MH370 Likely Debris Found

[Dodgey]

Nope not working for me, can someone repost them if you can see them?

[andrewas]

Go here:

https://nuage.nibb.fr/index.php/s/ohAfTU2W9unu8eI/download

Your browser will complain about an invalid SSL certificate. In most browser, you can usually add an exception for that site which will let you see the pics.

[PakledHostage]

Fixed?

Nope. Maybe just post the images to imgur?

Edited July 31, 2015 by PakledHostage
Deleted weird double post glitch?...

[B787_300]

It doesnt matter that they found this floating piece of debris, it has been too long so that the pieces could have drifted around the entire southern ocean by now. The pieces just shows that the plane crashed in water. it does not show where, when, how, or why.

[Kerbart]

It doesnt matter that they found this floating piece of debris, it has been too long so that the pieces could have drifted around the entire southern ocean by now. The pieces just shows that the plane crashed in water. it does not show where, when, how, or why.

Actually it shows a lot. The fact that there's MH370 wreckage suggests that there's an MH370 wreck. Reason dictates that there is one, but now we know. While it may not seem a lot, for the family of the victims it brings closure a step forward: from "disappeared without a trace" to "crashed into the ocean" may not seem a lot but for them it does.

It also tells us that the plane crashed in the Southern Ocean. Surely not near Madagascar, but we know how the currents in that region work. It pretty much confirms that MH370 has indeed crashed somewhere west of Australia, and not north of Indonesia or in Afghanistan as some conspiracy theorists claim.

When you have nothing to work on, you'll need to work on assumptions . When you work on assumptions, any trace of evidence that supports or rejects those assumptions is huge, and this is one of them.

[PakledHostage]

When you work on assumptions, any trace of evidence that supports or rejects those assumptions is huge, and this is one of them.

I fully agree.

And don't forget that this flaperon will itself contain trace evidence. Whether that is the types of organisms growing on it, the nature of the damage (i.e. were the flaps likely extended when it hit the water?), maybe even the degree of salt water corrosion. We will learn something about the crash by examining the recovered part.

[Camacha]

I was sceptical at first, but the part number (not serial number) printed on it seems to confirm that it's a flaperon from a Boeing 777. Since MH370 was the only 777 gone missing anywhere near the Indian Ocean, there isn't really much doubt.

How many other 777's are missing? People keep saying it is the only one in the area, but I am unsure which other ones are unaccounted for.

[K^2]

How many other 777's are missing? People keep saying it is the only one in the area, but I am unsure which other ones are unaccounted for.

777 Incidents and Accidents

[DerekL1963]

How many other 777's are missing?

Precisely 00.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

[Camacha]

777 Incidents and Accidents

Ah, yes, thanks for doing the work my lazy butt neglected to do.

As expected, it seems no other 777's are missing. I wish people/media were less handwavy about that. It still means parts of a 777 might have gone missing (parts of scrapped planes or spare parts falling off ships, for instance), but suggestion there are more full aircraft of this type missing seems misleading.

If I am to believe this site, a fair amount of 777's have been written off, stored or scrapped, even though the majority is still flying. I am unsure whether a central registry exists for these kinds of parts. The whereabouts of new parts should be reasonably well known, but I know second hand and scrap parts used to be traded everywhere and anywhere, as there were a couple of incidents with that (old or written off parts being sold as new or refurbished). Whether rules changes have been made to track all parts I do not know, but I can only assume that these rules do not cover all parts of the world. A process of elimination might not be necessary though, there is a fair chance Boeing will have records of parts installed in that specific 777 being found in that washed up wing piece.

Precisely 00.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Be careful with those fractions A lost panel here, some burst tires there and a couple of bits shaking loose and you might be in trouble.

Edited August 1, 2015 by Camacha

[softweir]

Judging by comments on the BBC website, experts are certain that the flaperon in question will have a serial number and the airline will have a record of that serial number in the paperwork for that aircraft. The question is: is the serial number at all legible? Will enough remain for a positive match to be made, even assuming it is from that aircraft?

[PakledHostage]

Parts like the flaperon in question certainly are rotable parts. Rotables are tracked and you'd be able to pull up the maintenance history for the lifetime of the part. They may not even stay on the same aircraft for the entire lifetime of the airframe.

