Posted on 03/11/2014 6:25:38 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Yeah, I know. I was just confirming his statement.
We did, but none of them were on an airfield. The C17 went to ACEH, their total gross on landing was probably close to or under 300,000#. A 777-200ER weighs 300k empty.
I personally know of similar incidents on domestic airliners.
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Perhaps the ‘aviation geek’ was practicing short landing and takeoffs with his high tech ‘hobby’ setup at home. Remember the oversized planes that land at the wrong airports all the time. The passengers, their luggage and all non essential pieces are stripped off and the pilot takes off hot. One of those happened not too long ago with a 777 IIRC.
“aircraft normally needs a runway of 9,119 ft to get airborne at maximum weight; Jabara’s runway is only 6,102 ft long.
Brad Christopher of the Wichita Airport Authority told the Associated Press news agency the company that operates the aircraft had “assured us they’ve run all the engineering calculation and performance and the aircraft is very safe for a normal departure at its current weight and conditions here”.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swTjsxM7WW4
You can takeoff with a load of 110,000# at sea level in about 45-4700 feet, at max gross, it takes 11,000 feet.
Landing the plane with almost no fuel and figure 260 souls onboard at 150#/apiece, with no cargo, you'd need between 42-4300 feet.
So you can land it on a shorter field than you can takeoff from with a useful load. Depending on the length of this phantom field, the target area for this plane to be a 'cruise missile' drops way down. Don't forget that passenger jets have to be high to get their forecast mileage. Low level ingress means even a smaller radius for an attack. If it does go high, it will need to spoof the air traffic monitoring that is now not just sitting on its collective ass.
The key words are ‘normally’ and ‘current’. When it left I can assure you it didn’t go at max gross.
Not saying it did happen. Just that with a flight simulator in his HOUSE, this guy could have practiced landing (and takeoff) that heavy at any airport of his choosing without anyone being the wiser.
The air traffic control monitoring wasn’t listening for weirdness yesterday. They were thinking the plane had crashed.
Question, is there any ways a plane can spoof something it isn’t? Like pretending to be a lear jet when it’s really a 777, for the purposes of ident to air traffic control?
As far as spoofing, he can dial in any transponder code he wants if he remains VFR 1200. The IFR codes are discrete, but a compatriot could easily steal a squawk code from an authorized flight when it gets the code from departure control. Now you'd have two squawks same code, same area. Or he could try and go legit, with a countries' help switch to 7600 (lost comm) and try and get as far as he could with that ruse. His altitude and track will tell a controller whether he is what he says he is. And what he says he is better be filed.
“...Some country is going to have to be involved with this.”
This is very serious. Banda Aceh sounds like a key to this event, and the 777 is long gone on its way to wherever.
LucyT, if you haven’t been following this, it is beginning to look like that Malaysian flight that went missing has been highjacked, and it is possibly carrying Americans with defense information.
Details are in this discussion. Flight appears to have turned east and possibly gone over the Indian Ocean.
If it landed somewhere you can bet there was a fuel truck waiting, and once refueled it may have been flown back to Iran by the two to four "undocumented" Iranian "immigrants".
SS1
Be good to hear speculation from commercial pilots. It looks like the transponder stopped sending around the time the plane changed course. However, the flight didn’t lose much altitude over the few hundred kilometers that it travelled after turning around.
Is a complete electrical failure plausible? No transponder, no radio, no navigation, but still engine power. Could the pilots have been left with trying to visually navigate back to Kuala Lumpur and missed their destination?
West to the IO.
Do you think Iran is ready to take on China, having 150 of her citizens on their soil, in that scenario?
With 8800mi range when refueled, I guess it could make it to Iran if the transponder data was exchanged for a legit flight destined for Iran.
This puts Putin in a bad spot, Iran being their client, and I doubt Putin would encourage the forcing of Russia v. China although anything’s possible in this day and age.
If they had a complete electrical failure, it is gone down. The 777 is fly by wire. Now losing nav and radios they should have flown a holding pattern at max conserve airspeed and attempted the recovery in daylight. Looking at the cockpit I don't see a wet compass or a spirit-based turn and slip indicator but that doesn't mean there isn't one. But that is quite a reach back knowledge wise for a guy with 18K hours. Having to do partial panel holding for 6 or seven hours.
Cyber Liberty, pinging you to this part of the discussion ...
If this was an attempt to procure a jet for future terrorist ops, they had better pick up the pace. The longer it remains missing the less likely it will be usable for that purpose.
Do you think Iran is ready to take on China, having 150 of her citizens on their soil, in that scenario?
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