NBCNews: Flight 370's Westward Turn Began 12 Minutes Before Co-Pilot's "All Right, Good Night" Sign Off

That's what NBCNew says. I think it's possible they're overerading this a little, but I'll get to that.

The missing Malaysia Airlines jet's abrupt U-turn was programmed into the on-board computer well before the co-pilot calmly signed off with air traffic controllers, sources tell NBC News.

The change in direction was made at least 12 minutes before co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid said "All right, good night," to controllers on the ground, the sources said.

Here's why I think they're overreading this a little. First, the timeline:

1:07 am: Last ACARS transmission

1:19 am: "All right, good night" signoff

1:37 am: Scheduled ACARS transmission that never came, because ACARS had been disabled

My problem is that they are saying the turn began at 1:07am. We've seen mistakes made before with timing, based on ACARS -- the Malaysians claimed that ACARS was turned off before the signoff, when they really meant it was turned off sometime after 1:07am. "After 1:07am" quickly became at 1:07 am.

I am guessing that the ACARS transmission itself contained the flightpath changed. And that would have come in at 1:07 am, right? 12 minutes before the 1:19 am signoff.

But just because the flightpath change is programmed into ACARS doesn't necessarily mean the jet began to execute the turn yet.

Megyn Kelly was trying to get people to be firm on this point on her show, and people seemed to be saying "probably" or "maybe" as to whether they knew the plane was already turning at 1:19 am, as opposed to programmed to turn.

Whether the jet had already begun to turn or not, it does seem very important that the instruction was already keyed into the Flight Management System before the copilot's signoff.

posted by Ace at 09:34 PM

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