[fiftymegaton]

A couple questions for anyone who might know:

1. Can the ACARS system be shut off from within the cockpit? Or does someone have to physically leave(be outside) the cockpit in order to deactivate it?

2. Once the ACARS system is turned off, can it be seen as turned off from within the cockpit? In other words, is there a display in the cockpit that shows whether or not the ACARS system is active or not?

[ltc8k6]

Not totally.

In the cockpit you can turn off the VHF, HF, and SATCOM links that ACARS uses to send data.

Effectively, that stops the reports.

[RC one]

I read that it could be turned off from the cockpit via breakers and that there would be an orange warning light that would come on if you did this. I think we have to consider the possibility of electronic warfare involvement of one or more varieties. A plane can be made invisible to radar. Radio signals can be blocked. Transponders can be copied and resent from different locations and pretty much anything with a computer can be hacked at some level. I think we can conclude that there was either something very important to someone on that plane or the plane itself was stolen in order to be refitted as a weapon against the US. these are the two basic theories that I am stuck on. There were US DOD employees on the plane. there were Iranians on the plane. There were Chinese tech specialists on the plane who worked for companies known to have hacked things like Google. Nothing about this dispearance screams low tech IMO.

[Resolute Conservative]

There is only one question. Can pilots actually manually fly a plane anymore? The answer is it seems unlikely.