^ thanks, that's kind of what I figured. It gives some possibility to the "depressurization knocking out the pilots" theories, but if it did then somebody would have picked it up on radar. I've been doing some reading on a pilots forum as well, and apparently the gap in between the contact with ground crews would be very small, so small that if it was highjacked the person(s) doing it were either really, really goo, or the pilots had to have been involved to know when thy were in that gap.
edit: According to a National Post article, the plane disappeared only 3 minutes after Malaysian ATC told the pilots they were being handed over to the Vietnamese ATC.
Also after reading that forum, I learned that it's possible someone could have disabled the systems without accessing the cockpit, if they were familiar with that airplane and able to get into the circuit breaker maintenance panels. Of course I have no idea where those are in this type of plane and how easily someone could get to them, but supposedly this happened on SilkAir Flight 185 which crashed in 1997 (only the data recorder were shut off though).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Infiniti
Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Rolls Royce engine monitoring data (which is transmitted live from the aircraft) reveals the aircraft was airborne for 5 hours...
http://tinyurl.com/m7jnd8x |
I just read the whole thing, from the sounds of it they've gone to the home of at least one of the pilots, the engines may have been running for another 4 hours (or possibly up to 2200nm), and they're now downplaying the whole "picked up by military radar" bit. As well they're considering the possibility that someone stole the plane and is basically hiding it somewhere for future use.
And to think, some of you were brushing off the "landed at a secret airstrip" theory.