Malaysia Flight 370: The 10 big questions
updated 5:02 PM EDT, Sun March 16, 2014
The search for Flight 370 continues
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Beijing-bound aircraft disappeared more than a week ago with 239 people on board
- Pilots' homes searched: What do we know?
- What scenarios are still being considered about the missing plane?
- Aircraft communications offer clues
Here are 10 questions surrounding what we know and what we don't know:
1. What do we know about the pilots?
The pilot, Capt. Zaharie
Ahmad Shah, 53, has 18,365 flying hours. He joined the airline in 1981.
For a veteran 777 pilot with Shah's background, 18,000-plus total career
hours in the air is normal.
Who were the men who flew Flight 370?
Police search pilot's home
Shah built a flight
simulator in his home. It's somewhat common among the worldwide
community of aviation enthusiasts to use online flight simulator
programs to replicate various situations. Simulators allow users to
virtually experience scenarios in various aircraft.
Programs can simulate
flight routes, landings and takeoffs from actual airports, but pilots
say they cannot replace the experience gained from real flying.
Shah is married and has
three children, the youngest of whom is in her 20s and lives with her
parents. He and his wife have one grandchild.
First Officer Fariq Ab
Hamid, 27, joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007. He has 2,763 flying hours
and was transitioning from flight simulator training to the Boeing
777-200ER.
The amount of flight time
Hamid has could be a bit low for a 777 pilot flying for an American
airline, experts said. But the system of pilot advancement is often
faster among airlines in smaller nations. Some airlines in these
countries offer cadet programs that find talented and promising young
pilot candidates and offer them intensive, specialized training, experts
say.
Hamid lives with his
parents and some of his four siblings, according to a neighbor. A source
close to the investigation told CNN that Malaysian police searched
Shah's and Hamid's homes Saturday.
2. What do we know about communications to and from the plane?
Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
More countries join Flight 370 search
Timeline: Takeoff to satellite contacts
Key clues about the
plane have come from developments surrounding data and voice
communications. The plane is equipped with a standard voice
communication radio and two other kinds of communication technology:
transponders and the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting
System, known by the acronym ACARS.
The last known voice communication from the 777's cockpit was these words: "All right, good night."
We don't know whose
voice spoke the words, but they were uttered as the plane neared
Vietnamese air traffic control airspace at about the same time the
transponder was shut off, according to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib
Razak.
Because of the vital
information a transponder provides, it would be highly unlikely for a
pilot to shut it off. Transponders are considered reliable, but they
occasionally fail, which is why there is a backup transponder.
One way to hide a
plane's flight information from air traffic controllers would be to turn
off the transponder. Experts give conflicting opinions about what the
transponder shutoff could mean: One theory points to someone -- perhaps a
hijacker -- wanting to hide the plane before changing course; another
theory is the transponder could have stopped transmitting because of a
catastrophic power failure.
A series of "handshakes"
-- or electronic connections -- from the plane's ACARS was transmitted
to satellites for four to five hours after the transponder stopped
sending signals, a senior U.S. official told CNN.
ACARS includes air
traffic service communications. The automated system generally sends
routine messages to the airline, such as when the aircraft lifts off or
lands and how much fuel it may have, he said. It can also be used to
communicate text messages, for instance when the aircraft encounters
turbulence. ACARS typically beams down engine parameters, temperatures,
the amount of fuel burned and any maintenance discrepancies.
According to Malaysia
Airlines, all of its aircraft are equipped with ACARS. "Nevertheless,
there were no distress calls, and no information was relayed," the
airline said.
The aircraft's ACARS was
sending pings more than five hours after the transponder last emitted a
signal, an aviation industry source told CNN on Friday.
These pings don't
provide information about speed or altitude, but they do indicate the
plane was intact for that long, since an aircraft has to be powered and
have structural integrity for the ACARS to operate, the source said.
The pings were detected
by satellites and were used, with radar and other data, to calculate
where the plane might have traveled. A U.S. official, who spoke to
reporters on condition of anonymity, said a satellite recorded
electronic "handshakes" with the 777 that were later analyzed.
The information gleaned
from this analysis -- which the U.S. official described as
"unprecedented" -- supports the conclusion that the aircraft turned
toward the west, away from the Gulf of Thailand and toward the Indian
Ocean. Referring to the five- to six-hour range in which the plane may
have flown after its transponder cut off, the same official said, "We
believe we have the time of the loss of the airplane within an hour."
But on Saturday,
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib said that "based on new satellite
communication, we can say with a high degree of certainty that ... ACARS
was disabled just before the aircraft reached the east coast of
peninsular Malaysia."
3. Where could the plane be? What could have happened to it?
The mystery of Malaysia Air 370
Will mystery of Flight 370 be solved?
The evidence is growing that the plane flew for hours after losing contact with air traffic control.
Malaysia's aviation
authorities, with agreement from U.S. and British government experts,
concluded the plane's last communication with the satellite was in one
of two possible corridors. One stretches from the border of Kazakhstan
and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand; the other from Indonesia to the
southern Indian Ocean.
The latest data and
calculations provided by Malaysian officials show an arc of places the
aircraft could have traveled. Because the northern reaches of the arc
include some tightly guarded airspace over India, Pakistan and U.S.
installations in Afghanistan, U.S. authorities believe it more likely
the aircraft crashed south of India into waters outside the reach of
radar, one U.S. official said.
Had it flown farther north, it would likely have been detected by radar, the official said.
A classified analysis of
electronic and satellite data suggests Flight 370 likely crashed either
in the Bay of Bengal or elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, CNN learned
Friday.
