Do you think that possibly the search area is not correct?
That is possible, but you could still be in the right general area and not find wreckage.
I think that's one of the theories they're starting to work with. The plane could have changed course (with brief pilot interaction before something catastrophic happened, incapacitating the pilots) and continued to fly for 6+ hours on that (unknown) course, based on the estimated remaining fuel.
I know not every square mile of the globe is covered with radar but unless they turned East I don't see how the plane could have undetected for that long, unless it crashed in the water (in an area they're not searching) before getting in range again.
One key is that they "fell off radar" or "lost contact", the latter may or may not indicated they were in radar coverage. But the graphic below looks to me (unless my scale is off) like they would have been in radar coverage. You are right that radar coverage only goes out from a land based radar 100-150 miles or so. Based on the route of the flight, a similar situation when flying from New Orleans direct to Cancun, there is a segment in that flight in the middle where radar coverage is lost, and the crew reverts to position reports (UHF radio coverage is maintained). On long flights over large expanses of water there is either satellite comms (of which I am not familiar with) or HF Radio.
link
Malaysian Air Force has managed to trace the last known location to Palau Perak which is hundreds miles off course from its original flight path.
This truly adds to the mystery. Navigation errors are a possibility, and normally crews check out their flight plans, whether they enter it or it is fed to the aircraft, although one possible wrinkle is when points on the flight plan out in the ocean consist of lat/long positions. These should be verified by the crew and are not as easy to verify as a point on land, because if a point says, DCA, the database has it's lat/long tied to it, but a lat/long is a lat/long and must be verified on a map. Some crews have been cavalier about this. I'll also point out that aircraft like Airbusses, (and I assume Boeings) have radio navigation (Tacan, VOR) tied into their nav system that the aircraft tunes and uses those references automatically when it can.
Falling off radar can mean one of three things, midair explosion, loss of altitude (by accident or on purpose) or electronics failure of some kind. Usually aircraft broadcast transponder codes.
If the aircraft loses this, then ATC would have to see the aircraft on raw radar, which does not always happen on computerized systems.
4 likely possibilities at this point: (no particular order) 1) nav error, 2) deviation on purpose, possible hijack) 3) catastrophic failure, crash, 4) significant failure losing electronics and nav equipment, eventually resulting in a crash. Based on today's reporting, if you made me guess, it would be something along the lines of #4. They are now searching a huge area including the Indian Ocean, West of Malaysia, which would indicate a lost airplane with mechanical difficulties.
If the plane had made such an huge diversion from the planed route, then either a hijack or a weird action of the pilot(s) seems most obvious.
Problem with the hijack theory is that there must have been someway the pilots could have sent a signal. Otherwise this has to be the perfect hijack...
A perfectly "silent" hijack, all transponders simply switched off, an invisible course alteration, and maybe (hopefully) a successful landing on some kind a small (maybe even deserted) airfield...?
Seems too perfect even to be "Hollywood"...
It seems like if something like that happened then the pilots should have been able to get some sort of message off to ATC.
With a hijack there would have been a high probability the pilots would have been able to alert authorities. Another possibility is that the flight deck was not kept secure and then all bets are off.
Not why it went hundred's of miles off course. If it was pilot suicide, they would have just nose dived it into the water.
I see the logic, but this would not eliminate pilot suicide.
One would think, until ACA143 happened:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider#Refeuling
Now, I would assume that Malaysia would be Metric, so that shouldn't have been a problem.. But it couldn't be ruled out as a possibility; far cry, but still possible.
BL.
Even if they messed up and measured the amount of fuel in pounds instead of kilograms they should have had more than 40 minutes of fuel, at least I'm pretty sure I read that they lost contact about 40 minutes into the flight. So I highly doubt that would be the case.
There is virtually no way they ran out of fuel 40 minutes into the flight without a massive fuel leak, which would have been noticed and announced.
True, but didn't they also lose all avionics because of EFIS being powered by the engines? Same thing with RAT? I may be wrong because it was an A330, and not a B762 in Gimli's case.
Memory escapes me on that one, as well as the bulk of the avionics on the big birds; I only have 7 hours logged towards a PPL, and that is in a Skyhawk.
BL.
The RAT is an air powered turbine that drops down in case of a dual generator/engine failure. Think of it as a wind turbine in wind farms. It turns in the wind turning a small generator powerful enough to run the aircrafts essential systems.
As long as the RAT works.
But even if it does not work, the aircraft should still have at least 30 minutes of battery time where the radios would function. Now is it possible they lost their electronics and their navigation, (on board fire?) were unable communicate and at night, got lost until they ran out of fuel? At this point, just as much a possibility as any.