Posted on 03/14/2014 10:34:11 AM PDT by nickcarraway
A question about a flight simulator in the home of flight MH370 pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was raised at Fridays media conference.
Malaysia Airlines chief executive officer Ahnad Jauhari Yahya said Malaysia Airlines had no policy forbidding staff from owning the technology.
Jauhari said Capt Zaharie was allowed to pursue his hobbies.
There are several other guys (pilots) who also have flight simulators in their home," he told reporters.
Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein said the authorities will search the home of MH370 crew members if it was necessary to do so.
He said such a search could not be ruled out in the efforts to gather as much information as possible about the missing aircraft.
If the investigation leads us to that direction (the need to search the house) and it is within the law, we will do it, he said.
He said the whole passenger manifest was also being examined.
Capt Zaharie, 53 and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, were among the 12-member crew of the Boeing 777-200 with 227 passengers.
Hishammuddin also said the investigators were looking at several possibilities as to why the planes transponder and the Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (Acars) did not transmit any data after 1.30am on Saturday.
We are trying to find out whether they were shut down intentionally, shut down under duress or if an explosion occurred.
We are looking at various possibilities, thus that is why I refuse to speculate, he said.
Foreign media have been reporting on unverified news that police had raided the house of Capt Zaharie in Shah Alam and confiscated his flight simulator for investigations.
However, Bukit Aman sources have all denied the raid took place, saying the officers had tried to visit the family but found no one at home.
CNN reported that Capt Zaharie had posted on German online forum, X-Sim.de, that he had built a flight simulator himself in November 2012.
"About a month ago I finish assembly of FSX and FS9 with six monitors" in a message signed Capt Zaharie Ahmad Shah BOEING 777 MALAYSIA AIRLINES.
Checks reveal that FSX and FS9 were over the counter flight simulator games made by Microsoft that could be easily bought online.
Capt Zaharie studied aviation at the Philippine Airlines Aviation School in Pasay City, Manila in 1980, before joining Malaysia Airlines in 1981.
The Penangite became a captain in the early 1990's and has 33-years and 18, 360 hours of flying experience under his belt.
His colleagues described him as a jovial but professional "aviation geek" who collects remote controlled miniature aircrafts, light twin engine helicopters and amphibious aircrafts.
Outside of aviation, he runs a YouTube channel dedicated to DIY projects, where he teaches viewers how to fix home appliances like air-conditioners.
The difference here is no one was looking for the 777. NK is monitored.
That would be the M.O. of some terrorists who know that getting a bomb on board is difficult and instead of killing passengers immediately want to prolong the terror and cause uncertainty among future flyers.
That was the copilot.
the most mysterious disappearance of an airplane that, some have said, and rightly so, ever.
Then the 'some who said' are idiots. It hasn't been that long since it 'disappeared'. The world is a big place, some of it isn't under everyday surveillance and control. Thank God.
Go to the simulator and find out where he has been practicing landings.
TransponDers and no. If it reflect radar energy it is visible to radar. If there is no radar coverage, then it doesn't matter whether the transponder was on or not.
Yesterday I tried loading up some of Gottfried Razek's photo-real scenery...heh, brought my rig to a standstill in SoCal trying to load up all those texture tiles.
Anything new in the future of the flight sim world on the horizon?
(other than Prepar3D, XPlane, etc.?)
Nothing suspicious about a pilot having a sim at home.
Everything suspicious about anyone involved in this flight, even the pilots and especially the pilots. And any pilot here would expect the feds to be all over his home if he and his airplane went missing, or flying into a building.
I don’t care if no one claimed responsibility for this, nor that if someone did, it’s being covered up.
The pilot, in this case, serves the passengers who have reasonable, if reluctant, expectation to arrive at his destination safely.
Any American pilot knows that if that doesn’t happen he’s going to be looked at poked prodded gone over, as well as flight simulators at home, and especially simulators at home.
I mean where is your sense of what happened on 911? the guys were trained at flight schools here, using cash. The insturctors and their schools are innocent?
Why do Americans think like stupid Bugs Bunny hunting dogs?
“Duh, the pilot was innocent in the 911 deal, so it’s always going to fit that pattern”
Why can’t they do something different? Because we are all powerful and we don’t want them to?
