Malaysia Airlines 777 - Missing

[MrWings]

Experts are speculating based on second or third hand information. From what we've seen, especially from the Malaysian government, this info is suspect. That makes any speculation rather worthless.

While we are often critical of the closed door nature of TSB and NTSB accident investigations where information is tough to come by until the final report, I think that is looking like a wise policy now.

[Diadem]

Was this a bad April Fools joke (aired yesterday), or are they bigger idiots than we all thought?

The "instructor" also explained that if the plane ran out of fuel, it would have dropped tail-first into the ocean...

[Mig29]

I don't know guys....it's just seems crazy that in today's day and age no one has spotted this plane.

The tinfoil is "ON" and one of the theories is that is "diverted" to Diego Garcia.....rumors on the net are speculating why there were no departures from Diego Garcia for the next 72hrs on March 8th?????????

[AirFrame]

That sounds like one of those "facts" that someone just states without foundation, and everyone takes to be true without thinking about it. How do we know there were no departures from DG for 72 hours after it went missing? How often does DG have no departures for a 72 hour period? Did something unusual, but unrelated, happen at DG to close it for 72 hours?

All too often people see coincidence and mistake it for conspiracy.

[ehbuddy]

CNN..........what a joke they are.

They bring in Captain Les Abend who is a top notch pilot and knows the aircraft like he was born in it.............yet they ignore Les and listen to that loud mouthed Richard Quest who is just a vocal walking opinion center.

[CLguy]

Another theory since everyone seems to have forgot about the poor local Maldivian Islanders who reported seeing a large jet with red stripes flying low level past their island.

http://www.trueactivist.com/gab_gallery ... sappeared/

[arctic_slim]

Interesting theory. But since no pieces of the plane have been found it will be just that, another theory to add to the dozen theories out there already.

[Diadem]

Another theory since everyone seems to have forgot about the poor local Maldivian Islanders who reported seeing a large jet with red stripes flying low level past their island.

http://www.trueactivist.com/gab_gallery ... sappeared/

This video isn't reliable at all; the narrator says that "Osama bin Laden's henchmen were flying airplanes into the World Trade Center towers on 9/11". Everyone knows that Mossad was actually responsible for that, with the help of the Bilderberg Group and the New World Order. How can we trust anyone who takes the government's account of events at face value? /sarcasm

[GyvAir]

News just coming out that a Chinese ship has picked up a recorder beacon signal in the search area. Source of signal not yet confirmed.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia-a ... -1.2599494

[Illya Kuryakin]

Shot down. Coverup in process. At least in my book.
Illya

[GyvAir]

So, if it turns out that the sound picked up by the Chinese searchers is in fact from a ULB belonging to MH370 and they found it in the manner the media is implying (sticking a hand held hydrophone into the water from an inflatable boat), what did they know, for them to chose to stop in that particular spot out of all of the hundreds of thousands of square miles in the defined search area to stick the hydrophone in the water?

[youtube]http://youtu.be/gUcXNobO6cU?t=1m25s[/youtube]

[Pavese]

So, if it turns out that the sound picked up by the Chinese searchers is in fact from a ULB belonging to MH370 and they found it in the manner the media is implying (sticking a hand held hydrophone into the water from an inflatable boat), what did they know, for them to chose to stop in that particular spot out of all of the hundreds of thousands of square miles in the defined search area to stick the hydrophone in the water?

[youtube]http://youtu.be/gUcXNobO6cU?t=1m25s[/youtube]

WARNING: FRIVOLOUS SPECULATION & IMAGINATION ALERT!


True or false, there is just so much fodder in this story for mystery novel writers, it's truly a bonanza. Coming up with pings which they say 3 people heard (at 37.5 kHz, pretty high for the human ear, especially as you age) but didn't record (!?!) seems out there a ways.....or at least not following good practice.........

On the China theme there are so many ways they (or any of the searching countries) could build up an alibi for nefarious activities (like checking out their neighbor's sonar capability) if they wanted to go to the trouble, not saying they did but how many times have you read a book where the author lead you by the nose feeding you clues and false clues?

Our far eastern friends (or anyone else, like our friends in Diego Garcia) could have arranged for the aircraft to disappear (use your imagination...telemetry spoofing, knock out gas or whatever they use in the movies and fly it to Dr. No's secret lair where the passengers are imprisoned, it all works in a novel) then laid a trail of Inmarsat data using a Learjet and appropriate com hardware then shut it off in the middle of nowhere and disappear back to where they came from.

