Taped2Seat

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.

savall

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.


Jumpseat: Meant if there were any employees riding up to Beijing.

rickair7777

A pilot would know he needed O2 and how to get it. He might not understand the DCS issues he would experience by deliberately exposing himself to ambient pressure in the 40's without adequate prep...it would be rapid and crippling IMO. I have a bit of experience with parachute and dive ops, so I may be more conscious of that than most.

rickair7777

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.

savall

I've been reading about the flight path, but I haven't yet seen it. Where are you guys finding the most "reliable" news source ? I've mostly only caught info through here and the occasional glimpse of CNN. It seems WSJ has good sources, but I don't have a subscription.

Dougdrvr

Whoever he is, he needs to turn in his Captain stripes (see web site) and go back to school, judging from his comments on jet upset.

LKB111

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?

unitedflyier

First we hear the flight climbed to FL450 when it disappeared now the latest is it descended to 5,000ft to avoid radar detection. 9 people around 01.30 reported a low flying aircraft with landing lights on to local police.

Why are we only just hearing about this now? Can we trust any information coming from the Malaysian government? The plane cannot be at FL450 and 5,000ft at the same time.

FO was the last voice heard and expat pilots relayed a message from Vietnam after last official comm (the handoff) was heard. The relay message was broken with lots of static. Suggesting it was further away that it should have been.

If it did descent to 5,000 ft how was it detected at 08;11 so far away without refuelling?

Did it land, now we are told it could have been on the ground.

Seems every day we hear more information that just raises more questions.

LKB111

This also raises an interesting possibility:

Keith Ledgerwood ? Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

savall

Might as well say the Singapore pilots were an accessory to whatever happened to 370. That would require a lot of coordination or just sheer luck.

If it was planned that way the MAS flight would be dependent on the Singaporean jet flying the exact flight plan with no shortcuts or weather deviations, would need to be departing exactly on time, etc.