Your comment demonstrates how monumentally "The War on Terror" has failed, now that people have been so thoroughly terrorized that the most available explanation for a plane disappearing has become "terrorism".
That depends on how you view the war on terror. If you view it as political construct of Govts. wishing to grab extraordinary amounts of power and oversight over a largely disenfranchised populace then I would say it has been remarkably successful.
A large modern aircraft completely disappears suddenly, in good weather, without a trace. Terrorism could certainly be a logical explanation. It wouldn't be the first time. Mid-air collision, shot down, etc. The suddenness does raise extreme conclusions.
in this day and age? Sure. With the technology behind the newer planes flying to day it would take an extraordinary event to down one without word.
So the thoughts that come to me are, flew into terrain (mountain), door opened causing decompression and deformation of airframe, airframe failure, bomb, or someone took over fast enough to silence communications.
What is the availability of communications to passengers in that area? Cell has to be pretty much far between?
I don't think anybody can disable communications from inside the plane (but then, that's a guess, if anybody knows better, please tell so).
It would be compatible with some group kidnapping the plane, and changing the route to go over the ocean. But the plane would have already appeared somewhere, so I don't think that's likely.
Also, if it was a bomb, it would need to be quite a big one, to completely destroy the plane. Also unlikely.
He said it had a non-zero probability and should be considered, not that it was the most available explanation.
Considering that just a few days ago, China suffered a terrorist attack on a railway station by separatists that left nearly three dozen dead, it would certainly not be surprising to see an attack against an airplane flying to China and carrying a large number of Chinese passengers.
IMO, that's the most likely scenario. This highly advanced airplane was in clear weather in a spot where any distress signals it sent would have been received. The plane itself can send automated signals even if the pilots were incapacitated. No signals went out, and according to media reports, the plane simply "vanished" from radar (i.e. the data didn't indicate the plane descending before it disappeared).
All of the data indicates a mid-air explosion. There are some possible causes of such an explosion that are not terrorism related, such as mislabeled/improperly stored explosive cargo, but IMO those causes are at least as likely as terrorism in this case. It will be interesting to see if any groups come forward claiming responsibility.
I can think of two likely possibilities. The plane might have disintegrated in midair (that is not necessarily intentional btw, and most midair breakups are bad maintenance), or something could have gone drastically wrong. For example this plane had a previously damaged wing. If something went south, it is possible that the plane could have ended up in a flat spin and crashed.
Another possibility is AIRDU failures leaving the plane to fly into the sea.
> The fault-tolerant ADIRU was designed to operate with a failed accelerometer (it has six). The redundant design of the ADIRU also meant that it wasn’t mandatory to replace the unit when an accelerometer failed.
This seems unwise to me. I could understand if the rule was that you could put off replacing a failed accelerometer until the next regular maintenance. If it is OK to simply never replace it, then why not just ship the plane with five and save money?
> I could understand if the rule was that you could put off replacing a failed accelerometer until the next regular maintenance.
I think that's the idea. Whether or not it is followed in practice is another matter, and testing further failures was not the priority it should have been.
Of course I may be proven wrong, but I feel that it is quite premature to make such an assumption. A plane can rapidly disappear from radar for a number of reasons: not including your suggestions of terrorism or explosive payload.
The thrust of my comment was that the data indicates a very rapid breakup of the plane (explosion), and I indeed said that there are other possible causes of mid-air explosions besides terrorism. My mention of explosive cargo wasn't intended to be an exhaustive list of alternative causes. I just think that terrorism is certainly within the realm of possibility given the totality of the circumstances.
There is also a long stop in the flight data, is it possible this was one of the pilots trying fool a hijacker, by secretly change something so that data was sent again?
Hope they find it quickly.
That's not really how we use probability, how about we start by considering the most likely scenario and, if needed, progress to the "non-zero" probability events.
In 2013 there were 12 accidents concerning aircraft, none of which were related to terrorism.
In 2012 there were 12 accidents relating to aircraft, none of which were related to terrorism - there was also on attempted hijacking
In 2011 there were 25 accidents concerning aircraft, none of which were related to terrorism.
In 2010 there were 26 accidents concerning aircraft, none of which were related to terrorism.
- One of these bore some similarity to this incident, in that the aircraft was lost on radar. - Pamir Airways Flight 112, vanished from radar ten minutes after takeoff. It was eventually found 12 miles from Kabul.
In 2009 there were 21 accidents related to aircraft.
- There were also two terrorist incidents, one hostage taking and one attempted bombing.
Air France Flight 447 was one of the planes lost that year, it was lost over the Atlantic Ocean and it took two years for the wreckage to be found and the black boxes recovered.
It vanished 'without a Mayday call, a witness, or even a trace on radar [...] Flight 447 seemed to disappear from the sky'
Going by those figures, a little over 3% of the incidents involving aircraft were terrorism-related. And none of those, to my knowledge, resulted in deaths, or even significant injury.
1) Accidents are frequent (and I suspect the list I've got is out by one or two since I didn't count it automatically, and somewhat incomplete in any case) - the number of planes in the sky pretty much ensures that.
2) Terrorism related to flights seems relatively rare, and most commonly relatively ineffectual as compared to things like messed up landings.
3) Planes have vanished from radar before without foul play, (and seemingly in similar conditions in the case of 447.)
And that's roughly in line with what we'd expect before seeing evidence. Unless you know that the two are strongly related, the way to bet is that the intersection of two low probability events is going to be vanishingly small.
So, while there's no solid proof that it isn't terrorism in this case, that's the way I'd bet if I were a betting woman ^_^
You're not going back far enough! Why would you think 5 years is enough to draw conclusions? If you look back 15 years (long enough to include 9/11), then 50% of commercial aviation fatalities are due to terrorism.
50% of commercial aviation fatalities being due to terrorism, well maybe if you're counting the people on the ground, (I'm not interested enough in fatalities to do the maths on that.) Disregarding, the ground fatalities however:
There were for planes in 9/11. According to the list I last quoted, there were:
92 people on a Boeing 767200-ER
65 people on a Boeing 767-200
64 people on a Boeing 757-200
44 people on a Boeing 757-200
=> 265
If the fatalities are 100% in this most recent crash, it almost exceeds the 9/11 aviation fatalities by itself. Excluding this most recent incident - and just going from the wikilist again - you only have to go back to May 14th 2012 to exceed those casualties:
So, I find it highly unlikely that 9/11 does account for 50% of the commercial aviation fatalities in the last 15 years since it would account for less than 50% in the last 2 if it had occurred in those years.
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As for the other points -
I'm interested in incidents concerning aircraft, and not the number of fatalities in general. The question isn't what is your chance of dying in a terrorist attack, the question is what sort of figure can we hang off this plane vanishing being due to a terrorist attack. 9/11 is four aircraft - from that point of view it doesn't change the figures much.
I could go further back and increase the confidence level but I don't really see the point. This isn't the sort of scenario where a more precise number seems likely to matter, even if I were out by an entire order of magnitude, it would make little difference. It would still be the thing to bet against it being terrorism.
I might bother to get a more precise number if I were putting money on it, but that would largely be a matter of knowing how much money to bet rather than the direction of the bet.
Basically, if you want a more precise number, you'll have to do the work yourself.
