Pretty much, yes. No other explanation works.

There wasn't a storm. You may be thinking of Air France 447.

Dumb question, but does the transponder need to be squawking in order for radar to pick up a plane? Or is that just military radar? Obviously they can pick up missiles and hostile aircraft that aren't squawking their location.

Thanks. That's why I wouldn't make a good detective. I'll never forget when Payne Stewart's plane lost cabin pressure and flew for miles after everyone on board was likely dead. It was tailed by military jets ready to shoot it down. Fortunately, it ran out of fuel over an unpopulated area and that was never necessary. But I was listening to it on the radio in real time and it was surreal.

As I responded above, I didn't even think he might be trying to protect family members from having to suffer the questions of why he committed suicide and killed all those people, so hiding it seems realistic to me now. But one thing I don't get...

He must have had to subdue the co-pilot and possibly other crew on board who surely recognized something was up. Even as a passenger I have a general sense of which direction my plane should be traveling and if it adjusted its course at cruising altitude to that degree without pilot explanation I'd be pretty alarmed.

Same. You seem to know what you're talking about. Thanks for your input.

Air Traffic Control radar only picks up planes with transponders, so MH370 disappeared from their screens as soon as the transponder was disabled. The flight path data we have subsequent to that is from Malaysian military radar and didn't come out until a little while after the incident, after they went back through their logs. Side note, I'm not a military guy, but it seems embarrassing to me that it was possible to fly a large plane with no identification over Malaysian airspace without someone raising the alarm.

Helios 522 is interesting as well. Poor flight attendant, what a fate.

It's speculation, but likely he decompressed the cabin. From the cockpit, the captain has full control over cabin pressure and can equalize with the external pressure. Passenger oxygen masks would drop - the captain cannot control this, preventing it would have involved removing the circuit breaker before the flight. The cabin crew also have portable oxygen masks available. However, MH370's altitude was 35,000 feet when it disappeared. At 37,000+ feet, standard oxygen masks are insufficient to stay conscious, and even at 35,000 feet, people trying to breathe with standard masks will quickly become hypoxic. The pressurized oxygen masks needed to function at this altitude are only available in the cockpit. Normal procedure in a decompression is a very rapid descent for this reason.

As the captain, he could get the co-pilot to leave the cockpit on some pretext and then simply lock him out. (He may have killed the co-pilot by some violent means, but it's more likely he duped him into stepping outside.) He then climbed the aircraft to extreme altitude and decompressed the cabin to kill everyone but himself, since no one else had an oxygen supply that would last as long as his. He then flew the aircraft to the southern Indian Ocean, beyond radar coverage, a route he had practised on his home simulator, and plunked it into the sea.

Seabed Constructor on the job

https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/world...370/ar-AAv4A7k

Bump.

Ocean Infinity turned off its position reporting system a few days ago, which is part of protocol when they think they've found something. It turned out to be a shipwreck of an unknown ship. The ship is thought to be about 200 years old and is sort of interesting in its own right. Australia was only settled by Europeans in 1788, 200 years ago would be 1818, so pretty early days still.

Ocean Infinity have also checked out a couple other "points of interest", which turned out to be geological in nature. They have now covered 7,500 square kilometers, including most of the prime searching area. They're planning to cover at least 25,000 square kilometers in total, but I'd say they're a clear underdog to find it now.

Why do you consider them an underdog "now"? Sounds like theres still lots to search

The 7,500 sq km they have already searched included (I'm pretty sure, it's a bit unclear) the 5,000 sq km that the CSIRO identified as the regions most of interest. The other areas are progressively less likely to contain the plane.

I find it pretty crazy that they can find any wreckage of a 200 year old ship.

The other areas are now a lot more likely to contain the plane than they were before they eliminated (greatly reduced?) the possibility of it being in the first 7500 sq. km.

They used to sail quite close to shore when they could.

I had thought there was some debate to the different areas recognized. I know zero about this, but I want to believe!

It's even more interesting because it is an unknown ship that predates Australia.

Since they didn't specify the kind of ship, it has to be an alien shipwreck. The antimatter engine obviously caused a warp in the space-time continuum, making the pilots of the plane to visually see they were still going along happily while the plane was actually going nose down. When they left the space-time warp, the plane was instantly in the water.

This explains why the issue with the tracking device. It wasn't actually turned off, it was stuck in a bubble that the signals couldn't escape.

Solved!

Not sounding great on the search front...

The search is in its final phase now. I believe it's set to finish in early June. The main 25,000 sq km area they were intending to cover has all been searched, so they're into secondary search areas now. Obviously a big dog to find it at this point, unfortunately.

But in other MH370 news, more people have come out in support of the pilot suicide theory:

Should note that I don't think the ATSB have a theory about what happened. They have said that assuming a condition of autopilot on and pilots incapacitated is the best way to analyze what would have happened to the flight. I agree, because I think the pilot likely killed himself prior to the plane going down, as drowning in extremely cold waters is not a very pleasant way to go. I assume privately, most people within the ATSB think it was pilot suicide, but I'm not sure it would be proper for them to take a public position on it.

Also:

how in the world would the pilot end up drowning in cold waters if his big ass, flying-really-fast plane crashed into the ocean?

like, unless he was purposely trying to glide down, why would you ever worry about drowning as the pilot of a huge plane like that?

It's unlikely that the plane went into an uncontrolled dive. The flaperon that was found was largely intact, suggesting a relatively gentle landing. The plane would have broken up a little, but stayed in large pieces and mostly sunk. A hard impact would also have left a big debris field that would be spotted on satellite. If you buy the "pilot trying to hide his actions" theory, he would have known this and would have wanted to avoid it. I'm not sure if autopilots are capable of trying to glide the plane after flameout, but if they are, that's the obvious option. You don't want to be doing it yourself.

This is Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961, which was hijacked and had to ditch in the ocean after fuel exhaustion:



50 of the 175 people on board survived, including the pilot and co-pilot. Four people even escaped with no injuries.

what if he parachuted out overland tho?

What do you think the chances to find the plane past June are over the next few years ?

~Zero. Nobody will be looking for it.

No, it's not.

Edit: "British Airways (BA) is the flag carrier and the largest airline in the United Kingdom based on fleet size, or the second largest, behind easyJet, when measured by passengers carried."

I stand semi-corrected.

What is the point of making posts like that? I will never understand.

1) Nobody cares. It's a large airline.
2) You don't present any evidence, so why would anyone believe you over a news article?
3) You are in fact wrong. International Airlines Group is larger, but they are not a single airline.

Someone was wrong on the internet...