dans2992
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Dans2992
New Information On MH 370
- Thread starter ggroves
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Lindberg
Final Approach
Well, the prototypical negligence plaintiff has to prove the existence of a duty, a breach of the duty, an injury caused by that breach, and damages. There are enough nuances to fill a couple of years of law school, but that's the basic formula. Your theory doesn't even come close on causation. Nobody died for lack of an ELT. These people were dead six hours before they hit the water, else they would have crashed sooner.
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jesse
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One might be able to say an airline had a duty not to completely lose a 777 full of passengers, they breached said duty since they still can't even find a part, and that there is great emotional damage to the families.
Not a lawyer just trying to fill in your above blanks. Not having a way to track the plain when options were available could be used in the above argument.
The first question in aviation cases is what law applies. Here, the flight was an international flight, between Malaysia and China (both signatories) so it would fall under the Montreal convention. The airline would be strictly liable for damages caused by an "accident" up the a certain amount, above which damages may be avoided if the airline can show the accident was not caused by their negligence or was caused by the negligence of a third party.
At common law, a common carrier would owe the highest level of care, a standard which is higher than the typical "reasonable man" standard.
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Unless a different limit is spelled out in the contract of carriage, liability in a international flight is fixed at 16, 600 IMF 'special drawing rights' (about $25k under the Warshaw convention)
Regardless of cause (sabotage/accident/meteor strike) 1/2 of the chinese pax will sue Boeing in Philadelphia, PA to get a couple of million for their ambulance chaser and their government.
Regardless of cause (sabotage/accident/meteor strike) 1/2 of the chinese pax will sue Boeing in Philadelphia, PA to get a couple of million for their ambulance chaser and their government.
Negligence issues do not apply to airlines, they are Strict Liability.
This was revised by the Montreal Convention, which has a two tier system.
Strict liability for the first tier which is up to 113,100 SDRs, and damages actually proven above that amount if the aircarrier was negligent for the second tier.
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Only partially correct. Assuming the countries of origin, or departure are signatories to the Montreal convention, then the two tier system applies.
I guess I am old. Last time I looked at this was prior to the Montreal convention. 160k for a life is still cheap.
Piloto
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Piloto
Piloto
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How would you know they were dead before crash? How would you know the plane crashed and killed everyone without a wreck? This plane could had very well landed on Gilligan's island. But without an ELT that little pistons planes have how would you propose not to be negligent or liable for not having it? ICAO rules are very specific on ELT requirements. If MH370 didn't have an ELT they are simply in violation of ICAO, negligent and liable. I do not think an airline is willing to take that risk for a $2,500 ELT.
José
Lindberg
Final Approach
If the flight crew was not incapacitated, the plane would not have flown to the bottom of the world. If the flight crew was incapacitated but the passengers were not, they would have done something, likely leading to a crash sooner.
I find that highly unlikely, since Gilligan's island is a fictional place. There are not a lot of completely uninhabited and undiscovered places on earth. And I'm sure any uninhabited island anywhere near the flight path has been thouroughly examined.
How would an ELT have prevented anyone from dying in this situation?
Fearless Tower
Touchdown! Greaser!
Maybe, maybe not.
Latest story going around is that the captain's wife and daughter left him and he was distraught. According to a fellow captain, he was in no shape to fly. If he was depressed/mentally ill, anything is possible.
Of course, like any piece of news in this investigation, it should be taken with a grain of salt.
dtuuri
Final Approach
I knew this would happen. Pilots stone their dead. So, how do they figure he got the copilot to go along? Shoot him?
dtuuri
NoHeat
En-Route
It wouldn't.
And by this argument, airlines should eliminate cockpit voice recorders and black boxes, and nations should not search for planes that might only have dead people in them.
On the contrary, I think international flights should have an ELT, and the pilots should carry a PLB on their person. So that we have a chance of finding bodies and hull.
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Fearless Tower
Touchdown! Greaser!
Who knows. And at this point there is absolutely no proof that that is what happened. Hell, a pilot going through a divorce? That description probably fits over half of the professional pilots out there.
But, that said, mental illness in the cockpit is not unheard of. I've mentioned this before, but I can see how a scenario like JetBlue's Captain Osborn could play out very differently in a different cultural setting. The FO on the flight was older and a lot more experienced than the FO of MH370. Who knows what could have happened if the JetBlue FO didn't take action when he did.
N747JB
Final Approach
Kinda makes ya wonder where this "fellow captain" was before pushback... And why he didn't speak up earlier
Kinda makes ya wonder where this "fellow captain" was before pushback... And why he didn't speak up earlier
There is an interesting chapter in the book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, the chapter about Korean pilots. In summation there is a problem with cultures (specifically Asian and south American) in which hierarchy is strongly entrenched and younger more junior crew are inhibited by culture to object to a more senior crew member. There are several examples of crashes in which the copilot was too indirect to intervene.
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe
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Now, according to a "high ranking officer" the copilot did "not have the experience to manage such a diversion".
Yea.
Right.
Yea.
Right.
