The story of the disappearing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 only gets more mysterious. Let’s walk through exactly how complicated it is to steal an airplane in mid-flight and why suspicion is increasingly falling on the two pilots.
First, there’s the matter of the cockpit door. The pilots in a commercial jet are locked in behind a steel barrier that costs about $40,000, according to Kenneth J. Button, director of the Center for Transportation, Policy, Operations and Logistics at George Mason University. Pilots are only supposed to let someone else into the cockpit after a visual check through a peephole.
Second, you would need to know what ACARS is, how to deactivate it, and when to turn it off. ACARS, or Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, is a way for airlines to automatically monitor things like engine function while a plane is the air. Turning it off cuts off the flow of information that investigators often use to reconstruct events in the air. Someone turned the system off on Flight 370 between 1:07 a.m. local time and when it was next supposed to transmit 30 minutes later, according to Malaysian Airlines.
Third, you would need to know when to pull your disappearing act so as not to set off alarms with air traffic control. The pilots’ last communication came at 1:19 a.m. on March 8, as Flight 370 passed from Malaysia airspace into Vietnamese airspace. Malaysian airlines said that the flight’s co-pilot appears to be the one who signed off with Malaysian air traffic control with an “Alright, good night.” Under normal circumstances, one of the pilots would then check in with Vietnamese air traffic controllers. But they didn’t.
Fourth, you’ve got to know how to fly a plane with a large degree of sophistication in order to avoid detection. After the plane diverted from its Beijing-bound course, it dropped to low altitudes of 5,000 feet, says Button, likely to avoid military radar systems in the area. Flying that low requires a lot of adjustments to the aircraft and a lot of experience, he says, including figuring out how long your fuel will last.
And last but not least, try finding an airfield large enough for a plane of that size to land. Button says you’d need a runway the size of something at Dulles International Airport in Washington.
