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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

#71

Post by raquo »

zaroth wrote: post #55

Would have to be a pretty hardened pilot to take a 777 down to FL 50 and keep her there anywhere except approach. "Experts said flying a Boeing 777 in such a way would be dangerous, stressing the airframe and possibly causing those on board to be air sick and suffer from spatial disorientation." This truly meets the definition of incredible. How could you be that good, but then end up crashing the plane? If you are t…

Having read the article, I think the journalist got confused – what is stressful and requires insane skills is flying very low, following the terrain between mountains/hills.

However, flying a mile high is only slightly different from flying 6 miles high in terms of stress experienced or skill required.

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#72

Post by chrissnell »

zaroth wrote: post #55

Would have to be a pretty hardened pilot to take a 777 down to FL 50 and keep her there anywhere except approach. "Experts said flying a Boeing 777 in such a way would be dangerous, stressing the airframe and possibly causing those on board to be air sick and suffer from spatial disorientation." This truly meets the definition of incredible. How could you be that good, but then end up crashing the plane? If you are t…

Military-style nap-of-the-earth flying, à la the raid on the bin Laden compound. Those SOAR pilots surely have practiced this stuff for years. How would a civilian pilot (or hijacker pilot) acquire these skills? Flight simulator perhaps?

The pilot had a fancy flight simulator at home.

Now, there are plenty of legitimate reasons that a pilot would have a simulator at home, so we can't pin too much to this discovery. Lots of pilots buy small planes after they retire because they still love flying and he might have built this simulator because it was fun. Other articles describe him as a hardware geek and mention his YouTube videos demonstrating his homebrew simulator consoles. Still, it seems suspicious to me, especially in context of the recent revelation that the transponder and tracking systems were disabled prior to MH370 signing off with Malaysian ATC.

Four days ago, I thought that a Central Asian hijacking scenario was next to impossible. Today, I'm not so sure.

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#73

Post by [deleted] »

zaroth wrote: post #55

Would have to be a pretty hardened pilot to take a 777 down to FL 50 and keep her there anywhere except approach. "Experts said flying a Boeing 777 in such a way would be dangerous, stressing the airframe and possibly causing those on board to be air sick and suffer from spatial disorientation." This truly meets the definition of incredible. How could you be that good, but then end up crashing the plane? If you are t…

[deleted]

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#75

Post by checker659 »

chrissnell wrote: post #72
zaroth wrote: post #55

Would have to be a pretty hardened pilot to take a 777 down to FL 50 and keep her there anywhere except approach. "Experts said flying a Boeing 777 in such a way would be dangerous, stressing the airframe and possibly causing those on board to be air sick and suffer from spatial disorientation." This truly meets the definition of incredible. How could you be that good, but then end up crashing the plane? If you are t…

Military-style nap-of-the-earth flying, à la the raid on the bin Laden compound. Those SOAR pilots surely have practiced this stuff for years. How would a civilian pilot (or hijacker pilot) acquire these skills? Flight simulator perhaps? The pilot had a fancy flight simulator at home. Now, there are plenty of legitimate reasons that a pilot would have a simulator at home, so we can't pin too much to this discovery. L…

I wouldn't call it fancy. I mean, it was Microsoft Flight Simulator running on a box with a joystick and four monitors hooked up and placed to look like a 777 cockpit.

Total cost should be less than 1000 bucks.

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#76

Post by rphlx »

My guess is that the US, Russian, and Chinese militaries have the interest, and operational ability, to track every in-flight commercial jet all over the world. The IR signature alone makes a commercial jet obvious at any altitude as long as the engines are running. So MH370 is probably not lost; its final position is just being concealed by military protocol to avoid confirming satellite capabilities that have, in all likelihood, existed since the 1960s.

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#77

Post by ekianjo »

fiatmoney wrote: post #29
courtneypowell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, is the possibility that the passengers are still alive being discussed by any major news outlet? I have read tons of coverage but the authors implicitly state the passengers are lost.

The only circumstances in which they would be alive would be if it was a hijacking, the plane landed relatively safely, and they were being held hostage & incommunicado somewhere. It does seem the unlikeliest of possibilities at this point.

However, nothing, so far, indicates that the plane has crashed. If the plane has actually managed, ON PURPOSE, to avoid radar detection, it could have as well landed in secret somewhere else.

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#79

Post by JacobAldridge »

trhway wrote: post #46
JacobAldridge wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people fit 239 passengers in a plane. Couldn't manufacturers do the same with cars? Fallacy by analogy. It's a fair question (off hand), but it falls down when other factors are considered (cars don't normally drive for hours over water, for example).

>Fallacy by analogy. or may be you just saw in my post an analogy to the fallacy by analogy >cars don't normally drive for hours over water, for example how that would affect the satellite communication?

See here for the long answer - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-26544554

The short answer, as I understand it, is: 1) Most communications technology, including satellites, is focused on where most people are communicating - ie, on land; ie, on 1/8th of the earth's surface 2) As you correctly point out, satellites over water aren't as obvious a problem as, say, mobile phone towers in the Indian Ocean, but the cost to retrofit existing aircraft is considered prohibitive given the rarity of this type of situation (ie, existing communication systems work well, and in this case seem to have been deliberately turned off anyway - so a different system is likely to have proved no more helpful).

Re: MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection, says paper

#80

Post by yen223 »

lutusp wrote: post #44
gklitt wrote: post #31

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.

> 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." As it turns out, only the headline suggests that the plane descended to an altitude of 1500m, not the article body, which always says the aircraft descended 1500m. The headline includes the words "MH370 flew as low as 1,500m to avoid detection" [emphasis added], but t…

>It's important also to say this article may have been translated from Malay, which could affect its readability.

The article was from the New Straits Times, which is an English-language newspaper. The initial report may have been written in Malay though.

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