Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

then the Gulf Of Thailand would be a pretty good spot to search I reckon if they haven't searched there already!! I've got a funny feeling that this is going to turn into a Marie Celeste type scenario., if it doesn't get found. But also if a plane was in trouble surely a pilot has to send out a SOS signal? If they didn't then surely that id gross negligence on their part. Also could any crash landing re - activate the tracking?

(18-03-2014 22:08 )Tumble_Drier Wrote:  

(18-03-2014 20:23 )babelover48 Wrote:  so it was definitely reachable?

KL to Beijing is around 2700 miles. The plane was well out into the Gulf of Thailand when it turned west off the original flight path so if you knock 500 miles off (a guesstimate) you're left worth 2200 miles plus the reserve.

As far as I know the Malaysians have only said there was enough fuel for the Beijing trip and haven't declared actual figures.

I don't claim to be an expert, but any climbing / descending or meandering around is going to eat into that remaining fuel pretty quickly as the fuel calculations will be based on maximum time at cruise speed & altitude where it's most efficient.

It strikes me that at some point the Malaysians have got to release those figures. as I feel they would help in either calculating where the plane may have crashed or illegally landed and therefore could narrow the search area. not only that doesn't the black box send out a signal too so that helps investigators locate it?

The signal from the "black boxes" only has limited range (5km or so). It's designed to help locate the boxes themselves, usually in a debris field, rather than to find the actual aircraft.

The black box only works for 30 days until the battery runs out and starts emitting a signal automatically when it hits water.
10 days wasted already.

(18-03-2014 22:08 )Tumble_Drier Wrote:  KL to Beijing is around 2700 miles. The plane was well out into the Gulf of Thailand when it turned west off the original flight path so if you knock 500 miles off (a guesstimate) you're left worth 2200 miles plus the reserve.

As far as I know the Malaysians have only said there was enough fuel for the Beijing trip and haven't declared actual figures.

The reserve fuel of airliners varies between enough to keep it in the air for an additional 30 minutes up to enough to keep it in the air for an additional 2 hours, depending on the practice of the airline. As you correctly said the Malaysian authorities haven't declared actual figures, but the plane took off at 00:41 and the last satellite ping from it was received at 08:11 and the Malaysian authorities have stated that the plane certainly could have been in the air for that long. Although some of the satellite pings could have been received from the ground if the plane had landed, the Malaysian authorities accept that the plane's fuel load was enough for it to have been continuously in the air until 08:11 and to still be in the air at that time.

(18-03-2014 19:37 )babelover48 Wrote:  Are they searching the wrong way round as one theory suggests?

If the Maldives sighting is genuine, then yes they are searching in the wrong directions completely. They are currently searching in zones to the north and south of Malaysia, but the Maldives are to the west.

(18-03-2014 17:34 )dominar rygel xvi Wrote:  That's INTERESTING because Malaysian cops have discovered that the runways of 5 airports were loaded into the flight simulator the pilot had at home, 2 of them being in India, 1 in Sri Lanka, 1 was the island of Diego Garcia and 1 was in the MALDIVES.

I don't think there's anything significant in this. The plane didn't land at any of those airports, so it's just another red herring.

(19-03-2014 01:00 )southlondonphil Wrote:  I don't think there's anything significant in this. The plane didn't land at any of those airports, so it's just another red herring.

But why would he have Diego Garcia programmed into his simulator? It's a military base, so airliners couldn't land there under any circumstances.

(18-03-2014 16:36 )Tumble_Drier Wrote:  there are several reports of a low flying "Jumbo Jet" over the Maldives

So where would it have been heading? And was anyone at the controls or was the plane on autopilot?

(19-03-2014 02:02 )4waydiablo Wrote:  

(19-03-2014 01:00 )southlondonphil Wrote:  I don't think there's anything significant in this. The plane didn't land at any of those airports, so it's just another red herring.

But why would he have Diego Garcia programmed into his simulator? It's a military base, so airliners couldn't land there under any circumstances.

Only 1 reason terrorism its central to part of us operations in that area just imagine the shit would hit the fan if the us had been forced to blow it out of the sky with that many chinese citizens aboard