Missing Airliner

Use this thread if you wish to continue the discussions and theories around this tragedy. I'm sure that anyone derailing it again will be spoken to by Murphy.

Was wondering about that.

Looking at the list in wiki this morning of unexplained aircraft disappearances. There are many.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aerial_disappearances

If this remains unresolved it will go down as the greatest loss of life in an unexplained disappearance.

And someone has already put this one down to hijacking on Wiki, which should be corrected.

In this case it is all still speculation but in the absence of evidence, if it is a question of human error vs conspiracy, I go with human error every time.

H

Well, there IS plenty of evidence that pretty much rules out simple human error. Different systems of the aircraft were switched off at different times. Much of the lack of evidence (e.g. no sign of wreckage) is easiest explained if the aircraft changed course. That all makes it most likely that it was a deliberate attempt to steal the plane, and to gain time by leaving as few traces as possible.

Combine these elements and the easiest explanation becomes ... a conspiracy. It's unlikely that this was done by a single person, or without preparation.

We don't know the purpose of the conspiracy yet, nor whether the plane theft was successful (maybe it crashed into the Indian Ocean after all), and we don't know what happened to the passengers (although I'm not optimistic about their fate). But that doesn't mean that the theory of "human error" requires fewer assumptions to explain what's there - and what's missing.

Now the reports here are saying the systems had been started to be shut down before the last voice communication from the flight crew.


http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/final-words-jet-came-systems-171331126.html

Or had just failed, rather than 'was disabled'? I feel a little for the family and reputation of these pilots, with all this speculation focusing on them, and no hard evidence.

Theory--The Russians hired the two pilots to fly to Russia so Tupolev or another aircraft factory can copy the 777 design. This assuming Boeing has tight network security since Microsoft is nearby

Found this in the comments of a Daily Mail article:

Cripes man, my ACARS craps out on me in Cancun, St. Martin, and at one of the gates in Des Moines not to mention many other places and airways. Need more info.

Seriously?

Why, surely the aliens won't go for poor quality unobtainium?

You're right....the Alien theory is more believable.

The 777 isn't exactly high level sensitive technology. It's a commercial product sold and operated in large numbers all over the world.

If the Russians wanted to reverse engineer a 20 year old airliner there would be far easier ways to get hold of an example other than arranging the theft of one during a scheduled airline flight with 239 people on board. They could for example, just buy one.

Or they could have just taken a really close look at the 777s that Aeroflot operated a few years back.

Israel is bolstering their already rigid air defense in the remote possibility that the airliner was "stolen" in order to rig it as a flying nuclear dirty bomb. Right now it seems that no scenario is really off the table (other than it flying into outer space).

I'm going to publicly rule out the possibility it's being turned into a seaplane.



The Jedi Master

-- this hijacking appears to have been carefully planned with 1 or more person having very good knowledge of the aircrafts communication/navigational systems

-- the possibility that the aircraft was landed somewhere is a very realistic possibility given the circumstances

Would it be possible to change the aircraft radio id whilst flying?

There's only 2 possibilities: it landed or it crashed. It can't still be flying.




The Jedi Master

What about Aliens posing as Russians....from the future?!

Future Russians...how could you tell? They'll be just as unhappy as those from the present...




The Jedi Master

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?

Holy crap, there are actors funded by the STATE? Talk about a waste of public funding!!!!

Oh right, that was probably started by Reagan...




The Jedi Master

So what do you think of this?

Russia “Puzzled” Over Malaysia Airlines “Capture” By US Navy

Salient points:

1. ...report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (GRU)...United States Navy “captured and then diverted” a Malaysia Airlines civilian aircraft from its intended flight-path to their vast and highly-secretive Indian Ocean base located on the Diego Garcia atoll.

2.Flight 370 was already under GRU “surveillance” after it received a “highly suspicious” cargo load that had been traced to the Indian Ocean nation Republic of Seychelles, and where it had previously been aboard the US-flagged container ship MV Maersk Alabama.

3. What first aroused GRU suspicions regarding the MV Maersk Alabama, this report continues, was that within 24-hours of off-loading this “highly suspicious” cargo load bound for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the two highly-trained US Navy Seals assigned to protect it, Mark Daniel Kennedy, 43, and Jeffrey Keith Reynolds, 44, were found dead under “suspicious circumstances.”

4.Critical to note about Flight 370’s flight deviation, GRU experts in this report say, was that it occurred during the same time period that all of the Spratly Island mobile phone communications operated by China Mobile were being jammed.

