Now CNN is saying the NYT is reporting there were radar returns that had the plane climbing from 35,000 (a normal cruising alt.) up to 45,000'.

The service ceiling is only 43,100' on Delta's 777's, but if they were light you could easily climb to 45,000. Then it descended to 23,000', then it climbed again.

Of course no pilot would do this...UNLESS...you were fighting for control of the airplane and yanking back and forth on the control column.

Also, they are showing a ground track that zig zags a bit, after it crossed over Malaysia.

So...if what they are now reporting is accurate (and I give it 50/50 at best) it sounds like it was being hijacked, and flown by amateurs, who may have been looking for their destination. If so, somebody trained them on shutting off the transponder.

The question is, why?

What were they trying to do, crash it and kill people on the ground, or steal it, or just get to somewhere else? (Thailand, India?)

It would be very strange if they were able to overpower two pilots, and then fly the airplane on the path CNN is showing now. I guess we won't know what was really going on until we hear the **** voice recorder. I just hope they can find it in less than two years!

It takes a little while to climb 10,000 feet doesn't it? And then to drop from there over 20,000 feet? That's a really slow struggle.

Several years ago the golfer Payne Stewart's plane had a CO problem, and it flew until it ran out of fuel. There may have been an escort that witnessed it.

It happens.

Payne's plane slowly lost it's pressurization, the pilot(s) passed out, and it flew on auto pilot until it ran out of gas and crashed. There were F16's that intercepted it to see what was going on. The reported fog on the inside of the windows, which indicated loss of pressurization.

http://www.airsafe.com/stewart.htm

Jake, depending on how heavy/light the airplane was, it could climb at 1-2,000 feet per minute from 350 to 450. So maybe 5 minutes. But much less if you 'zoomed' it up there by pulling back harder, but you'll bleed off airspeed if you do that, and you won't stay up there long before you run out of airspeed and come right back down, which might be why they dove down to 230.

Hmmm...that would be an interesting clue if it is true. I'm still not sure I buy the hijacking theory from the altitude changes - 5 Minutes is a really long fight in a cabin (allowing time for some folks to certainly join in). That could still be a single event that left the plane in a sharpish nose up attitude when it stalled at that crazy altitude and pitched back down...but it probably wouldn't have traveled too far if that were the case. Too high for a bird strike, weather too good for hail. Cracked windshield(s) nobody noticed? ... I guess the Aliens still have this one for now.

And I still stand by my first topic...if the engines are globally capable of continuously broadcasting performance data to Rolls Royce every few minutes, why in the world can't the plane send some similar but specific location data? Granted, I have the benefit of hindsight, but this seems like a really big engineering duh-huh.

I agree Jake, it should be able to send position/speed/altitude/heading data to a satellite every 2 minutes or so...but then you'd have to install sat com capability to every airliner flying. And you'd have to put up more satellites, to monitor every square inch of the planet.

Right now less than 25% of the world airline fleet have Sat Com, and there are lots of 'dead spots' all over the globe. Then you'd have to have someone monitor all that data, from 40,000 flights per day, and you'd have to have some way to store all that data, and here's the biggest obstical:

WHO is going to PAY for that??

As with most things, it comes down to money. More safety costs Mo'money, and no Airline CEO or Politician wants to spend that money.

What's the trigger point in that awful scenario (Stewart)? I'd hate to be the guy making the call, or pulling the trigger; but would also hate to see it crash into a major populated area.

The Coast Guard has a hard enough time figuring out drift patterns when a boat goes missing, and they only deal with two dimensions of forces. Can't imagine how difficult this job must be right now in Malaysia.

Mike

By trigger point, do you mean who decides to shoot it down? And when?

I'm guessing if it was heading towards Washington, DC, they would have shot it down. Heading towards Montana, not so much.

I'm very confident that the solutions already exist, and it sadly is all about the money.

But, while we're already on the wish list portion of the discussion; who else is stunned that there isn't a remote control override available yet? After what happened on 9/11, and seeing what the military drones can do (remotely flown from under a mountain on the other side of the planet), I'd say this is long overdue as well.

Mike

Yes, do they brief/counsel you guys on that, or are you even allowed to discuss it?

I don't think DC is the only place with lives worthy of saving. And, I mean that as a caring human being, not a political troll.

Mike

Yeatbut....those jackasses in DC think THEY are the most important people on the planet, so they want to be "Protected".

But the people in Montana?

The clowns in DC couldn't care less.

Here's what Sully had to say about the Malaysia flight:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-26572575

There's nobody to hit in montana. Seven phone calls later almost everyone would be out of the way. lol

Sully is such a good talker. He sounds really intelligent and manages to say stuff while maintaining dignity. He doesn't say anything that's not factual, doesn't blame, and he doesn't bite on the latest "facts". That's a cool news set too.

Right now Pierce Morgan has some clown on who is telling everyone how to get down into the E/E compartment, where all the circuit breakers are!

Thanks CNN!

Al Queda must be LOVING all this great info for taking over and disabling a 777!

That would make hijacking/terrorism very easy, and make TSA searches even more worthless.

As I said earlier, the satellite coverage would have to be increased to have a comm link with every flight. Also, as the Iranians proved a couple years ago, they can hack a remote control system and take over a drone, and land it in Iran. It would only be a matter of time before some goofballs hacked a remote control system to take over a flight and land it elsewhere, hold it for ransom, sell it back to the owners.

Think Somali Pirates, but taking airplanes full of people, instead of big ships.

Ummm, yeah...no. I'm up for a $1,200 spot tracker (which is about 10X our cost) mounted in plane in a manner that is really tough to disable that broadcasts an id,lat,long,heading,and speed every 2 minutes. Seriously....that's not that much data.

OK, so you install a unit which is going to broadcast all that info, but what/who is going to receive this data out in the "Dead Zones" around the world?

Here's more speculation:
http://news.msn.com/world/missing-plane-piracy-theory-gains-more-credence

I have some doubts about the accuracy of altitudes reported by the Malaysian Military...

It may have just stayed at 35,000' and the radar returns were so weak, they thought it was at 45K, and 23K, and then back at 35K, but it wasn't.

The part that concerns me most is the zig-zag track, if that really happened, someone was alive and turning the airplane, as if they were looking for a place to land it. That could have been the pilots, going back to the "smoke in the ****" scenario.

Or it could have been hijackers, who were looking for their secret island hide-away complete with a paved airstrip!

We won't know until we hear the **** voice recorder.

I found it!
777-300 for sale - Vietnam