Given the erractic nature of the flight of MH370 as now stated, after turning West, would this be indicative of a Training Captain flying a fully functional aircraft?

This article as originally posted a few pages back by Andy and discussed by others, IMHO, nails the current situation.

Doomed airliner pilot was political fanatic: Hours before taking control of flight MH370 he attended trial of jailed opposition leader as FBI reveal passengers could be at a secret location | Mail Online

ETA: Blue Amber, re rapid climb and descent - maybe the actions of an FO trying to restore control? JMO

You understand VHF from an altitude of ~38,000 feet has a "range" of 300nm or more don't you?

Also you understand there is uninterrupted VHF coverage across the entire region in question (Gulf of Thailand/Malaysia etc) and every other aircraft except this one managed to be "in range" and tracked.

quote "Given the erractic nature of the flight of MH370 as now stated, after turning West, would this be indicative of a Training Captain flying a fully functional aircraft?"

No, the erratic nature of the flight, zig-zag and long extended trip to a watery demise in a desolate deep spot 7 hours later, is indicative of a sneaky skilled person with an agenda that includes confusing the world and embarassing a government he resents.

New JORN
 

I'd raise an eyebrow at the JORN capability 'dezinformaciya' repeated without question in post #4062 and #4125, thus:

"I can well understand the Australians being very cagy about releasing any data analysis which might give clues and cues regarding the extent and limits of their OTHR system, but I am wholly confident it now exceeds by some margin what is widely reported in the public domain.

Viz:

"The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) is an over-the-horizon radar network that can monitor air and sea movements across 37,000 km2. It has an official range of 3,000 km.

....the JORN delivered in 2003 was designed to a specification developed in the early 1990s. During this period the Alice Springs radar had evolved significantly under the guidance of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO). In February 2004 a fifth phase of the JORN project was approved. This phase aimed to upgrade the Laverton and Longreach radars to reflect over a decade of OTHR research and development. Phase five was scheduled to run until approximately the year 2011.

......other sources put the range at 4000 km from the Australian coastline,, as far away as Singapore The JORN is so sensitive it is able to track planes as small as a Cessna 172 taking off and landing in East Timor 2600 km away. Current research is anticipated to increase its sensitivity by a factor of ten beyond this level.

....JORN is designed to detect air targets equivalent in size to a military BAE Hawk-127 jet-trainer aircraft or larger…….enhancements planned beyond Phase 5 are unlikely to markedly improve the system’s ability to detect a vessel smaller than an ACPB patrol boat" ( my emphasis )

A meeting in recent years of the Qinetiq/RAF Boscombe Down branch of the RIN had a presentation on developmenst in OTHR in general and Jindalee in particular. Most of the attendees were Very Senior Development Electronics Engineers and some of the questions and answers were particularly probing and frank. It was clear that operating range 'on a good day' was very considerably more than 3000km and there was brief comment about tracking North Korean missile launches.....

It makes little sense to have a world-class threat tracking system, costing A$billions, and not have it running almost all the time. Does anyone really believe that the published FAQs of this VIP defense capability reflect its full operational range? Bolleaux!

I'm aware of the 'Inverse Square law'. Nevertheless, I suspect the 'Strines will have something to add to the discussion, albeit behind closed doors, and most likely 'shared' with their US allies.

Silverfox 36
 

I am a regular reader of PPrune but have nothing to do with the airline world. Just an intersted observer. Ever since MH 370 disappeared I have read very confusing reports, today I saw some diagrams in the paper showing the vertical movements of between 45000' and 30000'. If the investigators are so sure of thevertical movement why can't they tell us where the pplane was at that moment. This realy baffles me.

Where is the evidence ?
 

Do you really think the Malaysian president would state such things, -things that are corroborated by the AAIB,NTSB and Boeing for him If there were no evidence!!!

Here you just give away the truth, you have absolutely no idea how these systems operate or the frequencies they operate on. VHF RANGE LOL

Labelling the pilot a political "fanatic" for "obsessively" following the highly political and anti-democratic trial of Anwar Ibrahim, kept out of even official opposition illegitimately for more than a decade, is just ridiculous. Anyone pro democracy and with a conscience would be doing just that, bravely, in the face of an oppressive regime. It's quite important to distinguish between valid activism on behalf of basic democracy, and any form of extremism.

