Beijing-bound MAS plane carrying 239 people missing as of 20 mins ago.

roadgravel
Just fly until the passenger oxygen is expended.

Works for me.

The pilot's friend reported as denying possibilities it could have been the pilot.

www.bbc.co.uk...

Malaysia Airlines MH370: Pilot 'not behind' disappearance

A friend of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah has said that he does not believe the chief pilot is responsible for the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines MH370.

Peter Chong was speaking to the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes after it had emerged that contact with the aircraft was deliberately cut off by someone on board, and the home of Captain Zaharie had been searched by police.

rockflier
reply to post by Vasa Croe

 

The higher the altitude, the less useful time of consciousness. Altitude

Times of Useful Consciousness

10,000 ft. Hours

20,000 ft. 5 to 12 minutes

30,000 ft. 45 to 75 seconds

40,000 ft. 3 to 30 seconds

45,000 ft and above 12 to 15 seconds or less Smokers have shorter useful consciousness time—an altitude of 5000’ the symptoms and effects for a smoker are equivalent to those experience by a non-smoker at 10000’.
www.langleyflyingschool.com...

edit on Sat, 15 Mar 2014 15:17:42 -050020142014-03-15T15:17:42-05:00kfSaturday17America/ChicagoSat, 15 Mar 2014 15:17:42 -0500 by rockflier because: (no reason given)

Thans for the info.

I suppose it's still possible the pilot climbed to this kind of height to kill himself and all those on board. It would be a quick death.

roadgravel
Just fly until the passenger oxygen is expended.

The oxygen generators in the overhead panel will last around 22 minutes so it won't be that long.

The first aid/walk around bottles (200 litres) will last 50-100 minutes depending on the flow rate selected. Not sure how many of these bottles there are on a 777 but definitely not enough to go around 239 people. I'd say probably 15-20 bottles.

Pilot suicide is looking the most likely explanation IMO, probably the guy with the simulator in his house. Maybe he got a thrill out of planning out the "perfect" suicide with the aim of ensuring that the plane is never found.

Or maybe there was a mechanical fault/pilot error that caused decompression in the aircraft, which led to hypoxia amongst everyone on board. The pilots got confused and disorientated (symptoms of hypoxia) and made irrational decisions like changing the flight path, turning off the transponder etc. Eventually they lost consciousness, the plane ran out of fuel and crashed in the sea.

I think the fact the Americans sent a ship to the Indian Ocean is quite telling. I think that's where it'll be found (if it is found at all).

reply to post by theabsolutetruth


Sad to say, but sometimes you never know what's really going on inside your friends head.
Despite the fact that since the beginning I am really dismissing foul play by the pilot or copilot.

haveblue

roadgravel
Just fly until the passenger oxygen is expended.

The oxygen generators in the overhead panel will last around 14 minutes so it won't be that long.

The first aid/walk around bottles (200 litres) will last 50-100 minutes depending on the flow rate selected. Not sure how many of these bottles there are on a 777 but definitely not enough to go around 239 people. I'd say probably 15 bottles.

Great info. Thanks!

EnzoD
Pilot suicide is looking the most likely explanation IMO, probably the guy with the simulator in his house. Maybe he got a thrill out of planning out the "perfect" suicide with the aim of ensuring that the plane is never found.

I also happen to have a Boeing 777 simulator at home. Does that mean I'm also likely to hijack my own aircraft and kill my passengers? Aviation is more than a profession for many pilots and engineers. It's a passion.

reply to post by DrHammondStoat


The sat comms say it then went to 23,000 then climbing again and flying NW.

www.theguardian.com...

Why did no one see the plane veering so far off course?
They did. The New York Times, quoting American officials and others close to the investigation, said radar signals recorded by the Malaysian military appeared to show the airliner climbing to 45,000ft, higher than a Boeing 777's approved limit, soon after its disappearance from civilian radar, then making a sharp turn to the west. The radar tracking then shows the plane descending unevenly to 23,000ft, below normal cruising levels, before climbing again and flying north-west towards the Indian Ocean. What the military did with this information is not known.

reply to post by Boeing777


No not at all, but it makes you the most likely to know how to take a 777 offline and along a flight path undetectable by most radars.

Good morning everyone and a big kudos to all of you who have been providing updates and further analysis.


One thing that has been going through my head the last week is being reminded of part of the plotline in Neal Stephenson's Reamde (if none of you have read it, it's a pretty good read).

A plane, albeit a private, smaller aircraft was hijacked and flew under radar from asia to rough/crash land in north-western USA/canadian border in a mountainous, pine, snowy region, basically to get people/terrorists into the country undetected to further their plots on an attack on USA with the help of small cells already in place.

