[breaking] Malaysian Airlines loses contact with Beijing-bound flight, 239 on board

I agree, but I still thought they were making their severe turn *before* they said "good night" calmly to the tower, right? Or has that been updated?

 

That was what I heard.

 

Clarify, pls. B-Bob asked two contrary questions.

Was the news about turning before saying "Good Night" updated to be wrong?

 

No, sorry. What I heard was that the turn was before "Good Night" and I haven't heard them change that.

 

I thought, and may be wrong, that the turn was pre-programmed before they said it, but that the turn did or would have occurred afterwards.

 

So they are sure that the plane went south. Do they know it went down in the Ocean based on the amount of Fuel it had vs how long it was flying?

 

Is it possible a suicidal pilot actually chose that spot in the ocean knowing it was the deepest *SO THAT* the plane would never be found, as a way to live on in infamy.

I'm still waiting on one piece of obvious debris from that plane, though. Do we even have that, yet?

 

The satellite system that was transmitting would be incredibly difficult for someone to shut off, if they even knew it existed. Remember, this tech has never been used like this before.

It transmitted for all that time and made its last transmission 1500 miles or so off the coast of Perth. The idea that someone flew that far and then went downstairs and shut the system off and then navigated the plane back towards a landing strip seems implausible.

Combine all that with the debris that has been spotted, including colored items via the Navy's plane and it seems like a closed case at this point. The plane crashed there and we now have a general idea of where the wreckage will be.

A suicide mission seems silly to me, but the mechanical failure theory has major holes as well.

At this point I'm thinking whatever the person in control of the plane was TRYING to do went wrong and this ended up happening

 

I was looking to see if someone said this. I am thinking the same..well maybe whoever is trying to conclude this as a crash is picking this area to be the crash site. Not that hard to put out some reports saying satellite said this was it.

 

Maybe the Chinese developed a secret propulsion system retrofitted onto the Boeing jet that prevented radar from detecting it. The pilots activated the stealth propulsion system with the thought of defecting to the US with this technology. A CIA agent knew the Chinese would never let the US keep the stolen technology and convinced the pilots "crash" the plane in a deep part of the ocean.

 

seems obvious enough to me.

 

The computer detected that the airspeed data was lost, so it turned off autopilot which automatically switched to "alternate law" (which will always be the case when autopilot is lost). Disengaging from autopilot isn't always going into "alternate law" though. You can manually fly the plane in normal mode, and the controls you input to the computer operate within "standard law" ie you can't manually cause a plane to stall or crash into a mountain. IIRC, both co-pilots had no idea it was disengaged. The FO who wasn't operating as captain at the time (and obviously wasn't thinking clearly) kept pulling back on the side stick (which you mentioned in an earlier post) that caused the plane to descend at a 40-degree angle (with the nose pitched up 15-degrees). He thought they were still in standard law, and so no matter what he did, the plane wouldn't stall and would automatically compensate for the incline. And you would think this is how you combat a stall, but it's actually the exact opposite. At 40,000 ft in the air, wings can't generate much lift because engines generate less thrust so you "gain" altitude while losing speed (think of running on a treadmill with an incline and decline) and actually begin falling rapidly. You're supposed to put the nose down to gain speed and then level off. Anyone who has played flight simulator and stalled in the air would know this without any formal training.

The other shocker relates to the fact Airbus has dual input mode (the side stick of one pilot stays neutral while the other is operating, unlike Boeing). When the FO sitting in the captain's seat figured out that the other co-pilot was actually pulling back, he started to push forward. The other pilot was still (like an idiot) pulling back and so the computer took the average of both controls and eventually negated the pitch down control. The plane was unable to recover in time.

 

It looks like American lives may actually be worth more than non-Americans. When it comes to lawsuits that is.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/mi...-might-get-millions-if-theyre-american-n61521

MH370 Families Might Get Millions, If They're American

As the search for any wreckage for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight continues, insurance experts have warned of "divergent" compensation claims, with the families of U.S. passengers potentially receiving millions more than their Asian counterparts.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Monday that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 — missing for more than two weeks — was lost "beyond any reasonable doubt." New satellite data indicated the plane was probably at the bottom of the southern Indian Ocean, Razak added.

All 239 of the people on the plane — 227 passengers and 12 crew — are assumed to have died.

The airline must pay the families of those on board around $176,000 under a multilateral treaty known as the Montreal Convention, and said it had already given relatives $5,000 per passenger in compensation.

But relatives can also sue for further damages — and it is these further pay-outs that experts warn could vary widely.

"Compensation for loss of life is vastly different between U.S. passengers and non-U.S. passengers," Terry Rolfe, leader of the aviation practice at Integro Insurance Brokers, told CNBC.

