Posted on 03/17/2014 6:59:33 PM PDT by kristinn
The first turn to the west that diverted the missing Malaysia Airlines plane from its planned flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was carried out through a computer system that was most likely programmed by someone in the planes cockpit who was knowledgeable about airplane systems, according to senior American officials.
Instead of manually operating the planes controls, whoever altered Flight 370s path typed seven or eight keystrokes into a computer on a knee-high pedestal between the captain and the first officer, according to officials. The Flight Management System, as the computer is known, directs the plane from point to point specified in the flight plan submitted before each flight. It is not clear whether the planes path was reprogrammed before or after it took off.
The fact that the turn away from Beijing was programmed into the computer has reinforced the belief of investigators first voiced by Malaysian officials that the plane was deliberately diverted and that foul play was involved. It has also increased their focus on the planes captain and first officer.
SNIP
According to investigators, it appears that a waypoint was added to the planned route. Pilots do that in the ordinary course of flying if air traffic controllers tell them to take a different route, to avoid weather or traffic. But in this case, the waypoint was far off the path to Beijing.
Whoever changed the planes course would have had to be familiar with Boeing aircraft, though not necessarily the 777 the type of plane that disappeared. American officials and aviation experts said it was far-fetched to believe that a passenger could have reprogrammed the Flight Management System.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
In the Oval Office, with Mr. Love and a ... vibrating candlestick?
Or it could be something like this:
Pilot-”Hey, look what I have been practicing at home on my simulator”
Co-pilot-”Oh yeah, what?”
Pilot-”Watch this”
Co-pilot-”Aw craaaaap”
Pilot-”Ooooops”
I read about the Maldives sightings and interpreted it as the plane flying over the islands and on to who-knows-where, but you're right that it could've landed. This 'operation', whatever it is, appears so clever and meticulous in its planning and execution that I think we're either dealing with a nation-state as you say, or perhaps just a captain who lost his mind. With so much information and no resolution, it seems to me that the story is either much bigger or much smaller than we're thinking right now. It's easy to mistake skillful action for rational thinking. It's easy to mistake conspiracy for incompetence - or the other way around.
We may well be through the looking glass. I don't know which of our proposed scenarios is more disturbing. I hope my instincts are wrong. I grew weary of constant air travel to weird places, seeing weird things. I also have grown very mistrustful of my government and even my military (at least its command.) I'll agree there are far worse state actors out there, and I hope that our fears about this plane are proven wrong. You and I agree that it almost certainly touched down somewhere. This much time having passed without knowing where or why eliminates a lot of possibilities. The ones remaining are not very good.
Then why is the US Navy pulling out of the region?
A General who has been commenting from the beginning of the story of FoxNews has consistently opined the plane landed somewhere. He had some very interesting statements on Hannity tonight, among one was that if the Pakistani’s don’t come forth soon with some official response to questioning and cooperation, that in itself will be seen as incriminating.
This guy seemed to have more info than he wanted to share despite Hannity’s questioning. In fact, he begged off being questioned too closely on some things. He seems to think that there will be developments break in the next day or so and say that the US Navy wouldn’t pull out unless they knew there was nothing to be found and that some of the best “leaks” on this story are coming out of our government’s resources. He thinks the government knows more than what has been released. It was an interesting interview.
May God find all aboard alive by the searchers.
For an observer, Mchael J. McKay was on an Oil Rig, standing on a hill or tower 100 feet (30 m) in height, the horizon is at a distance of 12.2 miles (19.6 km) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon Any object at altitude, even above a few feet, past the horizon can be observed as long as it is bright enough and the sky is dark and clear.
A burning object at 35,000 feet can be seen from the surface at a radius of about 221 miles. But Mr McKay was 365 miles from the last transponder hit. And the airplane at that time, according to the Malay monkeys' military radar, turned away from Mr Fox and headed west by south back across the Malaysian island.
So, Mr McKay must have seen something else.
USAF80: < What about the remote control autopilot?>
< If you’re referring to external control of the aircraft,... The technology exists, and we may not know the full capabilities of such. >
Glory hallelujah, that open-mindedness is refreshing to read.
This isn’t necessarily directed to you since I don’t know your background, but pls let me vent a minute. It’s been my experience that it takes a certain kind of computer person to be able to open his mind to admit, or maybe even to comprehend, that maybe, just maybe, there is malware in the wild now that he hasn’t seen yet, and therefore he just MAY not fully comprehend its abilities. And heaven forbid if someone without his “expert training” and “experience” comes along and tries to explain that maybe the reason he doesn’t see any evidence of being pwned is because he resides inside a virtualized Matrix World full of Linux penguins, nop slides, and hidden hacker conversations inside the binary files. In truth, the “Reality” he is allowed to see on his computer screen every day is whatever “Reality”his Slavemaster Owner allows him to see at any given moment. His owner is the current owner of the persistent virtualized rootkit that operates on his pwned computer.
