Birdspeed said:
Ian w,
Agreed the a/c would fly a phugoid profile. As the a/c was trimmed for high speed cruise 280kts; once the engines failed, first one and then 7 minutes later the other the loss of pitch-power component would I guess have the a/c trimmed speed up to perhaps 350kts.
So it's going to hit the sea hard and fast, and in a steep spiral.
As for the route after the event, to me it seems completely random, with the a/c flying a phugoid with autopilot out. If you wanted to make the plane disappear I wouldn't choose this route. I would have expected 3 different air forces to have intercepted me.
Is the early route with the multiple doglegs really firmly established?
The evidence is pretty much all held by the various national governments, none of whom seem especially fond of external scrutiny.
This all happened in the dead of the night, in airspace that was free from any plausible threat. It is convenient for everyone to claim the aircraft only skirted their airspace, so we construct a route that fits. Can we have confidence that that route is actually true?