MH370: Malaysian Airlines Flight to Beijing carrying 239 people is lost over sea.

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jimipitbull
http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/22...n-airports-in-mh370-pilots-simulator-reports/

The flight simulator, seized from the home of one of MH370's missing pilots, included software for five practice runways around the Indian Ocean. Male International Airport in Maldives, three airports in India and Sri Lanka, and one belonging to the US military base in Diego Garcia. All have a runway length of 1,000 metres," a source told the Malay daily.
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Meaningless, the joys of flight simulation is to do routes you cannot in real life, usually exotic. I myself have simmed to those places (except the military base), especially Male.
 
Jay
Meaningless, the joys of flight simulation is to do routes you cannot in real life, usually exotic. I myself have simmed to those places (except the military base), especially Male.
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If it turns out the pilot is either responsible or involved then everyone will see his flight sim as absolute proof. How could the authorities have missed it?

If he's got Arma III too they'll be beside themselves.
 
Jay
Meaningless, the joys of flight simulation is to do routes you cannot in real life, usually exotic. I myself have simmed to those places (except the military base), especially Male.
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Which 3 airports in India and Sri Lanka do you think they are referring to?
 
jimipitbull
Which 3 airports in India and Sri Lanka do you think they are referring to?
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This may be a bigger question than it seems. The article doesn't even mention if the airports were addware. FSX has a ridiculous number of airports by default, as in hundreds per country. From the report, I can sort of infer that they seem to be talking about add on content (but that wouldn't really be necessary to practice flying the route) but it's not at all clear. If these airports are just the standard airports in the game, then they're not even worth mentioning.

TenEightyOne
If he's got Arma III too they'll be beside themselves.
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Or Tacpac add on

Or high score in the Flour bombing mission
 
TenEightyOne
This from the Beeb coverage of the press conference;



Who knows what's relevant and what isn't any more... the Chinese are now going to look in China, Malaysia has been discussing "use of satellite data" with the US... half the problem is that no one can admit what they actually know, or how they know it.
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The Chinese have investigated and ruled out involvement of all the Chinese on the flight.
The Chinese have taken responsibility for reviewing radar logs and searching the putative flight path over China with over 20 satellites, they say. So far data is secret.

So clearly we can rule out as irrelevant anything having to do with China or Chinese. They will tell us what we need to know. :rolleyes:

Australia has taken responsibility for searching the southern ocean with a couple of P-3's. The US is chipping in a P-3.

It seems the trail has grown cold.

There is some talk of what we'll do to prevent this from happening again. But also there is talk of what we'll do if the plane is not located. Must it then be considered a terrorist threat? Must new levels of security be implemented to deal with the ongoing threat?
 
Interesting that Male (in the Maldives) is one of the locations found on the co-pilot's flight simulator.

Apparently the sighting was a long way from Male, but it could have been the intended target for a landing possibly?

99% chance of being yet another red herring though.
 
Touring Mars
Interesting that Male (in the Maldives) is one of the locations found on the co-pilot's flight simulator.

Apparently the sighting was a long way from Male, but it could have been the intended target for a landing possibly?

99% chance of being yet another red herring though.
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Unless there is tangible evidence, this may be nothing more than further speculation. At this point what is tangible? Last night on CNN they were questioning the validity of the satellite recognition that places the aircraft 7 hours into the flight over the Indian ocean. It's a great deal of nonsense.

If the satellite ID at the 7 hour mark is credible, I am confident the aircraft is sitting on the ground near Afghanistan, or it crashed along that route in Western China or Tibet and likely won't be discovered until military satellites or spy planes find it.
 
Touring Mars
Interesting that Male (in the Maldives) is one of the locations found on the co-pilot's flight simulator.
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Not really. FSX (the simulator program he was using, or one of them anyway) has over 24,000 airfields, essentially every airfield in the world that the FAA knew about.

People are going to make a big deal out of this whole flight sim thing even though it really doesn't mean anything.
 
A key point being made by CNN analysts:
The west turn away from original course was plotted into ACARS before contact was lost. This locks in a premeditated cockpit decision to change course.
 
