MH370 Likely Debris Found

[Tex_NL]

It's confirmed. The debris found on Reunion is from flight MH370.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/05/world/mh370-investigation/index.html

[softweir]

Confirmed by the Malaysians, but the French are more guarded in their statements leaving some doubt as to how sure investigators are that it is, in fact, part of flight MH370.

[B787_300]

softweir it is quite likely a missing flaperon is cause for a plane to be grounded for a full D check. I would think that Boeing knows exactly which craft that came from and the French are just being overly cautious.

[Laie]

It's not as if we were talking about a 737 where spare parts have been swapped and refurbished for 40 years.

[PB666]

For Boeing the 7x7 the x designates the basic form. sort of like sizeX in KSP, but not exactly, because couple of craft have same crosssectional profile

Adding to this are the base variations such as 7x7-y00 (737-500) which both deal with upgrades and size variations (for example 737 has stopped making certain early variations and has replaced them with later variations of approximately the same footprint, but there has been significant part remodeling and modernization between the two similarly footprinted versions).

Then finally there is the clone identity 7x7-yzz, and in each aircraft's cockpit the exact designation is posted.

So basically for each base variation x there is a fuselage length and wingspan variant y, and as the aircraft ages various minor part designs are made zz.

Both Boeing and the company have a manifest of all these parts because over the life of the aircraft some of the parts will be replaced.

If the flaperon matches the specification of the parts that was assembled for type 7x7-yzz on a given date, and/or matches the manifest then it is extremely unlikely that the part remnant came from another source.

There is one remote and disturbing possibility. If the plane lost the flaperon in flight, it could probably fly for hours without it, compensating by raising lift on the rest of the wing and reducing lift on the other wing, and slightly shifting the rudder position. The other possibility is that someone on the ground before takeoof intentionally swapped the part with a part on a different but similar 777 in order to complicate the investigation. These both are very unlikely.

[whiterafter]

Even if they had swapped out the flap from another 777 they don't randomly end up on the coast of a tropical island. It has been very obvious to those in the airline community and investigation that the crash was led by one of the pilots, since the flight specifically flew around the island of Sumatra (which could only be to avoid radar).

If there was a problem with the plane that required a diversion, no experienced pilot would have flown the plane hundreds of miles south, and the problem would be very unlikely to have begun exactly as it was in "radio limbo" switching between control centers.

If MH370 ran out of oxygen (which could explain flying the plane uncontrolled past Australia) , then why did it happen exactly when it was switching between control centers, and if the pilots were able to control the plane enough to turn around and *coincidentally* fly around Indonesian military radar, then they also had the ability to descend to a safe altitude.

[Sampa]

I might suggest that the unthinkable has happened before, on several occassions. But, I might think we should consider the possibility that the navigation instruments could have possibly failed and the pilots got disoriented? (they were flying at night, after all!)

[Nibb31]

I might suggest that the unthinkable has happened before, on several occassions. But, I might think we should consider the possibility that the navigation instruments could have possibly failed and the pilots got disoriented? (they were flying at night, after all!)

There is multiple redundancy in the navigation instruments and radio systems as well as power systems. If all the nav systems and radios failed at once, that either there was a general power failure that would also have also hit the flight computers and fly-by-wire systems that would have made the plane inoperable, or they were switched off on purpose. If the plane was inoperable, it wouldn't have been able to change course and stay airborne.

There are really only two hypothesis that corroborate with the facts:

- A pilot suicide, which would have been particularly long-winded. It's hard to imagine that the crew and passengers would have been unaware or incapacitated for several hours. Maybe a crewmember took advantage of being alone in the cockpit to shut out his colleague and then depressurized the cabin to kill everyone on board.

- A failed hijacking, which for one reason or another, ends up with the plane going the wrong way. Maybe the pilots were killed and the hijacker didn't know how to control the plane. Maybe a shot was fired or a bomb went off and the plane depressurized killing everyone on board but kept flying until it ran out of fuel.

The actual fate of MH370 will probably remain a mystery forever. Let's just hope that finding parts of the wreckage allows some closure for the families.

