China Airlines goes down with 132 souls on board

Hydraulically boosted elevators. Still cable operated.
 
Did a little looking at the descent profile, and tried to estimate airspeed using Pythagorean Theorem. Obviously there are limits to that approach. I did not attempt to correct for altitude. Someone smarter than me can do that.

I am really surprised the airspeed was not much faster at the bottom of the first dive. I frequently dive steeply or vertically at full power when flying acro, and speed builds up VERY fast. Makes me wonder if power was not cut at some point early in the dive to prevent an overspeed.

Hard to say whether something happened at the end of the short climb, such as structural failure from overstress during the pull out, or if the same malfunction that caused the initial abrubt dive occurred again.

IMO the profile is not consistent with a "crew suicide" theory, since there was a clear attempt to rectify the first dive.

descent profile.PNG
 
Don't quite trust anything coming from "Brother 7", whoever that may be. Like I said, whatever it is, we won't hear about it if it makes the Chinese govco look bad. It took independent investigators to get to the bottom of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, govco wasn't much help at all.
 
steingar said:
Don't quite trust anything coming from "Brother 7", whoever that may be. Like I said, whatever it is, we won't hear about it if it makes the Chinese govco look bad. It took independent investigators to get to the bottom of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, govco wasn't much help at all.
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As far as I know, nobody has gotten to the bottom of the 370 crash.
 
wanttaja said:
Or there was a fight over the controls that the wrong guy won....

Ron Wanttaja
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Or parts starting departing the aircraft and they lost control, allowing the aircraft to temporarily right itself.
 
Kenny Phillips said:
As far as I know, nobody has gotten to the bottom of the 370 crash.
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An independent investigator found the wreckage and showed where the jet went down. Looks a whole bunch like pilot suicide writ large, as the pilot had been practicing the exact flight path on his sim that the jet went through. Nice write up in The Atlantic.
 
Here’s a tidbit, scuttlebutt that the Boeing investigative team wasn’t needed with the investigation, sent home??

Brother #7 may be on to something?
 
steingar said:
An independent investigator found the wreckage and showed where the jet went down. Looks a whole bunch like pilot suicide writ large, as the pilot had been practicing the exact flight path on his sim that the jet went through. Nice write up in The Atlantic.
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That’s actually incorrect about the flight sim. An even better write up on Wikipedia.
 
sourdough44 said:
Here’s a tidbit, scuttlebutt that the Boeing investigative team wasn’t needed with the investigation, sent home??

Brother #7 may be on to something?
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Source for the Boeing info?
 
sourdough44 said:
Here’s a tidbit, scuttlebutt that the Boeing investigative team wasn’t needed with the investigation, sent home??
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FYI: per a NTSB news brief, the NTSB, Boeing, and others just got their travel visas a day or two ago and haven't left yet. The brief stated they hope to leave for China this week.
 
Unsubstantiated scuttlebutt, that means I can’t verify. I have seen speculation that was more unlikely, so I feel it has a smidgen of merit.
 
Trogdor said:
That’s actually incorrect about the flight sim. An even better write up on Wikipedia.
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From that Wikipedia page:
In 2016, a leaked American document stated that a route on the pilot's home flight simulator, which closely matched the projected flight over the Indian Ocean, was found during the FBI analysis of the flight simulator's computer hard drive.[256] This was later confirmed by the ATSB, although the agency stressed that this did not prove the pilot's involvement.[257] The find was similarly confirmed by the Malaysian government.[258]​
 
elephant212 said:
From that Wikipedia page:
In 2016, a leaked American document stated that a route on the pilot's home flight simulator, which closely matched the projected flight over the Indian Ocean, was found during the FBI analysis of the flight simulator's computer hard drive.[256] This was later confirmed by the ATSB, although the agency stressed that this did not prove the pilot's involvement.[257] The find was similarly confirmed by the Malaysian government.[258]​
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LOL. Quote all parts of the article please related to the sim:

In 2018, the sister of the pilot said that the safety investigation report on MH370 showed "nothing negative"[259] about the pilot flying the plane.[260][261][262] According to the report, "There were seven 'manually programmed' waypoint coordinates that, when connected together, will create a flight path from KLIA to an area south of the Indian Ocean through the Andaman Sea. But a forensic report concluded there were no unusual activities other than game-related flight simulations."[263] The waypoints were recovered from a backup file dated 3 February 2014 but the report reached no conclusion regarding the dates they had been set.[216]: 27 

Believe what you want, but so far there is no hard evidence of what really happened to MH370.
 
Trogdor said:
Believe what you want, but so far there is no hard evidence of what really happened to MH370.
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Other than the wreckage. I think that tells the tale of the fate of the aircraft. And all the other links in the two chains 1) the flight sim info and 2) the actual flight path are too big of a coincidence to have happened randomly. The pilot killed his crew and passengers and "disappeared" the airplane into the middle of a seldom traveled portion of the ocean. Its pretty clear.
 
steingar said:
An independent investigator found the wreckage and showed where the jet went down. Looks a whole bunch like pilot suicide writ large, as the pilot had been practicing the exact flight path on his sim that the jet went through. Nice write up in The Atlantic.
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Nobody has found any wreckage for years, from what I can see. Someone has a hypothesis, a potentially lovely one.
 
Trogdor said:
Believe what you want, but so far there is no hard evidence of what really happened to MH370.
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The waypoints are evidence, but do not conclusively prove anything.
 
Kenny Phillips said:
Nobody has found any wreckage for years, from what I can see. Someone has a hypothesis, a potentially lovely one.
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Wreckage to me is finding the airplane. What they found was debris washed ashore. Planes in the water.... somewhere.
 
Yeah totally. The idea the flight sim data was positive proof of suicide is sheer conjecture. Correlation does not equate to causation.
 
