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A Year On, What Flight Simulators Can't Prove About Flight MH370
NBC News, a year after the loss of Malaysian Airlines flight 370, has an interesting piece about various scenarios that would explain the plane's disappearance. From the article: The theory that the pilots turned west because of an emergency is undermined because they did not head back toward Kuala Lumpur, according to retired NTSB senior investigator Greg Feith. ... Feith said that turning off the communications and taking the aircraft to the remote Indian Ocean was a course of action consistent with someone trying to purposefully lose an airliner. "It's 20,000-plus feet deep there," Feith said. "It's going be very difficult to find." He added that "the first thing you're going to do" as a pilot during an emergency is "don the oxygen mask" and "confess to ATC [air traffic control], 'We've got an issue, we need to return.'" Feith, who investigated other so-called "murder-suicide" airline crashes while at the NTSB, said that he has "always postured at least that this was an intentional act by one or both pilots."
There was an article in Wired quite awhile ago by a pilot. He said if there was a sudden change in direction, it was probably because the -experienced- pilot who was familiar with all the airports in the area, was looking for a safe airport. In that direction was a 7,000 foot runway. He theorized there was a nosewheel fire, the pilot turned and then everyone was overcome by smoke so the plane continued on untl running out of fuel.
http://www.wired.com/2014/03/mh370-electrical-fire/
"In this day and age of emergency failsafe backups".
What world do you live in? The day and age I inhabit seems to have had it's operating manual written by some clown named Murphy.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Except when its a country the US doesn't like, then its still terrorism.
It bugs me that from the beginning the MH370 disappearance does not seem to first be being approached as a possible criminal act. Were there any outrageous insurance claims following the flight? Were known drug kingpins contacted about losses that wouldn't normally be reported? Was there something on that plane worth (to an appropriately depraved mind) killing all of those people for?
no it was hacked
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...
Wrigley says that the pilot can always turn off autopilot if the plane starts making unexpected course changes. If someone did hack into the aircraft and take over the plane using the flight management computer, they would have had no means of keeping that control. "If an aircraft flight management system could be hacked by remote control, it would cause a lot of confusion on the flight deck, but I can't imagine that any pilot would just sit back and watch while the aircraft changed course." In that event surely they would find some way of communicating the problem.
Sounds like the AirAsia crash reports of issues with the flight management computer and the talk of the pilot trying to reset it.
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
I am the pilot of MH370.
I know the pilots' security routine: quick metal detector gate and a light symbolic patdown. Smuggling the ceramic knife ($5 at Kitchens-R-Us) in my shoe will be easy.
I will execute at international ATC handoff, so it takes time for them to notice neither tower has my plane. I will excuse myself to the bathroom, retrieve the knife, and return to slit the co-pilot's throat. I will not be intercepted or talked down from my destiny, so I will shut down all the comms I can.
I will turn west, the route with the least amount of land before open ocean - I will avoid land to avoid military radar. (One radar does pick me up, but hey, no plan is perfect.) A moment at high altitude, combined with manipulation of cabin air flow, will take care of crew and passengers.
I will circle southeast towards the Antarctic, away from shipping routes and flight traffic. I will fly until my fuel is almost gone, to avoid leaving a fuel slick behind. Then I will land on the sea - all pilots practice doing that - and sink in one piece, so as not to leave a debris field.
All I do is for one goal: to disappear.
Why, you may ask. That is for me to know. Maybe I have decided to check out, and my culture frowns on suicide - and insurance won't pay off to my family in suicide. That's the point of disappearing - to keep you from knowing.
Would it be too cheesy for me to quote a TV series here: "This is my design."
Whether it is or isn't doesn't change the fact that a chairman of the Republican Party said they want to control the election process to discourage Blacks from voting. The details of the method are unrelated to the stated goals and desires of the Republican Party, announced publicly by an official of the party.
Learn to love Alaska
The best theory I've heard is the follows (don your aluminum-foil hats!) --
Suppose you were a terrorism-for-hire organization, or a straight-up terrorist organization that was planning another big strike against a major superpower. Either one works for this theory. And suppose you had some new, amazing high-tech way of taking over a 777 by remote control. What would you do to either (a) test your system, or (b) impress a potential client? Such an ability would be HUGELY valuable, but only if it remained secret. You'd probably select a flight operated by a developing country that would not nominally have been under the same level of scrutiny as one from the first world, and one that could quickly be taken out of normal radar coverage. You'd take the plane over, disable its communication, move it about against the pilot's will (but still within radar range so that the demonstration could be recorded), and then send it off to crash well outside of radar range in a very deep part of the ocean where it might never be found, so evidence of your nefarious actions would not come to public scrutiny.
You'd be able to demand a pretty high price in the elite international terrorism market with such a demonstration. So while the act of diverting MH 370 might not in itself have been an act of terrorism, it still might have been executed by terrorists.
It's far fetched, yes, but it fits the facts better than any other theory I've heard. (Suicide by two non-suicidal pilots? Fire that magically disables communication without affecting navigation? Hijack with modern hardened cockpit access? Etc.)
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
You're implying that I don't think that the Air France plane was worth abandoning after 2 months too.
Looking for things isn't cheap. Looking for things on the bottom of the ocean is actually very expensive. I don't think we got our moneys worth on the Air France plane, and unless we find positive evidence that MH317 was abducted by aliens and we establish first contact as a result, we won't get our money's worth on MH317 either.
There's a point of diminishing returns especially when we're talking about the safety of statistically the safest form of travel by a very VERY large margin. They money would be better spent in programs that could deliver a better return on investment.