Posted on 03/16/2014 12:27:57 PM PDT by Innovative
Investigators have said someone on board the plane first disabled one of its communications systems — the Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS — about 40 minutes after takeoff.
Around 14 minutes later, the transponder that identifies the plane to commercial radar systems was also shut down. The fact that both systems went dark separately offered strong evidence that the plane's disappearance was deliberate.
On Sunday, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference that that the final, reassuring words from the cockpit — "All right, good night" — were spoken to air traffic controllers after the ACARS system was shut off. Whoever spoke did not mention any trouble on board.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
So you are saying the satellite link is via Iridium (low earth orbit, lots of satellites, in constant motion relative to the ground), not Inmarsat (one satellite, geosynchronous, parked 22,300 miles above a point along the equator in the Indian Ocean)? The diagram with the arcs is supposedly based on the conclusions of Inmarsat engineers.
A term used despite the American understanding of what it means here. It isn't the same thing, there isn't positive control in most areas covered by ICAO. The transponder was secured because the flight was going to turn west into an area that had radar coverage.
The aircraft probably has dual transponders; so if one fails, it would be powered-off, and the pilot would be sure that the other was powered on. Short of that, transponders often have partial capability - you can "squawk altitude" or not, if there is some problem with the message content.
No pilot I know would go all Muhamud Atta because a flight attendant turned him down. They would simply move on to the flight attendant.
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True, but if this pilot is the guy, and he has a home simulator, is it not highly likely he practiced something especially interesting on it? Like putting her down at a difficult airport somewhere in the 'stans?
Here are a few reasons:
1. Satellite space segment is expensive.
2. The antennas will not work with the aircraft in unusual attitudes, such as diving straight for the ocean.
3. There are fairly frequent windows of satcom unavailability.
I agree that post is very interesting, I sure hope someone is looking very closely at that point.
The data is from 3/12.
Ya’ see...
there’s the problem, right there, in a nutshell.
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Don’t know. Do you think they might have or should have?
Hello again cynwoody. Please read post 47 carefully. The 777 system is designed to work with the low earth orbit Iridium satellite system (60+ satellites). Since we know that the Iridium folks recieved 5 or 6 pings they should be able to produce a ground track. The 2 circular tracks you see on TV must have been obtained accidently by a geo comm sat picking up one of the pings. Another sat would still be needed to triangulate. The big question is why haven’t the Iridium folks come forward. Maybe they have and that is where the destroyer Kidd went.
Why the Hell would anyone let a moslem fly their airplane?
That was proposed after AF447, but, IIRC, was shot down because of the cost of satellite data transmission.
That's probably also why the Boeing Aircraft Health Management messages are limited to just a few significant events per flight.
Wonder what’s in the memory of the program.
The plane is at the bottom of the ocean and it may or may not be eventually located.
Could be. Usually those that want to practice flying a biggy fast and low.
I agree.
Used for recruiting new officers and press events. No tax dollars were used. Promise. ;O)
I'm not familiar with any flight simulator software. But, if it's constructed the way most GUI apps are, you can probably save simulations and simulation configurations as named documents, and later edit them and replay them.
You might want to resume a saved simulation at a certain point, but with altered circumstances. E.g., you are on final approach to some airport, and this time, you'd like another airplane to intrude on the runway, so that you can see if you have the right stuff to avoid a crash. Or maybe some critical system on the plane fails. Can you recover?
If I were running the simulator investigation, I'd want three people on the team: An ace computer forensics expert (e.g., Simson Garfinkle), an experienced 777 pilot, and somebody deeply familiar with the simulation software Captain Zaharie was using.
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