5.US Navy was able to divert Flight 370 to its Diego Garcia base, this report says, appears to have been accomplished remotely as this Boeing 777-200ER aircraft is equipped with a fly-by-wire (FBW) system that replaces the conventional manual flight controls of an aircraft with an electronic interface allowing it to be controlled like any drone-type aircraft.

I have to say it's no more weirder than some of the explanations so far!

I think that looks like a very rank amateur site for one that claims World's Largest English Language News Service.

Look at their (lack of) advertisers for such an esteemed outfit- that should mean something.

But to answer the question I posed? Is it any more/less preposterous than some of the other theories being put forward?

I think it is.

I don't know every theory out there being advanced, but click on the links of the website to see how their journalistic integrity works.

The first sentence says that Russia remains "puzzled" that this flight was “captured and then diverted” by the U.S. to its secret base in the area- you click on the link to see the source of this claim, and it leads to a Reuters article about the plane being missing, with no mention of any of these facts.

Other links work similarly, leading to Wikipedia portals with no reference to the context being claimed. Crazy facts supported by non-sequiters.

While people complain about corporate owned lamestream news outlets, I get that, but the alternative is like any whack job out there with a tinfoil hat broadcasting on public access at 0300 - only it's much worse because it's the Internet.

I think the plane was diverted (hijacked whatever) then another event took place and it crashed into the sea. Just think about it, 227 passengers and recall United 93 with fewer passengers who fought back. If it crashed a body or a wreckage might turn up somewhere. It took about five days before they found a body from the air France crash.

227 passengers and not a single call? What happened? Should we assume that if the passengers are alive they're somewhere where there is no cell coverage? How quickly can you silence all of them when something goes wrong? Do they have to divert the flight where there is no cell coverage? Did they plan against this in advance?

If the plane is still intact, landed somewhere flying to somewhere, with all the coverage there's a great chance that it could have been spotted by someone by now.

I would sooner bet money it crashing in the ocean- but that's only because it hasn't yet turned up intact, the lack of evidence doesn't prove this scenario, though, it's more a hunch. I think it's more probable because you can't simply land at an international terminal with this plane that everyone is looking for.

It's not comparable to Air France for the important reason they didn't have indicators of the aircraft being hijacked- it failed to check in, but no indication that equipment was being turned off or indication that the plane was being tracked hundreds of miles off its route.

Since the prevailing theory with this plane is that it has been deliberately taken somewhere other than its planned route, with a lot more possible destinations within reach rather than empty ocean, that modifies it a bit, from that likely basis, more scenarios open up than Air France.

One of the crew could have been suicidal, could have had other plans with the aircraft, and/or a passenger hijacked it. But some of these scenarios provide for more possibilities than what happened with Air France.

Take away the passenger's cell phones while still being out of cell range? Or simply kill the passengers by suffocation?

If they tried any of those and the passengers fought back that would be a good reason for a crash. BTW my Air France reference was about the discovery of evidence of a wreckage, bodies found etc.

"All right, good night"

This is apparently the last from the cockpit to air traffic controllers - AFTER some communication functions were disabled. Not at all a normal response from an experienced pilot.

and why would that be?

the parting words before you change center control frequencies are rarely important
communications start to get real loose

who knows what happened

there's not even enough information to speculate, the only thing we know is the radius the plane could have put down in is huge

if the pilot turns off the pax communications switch then all passenger wifi and cellular services are disabled. it's a trivial thing to do in jets that are equipped with it. there are no cell towers over the middle of the ocean and besides that you usually can't use a cell phone on regular cell towers while that high up anyway.

Being above FL140 will not kill people quickly. Per the FAR, you aren't even required to provide oxygen to passengers until you are at or above FL150.


http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgFAR.nsf/0/ba9afbf96dbc56f0852566cf006798f9!OpenDocument

Can an airline pilot intentionally depressurize the cabin, leaving the cockpit pressurized or supplied with emergency oxygen ( without turning on the passenger emergency oxygen system) ? If so, it might explain the sudden extreme high-altitude part of the flight. Quick and clean way to wipe out the passengers and any of the crew not in the cockpit at the time.

I may be wrong but I find it extremely difficult to believe that it crashed in the water and remains unlocated after all this time. There's just too much STUFF in an airliner that would make a giant, spreading mess on the water. Seat cushions, luggage, clothing, not to mention jet fuel.

Either that or it has been found, and somebody ain't tellin'.

Well they spent quite a lot of time looking in the wrong place.