How to appear invisible to civilian radar?
 

There's a lot of talk about how MAS370 could have evaded several countries' civilian ATC radar (and by implication their military search radar). Has anyone considered maybe it didn't?

Admittedly, all my experience is in North America, but couldn't a flight plan be filed and picked up by the errant flight, and its transponder re-engaged (or another one brought online), allowing it to proceed on its merry way? It could even masquerade as some country's military flight.

No better place to hide something than in plain sight...

Why are so many still dribbling about ACARS, satcom, or transponders. There was no fire or loss of consciousness blah blah blah, some bad boys out thought security and nicked the jet. Why and how we will find out, eventually. The best we can hope for is the passengers and crew are still alive.


All those whinging about security being for public consumption, can say, well we told you so.

The prime minister of Malaysia merely said that the known facts were "consistent with" foul play.

He said the ACARS were disconnected. Basically they failed to send further data. How can one distinguish between intentional vs. result of some failure?

I have prepared a more accurate map of the various constraints governing the possible southern destination.

http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/~mark/per.../australia.png

The red circle shows points that see the INMARSAT IOR at 40 degrees altitude. The plane was on this circle at 8:11am. (It may have been on the northern arc of the red circle not shown but I am just considering the southern possibility here.)

The pink circle shows the limit of INMARSAT POR over the pacific. The plane was not east of the pink circle. Otherwise POR would have detected a ping at 8:11am as well.

The green circle to the far west is the limit of INMARSAT AOR-E over the Atlantic. The plane was not west of that line.

The light blue circle is roughly the limit of distance that the plane would have been able to reach by 8:11am given its last sighting NW of Penang at 2:15am. So the plane did not have time to get south of the blue circle.
(Assumes 5400km from Phuket)

The white circle is the limit of Australia's JORN radar. If the radar was switched on at 8:11am (WST=MYT) then the plane may have been spotted if it was within the white circle. (Assume 3000km from Laverton).

The number of first time posters flooding this thread with questions and theories that have been raised 100 times before is just....

-Cargo? Yes!
-Decompression? Yes!
-Fire? Yes!
-45000 ft? Yes!
-0 feet? Yes!
-FR24? Yes!
-Shadowing SQ? Yes!
-Captain had a flightsim at home? Yes!
-First officer invited girls into cockpit? Yes!
-False passports? Yes!
-The Chinese said something? Yes!
-Picture of village disguising as a fallen apart aircraft? Yes!
-Aussies have a radar? Yes!
-PM said it was hijacked? Yes!
-And on and on it goes!

I think the butler did it!

Yes mods, I know. Thank you for flushing 90% of this %#{]%{*{ down the edrain.

Seriously people.
Single failure!
Crew fixed oxygen cylinder. (Ie. the one connected to the pilot's oxygen masks) ruptures and takes out some avionics and holes the fuselage.
Think of the implications of that single failure. Think of the crew reaction/action. Think of the available time.
Please let's not eat our own young! These were good pilots, good citizens. Innocent until PROVEN otherwise.

They know exactly where it was when those movements were detected - above the Gulf of Thailand not long after the transponder went dead, ie at the very start of the disappearance. They know this from radar coverage. An hour or so later, the jet left the last radar area, west of Malaysia, and would only have been detectable via the equipment that had been turned off. The 'pings' are from that phase of the flight, and can only tell us the angle the plane made to the satellite that picked those signals up. Does that help?

@DS

Because of that bit about being under duress.

Exactly.
Thre is no evidence that anything was SWITCHED OFF.
Signals stopped arriving - that does not in anyway imply or support human intervention. There are plenty of more credible explanations.

For example, depressurisation caused by failure of an upper skin panel is highly likely to damage the antenna cables.

Was JORN switched on?
 

The RAAF FAQ available at http://www.airforce.gov.au/docs/JORN_Fact_Sheet.pdf states that the Jindalee system does not operate 24/7 for fiscal and staffing reasons. Aviation Week could not get an answer as to whether JORN had provided any useful data to help in the search.

Absolutely. And that is the one of the few facts we can rely on.

@ancient greek
 

There are ways to determine if these systems were deselected or abruptly lost I.E. cb tripped or failed somehow. Quit piping up, follow the thread, if suddenly something is discussed which you actually do have knowledge of by all means share your wisdom, but until that magic moment.........