Throw in a few fuzzy satellite (or Photoshop) images, a few unidentified flotsam reports from an aircraft, a fireball in the sky, a ping report and some radar data and you could make something the size of......an airliner disappear.

Wonder what kind of money there is in mystery novel writing?

D

[ikarus]

Malaysia MH370: Who has means & motive to take a plane full of people?
Beginning his working life in the aviation industry and trained by the BBC, Tony Gosling is a British land rights activist, historian & investigative radio journalist.
http://rt.com/op-edge/lost-airliner-mal ... china-365/

Enough in the way of misstatements, contradictions and other evidence has emerged from the developing story of ‘lost’ Malaysian Airlines flight 370 to form a case for its disappearance being orchestrated by the West's Military Industrial Complex.

The initial possibility that the airliner ‘crashed into the sea and disappeared’ is fading away. The 'Bermuda Triangle' scenario of bewildering disappearances will not wash in the modern world.

With the benefit of hindsight, that Caribbean 'mystery' popularized in the 1970s now looks to have been rolled out to a credulous press and public as a convenient cover story for skullduggery in CIA and related drug-running operations by sea and air between Florida markets and South American cocaine producers.
Military secrets are not for civilian TV news

The Malaysian government does not have the most sophisticated satellite and radar surveillance systems and it took several days for them to admit that they had indeed tracked MH370 back in a westerly direction across the Malay Peninsula.

From that last point of contact on, the Malaysian authorities have been entirely reliant on 'help' from countries with powerful military radar systems and, more importantly, the top of the technocratic food chain, satellites.

And there we are faced with a dilemma. Does the military alliance that controls these systems see Malaysia as an ally? Are they willing to reveal the peacetime capabilities of their systems to a foreign power? Ultimately do they have the technical capability to 'hack' an airliner's controls and disable avionics, even steer the plane rendering the pilot? If they can do that do they want to release that information to the world?

There seem to be two main theories emerging as to why, and by far the simplest is the demonstrated by hacker Hugo Teso who is also a commercial pilot. At the 'Hack in the Box' conference in April 2013, Teso demonstrated the ability to change speed, altitude and direction of a virtual airplane by sending radio signals to its flight-management system. He has also developed an Android app which demonstrates the vulnerability of modern computer-controlled airliners and business jets called PlaneSploit.

The US has several airbases around the Indian Ocean and South China Sea from which they operate the most advanced electronic warfare gadgetry in the world. Both from specialist warships and electronic warfare pods and installations on a variety of aircraft from the lumbering AWACS battle control planes to fighter jets.


Former scientific adviser to the UK Home Office Dr. Sally Leivesley was quoted by London’s Sunday Express on March 16 as saying, “hackers could change the plane’s speed, altitude and direction by sending radio signals to its flight management system. It could then be landed or made to crash by remote control.” She floated the possibility that this could be the world’s first cyber-hijack.

But Malaysia is a relatively low-tech country and not in a position to know for sure whether this happened or not. Codes of humility in the region also mitigate against the Malaysian authorities being prepared to admit they are out of their depth and lose face.

The second is that MH370’s pilot was simply called by the military on a frequency not being recorded by Air Traffic Control and told something along the lines of, “Vietnamese and other unspecified airspace is suddenly unsafe to fly in due to a military incident so please change frequency and follow instructions to a distant airstrip where we can put you down safely." The was followed by something like, "Please do not inform passengers as this may alarm them.” The pilot would then be likely to simply comply and passengers may never know that anything was wrong. So if one of these is the means, what about the motive?

The geopolitics of Malaysia & China

With a constant stream of invasions and interventions and by constantly ratcheting up the arms race ever since the Second World War the USA has marked itself out, as US writer William Blum puts it, as the ‘Rogue State’ of the modern era. As a once great superpower's economy disintegrates, US behavior in world affairs with illegal 'adventures' into Iraq, Libya etc. is becoming shameless. They believe with a bit of 'soft power' news management to their domestic populations they can get away with anything.

Europe has been almost fully co-opted under US domination over decades by multinational corporations, IMF loans and the NATO military alliance. They appear to be forming a single market under the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) too now, which will weld EU and the Euro Currency to the Dollar in what will effectively be one country.

Both China and Malaysia are independently strong and that rankles in Washington. Malaysia refuses to do what it is told by the IMF and China is staunchly independent of the US 'vision' for the world in a way that has proved impossible for nations like Britain or, most recently, Ukraine to be.

