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Post by questa on Mar 17, 2014 23:12:37 GMT
Can someone with knowledge of these things tell me why the information that gets stored in the "black boxes" can't be transmitted immediately to the nearest air safety office. That way an experienced pilot in the office may hear the pilots in trouble and getting data from aircraft, radio instructions to assist. (Air France 447..classic example) It would also reduce the costs of retrieving the boxes as the data is already available.
With all the satellites whirling around, surely this could be done...["and don't call me Shirley"]
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2014 6:50:14 GMT
It can be done, but the airlines and the pilots don't want to do it. Unauthorised things happen all the time on planes without any incident, but they don't want the whole world to know.
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Post by bjd on Mar 18, 2014 6:58:09 GMT
Ha, Questa! I was about to answer Kerouac's post by saying, "Haven't you seen Airplane", when I saw the last line of your post.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2014 22:18:14 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2014 19:56:33 GMT
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Post by fumobici on Mar 19, 2014 21:47:58 GMT
www.theonion.com/articles/families-of-missing-flight-passengers-just-hoping,35572/ "KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA—Saying they have endured heart-wrenching uncertainty and deserved definitive answers, the families of passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 expressed hope Wednesday that the media will eventually receive some kind of closure regarding the plane’s mysterious disappearance."
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Post by questa on Mar 19, 2014 22:58:31 GMT
In Asian cultures it is terrible to be the bearer of bad news...hence the boss is always told everything is going well as the factory goes up in flames. Western culture is more likely to accept bad news more logically.
That perhaps is why the Chinese families are so angry now. They have been holding out on the faint glimmer of hope that the plane has landed safely somewhere...a hope that Malaysian Airlines has not done much to deny. If the airline had given a direct statement to the effect that they were not regarding it as a rescue situation but a recovery investigation, I am sure many of the families would have gone home to grieve rather than stay and turn distress into anger.
About time MA had the guts to stand up and say "Sorry, we have lost a plane, your people and our work colleagues. We all will grieve together and try to find out what happened."
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Post by questa on Mar 20, 2014 3:46:52 GMT
JUST IN: US Navy commander tells @abc a US P-8 is nearing search area where Australian PM says satellite has noted 2 objects of interest.
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Post by questa on Mar 20, 2014 5:30:02 GMT
SYDNEY: Two images spotted by satellites that may be potential debris from a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner were "indistinct", with the largest measuring 24 metres, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said.
"They are objects of a reasonable size and probably awash with water moving up and down over the surface," John Young, general manager of the emergency response division of AMSA, told reporters.
Australia has sent four search aircraft and two ships to an area south of the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean it identified earlier this week to search for the objects pinpointed by satellites.
Water in the search area was "several thousand metres deep" and poor visibility in the area would hamper the search, although the weather was moderate, Young said.--Reuters
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2014 17:55:58 GMT
It's starting to look like this might be the place -- but wind and rain and night are making us wait to find out.
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Post by mossie on Mar 20, 2014 20:44:39 GMT
There could be a long way to go yet. A grainy satellite image is one thing, getting a visual on it is quite another. Having done an air search over a desert, it must be even more difficult over the sea. It is also very tedious and tiring, if you look away for a moment you fear you may have missed something.
Everyone must hope and pray that they can positively identify this aircraft, but nothing now will bring back the passengers and crew alive.
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Post by questa on Mar 20, 2014 21:44:08 GMT
The best we can hope for is to find the black boxes intact.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2014 19:20:26 GMT
I would like to express my solidarity to the European news correspondants currently in Perth. French TV has Hakim Abdelkhalek over there, and the poor guy has to do every report on the morning, noon and evening news live. On the morning news, it's okay because it's 2 pm in Perth but on the evening news, there he is again, still live, when it is 3 am.
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Post by questa on Mar 21, 2014 21:24:39 GMT
Now you can understand the plight of the dwellers "down under". Whenever something big is happening in your time zone we have to sit up all night to keep up with it. I have stayed awake over developing news, cricket matches etc. and woken my kids at 4am to watch Oz win the America's Cup. And when Wimbledon is on complete offices go bleary eyed and snarly. I guess we take our news correspondents for granted.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 22, 2014 16:13:02 GMT
Since it appears that maybe, just maybe, some debris is on the verge of being found, here is some food for thought about what might happen next. I had forgotten, as I assume that just about every has, that it took two years to find the Air France plane even though debris was found after "only" a week. And as the article mentions, they were lucky with Air France because the main part of the plane settled on a flat sandy area of the ocean floor. Meanwhile, I have been watching these outraged Chinese families on the various news reports and while a lot of them are genuinely heartbroken about losing loved ones, I am obliged to imagine that plenty of others are just upset about monetary compensation being delayed. Call me cynical.
