I suspect the person asking this question is the same one who asked nearly exactly the same question here a few months ago from memory.. and surprisingly, the answers have not changed.
I'm glad it's not just me who recognised it. So I went and looked:
https://slashdot.org/story/360...
Yup, same guy.
Yup, looks that way. From two days ago:
Chromebooks don't have a Delete key?
Thanks for the info, that means I won't ever have to consider buying one.
The absence of the Delete key and the cursor keys is the thing I find most frustrating about using a phone keyboard. Thank God they're back on my Android tablet.
These days that number just puts you through to the Transphobic Hate Line.
"Had they realised about the double-back earlier they might have got him" nope. Everybody was dead the moment he started it and presumably incapacited the copilot. There is nothing the passenger or the military could have done at that point. [...] By that point the only thing that could be changed is bringing disclosure on the where about of the remain.
Yes, exactly. I quite agree. Sorry, my wording wasn't brilliant as I was typing in a rush. By "got him" I meant "got his location". As I wrote to somebody else who picked up on the same point...
at least they'd have known where to pick up the wreckage, which might have given us some confirmation of what happened and would certainly [well, hopefully] have given all those families some closure and bodies to bury
Now THAT'S an interesting one I haven't heard before.
Especially as there has been quite a lot of speculation as to what was in the hold.
No airstairs on a triple-7 though...
The above is the correct explanation, saving me some typing, thanks!
Well quite, but at least they'd have known where to pick up the wreckage, which might have given us some confirmation of what happened and would certainly have given all those families some closure and bodies to bury.
Thank you for telling them that. Vietnam not Thailand then.
I'm normally an assiduous article-reader but this time it was too big and the urge to post first overcame me given some of the stuff being written here. Thanks for filling the gap.
Failure in electronics systems causes a halt of radio and instrument processing. Inaccurate instrument panel. Pilot wanders around confused, can't find where he's going because the instruments give false headings...
I should also add, as someone else's post prompted me to reply that the flight path was intentionally devious. As I wrote:
Cutting a long story short, as soon as he signed off from one ATC area, he promptly turned off all his tracking devices (so from then on only military primary radar could track him, not the secondary radar used by most ATCs), then changed altitude and sneakily doubled back on himself, very cunningly flying a flight path that sneaked him under and past all the nearby primary radars, seriously minimising his chances of being spotted.
By the time the next ATC area (Thailand IIRC) realised that he hadn't checked in with them, he was long gone and heading towards the South Pole for six hours, way out of range of any radar on the planet (except possibly Australian military right near the end).
Had they realised about the double-back earlier they might have got him, but as it was, when he didn't check in they assumed an accident, and started searching where he would be given his last known trajectory, i.e. in the South China Sea.
By the time they reviewed military radar tapes two days later and saw this passing object on the fringes of their scopes, everyone was long dead.
That took serious planning. The idea that this mysterious electrical fault struck at the EXACT moment he signed off from ATC, and then not only did the plane turn back, but cleverly skimmed military radars before then, half-an-hour later, turning another 90 degrees and setting course for the South Pole, is absolutely ludicrous. Sorry, but it is. It could only have been deliberate.
Its last heading being directly towards the South Pole?!
Cutting a long story short, as soon as he signed off from one ATC area, he promptly turned off all his tracking devices (so from then on only military primary radar could track him, not the secondary radar used by most ATCs), then changed altitude and sneakily doubled back on himself, very cunningly flying a flight path that sneaked him under and past all the nearby primary radars, seriously minimising his chances of being spotted.
(Another reason the electrical failure hypothesis is absolute rubbish, his turnback flight path was far too well-planned.)
By the time the next ATC area (Thailand IIRC) realised that he hadn't checked in with them, he was long gone and heading towards the South Pole for six hours, way out of range of any radar on the planet (except possibly Australian military right near the end).
Had they realised about the double-back earlier they might have got him, but as it was, when he didn't check in they assumed an accident, and started searching where he would be given his last known trajectory, i.e. in the South China Sea.
By the time they reviewed military radar tapes two days later and saw this passing object on the fringes of their scopes, everyone was long dead.
Failure in electronics systems causes a halt of radio and instrument processing. Inaccurate instrument panel. Pilot wanders around confused, can't find where he's going because the instruments give false headings. Autopilot might also be driving the plane despite protocol (is there a hardware autopilot kill switch, or just software?). Failure eventually results in fuel system and engine management failure, engines shut down, plane can't glide forever.
Of course a minor electrical fault could screw up hundreds of electrical processes.
Such hypotheses were taken apart on the PPRuNe pilots' forum's 296-page megathread at the time.
There's no plausible explanation for any electrical failure causing the exact sequence of radio communications failures observed. People were even digging out circuit schematics. However they do extremely nicely fit the pattern of someone turning them off one by one and pulling circuit breakers.
It's a good thing for us that he didn't know about the satellite unit's in-built "pings", otherwise he would have pulled that breaker too (he did pull the one for the stuff that feeds data to it!).
The guy who's researched it for years is correct.
I'm afraid you, with your expert autopilot knowledge, are not.
Few people who followed the PPRuNe 296-page megathread were left in any doubt that it was indeed the result of deliberate pilot action, probably as a political protest against Malaysia's then-prime-minister jailing his opponent on trumped-up charges, along with the pilot having his divorce finalised on the same day (albeit it was apparently amicable).
And indeed mainstream news articles have been printed saying much the same thing.
So I'm not entirely sure why this is news, although I'm glad it's not being forgotten about and somebody somewhere is still, literally, picking up the pieces.
No video chat
And there you said it.
However since I don't often use video, it is one of the future options I'm considering. But then what do I do when I *do* want to use video?
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death. -- James F. Byrnes
