Lost is an American serial drama series that follows the fate of the survivors of the Oceanic Airlines 815 on a mysterious tropical island located somewhere in the Pacific (even if the serial is filmed mainly in the Hawaii). Departed from Sydney on Sept. 22 2004 at 14:55, from gate 23, and flying to Los Angeles, where it was expected to arrive at 10:42L, the B-777 of Oceanic 815 experienced a radio failure 6 hours after take-off. The pilot decided to land to Nadi airport in the Fiji island (even if the nearest landing field was the Faleolo International Airport in Samoa), but 2 hours later, the plane, flying off-course by approximately 1000 miles, encountered severe CAT (Clear Air Turbolence) and broke-up.
The following compilation from Youtube user battletops provides a view of the plane crash from the passengers’ perspective.
According to the interesting study published on Lostpedia (http://www.lostpedia.com/wiki/Flight_path_of_Oceanic_815) basing on the characters’ statements (failure after 6 hours, turnaround, 2 hours before mid-air break up), the crash location should be somewhere North of Fiji. Actually, Lostpedia based its calculation on a straight route connecting SYD (Kingsford Smith International) to LAX (Los Angeles International) while actual route is most probably sensibly different. In order to discover the actual crash site of OC815 I studied the FPL of a real flight connecting SYD to LAX: QFA 11. I picked the most recent flight plan from FlightAware, dated Sept 27th:
QFA11
Qantas Airways Limited “Qantas” (Australia)
Aircraft Boeing 747-400 (quad-jet) (H/B744/Q)
Origin Sydney Int’l (YSSY)
Destination Los Angeles Intl (KLAX)
Other flights between these airports
Route DIPSO G595 ALLOC KEBAB 3300S 15600E
3200S 15800E 3100S 16000E 2938S 16300E
2600S 17000E 2524S 17103E TERUX 2300S
17500E 1900S 18000E 1355S 17456W 0800S
17000W 0500S 16700W 0300S 16500W 0300N
16000W 0900N 15500W 1500N 15000W 2000N
14500W 2400N 14000W 2700N 13500W 3000N
12500W WEDES B581 FICKY C1177 SXC
Date Thursday, Sep 27, 2007
Duration 12 hours 14 minutes
Status Arrived over 4 hours ago (track log)
Proposed/Assigned Actual/Estimated
Departure 03:25AM GMT 03:35AM GMT
Arrival 08:53AM PDT 08:49AM PDT
Speed Mach .84
Altitude 29000 feet
I plotted the QF11 using FSNavigator and drew the path expected to be flown from Sydney to Los Angeles by Oceanic 815.
I used a cruising speed of 340KIAS (that I chose to have a total flight time to destination of 12 hours and 14 minutes, the same of QF 11 that on Sep. 28th landed in LAX after 12 hours and 8 minutes), a turnaround point 6 hours after departure, a standard 180° turn, and 2 hours of flight NORDO (No Radio) direct to Nadi International airport and obtained a new crash location 350 Kilometers to the W of Samoa and 600 Kilometers to the North of Fiji; a point that is incredibly coicident with a very small island in the Pacific Ocean whose name is Wallis Island (Uvea). According to my study, that is the exact location of Lost island.
This is the satellite view of Wallis.
Thanks for the info published.
Is it possible, with your coordinates, that Oceanic Flight 815 may have passed through the infamous ‘Dragon’s Triangle’?
(ok, I’m Italian, but I’ll use English for the sake of everyone)
Nice job David.
I also pointed out this on my forum when I had to point out thet the very first scene should have happened at night time, but I didn’t have the means to plot the route through an orthodromic flight path.
By the way, Oceanic 815 was surely being flown in IFR.
This means that it is just insane that the pilot made a 180 turn and headed towards Fiji Island, since he should have headed to L.A., wait for ETA on the IAF and land within 30 minutes from ETA.
OR, he could just decide to divert, but at this point I find that Hawaii are a much more suitable solution.
Could you please post an image of the relative position on Hawaii, Fiji and turn point on your plotting, just to confirm my theory?
It seems that given a FT of 12 hours, 6 hours after take off Oceanic 815 would have been over the Equal Time Point and that it could reach Hawaii in a couple of hours or less.
JG,
the track I drew is quite far from the Dragon’s Triangle and theoretically incompatible with the one of the Oceanic 815, it is based on the crew’ statements and for this reason it might be slightly inaccurate. Since crew might have used approximate figures and have uncorrectly assessed their position, the flight time since departure etc, there might be some connection between the crash location and the Dragon’s Triangle. This theory, could also explain why a Beechcraft departed from Nigeria crashed on the same island in the Pacific after an impossible flight of some 18.000 kilometers.
Hi Roberto,
will post an update in the next days to compare the relative position of the Oceanic to the Hawaii. Can you give me your blog url?
Thanks for the concern.
Mine is not a blog, rather a forum about something that has nothing to do with Lost or aircraft in general.
But we do have a 100 pages topic on Lost here
http://www.giorgiacosplay.com/public/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1276
You must have a username to log in though, but registering is free (or I can grant you a temporary account, since I’m the admin).
Comunque lavoro a Milano ACC.
Le procedure per le visite della stampa sono lunghe e complicate, ma magari posso chiedere, se pensi che possa servirti per il lavoro o semplicemente interessare (in questo secondo caso basta organizzare un incontro e portare un documento)