And this took place without the crew noticing and reporting an issue or switching to manual and flying back? Not possible.
Commercial airliners have multiple independent control and comms systems for pretty obvious reasons. In this case the ACARS which provides comms between plane, airline company and ground control was disabled, as was the plane's status transponder 14 minutes later. This more-or-less rules out some kind of catastropic event. The ACARS runs when the plane is powered up. It doesn't have an off switch and to disable it you would need to select the correct circuit breaker out of hundreds in the cockpit. Apart from physical access to the cockpit, you would also need systems knowledge for that model of plane. What is known is consistent with a reasonably well planned inside job or, maybe, a very sophisticated hijack. Pilots have flipped out before. No one credible has claimed responsibility for a hijack. Tech background article: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/wanted-malaysia-airlines-flight-gird-aviation-expert-article-1.1723111 - Jim _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
