Airline Pilot Central Forums - Malaysian 777 missing

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NYT discovers FMS

Quote:

Originally Posted by ildarin (Post 1604571)

He had access to a certified FTD at work, and to a real simulator. With 20,000 hours, he didn't NEED one at home; he was apparently a computer geek on the side.

Checklists, on the other hand, are not secret, nor are they secured.

Ever hear of VatSim.net? Geeky to the core. Realtime simulation geeks playing what you and I do every night. Their website likely has all the manuals and checklists for most aircraft currently flying.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mike734 (Post 1604570)

Classic projection.

Hey, dead men tell no tales! :D

You do it your way, I'll do it mine.

I'll bet I get a lot less complaints.;)

It's a little known fact that we 777 guys typically climb up to FL450, depressurize, put everyone to sleep, go back and have our way with the hotties, come back to the cockpit and repressurize, then continue on our way...

Happens all the time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by galaxy flyer (Post 1604557)

Timbo,

An, I'll bet on any given day, 30% of all crews, regardless of flying machine, exhibit one or more of Lemon's warning signs in the pax minds. Following the posts here and at PPRUNE would drive you nuts.

GF

NOW I know what that rocking chair was all about!! :eek::D

Quote:

Originally Posted by LKB111 (Post 1604562)

Thanks for indulging me and responding to my post.

I guess I'm having a hard time understanding how/why this could have happened. It seems so strange that the person at the controls was able to do as much as he did and didn't have an end game. Conversely, if the end game was just to crash it, why would he fly for hours first?

As soon as I heard the transponder had been turned off, I believed it had to be something malicious. But even that doesn't add up with all the other evidence unless he could land it somewhere intact.

The Malaysians have to know much more than they're saying and that's super frustrating.

Three possibilities:

1) A fire or other malfunction of the avionics.

2.) A hijack or crew defection.

3.) A small bomb severed electrics and/or caused depressurization.

Just because there was no obvious end game, it does not mean there wasn't a planned end game. Any of the above three problems could have thrown a spanner in the works.

Landing "intact" would have been the least likely of end games.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LKB111 (Post 1604575)

That's all well and good. But the transponder was turned off which throws the whole thing out the window.

Who told you that, and why would you believe them? :rolleyes:

Let me guess, you heard it on TV, so it must be true?

The azzclowns on TV have NO IDEA what happened up there, and it's becoming obvious the Malaysian Military doesn't even monitor it's radar at 2am on a Sunday morning. They want to point the finger at the pilots, because that solves all their problems. "The Pilots went Rouge!"

Really? Why? What are they going to gain, other than unemployment?

Well it must have been hijacked!!

Why? To fly it into the sea?

It was most likely a smoke/fire issue in the E/E bay, and they all died before it even hit the water.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Timbo (Post 1604603)

Well, in part, yeah. :p But also, wouldn't other aircraft have been able to "see" 370 if the transponder was on?

I'm not jumping to any conclusions about the flight crew. I'm only *guessing* that someone with cockpit knowledge was at the helm.

Quote:

Originally Posted by biggy (Post 1604090)

...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?

Hey Biggy, welcome to the forum. Back in the early 1990s there was a guy that got arrested in South Florida after landing his Lear jet. His method was camping out near ADIZ boundaries (now called FIRs) and "joining" up on KMIA bound airliners. Transponder off of course. He'd fly a tight formation, shadowing the scheduled flights inbound, until he got to where he wanted to be, which was inside the international water boundary (back then it was 3 miles offshore). At the last moment he'd break off and light up his transponder on a VFR code, as if he'd just been out doing some local proficiency flying, or as if he'd barely missed the airliner. Lastly, he'd proceed to one of many nearby lesser used, or executive airports and off load his cargo. If I remember correctly, I think it was predominantly cocaine. He went away for a long time.

Allegedly he'd gotten aways with this tactic for a while, but it was the supply trail that eventually gave U.S. Customs enough leads to look closer at South Florida jet operators and eventually he got nabbed. I doubt anyone in Malaysia was all that interested in anything going on at 3 a.m.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Bligh (Post 1604590)

I hadn't; I'll check it out.

I don't think I'll be buying MS Flight Simulator, though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LKB111 (Post 1604605)

Air Malaysia is having financial issues. They don't subscribe to SatCom, or the higher quality (more expensive) ACARS data stream. I'll bet they don't do a whole lot of the required maintenance either.

Gee...I wonder why they would rather point fingers at the pilots than admit this airframe had a maintenance history? :rolleyes: