So flight sim enthusiasts are strange people because they like doing something the author doesn't? Bit of a stretch of logic there. What's so strange about using VR to do something most people will never have the opportunity to do in real life? The fact the pilot in question used a flight sim to practice a flight he planned to make later on in real life hardly makes him a typical flight sim enthusiast.
Flight sim records show MH370 captain practiced 'flight' near search area
The Australian Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) overseeing the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has confirmed the plane's captain simulated a flight over remote southern reaches of the Indian Ocean. A new statement confirms US media reports from last week that MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah flew a …
-
-
Thursday 28th July 2016 11:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
I'm a flight sim enthusiast
I'm a MS FS enthusiast (and undoubtedly a bit odd*), but then I think using mobile phones to find pretend monsters in the park is also a bit odd.
Back to the story, how come its taken so long for this to be reported, surely the authorities would have searched his PC fairly soon after the plane went missing. I also wonder what sort of record was found on the captain's flight sim and what does that tell us about his state of mind. Was it a flight plan, was it a black box type recording, or maybe both. If it was a flight plan, then it would have a destination (even if that was a waypoint in the middle of the ocean) and it would indicate a chilling degree of pre-meditation.
* I once flew a pretend light plane (a Beechraft Bonanza P35) from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Horn via the Bering Straits - many stops on route and many hours of flight time, but at each stop I Googled the place and learnt lots of interesting stuff. If time and money permit I may visit some of them for real.
-
Thursday 28th July 2016 11:28 GMT beirtipol
Re: I'm a flight sim enthusiast
Turns out that El Reg may be a couple of years behind the *shudder* Daily Mail on this one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2584123/Revealed-Malaysian-Airlines-pilot-high-security-US-base-Diego-Garcia-programmed-homemade-flight-simulator-deleted-data-just-taking-control-missing-plane.html
-
-
Thursday 28th July 2016 13:54 GMT Pat Att
Re: I'm a flight sim enthusiast
A friend of mine used to do that. But in his defence, he was a trainee pilot who was practicing (with his wife acting as no doubt a very bored co-pilot) the various procedures one does on such a trip. It all helped him pass a subsequent interview, and since then he may have taken you on holiday somewhere.
-
Friday 29th July 2016 09:49 GMT Martin an gof
Re: I'm a flight sim enthusiast
he was a trainee pilot who was practicing
I believe that the John Finnemore sitcom Cabin Pressure had quite a lot of storylines taken from reality (I believe his brother or perhaps his father is/was an airline pilot). In this case the episode Helsinki comes to mind - search for the words "flight simulator", they're about a third of the way down the the transcript.
M.
-
-
Thursday 28th July 2016 14:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I'm a flight sim enthusiast
If you do it with full simulated ATC plus other planes around is a "game" on its own, flying following all the mandatory procedures (plus all the pre-flight setup and checks, i..e. flight plan, weather, NOTAMs, fuel load, etc.)
If you do it alone without anything above it's pretty boring.
-
Thursday 28th July 2016 16:15 GMT GrapeBunch
Re: I'm a flight sim enthusiast
clouds ... maybe he was suffering from insomnia during designated sleep periods. I occasionally suffer a sleepless. If I then plop myself down in a comfy in front of a TV and watch a pre-recorded chess lesson, there's a pretty good chance I'll catch a catnap, sometimes more than once over the 45 minutes of the lesson. And I am a chess enthusiast.
Also, insomnia can lead to mental instability.
There are all sorts of other possibilities. For example, conditioning. Maybe there was a reward at the end of the flight. On the computer, it might be a program or video which would play after completion of the simulation, then erase or hide itself. Or a real world reward.
-
-
-
Thursday 28th July 2016 12:51 GMT Alfred
"So flight sim enthusiasts are strange people because they like doing something the author doesn't? Bit of a stretch of logic there."
You know who's stretching here? You are. Nobody said it was because the author doesn't like doing it. I won't keep you; the outrage bus is about to leave and I think they're holding your seat.
-
Thursday 28th July 2016 08:27 GMT SkippyBing
Debris field
I would have thought the simulation runs that show the debris found to date indicates the search area should be slightly further north is more pertinent to actually finding anything.
I mean you can do all kinds of stuff in Flight Sim, not only have I practised flights I'm actually going to fly but I've also tried landing Hercules transport planes on aircraft carriers and taking airliners under bridges. It doesn't mean I'm intending on doing it. Don't have the right type ratings for starters.
-
-
-
Friday 29th July 2016 02:13 GMT Clive Harris
Re: When you're considering landing Hercs on aircraft carriers...
How about a Lancaster?
A story I got from my uncle - like most wartime stories, it's probably been "embroidered" a bit, but I think it's mostly true.
At the end of WW2, a friend of his was ferrying a Lancaster back home. He knew he was going to be demobbed and grounded as soon as he landed, so he decided to have a bit of fun on the way back.
Crossing the English Channel, he spotted a US aircraft carrier, also heading home. He radioed the aircraft carrier, saying that he had engine trouble and requesting permission to land on it. Permission was, of course, refused. He then declared an emergency and said he was landing anyway, lining up his heavy bomber with the ship, wheels down and showing every intention of landing. He pulled up at the last moment, watching with amusement as the carrier crew frantically ran in all directions, trying to avoid the inevitable disaster.
