Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 12:50 a.m. EDT Thursday, March 13, 2014 | Andy Pasztor

[kristinn]

Engine Data Suggest Malaysia Flight Was Airborne Long After Radar Disappearance, U.S. Investigators Say

Updated March 13, 2014 12:50 a.m. ET

U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.

Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours...

[Paladin2]

Why has Boeing been so quiet about their data for so many daze?

[Paladin2]

Then it’s a conspiratorial situation where the re-directors were knowledgeable (aka Flight Crew?).

[Mariner]

So if this plane flew 4hrs after contact was lost, it was almost certainly hijacked.

And, it may have landed safely somewhere.

But, not demands? Is it now nothing but a bomb?

Or, did passengers and crew sacrifice themselves to keep it from being used as a bomb? This is going to be one hell of a story.

[ElkGroveDan]

Someone shut them off. As for radar, it didn’t disappear. The Malaysian military was capturing glimpses of it flying off the other way

[Rca2000]

That plane is likely on one of those islands somewhere, in some secret hangar.

[Aria]

So then the plane is probably stolen.

[cynwoody]

Does the article say how they KNOW this information?

Telemetry downloads from the airplane's engines to their manufacturer, Rolls Royce, continued for five hours after takeoff. The transponder stopped transponding 41 minutes in.

[RobbyS]

So why did the transponder stop sending data? If on automatic, why not just follow the vector to the end of the time the engines stopped sending?

[easternsky]

I think there is a lot more ,a whole lot of people are quite about

[dalereed]

Unless it was hijacked and the hijackers were experienced pilots.

[Ezekiel]

Well, then the debris is a red herring. The plane cannot have flown on for several hours, and the debris from a crash end up back in that place, unless they doubled back to the exact location. None of it makes sense.

Never mind Waldo, this is more like

Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego?

[Army Air Corps]

Pingaroo.

[Kartographer]

[cynwoody]

If they were over 18,000 with no transponder would have set off ATC everywhere they flew and would have had intercepter jets after it.

Does the Indian Ocean care about Class A airspace?

[Paladin2]

"I think there is a lot more ,a whole lot of people are quite about"

I have wondered why the 50's of US TLA's haven't coughed up what they know or don't know.

No info, No future budget.

[vette6387]

“Sooooo where does that end them up??? Iran?”

You’re reading my mind. Like to see a map with the final fix as the locus, and see where 4 hours gets you

[Praxeologue]

Telemetry downloads from the airplane's engines to their manufacturer, Rolls Royce, continued for five hours after takeoff.

Then someone should know, at least roughly, where the plane. They are just not saying so as not to alert malfeasors.

[Girlene]

Here's what I found on the data. Malaysian plane sent out engine data before vanishing

The missing Malaysia Airlines jet sent at least two bursts of technical data back to the airline before it disappeared, New Scientist has learned.

..................This would suggest no concrete data is to hand. But New Scientist understands that the maker of the missing Boeing 777's Trent 800 engines, Rolls Royce, received two data reports from flight MH370 at its global engine health monitoring centre in Derby, UK, where it keeps real-time tabs on its engines in use. One was broadcast as MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the other during the 777's climb out towards Beijing.

As the engine data is filtered from a larger ACARS report covering all the plane's critical flight systems and avionics, it could mean the airline has some useful clues about the condition of the aircraft prior to its disappearance. The plane does not appear to have been cruising long enough to issue any more ACARS reports. It disappeared from radar at 1.30 AM local time, halfway between Malaysia and Vietnam over the Gulf of Thailand................

[BunnySlippers]

Bookmark.

[dalereed]

It applies world wide.

No transponder I think they flew
vfr under FL18 and didn’t set off any alarms.