So the disappearance of a
Malaysia Airlines jet well into its flight Saturday morning over the
South China Sea has led aviation experts to assume that whatever
happened was quick and left the pilots no time to place a distress call.
It
could take investigators months, if not years, to determine what
happened to the Boeing 777 flying from Malaysia's largest city of Kuala
Lumpur to Beijing.
At this
early stage, we're focusing on the facts that we don't know, said Todd
Curtis, a former safety engineer with Boeing who worked on its 777
wide-body jets and is now director of the Airsafe.com Foundation.
Military
radar indicates that the missing Boeing 777 jet may have turned back
before vanishing, Malaysia's air force chief said Sunday as authorities
were investigating up to four passengers with suspicious
identifications. The revelations add to the mystery surrounding the
final minutes of the flight.
Air force chief Rodzali Daud didn't say
which direction the plane veered when it apparently went off course, or
how long it flew in that direction, Some of the information it had was
also corroborated by civilian radar, he said.
If the information
about the U,turn is accurate, that lessens the probability that the
plane suffered a catastrophic explosion but raises further questions
about why the pilots didn't signal for help. If there was a minor
mechanical failure or even something more serious like the shutdown of
both of the plane's engines the pilots likely would have had time to
radio for help. The lack of a call suggests something very sudden and
very violent happened, said William Waldock, who teaches accident
investigation at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott,
Arizona.
It's possible that there was either an abrupt breakup of
the plane or something that led it into a quick, steep dive. Some
experts even suggested an act of terrorism or a pilot purposely crashing
the jet.
Either you had a catastrophic event that tore the
airplane apart, or you had a criminal act, said Scott Hamilton,
managing director of aviation consultancy Leeham Co. It was so quick
and they didn't radio.
No matter how unlikely a scenario, it's
too early to rule out any possibilities, experts warn. The best clues
will come with the recovery of the flight data and voice recorders and
an examination of the wreckage. U.S. investigators from the FBI, the
National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation
Administration and experts from Boeing are heading to Asia to assist in
the investigation.
A massive international sea search has so far
turned up no trace of the jet, though Vietnamese authorities said late
Sunday that a low-flying plane had spotted a rectangular object in
waters about, 90 kilometers, 56 miles south of Tho Chu island, in the
same area where oil slicks were spotted Saturday. Search teams from
Vietnam and other countries were asked to send boats to the area to
examine the object. Authorities said earlier that they had spotted an
orange object in the area that turned out not to be from the aircraft.
Airplane
crashes typically occur during takeoff and the climb away from an
airport, or while coming in for a landing, as in last year's fatal crash
of an Asiana Airlines jet in San Francisco. Just 9 percent of fatal
accidents happen when a plane is at cruising altitude, according to a
statistical summary of commercial jet airplane accidents done by Boeing.
Capt. John M. Cox, who spent 25
years flying for US Airways and is now CEO of Safety Operating Systems,
said that whatever happened to the Malaysia Airlines jet, it occurred
quickly. The problem had to be big enough, he said, to stop the plane's
transponder from broadcasting its location, although the transponder can
be purposely shut off from the cockpit.
One
of the first indicators of what happened will be the size of the debris
field. If it is large and spread out over tens of miles, then the plane
likely broke apart at a high elevation. That could signal a bomb or a
massive airframe failure. If it is a smaller field, the plane probably
fell from, 35,000 feet and 10,700 meters intact, breaking up upon contact
with the water.
We know the airplane is down. Beyond that, we don t know a whole lot, Cox said.
The
Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records in aviation history. It
first carried passengers in June 1995 and went 18 years without a fatal
accident. That streak came to an end with the July 2013 Asiana crash.
Three of the 307 people aboard that flight died. Saturday s Malaysia
Airlines flight carrying 239 passengers and crew would only be the
second fatal incident for the aircraft type.
It's
one of the most reliable airplanes ever built, said John Goglia, a
former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.
Some of the possible causes for the plane disappearing include.
A CATASTROPHIC STRUCTURAL FAILURE. Most aircraft are made of aluminum
which is susceptible to corrosion over time, especially in areas of high
humidity. But given the plane's long history and impressive safety
record, experts suggest that a failure of the airframe, or the plane's
Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engines, is unlikely.
More of a threat to
the plane's integrity is the constant pressurization and
depressurization of the cabin for takeoff and landing. In April 2011, a
Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 made an emergency landing shortly after
takeoff from Phoenix after the plane's fuselage ruptured, causing a
5,foot and 1.5 meter tear. The plane, with 118 people on board, landed
safely. But such a rupture is less likely in this case. Airlines fly the
777 on longer distances, with many fewer takeoffs and landings, putting
less stress on the airframe.
It's not like this was Southwest
Airlines doing 10 flights a day, Hamilton said. There's nothing to
suggest there would be any fatigue issues.
BAD WEATHER. Planes
are designed to fly through most severe storms. However, in June 2009,
an Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed during a bad
storm over the Atlantic Ocean. Ice built up on the Airbus A330's
airspeed indicators, giving false readings. That, and bad decisions by
the pilots, led the plane into a stall causing it to plummet into the
sea. All 228 passengers and crew aboard died. The pilots never radioed
for help.
In the case of Saturday's Malaysia Airlines flight, all indications show that there were clear skies.
PILOT DISORIENTATION. Curtis said that the pilots could have taken the
plane off autopilot and somehow went off course and didn't realize it
until it was too late. The plane could have flown for another five or
six hours from its point of last contact, putting it up to 3,000 miles 4,800 kilometers away. This is unlikely given that the plane probably
would have been picked up by radar somewhere. But it's too early to
eliminate it as a possibility.
FAILURE OF BOTH ENGINES. In
January 2008, a British Airways 777 crashed about 1,000 feet,
300
meters short of the runway at London's Heathrow Airport. As the plane
was coming in to land, the engines lost thrust because of ice buildup in
the fuel system. There were no fatalities.
Loss of both engines
is possible in this case, but Hamilton said the plane could glide for up
to 20 minutes, giving pilots plenty of time to make an emergency call.
When a US Airways A320 lost both of its engines in January 2009 after
taking off from LaGuardia Airport in New York it was at a much lower
elevation. But Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger still had plenty of
communications with air traffic controllers before ending the
six-minute flight in the Hudson River.
A BOMB. Several planes
have been brought down including Pan Am Flight 103 between London and
New York in December 1988. There was also an Air India flight in June
1985 between Montreal and London and a plane in September 1989 flown by
French airline Union des Transports Aériens which blew up over the
Sahara.
HIJACKING. A traditional hijacking seems unlikely given
that a plane's captors typically land at an airport and have some type
of demand. But a 9/11-like hijacking is possible, with terrorists
forcing the plane into the ocean.
PILOT SUICIDE. There were two large jet crashes in the late 1990s a
SilkAir flight and an EgyptAir flightthat are believed to have been
caused by pilots deliberately crashing the planes. Government crash
investigators never formally declared the crashes suicides but both are
widely acknowledged by crash experts to have been caused by deliberate
pilot actions.
Editor: Julian Ovidiu B, APPF & NEW YORK