By the time the incident report worked its way through the system, he was safely home, grounded and "civilianised".
-
Friday 29th July 2016 18:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: When you're considering landing Hercs on aircraft carriers...
He was lucky the carrier captain didn't have it gunned to save its ship (I would have done it <G>)... also because there were no large CVAs (which couldn't anyway get a Lancaster) back then in Europe AFAIK, guess it was probably a CVE ferrying planes or on AS duty, maybe at most a CVL...
-
-
-
Thursday 28th July 2016 15:46 GMT DropBear
Re: Debris field
"taking airliners under bridges. It doesn't mean I'm intending on doing it."
Unless you were piloting an aircraft that went missing and was last spotted heading straight for a bridge which happens to have paint marks consistent with the paint on your plane's tail. In which case you clearly and obviously DID intend to.
-
Friday 29th July 2016 19:25 GMT Dadmin
Re: Debris field
HAHA! That's the best; taking a sim plane under a bridge! I do that every time I steal the black or white Lear Jets in GTA V. So much fun!
Try ditching the plane on the golf course, then getting away in a golf cart. I don't even run missions anymore, just ride or fly and enjoy the "big island." I guess this is going to be evidence if I ever commit a serious crime... they'll say; "he played GTA V, so natch, a crim. He was a quiet and respectful, his neighbor's commented. Also, he was a big asshole to Windows admins at Wired's source; El Reg."
-
-
-
Thursday 28th July 2016 15:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Just I wonder why he needed to simulate a flight over a large space of simple water. While simulating flights in more complex airspace can make sense - a good simulator gives you an idea of the actual flight, flying over an expanse of water for an already experienced pilot doesn't look something that needs practice.
And he couldn't practice the radio equipment faults in the simulator - nor many simulators simulate primary radars ranges. The only simulation I can think of is looking at how far the plane could go in a specific flight configuration, even if a simulation wouldn't be perfect anyway, and actual weather conditions were unknown. Without a flight recording it's impossible to know if he tested different configurations.
Unless it was just a simple "I'll do this" - if he was a man outside is mind, he could have done that anyway, without any good reason.
-
Friday 29th July 2016 20:14 GMT Alan Brown
"Practicing flights in a sim to places off the beaten track isn't unusual"
There's a lot of FS interest in Diego Garcia as a destination and always has been as it's pretty much the only way to land there unless you're part of a very small elite.
Just because he may have run virtual flight plans in that direction doesn't mean he was planning to actually do so. In any case the seach area is a good-sized continent distance away from the airbase.
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Thursday 28th July 2016 13:47 GMT Tikimon
My personal contribution to "odd" flight sim behavior
My flight-sim track that an outside observer might consider the weirdest was flying an F-18 Hornet end-to-end through the Arizona memorial in Honolulu.
Of course the memorial is not open at the ends, nor large enough to allow an F-18 to pass. This was a while back, and I was taking advantage of the relatively crude programming back then..
Also of note, when I got bored with a flight I sometimes ended it by crashing into a building. Which only demonstrated my intent to not spend time flying back to base and landing properly.
-
Friday 29th July 2016 00:34 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: My personal contribution to "odd" flight sim behavior
Yup, I've not played with flight sims since the pre-VGA days, but like probably everyone else, one of the first things you do is try flying under a bridge (Golden Gate) or buzzing the Statue of Liberty. (Pretty much all flight sims back then came with US airspace as the default, most other places being add on packs. IIRC the first flight sim I played was on a TRS-80 (was that MS FlightSim or had they not bought it yet?)
-
Friday 29th July 2016 10:01 GMT Martin an gof
Re: My personal contribution to "odd" flight sim behavior
I've not played with flight sims since the pre-VGA days, but like probably everyone else, one of the first things you do is try flying under a bridge
Talking about pre-VGA, in Aviator on the BBC Micro, flying under the bridge was a required skill - there's a picture of the bridge on the game cover.
M.
-
-
Thursday 28th July 2016 20:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
There was
an exchange on the radio program 'Cabin Pressure about how weird it was for an airline pilot to relax by engaging in a simulation of what they did all day. The way to relax after work is to spend time involved in a simulation of what you do all day at work. Why isn't there a network admin game?
-
Friday 29th July 2016 16:04 GMT Milton
JACC does NOT "rule out that scenario"
JACC said, quite correctly, that finding a Southern Ocean route in the sim does not prove that the pilot intended to fly a similar route in reality. Absent the belated discovery of a written confession, nothing can prove that this was a pilot crime except the increasingly thin chance of finding the data recorders.
But it does not in any way prove that the pilot wasn't responsible. It's absolutely wrong to say that JACC rules the possibility out.
A suspicious person might reasonably wonder why a professional pilot would simulate a flight into that region, for which there is no credible purpose related to his quotidian work, especially when his plane later goes and does precisely that. But suspicion or not, we have no proof, and the pilot's family are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
Yes, it is odd that the plane made a series of turns in controlled flight after giving the appearance of manual shutdown of various comms systems; odd that the pilot simulated a very similar flight beforehand; odd in so many ways, really—but one thing we know about modern air disasters is that they are almost always the result of a series of failures and unlucky coincidences, that a simple cause is now extremely rare.
So, strange as these things are, the pilot remains innocent until proven guilty.
It's saddening that the search may end soon, because if there is an answer to be found now, it's in one place only: the Flight Data Recorder.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
