MH370 search: what happens when a plane runs out of fuel? (2024)

FAQs

Did MH370 run out of fuel? ›

Military radar saw the plane turn around to travel over the Andaman Sea before it vanished, and satellite data showed it continued to fly for hours, possibly until it ran out of fuel. The plane is believed to have crashed in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean.

Short Answer No, it doesn't just stop and fall to the ground. When a plane runs out of fuel, the engines stop working, just like a car. When the engines stop, the plane loses power and certain plane functions that need power, also stop working, like some hydraulics. The pilots have been able to “glid…

INVESTIGATION REPORT. A 495-page report into MH370's disappearance, published in July 2018, said the Boeing 777's controls were likely deliberately manipulated to take it off course, but investigators could not determine who was responsible.

So essentially, any plane can glide if the need arises. And in situations where all the engines have failed, pilots have to expect the plane to do some gliding. Without the thrust those engines are built to provide, the plane can't help but lose altitude.

Godfrey said he traced WSPR data back to the time when MH370 disappeared and concluded the aircraft may be lying between 3,000 and 4,000 meters (9,800 to 13,000 feet) below the Indian Ocean, about 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) off the coast of Perth, Australia.

However, friends of Zaharie Shah claimed the pilot was "lonely and sad" and was believed to be "clinically depressed," The Atlantic reported.

The longest that a commercial airplane has flown without refueling is a little over 23 hours. This was achieved by a Boeing 777-200 LR that flew between Hong Kong and London, covering a distance of almost 20,000 km.

How long can a private jet fly without refueling? It all boils down to jet class, make and model, payload, and weather conditions. While a mid-size jet can go four to six hours nonstop, a large jet can fly for ten or more.

The only way to refuel a jet fighter whilst in flight is from an aerial tanker. There was a Cessna light aircraft that refueled from a truck for world record purposes but a jet fighter would be too fast for this to work. If the jet were to land then it would not be in flight any more.

The plane is believed to have crashed in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean. Theories about what happened on board range from hijacking to a loss of oxygen in the cabin to power failure. But there was no distress call, no ransom demand, nor bad weather or evidence of technical failures.

What is the new theory of MH370? ›

Another theory presents an alternate scenario — where the captain could have guided the aircraft in a soft landing known as a "controlled ditching". Since early in the search, fuel exhaustion was seen as the most likely explanation for the aircraft's power interruption, according to the ATSB's final report.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is the 84th plane to go mysteriously missing since 1948. A new visualization maps out this history of lost flights. The disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 hasn't gotten much less baffling since the news broke on March 8th.

Pilots do not turn an engine of at all while in a flight.

An aircraft's engine can stop for a number of reasons but the most common one is fuel starvation. In such a case, there is no restarting so the pilot will try to find a place to land safely.

The aircraft doesn't have to lose altitude particularly rapidly to keep flying and therefore if both engines were to fail a high altitude, the aircraft may have as much as 20 – 30 minutes of airbourne time to find somewhere to land before it reaches the ground.

The aircraft carried 49,100 kilograms (108,200 lb) of fuel, including reserves, allowing an endurance of 7 hours and 31 minutes.

Then the flight went on a westward path across Malaysia, rather than north to its final destination of Beijing. Such a sudden deviation would have been noticed by the plane's 200-plus passengers. Langewiesche reported that Shah likely depressurized the cabin to subdue any rebellion.

Air Canada Flight 143, commonly known as the Gimli Glider, was a Canadian scheduled domestic passenger flight between Montreal and Edmonton that ran out of fuel on Saturday, July 23, 1983, at an altitude of 41,000 feet (12,500 m), midway through the flight.