How does a wet cloth really help (scientifically) to survive an airplane crash?

This line made me really angry.

And this 3-line sentence made me angrier. Snipping so readers could't understand my point. And because you were making light of the death of a woman I cared about.

To try to make up for what Ms. Brest had snipped and to make my previous post more clear: If you don't see the connection between my brother's aunt's death because of where she lived but years after she moved downwind from a steel plant and my ridiculing your insistence that it only matters if something is *immediately* dangerous, you're blind, or intentionally blind, or lying, or stupid.

She didn't want to die, and her family didn't want her to die from mesothelioma, at all. Of course it didnt' happen immediately. It never does with asbestos.

Maybe health insurance shouldn't pay expenses of someone who doesn't get sick immediately? Maybe life insurance shouldn't pay when someone dies, but not immediately. Heck, maybe we shouldn't even bury the people who don't die immediately after the cause of their death. Because immediate danger and death is all that matters, it seems, to you. None of these is more stupid than your attitude.

Maybe when you're dying from some long term poison, you'll understand it, but until you do, you're stupid.

Reply to
micky
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OTOH, if we are going to *assume* smoke particles are a life-threatening danger, we don't need to read anything. We've already assumed it.

Reply to
micky

Yeah, getting the carry on out of the overhead never has been shown to slow things down (grin). Even getting it out from under the seat would most likely get in the way of your aisle-mates getting ou. And if you were last (and even the only one) how exactly do you stay out of everyone else's way? Finally, you can't be last because then you are endangering the FAs who can't leave until you do.

Reply to
Kurt Ullman

Always wondered about that word, kudos. Subtle difference. William F Bluckley would be proud.

The average vocabulary is 600 words, so with that limit you have no idea what a 'ducky-wucky' is, eh? [credit to Charles Schulz]

Thanks.

Reply to
RobertMacy

Oh, well. Maybe I'll get a wearable computer, just in case.

Reply to
micky

Again, that defect that occured in one other case, resulted in a cockpit fire at the pilots seat, while the airplane was on the ground. Let's say the same thing happened in MH370. How does that explain the airplane flying for about an hour more under radar contact, making precise turns, lining up with mormal flight paths toward India, and then later, making at least one more course change that took it to Australia? How does it miraculously result in the the transponder and ACARS being lost. And all this just happened to occur in the couple of minutes between being handed off by Malaysian ATC to Vietnam ATC, ie the ideal small, ideal window for deliberate human action?

So then explain how the plane continued to make the many reported course and altitute changes. Including ones an hour and beyone the alleged fire.... It just doesn't fit.

That's not true. There are portable oxygen tanks for the crew to use. Also the passengers have oxygen for long enough to bring the plane down to 10,000.

The autopilot, since it doesn't breathe, would have flown

Sure, on it's original heading, on to Vietnam. But it obviously didn't go there. Are we to believe that the pilots sat there in a burning cockpit and entered a fight path into the autopilot with precise twists and turns that leads to Australia? What does fit that? A deliberate human act.

We may never know the truth of what

And if it did, you'd have the plane still on it's original flight path. It would have stayed on that autopilot route, not headed off to Australia by an indirect, but controlled route.

Or, if the pilots had the fire and turned the plane around while battling the fire and not having time to issue a mayday, then they almost certainly would do that by just spinning a knob to set a rough heading in the opposite direction, ie back to Malaysia. If they did that and were then overcome by smoke, the plane would again have stayed on that heading, not taken a different, controlled route with turns an hour plus later, and winding up in Australia. It would have gone right across Malaysia on that heading, on towards Africa/India in a straight path, until it ran out of fuel.

And again, it doesn't explaing the transponder, ACARS both going off. And going off in the couple on minute window between one ATC and the next.