Trogdor said:
Yeah totally. The idea the flight sim data was positive proof of suicide is sheer conjecture. Correlation does not equate to causation.
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I think the reasonable conclusion is that the airplane was under human control and followed a plan with the intention of disappearing. Whoever was flying the airplane turned off the transponder, climbed even higher to kill the passengers more quickly, then flew a route to avoid radar and landfall as much as possible, with the terminal phase of the flight being to head out to an untraveled part of the ocean. The likely suspect is someone who was already in the cockpit and who had flown very similar profiles on his flight simulator at home. To me the only questions are why he did what he did and exactly where the plane impacted.

I don't know that it is sufficient evidence for a conviction in a courtroom, but I'd offer 100:1 odds on it being a case of mass murder and suicide by airplane, with the pilot being the guilty party.
 
kyleb said:
I think the reasonable conclusion is that the airplane was under human control and followed a plan with the intention of disappearing. Whoever was flying the airplane turned off the transponder, climbed even higher to kill the passengers more quickly, then flew a route to avoid radar and landfall as much as possible, with the terminal phase of the flight being to head out to an untraveled part of the ocean. The likely suspect is someone who was already in the cockpit and who had flown very similar profiles on his flight simulator at home. To me the only questions are why he did what he did and exactly where the plane impacted.

I don't know that it is sufficient evidence for a conviction in a courtroom, but I'd offer 100:1 odds on it being a case of mass murder and suicide by airplane, with the pilot being the guilty party.
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From what I read a while back, the captain had marital problems, and his wife or girlfriend had just moved out. There's probably more detail out there somewhere but that sums it up.
 
Piperonca said:
From what I read a while back, the captain had marital problems, and his wife or girlfriend had just moved out. There's probably more detail out there somewhere but that sums it up.
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I saw that too, but heck everyone has had relationship problems beginning with their 2nd grade crush. It is bizarre that this guy went off the deep end badly enough to take 200+ victims with him.
 
kyleb said:
Whoever was flying the airplane turned off the transponder, climbed even higher to kill the passengers more quickly, then flew a route to avoid radar and landfall as much as possible, with the terminal phase of the flight being to head out to an untraveled part of the ocean.
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Why? The plane flew until it was out of gas. So why go to all that trouble? If you have sole control of the cockpit, why bother continuing to fly for hours when you could just drive into a mountain or plunge into the ocean?
 
Lindberg said:
Why? The plane flew until it was out of gas. So why go to all that trouble? If you have sole control of the cockpit, why bother continuing to fly for hours when you could just drive into a mountain or plunge into the ocean?
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Because he apparently wanted the airplane to disappear, instead of cratering it into the nearest mountain and leaving proof of what he did.
 
kyleb said:
Because he apparently wanted the airplane to disappear, instead of cratering it into the nearest mountain and leaving proof of what he did.
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The airplane only disappeared because ATC ducked up and it wasn't reported missing for hours. He couldn't have counted on that.
 
Lindberg said:
The airplane only disappeared because ATC ducked up and it wasn't reported missing for hours. He couldn't have counted on that.
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He could count on ATC radars losing him after he shut down the transponder. He could also bet that nobody watching a primary (largely military) radar would pay much much attention unless the flight path threatened someone's borders/security.
 
kyleb said:
He could count on ATC radars losing him after he shut down the transponder. He could also bet that nobody watching a primary (largely military) radar would pay much much attention unless the flight path threatened someone's borders/security.
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ATC can track a primary target. They didn't because no one was looking.
 
Is the silence becoming deafening? Compare to the timeline of info from the Lion Air & Ethiopian Max crashes?

I’m starting to get the feeling they’d rather meter out details sparingly, over a long timeline?
 
When the typical aviation accident conversant person says that the wreckage hasn’t been found, they mean the main part of the wreckage or debris field which is typically at or near the point of impact. The discovery of relatively small pieces of the aircraft or its contents that has floated an unknown distance away from the point of impact does not qualify as the wreckage being discovered.
 
So here’s a question: Is the main wreckage findable? If the airplane impacted hard enough to produce the fragments that washed ashore, I doubt there is a substantially whole airframe to find on the seabed. Can side scanning sonar find aluminum confetti?
 
sourdough44 said:
Is the silence becoming deafening?
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Transparency and the Chinese government are two mutually incompatible ideas according to the Chinese government, who closely monitors and controls what data is exported from the country.
 
RyanShort1 said:
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steingar said:
Wreckage has been found washed ashore all over the Indian Ocean, which is where ether jet went down.
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SkyDog58 said:
When the typical aviation accident conversant person says that the wreckage hasn’t been found, they mean the main part of the wreckage or debris field which is typically at or near the point of impact. The discovery of relatively small pieces of the aircraft or its contents that has floated an unknown distance away from the point of impact does not qualify as the wreckage being discovered.
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kyleb said:
So here’s a question: Is the main wreckage findable? If the airplane impacted hard enough to produce the fragments that washed ashore, I doubt there is a substantially whole airframe to find on the seabed. Can side scanning sonar find aluminum confetti?
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There's a long MH370 thread on this board, and this isn't it.
 
sourdough44 said:
I I’m starting to get the feeling they’d rather meter out details sparingly, over a long timeline?
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Yes because the Chinese government is all about getting clicks on social media
 
sourdough44 said:
I’m starting to get the feeling they’d rather meter out details sparingly, over a long timeline?
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In general, investigations take time. 12-18 months isn’t unusual in the U.S. I wouldn’t expect another country to be different. Lots of scenarios to check out, sometimes requiring searches for more wreckage, testing of parts found in the wreckage, examining maintenance records and personnel records, doing sims.

Hurried statements in response to external pressure can prove later to be wrong.
 
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