"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
m...
In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:

Agreed. Certainly Shah, the pilot with the huge simulator, appears to
have
been able to easily acquire that data. I wonder if MS Flight Simulator
teaches users how to disable the transponder. Some of those simulators
are
notoriously accurate.

Wouldn't tell us anything either way.

It would tell me if there were idiots at MS that valued realism over common
sense. (-"

(1) being checked out on the
plane, he would know where the switch it. (2). It would also be in the
manuals that are carried in their flight bags (or flight iPads depending
on the airline.

No doubt. But I've read that disabling the ACARS (incompletely, it turns
out) takes a lot more knowledge and access to an electronics bay. I'm
bowing out all this supposition because of this article:

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03...ectrical-fire/

For me, the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in
a fire. And there most likely was an electrical fire. In the case of a fire,
the first response is to pull the main busses and restore circuits one by
one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses, the
plane would go silent. It probably was a serious event and the flight crew
was occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire.
Aviate, navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such
situations.

I feel a little guilty at how many people are ready to turn a pilot who
apparently is a community minded guy who does home repair(!!!!!) videos into
a sucidal monster and a mass-murderer. For karmic reasons, I am preferring
to believe that he did everything humanly possible to get the aircraft to a
safe landing zone and failed.

I think that after years of suppressing the Muslim Uighurs in their
outlying
districts that the Uighurs, possibly with a little help from a state
actor
like Iran or Syria, took the plane. The fact that these two pilots
published photos of themselve frolicking in the cabin with teenage girls
alarms me. A terrorist would seize on that sort of information to trick
those pilots into opening the cabin for some very bad girls.

I can't see Iran or Syria doing that to China.

Yeah, who would expect the US to spy on Merkel's cell phone and the whole
EU. We're allies for God's sake! (-:

First of all, China has consistently sided with both on the Security
Council.

I believe that's readily explained by China just being a dick. Same reason
they support NK.

Secondly, China has fewer concerns about retaliation than even our most
hawkish people
in the US have. Doesn't make sense for those two to risk it.

They can always claim "rogue operators." It works for the big banks, why
not countries?

--
Bobby G.