The show AirDisasters on TV had a story about the SilkAir flight in next door Indonesia from a decade ago where another pilot deliberately killed himself and everyone else. Some parts are exactly the same as MH370, particularly that it too happened between one ATC and the next. The CVR going off was the first odd occurance. It occured just after the captain is heard telling the copilot that he was going to the bathroom. The breaker for the CVR is right there, behind the pilots, inches away from where the pilot went. About 5 mins later, the FDR stops. Why didn't he just turn that off at the same time? Because if you do, the master alarm goes off. So, the likely scenario is that he returned to the cockpit, told the much less experienced copilot to go do something, talk to someone in the cabin, then locked the door behing him.

About a minute after the FDR ends, the plane entered such an extreme dive, that the only way they could duplicate it was to use full power and full nose down input at the controls. The elevator jack screw was found 100% nose down. The pilot was deep in debt, was being hounded to repay stock trading losses, had been reprimanded/demoted 6 months prior for reckless behavior. And it happened on Dec 19. That was the 18th anniversery of an interesting event. The pilot was in the AF back then. He was one of four planes sent on a mission. He had a mechanical problem and had to return. The other planes somehow, following each other I guess, managed to fly into clouds and then into a mountain, killing

3 of his good friends.

I think it far more likely that you're going to find some psychological profile similarities, with the senior MH370 pilot most likely, than that it turns out to be anything mechanical with the airplane. We already know that his family had apparently left him, with some reports being that it was within days of the event. Then there is the link to the opposition party leader, who he apparently knew, being sentenced to jail on some BS charges, etc.

Reply to
trader_4

You're right on that point. But it's even worse, she's lying on top of it. I provided links to Fire Engineering and NFPA articles that specifically say that particles are one of the dangerous and deadly components of smoke inhalation. So she's lying that no one has provided anything. I've posted them several times now:

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No response from her, other than to claim she's apparently killfiled us. It's amazing isn't it? I'll remember this when and if she shows up here again.

Reply to
trader_4

Bingo! You made two good points here.

Reply to
Ronnie

Don't you think that's a little harsh. Even if she did spit on your aunt, she can't help herself.

Reply to
Ronnie

That's a pretty good analogy.

Reply to
Ronnie

Maybe she can do that.

Reply to
Ronnie

There are two big problems here. One is, she's a liar, she's putting on an act. She pretends to not understand, apologizes for "not being clear", but refuses to address the obvious specific points and cites that you and I have made.

The other is, that she's wandered all over the wilderness and just keeps adding more and more layers of confusion. Instead of saying whatever it is she wants to say, she says things like "So, we know our conclusions are correct". What conclusions? Who? There are

50 posts.

Now it's conflating "smoke" with "particle inhalation". Particle inhalation is one component of smoke.

That's a good analogy. Or maybe a better twist would be let's say there was a guide on the lethality of weapons and they included, guns and knives. Following her logic, because fists and baseball bats are not included, "we can safely assume they are just an inconvenience".

And to take it a step further, when someone provides a couple of credible links that say fists and baseball bats can kill, she just ignores it and claims it doesn't exist.

And what really galls me is that she talked about doing things "scientifically" many times.

Reply to
trader_4

That is when she was exposed as a liar. I had been giving her the benefit of the doubt for some time, but that sealed it. Any reasonable person that read what you wrote in it's entirety knows exactly what you meant. Instead she just takes one out of context snippet, and replies only to that.

I vote for lying.

Reply to
trader_4

Per RobertMacy:

That seems awfully low - even so I can't find anything authoritative-sounding to the contrary.

Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

There's no explanation of events that can be proven or disproved until the wreckage is found. The pandemonium that can occur with a cabin fire can explain a lot of things that appear to be inexplicable. Reading about how fast cabin fires spread and how lethal they can be still makes me suspect a cabin fire because a pilot crashing a plane deliberately and silently doesn't make sense. He would *want* to get credit for his actions. Your small, ideal window could be total coincidence. There's just no way to know from the few facts that are available.

If it was a cabin fire, there should be still some evidence recoverable to support that theory. If the FDR and voice recorder unit are found, it may prove your theory - or it may leave us with more clues but no firm answer because the voice recorder overwrites old data every two hours and the plane allegedly crashed 7 hours after takeoff. Critical voice information is most likely gone unless the CVR lost power early on in the flight.

