Originally Posted by
MickG0105
There is no evidence to suggest that MH370's track on its final leg south into the Southern Indian Ocean had to have been a straight line. In fact, Dr Bobby Ulich recently published a paper Interpretation of MH370 18:25–18:41 Satellite Data that demonstrates that the curving path generated by having the final leg flown on a constant heading of 180T from near waypoint ANOKO at Best Holding speed produces an excellent fit to the BTO and BFO data. The flight path produced initially curves to the west and then to the east under the influence of the prevailing winds.
The evidence for a straight line is that the ATSB's best guess as to where the flight ended is at a position that would have required a straight line to achieve due to the fuel considerations. Any other track to that point would have needed more fuel than was aboard.
Therefore, if the wreckage is ever found near this area, we can safely rule anything but deliberate action by a person knowledgeable in the navigation systems.
Speaking of which, Dr Ulrich's paper is deficient in such system knowledge.
A B777 reaching an End of Offset or End of Route point in LNAV would have reverted to the default AFDS modes of Magnetic heading hold and SPEED mode.
Airliners dont fly enroute in TRACK mode or with TRUE reference set (polar operations excepted), yet these are the selections that would have to have been made if the AFDS was flying the aircraft, to achieve that straight line as the default magnetic heading mode would have turned the aircraft in a gentle turn towards the Australian coast due to large changes in magnetic variation as the aircraft headed south
The only other way to do it is LNAV with a waypoint entered into the FMC. Either way it must be done via someone who knows what they are doing.
Mick I have read your scenario and consider that the series of cascading and coincidental events to be far-fetched. You really lost me when your scenario had a crew, still with some semblance of control, abandoning all hope and looking for somewhere to crash. To my knowledge no crew in history has ever done this.
With regards to the SDU, have you considered that perhaps the one reason to de-power the LH AC Bus was to deny the use of SATCOM communication to the Flight attendants for the period of time required to take them out of the equation?
Panasonic IFE systems retain the ability to make such calls even if the IFE has been switched off.