Everyone knows that Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky were all aliens. How else could you explain their bizarre ideology?

Theoretically this aircraft could be a victim of global climate change...

One possibility is that the aircraft encountered the previously unknown GoreStream consisting of all the jet exhaust Al Gore has created while jetting around the globe promoting green causes.

Of course $Billions more in studies will be needed to prove/disprove that theory.

Let the grants start flowing!

Good a theory as any at this point.

The likely options as I see them are
1. The plane was hijacked by terrorists for some near future plot. Landed in an ex-Soviet republic.
2. The plane was hijacked for some cargo on the plane. Landed in an ex-Soviet republic.
3. The plane crashed somewhere in the Indian ocean.

Based on the fact that no contact seems to have been made, if the first two are what happened then I don't expect the passengers or crew to be alive.

They would be the ones using iPhones...4

Whereas Cubans from the future would be using Blackberry Bold's.

Occam's Razor suggests not necessarily the simplest explanation (there's nothing simple about how nuclear weapons work, for instance), but if you had two theories, you ought to pick the one that multiplies causes the least.

For instance,

1) The plane was hijacked by aliens

vs.

2) The plane was hijacked by zombies hidden in the cargo hold, then captured by aliens

They might both turn out wrong, but 1) is more a more economical theory, it's more likely necessary and sufficient if you had some evidence about either scenario.

I'm still unconvinced as to any of the common theories doin the rounds at the moment:

i) Pilot suicide as a political statement - assuming for a second that the pilot wass willing to murder 238 other people to make that statement, it's perhaps strange that he apparently didn't leave a statement or message to be found.

ii) Pilot suicide for life insurance payout - assuming his wife would be the beneficiary. I can't get my head around this guy apparently caring for his wife/family enough to kill himself so they could cash in on his life insurance, but would be willing ot kill 238 other innocents in the process. There's also the point that if the suicide were discovered there would be no payout.

iii) Aircraft being stolen to use in a 9/11 type terror attack - would be extremely difficult to successfully pull off, and what's more there have got to be slightly less conspicuous ways to acquire a suitable aircraft.

If it was a hijacking and they aren't making demands for the passengers, they probably don't want to deal with hostages, there's good chance the passengers have been murdered. A scenario some have suggested is that the crew took the plane to high enough altitude, put on their own oxygen masks, bled out the air somehow, the passengers wouldn't have been in much position to react or know what was happening.

I've heard the theory that because they went to FL450 it means they were trying to kill the passengers from lack of oxygen.

But you don't need to go to FL450 to do that. They could of done the same thing at normal cruise. Anything above FL140 will kill you pretty quickly. I'm not sure it makes any sense.

But if they did do that, then I think it may speak to the plane being taken somewhere. If you are just going to crash the plane, why kill the passengers beforehand? Seems like a pointless exercise to de-pressurize the plane if you are just going to crash it into the ocean.

Yeah. Now I'm pretty much convinced that something happened.

Yep, the "cops" stole the plane.

I'm certain of it.

Might be worth to take a closer look at Myanmar - especially the eastern Shan state, heart of the Asian drug trade.

http://asiancorrespondent.com/112483/ana...lenge-in-burma/

This failed premise again, no one ever learns.


Poor farmers who usually get caught up in these conflicts between rebels and a these governments, if not outright forced to grow them have a choice:

1) An illegal crop that nets in substantially more money to feed their families in these poor societies

2) A chosen crop such as coffee beans, decorative flowers or bananas or something that requires a lot of land, care and considerably more resources to grow, in which case they're competing against big growers who can do it on an industrial scale very cheaply.

These farmers could even be sympathetic to the rebels if not coerced by them (or at least aren't too keen on their governments), so it's good for them both ways.

Because these substances are illegal, they create the profit motive in the first place. An acre of poppies isn't anywhere near as resource intensive as an acre of market grade cash crops, and the profit margin isn't razor thin. They're just going to have to deal with that fact, but I guess delusion must have some comfort as well.

That's not the point, Kontakt. Focus, man, focus.

In all honesty, I'm not sure what the point is- I thought you were making the connection to the political problems of the region to the possible hijacking.

There were photos turned up of one of the pilots wearing a T-shirt that said somefink like "Democracy is dead," maybe there's an ideological motive in there, maybe the plane is involved with some sort of extreme protest.

Thoughts picked up on the 'net:

Quote: If this is the explanation then we know that the aircraft was piloted by an experienced and competent person; which translates to saying that the maximum range of the aircraft just got larger, particularly if he had help. If the passengers, killed or rendered unconscious by a period of cabin pressure or 30,000 feet or so, were thrown overboard the flight range is increased even more. Even with all passengers intact the range is far enough to have reached Pakistan and Iran; and, of course, China.

Pakistan is a leaky operation, and whether a Malaysian airplane could be landed at a Pakistani airfield without word getting out is problematic. An intelligent planner � and this was well planned � probably would not assume that was possible. Iran is another matter. Of course it would be possible in China, but I can conceive of no rational reason for the Chinese to hijack their own airplane and conceal it.

And of course the notion that the airplane has landed safely in Iran or anywhere else it pure speculation based only on its possibility; there�s no evidence for anything like that; still, as the search of the seas continues without anything whatever being found raises the probability that it is successfully on the ground. Understand that doubling a small probability is still a small probability. Unquote.

and:

Quote: To me, the most shocking thing about this story is that it appears that the US intelligence community does not know the location of the plane. It would be a surprise to learn that we do not have a satellite with radar or another sensor that can track airplanes at any location globally.

