Posted on 03/16/2014 12:10:12 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The two pilots of the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 did not ask to fly together, said Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein on Sunday.
The search for the missing plane entered a dramatic new phase on Saturday after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak acknowledged for the first time that the plane was deliberately diverted, and that it could have gone as far north as Kazakhstan in Central Asia or southwards towards the Indian Ocean.
Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar, who was also present at the press conference on Sunday, said investigation now includes ground staff, as well as crew and passengers of the plane.
Investigations include possibility of hijack, sabotage and terrorism, he added.
Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah (left) and his First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid. According to Hishammuddin, the pilots did not request to fly together. The government said earlier on Sunday that police had searched the homes of the two pilots of the missing plane and were examining the captain's home flight simulator, but cautioned it was a "normal" procedure.
"Officers spoke to family members of the pilot and experts are examining the pilot's flight simulator. On Saturday, the police also searched the home of the co-pilot."
Flight MH370, with 239 people on board, went missing near the South China Sea on March 8.
The revelation refocused attention on the background of the 239 passengers and crew, while sparking both outrage and relief among anxious family members in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.
Wonder if it’s an actual flight simulator or just a computer program type?
What’s the lesson here? Don’t ever get on a plane when a muzzie is in the cockpit. They tend to have issues with flying.
PC based, with yoke, rudder pedals, throttle quadrant, and 4 monitors.
I think we’ve reached the point of concluding this was intentional. The next question is “what do they want?” and “what are they expecting to do to the passengers”? 200+ people including infants cannot stay hidden for long. If they are alive, something is going to turn up.
A theory posted here was the climb to 40,000+ ft was done in order to kill all of the passengers. It wouldn’t take long if they turned off the oxygen masks and vented the cabin.
The oxygen masks run off of generators that only make oxygen for about ten minutes.
That explains why nobody was answering their cellphones. It looks like this the whole goal of this was to rip off the plane. But then again, isn’t it possible to triangulate cellphone positions? For example you call the number and the satellite can relay the position it sent the signal to?
I’ve discounted the cell phone thing. Simply because the batteries wouldn’t have lasted long enough.
That's to chuckle. They are one and the same. That is, all flight simulators designed after 1978 or so used computers to effect what happened and respond to user inputs. The difference between what Boeing or United has in their training facilities versus what pilots like Shah have at home simply varies by how much officially-manufactured input/output hardware is employed and whether displays are driven using the exact same data and electrical standards as the actual plane, or whether it's a simpler mock-up.
I zoomed into the photo of Shah's "simulator" and see that it was apparently of home/club brew, nowhere near the multi-million dollar training facility hardware. That is, aside from computer-based displays, the only physical elements were a flight yoke and rudder pedals. A college aviation fanatic could put together what he had for less than $25K, I'd estimate, maybe even less than $16K.
The three big screens were for the out-the-window views, but the main instrument display was also a computer screen, as were his comm- and circuit breaker panels.
Computers can be tied together via a local network and share data to and from the central simulation computer to generate visual or instrument displays. The yoke and rudder pedals were presumably connected into the same central computer. Usually, a micro-computer is dedicated to each instrument display. I see he had a keyboard and a mouse, so I presume that was used to assist for input, rather than having the displays key touch-sensitive, but touch sensitivity is also possible.
I used to make program and sell such simulators. From what I see, it could be one of ours. (oops!)
As far as not having asked to fly together for that specific trip, I could also imagine two conspiring pilots simply to wait for the day when they appeared on the schedule together for just the right flight, and go with just a couple of weeks of warning. This noted feature in the headline doesn't tell me they couldn't have conspired together to do this.
HF
My prayer's that none of the young children were brought into the cockpit to meet the captain (while their parents were murdered).
The monsters might not have wanted to wait for their virgins.
That’s what I meant. Good points...
Oh, and there was a cheap, plastic and aluminum throttle quadrant (from memory now, a few days after seeing the picture).
HF
Sadly, that makes too much sense.
Which means they wanted the plane, not just a crash.
Bringing up the interesting question of what they wanted with the plane. It’s worth many millions of dollars, but you can’t just sell one on ebay.
Getting all those bodies out would also be a LOT of work for somebody. As would decontaminating the passenger compartment from body fluids.
IMO they intend to use it as a weapon. They’ll dump the bodies out the doors but they need to clean it up.
9M-MRO was apparently equipped with the optional bottled passenger oxygen system and did not have the generators. It used several bottles to supply the passenger masks.
Good to know. Thanks. Two questions, though, how long would the bottles last, and can they be shut off from the cockpit?
Remove all the dead pax and seats, strip out all the cargo and luggage, replace with an equivalent mass of warhead.
Me? I’m guessing it’s intended to be a dam buster, a smaller aircraft would do just fine for any ordinary structure. Perhaps a massive shaped charge under the flight deck to bore a deep hole in the face, with an even more massive main charge of some relatively insensitive explosive to be rammed into that hole before detonation.
Compare to an M180, only writ LARGE...
Even if MH370 was successfully landed in some terrorist stronghold, I just don't see this scenario playing out. NORAD has such an umbrella over this continent that it could spot a wayward Piper plane and intercept it with a pair of F-16s before it got within 200 miles of the coast. There's just no way you can sneak a Boeing 777 into U.S. airspace!
I know some will point to 9/11 but that was a different situation. Those planes were already in the U.S. and diverted from their flight plans only when they were minutes from the targets. Also, we were caught with our pants down and that is not likely to happen again.
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