doesn't really factor in the Malaysian Government lying it's ass off.







On Fri, 04 Apr 2014 12:16:39 -0400, Pat wrote:

On Fri, 04 Apr 2014 10:12:55 -0400, Ho MeGu Y "Ho wrote:

trader_4 wrote:

Another thing no one has mentioned. Malaysian military said they had
it on radar somewhere over the Straits at 29,500 ft. No one AFAIK
has commented on that. That's not a standard altitude.

I've monitored the flights I've been on using hand-held GPS, and I can
tell you that flight altitudes rarely match up with what the pilots
claim to be their cruise altitude or in-flight map display. Being off
by 500 feet is common.

Don't confuse altitude with "flight level". Above 18,000 feet,
everyone switches their altimeters (really a barometer) to standard
pressure. That way, they don't have to keep finding out what the
barometric pressure is where they happen to be. Remember, all this
was in use long before GPS. So one date, flight level 370 (approx
37,000 feet) might be 36,500 while on another day, it might 37,500.
Since everyone used the same system, it all works. When the plane
gets near an airport, the air traffic controller tells them the local
altimeter reading (a four digit number that matches the barometric
pressure in inches of mercury without the decimal point). They dial
that into their altimeter and can now read altitude in feet rather
than "flight levels".