If the US does have this information, its existence might be classified at a high level. If the plane crashed at sea, the US government could find a way to point out suitable locations to search, much like what happened during WWII with deciphered Enigma traffic and submarines and other ships. What about the scenario of the plane flying to Pakistan or another country?

I would be very interested to read a discussion on the subject with you and your other readers. This story is better than fiction. Unquote.

RedToo.

Wired.com

If MH370 was seized by passengers or a crew member, the hijacking would the third so far this year�in addition to the Ethiopian Airlines episode, there also was the bizarre Pegasus Airlines incident of early February, in which an apparently intoxicated Ukrainian man demanded passage to Sochi but was instead taken to Istanbul. This clustering of hijackings shouldn�t be surprising. The crime always has been highly viral in nature; each hijacking tends to be influenced by the last, in terms of modus operandi or other key details. A perfect example of this phenomenon is how �parajacking��hijackings in which the criminal flees by jumping out of the plane�evolved in the early 1970s. Though most folks only remember the infamous D.B. Cooper hijacking of November 1971, there were numerous other incidents in the ensuing months in which the hijackers became increasingly more adept at getting away from the authorities�at least for a few days. (Cooper himself may have been a copycat, inspired by a farcical Air Canada hijacking.) Perhaps one of MH370�s pilots had been inspired by the Ethiopian Airlines hijacking, and thought he could fly his way to a better life on distant shores.

It also is important to remember that, unlike the highly organized 9/11 terrorists, most hijackers through history have been scatterbrained, sometimes to a comic degree. In the midst of manic episodes or afflicted by paranoia, they often can be quite good at planning minor details of their crimes, yet quite deluded about how the endgames will play out. This certainly was the case with Roger Holder, the principal hijacker of Western Airlines Flight 701 in June 1972. An Army veteran who had served four tours in Vietnam, Holder cooked up a clever ruse by which he convinced the crew that he was accompanied by four members of the Weathermen, at least one of whom was armed with a bomb. But he also hijacked a short-range Boeing 727 by accident, thereby making it impossible for him to reach his intended destination of Hanoi.

If MH370�s hijacker was in a mental state similar to Holder�s, he or she might have had the psychological wherewithal to figure out how to disable the plane�s communications systems, but not to realize that reaching, say, Western Europe was not a feasible goal. The hijacking could even have been an impulsive act, as many such crimes were during America�s �golden age� or air piracy. Ricardo Chavez Ortiz, for example, who commandeered a Frontier Airlines jet in order to get a radio crew to broadcast his rambling 34-minute speech, claimed to have decided to hijack the plane only after it reached cruising altitude.

Though data points may be accumulating in favor of the hijacking theory, it remains difficult to believe that MH370 is now in the possession of a global terror network that plans to use it in a future attack; landing and hiding a Boeing 777-200ER�a 209-foot-long aircraft with a 200-foot wingspan�in a lawless corner of the world would require immense resources, not to mention luck. In fact, there�s a good chance that any hijacker of the flight was not motivated by any sort of radical ideology, but rather by personal woes. In the history of air piracy, the vast majority of hijackers have been men or women who, though they may have claimed political affiliations, were most interested in fleeing from desperate circumstances: economic hardships, legal entanglements, love affairs gone wrong. In the era before everyone had to pass through metal detectors and have their carry-on luggage screened, hijacking a plane was an easy and spectacular way to try and alter one�s fortunes. One young American hijacker, who tried to flee to Cuba with her boyfriend in the late 1960s, neatly summed up that mindset when later asked why she had opted for such a risky crime: �Something had to be done�and I did something, for better or worse. It [was] better than eighteen years of therapy, or whatever. It just seemed like the answer.�

On one level, it�s comforting to think that a hijacker of MH370 was not bent on using the plane as a weapon of mass destruction, but rather wanted to start life anew somewhere else. But it�s also frightening to imagine a world where, as in the early 1970s, the desperate and deluded increasingly start to view hijacking as a reasonable solution to their problems.

Yes, the point was to link the alleged hijacking to the Asian drug trafficking and the highly unstable political situation in the Shan state.

I just took the next best link that pointed out the situation. I don't think debating the content (or the points made within the content of the article) of the article is helpful in this thread.

Maybe starting a separate one might serve both issues better.


For the record, I do not disagree with what you've said.

I would sooner discount a state actor of any kind. North Korea used to try crazy stuff like that, but there's nothing to do with a hijacked airliner for Iran, Pakistan, or China that I can see. Imagine the blowback for a country and their industries to do that. Fringe individuals and groups, they have a different risk calculation.

Like, for example, some drug kingpin/ head of a cartel/ warlord. They could use such a plane for a variety of "missions": smuggling drugs, arms, people, then sell the whole thing (either in one piece or separately).

Whole ships get stolen (more often than most people think), without anyone paying too much attention. Once the insurance companies have paid and were reimbursed by their insurance companies (Munich Re, for example), the former owners tend to lose interest pretty fast.

The "political statement" theory is a little thin so far, in the absence of such a statement. Maybe something went wrong before they could pull of whatever it was they were going to do?