TerryW

    peejman, Pilots are not able to control passenger O2 with an on/off on newer aircraft like the 777.  Passenger O2 comes from individual oxygen generator at each passenger service unit (PSU).   Oxygen generators are like what took that Value Jet airliner down when they caught fire in the cargo compartment.   I don't remember how long the generators lasts but the FAA requires enough O2 to make an emergency decent from max certified altitude to a lower altitude around 10,000 feet.  I am sorry I don't remember all the exact numbers.  But  the bad guys could hang out long enough to put everyone out for good.  :-(

My Mom always told me, "If you can't find anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."    Mr Phelps,                                                                                                                                                                                   .

I finally watched the news yesterday. This story is crazy. Opinion Alert: I think the plane is fine and going to be used for something nefarious and the pilots were in on it. The way the news is reporting is like those two pilots fly together all the time.? Scary scary scary. I hope they find the plane and passengers safe.

    Tanker, me too.  There are some funny Mo Fo's here.  I love the humor. 

Good article.  The part about cell phones about to be approved for use inflight in Europe, I hope that doesn't happen here.  I really don't want to listen to someone 18 rows away talk on their phone.........

The people that scam like this deserve bad things to happen to them....

    I like this one...

    I like that except I would say  1)sudden mechanical failure     Errors, if trapped aren't that big a deal.

Yikes!

Those other countries need the TSA. They don't know what they are missing.  :taser:

     Dave I know it's hard to believe. Don't equate what they do in other countries to the US air traffic system, regulatory agencies, pilot training, radio communication, aircraft maintenance, etc. I have a friend that flew a Russian airline, in Russia about 10 years ago that allowed standing during all phases of flight. YIKES...     (I got lost here in the middle.....)   I think one possibility might be fire.  If there is a fire on board, they were screwed. Fire is bad, bad and real bad.  You would have your hands full fighting a fire and flying an airplane.  IDK

Cancer rates for pilots is high, very high.  I have had LOTS of precancerous junk removed to the tune of about a pound of flesh.  I get checked only once a year now.  I was every 6 months there for a while.    When I was a kid I never wore a shirt or long pants unless I absolutely had to. I grew up in the desert SW and it was warm enough most of the year to get away with it.  My doc told me that is where a lot of my precancerous junk came from.   No radiation testing per se.

Great collection.  Are they all 45 ACP?

    TMF, I can't argue, you're right and I am on your side. How an aircraft is equipt isn't always decided based on what is the "latest greatest", it is decided by people that look for .0001 pennies in the cost and what will it return in whole dollars.              I can't speak for other airlines but my transponder operation hasn't changed one bit since 9/11.  I have friends at just about all the other carriers and don't know if the others procedures have changed but I doubt it.  We turn the transponder on and off based on the phase of flight.  It is used on the ground during taxi because most airports have ground based radar and they track us at all times during taxi, especially during low visibility conditions.  We don't leave the transponder on at the gate as it has a very high output and is more damaging to humans than the aircraft's airborne radar.  It has the several modes one of which is STBY.  The way our transponders work is we have a discreet code assigned to our flight by Air Traffic Control. Their ground based radar sweeps the sky(queries) and our transponder replies with our assigned code and our altitude in order to differentiate us from others.  I am not aware of a transponder that communicates globally ie in non radar environment.  I think what would be used to give position would be a separate radio device.   

    There is nothing free, everything has a price.  Buying putting the technology in the 600+ airliners my company owns costs downtime or it has a weight that costs me in payload/gas to carry it around every day.  My company is going to iPads for our flight manuals.  We will pull the 10 manuals out of the airplane and those weigh about 50 pounds but carrying 50 pounds around on 600 airplanes on 4500 hundred flights a day will save my company millions in gas annually.

Tanker, it's the bus or us!

Lumber Jack, I am just surmising.  I really don't much detail about the story, as I am not much of a news guy.    I just talked to a buddy and some aircraft are tracked via GPS sat.    I am only current to fly domestically(Thank God) I am always in sight of dirt.  :-)

Me after one too many cups of coffee....

      I am a 26 year commercial pilot with many many many thousands of hours in the left seat. I haven't flown international in years but I'm 99% sure even off our coasts there is zero GPS type "tracking" that all tracking/ positioning is plotted by pilot induced position reports over the Sat Com.  Now, most other countries outside of the US and Europe, they don't have jack for modern ground technology when it comes to radios, radar or radar coverage.    I just ask a buddy of mine that flies captain on a 767 for Continental and he hasn't got back to me but I'd bet my paycheck US carriers don't use this technology and I guarantee third world countries don't have tracking.  

Sad day.  A real hero..

:rofl:  :rofl:             HERE

Where was he found?

  Does anybody know where the aircraft was last seen on radar?  Conventional radar drops off after the shoreline, I forget how many miles but it's not very far.  If my memory serves me correctly, long over water flying is done on tracks and aircraft are "tracked" via sat com position reports from the pilots.  It's been years since I've done it but I remember you are all by your lonesome as far as air traffic control radar is concerned.    If the terrorists want to make the plane look like David Copperfield made it disappear, over water leaves everyone guessing about it and it's contents whereabouts.   Sad for those families. My family unexpectedly lost a cousin for several months before his body was found and it tore my aunt and uncle to pieces wondering. 

    Thanks!

  Ok,  I'm not crazy.....  Listening to him is much more painful than my friends from Russia.  We hang together for days and it doesn't bother me but with that dude I couldn't make it to the 2 minute mark in his video without hitting the mute button....