We’re into day twelve of this search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. I wish I could give some optimistic news, but alas, there’s not much of that. However, some new information about the flight simulator owned by one of the pilots has been revealed. Via CNN:
Some data had been deleted from the flight simulator found at the home of the pilot, Hishammuddin said. Forensic work is under way to try to recover it, he said.
It sounds a lot more diabolical than it might be. The guys job is to fly planes, so why not practice flying planes and landing in alternative airports? And the deleted data? Why keep old data when you are constantly updating your flights with new data? We all deleted crap on our computer that we don’t use anymore, so why is this different? When I was 18 and had a flight simulator on my computer, you better believe that authorities would look at that and think I was a nut case. “Mr. Sorensen, why did you try to do barrel rolls with a massive jet liner in nearly every single flight?”
Meanwhile, the search for the plane has changed focus. More importantly, the U.S. investigators are focusing their search in the Southern region.
The missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is more likely to be in the southern search area identified by investigators, which stretches far into the Indian Ocean, a U.S. government official familiar with the investigation told CNN on Wednesday.
“This is an area out of normal shipping lanes, out of any commercial flight patterns, with few fishing boats and there are no islands,” the official said, warning that the search could well last “weeks and not days.”
New information is coming in that before the pilots signed off, they reprogrammed the planes course 12 minutes beforehand. One theory said that this reprogramming was due to a probable fire and they diverted to the nearest airport, but being calm after the fact and saying, “Alright, good night” seems questionable.
On Tuesday, for example, a law enforcement official told CNN that the aircraft’s first major change of course was almost certainly programmed by somebody in the cockpit. The change was entered into the plane’s system at least 12 minutes before a person in the cockpit, believed to be the co-pilot, signed off to air traffic controllers.
But that disclosure only left more questions about the reason behind the reprogrammed flight path.
Some experts said the change in direction could have been part of an alternate flight plan programmed in advance in case of emergency; others suggested it could show something more nefarious was afoot.
With all of these updates coming in, we’re still no closer to finding out and genuine information on where the plane actually is. It seems as though we have all these dots laying around and none of them are connecting. All we know is that the search areas change daily and the pilots, crew, and passengers remain under heavy scrutiny.
Via CNN