Rotables have data plates that include the serial number and part number. The data plate is usually made of stainless steel or titanium (depending on where it is being mounted because you don't want to cause galvanic corrosion). The part number and serial number text is pressed into the metal so it can be read, pretty much no matter what. On a flap or a slat, the data plate would typically be mounted on the ends, although it wasn't visible in the one photo that I saw of the flaperon that was found.

It looks to me like the flap's other end was damaged. Hopefully the data plate hasn't gone missing, but that might explain why it is taking so long to get a definitive ID on the part having come from MH370. If the data plate has gone missing, they'd have to disassemble the flap and read off the part numbers off of the individual bits that it is made from. There are small variations in many parts on commercial transport aircraft from one airframe to the next. They might be able to figure out what series the flaperon is and compare that part's series to the series of the flaperon that is known to have been on MH370. There may also be unique repairs on the flaperon that was known to be on MH370, and they could then identify it that way... Kind of like dental records.

Edited August 1, 2015 by PakledHostage

[Camacha]

It looks to me like the flap's other end was damaged. Hopefully the data plate hasn't gone missing, but that might explain why it is taking so long to get a definitive ID on the part having come from MH370. If the data plate has gone missing, they'd have to disassemble the flap and read off the part numbers off of the individual bits that it is made from. There are small variations in many parts on commercial transport aircraft from one airframe to the next. They might be able to figure out what series the flaperon is and compare that part's series to the series of the flaperon that is known to have been on MH370. There may also be unique repairs on the flaperon that was known to be on MH370, and they could then identify it that way... Kind of like dental records.

Pretty much what they do to identify sunken ships and submarines. Though often quite similar to other ships, various small changes and combinations can often lead to positive identification. The hard bit here is that there is very little aircraft here, but the upside is that you can examine it extensively (as opposed to a deep sea wreck).

[Nibb31]

How many other 777's are missing? People keep saying it is the only one in the area, but I am unsure which other ones are unaccounted for.

I said it in my post. A flaperon falling off in flight is rather unlikely without some sort of catastrophic outcome. It would certainly have been noticed and reported.

There have been only 5 losses of a 777 (which is a rather good track record). The first 3 occured at airports and all of the parts were recovered and accounted for. The others were MH17 that was destroyed over Ukraine with wreckage dispersed over a wide area and MH370.

It is rather unlikely that any parts from MH17 drifted from Ukraine to Reunion, so the wreckage can reasonably only be from MH370.

Edited August 1, 2015 by Nibb31

[Camacha]

I said it in my post. A flaperon falling off in flight is rather unlikely without some sort of catastrophic outcome. It would certainly have been noticed and reported.

If you only take hull losses into account, you are right, but you also have to consider the possibility of scrapped, salvaged or new parts being lost. A shipping container falling off of a freighter is a relatively common occurrence and more of an insurance issue than anything else.

Though it is likely that this part belongs to the missing flight, these kinds of possibilities warrant a little more research and making sure you are right.

[Hcube]

i am so very tired of the fuss about this debris right now. It literally is all over the news (atleast in my country), and on popular media channels it comes along with a bunch of wrong explanations from "specialists", talk-shows were they talk a lot but say nothing, and a lot of BS. It is literally everywhere : "debris will be analysed in France, hooray" ; "debris was loaded on the plane and is about to depart from La Réunion" ; FLASH NEWS : "debris has arrived in France, and is currently waiting in a warehouse"...etc

If ever the data that will be recovered from that flaperon tells something about the crash, ie wether it was a depressurisation, explosion, terrorist attack, engine failure..., (wich is highly unlikely assuming that the flaperon does not contain computing/memory units->no flight data stored in it, and has spent roughly a year and a half kn saltwater),

would it really change anything ?

do we actually care wether it was an engine failure or a depressurization ?

The passengers died anyway. I doubt that finding traces of kerosene on a flaperon, indicating an engine fire blahblahblah will change anything to that...

Am I the only one fed up with that story and feeling that way ?

[Camacha]

Am I the only one fed up with that story and feeling that way ?

You probably are. I understand getting tired of what can be called the generation of news - in absence of news tiny details are inflated to news status, so the whole circus can do another round. However, the people died anyway is a totally different matter. That is almost like not trying criminals, because the crime has been committed anyway. Yes, the people will remain dead, but it will shed light on errors and how they can be prevented in the future. This is very important to all of us, because it is what made aviation so safe. Another possibly even more important issue is that it might bring a form of closure for the relatives of the victims. Remember that it is not just 227 people missing, it is an exponential amount of family members not knowing what happened to their loved ones, silently suffering in limbo.