That slick might have dissipated pretty quick if the seas were rough....the flotsam...just don't know.

I've always heard 14,000 is the cutoff. I know it's the level you must descend to if cabin pressure is lost. Hypoxia can set in as low as 8,000 feet for some people.

From the FAA regs:



FL140, even from your link, is a key altitude referenced frequently.

Regardless, FL350 (or whatever cruise was) is plenty high enough to have a rapid onset of hypoxia.

Pre-flight the pilot arms the emergency oxygen system for the passengers. I'm not sure if it can be turned off in flight but I'd guess it can be.

This is actually along the lines of a very common phrase from an experienced professional pilot. Typically, the more experience you have, the more "relaxed" you fly. We have not seen/heard the entire communication between the crew and ATC before the hand off to Vietnamese airspace. But generally the appropriate conversation would be:

ATC: MH370, contact Hochiminh on 123.45
Pilot: Contact XXX on 123.45, MH370

Technically, there should not be: good night, morning, hi how are you? etc.

Many pilots like to be chummy and nice over the radio, especially at 2 am when there is less traffic. So saying good night, morning, afternoon, etc is VERY common on the radio.

All these media outlets scrutinizing what the crew said, how it was said.... What's next? What did the crew eat prior to flight? When did they last take a dump? Omg, the captain has 18,000 hours AND has a homebuilt flight sim cockpit?! I guess i need to dismantle my Obutto before the Feds raid my house.



And thanks for getting the original MH370 thread moved to PWEC. You know who you are!

Adding to my previous post. Listen to the conversation in the video below. As you can tell, when you've got a nice Air Traffic Controller, you'll get a better working "rapport" over the radio. Saying "all right, good night" around 2am is perfectly normal. I'm sure the controller wished MH370 a good night/flight,etc as they were handed off.

For a split second it may very well have been a seaplane, before it turned into a submarine, which then itself is now becoming an artificial reef.

This is more a question for a current ATP qualified pilot, which I am not.

However, at least on the surface, I believe this is possible. Reason I say that is two weeks ago I saw an episode of Mayday Air crash investigations, in which a Greek budget airliner crashed...everyone suffering from Hypoxia. The conclusion was that aircraft maintenance people turned the automatic pressurisation off, in order to test for cabin pressure leaks on the ground, and did not turn the knob back to typical setting.

Then, during preflight check list, the copilot was momentarily distracted, and missed checking the setting. And they never caught it once airborne because the warning sound was generic, and the sub-panel area kind of obscured by sunlight.

So everyone, including the pilots, lost conciousness. Later a flight attendent, former Greek Special Forces, and training to be a pro pilot, woke and tried to rescue the situation, but by the time he made it to the pilot's seat, he only had time to indicate to Greek AF F-16 that they had no more fuel left. So the plane flamed out, lost alt until it hit a mountain side.

So...if the switch can be left "off", I suspect it could be turned off in flight. Maybe. But while both Boeing products, there could be significant differences between a 777-200 and 737-300 pressurisation systems, with perhaps a decade of engineering progress separating them.

Also, this presumes the one flying the Malaysian airliner had his own o2 tank supply.

Then there is the 20 employees of a computer chip maker... the truth of this flight may end up even stranger than terrorism or a looney pilot.

I don't believe in the hijack theory, my view is the plane crashed into the sea and what followed was a botched search and rescue effort in the wrong areas with wrong and or poor information has caused a bit of embarrassment to the authorities who are now doing damage limitation...and in the process has dragged the reputation of the flight crew through the dirt with no evidence what so ever.

The amount of no stories and trivial crap reported by the news was staggering, pilot had home built simulator and technical manuals, photos of pilots with pretty girls etc, alright good night coms? Plane flying noe to escape radar. Really!

@ rick

Yes a pilot can manually control the pressurisation system.

As for the coms, even over busy London airspace you will frequently hear "niceties" or non standard coms or a quick comedy reference over the radio - when the time is right.

Must you post stupid replies like this? I swear, posts like these and some of the other ones on here just make me shake my head in disgust.

Anyone have any idea of the radar coverage over the hypothetical
travel path given in the satellite-reception-based diagram/map
which was posted in the previous thread, and has been making the
rounds of news outlets - an arc up over Bengal and into the 'stans?
http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/15/15-malaysia-map.o.jpg/a_560x375.jpg

If the pilot had to keep below radar, it would be quite challenging
rather unaided flying in the dark. Perhaps the result is decorating
the side of a Himalaya. Looks pretty lumpy on that arc a tad north
of the headwaters of the Brahmaputra.