Edited August 6, 2015 by Nibb31

[Columbia]

I might suggest that the unthinkable has happened before, on several occassions. But, I might think we should consider the possibility that the navigation instruments could have possibly failed and the pilots got disoriented? (they were flying at night, after all!)

Well, pilots are trained to cope with instruments showing faulty readings. In the cold night, sensors such at pitot tubes and such tend to freeze up, and there are often de-icers in place. The autopilot is disengaged, officers turn the deicing units on, and the sensors warm up back to life. It's often not unusual to have these kind of failures. And even so, there's the Auxiliary Power Unit, and an emergency Ram Air Unit that provides little - but just enough - power to control the aircraft in an engine failure and such.

A similar incident to MH370 occured in 2009 - Namely, Air France 447. A pitot tube froze, the first officer was mistaken, stalled the airplane, crashed above the South Atlantic. It was certainly avoidable, albeit tragic. The majority of it's pieces, sunken at depths lower than the Titanic, took 2 years to be fully explored. It's a very similar case, took a long time to be fully explored, a transocean flight, etc. It was an A330-200 flying, instead of a Boeing 777-200ER.

[PakledHostage]

Then finally there is the clone identity 7x7-yzz, and in each aircraft's cockpit the exact designation is posted.

So basically for each base variation x there is a fuselage length and wingspan variant y, and as the aircraft ages various minor part designs are made zz.

Not quite. The 'zz' number in a Boeing aircraft type's dash number is the customer code. It designates the airline that the airframe was originally delivered to.

In very general terms, the 'x' number is the aircraft type while the 'y' denotes some variant, but the variations aren't limited to just fuselage length. For example, the 747-400 is an entirely different type design (with its own FAA type certificate) from the 747 classics. As far as the FAA is concerned, the 747-400 is more different from a 747-300 than a 767 is from a 757. (The 757 and 767 share the same type certificate).

Both Boeing and the company have a manifest of all these parts because over the life of the aircraft some of the parts will be replaced.

If the flaperon matches the specification of the parts that was assembled for type 7x7-yzz on a given date, and/or matches the manifest then it is extremely unlikely that the part remnant came from another source.

Boeing doesn't really care if an operator moves a part from one aircraft to another. The operator may ask Boeing for confirmation that a part can be swapped from one airframe to another if it isn't clear from the existing approved documentation, but Boeing isn't required to keep a list of what is on a given aircraft. All they can tell you is what was on it when they delivered it to the customer that first took delivery.

As I described in my post earlier in this thread, wing parts like flaps, slats, spoilers and ailerons each have their own part number and serial number pressed into a data plate that is permanently afixed to those parts. This is because those types of parts can and do get swapped around from one aircraft to another over the lifetime of the airframe. Their composite sub components may get water in them, causing delamination due to freeze/thaw cycles. They may be damaged by lightning strikes. They may even get damaged due to bird strikes, tire failures, collisions with ground vehicles, etc. In the event, you don't want to have to ground the entire aircraft for a week while you fix what is an otherwise removable part. Instead, you find a way to swap it out (whether by leasing or buying a replacement part, by robbing a serviceable part off an aircraft that is in heavy maintenance or by using one of your own spares) and fix the damaged part in the back shops while the aircraft keeps earning revenue. The operating airline is then responsible for keeping a record of what S/N is on its aircraft and the maintenance history of that part, along with the back to birth records of where the part came from.

There is one remote and disturbing possibility. If the plane lost the flaperon in flight, it could probably fly for hours without it, compensating by raising lift on the rest of the wing and reducing lift on the other wing, and slightly shifting the rudder position. The other possibility is that someone on the ground before takeoof intentionally swapped the part with a part on a different but similar 777 in order to complicate the investigation. These both are very unlikely.

That would require a conspiracy. You don't just walk up to a 777 with a flaperon under your arm and swap it out. You need all sorts of specialized tools and equipment to do a job like that. It will take the effort of multiple people. And as they say, the only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead...

softweir it is quite likely a missing flaperon is cause for a plane to be grounded for a full D check. I would think that Boeing knows exactly which craft that came from and the French are just being overly cautious.