If ever the data that will be recovered from that flaperon tells something about the crash, ie wether it was a depressurisation, explosion, terrorist attack, engine failure..., (wich is highly unlikely assuming that the flaperon does not contain computing/memory units->no flight data stored in it, and has spent roughly a year and a half kn saltwater),

This is also false. Depending on the type of break-up, different fractures tell a different story. If the plane broke up in mid air you will see different breaks than if it collided with the water intact, and if it is something like metal-fatigue it will show up differently than when it is a violent stress break. Different parts will tell more or less of the whole story, but we will certainly learn more about the crash just by looking at the part closely.

[PB666]

There is so much junk in the ocean now people will just ignore it. On our beaches here I find juice bottles from North Africa, milk cartoons from Portugal, candy wrappers from Brazil. Just about anything thats dumped into the Altantic will end up on a beach in the Gulf of Mexico. I once did a small statistic one morning just to see where stuff came from, about 80:20 ratio stuff on our beach comes from outside the US. Cargo container falls off a boat, contents wash up on shore, people just ignore it. Can't say I would pick up a wallet if it had gooseneck barnacles growing on it. We are such a disposable society now-a-days it takes something really big like a wing section to get notice.

[Camacha]

There is so much junk in the ocean now people will just ignore it. On our beaches here I find juice bottles from North Africa, milk cartoons from Portugal, candy wrappers from Brazil. Just about anything thats dumped into the Altantic will end up on a beach in the Gulf of Mexico. I once did a small statistic one morning just to see where stuff came from, about 80:20 ratio stuff on our beach comes from outside the US. Cargo container falls off a boat, contents wash up on shore, people just ignore it. Can't say I would pick up a wallet if it had gooseneck barnacles growing on it. We are such a disposable society now-a-days it takes something really big like a wing section to get notice.

To be fair, nature has been doing this for a long time. The bits are not just a bit more identifiable. Sahara sand feeds the rain forests across the Atlantic and polar vent nutrients get carried all over the world.

[Hcube]

You probably are. I understand getting tired of what can be called the generation of news - in absence of news tiny details are inflated to news status, so the whole circus can do another round. However, the people died anyway is a totally different matter. That is almost like not trying criminals, because the crime has been committed anyway. Yes, the people will remain dead, but it will shed light on errors and how they can be prevented in the future. This is very important to all of us, because it is what made aviation so safe. Another possibly even more important issue is that it might bring a form of closure for the relatives of the victims. Remember that it is not just 227 people missing, it is an exponential amount of family members not knowing what happened to their loved ones, silently suffering in limbo.

This is also false. Depending on the type of break-up, different fractures tell a different story. If the plane broke up in mid air you will see different breaks than if it collided with the water intact, and if it is something like metal-fatigue it will show up differently than when it is a violent stress break. Different parts will tell more or less of the whole story, but we will certainly learn more about the crash just by looking at the part closely.

I can only agree with you, i totally understand your point. But what i meant about "they died anyway" part is by no means that i thought that search and studies should be stopped, but that it is not huge great news and that it does not deserve the place it has right now in the media titles...

Still not sure about the part with "knowing what went wrong will help prevent similar errors", because while this is very true in rocketry (cf CRS-7) i am not sure that finding what went wrong on the 777 will change anything to its design, its maintenance or the way it is flown since the triple7 is a very common and very reliable airliner (only 5 or 6 critical failures iirc).

[softweir]

i am not sure that finding what went wrong on the 777 will change anything to its design, its maintenance or the way it is flown

On the contrary - every major air incident in recent years due to mechanical fault has led to aviation authorities making recommendations for retrospective changes to the relevant hardware. Even minor incidents lead to changes.

The list of changes made to aircraft and adjustments to designs in future builds is too long to list, but for instance: a Boeing 777 crashes (with no fatalities) on runway approach due to ice crystals in a heat-exchanger in the fuel lines of the Rolls-Royce Trent 895 engines. The heat-exchanger was redesigned and existing aircraft with that engine are retrofitted with the new design, and new Trent 895 engines are built with the upgrade. In the meantime, even before the cause was fully understood, operating procedures were put in place to reduce the chances of ice causing blockages. Boeing were also required to redesign the undercarriage attachment, because during that crash one of the fuel tanks was damaged when the undercarriage collapsed. Furthermore, air investigators spent months examining other engine designs to be sure a similar fault could occur.

