Mystery of MH370

It has been over 80 hours of Search & Rescue.

yet there were many unanswered questions.

Q: Why was there no distress signal?

 

Air traffic controllers in Subang, outside Kuala Lumpur, did not receive a distress signal from flight MH370.

Neither the pilot nor his co-pilot made any attempt to indicate there was a problem.

The jet could be tracked one second, and was gone the next.

A leading aviation safety expert said he found it "extraordinary" that there is no record of a distress call.

 

Q: Why hasn’t the plane, or wreckage been found?

 
There are many reasons for this, and the most grim scenario is that the plane suffered a high-altitude catastrophic disaster, either a mechanical failure or a strong explosion. This would have caused the debris to have been spread over a wide area and swept out by the currents before the search and rescue (SAR) efforts were started.

Another possible reason is that the plane deviated from its flight path and ended up hundreds of miles away from the current search area.

 

Q: What was the last known point of contact?

 
120 nautical miles east off Kota Bahru, 40 minutes into the flight at 1.30am.

 

Q: Did the flight enter Vietnam air space and if it did, did it establish contact with the Vietnamese Air Control?

 
A pilot who was flying in the vicinity of flight MH370 said he heard mumbling and interference when he tried to contact the missing plane.
The pilot, who asked to remain anonymous, told the New Straits Times that his plane, which was bound for Narita, Japan, was able to make contact using an emergency frequency.
"We managed to establish contact with MH370 just after 1.30am and asked them if they have transferred into Vietnamese airspace," he said.
"The voice on the other side could have been either Captain Zaharie (Ahmad Shah, 53,) or Fariq (Abdul Hamid, 27), but I was sure it was the copilot
“There were a lot of interference ... static ... but I heard mumbling from the other end.

 

Q: How does radar work and how could a plane suddenly disappear from radar at 35,000 ft

 
Radar works by sending out radio waves or microwaves, and when it hits an object, and the object bounces back a small amount of the energy back to the transmitter. Its how blind bats find their way around. By compiling back the waves, and calculating the time it took for the waves to come back, the distance, height speed and other details of an object can be extrapolated.

In the case of MH370, it mysteriously went off from radar at about 1.30am. The only two possibilities that seem could make the plane disappear from in an instant is if it disintegrated or if it went into a steep nosedive.

 

Q: Does the 777-200ER have an ACARS system on board? If yes, where is the data?

 
Yes it does, but we do not know if the MH370 had its system activated or if Malaysia Airlines had it set up to be used on its aircraft. ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) if activated automatically sends short messages to ground controllers, reporting the position and critical data like speed and altitude of the plane. In the event of a disaster, the ACARS system would have continued to relay data back to the ground controller until a point when it became disabled.

Let's pray for them.....