AirAsia flight 8501 missing

[Camikaze]

The airline is a cheap one so it could be a result of that?

I don't necessarily think cheapness is an indicator of safety - all airlines would have to comply with the same standards, and after Garuda's troubles about a decade ago, I was under the impression that those regional standards were now fairly high. But it is interesting that this comes just after they'd been getting some bad press (in Australia at least) for some fairly heavy financial losses, and subsequently having to cut a route on short notice (Sydney to Denpasar, IIRC). Hopefully corners weren't being cut.

 

[Leonel]

It's kind of scary since my mom is in Indonesia now and she's been taking trips around Asia. I did check a passenger manifest and was relieved to find her name wasn't there.

 

[Domen]

Not a question. I'd be curious how many major passenger airliners have been outright lost in that time though. I've been around for most of that time, and I don't remember any before this one.

Except for Oceanic Airlines Flight 815, lost back in 2004.

 

[madviking]

with the current level of news scrutiny (especially in our post 9-11 society), any major civilian aircraft going missing will generate a ton of buzz. let alone in a year that's already had much publicized aircraft incidents.

 

[IglooDame]

So did they lose the radar skin paint, the transponder return, or both simultaneously?

 

[aelf]

Fox News suggests that metric system and culture are to blame for AirAsia disappearance.

"Even when we think about temperature, it's Fahrenheit or Celsius," she pointed out. "It's kilometers or miles. You know, everything about their training could be similar, but different."

"It's not just a difference in the way that we measure things?" Kooiman replied. "Is it not as safe in that part of the world? Because our viewers may be thinking, 'International travel, is it safe? Is it not safe?'"

Kooiman's co-host Charles Payne wondered if the reason why "a lot of these incidents" have occurred in Asia is a cultural difference, "certain respect for procedure."

Murica!

 

[Cutlass]

So did they lose the radar skin paint, the transponder return, or both simultaneously?

I didn't think air traffic control radars had the power to skin paint at range at all.




In other news, the radio program this morning was saying debris and bodies have been found.

 

[IglooDame]

I didn't think air traffic control radars had the power to skin paint at range at all.

Neither did I, but the news programs seem to uniformly assume loss of radar contact = immediate crash, when the MalaysianAir flight demonstrates that there are other possibilities (albeit much less likely).

In other news, the radio program this morning was saying debris and bodies have been found.

Thus proving the assumptions correct about 'immediate crash' in this case.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I don't think it's a question of air traffic control radars. I think Indonesian military radar can identify every aircraft over the Java Sea at any given time, and if something disappears they can tell you where and when.

 

[Cutlass]

Any radar system has incomplete coverage. And over the sea that's even more true than over land. It's costly to have radars that will cover everything.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Any radar system has incomplete coverage. And over the sea that's even more true than over land. It's costly to have radars that will cover everything.

While this is a fitting statement for the lost Malaysian Air flight, this one disappeared over the Java Sea. "Disappeared over the Java Sea" is another way of saying "disappeared right in the middle of Indonesia".