Can an Aircraft ‘Disappear’ in Flight?

I suggest the blog needs not better editing but a more logical essay plan:

1. To answer the question - yes, an aircraft can disappear without the quote marks

2. To explain why

- primary radar has limited coverage of the world, with a notably large gap over the oceans

- secondary radar and other current reporting systems are not designed for 24/7 position reporting

3. To offer suggestions for the future, with estimates of cost

- ground/water based

- satellite based

Alien abduction.

One shot down and then one disappears, same airline.

In the whole entire world, there is no such thing as a coincidence when juman nature is present. Misappropriation of the depth of the English language is not a coindidence either. Disappear has varied connotations. Crashing into the water is not really the same as visually disappearing, and neither is being shot down. Being undetectable, either visually by camouflage, or electronically by low radar cross section is not the same as disappearing. Just because something is not detectable, that does not preclude its presence within the system containing the experiment. The detector can be faulty, or improperly "tuned" to "see" the object.

To disappear (IMHO) means that what was there just a short increment of time ago, is no longer "in the sandbox".

Kind of like a TARDIS?

More like the whole blogosphere just went from being one screen wide to three rooms wide.

Once again this comes down to proper editing of how one describes an airplanes disappearance. An airplane can safely disappear into a cloud bank when taking off on a rainy day. Any airplane can disappear out of sight by flying beyond the horizon. A fighter airplane can still disappear in a dogfight by flying into the sun. A stealth aircraft can disappear from radar by turning their transponder beacon "OFF". The F14 Tomcat has disappeared from all the skies from obsolescence.

"Can an Aircraft disappear in flight". This is a serious topic and I apologize for treating it with levity. No, unless someone has invented an anti gravity device, the flight has obviously been terminated just before or at the point of disappearance.

This is dumb. Planes do not disappear unless they hide out in clouds and cannot be seen. But of course there are many places where a plane cannot be tracked by all reporting systems and sometimes none at all.

But even given that, to say a plane disappeared is for callers to Coast to Coast a.m.

Aircraft can 'disappear' fairly easily:

1. Fly below the 'radar ceiling.'
2. Fly into a 'shadow zone' where 'line of sight⁽¹⁾' to aviation communication towers is blocked. (Often overlaps with being 'below the radar ceiling.')
3. Congratulations, you've disappeared.

Unless the plane is flying into a mountain⁽²⁾, it's likely that they will go though this while making an emergency landing and/or/crashing.

There are other ways to 'disappear' a plane, such as 'sudden disassembly' of the vehicle due to a severe mechanical flaw, or contact with airborne munitions, either aggressive or 'friendly.'⁽³⁾

Notes:

1. Planes do not use satellite communications, beyond GPS navigation (which is a one-way signal), so they need line of sight to towers to stay in contact with the airports and control stations. Remember that radio waves have different 'line of sight' rules than 'visible light,' but if there is no 'line of sight,' there is no communication.
2. There are only tree things on this planet that a plane could crash into while still in view of radar: mountains, tall buildings, and other planes. And most of those have made the news recently enough that any mention is a 'painful reminder.' But we cannot ignore a safety issue just because we feel sad thinking about it.
3. Again, I'm trying to be polite and not insensitive to recent tragedies, but some things need to be said, or we end up ignoring elephants in the room while people are still getting stomped underfoot.
   

"Notes:

1. Planes do not use satellite communications, beyond GPS navigation (which is a one-way signal), so they need line of sight to towers to stay in contact with the airports and control stations. Remember that radio waves have different 'line of sight' rules than 'visible light,' but if there is no 'line of sight,' there is no communication."

Er.... no. Planes /do/ use satellite communications for a number of applications. Or airliners do, anyway. Firsly there's the telephone system for passengers and crew then there's the Satellite Data Unit which the ACARS uses for in-flight fault reporting. What we know of MH370's position is from the ping times of the several contacts between the Inmarsat satellite and the SDU on the plane which gives us the distance of the aircraft from the satellite.

The aspect of both MH370 and AF447 that continues to amaze me is the ignorance of the implications of satellite communications systems by airline staff. Malaysia staff telephoned MH370's cockpit telephone at 02:39 and 07:13. Both times the call went through to the plane but was unanswered. Both times the call setup yeilded some useful position information. If staff had known more of the system they would have called, hungup, called, hungup, continually knowing that they were creating a log that would give them some idea of the aircraft's position.

Even more bizarrely, AF447 generated 23 Error messages, relayed to Air France by satellite, on its way down including "Failure: Electric Flight Control System #1-#2, Flight Control Primary Computer #2, ADIRU #1, comm. Air Data Reference #1-#2 to FCPC #2 have failed" (02:13) and "ADVISORY CABIN VERTICAL SPEED" [cabin pressure changing rapidly] (02:14). I thought it was bad enough there was no system watching error messages and alerting if a critical message or significant grouping occured after all, the plane had just sent messages saying "loads of important systems have failed and we're dropping out of the sky". You'd think that worthy of notice. However, even when the flight was overdue no-one thought to check the error logs until some time later. The log timing alone would have given a pretty good indication of where the plane was rather than having search planes pratting about over half of the Atlantic Ocean.

Disposition of persons onboard the aircraft can make it "disappear".

Political status of persons onboard can make it "disappear".

Co-ordinated media efforts can make it "disappear".

Yup, gotta watch out for those massive Alien Mother Ships that swallow-up Jumbos.... LMAO!

Given the fact that Flight MH370 managed to elude multiple systems, it would seem

to me that there had to be some very well informed hi-jackers involved in the

disappearance of the airplane. Whoever caused the airplane to disappear did their

homework very well.

You have "hit the nail on the head" on the crux of the problem with many conspiracy theories in general here. The probability that a hijacker could intentionally circumvent the multiple tracking systems available to safely land this plane somewhere without anyone telling versus something going wrong at the wrong time causing the plane to crash somewhere that systems cannot see. Both of these scenarios are very unlikely. It can be argued which is more likely until wreckage has been found.

Yes, it's a big, deep, dark ocean and a fast moving aircraft can travel a good distance in a short time.

Disappear is not the same as not found.

If I lost my diamond ring, and decide to exclusively look on 1st street, and continually look for it there no matter what, when I don't know it's lying somewhere on 3rd avenue, it is not 'disappeared'... i'm just to ignorant, stupid, or prideful to change my search area.

Same as this incident.

The investigators are convinced where the flight went down, when it crashed at another location. There is enough evidence to place the aircraft several hundred miles from the search area.

With the additional layer of politics regarding the religion, mental state of the pilot, and the absolute pride of the investigative leadership looking to be 'right' and 'first' in finding the crash adds to to silliness.

The plane has not disappeared. It is findable.

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." - Arthur Conan Doyle