I believe Aliens abducted the plane mid flight.
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I believe Aliens abducted the plane mid flight.
My first thought was meteor...
Then a little Bermuda triangle (we would have to come up with a new name)...
Aliens work!
Any one of these is good plot for a b-movie.
You mean from space aliens or illegal aliens?Quote:
Originally Posted by dclamp
Personally I think it is some kind of election year campaign stunt from the Republicans. Kind of like how George Dubya manipulated the terrorist levels until after the election.
Or maybe someone is trying to scare us into building a couple of more aircraft carriers. I haven't seen Cheney around lately.
Considering that it appears that it might have been hijacked, and since no crash site has been found, it seems like there is a possibility that it didn't crash.
There are a number of things pointing away from some type in in flight catastrophe but I don't think the lack of a crash site means much. Last I heard there a 20,000 square miles of potential crash sites. That is a lot of area to cover.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
If it did crash in the Indian ocean a week ago - any floating debris will have moves way off from the crash site - now we are back tracking along known ocean currents and fighting weather affects on the surface...
Then we have the problem of the Indian ocean being miles deep in places compared to several hundred feet in the south china sea area were they originally thought it went down.
And the beeper-beacon on the black box has power for a couple of weeks - already lost a week due to the inabilities of the Malaysian government. They didn't search the pilots house until yesterday!
I think the plane has crashed...It cannot be a hostage case (aliens included) as there is no point in keeping quite about it for such a long time..
Sorry for the families of the victims though...
Keeping quiet forces all these difference nations to spend tons of dollars searching for something they will never find.
Then they announce they have hostages after a couple of weeks.
That is exactly how terrorism works.
Based on the initial reports that there was an (almost) instantaneous loss of communication, the conclusion would be a crash (or explosion/damage/bomb).
However, it appears the 'authorities' in that area have been less than forthright with information - the plane, apparently, had all transponders turned off, but still 'phoned home' intermittently, and was able to be tracked for several hours. From what I understand, the 'track' appeared to remain outside known radar coverage areas.
I believe there were four (?) Americans on the flight. Not to belittle the value of lives of Malaysians but if it was a terrorist group, using hostages, I'm not sure that the people taken are of such high value. Perhaps Malaysia does have a weak stance regarding terrorist abductions?
Having said that, terrorist zealotry isn't known for it's predictability and straight-thinking.
If the plane went to the middle east - where the US and Russia already can't get along, wouldn't this possibly bring China into the arena?
This is about as interesting a crash/non-crash as there has ever been. Hollywood must be salivating.
I like how the black box is a local device - too expensive to retro-fit to be satellite transmitters...
But the engines do a health-check ping to satellites. I guess they are the most expensive part of the plane and they carry the most liability (for the engine manufacturers).
This could very well change how black boxes work going forwards. Sat transmission wouldn't add more than a penny to the price of the ticket, for most people.
I flew from NYC to Chicago a few weeks ago and I started doing the math for how much all us passengers had paid for that flight. Small plane - 2 seats on each side - maybe 40 rows. So we got 80 people paying $200 (for just the one-way) - that was $16000. For 2 hours in the air - 2 pilots - 1 flight attendant. I could see profit in that equation!
They could certainly afford sat-transmission.
Many were probably paying more than $200.
However, what was the price of the fuel used during that time?
Just googling around a bit and I found that jets get 4 times better use of fuel per person then a car.
Not sure how to translate that into cost!
Quote:
Originally Posted by szlamany
There's more to it than just that... there's also the mechanics, taxes, landing fees, fuel, all kinds or regulatory fees and junk.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
I wouldn't be surprised to find out if the profit margin on a typical ticket is a mere 10%. Now, Business Class, and First Class, that has the higher profit margins... not to mention all those high priced drinks and snacks they sell.
-tg
And you have to throw in economy of scale. Looking at a single flight isn't how to go about calculating profit in a business like that. At any rate the technology should be upgraded since it is available. The voice recorders loop over them selves every two hours. If the plane was aloft for hours after what ever event occurred the initially recorded data is gone.Quote:
Originally Posted by szlamany
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the profit margin on a typical ticket is less than 0. It may be that the ENTIRE profit is in the business flyers who buy at the last minute, and the rest is about filling seats at cost, or even at a slight loss.
I was kind of joking - I didn't expect you all to figure out the best business model for an airline!
Seems us programmers are always trying to find logical solutions to everything :)
Probably true... the low margin, high volume model mixed with the usual supply vs. demand model. Somehow it seems to work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
-tg
Yeah, that's about it. But the original point was right: The black box could more easily be held both on and off an airplane without adding much cost at all. When averaged across the number of passengers, the cost would be trivial.
Ok, I have come to my second conclusion. The LOST TV show has come a reality. Hopefully every passenger has seen at least the first season of LOST so they know what to do.
4 8 15 16 23 42
Would be awesome if it turns out to be a promotional thingy for Lost 2.
Maybe they are bringing back Gillagan's Island with a twist...Quote:
Originally Posted by dalek
Who knew that Lost would actually turn out to be a documentary...Quote:
Originally Posted by dalek
-tg
We could probably figure out if that was the case by reviewing the passenger list: Did they all look like models? If so, then that's it. The rest of us just crash.
How in God's name do you lose a passenger jet ? Seriously ? With all these modern gizmos, people can still lose something that large ?
You lose it by involving a number of countries that don't trust each other and don't want to look meek by asking for help or admitting they screwed up... you know, it's just like any decent sized development project that's gone off the rails. Everyone seeks to protect their little fiefdoms and refuse to share any information until it's too late and the executive sponsor drops the hammer and wants to know what's going on.
-tg
That is phase four of the standard project:Quote:
Originally Posted by techgnome
1. Enthusiaism
2. Dissillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Praise and honours for the non-participants
Apparently debris from the crash has been found...
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/26/world/...irlines-plane/
It was the size of two or three buses - that's not big...Quote:
Originally Posted by Niya
Imagine for a second that you have to look at an image to see if you can find debris. The image is showing items that are 50 feet across - so obviously the overall dimension of the image is at best a couple of hundred feet. If you did the math I would guess that you have hundreds of thousands of images for just a few square miles.
I agree it's no small task szlamany but the images are digital and it seems like software would be able to find pixel clumps quickly enough to narrow it down. I'm shocked that it's taken so long to find the plane and even more shocked the Malaysian government was so anxious to give closure to it's families that it gave a conclusion way before having the facts. I'm not a big fan of conspiracies but this is all just goofy. I pray the 120 objects are the crash so the families can start the process of moving on.
On a lighter note, I got a kick out of everyone turning the cost discussion into logic research. Programmers really are a different breed.
Oh, you know how it is. You're about to lave the house and you get distracted. Then it's like "Keys... Wallet... Boeing 777". It's an easy mistake to make.Quote:
How in God's name do you lose a passenger jet ?
My prediction: it'll be in the last place they look for it.
Nope, some debris was spotted, but the article makes it clear that it hasn't been identified as being related to aircraft, let alone this flight.Quote:
Originally Posted by dclamp
Illegal Aliens or UFO's?Quote:
Originally Posted by dclamp
UFO? Undocumented foreign official??