Touring Mars
Interesting that Male (in the Maldives) is one of the locations found on the co-pilot's flight simulator.

Apparently the sighting was a long way from Male, but it could have been the intended target for a landing possibly?

99% chance of being yet another red herring though.
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Male is a difficult landing - for the exact opposite reasons Hong Kong was. He'd probably just have been practicing it for fun.

If there were files of him putting it down on a nice, flat and unmarked strip in Taklamakan... yeah, possibly more relevant.
 
Male is a very commonly used airport for flight simmers, there is a lot of mods available for that airport also. Very unsurprising to have it in his sim (or whatever that article says, as mentioned almost all airfields are in FSX 24,000+)
 
Famine
If there were files of him putting it down on a nice, flat and unmarked strip in Taklamakan... yeah, possibly more relevant.
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If he's like most flight simmers then he's also taken his 777 under several bridges (inverted), landed at Meigs (the good old days) and done at least a touch-and-go on a carrier.

They could be looking anywhere.... except Meigs, obviously :(
 
Well, my fairly irrelevant verdict is this, after all the facts and speculation:

1) No terrorism involved. No group is smart enough to outsmart all the available military radar and satellite coverage. And then not claim responsibility for it.
2) Not pilot suicide - no political message was left an no notes left to communicate any message of defiance or axe to grind to anyone.

Which leaves:

Fire. Electronics either destroyed, shorted or partially fried. Pilots and crew overcome with smoke or toxic fumes. Autopilot either partially engaged or doing its thing and keeping the flight in the air in pre-programmed flying lanes at weird altitudes until the fire affected flight surfaces or propulsion.

It's somewhere in the Indian Ocean, unlikely to ever be found.
 
unitedstomper
This may have been posted what do you make of it
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Anyone who's played GT6 can spot lag a mile off :D

The problem with flight trackers is that they aren't always fed by official radar, in some places it's actually powered by ham-nets reading the transponders in their sheds and uploading to a central store.

That means that what appear to be course interruptions aren't, necessarily. The first one definitely looks like some kind of lag either with the receiver or the aircraft systems themselves.

The guy also says "a plane that was in contact with it was 30 mins ahead". The aircraft that we see closest on the plot is suddenly presented as an object of mystery... but planes aren't normally in contact with each other, so there's no mystery there. The closer aircraft may be a different class, airline, route, and could be 25,000 feet lower. The aircraft that was in contact was quite possibly from the same airline (or airline 'alliance').

Overall this track is interesting but it doesn't really tell us anything, but then you could say that for all the 'facts' so far ;)

EDIT: On the subject of downloadable scenery, look what's at #3 in FlightSim.com's hot files of the day... only 6 downloads but quite clearly an international plot is developing.

FlightsimTopTen.jpg
 
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Eyewitness reports on a Maldives atoll says that a low flying jet was spotted (and heard) hours after the Malaysian flight had disappeared.

Could they have been trying to make it to Somalia? That would be a trip of roughly 7000 kilometers. If they were flying low to avoid radar, wouldn't the range be shorter than at high altitude, because of the higher density of air?

I guess the theory I'm testing here is that they miscalculated the range of the jet, ran out of fuel and splashed in the sea.

plot.jpg


What doesn't add up with that theory though is that they eyewitness said it was flying north to south-east.
 
You cant miscalculate the fuel range on jets these days.

You punch in where you want to go and it tells you that you do not have the fuel for the job.
 
Mike Rotch
Which leaves:

Fire. Electronics either destroyed, shorted or partially fried. Pilots and crew overcome with smoke or toxic fumes. Autopilot either partially engaged or doing its thing and keeping the flight in the air in pre-programmed flying lanes at weird altitudes until the fire affected flight surfaces or propulsion.
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That's the theory put forward by a Canadian pilot, who reckons that a fire broke out and that the pilots immediately shut all of the electronics down and tried to make for a nearby airport that could take a 777, but they were overwhelmed by smoke and/or fumes before they could land, passed out, and the autopilot took over until the jet ran out of fuel. But the theory does not explain why the pilots did not report it, why the plane went to 45,000 feet - which is higher than they are intended to go - or why the plane apparently made a second turn hours later.

