Posted on 03/18/2014 4:17:37 AM PDT by wtd
Cops find five Indian Ocean practice runways in MH370 pilot’s simulator, BH reports
Investigators have discovered the runways of five airports near the Indian Ocean loaded into Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s home-made flight simulator, a Malay daily reported today.
“The simulation programmes are based on runways at the Male International Airport in Maldives, an airport owned by the United States (Diego Garcia), and three other runways in India and Sri Lanka, all have runway lengths of 1,000 metres.
“We are not discounting the possibility that the plane landed on a runway that might not be heavily monitored, in addition to the theories that the plane landed on sea, in the hills, or in an open space,” the source was quoted as saying.
(Excerpt) Read more at themalaymailonline.com ...
Once again, common for flight geeks.
Heh.
That would definitely not be Diego Garcia.
Wow, he must have bought a cheap simulator, I not only have those, I have 35,500 more around the world in my $49 simulator from Microsoft. I can’t believe they are pursuing this angle. I bet they are going to find a paring knife in his kitchen next. Oh golly gee!!!
His flight sim is MS X, so he does too. Sensationalism at its finest.
Thought they said he had a blown simulator? Whatever that actually means.
There is what looks like a somewhat remote paved runway of 7500’ on the north east coast of Sri Lanka.
8°32’20.87”N
81°10’54.36”E
The runway spans a small section of land from water to water and there are several petrol storage tanks very close to it. Would be a great place to land, refuel and take off again in the wee hours of a Sunday morning. Mindful that the Islamic Sabbath is on Friday, it would amount to something happening early in the morning on our Tuesday.
Full blown would be more like it. It actually mimicked the layout of his seat on the 777. Complete with a touchscreen of the center controls console. It was quite elaborate.
It might have been a hijacking by the co-pilot, but just having some runways in his simulator is not definite proof of intention.
Lots of serious pilots have these simulator set ups and practice going to new airports that they haven’t been to.
I have a friend who flies for UPS and he plays with landing and taking off from the toughest strips he can find. He says one of the toughest is in India. One end of the strip is a cliff and the other is a mountainside.
Add to the touchscreen controls of the upper panel as well.
There’s so much ‘information’ out there that it is hard to keep track of what has been confirmed and what is hearsay. From the article, it states that it was a ‘home made’ flight simulator. What does that mean? Does this mean he was using commercial software on a rigged up computer system he put together, or does it mean that he had his own software? (I apologize ahead of time if this is explained somewhere, and I neglected to read it).
If it was commercial flight simulator software, is there a way to know what runways he was concentrating on when he used it?
As well planned as this seems to be , would he have left this information on his home device for all to see?
How often did we read that here on FR!
Not discounting your friends looking to advance their skills but how many have setup like this one? How many think there is a need for them to be landing at Diego-Garcia if they are not a US Reservist pilot?
I can see all of the other places if there was a destination point for the airlines, which there is at the Int’l airport on the SE cost of Sri Lanka. I would be most interested to know what the other sites were before making any accusations either pro or con.
It is just too easy to just start blaming the pilot when all other possibilities are evaporating as time marches on.
Its not 1965, and this isn’t Thunderball.
Hiding a 777 would be a trick. Any active runway would have human intelligence identifying the Malay 777 within hours of it being reported missing. Innactive runways rarely have hangars capable of holding a 777, so hiding it from satellite imagery would be a real trick.
The few inactive runways that do have such hangars would be quickly scrutinized.
The only way a 777 gets hidden from the world is if their is a state player involved.
1000 meters isn’t nearly enough runway for a 777. What good is a flight Sim without practice runways? Who would even write this? They should kill themselves to relieve our misery.
That sounds like a metaphor for life.
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