Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 entered a holding pattern for 22 minutes
airlive.net
airlive.net
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wif8oqzgm74sdqv/GDTAAA%20V4%20MH37...
Richard Godfrey is the author and he used WSPR "The WSPR protocol exchanges call sign, location and other information between radio stations." I guess it's this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSPR_(amateur_radio_software)
I don't know ANYTHING about him or WSPR, so I have no idea what this means.
[1] This claim appears in Godfrey's original, so it is not a case of the reporter misunderstanding.
quote from the article: "Neither the Malaysian nor the Indonesian Military have published any radar data"
wikipedia: "Data from Malaysian military radar showing Flight 370 (green) crossing the Strait of Malacca and Andaman Sea to where it was last detected by radar." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370#/...
Another cool thing is navaids, those are also labeled on charts but they are more interesting than simple waypoints because they have radio. Some navaids are directional and tell your instruments whether you are moving towards them or not, and on which vector (degrees relative to north). You can use navaids and basic radio instruments in an airplane to figure out where you are on a map and where you are heading without any electronics and GPS, you just need to know their frequencies (charts specify those).
I mean I know literally nothing at all and am speculating on top of speculation. But if you were gaming out this plan, wouldn't that seem an opportune moment to execute your plan to disable the other pilot?
As for the pilot's motives, if this holding pattern did occur, we can only speculate - and I, for one, can speculate that the pilot was balking at taking the final step that would lead to his death, but he was flying a planeload of people killed by his own hand...
At that altitude anyone without oxygen would be passed out or dead (higher than Mt Everest).
In another tragedy, A Greek 737 had a pressurization issue (crew failed to communicate because one was Ukrainian and the other was Greek) and it killed everyone except a flight attendant. The FA could not get the plane off autopilot to descend. The aircraft flew to the last waypoint in the FMS and entered a hold and continued holding until it ran out of fuel and crashed.
Perhaps that was what happened with this hold except it eventually left the hold for some reason and continued until it ran out of fuel and descended into the ocean?
New conspiracy theory claims US Air Force shot down MH370 in a failed bid to intercept it and seize electronic equipment on its way to China
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9407441/Author-reve...
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There is a history of CIA subterfuge in that area:
New conspiracy theory:
China shoots down MH370 because U.S. forces were intercepting it and seizing electronic equipment on the way to China that China didn’t want the U.S. to intercept.
Or secret autonomous TikTac drone has gone rogue and is targeting specific airliners to bring down that may evolve and threaten its air supremacy.
Please knock off these baseless conspiracy theories. There are 0 electronics in the world that the U.S. is going to shoot down a commercial airliner over. The CIA would just actually do CIA stuff like set up fake companies to ship or receive these items, or impersonate a driver, or any number of other actual realistic things that don’t involve outright murdering lots of people. Oh and good luck keep everyone quiet about it….
If you want to disappear, if the plane is going to crash into the ocean, you want to crash with no fuel. Else, you'll leave an oil / fuel slick. Yes?
So burning fuel makes sense, in this scenario.
Also, I would presume that's not a simple switch flick. Is the a process / procedure that might prevent doing that?
If the goal was, as you suggest, to get rid of any trace of the fuel, one would simply not do it close to the surface!
As it happens, I believe the Inmarsat events and radar intercepts indicate that the airplane was flying at a normal cruising altitude, and the the claim that it flew this pattern puts it at 36,000ft.
The simplest way to crash without leaving a fuel slick is to fly until fuel exhaustion. Spending 22 minutes in a holding pattern would put off estimates of how far the airplane could have gone on its fuel load (as would dumping fuel en-route), but I have no reason for thinking this was a motivation of the person then in control of the aircraft.