What a poorly written article. It twice says that the plane "dropped/descended 1500m," when it should be written "dropped TO [an altitude of] 1500m." (assuming I'm understanding the article correctly). A newspaper should at least have sufficient grammar standards to clearly convey the main point of a story.
MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper
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Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper
#32My wild guess: I think the plane was hijacked and taken to Iran (as there were iranians in the plane with stolen passport) or to Pakistan.
Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper
#33I'd still bet on ocean crash. Flying low or not, heading across the Bay of Bengal towards land, and you're going to get pinged with military radar.
Getting rather bored with folks around me who seem to be treating this like it's another HBO boxset. I agree with you - and I think a lot of people just really seem to enjoy the experience of speculating and entertaining these fantastical, mysterious theories. The reality is that it probably landed in the drink some time ago.
Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper
#34I may be missing something, but this seems like a very misleading headline. The actual article states that the plane "dropped 5,000 feet (1,500m)" and later that the "twinjet descended 1,500m or even lower". This simply means that the plane descended by a relatively small amount compared to 35,000 - 40,000 foot cruising altitudes, not that it was skimming the ground at 5,000 feet.
Confirmed here, you may just be picking up a typo:
"There are reports around in the last hour or so, claiming new information that the plane dropped an altitude 5000 feet"
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/17/mh370-contact-m...
Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper
#35Honest question. Would it have been possible for the plane to make it to North Korea?
Not without refueling somewhere. They didn't have enough gas to make it too far past Beijing. [0]
[0]- http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/interactive/2014/03/world/malays...
Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper
#36people install satellite security systems on $200K cars. Couldn't airlines do the same on a $100M plane.
You make it sound so simple, when in reality it is anything but simple. Every component in a plane is tested extensively before it can be installed and used. When it comes to electronic components in a plane, things like interference to other aircraft, other components on the plane, power usage and interference to ground devices (radio stations, emergency frequencies, etc) are all tested and considered. Planes are ma…
With 1st hand experience on aeronautics devices, i can tell you the "tech moves slow on planned because of extensive testing" is pure disinformation used copiously by everyone in the industry benefiting from that lie. Yeah, it is tested, like in several other industries.
Then there is a cost vs risk calculation thrown into the equation here. How often does a plane just vanish like this? It doesn't happen very often and probably not enough to warrant spending hundreds of millions of dollars implementing a terrorist proof tracking/data collection system.
Somebody gotta tell that to the nsa.
Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and they do. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillan... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Communications_Addres... These systems were manually disabled.
Point is a $100 spot device could be added (powered by Li AA's) as a backup system. This would have independent power supply and obviate the "need for cicuit breakers" being accessed. Or something like a lo-jack or whatever. Its completely embarassing to Boeing. Almost as bad as the pilot has a 64mb i phone and the [edit: voice recorders] holds only 2hrs? WTF. An Iphone might not itself survive, but the media allocat…
Yes, but the FDR is designed to survive multi-g impacts - how well would that smart phone survive?
Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper
#38Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper
#39Ignoring for the sake of argument the tragedy of hundreds of people getting murdered / kidnapped, this is the most captivating news event we've had in a while.
Seriously though, nearly every unlikely theory has ended up being the truth. That just doesn't happen very often.
Um... every unlikely theory except for one is going to turn out to be wrong, and we don't know what happened yet.