example what would have happened. martin savidge, if a plane runs out of fuel as is believed happened here, how does a plane this size enter the water? are there different scenarios? is it a glide down? one engine loses power before the next? reporter: right. these are things we ve been trying to simulate. put it into like neutral if you will and we ll sort of show you. we can t shut the engines off. the simulator doesn t allow that. it would do all sorts of computer problems. but we have tried this. put the engines completely in neutral. take the plane off of auto pilot. and then you let go of the controls. the aircraft is designed and engineered, this is true of many aircraft, it s built to fly. even though the engines are no longer running in this scenario, the plane is designed to be level and controlled and to make a low descent. we are doing that very slow and gradual. now again, it s a simulator. so of course the engines, it s
i m really fascinated, and we talked about it at the top of the program, this partial attempt at a hand shake. let s zero in a little bit more what could have possibly caused that. do you believe the idea that perhaps as the plane went into the water, it might have caused a surge that would have attempted this partial hand shake, anything to that? surge is a wide term, but when i think of a surge, you re talking about an electrical supply difference, which in my mind wouldn t have caused that but what would have is the input, something being input into it. so yeah, i think that s highly probable. my scenario that this bus system that took over from this ram air turbine that we talked about at the top of the hour, that will surge.
they watched the engines flame out on both sides and watched it go into the mountainside. that was on autopilot that. is an example of what would have happened. martin savidge, if a plane runs out of fuel, as is believed happened here, how does a plane this size enter the water? are there different scenarios? is it a glide down? reporter: these are things we ve been trying to simulate. put it into neutral, if you will, and we ll show you. we can t shut the engines off, the simulator doesn t allow that. but we have tried this, put the engines in neutral, take the plane off of autopilot and then you let go of the controls and the aircraft is designed that it s built to fly. even though the engines are no longer running in this scenario,
all right. well, let s begin with the fact you would have been flying about 45 minutes, we re talking about the malaysian airline 370, about the time they begin to see some electronics being shut down. the acars system you mentioned. this is a communication system between the airplane and the ground, it can work in a number of ways. let s bring up the text so i can show you here this is what the screen looks like. would allow the pilot to send a text message, but at the same time, the airplane is reporting down to the ground. it would be physically located right here. this simulator doesn t have it, because for the need of simulating flight you don t have to have it. but it would be right here. to disable it, though, there is no on/off switch. that s one of those things that you would have to somehow either pull a fuse or unwire. and that would require going down one level below where we