D-checks are planned maintenance and would not ever be required because you lost a flaperon. The aircraft would certainly be grounded for a series of conditional inspections that may also spill over to the rest of the world-wide fleet of that type design if the loss was deemed to be due to a design fault, but you don't go performing invasive inspections of everything on the aircraft just because you lost a part off the wing.

[Camacha]

There is multiple redundancy in the navigation instruments and radio systems as well as power systems. If all the nav systems and radios failed at once, that either there was a general power failure that would also have also hit the flight computers and fly-by-wire systems that would have made the plane inoperable, or they were switched off on purpose. If the plane was inoperable, it wouldn't have been able to change course and stay airborne.

There are really only two hypothesis that corroborate with the facts:

- A pilot suicide, which would have been particularly long-winded. It's hard to imagine that the crew and passengers would have been unaware or incapacitated for several hours. Maybe a crewmember took advantage of being alone in the cockpit to shut out his colleague and then depressurized the cabin to kill everyone on board.

- A failed hijacking, which for one reason or another, ends up with the plane going the wrong way. Maybe the pilots were killed and the hijacker didn't know how to control the plane. Maybe a shot was fired or a bomb went off and the plane depressurized killing everyone on board but kept flying until it ran out of fuel.

The actual fate of MH370 will probably remain a mystery forever. Let's just hope that finding parts of the wreckage allows some closure for the families.

In some ways it reminds me of the Helios Airways Flight 522 crash. Though the apparent avoiding of radar and air traffic control make this a strange case, weirder things have happened in the past. Maybe even a fluke combination of these possible causes and reasons.

I really hope we find the craft one day, so we might find out what has happened. It is hard, but not impossible to find it after all this time and in deep water.

[Nibb31]

There is one remote and disturbing possibility. If the plane lost the flaperon in flight, it could probably fly for hours without it, compensating by raising lift on the rest of the wing and reducing lift on the other wing, and slightly shifting the rudder position. The other possibility is that someone on the ground before takeoof intentionally swapped the part with a part on a different but similar 777 in order to complicate the investigation. These both are very unlikely.

And you'd have to explain the chain of events that leads to losing navigation, losing comms, losing a flaperon, and staying airborne for several hours.

[whiterafter]

You couldn't lose a flaperon unless you were on a cuckoo maneuver that would have been near impossible to recover from if you were losing wing parts left and right.

In Helios 522 and Air France 447 there was nothing similar to the suspicious avoidance of air traffic control and radar.

[PB666]

Not quite. The 'zz' number in a Boeing aircraft type's dash number is the customer code. It designates the airline that the airframe was originally delivered to.

In very general terms, the 'x' number is the aircraft type while the 'y' denotes some variant, but the variations aren't limited to just fuselage length. For example, the 747-400 is an entirely different type design (with its own FAA type certificate) from the 747 classics. As far as the FAA is concerned, the 747-400 is more different from a 747-300 than a 767 is from a 757. (The 757 and 767 share the same type certificate).

That's correct and they have the 747-800 coming out that will be even more different aircraft. The 747SP for instance is often equipped with very different engines, and a much shorter body. There are also alphabetical suffixes that apply. In general however the zz designates a common package that a company will buy, since even within the y-variants they may purchase engines from a different manufacturer, etc. But since we are talking about the 777. And I forget who, but one engine manufacturer is equipping the longest range model with a thruster capable of generating 100,000 ft/lbs of thrust which was at the time the largest thruster ever made for a commercial AC, so the types of variants still apply. Since a given company has planes that fly from certain length runways or may have to avoid certain terrain around airports, etc they may opt for a different engine package than the next company, or they may even have multiple engine packages for the same plane.

Boeing doesn't really care if an operator moves a part from one aircraft to another. The operator may ask Boeing for confirmation that a part can be swapped from one airframe to another if it isn't clear from the existing approved documentation, but Boeing isn't required to keep a list of what is on a given aircraft. All they can tell you is what was on it when they delivered it to the customer that first took delivery.

And so I posited a potential caveat below, conspiracy or not, it could be a careless book-keeping. The problem with the base theory is whether this is likely a part that would be swapped.

As I described in my post earlier in this thread, wing parts like flaps, slats, spoilers and ailerons each have their own part number and serial number pressed into a data plate that is permanently afixed to those parts.

