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A Pan Am captain ditched his Boeing Stratocruiser halfway to Hawaii in 1956 with no loss of life. They developed problems with two engines at the "point of no return". Ditched next to a Coast Guardship.
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Ground yourselves in a little reality.
Pilot: Was that Boeing 777 diverted deliberately? Not necessarily - CNN.com |
Originally Posted by Captain Bligh
(Post 1603716)
What if..... in a collaborative effort with the financier of the stollen passport holders, the aircraft was stolen for a purpose? Like a dirty bomb or nuclear device delivery vehicle?
I always said, when I flew it inserting troops to the gulf, was that it was the perfect bomber platform. It could fly so high and fast that NATO fighters that attempted to intercept us for practice (which was allowed since we were using CRAFT mission call signs) often couldn't reach us. Especially ones form EU nations with limited range and airspace. We would pass overhead at 37,000 feet doing .84 mach and they just couldn't close the distance given what they had to work with. The airplane has the ability to haul/deliver 100,000 pounds of payload an incredible distance. If terrorists stole it for a suicide mission, or imagine malicious intent, pick a city and it's gone. There's no way anyone in most of the governments in the world, has the testosterone to shoot down a civilian airliner given the history of how well that's worked in the past, nor with the current administrations at the helm of western governments. Even if terrorists or a foreign power just landed a 777 full of commandos somewhere after an intercept and started shooting their way out of the airplane, there isn't a civilian airport in the world that would be prepared for it. This is one of the problems with exporting technology for the sake of $$$$$, hoping to replace the cash flow from previously exported manufacturing jobs. Here's the thing, there's almost always a business man or two that have several global sat phones, one in their pocket one in a briefcase. Unless they killed everyone enroute, someone would make a call. As this story unfolds however; I think most people should hope and pray it crashed. Firstly, there's been a lot of talk about intercept in this thread, but I haven't seen anything anywhere addressing what I've been wondering about, which is whether it's possible for another rogue aircraft could've done a planned intercept of the flight and coerced the pilots' actions either over a direct communication or via some sort of 'sleeper' agent on the plane? Assuming that's not a completely crazy question, would a second plane be able to travel closely enough along the evasive flightpath to remain a threat without arousing further radar suspicion? Verging on getting a little more far-fetched, similar to the post above, once there was speculation that the plane could've landed somewhere covertly, my first (possibly Hollywood) thought was whether it would make for an excellent transport of a massive dirty bomb or the like. Supposing the plane is on some remote island off of, say, Indonesia, is it conceivable that it could fly to a target at the far end of its range, initially using the open waters of the Indian Ocean to mask its position? I realize things would get messier once it had borders to contend with, but might some nations' air forces be reluctant to deal with shooting down a flying dirty bomb if the stated target was beyond them? (For example, would Iran bother engaging such a rogue aircraft and risking fallout over its country if the intended target was in Israel?) Sorry if I'm pushing things into the absurd. I have no illusions I'm about to crack the case, I'm just not sure if I'm completely goofy with these thoughts. |
Originally Posted by CBreezy
(Post 1604073)
Ground yourselves in a little reality.
Pilot: Was that Boeing 777 diverted deliberately? Not necessarily - CNN.com |
Originally Posted by CBreezy
(Post 1604073)
Ground yourselves in a little reality.
Pilot: Was that Boeing 777 diverted deliberately? Not necessarily - CNN.com Jumpseat: Meant if there were any employees riding up to Beijing. |
Originally Posted by Taped2Seat
(Post 1604033)
Assuming the news are right (BIG if) whoever did this had a preconceived plan, as data appears to show a fairly clinical execution of twists and turns to silence comm and get out of Malaysian airspace. The scenario is possible only if the perp didn't have in-depth knowledge of oxygen levels.
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Originally Posted by Taped2Seat
(Post 1604093)
Yeah, biggest issue is not been able to trust data coming out of the quoted sources. Good article btw - hard to believe it came from CNN.
Originally Posted by savall
(Post 1604097)
I think Bill may have pieced together one of the more logical and reasonable articles since this whole thing started. I'm still concerned with the fact that no one can positively verify where this airplane was. Was it north or was it south ? Was it zig zagging or straight ? Still sounds to me like there could have been an instance that caused hypoxia and a turn over the ocean was initiated.
This is exactly what I thought...until I saw the track after the comms-loss. It's straight lines between waypoints with sharp turns at waypoints. That only happened if the plane was being positively controlled by a pilot or AP/FMS. And somebody had to load the new flight plan, for some reason. I'll still acknowledge the remote possibility that a well-intentioned pilot fighting a casualty changed the flight plan to head back to land by pulling up an old or stored plan that headed in the direction he wanted to go. But that's not really very likely. Possible, but not likely. |
Originally Posted by rickair7777
(Post 1604152)
This is exactly what I thought...until I saw the track after the comms-loss. It's straight lines between waypoints with sharp turns at waypoints. That only happened if the plane was being positively controlled by a pilot or AP/FMS. And somebody had to load the new flight plan, for some reason.
I'll still acknowledge the remote possibility that a well-intentioned pilot fighting a casualty changed the flight plan to head back to land by pulling up an old or stored plan that headed in the direction he wanted to go. But that's not really very likely. Possible, but not likely. |
Originally Posted by MEMbrain
(Post 1604000)
Who is this Mitchell Casado dude on CNN? The gruff goateed, t-shirt wearing, 777 "pilot trainer" at some Canadian airline enthusiast's FBS thrill ride company.
uFly Simulator ? Mississauga, Toronto, Canada ? fly in a real B 777 200ER cockpit ? |
I'm a non-pro, as this post will show, but, like the rest of the world, I've been speculating on this flight. Is the following plausible?
The 777 can land anywhere with 4k-5k feet of flat pavement that's at least 100 feet wide. (I think it takes 7k feet to take off again, though.) It doesn't have to be an airfield. It doesn't have to be on an island. There is PLENTY of mainland between the tip of Thailand and the furthest point it could have travelled on its fuel that would meet that criteria. The aircraft alone is worth $300 million bucks. The passengers are worth untold amounts. Who knows what valuables were in cargo that were attractive to the hijackers? I do not believe it crashed. When planes crash, they automatically send out an emergency beacon picked up by satellite. They leave massive debris fields. On water, they leave massive oil slicks that would have been detected by now. That plane was carrying a ton of fuel at the point it went off the grid. The plane could've flown under the radar level to reach its destination (under 5,000 feet). This uses more fuel and would not enable it to go as far as Kazakstan or whatever; farther north places I've seen on the map of possibilities. Whoever was at that controls was using waypoints while still flying over water and then, I believe, flew under the radar to its landing spot. The only thing that baffles me about this scenario is why a demand for money hasn't been made yet. But then, maybe they need more time to get their ducks in a row on that. Anyone? |
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