Alternatively, there is a lot of flat desert in western China, maybe
some cold war era old airfields, but possibly not hard for a group
to whip up a temporary field in hardpan, salt flats. Heck, in the
middle of the night, out there in Xinjiang, you could put up a fake
roadblock for the highly unlikely vehicle, and use one of the 10km
dead flat, dead straight stretches of the highway east of the Hotan
river for an airstrip. Skilled and prepared crew then monkeys with the
key avionics to squash the telemetry, maybe some quick spray paint,
and a load of fuel waiting, then off to somewhere nearby just slightly
more mainstream, a minor airport, ex-military, with a long runway and a
big hangar...

Just for the record, I don't mind this sort of thing, makes
the reading more interesting, and I pretty much expect it now.
The forum would be less without it. (I tried to see how it might
be regarded as offensive, and failed. Is that my shortcoming?)

Malaysian MH370 co-pilot entertained teenagers in cabin on earlier flight:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-cockpit-companions/

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/ma...riq-abdul-hamid



Soooo... that's why the flight deck is called a cockpit?

one thread already got closed because of that kinda nonsense, let's not make it two

These guys sure don't look like the sort to
be involved in the hijacking... unless perhaps
it involved a very large amount of money, and
no loss of life...

I totally relate with these fellows.
The more pics like that, the less I can imagine them doing something nasty.

Cheers,
Slug

One would think that since 9-11 we would have learned a few lessons. How is it that a large commercial airplane has the ability to turn off it's transponder manually? One would think it would be very important to keep track of any plane that could possibly turned into a deadly weapon or be used to kidnap people. Improvements need to be made so that any large plane can be tracked anywhere in the world. The black box also should be designed so that in case of a crash over water it can be found easily.

Those so called Black Boxes (they are actually orange) don't even float in water. They sink to the bottom! Heck, I can't even turn off the GPS on my car. Onstar and Lexus always knows where I am at all times if they wanted to spy on me. Why should a pilot of an airliner be able to turn off all transporters and GPS off manually especially when they are tasked with the responsibility of transporting 10 of 1000s of people across the world each year?

the transponder is not some magical homing beacon. it has multiple modes and it can be turned off when it's not needed.
i'm not sure what you think the transponder does but it's not a very special piece of equipment.
if the plane were hijacked there is a special transponder code the pilots can use to indicate the plane is being hijacked. so obviously the pilots / pirates / hijackers with knowledge of the airplane were careful to avoid that situation.



why shouldn't a pilot be able to turn off aircraft systems

what if your plane was about to catch on fire and the only way to stop the fire was for the captain to pull the fuses for the electrical system causing the problem? sure would suck to die because of a restriction put in place due to media hype.

Never realized "looks" have anything to do with your beliefs... but..

You realize several 9-11 hijackers loved to dance at nightclubs right? In fact I think it was the leader of the group with his buddies that danced the night away in Florida just before 9-11.

There are actually cases of plane crashes from malfunctioning transponders and airspace being screwed up by them. ATC can request them turned off. Pilots have to have the ability to turn them off for those reasons alone.

I've seen people on other comments sections (mostly of news articles) who seem so shocked by this. They don't get a pilot must be in control of every system so he can take care of every emergency, no matter how far fetched. Including fire as you said.

Probably the most basic reason is you don't have a transponder on while sitting at the gate pre-flighting or taxiing. Turning the transponder to TA/RA is something done at the runway threshold usually. It would overwhelm ATC to have 300 planes (at some major hub) all squawking within a 1/2 mile radius because they are forced to be on from startup.

Why not just put a GPS chip on every plane?

Right, after doing a little reading on the subject here's what I've picked up with regards to aircraft pressurisation and other such things:

i) It is possible for the crew to raise the pressure altitude of an airliner cabin when the aircraft is at cruise altitude. I couldn't find if it was possible to intentionally depressurise the cabin so that it was equalised with ambient pressure.

ii) The passenger oxygen masks will automatically deploy once the cabin pressure drops below a certain threshold. The automatic deployment cannot be prevented above 14,000ft.

iii) The passenger oxygen masks are not enough to keep the passengers conscious (or alive) for any length of time. They are simply designed to keep passengers conscious long enough for the crew to make an emergency descent to a safe altitude.

iv) The pilots' oxygen masks, whilst being better than the passengers' and having a slightly longer supply of oxygen, are again not designed to allow the pilots to function at high altitudes for any significant length of time.