One week after MH370 disappeared, China refused to back a US resolution at the UN Security Council condemning the Russian referendum in Crimea. Post-coup NATO is already signing co-operation deals with Kiev’s junta, the new ‘allies’ of the ‘free’ West, who have placed neo-Nazis in many of the nation’s key security and policing posts.

The deaths of 80 or so police and protesters in Kiev may simply have been an extension of NATO’s 1970s and 1980s ‘Operation Gladio’. In this top secret operation, exposed in a 1992 BBC Timewatch series, NATO armed fascist ‘irregulars’ took the role of terrorists and murdered countless innocent European civilians. The atrocities were blamed on leftist groups and ultimately the Soviet Union and Gladio was exposed by parliamentary enquiries in Italy, Belgium and Switzerland. Like the February 22 coup in Kiev, similar killing of protesters and police/army before the coup attempt happened in Venezuela and, more recently, Syria.

In this context the kidnapping of 239 passengers and crew could be just another example of NATO Intelligence’s disregard for human life, seeing people as pawns in a much more important geopolitical ‘game’.

The NATO countries’ answer to economic disaster, just like in the run-up to World Wars I and II, is aggression and war. As we saw with the leaked phone call in Turkey last week they are even prepared to stage events to justify an attack on an innocent neighbor. The fact that we are now in the nuclear age seems to have passed them by, but one imagines they believe, as US Strategic Air Command General Curtis LeMay said after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 that, "...at any point the Soviet Union could have been obliterated without more than expectable losses on our side."

Both China and Malaysia have been set against each other to a certain extent in a 'blame game' and severely humiliated over the loss of MH370. Some may see this as ‘payback time’ for making bad decisions at the UNSC, suiting the all-powerful IMF as well as their affiliated, if twisted, and increasingly belligerent NATO military alliance very well.
Psychological warfare – news management

First on Thursday, March 13, came Rolls Royce’s surprise announcement that the Boeing 777’s two Trent engines had been running for five or so hours after the plane was ‘lost’. Then on Tuesday, March 18, came reports from a small Maldives newspaper 'Haveeru' that half a dozen islanders had first heard and then seen a ‘jumbo jet’ flying very low. To quote the paper: “They said that it was a white aircraft, with red stripes across it – which is what the Malaysia Airlines flights typically look like, and it was heading in a southerly direction.”

Both these stories were greeted in the international press by an avalanche of denials from government, military and other ‘expert’ sources, none of whom could possibly have known whether or not the Rolls Royce or the Maldives Islanders were correct or not. This massive and instantaneous reaction is the clear signature of an Information Operations campaign to stop publication and broadcasting of those stories to the world’s public and it largely worked.

In the case of Rolls Royce, a retraction was even extracted from the engine manufacturers which the next day was forgotten, because the evidence Rolls Royce had was so robust and watertight. Far fewer individuals are killed, so the military argue, by the use of lies to win over a population than with guns, bombs and tanks. Quite right they are too.

But what happens when journalists who are better at telling the truth than they are at lying are surreptitiously assassinated, as is widely believed to be the case with Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings? He had told the truth about US Afghan General Stanley McChrystal and got him sacked from the top post.

Hastings was about to expose the new head of the CIA director John Brennan who is an advocate for using US Army Information Operations (I-Ops) Psychological Warfare cells against domestic US journalists and politicians. It’s widely believed, including by former White House cyber-security adviser Richard Clarke said that Michael’s Mercedes was ‘consistent with a car cyber attack’, or hacked. Accelerated to breakneck speed then steered into a tree where it exploded and he died.

An artwork conveying well-wishes for the passengers and crew of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is seen at a viewing gallery in Kuala Lumpur International Airport March 19, 2014. (Reuters)

With MH370 we have two clear examples of hard evidence where military style 'news management' or information warfare' appears to be the only explanation for cascades of malicious news stories spreading at the speed of light around the worlds news-wires designed to kill what may well be the truth stone dead.
Similarities to the 9/11 attacks and Britain's role

The bizarre zigzag routes followed by MH370 are exactly the sort of flight path demonstrated during the September 11 attacks. On 9/11 we saw the same mysterious switching off, whether remotely or by the pilots, of transponders which should have been reporting the planes’ speed, altitude and position to air traffic control. If anything, the 777 is even more liable to cyber hijacking than the 767s involved in the 9/11 attacks. It was the first production aircraft to have no controls by which the pilot has direct influence over any part of the aircraft. It's all via the flight management system.

