Could missing Malaysian plane MH 307 glided without fuel for miles?
Question: From the "arc" the plane was last in, before it would have run out of fuel, at around 8:11am apx, if it did run out of fuel could it have glided for miles and miles either onto land or somewhere far away in another part of the ocean?
I recall one jet like this that ran out of fuel glided for 90 miles.
Where would 90+ miles be away from those "arcs"? It could be almost anywhere from near them but much farther away then thought. Maybe even crashed into a remote location. Or simply glided into the ocean, leaving no debris. The pilots could have possibly pulled a D.B. Cooper.
Also: Too many air mishaps lately, now in Seattle a helicopter crash. Now Courtney Love thinks she found the plane, of all people!
who WAS #1?2014-03-18T17:25:11Z
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I'm guessing a big heavy airliner like that would have a fairly short glidepath. Not as bad as a brick or the space shuttle, but it would drop pretty quick with no engines.
But from its last reported position (which for some reason is in doubt) it still had 5 hours of fuel, meaning it could have landed in Pakistan or (if the wind was right) even Iran.
Experts say now that while the transponder was still on, they're guessing there was a fight in the cockpit and best theory was that either the pilot or copilot wanted to divert from course and hijack while the other objected. Apparently from telemetry (before the transponder was turned off) it was wiggling and then shot for altitude and then fell off all communication. Hence the fight theory.
I still say this aircraft did not crash in the ocean but is parked on the ground somewhere. I don't really care about the plane, but what about the several hundred passengers?
They glide better than a streamlined crowbar, but for miles? That depends on the altitude from which they started to glide. Stalling is a problem so the must keep the nose down and lose altitude to gain the energy lost to drag created by the air flow. Obviously that reduces the altitude. I believe the glide ratio on an aircraft of that nature would be less than 20 to one. that means they could glide less than 20 miles for every mile in altitude they had when they started their glide. Wind direction and wind speed would influence those numbers.
The 777 has a glide ratio of about 20 to 1, that is for every mile high they glide 20 miles. So if they are at 40,000 feet they can glide about 150 miles that is about 15 minutes. Of course if they were at 5,000 feet that would be 1/8th of that.