The incident aircraft, a Boeing 777-200 (9M-MRO). Photo by Laurent Errera.
This is a developing incident. Details are scarce and information will change. The following is a purely speculative analysis of the known information from various news sources.
At approximately 02:40 UTC, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 lost all contact with air traffic controllers while cruising over the Gulf of Thailand. The aircraft, a Boeing 777-200, departed Kuala Lumpar bound for Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew.
A look at Flightradar24′s live-tracking data for Malaysian 370 reveals that the aircraft was cruising at 35,000ft just off the coast of Malaysia when the altitude reading suddenly goes to 0ft – indicating altitude information has been lost. The aircraft then totally disappears.
Known facts about Malaysia Flight 370
- The aircraft was a Boeing 777-200 – registration 9M-MRO.
- The flight was scheduled to be six hours long – the aircraft took off with approximately 7.5 hours of fuel.
- Air traffic controllers on the ground lost contact with Malaysia 370 at approximately the same time the aircraft suddenly disappeared from Flightradar24.
- The Vietnamese Navy has reported that it has found debris and an oil slick between 10 and 20km long. Although not confirmed, it is thought to belong to Malaysia 370.
Early speculation about the incident
Unfortunately, it is my belief that the aircraft did not make it safely to the ground. This is belief is based primarily on to the sudden loss of all contact with the aircraft. A large majority of the time, when an aircraft is in distress, even the the direst of situations, the pilots are able to maintain some form of communication with the ground and relay that they are in trouble. This done by squawking emergency codes on their transponders and verbally issuing mayday calls over the radio. Furthermore, if an aircraft was going down, its descent would usually still be visible and trackable by air traffic control.
Based on this, I believe, and I stress this is a guess at best, is that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 suffered a catastrophic in-flight event that caused either total destruction or near destruction of the aircraft. The rapid nature of this event is why the pilots were unable to signal their distress and why the aircraft so suddenly disappeared from the view of air traffic controllers.
Other notes/developments:
- The incident aircraft (9M-MRO) had a minor ground incident in August 2012 when its wing struck the tail of a China Eastern Airlines Airbus A340 while taxiing. The wingtip suffered significant damage and the aircraft was repaired and returned to service.
- CNN reports that an Italian citizen listed to be on the flight, was in fact not on the flight and his passport was stolen.
- CNN reports that an Austrian citizen listed to be on the flight was not on board.
Information and sources:
Photo by David Eun.
At 18:26 UTC on Saturday July 6th, 2013 – Asiana Airlines Flight 214, a Boeing 777-200ER, crash landed at San Francisco International Airport. At the time of this writing, there have been 2 fatalities confirmed. This post is nothing more than speculation as to what occurred during the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214, and what caused the crash. I am not an air crash investigator and not associated with any aviation accident investigation agencies. This post is about what I think happened and not necessarily what will be discovered that actually happened.
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It’s only after you move in with your girlfriend, do you realize how much for a horrible mistake the entire idea was. Joking somewhat aside, she does not take too fondly to the idea of me playing what she considers my bizarre music and video games in the living room. As a result of this, I don’t own speakers for my PC – only a pair of Sennhesier HD 280 Pros. But on days when I have the house to myself, I definitely wouldn’t mind blasting some Flying Lotus or immersing myself into the wonderful war sounds of cs_office. Instead of spending a chunk of money on a good set of speakers that would hardly get used, I turned my attention to my Samsung SmartTV. Streaming music and media to your SmartTV is incredibly simple and easy to do – provided you have a Windows PC or a Samsung device. If you’re trying to stream your library from OS X, well it’s not that straightforward – as there are no official support from Samsung.
That’s when I stumbled upon an app (and webapp) called Plex.
The Plex Media Server is a smart Media Server application that is designed to make playing Movies, TV Shows and other media you may have on your computer simple. It’s been designed from the ground up to work seamlessly in your home network with a variety of Plex Clients.
Plex (for desktops) is a free and lightweight app that runs in the background. Plex basically turns your computer into a “Plex media server” that can be accessed from other computers, mobile devices, and TVs (the iOS app costs $5.99, and in my opinion; totally worth it). By having Plex installed on your computer, you can always have access to your media from anywhere (so long as there is access to the storage device – so prepare to be leaving your desktop on always).
For us OS X users, the most important feature of Plex is that it turns our computers into a media server that’s compatible with Samsung’s Allshare Play app. After a quick installation Plex began to analyze my media folder – getting the file paths and reading the organisational structure of the folders. A glance over at my SmartTV’s Allshare Play proudly displayed my computer; I now had access to all my music, movies, etc. on my SmartTV.
There are some minor inconveniences and strangeness with the Plex app when streaming to your SmartTV:
- You can’t control/play your media from your computer – yes, you actually have to get up and use the remote (or your USB mouse/keyboard) and select/play media from the SmartTV.
- Support for .MKV and other less “mainstream” filetypes is spotty and sometimes won’t play at all. But I hear this is a strange random issue that some people have and others don’t.
At the end of the day, if you’re on OS X and looking for a quick, easy, and free way to stream your media to your SmartTV – Plex is definitely the way to go.
Quality hardwood iPhone backs made by Tinkering Monkey. The flavour I chose was walnut, a nice dark tone to compliment a white iPhone.
View high resolution.