Britain’s role too has not been entirely as an honest broker. Private military connected firm Inmarsat have given impressive looking maps instructing rescuers where to search, but consistently failed to reveal the raw data which, they say, led to those conclusions. The UK Air Accident Investigation Branch too has given expert advice without fleshing out the full reasons for its conclusions.

On the other hand, Rolls Royce is the star of the piece, exposing an enormous flaw in the initial ‘lost plane’ theory: that MH370 flew on for over five hours. Airliners in trouble simply do not fly on for five hours and then plunge into the sea.

In the land where, as of last week, friends and family are prohibited from sending Bibles to their loved ones in prison, nothing in the way of barbarism from our real leaders across the Atlantic, now entirely contemptuous of the world and citizenry they are supposed to serve, would surprise me.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

[B52]

These latest news, of a Chinese Boat receiving "pings" has some pictures of workers holding microphones on poles
listening for " a ping" just a few feet under the surface.


The Surface is a very noisy place and the 37.5 Hz receiver would have to be within
a rough 2 mile distance to receive it, and towed at depth in
where it is out of range of similar frequency random noise to get that range.


This begs the question, why are the Chinese in a lone ranger search and what is basis of that decision.
It appears to assume that MH370 flew beyond the usual 250 nm primary radar range.
The Chinese appear to be acting on their own information and or calculations

Does anyone know the capabilities of the Indonesian Primary radar?
There is info that the US provided $50 million dollars for maritime radar on 11 meter towers
but I could find nothing on the equip Indonesia refers to.

[boeingboy]

This begs the question, why are the Chinese in a lone ranger search and what is basis of that decision.
It appears to assume that MH370 flew beyond the usual 250 nm primary radar range.
The Chinese appear to be acting on their own information and or calculations

What the hell are you talking about? Have you looked at a map lately. They are a lot farther away than 250 miles from any land where there might be a radar.

[GyvAir]

I think what he's referring to is the chatter about how the projected flight paths to the south take the plane over or very close to Sumatra, yet Indonesian radar apparently did not pick it up; a combination that some are saying is impossible and therefore the calculations or the assumptions they are based upon must be flawed.

[Gino Under]

Interesting.
Examination of the charts covering the "implied" routing of MH370, if it really had avoided Indonesian airspace, means it would have potentially passed through Malaysian, Indian, Sri Lankan and Australian FIRs and NONE of them knows anything about this flight's presence during this time period.

The question of this aircraft being seen (without a functioning transponder) by SSR in any of these FIRs should no longer be a question. Regardless of their radar range or capability. What about satellite and AWACS?

What might they reveal? Someone asleep at the switch?

Gino Under

[frozen solid]

While I admit I don't know very much about FBW control systems, I find it very difficult to believe that the 777 can be remotely accessed by "hackers" and then flown to a drone-like remotely piloted landing. I suppose I can picture false GPS or VOR signals being sent to the aircraft that could influence the direction it flies, and I suppose I can almost picture it being possible to remotely access the plane's AFCS while it is flying on autopilot, but I find it difficult in the extreme to believe that a pilot, upon noticing the plane's course being altered by the AFCS, couldn't press the red button on the control column and override anything the autopilot is up to by steering the ship himself. I am aware that the 777's physical flight controls are only connected electronically to the plane, through a computer, but surely the thing is hard-wired or programmed to give priority to signals from the control column and pedals, over any spurious transmissions from outside the plane? Surely? I mean I know control column movements are translated through artificial flight-envelope filters but really, does that actually result in a situation in which if a control column is deflected say to the right, the aircraft will actually refuse to go right? Even a little? I find that difficult to swallow. Just because something is electric instead of mechanical doesn't mean it can be "controlled by a hacker".

EDIT: Never mind. I just read this:
http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2 ... Series.pdf

Sounds like a giant crock of shit. I guess the guy figures he can monkey with the FMS and use it to tune radios and present data to pilots that causes them to unwittingly manoeuvre the plane in response to false traffic warnings, because they are routine-driven and rely on checklists. This is how he figures a hacker could deal with the difficulty presented by the pilots just being able to turn the autopilot "OFF".