The analysis, conducted
by the United States and Malaysian governments, used radar data and
satellite pings to calculate that the plane diverted to the west, across
the Malay Peninsula, and then either flew in a northwest direction
toward the Bay of Bengal or southwest into another part of the Indian
Ocean. Malaysian military radar registered dramatic changes for Flight
370 in altitude and it cut an erratic path across Malaysia in what are
some of the last known readings of its location, according to a senior
U.S. official.
The same official, who
is familiar with analysis of the data and declined to be identified
because of the sensitive nature of the information, cautioned that this
assessment is not definitive. The readings may not be wholly reliable
because of the distance of the plane from the radars that detected it,
the official said.
4. Couldn't a pilot just 'fly under the radar'?
Theoretically, yes. As a
tool intended to keep track of what's going on in the sky, radar
doesn't acquire data all the way to the ground.
Military pilots are
trained to take advantage of this when they need to go undetected. But
their aircraft are also equipped with terrain-evading radar and other
features intended to help fighter and helicopter pilots hug the ground,
said aviation consultant Keith Wolzinger of the Spectrum Group.
Understandably, Boeing doesn't offer those features on its commercial
airliners.
"Airline pilots are not trained for radar avoidance," said Wolzinger, himself a former 777 pilot. "We like to be on radar."
Also, unlike military
craft, civilian airliners don't have gear to detect when they've been
spotted on radar. So any efforts to fly undetected would be rudimentary.
5. Could the plane have landed somewhere?
One theory U.S.
officials are considering, according to a Wall Street Journal report, is
that someone might have taken the plane to be used for some other
purpose later. So it's theoretically possible that the plane could have
landed at a remote, hidden airstrip.
There are some large
holes in that theory. The 777 is a big plane. It requires, at minimum,
nearly a mile to land. And, says CNN aviation correspondent Richard
Quest, there's the matter of getting it someplace without setting off
alarm bells.
"You can't just fly a
777 and not have a radar trace," he said. One senior U.S. official,
citing information Malaysia has shared with the United States, told CNN
that "there is probably a significant likelihood" that the aircraft is
on the floor of the Indian Ocean.
6. How likely is hijacking or terrorism in this situation?
Expert: My money is on hijacking
The CIA and FBI aren't
ruling it out, but authorities aren't ruling out much at this point.
It's highly suspicious that the plane seems to have turned around. Those
suspicions are further fueled by the loss of communications with the
plane, considering the aircraft had "redundant electrical systems" that
would have had to be disabled.
Robert Francis, former
vice chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said his
first thought upon hearing the circumstances of the flight's mysterious
disappearance was that it blew up, but even an explosion would not be
proof of terrorism.
The two men who used
stolen passports to board the plane were identified by Interpol as
Iranians Pouri Nourmohammadi, 18, and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, 29.
Malaysian investigators say neither of them has any apparent connection
to terrorist organizations.
Stolen passports don't
necessarily indicate terrorism. In fact, passengers flew without having
their travel documents checked against Interpol's lost-and-stolen
passport database more than a billion times in 2013, according to the
international police organization. Among the reasons someone might use a
stolen passport: to emigrate to another country, to export goods
without paying taxes or to smuggle stolen goods, people, drugs or
weapons.
7. Could mechanical failure explain it?
Flight 370: Mechanical or sabotage?
It's one of the
possibilities, but less so since Najib said on Saturday that the plane's
movements "are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the
plane."
The absence of a debris
field could suggest that the pilot might have made an emergency landing
on water and the plane then sank intact, but there was no distress
signal.
However, aviation
consultant Kit Darby has said there might have been a power failure, and
during the hour when he had backup power, the pilot was attempting to
return to "the airports and a region he knows." There's also the
possibility that the tail or a wing tore from the fuselage. This
particular Boeing had suffered a clipped wingtip in the past, but Boeing
repaired it.
Another possibility is
that a window or door failed, which would cause the temperature inside
the plane to drop to 60 degrees below zero, creating a freezing fog and
giving crew members only seconds to don oxygen masks before becoming
disoriented and then incapacitated.
8. What other theories and speculation have been offered?
Conspiracy theories on missing flight
Lithium batteries:
Investigators are looking into the possibility that lithium batteries,
which have been blamed in previous crashes, played a role in the
disappearance, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence and
law-enforcement developments. The officials spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
If lithium batteries
were being carried in the cargo hold, they could have causes a
crash-inducing fire. But that would not explain other anomalies, such as
why the plane appears to have turned west. A pilot's likely first
instinct if lithium batteries were smoldering would have been to turn
around and return to the airport of origin -- not to fly an additional
five hours, said Arthur Rosenberg, an aviation expert who is a pilot,
engineer and partner in the New York-based law firm Soberman &
Rosenberg.
Meteor:
A meteor was reported in the area around the time Flight 370 took off,
but this seems to be atop a list of strange theories popping up in the
absence of empirical data explaining the plane's disappearance. Given
what little is known about the flight path, and the astronomical odds
against such an event, a meteor strike seems like an ultralong-shot
explanation.
9. What about reports that passengers' cell phones continued operating after the flight's disappearance?
When phones are disabled
or turned off -- which would presumably happen after a plane crash --
calls to those cell phones go directly to voice mail. Friends and loved
ones of the missing passengers, however, reported ringing when they
called. Technology industry analyst Jeff Kagan says a call would connect
first to a network before trying to find the end user, and the ringing
sound callers hear masks the silence they would otherwise hear while
waiting for the connection to be made.
"If it doesn't find the
phone after a few minutes, after a few rings, then typically, it
disconnects, and that's what's happening," he said.
10. Is this the first time a plane has vanished?
No. In 2009, Air France
Flight 447 crashed in the South Atlantic between Rio de Janeiro and
Paris during turbulent weather conditions. It took four searches and
almost two years before the bulk of the wreckage and majority of bodies
were recovered. The voice and data recorders weren't found on the ocean
floor until May 2011.
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