Originally Posted by
Che Xindamail
The complete lack of traces, debris or witnesses can only mean one thing, hijacking. Turn off the transponder, pull the ACARS cb's, and you are invisible to all but military primary radar. Descend low and not even they will see you. You are now in a fully functioning aircraft with astounding navigational capability, but invisible to the world. Where do you want to go?
The search area should be a seven hour fuel endurance radius of last known position. Since no ELT has gone off means it didn't crash, it landed. Remote airfields in China? Indonesia? Philippines? It means you must know how to navigate and land a 777. How many pilots in the world have undergone 777 training? Even just simulator training would suffice. 5000?
Looking forward to your thoughts.
I hate to disrupt the trusting faith that "ELT's go off in a crash" but they invariably don't. Indeed there was a discussion on here after the Ethiopian 787 fire at Heathrow on their usefulness at all. I have been involved in numerous incidents where they have gone off inadvertently. I would be interested if anyone can report the case of a crash where an ELT signal was useful. I have been involved in cases where military SARBEs worked as advertised but not ELTs.