You’ve been re-reading The Langoliers, haven’t you?
Haven’t read any King since the first half of Pet Sematary. Maybe the pilot did, if there’s a point to be made. I am curious to see if anyone can invalidate the proposition with something besides “the pilot had no record of being a nutter.”
Inmarsat is saying now that they haven’t been searching in the area of the Indian Ocean that their data reveal to be the likeliest spot. Says the searchers got sidetracked with false pings from somewhere else.
At the precise point where he was furthest from reach by any overseeing entity
The plane was still visible on Malaysian, Thai, and Vietnamese primary radar. Malaysia had told them good night and they were supposed to check in with Vietnamese ATC, so they weren’t talking to anyone for a brief period, but I don’t know that this makes it a good time to make a move. If everyone had been alert at their job, they would have been asking why it turned west immediately.
disabled the tracking systems he could access
The only real thing mysterious is that the transponder went off. There have been a lot of “experts” saying a lot of different things about ACARS being turned off, but it is apparently routine and easy for Malaysia Air to turn off ACARS on flights to China.
took the plane to an extreme altitude and dumped cabin pressure until everyone aboard was dead or disabled
I’ve heard the 43,000 feet claim but can find no proof that it’s true other than an unnamed source. I’ve heard that it was far from radar and readings may not have been accurate, but I can’t find any proof of that either. I also read that when it first turned left, it descended. I thought Malaysia released the radar data but I can’t find anything. I don’t see why climbing higher is necessary in this scenario. You’re out cold in 30 seconds at 35000 feet without oxygen, about 10-15 at 43,000. What difference do those seconds make?
*then flew a course designed to keep him off tracking as much as possible. *
The plane flew standard aviation corridors from when the transponder went off and as it went across the Malay Peninsula. It flew almost directly over Langkawi International Airport too. It supposedly flew at 12,000 feet around this time too, but, again, it’s hard to say for sure. There’s a rather good theory that they had trouble and were headed to Langkawi for an emergency landing. It really was the closest large airport available and descending to 12k while heading to the closest emergency airport does make a heck of a lot of sense.
*At the furthest reach of his fuel load, *
Likely true, it’s final cause for crashing is probably that it ran out of fuel.
over the deepest ocean available
I don’t know. It’s hard to find much info on the depths of the Indian Ocean but there seems to be nothing remarkable about any proposed crash sites along the “7th arc” in the Southern Indian Ocean, which is the only place anyone is taking seriously. There are places deeper and more inaccessible in the middle of the ocean instead of near Australia.
he brought the plane to minimum speed at perhaps 1000 feet, then arrowed it in for minimum impact damage and maximum chance of sinking immediately with little buoyant debris.
The lack of debris doesn’t’ surprise me much. They finally sent one plane to look in the South Indian Ocean on day ten, then three the next day, and more and more until they eventually had a handful. The search area was insanely huge. Currents could have dispersed debris or it could have sunk long before it could be spotted. I was always more surprised when they thought they found debris than I was at the lack of it.
Well, I could take the few facts we know and wrap a bunch of scenarios around them and there would be no way to prove they didn’t happen. The emergency landing attempt at Langkawi is one.
I can’t remember if it’s been mentioned in this thread, but a Bollywood movie of the incident is being made.
Anybody want to tell this guy a 747 and a 777 look nothing alike?
I don’t have my hopes up.
Shh.
Why am I not surprised?
Of course they will use the wrong plane & all the tech will be horribly wrong but man, the story lines wrapped around the good looking people will be intense.
Wonder if the crash scene will be really good CGI or they fade to black to save the $$$? :rolleyes:
There will be a big dance scene in the aisles as the plane is going down.
No, the dance scene will occur when all the passengers are momentarily and inexplicably transported to the middle of a forest, before switching back again to the plummeting aircraft.
In matching saris, too. But no kissing.
Most fail Occam’s Razor. The reliable facts point to deliberate actions by a single capable individual, albeit with unknown motivations. Everything else needs to add in complex and unlikely failures such as a fire that damaged the plane in precise ways without disabling its flight capacity, or even more improbable elements that are pure guesswork.
Simple set of observed facts, explained by a simple set of actions by the pilot (or possibly both flight crew). Assuming the plane is ever found, I will be highly surprised if any other explanation is considered likely. Yes, very elaborate theories can be created if suppositions about unlikely possibilities are included… but I note that both KAL007 and Flight 800 ended up having very simple, if deeply tragic explanations, despite mountains of apparent complexity.
The one thing that has surprised me is that no “suicide note” was found - I thought that perhaps the pilot was devious enough to leave some kind of delayed message, perhaps by 30 days or more. My conclusion is that he was so deeply disturbed that his only aim was to create an enduring if not unsolvable mystery rather than just an elaborate suicide.
I’m not sure that holds true. Again, if you’ve ever seen the belly of the newest 747’s on the market you’ll see how vulnerable they are. Some companies order the plane without metal flooring between the loading systems so you can see all the wiring. It’s your basic aviation electrical wiring exposed. The tiniest fire would destroy it. It’s very possible to take out communications without disturbing the functionality of the engines or control surfaces. A fire in the cargo hold (from lithium batteries) could exceed the fire suppression system and destroy certain runs of wiring yet not take the plane down.
I am in Malaysia now, visiting in-laws. There was news today (reported by the UK Telegraph) that just a few days ago, someone (Malaysian investigators?) found evidence in the pilot’s home-practice simulator of his having plotted a course to some island in the Indian Ocean, and then deleting the file.
I found this odd, because AFAIK the simulator’s hard drive had been checked carefully months ago – I believe with US assistance (FBI?) – but it might be true. Not enough evidence for a definitive answer, but perhaps it will help them determine a small search area. As we all know, a non-human-intervention explanation (fire that kills everyone but doesn’t down the plane, etc.) is possible but very unlikely. A human intervention explanation, if it could be shown to be quite possible even via circumstantial evidence relating to the pilot’s actions in the previous weeks or months, would really be more satisfying, given what we know about how planes work.
Seeing the previous post – I agree with Amateur Barbarian, not so much with Magiver (though I bow to Magiver’s much deeper knowledge). What Magiver said about the communications systems is surely true, but a failure to attempt an emergency landing on the Malay peninsula shows more than just a communications failure.
Anyway, IF ANYONE HEARS ANYTHING FROM A REPUTABLE SOURCE regarding what I wrote in this post, their input would be much appreciated.
I’d settle for any reliable source speaking on behalf of the airlines that can release useful information. Given the limits of civilian radar they should at least have triangulated radar tracking among the various radar sites and countries that provide a reasonably accurate track. It should match up to the track calculated by satellite signals.
Everything released to date has been weak.
You do know radar is line-of-sight, I hope? As in not over the horizon? And that radar tracks do exist for the over-land portions of the flight, and that that’s how the turn south was found to have happened?
New New York Times story out, about changing the search area again based on a new analysis.
Now they claim that the Maylasian military tracking radar is unreliable for purposes of tracking altitude. That track had indicated a turn followed by changes of altitude – a long dive followed by a long climb back to above the rated ceiling of the aircraft.
If there were no such dramatic changes, the speed and range of the aircraft would both be substantially higher, and the new search area is calculated based on it getting quite a bit farther along the same track.
Which reliable facts? I see like one or two in your scenario and neither point to (or away from) a pilot.
From the NY Times:
A new search area for the missing Malaysian plane has been announced by the Australian government after further analysis of satellite data.
Here’s the Australian government report:
The new search is going to start in August and may take a year.