The aircraft had fuel to fly to destination, divert to an alternate airfield and hold there for 30 minutes as mandated by regulations. If the crew were incapacitated, it would have flown at least to destination on autopilot and maybe to alternate if that had been programmed.

GPS merely updates the inertial (laser ring gyro) solution. Losing GPS would not prevent the autopilot navigating its route and eventually showing up on land based radar.

This article is poorly informed.

The aircraft would also have had to fly through Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese airspaces, twice in Vietnamese's case, before getting into Chinese airspace.

I'm also not sure inertial guidance will direct the aircraft off course enough to sink in the East China Sea.

This article also doesn't explain why a Vietnamese military radar had detected it to be U-turning just before it had to enter its airspace. This article is bunk.

Yes, inertial is good for worst case 5nm accuracy for 5 hours after an update from GNSS or ground based nav aids.

This article was posted by a HN account which is three hours old and seems only to have been created for this sole purpose. Fishy.

Further, the author claims to have contacted a specific person at NTSB by e-mail, and this person even dared to reply.

Aside: Guys, it's 2014, 13 years after 9/11. An unidentified aircraft passing over Chinese airspace for hours - withouth being intercepted? I'd consider Chinese Air Force a joke if this really happened.

I though that if the passenger jet entered Chinese airspace it would have had to report to the ground? A report I read early after the news broke, it said that China said the craft never entered their airspace.

If a passenger jet entered their airspace and ignored the towers, what would have happened?

I expect it would have been intercepted and destroyed if it threatened a military area or high population centre.

In 1954 the Chinese shot down a Cathay Pacific flight killing some of those on board. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathay_Pacific_VR-HEU

If this was the case it wouldn't explain their apparent helping in the current search phase though.

> If this was the case it wouldn't explain their apparent helping in the current search phase though.

Reminds me of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (1983): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#Sov...

1954 was 60 years ago and a completely different time when the government was fearful of nationalist counter-revolutionary attacks and suspicious of foreigners who for nearly a century had been taking turns on plundering China's riches. China has changed a lot since then and I'm not sure you can take their actions in 1954 as much evidence as what they would do today.

For sure, there would have been attempted radio contact etc that would have been heard by other flights. But I still believe if a sensitive area or large population area were threatened that they and many other countries would choose to bring the airliner down.

I would also be surprised if China did shoot the airliner down, that they would try and keep "a border incursion secret during this time", as it would surely come out.

In this case, I don't think China was involved in the loss of the airliner, but I thought others might find the history of the area interesting. I didn't know about the Russian SAR issue in the Korean airliner disaster.

> If a passenger jet entered their airspace and ignored the towers, what would have happened?

I would expect them to send fighter jets. They probably wouldn't blow it out of the sky without further reason, but I am sure they would stay with it until it leaves their airspace.

That is what I thought, we would have heard a total different story hitting the news.

Unless one of the countries did shoot down the plane, and are now covering it up because they realised their horrible mistake??

Then there's also the North-Korean airspace, which is maybe even more aggressive. Could also match the flight path (give or take).

The electro/mechanical reason for the plane's troubles may be plausible but I doubt the area in the red circle is where it went down.

IMO, it's reasonable at this point to assume the aircraft did not continue along its programmed autopilot course very far past the last contact point. That red circle covers a fairly well militarized area (Vietnam, China, South/North Korea, Southern Japan) and the civilian and military radar-warning systems of one or more of these countries would have detected an aircraft that was not on its known course.

My thoughts exactly. The airspace around Korea is extremely tightly controlled, and everyone is looking out for Kim Jong Un's next missile launch. (He just pulled off a couple of test launches last week.) Any unexpected object in that area will definitely be noticed and, if unresponsive, shot down.

adam air flight 574 (2007)

Took 9 days to find any wreckage. No distress call, because the crew did not believe they were in an emergency situation.

No great conspiracy, just spatial disorientation, coupled with being in a remote area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Air_Flight_574

I don't find the explanation plausible, actually.

If the aircraft had a sudden depressurization, and the pilots unconscious, it would stay straight and level until out of fuel.

If the aircraft transponder (ADS-B) and ACARS (Satelite) link was disabled by a blowout near the antenna, then other VHF radios would still function.

If ALL those communications systems disabled with the crew conscious and the aircraft still flying they could activate handheld ELTs kept in the cockpit.

From what the writer have described it sounds pretty similar to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

The point about the mobile phones makes sense, though I'm sure if the plane flew over Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean or Japanese airspace their respective airforce or even ATCs would have picked the plane up from their radars.

Why wouldn't the autopilot take it to at least near the airport? Also, does autopilot continue to work if the listed sensors go offline?

An autopilot can perform an instrument landing, however this does require some preparation of the flight crew (e.g. setting the right frequencies for ILS, reducing airspeed, deploy landing-gear, flaps, apply brakes + thrust reversers).

So simply guiding it to the nearest (suitable) airport would not make a big difference.

if the article was supposed to believed, isnt it obvious after all these search - the plane might be in North korean airspace crashing into the land..