re: Official Thread: Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

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Theres no reason to shut off transponders or make the maneuvers they did. You take it straight down and end it.

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Exactly. Wasn't it an Egyptian flight where the pilot did a nose dive because he was committing suicide? When they got to cruising altitude, the co-pilot announced he was going to the bathroom. The pilot then took the auto pilot off and started diving toward the ground. The other pilot begged and pleaded with him to pull up with him but he just continued to praise Allah as they dived toward the ground.

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So either the plane turned south heading towards areas w/o radar or went north towards countries that apparently are even more inept than Malaysia.

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A lot of those countries don't have their radar on at night because nothing is happening. India pretty much admitted most of their radars were off on the night in question.

Just drop the gold theory, its bullshite story because of 20k lbs. if it were considerably less, then maybe.

29k lbs with full fuel and full passengers with baggage over water most of the trip....that would be very reckless IMO.

BTW, I would imagine an expert could watch video (if it exists) of the takeoff and know that because of the 20k lbs extra, it took much longer to get off the ground than normal, right?

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They probably say "pre programmed" because of the exact turns going straight for the next point type stuff. Maybe everything involved (engine power) etc was all done perfectly.

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I agree. I don't think the woman in the video means pre-programmed the way I take it to mean. She's just trying to be cool and find different ways to say "deliberate" or "purposely" and doing a poor job of it.

What time do they turn them on? The last ping was 8:11 am...so maybe 9am

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It shouldn't take too long for the collective authorities to investigate their own airports.

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If the hijacking/landing is truly what happened, there is no fricking way they brought this plane down in a friendly country or an active airport.

EVERYONE would know bc it would have been daylight during the landing and people around the airport would have noticed a 777 coming in.

Its likely on a dirt airport int he middle of nowhere. And yes, according to the experts, the 777 could land on a dirt airport of dried lake bed

MH370 PRESS STATEMENT
BY MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT, MALAYSIA
SUNDAY, 16 MARCH 2014

1. Search and rescue operational update
a. The search and rescue operation continues to be a multi-national effort, led by Malaysia.

b. Malaysian officials are contacting countries along the northern and southern corridors about MH370. These countries include: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and France. Officials are requesting assistance from these countries.

c. Malaysian officials are currently discussing with all partners how best to deploy assets along the two corridors.

d. Malaysian officials are also asking countries to provide further assistance in the search for the aircraft, including: satellite data and analysis; ground-search capabilities; radar data; and maritime and air assets.

e. Both the northern and southern corridors are being treated with equal importance.

2. Update on the police investigation into MH370’s crew and passengers

a. As per normal procedure, the Royal Malaysia Police are investigating all crew and passengers on board MH370, as well as engineers who may have had contact with the aircraft before take-off.

b. Police searched the home of the pilot on Saturday 15 March. Officers spoke to family members of the pilot and experts are examining the pilot’s flight simulator. On 15 March, the police also searched the home of the co-pilot.


c. We appeal to the public not to jump to conclusions regarding the police investigation.

-ENDS-
March 16 Press Conference from PM

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Maximum Revenue Payload: 112 tons (102 metric tons)

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Gotcha...but that leads me to say the "max payload" in my truck might be 6000lbs, but I'm not going to get 25 mpg doing that.

So if a jet has a max, obviously that extra weight severely limits the distance it can travel.

So knowing it travel another 5 hrs eliminates the possibility of there being 20k extra pounds on board.

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Need technology that clears up the ATC radar rather than turning the transponder off.

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I think there is some misinformation about transponders. They do have squawk codes they assign that they can kind of put to the background.
major airports have flyover and GA traffic in the same vicinity.
You have different levels of Air classes.
Only IFR (instrument flights, controlled vectors, tower assisted) flights are allowed above 18,000 feet. So the only thing flying high will be overflight traffic that is already in contact with a center control.
An airport ATC is mainly following only it's airspace and incoming and departed planes that have not been assigned a new squawk yet.
As soon as you enter a new airspace or center control you are asked to squawk a new frequency.

Are spaces are set up like this.


ATC works by centers.


Each center tracks planes in their airspace. They do this with secondary and primary radar. The secondary communicates with the transponder. So as a plane switches centers and squawks the new frequency, they show up with their info on a screen and are given a number that their system generated.

They can "tune out" certain transponders.
But the primary reason it can be defeated, is because it's primary feature is it's ability to be frequency adjustable. If you can dial something in, you can turn it off. Even if, you dialed in a junk frequency, secondary radar would still read your frequency. So make it where you can't turn it off. But then what if it causes a fire, or it shorts? Then you have circuit breakers.
So unless you come up with a transponder that only squawks an info code on a frequency that is only used for "pinging a planes location" there really won't be a way to make the current transponders to where they can't be altered or turned off.

The problem isn't ATC radar, and you can't make it impossible to cut power to the primary (and secondary some have two) transponder.
Hell, you can probably cut power to the data and cockpit recorders too. Everything in a electrical system usually has a breaker/fuse.