Also, a question, hearing about how four hours into the flight someone turned off the signal to the satellite and that involves going into the bowel of the plane..how the heck does someone get down there?”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3133430/posts?page=1#1
There are 14 different levels of either data or voice communication systems on the 777. To disable most of them, a skilled operator would have to leave the cockpit, lift a rug behind the cockpit door, open a floor hatch, descend a four step ladder into the electronics bay below the cockpit. The circuit breakers are labeled, including the ACARS breaker. However, there is a second unlabeled ACARS breaker that only trained service techs would know about.
These are all highly intentional acts requiring training that pilots aren’t given, or would care about.
The only point to disabling so many systems would be to hide the bearing of the aircraft from ground radar and the radar of other aircraft.
Regarding the military radar tracking that showed extreme changes in altitude, some military radars can track the altitude of a “non-cooperative” target. However, tracking is imprecise at longer ranges due to the very narrow vertical beam width broadcast.
The 777 is certified to about FL430 so FL450 is flyable but the decompression would cause most passengers to pass out. In my opinion the pilot did so to stop an attempt by passengers to retake the cabin. The pilot can also dump the cabin pressure and a few minutes at that altitude would kill nearly everyone in the cabin.
From what I understand, this was all done after 4 hours..if this person knew what he was doing, why wait four hours, if he didnt want the plane to be noticed on satellite, why not do it immediately? Or it could have been so much was going on at the time he forgot and realized “Oh sh*t I forgot to turn that off”