Another interesting theory that I heard was that there was a Singapore Airlines plane nearby heading for Europe. If someone knew enough about turning the transponders off, then it has been suggested that that someone could have shadowed the Singapore flight, hiding its presence from radar before turning off.
 
Dotini
The Chinese have investigated and ruled out involvement of all the Chinese on the flight.
The Chinese have taken responsibility for reviewing radar logs and searching the putative flight path over China with over 20 satellites, they say. So far data is secret.

So clearly we can rule out as irrelevant anything having to do with China or Chinese. They will tell us what we need to know. :rolleyes:

Australia has taken responsibility for searching the southern ocean with a couple of P-3's. The US is chipping in a P-3.

It seems the trail has grown cold.

There is some talk of what we'll do to prevent this from happening again. But also there is talk of what we'll do if the plane is not located. Must it then be considered a terrorist threat? Must new levels of security be implemented to deal with the ongoing threat?
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Yes the terror threat shall read, "hello citizens, watch out for a white jumbo jet with this insignia (Malaysia airlines) on the tail of the aircraft. Also citizens watch out for the missiles and lasers and dinosaurs it will drop from the air to destroy you. Thank you"

BobK
Not really. FSX (the simulator program he was using, or one of them anyway) has over 24,000 airfields, essentially every airfield in the world that the FAA knew about.

People are going to make a big deal out of this whole flight sim thing even though it really doesn't mean anything.
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Cause they don't know what sim life is like, I secretly sim race so I can further my true dream of helping bank robbers as a getaway driver. CNN and everyone else will tell my story of how I nefariously played sims and that was the tall tell sign.

Oh these news organizations, they make me laugh.
I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to be the city folk that see it first...
 
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Apparently now some of the passengers families are going on a hunger strike because they feel they aren't being told the whole truth. While it must be a horrible thing to be going through I really only see that being detrimental to the search operations and it probably won't yield much new info for them.
 
Andrew R
Apparently now some of the passengers families are going on a hunger strike because they feel they aren't being told the whole truth. While it must be a horrible thing to be going through I really only see that being detrimental to the search operations and it probably won't yield much new info for them.
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The Malays have not been overly helpful have they.... It could certainly be that the plane is never found. It would be interesting to see what the "deleted data" from the younger pilots sim was about. Interesting that the black box recorders keep going for another 18 days, still some time left to try and find a "ping." Maybe this plane will become a "ghost plane" like the old haunted ships never to be found again but occasionally sited...

I wonder how many aircraft are at the bottom of the ocean in the Bermuda triangle.... quite a lot I imagine.
 
Almost can't believe what I just saw on the news... upset and grieving Chinese relatives being physically dragged away from the press kicking and screaming by Malaysian officials - just to stop the press hearing what they had to say. Disgraceful in every respect and I can't imagine it being good for Malaysian tourism to see this kind of behaviour. Shocked but not surprised.
 
Solid Lifters
Not sure if this has ever been posted, but it was a very good read. Simple solutions are usually the correct one.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/mh370-electrical-fire/
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Given that, so far anyway, there have been no credible claims of responsibility, no demands, no motive, and no clear evidence of any intentional wrong-doing, it is entirely plausible that it was simply an extremely unusual sequence of events that occurred by accident.

It is a great and tragic irony that the families of the passengers are probably hoping that it wasn't an accident and it was a hijacking, since the latter at least leaves the possibility open that the passengers are still alive.
 
I'm curious how there was a fire severe enough to knock out all communications and the pilots, but not until after they'd tried to climb to 45,000ft to put the fire out (do we not have halon extinguishers any more?) or disable the plane to the point of a crash until it ran out of fuel 7 hours later. Fire's generally not that picky - I could see spot fires disabling the communications or the pilots without destroying the plane, but not both.

Not to mention the alleged radar trace of it dodging between waypoints while flying west, away from (having already overflown) Langkawi...
 

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