Quote:
Originally Posted by underscore
"Ghost plane" sounds like a phantom plane or some kinda horror movie thing, I think people got confused by the term (I know I did).
It had the fuel, but what would the autopilot be doing? IIRC there are scenarios that kick the plane back into manual control as well, but if the plane was up for ~5hrs as alleged wouldn't that be roughly the amount of the flight that the plane would be in AP for? After that, what does the system do? Any of our helpful pilots care to chime in?
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note: I don't know if these all apply to the 777, I'm not rated on that aircraft, but on a similar type. Also, I speak with experience from my own experience, each airline has different operating procedures.
Most Medium/Long Haul flights will take off without the arrival procedures (ILS and STAR if you want terms) programmed into the computer, as doing so is practically useless as conditions at the destination airport can change in 6-12 hours. That being said, if the aircraft arrives at a point of which is has nothing to follow anymore, it will simply maintain the heading and altitude or hold (Goes into HDG HOLD and ALT HOLD as opposed to LNAV and VNAV if you're keen), and keep going until someone does something to it - though not too sure, as it's not something I've personally done before; but it will definitely not "GIVE UP" so to say.
In Boeing aircraft (at least on mine), the Autopilot will not be "kicked out" unless the following occurs:
- You turn it off (duh)
- Autothrottle will turn off with an engine failure in certain engines (RR engines do this)
- Kicking of the rudder pedals
- Flight Director kicks out at Low airspeed (approaching stall)
- Over speed
- AP Failures (but there's 3? I think, on a 777)
and some others, but depressurization - no matter how quick or how slow, will not cause it to disengage
However, no matter what you do with the autopilot on, once it enters an area of radar coverage it will be picked up, and assuming that nobody has touched the transponder ident code (commonly referred to as squack code), it will remain as MH370 on the radar scope.
Fun note: everything on airplanes nowadays are fail "safe". meaning if a component fails for whatever reason it will fail in the position that favours the situation rather than make it worse.