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Post by bjd on Mar 22, 2014 16:25:58 GMT
I remember at the time of the Air France crash -- at least in the following months, when they were looking for the wreckage -- a friend whose son works in civil aviation saying that they were looking in an area the size of Switzerland. It doesn't sound so big from that article, but it still took a long time.
In this case, they still don't know where the plane went down. I do wonder too why it went off course to such an extent if they are looking so far south.
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Post by questa on Mar 22, 2014 19:50:20 GMT
bjd, The comparison over here is 'as big as the state of Victoria', which puts it as bigger than Switzerland. The other constraint is that at 2,500 km from base, the Orions have to fly for around 6 hours, to and from the search area , to do 2 hours searching. As to why it went off course...how about a hijack by person(s) unknown who diverted course with intention of landing safely. However passengers staged a counter attack leading to loss of pressure and death of those on board, while the aircraft on autopilot keeps going until it runs out of fuel and ditches in the sea.
Mr Cynical...these are families who were permitted to have only one child. All the family's hopes were in that child. Now the child is gone. Without the child to do the funeral ceremonies, the parents' spirits will not rest. Ditto the old folks on the flight...how can their ceremonies be done without their 'bones' being with the family?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 22, 2014 20:20:28 GMT
Yes, and I will remain cynical. Not every victim was an only child. I would imagine that many of the Chinese passengers were corrupt businessmen, or even if they were not corrupt, it does not exclude the extremely numerous sex trips that these people make. We can assume that the vast majority of the Chinese passengers were men (as usual) and that their wives feel vindicated at last. Bring on the money!
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Post by Kimby on Mar 23, 2014 3:34:56 GMT
The only good thing about this tragedy is that it has completely displaced the conservative commentators' refrain of "Bengazi, Bengazi, Bengazi!"
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Post by questa on Mar 23, 2014 3:54:27 GMT
kimby...it has displaced a lot of world and local news, to the point that my state had an election 2 weeks ago and no-one seems to have noticed we have a hung parliament with no-one running the state. 2 independent candidates will decide who will form government...and one has gone on sick leave for "a couple of months" And what are all the media talking about? MH370.
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Post by bjd on Mar 23, 2014 7:24:22 GMT
Here in France we are having the first round of local elections today, so that is the main topic of news.
No talk of Benghazi at all here.
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Post by questa on Mar 23, 2014 12:03:58 GMT
If you are interested...we now have a minority Government as the Independent has put his choice on the party that had been in power before. YAWN...
CNN was doing a piece about the area that is being searched by the fleet of aircraft looking for debris. They showed a map of Australia and marked the city of Perth where the planes are based. Woops...they missed Perth which is on the far western coast of this huge country, towards the south, and told the world it was on the south coast of the island of Tasmania w-a-y-y- over on the East coast...where Hobart is...3000km or roughly Paris to Istanbul as the crow flies. No wonder we get gung ho Japanese cyclists pedalling through the desert from the west to Sydney...they think it is only a few days ride.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2014 12:42:09 GMT
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Post by Kimby on Mar 23, 2014 13:24:31 GMT
K2, I knew as soon as I saw "fox news" in the URL that it would be faux news...
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Post by htmb on Mar 23, 2014 13:47:54 GMT
And bill o whatever, to boot.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 23, 2014 13:56:21 GMT
It's a sad state of affairs when Americans get more accurate news from the Comedy Channel than from so-called "News" networks...
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Post by anshjain97 on Mar 23, 2014 15:58:26 GMT
And here, the national elections are next month. The battle is mainly between the current party, ruling since 2004, and the key opposition. Both have enough controversies on their profile.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2014 16:34:49 GMT
kimby...it has displaced a lot of world and local news, to the point that my state had an election 2 weeks ago and no-one seems to have noticed we have a hung parliament with no-one running the state. 2 independent candidates will decide who will form government...and one has gone on sick leave for "a couple of months" And what are all the media talking about? MH370. That certainly wouldn't make the news in Europe where Italy often continues without a government for several months, and then Belgium broke the all time world's record by operating with no government for 541 days in 2010-2011. Except for the fact that they became the laughing stock of Europe, apparently all ordinary business continued as usual over that entire period. If there had been a huge crisis all of sudden (e.g. Crimea), I would hope that it would have incited them to find a compromise a bit faster.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2014 6:43:52 GMT
The weather having improved, will they finally find something today?
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Post by questa on Mar 26, 2014 9:00:54 GMT
Weather closing in again....side swipe from a cyclone that has been causing damage elsewhere.
The searchers have 12 days to find the black boxes before they stop transmitting location.
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