If you are wrong on one item … it’s worth checking to see what other items you may be wrong on.
This is the advice and training they give border patrol agents when they catch someone giving a wrong answer.
It’s likely that in an emergency situation the pilot would have dialed in the nearest airport and set the auto pilot to descend at a specific speed and to a specific altitude. That puts it in the area they’re looking in now. The plane would have flown on it’s own adjusting the engines accordingly to the assigned altitude and then flown on the heading given. This would give the appearance of someone flying the plane.
If it was a fire in the cargo bay then it’s possible that took out the wires to the UHF antenna on the bottom of the plane making communication impossible.
To build on this just a little -
I haven’t checked the numbers recently, but for a country like New Zealand (who did send a plane to the search) even a single plane is a a very significant part of their airforce. (It used to be that NZ had, IIRC, 3 operational C130s)
If you are wrong on all items … you get to run Malaysia Airlines. 
Now BBC is saying there’s some sort of question about what was actually said in that final message from the plane. Geez, does anything stay the same in this story?
Just saw that this was already mentioned on this page. I’d reached the end of the previous page and thought that was the last page.
They could pay everybody involved in the search to stay on vacation forever, sure. I’m not saying it would be a political priority, but it’s obviously factually possible. The search is not so large that it is endangering whole national economies.
The search will slow down eventually if nothing is found, but that’s not because the countries involved can’t afford it, but just because they won’t want to.
It is not being consumed in large quantities relative to the budgets of whole countries, no. Maybe if you made a pie chart of each country’s budget, this would be a visible slice for a small country like New Zealand. But a country like the US is making money much faster than a few P-8s can use it up.
It’s not just fuel. Has anyone got any idea what the maintenance schedule is for the search aircraft? Military aircraft often spend more time in maintenance than in flight, and those flight hours are very tightly restricted. Some navy ships aren’t much better.
Malaysia has released the full transcript between MH370 and ATC. I wonder if it’ll change?
Well, the problem is that the Anglophone media have been basing their reports on a translation of the Mandarin version of an English-language transcript.
In other words, the Malaysian authorities took the English-language transcript, translated it to Chinese and gave it to the Chinese authorities. Then that Chinese version was translated back to English (by whom, I’m not sure) and paraded as the actual transcript.
See the note on this transcript:
It is, quite literally, Chinese whispers.
Yeah it’s clear that the double translation manuscript is not accurate. None of the phraseology is what would be said in the real world. I’m surprised the plane spotting websites didn’t have a recording of the ATC conversation. There are live ATC feeds on the net and often when something happens there is a recording of it in the public domain quite quickly.
I’ll say. The general meaning of the communications seem to match up, but there are wild differences in the precise wording.
The air search is almost over. Your imaginary budget doesn’t exist.
apples to doorknobs budget comparison. There simply is no open-ended fund for this.
I’m back to thinking suicidal pilot and not systems failure. The notion that the pilot wanted to steer the plane off somewhere no one would ever look but probably did not know about the pings being registered sounds quite plausible.
Anything, such as a suicidal pilot who also wants to disappear, is possible. However IMHO the likelihood is vanishingly small.
Suicide itself is rare and an intensely personal decision. A person who reaches that nadir has lost any sense of self-worth and it is the only escape (in their perception) from utter hopelessness.
A suicidal person does not think about taking others with them. Its a desperately private decision.
It can happen that a dramatic end is chosen and innocent people may be hurt but I struggle to think of examples. Bus drivers going off bridges, taxis ploughing into opposite lanes…?
But lets assume one of the pilots did decide on the grand gesture. Does anyone seriously think that person (who is insane in these moments) would fly on for 5 hours? And furthermore fly so as to deliberately hide the direction, over-write the cockpit recorder, and disappear the entire aircraft?
For what purpose? Killing oneself is extremely hard to actually do let alone delaying for 5 hours.
Unless you have been inside an incident like this you have absolutely no idea what a difference there is between what is known to those at the heart of the situation and what the media report and you believe.
I have been at the heart of matters the subject of a media frenzy. Here’s some basics from my experience: on average about every paragraph of every media story contains at least one massive inaccuracy that no one who actually knows what is going on believes for an instant. Journalists are lazy as fuck and write their stories by updating their previous stories or copying from other journalists. Consequently, once a totally inaccurate factoid gets into the media it is essentially unkillable because it takes on a life of its own. Correction at source is near futile because most journalists take more notice of their (or some other journalist’s) previous story than any new material.
About 90% of all contradiction and confusion is only in and between the media’s own stories not actual contradiction and confusion as far as anyone on the inside is concerned. Most of the remaining 10% of contradiction and confusion is not because of any botching or clusterfucking by anyone who matters but simply because as you look into something you find out some things that you didn’t know before. This is not evidence of anything incompetent, dramatic or conspirational.
Once politicians get involved then things really get out of hand because politicians are people who understand that *for their purposes * it doesn’t matter what is really going on: what matters is what the public think is going on. Consequently, within certain limits, they deal with issues as if what the media is saying is real even if they know it isn’t. This causes the public to put even more faith in the horseshit the media is peddling.
Short version: I doubt very much that any of the actual, operational, responsible people who matter involved in the investigation of MH370 have ever been in the slightest doubt about exactly what the last words were. I doubt they have done anything wrong at all, let alone created a clusterfuck.
There’s the time spent at 45,000 feet. Consensus seems to be that there’s enough air for 12 minutes, and the plane was reported at one stage to have remained at that altitude for 23 minutes. I haven’t checked in the last ten minutes so that might have changed.
I believe that’s all been covered earlier in the thread.
Good question Eliahna … NBC news had a link for FB that you could ask questions, but no one asked that one.
Plus they say the plane can’t go that far up and come back down that fast (as someone initially reported yet you never hear anything about it anymore) without losing it’s wings.
Plus the oxygen generator for the passengers only last 15 minutes with the cockpit oxygen (which is separate) is also for 15 minutes which the pilot would’ve known.
Plus why the two minute window of the transponder being turned off after saying goodnight. Perfect timing if you ask me … not a high jacking.
Plus the psychology of the initial report that the co-pilot said “goodnight alright” but now he didn’t say that … now he said, “goodnight Malaysian 370” sounds like a cover up of what was really said. Cover up to protect the airline from lawsuits. If he said more than that someone will crack and tell all someday.
Plus now they say they don’t even know who said the final goodnight, the pilot or the co-pilot.
If it was suicide by pilot and he wanted to get away with it then he pointed it in it’s final direction for the last 6 hours of flight and took some pills and died happy sleep.
This investigation isn’t over and someday we will hear the rest of the story …
Good question Eliahna
How many minutes would indicate a hijacking? Ten? One? None? I’m trying to see the logic here.