Pretty far cry from being able to take over the plane and steer it to a secret airfield. There was a question in another thread bout what do you tell your friends when they ask what YOU think happened to this aircraft... I feel like I spend most of my time de-bunking media-invented garbage like this!

[crazy_aviator]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a__VZMkUlPI here is an interesting idea follow the $$$ they all say !

[B52]

Correct,
You only need to look at the map and see that the claimed flight path could have been seen by radar at
the bottom end of Thailand and the top of Malaysia.

We don't know the exact location of those radars, their height above sea level however
in that area, at that time, it is reasonable to assume that some ducting conditions were in effect
that would have allowed Military L Band Radar to see hundreds of miles more than normal.

We also don't know who supplied that radar equipment and its normal capabilities let along
under good atmospheric conditions.

I recall 30 plus years ago being shown a primary radar and the very strong echos at nearly 300 miles was some very stationary
areas of granite. Even back there, a Doppler filter only worked on moving objects within NORMAL Range.
The very long ranges may not even show on some screens.

And, we have not heard of any tests flights to see exactly how far those radars are effective.
The Chinese may well have that information and applied it to come up with their own theories.

The trouble is, these countries have kept all that radar information classified and
decided not to fully disclose their information.

Interesting.
Examination of the charts covering the "implied" routing of MH370, if it really had avoided Indonesian airspace, means it would have potentially passed through Malaysian, Indian, Sri Lankan and Australian FIRs and NONE of them knows anything about this flight's presence during this time period.

The question of this aircraft being seen (without a functioning transponder) by SSR in any of these FIRs should no longer be a question. Regardless of their radar range or capability. What about satellite and AWACS?

What might they reveal? Someone asleep at the switch?

Gino Under

[GyvAir]

Reporting now that Australian ship Ocean Shield has picked up two distinct signals consistent with that of ULBs, 300 miles to the north of where the Chinese reported hearing something on Friday.

The Australian navy's Ocean Shield, which is carrying high-tech sound detectors from the U.S. Navy, picked up two separate signals within a remote patch of the Indian Ocean far off the west Australian coast that search crews have been crisscrossing for weeks. The first signal lasted two hours and 20 minutes before it was lost. The ship then turned around and picked up a signal again — this time recording two distinct "pinger returns" that lasted 13 minutes, Houston said.

http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment ... ane-search

[GyvAir]

Angus Huston explaining on Monday how the underwater search area was narrowed down:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU3pialcRgE

Search Area.JPG (107.94 KiB) Viewed 4225 times

http://www.jacc.gov.au/media/releases/2 ... mr012.aspx

[boeingboy]

There is a lot of research and hard work going on behind the scenes, some of it groundbreaking - with some real out of the box thinking...and people still want to scream coverup simply because it's out of their realm of comprehension. It's nausiating.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... shake.html
MH370 missing plane: 'black box pings' tracked to same point as final 'half-handshake'

A final unexplained signal emitted by the missing Malaysia Airlines plane was tracked to the same point in the Indian Ocean at which authorities believe they have found the aircraft, it can be revealed.

It is thought that this final "half-handshake" – or satellite contact – could have been the moment at which the plane ran out of fuel and plunged into the Indian Ocean.

The breakthrough in the search has assisted analysts to gain a picture of the likely final sequence for the aircraft, which is believed to have run out of fuel and then experienced a last jolt of power that triggered an incomplete satellite handshake before entering the water.

Chris McLaughlin, from British satellite company Inmarsat, which helped to identify the route of the plane by analyzing its satellite "handshakes", said the location of the new signals appears to coincide with the likely site of the aircraft's final mysterious transmission at 00:19 GMT – eight minutes after its last regular hourly handshake.

Likening the sequence to a car spluttering as it runs out of fuel, Mr McLaughlin told The Telegraph: "The partial handshake would be the plane running out of fuel and faltering for a moment, so the system went off network and then briefly powered up and had communication with the network. The plane looked for a final communication before it went off – and that was it."

"The first set was heard on Saturday and lasted for two hours and twenty minutes. The Ocean Shield ship then lost contact with the "pings" but turned around and later heard further signals for 13 minutes. It has since lost contact again and was last night trying to relocate the signals.

Significantly, Mr Houston said, the second set included two distinct sounds which would be consistent with transmissions from separate pingers attached to the black box's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. "

[Learning2Fly]

I've been monitoring this topic for quite some time, and I'm shocked about the current status of this investigation.

At the risk of adding more speculation to this discussion, I'd like to relay some information that I learned
from talking to pro pilots whom have flown 777's here at my workplace.

