Would have to be a pretty hardened pilot to take a 777 down to FL 50 and keep her there anywhere except approach.
"Experts said flying a Boeing 777 in such a way would be dangerous, stressing the airframe and possibly causing those on board to be air sick and suffer from spatial disorientation."
This truly meets the definition of incredible. How could you be that good, but then end up crashing the plane? If you are that good, then you are not going to crash that plane.
Having read the article, I think the journalist got confused – what is stressful and requires insane skills is flying very low, following the terrain between mountains/hills.
However, flying a mile high is only slightly different from flying 6 miles high in terms of stress experienced or skill required.
Actually flying at 5000 ft is pretty easy and airliners obviously have to do some of that during descent. The stuff fighter pilots do clearing power cables and hills by a few feet is quite different. Airliners avoid flying at 5000ft so as not to collide with light aircraft mostly.
Military-style nap-of-the-earth flying, à la the raid on the bin Laden compound. Those SOAR pilots surely have practiced this stuff for years. How would a civilian pilot (or hijacker pilot) acquire these skills? Flight simulator perhaps?
The pilot had a fancy flight simulator at home.
Now, there are plenty of legitimate reasons that a pilot would have a simulator at home, so we can't pin too much to this discovery. Lots of pilots buy small planes after they retire because they still love flying and he might have built this simulator because it was fun. Other articles describe him as a hardware geek and mention his YouTube videos demonstrating his homebrew simulator consoles. Still, it seems suspicious to me, especially in context of the recent revelation that the transponder and tracking systems were disabled prior to MH370 signing off with Malaysian ATC.
Four days ago, I thought that a Central Asian hijacking scenario was next to impossible. Today, I'm not so sure.
I wouldn't call it fancy. I mean, it was Microsoft Flight Simulator running on a box with a joystick and four monitors hooked up and placed to look like a 777 cockpit.
As with the "two fake passports" discussion, my rational follow up is "what are the priors?"
If one picks a random similar flight, what's the probability of having people flying with fake IDs/of having a pilot who runs a flight simulator at home?
military pilots sometime become civilian pilots when they get out of the service. i have no idea the background of the pilots in question, but that isn't an abnormal thing.
Unless you're trying to commit suicide. But then why would fly northwards instead of southwards if you want to commit suicide? I've a hard time believing the 5000 ft statement. But if it's true, then well, damn.
"Experts said flying a Boeing 777 in such a way would be dangerous, stressing the airframe and possibly causing those on board to be air sick and suffer from spatial disorientation."
This truly meets the definition of incredible. How could you be that good, but then end up crashing the plane? If you are that good, then you are not going to crash that plane.