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Malaysia Airlines Flight Goes Missing En Route to China
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Anonymous
Pilots can hijack planes too no? |
Anonymous
I suppose yes they can, but people tend to distinguish between external hijacking, and pilots, who are the right and authorized flyers of the plane, taking matters into their own hands. |
Anonymous
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I suppose the governments must now be looking into all the passengers. I wonder if there were any other pilots, or people who'd done flight training. From what I've read you can't just have some experience and go in and handle a 777- you need to know it, and from the way the plane was moving, it seems like someone with an incredible amount of experience had done it.
I do entirely believe in some type of hijacking or intentional act. There are too many things lining up to be the perfect storm. These pilots who had let people in to the cockpit (I wonder if this was known before?), it being a red eye and coming out of a state was less than ideal security/monitoring, how the commuications systems were turned off separately and right at the crossing over into Vietnam- it is too strategic and too well-planned to all be coincidental IMHO. The pilot did it, or was forced to, or there was someone else with incredible knowledge of the 777 on that plane. I was reading that if a pilot goes to the bathroom, a crew member has to step in so there are always 2 people in cockpit. I wonder... |
Anonymous
Source? My understanding is that a 777 is rated for altitudes as high as 43,000 feet. If so, the passenger oxygen system would have to work at least to that level. Why would it not work correctly at 45,000 feet? |
Anonymous
| Because somebody disconnected oxygen in the cabin but not the cockpit. |
Anonymous
That's different than saying the oxygen masks automatically stop working at altitudes over 40,000 feet. |
Anonymous
Most people would die with a rapid decompression at 30,000. Would take a little while, but not much O2 up there. People who do Everest take weeks to adjust their bodies and still use O2. Also it is cold as shit that high..like -30. Going up to 40 plus you need O2 all the time, just not enough to keep you alive. |
Anonymous
Sure, but why would the passenger oxygen masks not function at that level? That's what PP was asserting. |
Anonymous
All you have to do is fly over 35k for 20 minutes and everyone should be dead. Its not like the O2 supply for the passangers is endless. Everyone would just sit in their seats and died. If not from lack of O2, cold would get them. |
Anonymous
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I wonder if there was some kind of skirmish between one or both pilots, and the airline, or air traffic control. Maybe they had been reprimanded or given a lecturing to, about something recently. And the pilots decided to take a kind of revenge - "eff you all, we're out."
It could explain the airlines holding back on releasing things, for fear of piecing together sequencing of some sort of conflict. |
Anonymous
| I thought they said the idea that the plane went that high might not be correct after all. |
Anonymous
That's what happened in that flight (can't remember which one..Egypt Air? or another one. Google brings it up). The co-pilot had been reprimanded for sexual misconduct and was going to be stopped from doing international flights (I guess when they got back to their home base). The reprimandor (the pilot?) told him, "This is your last flight," and he replied, "Yours too." When the pilot went to the bathroom, he was not scheduled to fly yet, but he went and relieved the other co-pilot. At first the co-pilot protested but the guy outranked him, so he relented. When he got the controls, he jammed them downward. The pilot came in and saw the co-pilot turn off the engines because he said, "(Name), did you just turn off the engines?" and then he was yelling "Pull with me!" and that was it. The authorities saw it as revenge more than suicide. It's similar to when you fire someone and they come back with a gun…sort of a workplace violence in the skies. |
Anonymous
| Computer malfunctioned. |
Anonymous
The NYT article pretty much said that one of the pilots was very likely involved, although whether willingly or through coercion who knows. Something about when they switch off the communications - between Malaysia and Vietnam. Malaysia would think they switched to Vietnamese air traffic control and Vietnam wouldn't know to be expecting them yet. Allowed them to go longer before arousing suspicion. Only someone very familiar with the route would know exactly when to do this. |
Anonymous
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/62671/ Conversation about flying above 45,000 ft. Is long, but there it is: On another site it talks about that it is hard to draw the air into the lungs from the mask at that altitude before you pass out... Kevi747 "I believe I've been to 45,000 ft in a 767. Is that possible?" Not legally / safely. See below for the max alts. "When airplanes are heavy (fuel for very long trip) they are far from able to reach high levels... With my 747, we can barely reach 29,000 feet when we are fully loaded for a trip from Argentina to Europe, yet, at the end of the cruise flights, we occasionally are at 39,000 feet... I hardly ever fly at the maximum certificated of 45,000 feet..." B747skipper sums this topic up nicely. On the 757-200 we can go to 42,000ft (in practice FL410) and on the 767-300 we can go to 43,100ft (in practice FL430). I have never seen these levels in passenger service on either aircraft. We fly our 757s with 235 passengers and our 767-300s with 315-328 passengers. Our flights are nearly always full. On transatlantic trips with the B763 FL290 - FL320 is about the highest we can go initially, with the optimum level hanging around the FL305 mark. Getting a NAT track at FL320 is about right as the optimum level will be rising as our gross weight reduces along the track and we can "bracket" the optimum level. Remember that at the other end the optimum will likely be above us in the FL345 mark off the top of my head. Then we can step to FL350 and stay there for the rest of the trip. FL390 sometimes, FL410 only if weather dictates as this is never optimum in our operations due to high ZFW. On the 757-200 we can usually go straight to FL360/FL370 for a European hop (2-4 hours). Stepping to FL380/FL390 is not really ever worth it unless weather dictates, as the optimum weights to climb to these levels are in the 80,000kg range and often that is less than our ZFW! Short, empty positioning flights are the exception to these rules - we can go pretty much straight to FL410 in both aircraft in these cases. Brons2 "Coffin corner is the reason, you get to a point at higher altitudes that the margin between a stall (as IAS decreases) and overspeed (mach too high) becomes very, very small." Close but not close enough!! The margin actually becomes zero, so the speed at which high speed buffet and low speed stall occurs becomes the same. THAT is "Coffin Corner". It is the reason attempting to out-climb thunderstorm cells is normally a futile exercise since these things can grow to over 60,000ft and you'd hit Coffin Corner long before that. |