane is unknown

Communicate
This did not happen, but there are plenty of things that could have occurred in the prior two steps; pilots incapacitated by smoke, pilots incapacitated by low oxygen, communications system affected by fire on board..., which would have prevented communication

All of these things have been points of discussion for the past year, what was not included in the discussion until this month was the potential source for the sudden fire

What about military satellites

[monkeyxpress]

One thing I wondered about is whether some country's military has a better fix on where the plane went down (the last partial handshake). Iridium only have a very sparse satellite array and hence could only generate very rough ranging information. But it seems inconceivable to me that many of the military constellations (e.g. GPS, GLONASS) do not have the capability to triangulate a well defined Iridium signal. I would have thought doing this would be bread and butter for them.

I wouldn't expect anyone to step up and talk about this 'capability', but I would have thought someone could have quietly nudged things towards a set of coordinates earlier on. I guess there is a lot of game playing when it comes to acknowledging any sort of military capability but it intrigues me to think that somewhere there could be people who have an accurate plot of that aircraft's journey.

Having said that, one of the revelations of the whole event is that you can fly an unidentified jumbo jet across the Malaysian peninsula, have it detected by expensive military radar, and then have the military do precisely nothing about it.

Re:What about military satellites

[Richard_at_work]

The satellites in question would have to be looking for the signal - GPS and GLONAS are passive systems, they send signals out in a broadcast sense, not a 1:1 client communication sense, so there is nothing for them to track.

Re:What about military satellites

[ledow]

The military won't track every authorised, flight-planned route over every foreign territory. It's just pointless and expensive and outside the scope of the military.

On their own soil and to a certain extent nearby international waters, they rely on air traffic control and their systems to spot UNAUTHORISED aircraft. That's all they care about.

A plane on a detour is a daily occurence. A scheduled plane outside a border and no visible threat, isn't their problem.

And then you get into "which" military? The world's militaries are not co-operative. Likely one countries military did watch the aircraft, but then once it's leaving and not posing a threat it's up to another country to spot it and worry about it. Flying out over international waters into the middle of nowhere, which military is going to care? Even the Malaysian probably doesn't, or they'd be chasing their tails all done long for the slightest things of a company redirecting a plane for maintenance, to cover a late departure, etc.

And then you have to actually choose it as a target, watch it (GPS and GLONASS *do not transmit* from the aircraft, the aircraft uses signals SENT from the satellites to triangulate its OWN position, not the other way around - this is such a common misconception that it drives me mad), percieve it to be a threat worth monitoring and store all the data, including potentially classified capabilities, to hand off for a hunt for a plane where we knew everyone on board was dead the first day it doesn't check in.

It's just nothing to do with the military.

It's certainly nothing to do with any particular military for more than a fleeting moment at all.

And also, they probably have certain capabilities but they aren't active all the time and to this level of detail for everything that ever happens.

Sorry, but really don't buy into this stuff. The UK recently didn't realise that a couple of Soviet bombers were circling around its airspace until they'd already got half-way round and then it took almost forever for them to scramble an aircraft to meet them and see them off. And that's a CREDIBLE threat.

Spotting a commercial airplane going off-flight-plan is for the local air-traffic control. And between countries that link is capable of being "lost" between ATC's. And over international waters there IS not ATC.

Maybe someone did spot them and see them, but they would have paid them no attention as they weren't reported missing, weren't giving out Mayday, were broadcasting their positions as expected, over international waters, and so it never gets recorded and wouldn't be any use if they did (we knew roughly where they were flying, we don't know where they went down).

Even then, the ocean in the area is HUGE, you'd have a task spotting anything that you weren't specifically targeting.

Re:What really happened:

[Zocalo]

That is what I would expect too, perhaps a more accurate description of events might be "paperwork documenting MH370 beacon battery replacement may have been misplaced", but that's not going to generate the same number of page views.

Re:What really happened:

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's 2015 and we use GPS to find our way back to our car in a fucking parking lot and let we lost an airliner because it seemingly can't be outfitted with the same tech...

The MH370 incident plane was actually equipped with such equipment, but Malaysia Airlines was not in the best financial shape, so they decided to save money by cancelling the satellite-based portion of in-flight reporting, so they did not need to pay Inmarsat Inc. per kilobyte for the transmissions. Because of this, the satellite beam equipment was running on empty and only sent null pings once every hour or power-cycle. (Entirely neutering the equipment would have included some re-wiring work and MA did not want to bear any costs.)

