yes and you’ll note that the United States shifted south early in the investigation. This backs up the premise that there wasn’t a substantiated track to the west.
That still doesn’t explain why the search was going on in the northern Indian Ocean at one point. The military radar data led them there, then they became aware of the Inmarsat data that led them south.
OK, I haven’t been following this much, other than reading the headlines, but my question:
A few weeks ago, an airline pilot gave the “simplest explanation of what probably happened.” Just a few days later, an rebuttal showed that his idea was probably off.
Assuming that the narrowed-down search area does eventually pan out, would that give any credence to where the pilot in the article suspected the plane was heading when “the problem arose.”
I don’t know which explanation you’re referring to (there’ve been so many), but if it involved a fire on board the plane, it wouldn’t have any credence.
Right, a plane on fire has *minutes *left to fly, not hours.
Just playing Devil’s Advocate here, but can you envision an accident scenario where:[ul][li]Only non-navigational parts of the electronics are disabled, not all[]all communications are cut off except for the ones the pilots don’t know about[]the pilots are incapacitated, but manage to activate the autopilot[]the autopilot flies the plane past multiple waypoints as if it was programmed to do so[]the plane is unable to land, but can fly quite well in the wrong direction[*]none of the 230+ passengers or crew can make phone calls of any kind[/ul]?[/li]
Right, me neither.
For example Swissair111 lasted 20 minutes from the first trace of smoke until impact.
[quote=“Musicat, post:1366, topic:683168”]
[ul][li]none of the 230+ passengers or crew can make phone calls of any kind[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Cellular phone calls work from aircraft that are reasonably low, reasonably slow, and reasonably near to cell towers (say, within 25 miles). Without all three, chance of a successful call declines significantly.
Given that it seems likely this was not the case for Flight 370, the alternative would have been some special airline-provided telephone link. I haven’t yet heard any info to the effect that such a system was aboard.
Right. I don’t know why the fire scenario has persisted for so long. A commercial jetliner deliberately being flown so far off course and for so long is stranger than fiction, but at least it’s possible, unlike a burning plane flying for seven hours.
Ocean Shield is back in the small search area, and Echo has moved out, but seems to be going up and down on a track just outside it. Double checking?
By my estimation, Echo is about 25 km from the search area. I’m not sure it would be checking anything that far away. Maybe just biding it’s time while Ocean Shield is in the search area. OS is going only 2 knots, presumably looking for more pings.
Assuming it crashed in the search area, does anyone know what the winds were like that night along it’s path?
Enough speculation! Jeepers, can we we get a betting pool going?
There is now a report that there was a call from the copilot’s phone as the plane went over the west coast of Malaysia, just before it went off the radar.
News.com says that page can’t be found when I click the link. Here’s a link to New Straits Times, apparently the source of the story. It carefully points out that a call wasn’t necessarily made; it could have just been the phone being turned on, and that it didn’t necessarily have to be by the first officer.
The Guardian’s article on the story quotes Hishammuddin Hussein as saying, “I cannot comment because if it is true, we would have known about it much earlier.”
Weird. I accessed it a couple of times. I guess they don’t want people to know about it. 
They don’t want me to know about it, at least.
The link is “mobile.news.com”. Is that for smart phones only?
Link’s not working for me now, either. But a google on “Malaysia copilot cell phone” brings up a scwhack of links.
The link posted was mangled. I don’t think the Wikipedia stuff at the end belongs:
I see the headline twice at the site, with slightly different writing credits and pictures.
One
Two
Difficulties cutting and pasting from a phone. Thanks for fixing it.