20 Freescale Semiconductor Employees On Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 190
NeverVotedBush writes with news reported by CNN that a passenger manifest for the flight that went missing on its way from Malaysia to China indicates that "Twenty of the passengers aboard the flight work with Freescale Semiconductor, a company based in Austin, Texas. The company said that 12 of the employees are from Malaysia and eight are from China," and writes "Apparently, at least two passengers used stolen passports to board."
Re:Was there any ACARS data? (Score:5, Interesting)
It could be more complicated then that.
Suppose an electrical fault cause the loss of coordinate transmission while it also lost navigation and the pilots were forces to fly manually and blindly for a while before they lost all control and the plane crashed. A jets under ideal conditions can glide around 70 or so miles from 35000 feet in the air.
So if the jet lost portions of the planes controls in stages, it could be quite a large search radius from the last known position and it could be close to the limit of the fuel range if they could still control the engines (doubtful as most everything is fly by wire and a catastrophic electronics failure likely would consume that too).
Motorola used to have rules against that, IIRC (Score:5, Interesting)
Granted, it has been a while since I worked for the part of Motorola that became Freescale, but I am fairly certain there were rules against the maximum number of employees that could take any one flight. I think it was 2 for executives and 6 or 8 for regular employees. Situations like this, rare as they are, was the reason. I wonder if Freescale still has those rules and ignored them, or didn't copy them over. Any current employees have insight?
I hope the families receive meaningful information as to what and why this happened, and don't have to spend a year or longer wondering (at least for the what, why usually takes a lot longer with airline crashes).
The 777 is one of the safest commercial planes in the aviation history, with only one accident with fatalities prior to this. Having just flown on a 777 (Cathay Pacific) out of Kuala Lumpur less than 30 days ago, however, I will say that their airport security was very lax. When I set off the metal detector and was wanded, the security person stopped at the first thing that might have set it off (I had left a metal-bodied pen in my shirt pocket) and didn't go on to find I also forgot to take out my cell phone and earphones from a different pocket (cargo pants). That was just for entry to the main concourse, though. To actually get on the plane, Cathay Pacific required a secondary screening that was much more rigorous from what I observed of how they dealt with other people (I remembered to put away my pen and phone that time). Malaysia Air did not do a secondary screening for a domestic flight when I boarded in Sandakan a few days earlier, but the concourse screening was also more intensive.
Re:Was there any ACARS data? (Score:4, Interesting)
IMHO Investigators should have a careful look at the airport where the boarding took place
As I live and travel a lot within Asia, I can tell you that many airports in Asia, particularly those in Indonesia and in Malaysia (and also in Thailand) are so lack in any security procedure that any suicide bomber can board a plane easily.
And in Malaysia as well as in Brunei and in Indonesia, I have seen with my own eyes that they let women who cover up their faces passing through checkpoint and boarding planes.
Re:No American aboard ... move along, folks ! (Score:4, Interesting)
Hold on a sec we don't know if they're dead yet. I mean they could have been abducted by aliens you know.