My experience has also been that many “computer people” are not educated on the capabilities and complexities of the malware now used by our own NSA, the Russians, and the Chinese. And the typical “know-it-all” will arrogantly claim you’re nuts if you even insinuate that maybe there is something he doesn’t know yet. This isn’t even my field, but the testosterone-laden ignorance is so thick out there, I had to teach myself how to reverse engineer just to get the attention of the PTB in my world. It ain’t rocket science, but one has to be able to admit he doesn’t know everything before learning is possible. < /rant >
< If someone could and did take over MH370 from another location, I’d think about two things. First, how would the Captain and FO be incapacitated to ensure success? I’d think they’d fight such a takeover in any way possible and do anything possible to signal distress. >
We may never know, but if they were hacked, they may not have even realized it until it was too late. If the plane was being flown remotely, that does not mean that the pilots would know why and how it was happening in real time. A hack this complex would have meant the hackers had the ability to hide the actual real-time digital events and instead, only display on the pilots’ screens whatever they wanted the pilots to see. These hackers have at least 2 screens open: their screen and your screen. (If there’s a webcam in the room, make that 3 screens/windows.)
For that matter, maybe the pilots’ O2 supply was hacked or otherwise made inadequate/inaccessible (if it’s computerized). Yes, it sounds absurdly impossible, but anything controlled via computer is a potential possibility.
< If you mean the autopilot continuing to fly the altered and programmed route after the pilots had died, then that’s possible. I think that would end with the plane in the water. >
I agree. Since I know zilch about flying, it just seems over the top to think that a ‘drone-controlled’ plane full of dead people could be remotely navigated at the low altitudes they’re saying would be required to evade radar. UNLESS, the plane shadowed that other plane over India to ‘hide,’ as I’ve seen discussed, or UNLESS one of those country’s radar system was also hacked, making those affected radar operators see whatever the hackers wanted them to see. (Yeah, that sounds equally absurd!). Personally, I think the plane was hacked but their mission failed and the plane crashed somewhere. But our govt may not be sure of that yet, hence the stalling. If they can find the crashed plane, it’ll be a piece of cake to invent some run-of-the-mill hijacking story. They probably already have the YouTube video all ready to go. ;-)
Can't believe I did that. LOL! Mr Michael J McKay, obviously.
Ping to my reply above. I didn’t read the entire thread so I’m not sure if i got everyone who was discussing this.
Press conference.
Referred to as a search and rescue op.
No left turn prior to “Good night”.
No waypoints entered beyond IGARI to Beijing, the ones for the scheduled flight.
Maldives sighting not true.
There were deletions from the Captain’s home flight simulator, they are working to retrieve them.
*****
I think the waypoints comment applies to before the diversion.
They would not know about waypoints after that, because of ACARS being disabled.
What idiot wrote the headline?
What do you think of yesterdays comment that the plane landed in Pakistan?
Until someone can show some evidence of what actually did happen, I have taken to skimming (at best) the suggestions on what might have happened. I’m afraid I did not read much of the analysis suggesting this was possible/probable/etc.
One would think that the US has a better grasp on the comings and goings of 777 sized aircraft in that region. We certainly have a lot of electronic assets available for monitoring - but perhaps my imagination overcomes reality. I don’t know.
My objection to the headline is that the sentence is ambiguous on at least two different levels.
If they remoted into the autopiltot. It would be able to be flown from anywhere. The system would be configured to use radio or satellites. No problem flying at any level since its usually trained pilots flying.
Not saying that is what happened but it is feasible with current technology. As far as the pilots go, I’m not sure what they would do if their bird is electronically hijacked. I’m sure they would try to disengage the autopilot first and if that didn’t work (like designed) they would then go to the avionics bays and start pulling boxes off the racks (what I would do) The next step would be to start killing power hoping that would work but you may also crash the jet as a lot of systems nowadays are integrated. One would certainly be on the horn screaming that his jet is spazzing out.
It would be impossible to take over an aircraft without the pilots knowing. They would be monitoring their position and could tell immediately if the aircraft drifted off its intended course.
7500 is the transponder code for a hijack. When your plane gets taken over you turn the transponder to broadcast that code to let ATC know what is happening.
Unless you are the one hijacking yourself. Or you don’t want to be shot down.
Ask your friend if he has any experience with the acquisition and maintenance habits of foreign 3rd world airlines.
There are very good reasons US airlines tend to never buy secondhand planes from companies like Malaysia Airlines. Their planes are bare bones to begin with and definitely not maintained to FAA nor manufacturer’s specs.
We already know MAS opted out of the Boeing Jet-Data Services. There is no way MAS brought their plane in for annual maintenance and asked Boeing to retrofit it with BUAP.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-12/malaysian-air-said-to-opt-out-of-boeing-plan-to-share-jets-data.html
But let’s just imagine for a second that this plane did have BUAP retrofitted. We must say retrofitted because BUAP didn’t exist in 2002 when 9M-MRO was manufactured. But lets say Boeing secretly installed it during it’s last avionics servicing. Why then was the transponder switched off by someone in the cockpit? Or are you saying that BUAP can switch the ACARS transponder off too? Personally I don’t know if BUAP is capable of that.
Any current avionics experts on this forum?
I’ll speculate to a certain point, but I refuse to guess about the full capabilities of the BUAP. Either way, I think it more likely than not that someone in the cockpit was actively participating in this event.
You have FReepmail.
I have an avionics background and I’ve never heard of BUAP prior to this week.
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