Originally Posted by
Leightman 957
Specifically regarding the Duncan Steel post, three people including active airline pilots well versed with airline procedures and airliner capabilities and controls who wish not to be identified due to the obvious high degee of conjecture involved at present have responded to my inquiry regarding the Steel theory with these comments:
1. Route over land would have been easily picked up by numerous radar
sites. Any plane without a transponder signal at cruising altitude, without a transponder signal, would stick out like a sore thumb. 2. The first initial turn (if correct) is a classic "return to safety" in an emergency. 3. Total (electrical) power loss would have created the known fact of Transponder and ACARS loss. 4. The two engines can continue running with full aircraft (electrical) power loss as in they have isolated generators that continue to running EEC power. The engines will continue to maintain performance, and all necessary functions independent of aircraft central inputs. 5. All opinions/theories resulted in: The aircraft flew statically on the last course. The last course was a sloppy 180 most likely set in by pilots in a rush, or with limited visibility to PFD or CDU. Pilots lost consciousness, aircraft continued on course. If you go by such a scenario, the aircraft most likely took a western route as that was the initial turn programmed by hurried pilots.
Can we hit something on the head now before it comes up yet again. Area radar controllers do not use primary radar, they are not interested. All the aircratft in their airspace are transponding and their systems label the display with all the required information. A primary track will not even be noticed by most civilian area controllers.
Primary radar cover from military radars is geared to identifying threats; aircraft that are known are labeled and their primary response is correlated with their secondary (transpomder) response. If their secondary response stops then the correlated label still follows their primary response - that is why they are correlated. So MH370 transponder goes off but the label carries on as a non-threatening Comair track. 9/11 is something that happened to the USA - who is going to attack Malaysia? So don't expect anyone to react to a 777 from a local airline with no transponder.
Primary cover is
extremely sparse as it is expensive. Civil area control do not use it or reallly want it, airports use it but don't really need it. Military are then given the bill of runnig it and set up their radars where threats may occur. There is very little primary cover over the CONUS for this reason; However, Thai long range primary probably saw the MH370 track but it was no threat, same for Indonesia. What do people expect? Woulld the USA go on alert for a Mexican commercial airliner that turned back to Mexico in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico?
Random primary tracks are common - nobody is going to react to them. This may be why the transponder was turned off.