The most difficult part of the suicide scenario is that even Shakespeare's often long-winded dramatic characters got it over relatively quickly. People who survived jumping off the Golden Gate bridge change their minds half way down. Search for the 2003 New Yorker article about Golden Gate Bridge suicide jumpers. It's very enlightening.

I just don't know of a single case where a guy took 7 hours to kill himself. It's an impulsive act that people want to get over with quickly. He left no note, no radio contact, no reasons given. That's pretty unusual for a suicide, especially one who appears as troubled as he's been made out to be. And his demonization by the press and the Malaysian government also bothers me. It's classic scapegoating. There are dozens of scenarios at this stage, but allow me to prefer those that don't point a finger at the crew or the pilot.

Pilot suicide just doesn't make a lot of sense to me whereas a cabin fire in a plane KNOWN to have a serious oxygen hose defect seems far more likely. There's no record or mention I can find of the oxygen hose problem being corrected and I doubt Malaysia has a fully-functioning FAA equivalent to enforce maintenance fixes. I am also always totally suspicious of airlines and governments being quick to blame the pilots. It's an industry tradition used to focus attention away from any possible gross negligence on their part.

"Reported course changes" really bothers me. If they had such detail course information, why where they searching, without luck, huge swaths of ocean? That model plane has not one but several automated systems that can fly the plane and are dedicated to keeping it airborne. There's no main computer to fail, like some "Star Trek" scenario. There are lots of independent systems connected through data buses.

Considering how badly my PC acted up when the space heater accidentally started blowing on it I have no problem believing a fire damaged autopilot could do a lot of things that looked like a human was at the controls. Since autopilots are capable of executing almost every command a pilot could issue, changes in course don't prove there was a person issuing them.

You're forgetting that it was precisely those tanks and their fittings that caused the disastrous oxygen-fed fire on a different plane of the same model. A fire that would not have been survivable had it occurred aloft. A fire that turned the cabin's electrical gear into a mass of fused plastic and wire.

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Can *they* fly the plane if the pilots burned to death in a flash cabin fire? Maybe one of them was poking around with the charred autopilot after the flames were extinguished and those actions caused the alleged course changes. We may never know. One thing's for certain: without the wreckage there's never likely to be conclusive proof about what happened to that airplane, so we're just spinning our wheels.

Just like you can't testify to the operation of someone's mind in court, you can't determine if the pilot was suicidal or homicidal by counting the number of course changes a plane *allegedly* made after radio contact was lost. If there was a fire, the pilots would have tried to deactivate cockpit components by pulling the electrical busses. That *easily* explains why cockpit based systems failed first and other, more remote systems continued to function. If it was the pilot's emergency oxygen supply that caused the fire, then their chances for prolonged survival amidst toxic fumes are very poor.

Without the data and voice recorders or forensic evidence from the wreckage, it's all supposition. I base mine on a previous very serious oxygen fed cabin fire in an identical model and on Payne Stewart's flight to nowhere with a plane full of dead passengers. Yes, that plane flew in a straight line after all the passengers and pilot died from a pressurization malfunction, but the 777 has a far more sophisticated autopilot.

If the Apollo oxygen-fed (aka a "blowtorch") fire killed everyone in the capsule in 17 seconds, a fire like that doesn't leave much time to call the ATC tower and tell them about an event they couldn't do anything about anyway from 100's of miles away. The pilot's primary duty at that point is to keep the plane flying, not to alert ATC. Pilots have a mantra for setting priorities in an emergency: aviate, navigate, communicate.

The worst part is that they may never find the wreck. It took two YEARS to find the AirFrance wreck and they basically knew where it went down. But if they do find MH370, we may see which one of us is the better guesser, because that's all we can do. Guess. There just isn't enough information available to reach any valid conclusions other than the plane is lost.

Reply to
Robert Green

Complicating are economic pressures: Plane failed == extremely costly liability. Pilot Error == no liability.

And from experience having a pilot friend accused of fuel exhaustion when it was a casting flaw in the carburator suddenly appearing where he was 'guilty until proven innocent'; you'll see more Pilot Errors causing crashes than mechanical failures.