Manufacturers worldwide compile enormous manuals of "how not to build aircraft" that are kept in mind when new designs are being built. True: it won't stop makers trying completely new technologies and getting bitten in the arse, but they DO learn from the failures, and the next one will be due to something significantly different. If only car makers would do the same!

The only thing aircraft manufacturers can't learn from is severe pilot error, or murder-suicide. They do make changes to cockpit design to try to reduce error, but ultimately nothing can make a job as complex as piloting an airliner error-free, because what keeps one pilot from making an error increases the chances that a different pilot will get something else wrong. This is why, even now, most air incidents are due to pilots making mistakes. (Let's not get started on airlines overworking pilots and employing under-experienced pilots! And nothing will ever be certain to prevent pilots going insane and committing a nasty and vicious murder-suicide.)

Flying is one of the safest activities we ever undergo because of all this hard work and the very tough laws that force the work to be done. To say manufacturers never learn from problems, or that nothing ever gets done, is entirely missing the truth.

[Camacha]

that it does not deserve the place it has right now in the media titles...

It only gets that place because there is no other news to reports and these are easy pickings. Just tune out for a while, you will be happier for it.

Still not sure about the part with "knowing what went wrong will help prevent similar errors", because while this is very true in rocketry (cf CRS-7) i am not sure that finding what went wrong on the 777 will change anything to its design, its maintenance or the way it is flown since the triple7 is a very common and very reliable airliner (only 5 or 6 critical failures iirc).

Remember the very rare and flaky ice problem that crashed the 777 in England? Or the tail actuator problem in the 737 that all aircraft of that type flew with and needed a whopping 3 crashes to be finally found and resolved? It is rather presumptuous to claim no other problems might be present in something that is indeed a fairly reliable aircraft. They are so very complex machines that there will always be a weakness or flaw present somewhere. They might not be large and obvious flaws, but could be lethal ones nonetheless.

Even if it is not the plane that is to blame, it might be the pilots. You cannot fix that, you say? You would be mistaken Even though humans are fallible, it generally are guidelines, procedures and conventions that do not take human fallibility into account that cause accidents. Technical or procedural improvements and training can be made so that other flights have less risk of running into the same problem.

Pretty much any and every large airliner crash has led to lessons learned and therefore recommendations on how to improve things, meaning every crash made aviation a little more safe. All those lessons together make flying on of the safest forms of transportation. Declaring an accident as done and uninteresting without actually resolving or finding the problem is almost the total and exact opposite of what is normally done and what makes the most sense.

Edit: shoo, Softweir, shoo!

[Meecrob]

If you only take hull losses into account, you are right, but you also have to consider the possibility of scrapped, salvaged or new parts being lost. A shipping container falling off of a freighter is a relatively common occurrence and more of an insurance issue than anything else.

Though it is likely that this part belongs to the missing flight, these kinds of possibilities warrant a little more research and making sure you are right.

You have to take into consideration that both Boeing and HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited - the subcontractor) would have definitely known if they lost a flaperon during shipping and would probably tell the investigators "by the way, we lost this exact part a while back." Also keep in mind there are only 1728 B777 orders with only 1165 delivered. This is, ergo, an extremely rare piece of engineering to just "turn up" somewhere unannounced.

Edited August 2, 2015 by Meecrob
Added "during shipping"

[Camacha]

You have to take into consideration that both Boeing and HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited - the subcontractor) would have definitely known if they lost a flaperon and would probably tell the investigators "by the way, we lost this exact part a while back." Also keep in mind there are only 1728 B777 orders with only 1165 delivered. This is, ergo, an extremely rare piece of engineering to just "turn up" somewhere unannounced.

Thing is, there seems to be less supervision when it comes to second hand parts and when craft are scrapped bits and pieces might turn up anywhere. I remember there being huge issues with some parts being sold and resold as good or new, while they were actually old write-offs, though these larger parts will probably be a bit less susceptible to those practices.

Added to that, people might or might not report a container with scrap aluminium or artsy furniture made from aircraft parts falling of a ship to Boeing, mostly because a lot of people in the chain will not know what they were dealing with. As soon as parts or materials leave the airline world, anything could happen.

[Meecrob]

I think that no matter what, the consignee is going to be asking where his "scrap aluminum" 777 flaperon is. Its a part that is too valuable to disappear like that. I don't know for sure, but I bet it was insured too. There are less than 2000 of these in existence.