Please note: I have not read this thread entirely; I've checked in days at a time to read the
last few posts to get the latest info. If this has already been presented, then please accept my apology!

One of our instructors has SUGGESTED that the aircraft may have experienced some sort of pressurization
failure (whether it be windshield, or frame penetration).

"He" cited another 777 incident where the oxygen bottle exploded due to heat/fire caused by an
electrical failure. The bottle apparently kicked out the side of the aircraft leaving a large hole.

Egyptair
http://www.avherald.com/h?article=44078aa7&opt=0

An Egyptair Boeing 777-200, registration SU-GBP performing flight MS-667 from Cairo (Egypt) to Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) with 291 passengers, was preparing for departure at gate F7 with the passengers already boarded when a fire erupted in the cockpit causing smoke to also enter the cabin. The crew initiated an emergency evacuation. 5 occupants received minor injuries in the evacuations. Emergency services responded and put the fire out. 2 fire fighters were taken to a hospital for smoke inhalation. The aircraft received substantial damage, the fire burned through the right hand side of the cockpit leaving a hole of about the size of the first officer's side window in the fuselage just below that window.

There "may be" an inherent fault with the electrical system in these aircraft, or certain models?
Probably not as I'm not aware of any recall, or service bulletin. Does a SB exist? If so,
then you would think MH370 would have been serviced?

Where is the 02 bottle located? Was it the bottle that blew a hole in Egyptair's case, or was it fire?
I cannot find a credible source for 02 bottle location.

The four of us (3 pilots, 1 tech) chatted for nearly 20 minutes about the avionics systems, the electrical
buses,
the airline industry, ATC protocol, pilot protocol, etc.

Nothing really adds up based on the evidence presented by the media *(cough BS)*. With all of the
backup systems available on the aircraft (including a R.A.T.), we find it difficult to believe that a
distress call was not placed.

Having said that, one of the pilots SPECULATED that the availability of oxygen at that altitude would
be scarce, and without an 02 mask available, the pilots MAY have been unable to respond as they
would have tried to resolve the immediate issue first (IE: via checklist) before calling ATC.

Smoke detectors? Warning lights? Apparently an electrical fire can spread quickly, and fill
the cabin with smoke very rapidly. Is it possible the pilot(s) did not have enough time to diagnose
the problem, and things escalated before they were able to communicate their trouble?

Even IF the above was the case, it still does not explain several anomalies in this story. The final
report will have to be spectacular to give any credit to this investigation.

After studying a few prior NTSB reports, I won't hold my breath for anything substantial, or promising.

In nothing else, I hope that the families affected will find peace...because I can't imagine losing
a family member in this manner.

[Gino Under]

Learning2Fly

Your post IMHO is rational and not far fetched.
There are a surprising number (while not necessarily unusual) of ADs regarding the Oxygen system and Horizontal stabilizer for the 777. The "possible" outcomes of non-compliance could place the aircraft in serious peril.

On the FAA website you can read them all for yourself, if you like.
http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_an ... enFrameSet

With regard to the crew oxygen and the EgyptAir incident you refer to....quote:

SUMMARY: We are adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for certain The Boeing Company Model 777-200, -200LR, -300, -300ER, and 777F series airplanes. This AD was prompted by a report indicating that a fire originated near the first officer's area, which caused extensive damage to the flight deck. This AD requires replacing the low-pressure oxygen hoses with non-conductive low- pressure oxygen hoses in the flight compartment. We are issuing this AD to prevent electrical current from passing through the low-pressure oxygen hose internal anti-collapse spring, which can cause the low-pressure oxygen hose to melt or burn, and a consequent oxygen-fed fire in the flight compartment.

DATES: This AD is effective August 16, 2012.
The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of certain
publications listed in the AD as of August 16, 2012.

I've been taking flak for my references to ADs. I get that. Even David Learmont from Flight Magazine, their former editor and present safety guru, has scoffed at them (ADs, not me). Sorry, from a product liability perspective and an investigative perspective they are very relevant. Boeing is very quiet so far and is unlikely to want to comment. No one should be surprised.

We don't know what went on that night, but I suspect should they have had an electrical fire, possibly in the E&E bay, who's to say whether or not they were able to use NAVCOMMs or crew oxygen regardless of a RAT deployment. Catastrophes tend to have some very surprising chains of events.

Make of it what you will.

Gino Under