Reply to
RobertMacy

No, but you can put together various scenarios and how well they fit the known facts, if at all.

The pandemonium that can occur with a cabin fire can

And why not? It's happend at least three times before. EgyptAir, SilkAir, Mozambique.

Sigh... We've been through this. None of the other three wanted to get credit.

Sure it could be. But again, when you look at it from probabilites, the probability of it occuring in that brief window that's ideal for a plane to deliberately go missing is very small. And that exact thing happened in the SilkAir suicide crash in Indonesia, it ocurred between ATCs.

Who knows how and when a suicidal pilot is going to do it? If he wanted it become the big world unsolved mystery that it is, taking it to some remote location is perfectly reasonable. Also, you're assuming the suicide pilot was still conscious and alive all the time. He could have made the final setting for Aurstralia, then gotten drunk and taken a bottle of pills.

I don't know how you're starting the clock. If a guy living in PA wants to jump of the GW Bridge, when do you start the clock? When he got in the car to drive 200 miles? When he gets to the bridge?

Howquickly did the 911 hijackers get it over with?

He left no

It's exactly what you had in the other 3 crashes. And in the SilkAir the pilot opened the CVR breaker, then later the FDR breaker to

*hide* what he was doing.

What demonizing? All they've reported was the facts. Most significant so far is that his family had recently left him. And that he knew the former deputy PM that was sentenced to jail on trumped up charges. And that one of his friends had said he was unfit to fly, while another one said he was OK. I think there is probably a lot more we haven't heard in that area.

Why not, it's been done 3 times before in the last 15 years or so.

whereas a cabin fire in

Again the problem with the cockpit fire is it doesn't fit what we know in any way, shape or form. First this sudden fire had to occur in the few minutes between ATC, which is the ideal window for a plane to disappear. Next, how does it result in ACARS and transponders going off? Again, exactly what you need to go off to go missing. And it doesn't fit at all with the plane making a zig-zag turn over the Straits, aligning with flight paths toward India, an HOUR after said fire. And then making at least one more controlled turn to the left later, to Australia.

I am also always totally suspicious of airlines

Except that doesn't happen. I've never seen the NTSB being quick to blame pilots. They take no position until the investigation is complete. And even in this case, no one is blaming the pilots. All they said is that the behavior of the plane is consistent with human intervention. And if you just look at the real data, that's absolutely true.

Apparently because they didn't correctly analyze the data in the first few days. But soon after, they brought in NTSB, FAA, radar manufacturer, etc. They have seen and vetted the data. Are they all lying? Part of a coverup? And then after they had figured out it went into the Indian Ocean, Inmarsat eventually figured out the final course.

Sure and not one of those explains the mysterious course, altitude changes, etc that went on in the hour+ after the alleged point of a fire. That's precisely the point. That the plane was flying normally, on a totally new course, with turns in it, under control. A fire is totally inconsistent with that. Deliberate human action is.

I have a lot of problems believing it. Those systems are designed to be as failsafe as possible. If the autopilot is screwed up, it's almost certainly going to generate a warning and disconnect itself, not fly the plane to Australia. In fact, in the AirFrance/Brazil crash that's exactly what the AP did. I can show you 3 recent suicides. Show us one where the autopilot ever did what this plane did.

No, but someone had to reprogram the autopilot to do what it did. A pilot sitting in a burning cockpit, entering waypoints into the autopilot, makes sense to you? As I said before, if there was such a fire, I can see the pilot quickly spinning the autoheading knob to do about a 180, ie head back towards land. But enter waypoints for a zig zag over the Straits an hour later? Then other waypoints to get to Australia?

No, these tanks are in addition to the oxygen system for the crew. They are so other crew members, eg flight attendents can use them and still move around the cabin.

A fire that would not have been survivable had it occurred aloft. A

And if a fire like that happened, the plane would have gone down off Kota Bahru. It would not be in Australia.