The assumption is that the serial number would be conserved from the point of last contact to the point it ends up on the island. I believe that this has been done, but hypothetically if it were seriously damaged then you would have to go by structural indicators such as materials used in the part during a given time frame and the manufacturer.

D-checks are planned maintenance and would not ever be required because you lost a flaperon. The aircraft would certainly be grounded for a series of conditional inspections that may also spill over to the rest of the world-wide fleet of that type design if the loss was deemed to be due to a design fault, but you don't go performing invasive inspections of everything on the aircraft just because you lost a part off the wing.

I don't think anyone is saying that, and even I say its extremely unlikely but you could come up with a scenario. For example suppose you had two AC both just inspected and certified fit to fly, you then remove and swap the component from another aircraft which does the same job but was made a year earlier and had a different part supplier for certain components, then you remove the serial numbers and add the AC specific serial number to the part that was not hijacked, banking on the fact that no-one would notice the minute structural differences. Then I added that the part is kicked from the craft mid-flight and append this with a low intensity charges and a hydrolic line shutoff. Theoreritically if such a plane were to loose alot of weight, it could gain altitude and fly at a lower IAS for another hour or so, be well further south than the last ping, and so no-one would be looking for it. If we really wanted to get into conspiracy, the luggage would not be loaded on the craft, but instead an additional fuel tank was added and somewhat higher takeoff weight and speed. Or they may have simply filled incompletely full tanks for that particular flight with more fuel. Then the part shows up on the beach but the numbers don't match and the planes wreckage is never found. This would be something that and anarchist might choose as a form of terrorism, trying to undermine trust in the investigative authorities, regulators and the government.

This is what you call and 'if and if and if and if then argument' and its not something that has good statistical value, but the problem, I must point out, is that in investigations of past events similar complicated scenarios were devised that did not involved equipment sabotage. For example, the Concorde crash is being blamed on debris from a continental flight that was picked up and damaged the Concorde's wing. IOW any scenario that one could come up with is highly unlikely true because of all the complexities. Consider the mid-flight explosion of the 747, a very safe AC, because of an electrical short in the fuel tank.

Because of all potential complexities that might be true, there is a relatively good chance that one of thousands or millions might be the actual explanation, and that the current generalized explanation that a rogue pilot flew the plane until it ran out of fuel crashing in a rectangular box in the Indian ocean might not be true.

Let me make it clear, someone begs the issue could this bizarre investigators wont sign off that this is the planes part because they have some other explanation in mind, then you can with enough caveats create such an scenario.....but neither the premise or the supposition are very likely. I assume they are nearly impossible.

- - - Updated - - -

Just a reminder the ID for AF-447's airbus was involved in a taxi-ing tail-strike incidence months before it disappeared. I assume it had nothing to do with the accident. But a previous ground strike incident for a Japanese 747 was found to be causal for a mid-air loss of control incident that eventually resulted in Mountain crash.

[PakledHostage]

I don't think anyone is saying that, and even I say its extremely unlikely but you could come up with a scenario.

B787_300 did. That part of my response was directed at him/her. And as you don't appear to have read the rest of my post (or my earlier post in this thread) in any detail, I'll save my breath saying anything else.

You couldn't lose a flaperon unless you were on a cuckoo maneuver that would have been near impossible to recover from if you were losing wing parts left and right.

You wouldn't ever expect to loose a whole engine and pylon off the wing of a 747 either, yet it has happened more than once and not always with catastrophic consequences. Aircraft do occasionally suffer in flight failures and it doesn't always make the news when it happens. It does quite often result in some form of airworthiness directive being issued against the type, however, so you'd have a good chance of being able to find evidence of a flaperon design problem in the list if ADs issued against the 777 if there was a problem. You won't find it though because there isn't one.

[PB666]

B787_300 did. That part of my response was directed at him/her. And as you don't appear to have read the rest of my post (or my earlier post in this thread) in any detail, I'll save my breath saying anything else.

Or we could just wait until they find the dense wreckage and are capable of doing a real investigation.

[Glaran K'erman]

Or we could just wait until they find the dense wreckage and are capable of doing a real investigation.

