After sitting back, keeping my mouth closed for 7 days and watching how the United States Media handles this matter, I am reminded of the date September 11th, 2001, all over again. Why? Because no one in the media has told the American People the absolute truth about what is possible in regards to Flight 370.
Being a pilot with several advanced ratings including jet type ratings, various LOAs, as well as a respectable amount of time in more than one 200,000lb class of multi-engine jet airframe, I can tell you without equivocation (as well as anyone with the same or greater qualifications) that none of the aircraft involved in 911 were piloted by human beings just prior to impact. I can also tell you that all commercial aircraft go through a rigorous research, design, engineering, testing, optimization and eventual certification process to make certain that the aircraft is exceedingly airworthy.
Aircraft do exactly what they are designed to do: Fly. They do not simply drop out of the sky for frivolous reasons.
Modern commercial airframes are designed/engineered to be full integrated electronic and computer based systems with redundancy and failover as two of their major safety features. Those two design goals are achieved through the linking of mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic and avionics systems into a singular fault tolerant operation that most of you have come to know as a commercial airliner.
Boeing designed and built this aircraft. For decades Boeing has used component based LRU (Line Replaceable Units) in its airframes. Avionics LRUs on most modern commercial airframes are programmable. It is important that you understand that fact. Commercial aircraft in the same category as the Boeing triple-seven are fully capable of executing take-off, climb, cruise, descent, landing and roll-out on their own with each phase being managed by the link between LRUs and the major systems identified above (mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic and avionics). These aircraft have the ability to transmit data Air-to-Ground and to receive data Ground-to-Air via the DataLink system designed and manufactured by Airinc, who also develops and maintains the technology standards in aviation for the LRUs.
This particular aircraft deploys are earlier version of the Honeywell digital fly-by-wire flight control system. That system is inextricably linked and mapped to the on-board LRU based avionics system of the triple-seven, which is capable of receiving in-bound communications via ground-to-air. Though much of the entire avionics and flight control system designs are subcontracted, Boeing still maintains the position of "chief integrator." It is also important to realize that flight management functionality on-board the tripe-seven is managed by a dedicated LRU, designed specifically for that purpose - which is likewise programmable. The flight management system is linked and integrated with the navigation system - which itself is comprised of an inertial reference system (INR), an air data system, integrated nav-receivers, VOR, GPS and GLS, etc., making CAT III and CAT I GLS approaches possible.
SAT based ACARS (Satellite Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) has been in use for many years and it enables Ground-to-Air real-time data communications. At the heart of this arrangement is the Communications Management Unit (CMU). The CMU is linked to other on-board systems and can be linked or connected to the aircraft's Flight Management Computer (FMC) and by logical extension to the aircraft's Flight Control System (FCS). Essentially, data can be routed through the SATCOM receiver to the on-board MU/CMU and down to the FMC (Flight Management Computer). Thus, you can control such an aircraft remotely using the ACARS Avionics Architecture. Don't allow anyone to tell you that you cannot. You can do more than just manipulate the flight controls. You can also remotely actuate other on-board systems as well, including the activation and manipulation of the on-board transponder - which we keep hearing so much about on CNN.
So, people want to know:
- Can such an aircraft be taken over from the ground? Yes.
- Can such an aircraft be positively controlled from the ground? Yes.
You can even send a signal to release gas into the cockpit/flight deck through the aircraft's recirculation system which disables the pilot, crew and all passengers on-board and then remotely take-over the aircraft, if you have previously arranged for the implementation of such a thing physically. Sound extreme? Yes - it is extreme. Very extreme.
Recall Betty Ong's call from Flight 11. Remember these transcribed words: "...we can't breathe!"
What the heck was Betty Ong, talking about and WHY did the media never stop to ask the question? What does not being able to breathe or having difficulty breathing have to do with being "skyjacked" by terrorists? There were no official reports of anyone getting gas on-board any aircraft involved in 911. The only reports of weapons involved "box cutters."
So, why are people having difficulty "breathing" on-board Flight 11? That is an honest question that has never been answered. There were no reported fires on-board any aircraft involved in 911. So, what does difficulty breathing have to do with anything, unless people were being exposed to something very toxic in the recirculated air they were breathing. And, how do you get something very toxic into the recirculated air being inhaled by people on-board a modern commercial aircraft with no fire on-board?
Boeing 777s don't just disappear from the sky without good cause. They don't just vanish so cleanly without a trace. Aircraft of this type are extremely stable airborne platforms - they don't just fall from the sky merely because someone sneezed. When I hear reports of transponders going off, fault tolerant and redundant systems sequentially shutting down "on their own" - then I know someone is causing that to happen. The question is whether or not those things took place on-board, or from a remote location. Those are the ONLY two questions I have at this point. Everything else is a farce and a smoke-screen.
Modern commercial aircraft systems designed to be fault tolerant and with a high degree of failover, do not simply begin to shut down critical avionics systems on their own. However, you absolutely can sequentially shut down those exact same systems through a SATCOM surrogate of some type.
I am not ruling out any causation at this point. However, recent commercial aviation history being what it is, I am also not ruling out the possibility that Flight 370 became yet another unwitting player in someone's psychotic game of lethal airborne chess by way of Remote Control.