Further, the RAAF no longer deploys to Butterworth. Its F-18 bases are in Queensland and NSW with limited deployments to N.T. All thousands of miles away. Seriously doubt, Malaysia, Vietnam or Thailand has a QRA. Singapore might.


Gf

Beyond ludicrous.

Most folks cannot even begin to comprehend how vast the south pacific is. Most fighters have a very limited combat radius without airborne refueling, which takes lengthy advance coordination to arrange.

Defensive fighter capability (interception) defends a specific area or border. AR is typically not required because the fighters are based close to the defended area. Response time in minutes. If the missing flight penetrated the wrong ADIZ, it could have been intercepted by fighters staged for that purpose.

Long-range offensive/strike ops require massive, complex coordination which takes 72-96 hours to arrange. That's what AR is used for.

An aerial search would utilize long-range/long-endurance patrol aircraft, and that's exactly what happened... the next day.

Also nobody in Oz or the USN likely even knew about this until they turned on CNN the next morning. Their job is not to patrol the vast reaches of the Pacific for lost jets. The ATC facilities which lost contact with MH don't have a red-phone to the pentagon.

That said, if it had approached a US ADIZ, it certainly would have been detected, transponder or not, and intercepted.

Didn’t the captain report leveling off at their assigned altitude? I heard that’s not normal? Perhaps it was his way of crying out for help after being hijacked? I mean the flight doesn’t fit the narrative of pilot suicide. I’m thinking a controlled landing was attempted. Never said it was went successful. Strange how the only piece recovered is a flap. And it would make sense if it was retracted. And who’s to say hijackers didn’t make their way into the cockpit by starting a fire, then getting out of control? Sure sounds a lot more believable than the depressurized with pilot still somehow flying story

Oceanic out of radar, no real harm in reporting assigned altitude via radio. Some pilots report things they don't have to, I personally find it annoying because it clogs up the radio but there's nothing that says you can't communicate additional info to ATC.

No.

1. No way to predict how the plane would come apart on impact, especially if you have no idea of arrival speed/attitude

2. Different objects have different shapes and densities, and thus float differently and are affected by currents and winds differently.

3. It's a very big ocean out there, so #2 would be amplified by time and distance... you could end with parts on different continents.

You're way overthinking this.

It was either pilot suicide (which I strongly doubted at first but now don't see any other obvious answer) or just possibly an innocent onboard fire.

The fire *might* just explain the loss of avionics and incapacitation of crew & pax. In the process of fire fighting, electrical buses would likely have been dumped, and depressurizing the ship is one way to fight an out-of-control fire, especially if you have nowhere to land immediately. If crew oxygen failed or ran out, the crew might have inadvertently incapacitated themselves in the process. But it's still a stretch.

Pilot suicide only requires one anomaly: Suicidal Pilot.

The fire scenario requires several anomalies: Fire + loss of avionics + loss of cabin pressure + no comms/mayday + pilots succumb to low cabin pressure (they have O2 and and know to use it).

Hijacking is even more improbable... hijackers would have taken the plane somewhere and claimed credit. If they just wanted to bring the plane down they would have used a bomb, that's a lot easier than hijacking. If the crew regained control they would have landed somewhere or at least communicated before ditching.

What are you talking about? I guess those tankers sitting alert at my base that launch with the fighters sit there and plan for 96 hours and then launch after the fighters get back and go to bed for 3 days. Were you a fighter guy? Or are you spewing more bad info like over in the pilot health section.

Oh this is getting rich!��

So how long do you think it would take those tankers to get released from their nuke support mission and then fly from wherever the h€|| your base is to the Indian Ocean? Because at max speed a fighter will be lucky to have a range much over 400 nm so they can’t depart until you are about 20 minutes from having them on station. And then they can’t travel any faster than the tanker that’s fueling them.

And no, I was never a fighter PILOT but I sure worked in the back seat of a lot of fighters and I definitely understand navigation better than you do. You ever fly the pond? EITHER pond? Sitting on an ejection seat and wearing a poopie suit? Or do you even know what those are?

Sure did. And I wasn’t talking to you. Also, shut up nav.

So what WOULD BE the flight time of those tankers at “your base” to the Indian Ocean, oh great Sky God, and what would be their duty time remaining when they got there? And how much fuel would the tankers have burned getting there? How much loiter time would they then have to support SAR activities when they did finally arrive there?

Inquiring navigator minds want to know if you can actually figure that out unassisted.
:D

My guess would be about 2000 NM for US tankers, 300 NM for Singapore Tankers. So anywhere between 1-4+ hrs of everything is working right. And they would still not find a thing unless all the radar sites in the area where tracking it. So shut up Co!😛