JJ21

what if hi jackers flew to a shorter destination, shut down the engines but ran the APU, would that cause the satellite "pinging" the news is talking about?

if they had to wanted to de load the cargo compartments/interior cabin maybe they kept the apu running? hence the "7 hours of flight time"

rickair7777

They may have tried, but they probably didn't succeed. There is no point in keeping the plane. If they intended to use it as a WMD they would have done so immediately (within a day or so) before somebody wised up. They're not going to sit around some jungle airstrip with a hot 777 waiting to act out their lead role in the next navy seal movie.

It could have landed intact in the ocean, floated for three days, sank and odds are they still wouldn't have spotted it. It was days before they even had an idea in which direction it went.

The ocean is incredibly vast, most folks can't even seem to grasp how vast and satellite resources are extremely limited by comparison.

Most likely there was a debris field and even an oil slick, but in any normal open-ocean conditions it would have dispersed within hours or a day or two at most. The ocean is very dynamic and is full of miscellaneous debris...especially in that part of the world.

rickair7777

Supposedly the "pings" included engine performance data for trend monitoring, which indicated the engines were running in cruise conditions.

rickair7777

I think private pilots learn about this.

Medical O2 has water vapor (normal ambient humidity) so as not to dry out the patient's lungs and throat.

Aviation O2 is dry, so that it doesn't form ice in the delivery system when the regulator drops the pressure, and subsequently the temperature.

rickair7777

Very unlikely. This would be very hard to pull off for several reasons, and it's a tactic military forces are aware of.

Even the experts on CNN called BS on this theory.

Theoretically possible, but not possible to reliably plan the intercept since the interceptor in this case can't augment and do a supersonic sprint to catch up.

Also airliners do not have targeting radar that can track other aircraft.

JJ21

"Also airliners do not have targeting radar that can track other aircraft."

you dont need radar you just need a clear view out of your cockpit window to see the nav lights of another plane.

rickair7777

If you know exactly where he's supposed to be and when.

If it's clear out.

If you acquire the correct set of blinky lights from miles away.

If he's not late.

If you can get catch up without resorting to afterburners.


Or perhaps you've done subsonic night VFR intercepts without GCI or radar?


Not saying it absolutely wouldn't work but the odds are low enough that nobody would think it was a good plan.

FDXLAG

To run a rejoin you need someway to estimate range. I forget the exact numbers but if two aircraft are pointing at each other (ideally they are 180 degrees out with parallel tracks offset by about 8 miles), both going .78 mach, you need to start the 180 degree turn at something like 20 miles to end up within a mile or so of each other. Cant be done with eyeballs alone.

JJ21

have you been to the Reno Air Races? Each race begins with formation flying around a mountain. each aircraft joins up with the lead....look at the military aircraft prior to all this advanced cockpit avionics they joined in formation day/night by looking out their cockpit window.

If the other a/c was still climbing out & Malaysia a/c spotted him he could catch up...the reality of it is if this was a planned a/c take over then they would have researched the standard flight paths for every airline flying out of Malaysia airports by just watching flight aware and other sites each night for a certain amount of time. runway/which sid changes...the Jet routes are usually pretty standard. That time of night there would be limited t/o delays so the timing could be more accurate then say during the day time.

Do I think this idea is far fetched? Yes, but I thought the article was interesting enough to share...and pray to God that that terrorist did not take this plane by any of these means because that means their planned attack on a city with the plane will be as stealth as this one. Scary to think about.

I am still leaning towards a a/c mechanical/bomb that caused the crew to turn towards their emergency airport area as there are countless airports in the area that they turned that are long enough for a triple 7 and it was the shortest route to land. see malaysia own website for their destination then you can see a map of the airports in the area the aircraft turn took them towards. The oil rig operator eye witness account that a plane at that time and area was "on fire" for about 10-15 seconds.

JimFromAustin

I have a question on how it is known the FMS was modified? Does the FMS report back the change in the flight plan via ACARS or something? Or is there just circumstantial evidence that it was changed? Sorry if this has already been asked, I scanned all the posts here and didn't see anything.