Apparently, whoever hijacked the MH370 (90% likely the captain, 9,99% likely the co-pilot) was aware of the unsubscribed satnav, but did not understand the technicality of the sat up-link still running on empty. That is why whe have some 7 pings as the only PUBLIC clue about the whereabouts of MH370.

(On the other hand there should be ample SECRET info on MH370's flight southern path, because the austrialians' cover story as to why the JORN / Jindalee over-horizontal radar system was not running at the time, is quite laughable. About as credible as Putin's explanation for why the Kremlin security cameras were all turned off precisely for the time of Nemtsov's assassination...)

Re:What really happened:

[Rich0]

And yet counterfeit parts are still a big problem in Asia-Africa airlines and maintenance facilities...

All the fancy computer systems in the world won't make a difference when there is money to be saved by working around them and somebody with the ethics to make it happen.

What really happened .. to your brain?

[Viol8]

Sure, MH370 was brought down buy a crack team of internal scrap metal terrorists. Carefully planned for years with infitration of the crew just so they can sell the used parts to unscrupulous airlines who are rich enough to own 777s!

Riiiight.

What fucking planet you are on? Tin foil hat? You've got an entire suit made out of it.

As for now finding wreckage - 100,000 ton freighter ships have gone missing at sea without a trace, never mind a piddly little airliner.

Re:The Irony

[deesine]

Did you hear that Alanis?

Re:What really happened:

[geogob]

What is the scrap value for a 777-200ER, what is its used parts value?

The untraceable used parts value for a 777-200ER is... ZERO. Used and reconditioned parts can be installed on other airplanes, but not without Certificate of Conformity / Form1 and so on. There is a lot of paperwork involved in getting a spare from one airplane onto another one. This includes full traceability. Without this paper trail, the part is useless. And faking a paper trail is possible, but doing so for all parts of a 777-200ER is beyond what's possible without raising red flags.

If it were a old 737, a DC-8 or a Cessna, It could be plausible. The people exploiting some old aircraft in some region of the world live under a, let say, different regulatory oversight. But I doubt any 777-200ER operate under conditions where you could use bootlegged market parts. You may as well sell the raw materials.

I believe that a much better reason to make an airplane AND its passenger disappear, is its payload.

Units

[rossdee]

"and the tail stand as tall as four giraffes."

Is giraffes the new standard unit of height? I though they used elephants in asia.

Anyway four giraffes aren't any higher than one giraffe - its not like they can stand on each others head.

Re:How often are the batteries supposed to be chan

[hey!]

If this a 10 year battery with a 5 year precautionary change then who gives a flying rats....

I think that attitude leads to abuse of engineering recommendations.

Physical reality is more complicated than "this battery will work for ten years and then stop". Some batteries lose 50% of their capacity in about three years, but they'll continue to work and be perfectly adequate for some users after five or six years when they've lost 75% of their capacity. Other users might find them unacceptable after two years, even though the manufacturer calls it a "three year battery".

When a battery is marketed as a "ten year battery" what that means is that the vendor thinks that most users will still be satisfied with the degraded performance of the battery after ten years. But the application engineer's judgment trumps the component designer's, because the application engineer knows exactly what he is demanding of the battery. If he says a ten year battery should be changed after five years, that battery is really a five year battery in that specific application.

But suppose the application engineer says, "this battery *should* be good for ten years, but we'd better change it at five," he's making a judgment call based on the likelihood that some people involved with this system might not have done what they are supposed to. Which is why everyone ought to do what they're supposed to. When you say "the maintenance schedule calls for swap-out at five years, but I'll stretch it to seven and it'll be good," you're making the implicit assumption you're the only lazy, greedy, irresponsible person involved in this business, which might not be true.

When everybody does what they're supposed to then the system performs *better* than it has to. That actually turns out to be a valuable property because sometimes you need a system to perform better than you'd anticipated. Like when you can't locate a lost plane's location more precisely than "somewhere in the South China Sea, or possibly in the Andaman Sea".

So not replacing a "ten year battery" at five years when a designer calls for it *is* a big deal. That's overriding the engineer's carefully considered judgment with the seat of your pants and hoping for the best.

Re:What really happened:

[fnj]

Thousands separators in numbers are your friend.