THe reasonable person can imagine, in this case, that the pilots had involvement at least one of them and that there could be a wide conspiracy of at least 19 people.
There could be a much larger outcome to this situation and precious pilots’ sensitivity will be insulted.
Too bad.
this guy was making a good wage and part of that is guaranteeing public and customer safety. If that means authorities poring over his stuff, with him in suspect mode, so what?
No Air Force pilot I know wouldn’t be, hasn’t been, gone over with a toothed comb after an accident. they would never publicly whine about it, either, theyre all subject to it.
I don’t understand people here anymore.
There’s such stupidity and forgetfulness.
So submarine launch from area would be safe from detection?
Sounds like a dedicated pilot to me.
Hmm. Ok. well, you can keep trying to protect the precious pilots, co pilot, captain, whoever. to say this is not a big mystery is wasting my time.
If my family member is missing for a week inexplicably, I’m not defending the pilot who, by the way, is responsible for the safety of my loved one. That’s what he’s paid to do. If someone was paying him more, and he was bribable, or turned a blind eye to a copilot who was so, I want the authorities all over his house, care, family, girlfriends, drinking buddies, everything, and a whole heck of a lot sooner than one week later.
You are wasting my time.
By Joel Achenbach, Published: March 11 E-mail the writer
The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is the kind of mystery thats not supposed to be possible anymore. The Information Age is also the age of surveillance, of interconnectedness, of cloud computing, of GPS satellites, of intelligence agencies that can monitor terrorists from space or call in a drone strike from a control console on the other side of the world.
But so far, all the technological eyes and ears of the world have failed to find the missing plane. The Boeing 777 jetliner, with 239 people aboard, silently vanished early Saturday morning on its way to China, disappearing from radar so suddenly and inexplicably that it might as well have flown into another dimension.
Unless he was using the simulator to train ROP’ers.
I would hope, but given some of what could be perceived as incompetence on behalf of the Malaysian authorities, one has to wonder if they are capable.
Exactly. The Fort Hood terrorist was a member of the American military. He wasn't a terrorist until he was. And even now they won't call him one.
That sort of software must leave loads of data on the hard drive.
If these guys hijacked their own airplane, isn't it quite likely that there is detailed representation of their planned route and destination on Captain Shah's machine?
Any dedicated pilot that I know welcomes the lack of privacy that comes with the territory of getting paid to fly hundreds of people around, trusting him with their lives.
If he’s not involved, but a victim, it will bear itself out.
He’s missing with his passengers and crew.
Are people here so paranoid and hateful that they think this is a witch hunt?
If a soldier is responsible for the deaths of just a few of his men, he in scrutinized. If a bus driver goes over a cliff, they’re going to search his effects, and examine.
A pilot disappears with 239 people and it’s an affront here to examine him?
It’s idiocy.
Sigh. Sanity.
These set ups are pretty common. I have a 777 simulator on my iPad for gods sake.
It would not be outrageous for, a commercial pilot to have a nice setup.
There were lots of clues about that guy. But they were overlooked because the military follows orders, and those orders are to be politically correct. Remember, when the political winds shift in an ugly direction, the Commander in Chief stands with the Mooselimbs.
“..If these guys hijacked their own airplane, isn’t it quite likely that there is detailed representation of their planned route and destination on Captain Shah’s machine?”
::::::::::::
I doubt it. At this point no one knows (we think) what the intentions of the perps that caused this were. So far, the distances of flight that are suspected are not long for this type of aircraft so it is impossible to even hypothesize about the flight mode (manual versus on board flight system) that was used and of course, where the plane went at the end of its flight. This could take a real long time to resolve.
How is it a mystery. The plane took off, didn't go where it was supposed to, Malaysians have it going west. Conclusion, someone took it. Whether the crew or terrorists, that doesn't matter. What matters is how much gas they had, what is the range. You miss your relative, so what? In the big scheme your relative is meaningless. Any country that sees this 777 again, is going to shoot it down, whether the passengers are on it or not.
, Im not defending the pilot who, by the way, is responsible for the safety of my loved one.
No, you are just blasting him with little or no reason. Unless you know much more than the rest of the world. He could have been part of it, yes. He also could have been one of the first killed defending the innocents aboard. I hope his efforts delayed the implementation of the plan so the terrs ran out of fuel short of their goal.
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