Maybe one of them was poking around with the charred autopilot after

If you had such an extensive fire as shown in that cockpit, the plane would be in the ocean. And if they were poking around at the burned up autopilot, it's inconceivable that they managed to make that nice controlled zig zag. If the plane was on some wild, erratic course then it would be more consistent with damage to the various control systems.

We may never know. One thing's for certain: without the wreckage

Even with it there may not be conclusive proof of anything.

No, but like the investigators are pointing to, everything we know about the planes behavior is consistent with human action.

1 - Initiating event occurs exactly between ATC handoffs 2 - Transponders, ACARS, go off 3 - No more VHF communication 4 - Various altitude changes as it flew 5 - Zig zag aligning with flight paths toward India 6 - Another turn even later to the left, to Australia. 7 - Having been at lower altitudes while crossing back over Malaysia, probably to avoid radar, it was back at cruising altitude for the rest of the next 7 hours. 8 - If you had a fire, the plane would have stayed below 10,000

And it's behavior is also inconsistent with every aircraft fire I've even heard of.

If there was a fire, the pilots would have tried to deactivate

That's possible, if it was indeed a cockpit fire and they believed the source was electrical.

That *easily* explains

Except the cockpit systems didn't fail. If the cockpit burned up, the autopilot wouldn't be flying the plane, making turns, etc all the way to australia.

If it was the pilot's emergency oxygen supply that

That's fine, it's just that what comes after that doesn't fit, while deliberate human action fits perfectly.

and on Payne Stewart's flight to nowhere

Which again doesn't fit. In that case the plane continued on it's original autopilot course. MH370 did not. It made specific, tight turns, and went off to Australia.

Yes, that plane flew in a straight

So the sophisticated autopilot is just going to decide to fly a waypoint route that no one ever entered and go to Australia? If the autopilot detects that it's screwed, it disconnects. It's like thinking that in a house fire, instead of my PC going off, it's going to decide to open up google maps and look for australia.

If the scenario you spelled out was occuring, there was no immediate need to aviate. The plane was on autopilot. Dealing with the fire would be the most critical. And you keep saying that mantra, but I don't think you really understand it. Part of aviating is making sure you don't fly into another plane, isn't it? You do that by communicating with ATC, particulalry when you've just made a 180 at night.

I'm not guessing. I'm just assigning probabilites to the scenarios given the reported facts. Everything fits human action. Almost nothing fits a fire. I showed you 3 suicide crashes in the last 15 years. It fits perfectly. Senior pilot waits until they are coming up on ATC handoff. He sends low experience copilot into the cabin on a wild goose chase. He locks the door, turns off transponders, ACARS. Then he manually flies the plane for awhile, then enters waypoints in the autopilot for final destination. Maybe takes bottle of pills. It fits every data point. Can anyone prove it? No. But it's the scenario with the highest probability. Or some hijacker could have gotten in and forced them to do similar.

Show us a fire case where the plane did anything like this. Show us a case in the last 50 years where there was a fire on board and there was no mayday, transponders go dead, ACARS goes dead, etc, and then the plane continues on to a new destination, flying in a controlled fashion, for 8 hours. I don't know of a single one.

Reply to
trader_4

That's incorrect. The liability can be the same for either case. Who pays it would be different. But you're not trying to tell us that in all the cases of pilot error, the airlines and/or their insurance companies didn't pay out costly claims?

So you're saying the NTSB doesn't conduct full and fair investigations? I've yet to see or hear of a case where it looked like they came to a deliberate wrong conclusion blaming the pilots. The reason more pilot errors cause crashes is because it's more likely for a pilot to make a mistake than it is for a mechanical failure to bring a plane down. Often, it's a combination. Many times some minor mechanical problem that didn't directly affect the ability of the plane to fly, results in the crew then making some big mistakes that then result in the crash too.

Reply to
trader_4

They don't LET you carry on water bottles! I've had FULL unopened ones confiscated! And try getting water from the flight attendant in the middle of a crisis.

HB

Reply to
Higgs Boson

They don't LET you carry on water bottles. I've had FULL unopened ones confiscated. And try getting ewater from a flight attendant in the middle of a crisis!

HB

Reply to
Higgs Boson

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