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by will_asouka 4477 days ago
The aircraft had fuel to fly to destination, divert to an alternate airfield and hold there for 30 minutes as mandated by regulations. If the crew were incapacitated, it would have flown at least to destination on autopilot and maybe to alternate if that had been programmed.

GPS merely updates the inertial (laser ring gyro) solution. Losing GPS would not prevent the autopilot navigating its route and eventually showing up on land based radar.

This article is poorly informed.

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The aircraft would also have had to fly through Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese airspaces, twice in Vietnamese's case, before getting into Chinese airspace.

I'm also not sure inertial guidance will direct the aircraft off course enough to sink in the East China Sea.

This article also doesn't explain why a Vietnamese military radar had detected it to be U-turning just before it had to enter its airspace. This article is bunk.

Yes, inertial is good for worst case 5nm accuracy for 5 hours after an update from GNSS or ground based nav aids.