Posted on 03/17/2014 1:37:17 PM PDT by blam
What Pilots Think About The Crazy New Theory That The Missing Malaysia Jet Used Another Jet To Hide
Alex Davies
March 17, 2014
Not surprisingly, the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 with 239 people on board more than a week ago has led some people to come up with very interesting theories about what might have happened.
On his Tumblr, self-identified hobby pilot and aviation enthusiast Keith Ledgerwood put forward the most elaborate and interesting suggestion we've heard yet.
He argues the 777 could have flown over India and Pakistan, avoiding military radar detection by turning off its communications systems and following a Singapore Airlines 777 so closely the two aircraft "would have shown up as one single blip on the radar."
In the post, Ledgerwood established that the Singapore Airlines flight was in the area.
The collision avoidance systems installed on all modern airliners operate using the transponder, which someone on the Malaysia flight could have turned off. So the Singapore crew wouldn't have detected a plane on their tail, Ledgerwood speculates.
"Once MH370 had cleared the volatile airspaces and was safe from being detected by military radar sites in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan," Ledgerwood writes, "it would have been free to break off from the shadow of SIA68 and could have then flown a path to it’s final landing site."
We asked Michael G. Fortune, a retired pilot who now works as an aviation consultant and expert witness, if that would be possible. After a lengthy pause, he gave us a skeptical "maybe." It would depend on what kind of radar equipment the Singapore 777 had on board, he said, and would require some serious aviation skill to find and stay behind the plane.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Well there was that one scene in “Air America” where they hid this plane in a barn and the bad guys (American CIA) couldn’t find it.
With the transponder on they could track the singapore jet with TCAS up to about 30 miles. With the transponder turned off, it would not be so easy.
I’m confused here, mind you its been years since I was up on the latest technology. But the Malaysia Flight 370 could have turned off it’s transponder, thereby eliminating the primary way of tracking it.
But it in turn shouldn’t have needed it on to utilize the weather/search radar in the nose of the aircraft to find the Singapore jet and follow it.
The transponder is a separate piece of equipment from the on-board radar and the on-board radar can, (well they used to anyway), be set to receive only and not transmit. It’s the transmitter that makes them easy to track. If they needed to they could turn on the radar transmitter for a couple of sweeps and then turn it off and look at the returns on the stored memory in the cockpit instruments.
In any case I would say it was an amazing feat of flying for any pilot today who has been trained to rely on so much of the modern equipment in the planes they fly today.
Interesting but wouldn’t the plane be noticed by the one in front? Do commercial planes have “rear vision” video? Or would the aero be affecting the plane in front?
How could a 777 follow another Plane so closely without Wake Turbulence being a Factor.?
They do it all the time - it’s call landing !
Ever been to a busy airport in the evening? You can see the planes lined up one behind the other as they make their final approach with a couple of miles separation.
In this case the lead plane is traveling at assigned altitude, navigation lights/beacons working.
Then tailing plane is flying without any lights and would be very difficult to spot at this time of the morning. Tailing plane approaches from behind, stays 500 ft above the lead aircraft and maybe a mile or less behind. The tailing plane can follow the lights ahead all night.
At those distances radar might just paint a single contact, depends on how far off the military radar site is. At that time of morning it might not get much attention.
I don’t know what the pilots or passengers in the lead aircraft would see. He doesn’t have to be anywhere near the same altitude, as long he is approximately the same distance from the radar antenna, give or take 500 feet.
Aerial refueling is not possible.
For the 40 plus years I flew, I flew behind airborne radars for maybe 30 of those years..
I never heard of a civilian radar that could see anything other than weather, primarily because its beam is a very narrow “pencil” beam.
It mus be narrow so that the exact size and location of large storms can be seen in a manner that allows circumnavigation. A wide beam sufficient to see aircraft would paint the ground and make two cells look as though they are one, thus making it impossible to plot a course between them.
Obviously fighters have a means of intercepting aircraft, but airlines are not designed for that purpose.
Intimate knowledge of airline schedules, the TCAS and carefully monitoring center frequencies during the planning period would have been his best means.
Stepped down and in tight would work, as well. Like aerial refueling. Stepped up would make it hard to see the aircraft you are flying form on.
Except once you’re over land, all the passengers’ cell phones would have worked again.
I am a Pilot as well, I’ve never seen planes follow that closely, even at Lax there’s plenty of seperation.
Remember the La Guardia Aircraft Crash that ended up in a neighborhood for taking off to quickly after another planes Wake. An Airbus I think.
Thanks for the information. The last radar I worked on was a shipboard one and it was switchable for different conditions depending on the surroundings. One setting was good for weather while out on the ‘bounty blue’ a different one was good for inshore navigation but filtered out Weather returns etc. I just assumed that the commercial ones would be somewhat similar despite having a side to side sweep versus a rotating sweep.
That assumption thing can really ‘bite’ you ya’know?
I did get an introductory course on the radar for the helicopters we occasionally carried and they had some very impressive capabilities. But being military that’s to be expected.
None of it seems to take into account the fact that the plane climbed first to 47,000, then rapidly descended. Or the cell phones, that, over land, would have been at some point operable.
Wake turbulence is a "thing" that trails an aircraft, and descends. If they had the same "footprint", the lower a/c would not see the WT - it would descend behind it. Besides, WT to two jumbo's is a flea in the wind... it is a BIG problem for C210's, however.
well, it started out to be 45,000.
What was the original source of that information?
What radar facility in that area had the capability of reading altitude with the transponder turned off?
Cell phones are not usable at high altitudes because they hit so many cell towers that they drive the system nuts.
Everyone is assuming that its a normal 777. What were the patent holders able to contribute to the mix from their laptops?
Other than a reason to ditch the plane where black boxes can’t be found
And the Airbus that crashed out of LGA Years ago was Flea Hit when it took off shortly after another did.
Well hopefully India can go back and check the radar transmissions of that Singapore flight that night a little more closely to see if there might have been something in its shadow.
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