"If the claim is brought in the U.S. courts, it's of significantly more value than if it's brought into any other court. And for U.S. citizens there is no problem getting into the U.S. courts."

Numerous nationalities

There were passengers of 14 different nationalities on board the flight, Malaysia Airlines said, with the majority — 152 — Chinese. There were also 38 passengers from Malaysia, seven Indonesians, six Australians and three Americans on board, among other nationalities.

Rolfe estimated that an American court could pay out $8 million to $10 million on a per-passenger basis, but compensation would be a fraction of this outside of the U.S. In China, she estimated relatives would receive less than $1 million per passenger.

Allianz, the main reinsurer for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, has already started to pay out on claims relating to its disappearance, according to Reuters.

The German insurance giant would not comment on financial details, but The Telegraph reported that some $110 million had been placed in an escrow account and Allianz had agreed to make hardship payments to the relatives of those on the fight.

Where claims can be brought

The Montreal Convention dictates that a claim has to be brought in one of five places: where the carrier is domiciled, its main place of business, where the ticket was bought, the destination of the flight or the primary residence of the plaintiff.

"So for the majority of passengers on this flight, this is either China or Malaysia and these countries have very limited views of damages as opposed to America," Illinois-based aviation crash attorney Floyd Wisner told CNBC.

"They could evaluate these cases and say a Chinese life is (of) less value than an American life. That's unfair and that's going to cause problems."

Indeed, Wisner said disparate pay-outs could lead to international backlash — especially if the plights of the families continued to be highly publicized.

"I would be raising holy hell if I was a family member of a passenger from one country getting less than someone who happened to be sitting next to me from another country," he said.

Another option open to the families is a class-action lawsuit, which would allow multiple relatives to sue over the same legal grounds.

"In theory, a class action would give the families more clout — because they're acting together rather than just as one person," Mike Burns, a lawyer who specializes in transport insurance at British law firm Weightmans, told CNBC.

"But where there's more clients, there's more money to be made — so a class action lawsuit is of massive financial benefit to the lawyers."

The airline and insurer will want to avoid this by being pro-active, he added, reassuring relatives that their individual claims will be managed swiftly and sensitively.

One reason for the high compensation pay-outs in the U.S., according to New York-based Rolfe, was the sheer number of attorneys and litigators here willing to take on the cases.

"There are a significant numbers of lawyers here who take on these airline cases and they know how to use the court system. They're used to doing it," she said. "And there isn't the same level of attorney or litigation or precedence in the rest of the world."

Same amount per passenger?

Wisner said the airline could pay out $500 million to $750 million in total compensation to the families, and was likely to have liability insurance of around $1 billion.

But he added that the total amount paid out could be reduced by offering one amount per passenger, whatever their nationality.

"They could aim for one standard for all, " he said. "It would be worth trying to avoid this disparate treatment and pay a flat-sum per passenger."

Rolfe, however, said this was unlikely. "The families won't sign off on it if they know they can get a higher pay-out in the U.S. courts," she added.

 

Doubtful. If this plane really was deliberately steered into this direction and directed towards the fate of simply running out of fuel over the middle of the ocean, there are still quite a few variables:

1) If the reports are true about the plane descending to 12,000 feet, you have to remember that fuel consumption would almost be doubled in that scenario. If true, how long it flied at low altitudes could have definitely jeopardized this "plan".

2) An unresponsive aircraft such as MH370 would have been treated as a threat in a post-9/11 world. The idea that this plane could have flown over land and remained undetected for about six hours or so without any fighters being scrambled to investigate is completely mind-boggling. Regardless, there's simply no way whoever was responsible for this could have known they would have been able to accomplish that.

3) Knowledge of the Diamantina Fracture Zone isn't exactly information that would be accessible inside the cockpit. I mean, yeah...you could do your homework beforehand and type the coordinates into the autopilot, but hitting that precise area would have been a relatively minor task compared to the problems presented with the first two things I mentioned.

 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Y4QZy9g2t6g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Dude, don't give the young turks video hits. Worst account on youtube.

 

Well they aren't great but they aren't bad either. Some of their stuf contains bias but like any other source I choose to ignore it if it does. It's not like any fox or CNN outlets are better.

 

So what you're saying is

 

Sounds like a non-issue to me. Its not that American lives are worth more, but the American legal system allows for higher payouts for damages. If a Chinese or Malaysian got different amounts in the American legal system, then you might be on to something, but they're not even eligible so the point its moot. Then there's simple economics, $1 million in China or Malaysia will go a lot further than $1 million in the US, which probably why the Montreal Convention allows claims to be made in ones country of residence.

 

OMG this thread fell off the first page of the Clutch BBS. That ain't right!

We're still looking at 145 possible plane debris objects that no one can find.

Wake me up when there is more news. I like watching them re-hash the same storyline every night on CNN. How many different ways can you say the same thing?