A bit far fetched really, I know, hence it's just a fictitious novel.

But got me thinking, could there have been people on board needing to get somewhere undetected? Maybe, maybe not.

I'm curious to know, because it's been brought up a few times, why on this flight 8 of the crew were male. If they were involved... how did they manage that? Surely their placement is the result of management.

But then, after all the theories we have had, I begin to be drawn back to utilizing occam's razor and think it might be a good idea to read this thread from the start again. Initial facts can be lost in all this confusion.

EDIT: By the way... I don't hold the pilot suicide thing as more likely, unless, of course it was suicide for other reasons. Even if he did suicide, there's the co-pilot who could take over. Am I correct that there's a 3rd sort of pilot in the cockpit too for these flights?

reply to post by kanbanozaurus


Exactly, the 7/7 bombers weren't suspected by their friends and family either.

reply to post by Boeing777



PhotonEffect said pretty much exactly what I was going to reply with.

I bet something comes out about this pilot in the next couple of days. Divorce, money problems, something like that.

Just a hunch.

reply to post by PhotonEffect


The simulator he had at home is useless for practising maneuver skills. Flight simming is a hobby for many pilots. The idea that he used his home flight simulator to practise unusual maneuvers to hijack the plane isn't feasible. You might know what all the buttons do and when to use them and then moving straight to try to hand fly the actual thing won't work.

Practical skills are required which can be obtained from hours of experience as a pilot in command in a real jet or a full motion flight simulator. As said earlier, this captain had thousands of hours of pilot in command (PIC) experience and would therefore be useless for him to use a 777 simulator addon that was released in 2005 for Microsoft flight simulator 2004. I've tried this product and its fly-by-wire is flawed and not realistic. The PMDG 777 is the closest thing to the real aircraft that can be used for Microsoft flight simulator and this still isn't good enough compared to real life experience in a 777.

EnzoD
Pilot suicide is looking the most likely explanation IMO, probably the guy with the simulator in his house. Maybe he got a thrill out of planning out the "perfect" suicide with the aim of ensuring that the plane is never found.

For me it's the least likely scenario. So what if the guy had a sim at home, for a pilot that's really not that big a deal. In fact i really don't think something like this could be planned using FSX. For a start FSX won't show you how to avoid radar or switch off the transponder and ACARS.

This plane is in Iran and the Freescale Semiconductor employees are being questioned about everything they know, including cloaking tech. That's my theory anyhow.

reply to post by EnzoD

I think we've seen more evidence for cloaking shields or aliens than pilot suicide.

And if the pilot flew a hijacked plane, it may have been under duress too.

This article was shared on a Reddit thread I've been following today:

Malaysia Airline MH370: 9/11-style terror allegations resurface in case of lost plane

An al-Qaeda supergrass told a court last week that four to five Malaysian men had been planning to take control of a plane, using a bomb hidden in a shoe to blow open the cockpit door.

Security experts said the evidence from a convicted British terrorist was “credible”. The supergrass said that he had met the Malaysian jihadists – one of whom was a pilot – in Afghanistan and given them a shoe bomb to use to take control of an aircraft.

A British security source said: “These spectaculars take a long time in the planning.”

If this guy's info is right, then they knew this could happen for a while, and definitely are withholding info from the general public if it's directly linked to MH370.

reply to post by Boeing777


He's the only one on that plane who possessed the expertise needed to pull this off. And until something else comes out to refute that notion I'll abide by that...

The simulator only shows how avid he was. He knows the area and the plane like the back of his hand...

No one is claiming that all pilots who use a simulator at home have nefarious plans in mind, but given this situation investigators must look at that as a potential tool for a hijacking plot. Who's to say he wasn't practicing at home?

auroraaus

EDIT: By the way... I don't hold the pilot suicide thing as more likely, unless, of course it was suicide for other reasons. Even if he did suicide, there's the co-pilot who could take over. Am I correct that there's a 3rd sort of pilot in the cockpit too for these flights?

edit on 15-3-2014 by auroraaus because: Edit to add something I forgot to post. I have only drank half my first coffee of the day, forgiveness please.

flights over 8 hours we have 3 on a 2 pilot cockpit like the B777, A343, A332. 12+ hours, we have 4. Anything less than 8 hours, it's just 2. However, this varies with airline SOPs(standard operating procedures) and FAA/CAA regulations.

reply to post by EnzoD


why the weird flight pattern if he just would have wanted to kill himself, why going on for hours? You either have the guts to do it and do it right away, or you still have something that holds you back and you will turn back. It has more likely something to do with his family disappearing, (sorry no link, read it one of the other threads) just in case of course this should be true.