Posted on 03/13/2014 7:38:46 PM PDT by gooblah
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- A Malaysia Airlines plane sent signals to a satellite for four hours after the aircraft went missing, an indication that it was still flying for hundreds of miles or more, a U.S. official briefed on the search said Thursday.
Six days after the plane with 239 people aboard disappeared, Malaysian authorities expanded their search westward toward India, saying the aircraft may have flown for several hours after its last contact with the ground shortly after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.
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"Naah, its in the running for the U.S. Presidency in 2017."
It can’t stay in the airspace forever. It must at some point must have landed there.
“Unless the passengers aboard were dead”
Seems like if the passengers were alive and there was a hijacking for 4 hours some of them would try to call on their cell phones. Would cell phones work over the ocean like that?
“my guess is Pakistan.”
If the plane landed seems like the world would know, unless it was one of the crazy countries.
Best comment I’ve seen on this craziness yet!
“Malaysia recruits witch doctors “
Witch doctors will be about all you’ll get once we have full-scale Obamacare! /s;)
They could glide for a while without fuel if they’re high enough. All it takes is the proper attitude and trim.
“Our military should be on a high alert status until this jet is found.
“
Yeah, what if the plane secretly landed, then equipped with a nuke and flown to US disguised as a normal flight?
As low as $35 million with some mileage/cycles on her!
It would be ironic if the only thing found through the search and rescue efforts was her plane.
You don’t need a 777 to deliver a nuke, and it would be far easier and much less noticeable to just steal a private jet.
EMP attack.
Only the Russians have the balls to do that.
Part of the Earhart investigation focused on how she was to switch between radio beacon and a some other signal (like morse-code??) on the half-hour as a navigation aid. But at that time, everyone used a different time zone. A ship from Hawaii was anchored off the island (Howland?), and was 2.5 hours off from the island! (The ship was still on Hawaii time.)
Anyway - the result was using Mean Greenwich Time for all travel after that.
I imagine some changes will be coming as a result of this flight getting lost.
I think there is just enough fuel to make it to Pakistan.. Flying conservatively not in the political sense.
Destination PAKISTAN?
Doubtful. To get to Pakistan on the fuel load you’d have to fly over India and the Indians would see you. Not enough fuel to go around. For the same reason, the plane didn’t fly four hours north. While the Vietnamese might not have very good radar coverage, China certainly does and would have seen the plane. Same for Taiwan and Japan on the original heading.
If the cell phones were actually ringing, that would mean they were near a cell tower.
How does the cell phone system know how to route the call to the correct tower and then to the cell phone?
It's because the cell phone sends signals to the tower to announce its presence and connect with the tower.
There are easily searchable logs of these announcement signals.
If any of these cell phones were working and were near a cell tower, we would know where they were.
I thought of North Korea as a possibility but discarded that for the same reasons you mentioned plus warships of multiple nations and we damn well know for certain that country is under continous satellite observation.
Plus the Chinese would be really pissed at fat Kim :)
Were you watching the meter?
Fully fueled, this airplane has a range of 8892 miles. They had enough to reach Beijing with the customary reserve. But who's to say somebody didn't arrange to have some extra pumped aboard at KUL?
Or start WWIII
8892 miles is about 17 hours worth of flying.
Malaysia Airlines has said the plane was fueled for at least eight hours of flight. The Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route lasts six hours. Aircraft typically carry two hours’ worth of fuel on top of what is needed.
see post 124. Only had enough fuel left for 2200 nautical miles of flight when the transponders were turned off.
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