Didn't the Air France accident happen when a third pilot(or co, assistant) relieved the Captain so he could sleep?

Yes it did. There were three pilots on board that plane because it was an international flight. For those flights, all three pilots are up front for the takeoff and landing, but during the flight they each rotate out for a rest break.

1) They almost definitely have a manifest

2) It hasn't been made public

3) If something shady was done involving cargo, it may have been intentionally written differently on the manifest

I was wondering where I got the idea that there was a 3rd person involved. I was wondering if it was from the accident in San Francisco where I thought there was a 3rd person checking out the inexperienced pilot but it sounds like that was just a relief pilot in the cockpit.

So thanks for giving me a reason that I might not be totally crazy.

A lot of lithium ion batteries.

What if terrorists have been holding the plane for two weeks and the governments have been negotiating with them this whole time, and finally tried a rescue op and it went wrong and everyone got killed and now they're claiming it crashed instead?

What if a Bond Villain learned how to control planes remotely and threatened some world governments that they would crash all the planes unless we paid them a ransom and retainer, and then the governments called BS, and to demonstrate their ability the Bond Villain took control of this plane, made it do a bunch of tricks, then crashed it?

Seems like there is too much secrecy / shadiness going on for this to just be a simple plane crash. Either that, or it's the weirdest crash ever. Then again, more plausible that nothing shady happened and I've just been spoon fed conspiracy theories by the media for a week.

On the Asiana flight, the Captain was new to the 777 and was getting IOE from a check airman (another Captain) who was sitting in the right seat, performing the FO duties. But I think that there were four pilots on board (although I was never clear if they were all in the cockpit for the landing). Four pilots is normal for the very long flights (I've heard them called "ultra-long haul flights"). The FAA rule on this was any flight of 12 hours or more requires two crews (four pilots). I'm not sure if other countries have the same rules.

I used to fly to three places that required four pilots: Tel Aviv, Amman and Cairo. We would have all four pilots up front for takeoff and landing and one crew (Captain and FO) would go on break about 20-30 minutes after takeoff.

W0X0F, is it impossible to get into the cockpit without a key/passcode(no idea what you use) these days?

Also wouldn't the crew(stewards, is there a head/chief steward?) etc) outside the cockpit eventually realise that something was up?(If they were conscious) If they did know can they contact people(other planes/airports) from outside the cockpit?

what % of the cost of operating a 12 hour flight does the pilots' salaries represent? seems like a fairly onerous requirement to use 4 pilots that would affect the scheduling of these long flights for business reasons.

There's no key to the cockpit and without the lock code the only way to get in would be to break down the door or perhaps knock a hole in the bulkhead between the cockpit and cabin. But that door is pretty strong and made to resist this kind of attempt.

There is often very little communication between the pilots and FAs during flight, unless the pilots call for a lav break or there is a meal for them. Even if the cabin crew did eventually come to the conclusion that something was wrong, they really have no recourse other than to call up to the cockpit on the interphone. They have no way to communicate outside the plane.

I really have no idea. Not an exact figure, but you can figure two crews (four pilots) to be about $600/hr, so a 12 hour flight would be $7.2k. I don't know all the other operating costs, so I can't give you a percentage.

I'm having trouble parsing this sentence and getting the meaning of what you're trying to say. Not sure how using four pilots would "affect the scheduling of these long flights for business reasons." That doesn't make any sense to me.

Meaning, if the cost of operating flights jumps at 12 hours, i'll schedule fewer of them than i otherwise might. So in the marginal cases, i'll be inclined to schedule more beijing->SEA flights in lieu of beijing->LAX flights than I would if that law didn't exist, and let people take the connection from SEA->LAX.

I think I saw somewhere earlier itt one of the cases of pilot suicide had the pilot/co pilot make the plane dive, while his counterpart tried to intercede. If thats the case is it also possible one pilot could make the plane climb to a high altitude while the other tried to stop it?

Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, that's a business decision. But if you make the decision you're suggesting (in your hypothetical), then your competitors will scoop up the travelers who don't want to make a connection to get to L.A. (and passengers would always rather take the non-stop flight).

WOXOF... sorry if this was asked before. Was FL350 their assigned altitude? If so, has anyone explained what would prompt a climb to FL450 ? Nothing normal I assume?

I'm not sure of their assigned altitude, but FL350 is the right ballpark depending on their weight and other considerations (e.g. the dispatcher could make a decision on cruise altitude because of winds aloft and/or reported turbulence).

The climb to FL450 is perplexing to me. As I think I've said before, I have not watched even one minute of TV coverage of this (I overheard Megyn Kelly while sitting in another room at my parents house and that was enough for me). I'm afraid I'd throw something through the TV screen if I sat and listened to the likes of Wolf Blitzer.

So, given that this thread is my main source of information about this plane, I'm not even sure of the veracity of the reports about climbing to FL450. How have they determined that? And given that the service ceiling of the 777 is FL431, it would be difficult for a moderately to heavily loaded 777 to get to that altitude. If it did get up there, it's got to be close to stall and/or mach buffet.

In answer to your question, there would definitely be no normal reason to climb that high and plenty of reasons not to. The often cited reason I've heard is that you can kill people at that altitude by depressurizing the cabin. But FL350 is not significantly different is terms of ability to sustain life. In other words, if that was the goal then the climb was completely unnecessary.

If the climb can be verified, then to me that could be an indication of someone operating the plane with diminished capacity (e.g. suffering hypoxia) or perhaps someone who was bent on suicide and thought "Hey, I've always wondered just how high one of these things can really go?"

Yeah the climb is unverified. It comes from radar data but apparently altitude data from radar is notoriously unreliable at the distance the reading was taken from.

So passengers had to be dead for 6 hours of the flight. Black box needed for this riddle.

I don't think there will ever be an answer for this mystery

no u.

I apologize if this has already been asked or if it's a stupid question.

Is there any chance there was a fire in a part of the plane they couldn't get to so they climbed as high as they could to get to an altitude with less oxygen?

this then leads to the question as to why they didn't radio in such a problem.

I'm pretty sure also that someone knowledgable has already said itt that increasing altitude is not a recognised procedure for fighting a fire in the aircraft.

I think that at this point we really have to consider the possibility that this was carried out by Hitler and his army of zombie nazis

unfortunately that is where we're at I think. at this point black box recovery (which I think is the only thing that might give us credible evidence?) is a massive dog.

how else are we going to know what really happened? maybe a deleted suicide note on the captains computer or something?