Posted on 03/14/2014 5:49:30 PM PDT by gandalftb
Radar Suggests Jet Shifted Path More Than Once
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/world/asia/malaysia-military-radar.html?smid=tw-bna
Fuel usage depends on range and payload and flying conditions. Unexpected head winds, flying below FL30, trying to ascend to FL45, etc. all would burn up a lot of extra fuel.
Typically these aircraft are only given enough fuel for 45 minutes extra flying time. India is a long way off, at the end of their range under normal conditions.
My guess the pilot calculated his range, saw that he couldn’t make, especially flying under FL10 to avoid Indian radar, and dove in hard to keep floating debris to a minimum.
Wasn’t it the Beagle Mars probe where braniac scientists forgot to convert miles and kilometers?
Unbelievable ...all of it.
I like your theory. Hopefully we’ll find out.
Agreed, the limit switches on the cabin air outflow valves will limit the cabin pressure to about 14,000’ by going fully closed during an ascent.
The cabin leakage is about 1,000 feet per minute up to FL350. Above FL430 the leakage is much higher, the masks deploy but at that altitude there would only be a few minutes of oxygen. Incapacitation of the passengers would happen within minutes.
The pilot would be quite safe for an extended time.
That is a part of the disinformation by Malasia that has plagued this investigation.
Sad but we almost have to rely on our own press now. -Tom
The pilot doesn’t get to choose how much fuel is onboard. that is determined by the flight plan.
Significantly more fuel is used when not flying straight and level at the programmed cruising altitude. We can know from the turns, high altitudes, rate of ascent, the fuel usage.
Reduce the expected range by 25% and you barely make India.
Most of the theories on this thread fail to take into account a complete lack of any attempt by passengers to communicate a problem with the aircraft!
Of course, because if you have the fantastic knowledge of avionics required for all this to have been done by a hijacker, you would have no idea about the fuel capacity of a B777.
I mean if one wants to attack a target in India using a hijacked jet the obvious place to hijack the jet would be over the Gulf of Thailand in a jet flying from Malaysia to China. Because as we all know there are no jet aircraft anywhere near India.
ACARS was disabled early in the flight. Malaysia doesn’t subscribe to the full reporting ACARS anyway.
The supplemental engine condition telemetry that goes to Rolls-Royce by satellite is what was broadcasting about every 30 minutes for the rest of the flight. That ended when the flight ended.
“That is a part of the disinformation by Malasia that has plagued this investigation.
Sad but we almost have to rely on our own press now. -Tom”
No it wasn’t. It was a simple misunderstanding by reporters of a valid point the Malaysian official was trying to make.
When the word got out that two passengers had boarded using stolen European passports a reporter asked how could two presumably Asian passengers (as it turned out they were Iranian so could easily pass) board using European passports. The official replied that name does not automatically indicate race and gave as an example the famous Italian footballer Mario Balotelli who is ethnically a black African.
That was all, no misinformation it was a mistake made by international news organisations including US news agencies. Trust me, anyone who solely relies on the US media for international news coverage is in for a severe disappointment.
Indeed, the best laid plans...
Passenger aircraft don’t fly with full tanks, only enough to get to their destination + 45 minutes.
How would the pilot explain the need for more fuel? Once the payload is determined by the weight of the passengers and freight, the fuel amount is determined by the ground crew fuelers. Excess fuel would only increase the payload for no reason.
No, the pilot was stuck with the fuel onboard, it was always an iffy mission to India.
Then I'm lucky to be alive, as it has happened to me on multiple occasions where my flight was delayed for more than 45 minutes while in a holding pattern waiting for permission to land.
India is a long way off, at the end of their range under normal conditions.
Not correct. From the position of their last reported voice contact near Vietnam it is only about 2/3 as far to, say, Hyderabad, India, as it would have been to continue on to Beijing, not taking into account wind currents.
Why not hijack the plane in India, or Bangladesh, or Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or Sri Lanka? All countries with plenty of jet airliners and millions of disaffected people with experience in terrorism.
Why hijack the plane in Malaysia a country half an ocean away?
People really need to engage their logic in this case, they are letting their imaginations run wild over what I suspect will eventually turn out to be a run-of-the-mill plane crash.
Domestic flights that anticipate holding pattern delays carry more fuel. You probably don’t want to know that your flights probably landed with less than 10 minutes fuel.
We’re talking Beijing, long distance international flights here.
Terrorism is a political act. Hydrabad is not going to be high on the target list, as compared to the capital at New Delhi which is much farther inland.
If one or more of the pilots are the hijackers, then that answers your question as to why KL was the origination point.
Otherwise, it may simply be that the terrorist cell they had available to pull this off was based in Malaysia. There was information given by a terrorist captured in Britain a few years that there was a Malaysian cell which included a pilot that was given a shoe bomb constructed by al Qaeda.
You say it’s “half an ocean” away. It’s not that far to India, it’s significantly shorter to India than it is to their original destination of Beijing.
Malaysia Air is notorious for sloppy security.
There are many non-Muslim Chinese in Malaysia, especially on a flight to China that few Muslims go to.
The other countries you name are Muslim and flights to and from them are going to be full of Muslims.
You’re not going to get your 43 virgins if you kill a plane full of Muslims.
Yeah right, another 10 minutes and we would all have been dead.
Terrorists would turn up their nose at the opportunity to crash a jet into one of the largest cities in India, if it wasn’t New Delhi, according to you? Yeah, right.
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