Piloto
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If the plane actually ditched in the search area there is a chance some may have survived after impact, like in the case of the Hudson river ditching. But in these waters you could only survive for a few days or less due to hypothermia. An ELT signal would have prompted inmediate rescue procedures to the survivors and save them. Without an ELT signal it would take weeks just to find bodies. So yes the ELT would have saved lifes. Not having it caused deaths and the Airline is liable for it.
But even if MH370 was ELT equipped a suing layer can say that they were not properly maintained or that the pilots were not trained on its use.
What saved the Titanic survivors was the prompt SOS call made on Marconi's wireless telegraph. Otherwise no one would have know anything about the Titanic's predicament until it missed its ETA.
José
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Piloto
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The fact that there is no mention of an ELT signal from MH370 lend me to believe that the plane never crashed. And that probably safely landed somewhere. This fact adds more support to the hijack theory.
If I was a relative of one of those onboard and with no wreckage found this would support my hope that they may still alive.
José
If I was a relative of one of those onboard and with no wreckage found this would support my hope that they may still alive.
José
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Fearless Tower
Touchdown! Greaser!
Kinda makes ya wonder where this "fellow captain" was before pushback... And why he didn't speak up earlier
Like I said, I'd take it with a grain of salt like any other news release, but it is a possibility.
Fearless Tower
Touchdown! Greaser!
OMG, you really have lost it haven't you?
As if ELTs always go off every time an airplane crashes....
Lindberg
Final Approach
I don't see how that supports any theory that anyone was alive when the plane hit the water. It seems pretty far-fetched to suggest that the captain killed the FO and flew in a more-or-less straight line for 5 hours just so he could die in the ocean further south, while the other crew and the passengers sat on their hands for 5 hours waiting to die.
If it had been suicide or homicide, isn't it much more likely that the plane would be in the South China Sea?
Lindberg
Final Approach
Of course. The pilots flew thousands of miles and hours in the wrong direction just to make a controlled ditching in one of the most remote oceans of the world. I guess that's not the least plausible theory that's been suggested.
If they are stowed in life rafts, they are likely not ELTs, more likely PLBs. If there is no one conscious to trigger it, it will not go off. Even an ELT if the ditching was reasonable, would not trigger automatically.
Fearless Tower
Touchdown! Greaser!
Mentally ill people don't think like the rest of us do.
I'm just throwing it out there. Like everything else, I wouldn't get too wrapped up in the theory without more info/details.
Dav8or
Final Approach
Don't worry, I'm working on it. The captain diverted the plane, killed the FO and locked the cabin door. He then either killed himself, or unable to actually do the deed, let fuel exhaustion do the deed for him. He lied to the passengers cabin crew so as to keep them off their cell phones until out of cell range. The armored door to the cabin prevented anyone in back from getting to the controls.
I think I'll send this right off to the tabloids and then it'll be fact for a few hours. It'll be from a pilot, so they won't even question it's accuracy.
jesse
Touchdown! Greaser!
FWIW I would trust basically nothing coming out of the Malaysian government. If they suddenly have a "source" that says the captain was mentally ill it's quite possible they either completely made that or forced the "source" to say something. They were awful quick to start blaming their captain with basically no evidence to support that from the beginning. Anything they can do to take the light away from how poorly they handled things initially they will do and I doubt they feel bad about throwing the blame on a dead captain.
DavidWhite
Final Approach
If the co-pilot doesn't have the balls to speak up then he has no business flying an airplane.
Piloto
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Of course. The pilots flew thousands of miles and hours in the wrong direction just to make a controlled ditching in one of the most remote oceans of the world. I guess that's not the least plausible theory that's been suggested.
How would you know when there is no witnesses at the ditch site. It only takes one survivor to prove the point. And there is plenty of data showing a higher degree of survivability after ditching than hitting a rock or getting on fire after a land crash. Could you imagine the outcome of flight 1549 if it would have crashed on I-95 instead of the Hudson River. Plenty of liability issues for Malaysian Airlines. They maybe better settling this out of court because I don't see a fair jury for them on this case.
José
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The probable reason I see for ditching (if they did) after flying that long is because they ran out of fuel. This would have triggered the Master Caution system and activated the ELT automatically while in flight.
Check: http://www.acrartex.com/products/catalog/elts-commercialmilitary/b406-4/
José
jesse
Touchdown! Greaser!
Assuming it had one and assuming it worked as intended which they often don't.
But you are an American and your point of view is different from someone born in Asia. There are airlines where the captain is king and what he says goes. Read that book I mentioned, it is a good read. Also, the worst air crash in history is now blamed on a KLM captain who disregarded orders and took off when he was not cleared to, the crash in Tenerife.
Silvaire
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Easy enough to put something in his coffee or hit him with the crash axe.
How about ask him to get something out of the cabin or wait for him to use the restroom and not let him back in?
Dav8or
Final Approach
Where is the drama in that??!! Come on, get with the program! We need graphic visuals for this movie... er, um... crash investigation.
Silvaire
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I did that in post #402. Somali pirates are at this moment hauling yet another barge load of fake debris with 90 hp Zodiacs through gale force winds and high seas to dump in the path of search vessels in the Southern Indian Ocean in a desperate attempt to cover up their dastardly plot.
There.