Pretty much, for anybody not physically able to touch the flaperon any statement is still pure speculation, just like we've been doing since it vanished......Even then this is not an interesting piece of evidence except to verify the simple fact the plane didn't entirely disappear off the face of the Earth. Wel'll have to wait for more significant finds to have any further interesting discussion.

[WestAir]

Personally I don't quite believe the theories that the flaperon, or any airfoil, fell off in flight. It may have been dislodged by aerodynamic forces if the aircraft exceeded certain G forces or airspeeds - it may also have been dislodged due to an explosion (though the evidence of such a blast, like on MH 17, may have been quickly apparent in the form of shrapnel damage).

I don't fly 777's nor do I know anything about ETOPS and oceanic flying, but this looks more to me like the Helios or South Dakota Learjet crash than anything else. I must admit that I rarely try to guess the cause of a crash this vague, and I'm rarely right when I do.

It's just so odd to me to see a crew say nothing over the radio, or to the company, then vanish without a trace only to be found a year later washed ashore. It just sounds like no one was at the controls during the most crucial, defining moment of this flight.

Edited August 7, 2015 by WestAir

[softweir]

You are right, there is next to no chance a flaperon "just fell off" during flight. The 777 is incapable of pulling any kind of manoeuvre that would cause that to happen - it could only happen if ground crew were unbelievably sloppy and left it in a state unfit to fly.

Many things make it clear that something was going very wrong in the cockpit. The pilots ceased to communicate with the ground. Somebody turned off the aircraft identification system. The plane took a course that was 90deg away from its planned course, and flew along the boundaries between national air traffic control zones, so none of them assumed responsibility for it. There was no SOS. When it was last spotted (by satellite), it was so far from land that there was no chance of it returning to land. Several experts have gone on the record to say that there was no conceivable combination of system failures that could cause all these things to happen, and that in their opinions everything we know was the result of deliberate action by a person in the cockpit. But what happened we will never know unless the search ships can find and retrieve the flight recorders.

None of this is new, it is all information that has been gone over time and again. It is a virtual certainty that the plane impacted (deliberately or otherwise, under control or otherwise) into the Indian Ocean, and that the flaperon broke free at that moment and has taken this long to be washed ashore.

[PakledHostage]

Or we could just wait until they find the dense wreckage and are capable of doing a real investigation.

Yes, please do. I wasn't the one speculating. I merely attempted to provide additional background for some of the misconceptions in this thread. I have no doubt that the flaperon that was found on Reunion is wreckage from MH370 and that it will contain trace evidence that will shed at least some light, however small, on what happened. We just need to wait for the experts to complete their analysis.

[Nibb31]

Even if we do find the main wreckage, and even if the VFR is exploitable, it won't be of any use because it only records the last 30 minutes of flighy by which time it was likely that everybody on board was already dead. So no, we will never know precisely what happened on board flight MH370.

[Camacha]

Even if we do find the main wreckage, and even if the VFR is exploitable, it won't be of any use because it only records the last 30 minutes of flighy by which time it was likely that everybody on board was already dead. So no, we will never know precisely what happened on board flight MH370.

Just the fact that everyone on board was dead at that time is a major fact that will steer the investigation in a whole new direction. Do not underestimate how important these kinds of things are.

[WestAir]

Even if we do find the main wreckage, and even if the VFR is exploitable, it won't be of any use because it only records the last 30 minutes of flighy by which time it was likely that everybody on board was already dead. So no, we will never know precisely what happened on board flight MH370.

If I'm not mistaken, the 777's digital CVR holds 2 hours of voice communication. In any case, the flight data recorder potentially holds everything from pushback to impact.

[More Boosters]

Even then this is not an interesting piece of evidence except to verify the simple fact the plane didn't entirely disappear off the face of the Earth

Which I believe is an important step forward.

Edited August 8, 2015 by More Boosters

[Nibb31]

If I'm not mistaken, the 777's digital CVR holds 2 hours of voice communication. In any case, the flight data recorder potentially holds everything from pushback to impact.

It flew 8 hours after going silent and disappeared pretty much when it was supposed to run out of fuel. Both the CVR and the FDR are unlikely to provide anything that we don't already know.