Page 5 - Flight Management Computer News Today

>> at this point what we do know is that the flight plan at that point was reprogrammed. we dont know if it was before or after the plane took off. certainly that will be a key fact in this investigation moving forward. but if you think of the flight management computer on the triple 777, its like an old school chunky blackberry with big black buttons and a youd i amry screen. its right in between the two seats on the plane. we have a graphic up. go ahead. >> so that system has almost like apps....

Problem like smoke in the cockpit if you had an electrical fire in the avionics bay or something like that, he would have turned to the nearest airport which would have made sense. under that hypothesis if they became incapacitated or if there was a flight control problem. if there was a flight control problem, they still would have had the radio, so its hard to figure out. what really doesnt make sense on that, though, was if they did become incapacitated and the airplane was flying along, it w...

Into the flight management computer. that has happened before where you have two fixes that may be discriminated by one or two letters, and you mistype it. that could cause a plane to turn if youre not, if you made a mistake, and the other thing -- jenna: is that something that just can happen just as easy as were in a car and we make a wrong turn? is it just as easy to do something like that? >> it can happen, but you normally see it in the displays. you normally see your flight path as its bei...

Breaking news, "the new york times" now reporting that it was flight 370s computer that sent that plane off its flight path on the way to beijing. i want to bring in jon, our aerospace boeing reporter for "the wall street journal." so this seems to buttress some of your reporting from friday, right, jon? >> both duplicate and buttress. we addressed this last friday specifically when we talked about the manual change that was made to the aircraft. of course theres a lot of us chasing this story a...

To people involved in the transportation industry, you can do some of that and get some red flags but it is not -- in most cases its not repeated. its only at the entry into duty. i think trying to this do these before the fact is quite difficult. i completely defer to tom on his knowledge of the 777. my point was not only that someone knew how to fly this plane or force the pilots to but the person was quite smart about shutting down the pilots or the planes ability to communicate with the outs...

Islands? >> well, the andaman islands might be located along a route to a further destination. theres no way to tell that the andaman islands is the intended new destination. i did read the reuters report. one interesting thing was it said the radar plots of that target were going from way point to way point, which leads me to believe that an airway was reloaded in the flight management computer so that the airplane would track one of the published airways rather than if a destination only had b...

>> right. but if that happened, would there still be no way of anybody on board the plane indicating to the airline that there was this problem going on? are you assuming that theres been some catastrophic fault maybe involving lack of oxygen or something which means no one is in capacity able to do that? >> well, i dont know what happened to the crew or anyone on board. thats not part of my theory. but if there was a certain electrical malfunction that took out both the transponder and the flig...

You bet. now if you like that, press the red button on top. ♪ how did he not see that coming? whats in your wallet? asiana airlines flight flying low and slow. a pilot with little experience flying 777s. is he to blame? deen cox has flown 777s for years joins us. >> good evening. nice to see you. >> tell me, a slow landing in a 777, dont you know coming in whether you are going too slowly or not? isnt it evident in the cockpit? >> no, it should be extremely evident. the flight management com...

At the flight management system and flight management computer. the cockpit configuration and there has been a lot of discussion about stabilizized approaches and well be looking at that closely. we do hope to interview the crew within the next few days. we have a power plant team and they are looking at engine. they will be looking at the general conditions and taking a lot of photographs. they can tell through their examinations whether or not the engine is rotating at the time of the crash. t...

Theyre going to be looking very close at flight training and operations manuals, at the crews experience. the system and the flight management computer. the cockpit configuration and theres been a lot of discussion about state and theres been a lot of discussion of stabilize approaches and were going to be looking at that very closely. we do hope to interview the crew within the next few days. we have a power plants team and looking at the engines, theyre documenting general conditions, taking a...