brearley84 wrote:
seems this thread is just about people taking the mickey out of a sad event.
why have the UK company just come out with the info on the plane being lost in the indian ocean? or did they know from the start?
Inmarsat looked at the Doppler effect on the signal to their satellite - the change in frequency due to the satellite's movement in orbit - and were able to predict a northerly route or a southerly route (the big arches on the news graphics) - at the time that was as accurate as it got. This had never been done before. This was passed to the Malaysian government on 12th March.
Following this their engineers carried out a more detailed analysis and came up with a much more detailed Doppler model, then compared the model with similar aircraft along similar flight paths, and found a definitive match. These results were passed to the AAIB yesterday.
Tell me you're not one of the conspiracy believers? Twitter and facebook are already telling me I'm 'sheeple' and there's some huge cover-up. But then they tell me weed can cure cancer.
3 options for me: 1 - some catastrophic event has caused massive systems damage (probably electrical, including all comms) and despite someone's attempts to turn around or programme another route, everyone was eventually incapacitated and the aircraft flew on, or 2 - someone has deliberately taken control, ascended to 45,000 feet to kill everyone, and then for some unknown reason made a few turns and flown on until the aircraft ran out of fuel, or 3 - as far-fetched as it sounds (and is), some form of cyber attack that has taken over all systems and left the crew powerless.
Going back to an earlier post - aircraft can land on autopilot. I've never forgotten being an observer on an Airtours International flight around 1998, sat in the flight deck jump seat. Apparently they have to land an auto every so often (6 months iirc) and that day was the day. So we glided gently into Manchester, only for the aircraft to tip over to starboard about 3-400 metres out by what felt like about 90 degrees, but was probably only about 15, but still even the pilots shat themselves, yelling 'right wing, right wing' before disengaging autopilot, correcting and landing manually. If they shat themselves, you can imagine what I did.