Therefore, the notion that the pilots depressurised the cabin in order to kill the passengers is a non-starter, because they would probably end up incapacitating themselves as well.


The number of peole jumping straight to the conclusion that the aircraft has been stolen for use in a terror attack is perhaps indicative of the rather sensationalist mindset of a lot of people, and the fact that our governments or media have got at least some of us very scared about the possibility of such terror attacks. If you do some reading up on aviation crashes over the years you'll see there are plenty of incidents that were the result of a totally unforseen sequence of events. Indeed, MH370 isn't the first airliner to totally disappear from the face of the earth. There are at least two other examples of an airliner heading out across water and disappearing without a trace.

If and when the truth finally does come out it's almost certainly going to be far more mundane than some of the pretty sensational conspiracy theories doing the rounds at the moment. Some people perhaps need to stop watching so much TV/movies and get their heads back in the real world.

It probably will of ended up just having crashed into the sea.

But, the plane was turned around intentionally via the FMC (i.e. a specific airway doesn't get programmed by disorientation). The transponder was turned off intentionally. The engine monitoring was turned off intentionally. For what reasons, we don't know, but this was almost certainly the consequence of something deliberately done.

Summary of possibilities from the BBC News website:

1. Landed in the Andaman Islands
The plane was apparently at one stage heading in the direction of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the most easterly part of Indian territory, which lies between Indonesia and the coast of Thailand and Burma. It has been reported that military radar there might not even have been operating, as the threat level is generally perceived to be low.
The editor of the islands' Andaman Chronicle newspaper dismisses the notion that the aircraft could be there. There are four airstrips but planes landing would be spotted, he told CNN. He also believed monitoring by the Indian military would prevent an airliner being able to land there unnoticed. But this is an isolated spot. There are more than 570 islands, only 36 of which are inhabited. If the plane had been stolen, this might be the best place to land it secretly, says Steve Buzdygan, a former BA 777 pilot. It would be difficult, but not impossible, to land on the beach, he says. At least 5,000ft (1500m) or so would make a long enough strip to land on.
It would be theoretically possible but extremely difficult. With such a heavy aeroplane, using the landing gear might lead to the wheels digging into the sand and sections of undercarriage being ripped off. "If I was landing on a beach I would keep the wheels up," says Buzdygan. But in this type of crash landing, the danger would also be damage to the wings, which are full of fuel, causing an explosion. Even if landed safely, it is unlikely the plane would be able to take off again.

2. Flew to Kazakhstan
The Central Asian republic is at the far end of the northern search corridor, so the plane could hypothetically have landed there. Light aircraft pilot Sylvia Wrigley, author of Why Planes Crash, says landing in a desert might be possible and certainly more likely than landing on a beach somewhere. "To pull this off, you are looking at landing in an incredibly isolated area," says Wrigley. The failure so far to release a cargo manifest or passenger list has created wild rumours about either a valuable load on board or the presence of billionaires as a motive for hijacking.
But the plane would have been detected, the Kazakh Civil Aviation Committee said in a detailed statement sent to Reuters. And there's an even more obvious problem. The plane would have had to cross the airspace of countries like India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, which are all usually in a high state of military preparedness. But it's just possible that there are weak links in the radar systems of some of the countries en route to Central Asia, Wrigley speculates. "A lot of air traffic control gear is old. They might be used to getting false positives from flocks of birds and, therefore, it would be easy to discount it."

3. It flew south
The final satellite "ping" suggests the plane was still operational for at least five or six hours after leaving Malaysian radar range. For Norman Shanks, former head of group security at airports group BAA, and professor of aviation security at Coventry University, the search should therefore start from the extremes of the corridors and work up, rather than the other way around. He thinks the southern corridor is more likely for a plane that has so far avoided detection by radar.
The southern arc leads to the huge open spaces of the Indian Ocean, and then to Australia's empty northern hinterland. Without knowing the motive, it is hard to speculate where the plane's final destination was intended to be. But the plane may just have carried on until it ran out of fuel and then glided and crashed into the sea somewhere north of Australia.

4. Taklamakan Desert, north-west China
There has been speculation on forums that the plane could have been commandeered by China's Uighur Muslim separatists. Out of the plane's 239 passengers, 153 were Chinese citizens. One possible destination in this theory would be China's Taklamakan Desert. The region - described by Encyclopaedia Britannica as a "great desert of Central Asia and one of the largest sandy deserts in the world" - has no shortage of space far from prying eyes. The BBC's Jonah Fisher tweeted on 15 March: "Being briefed by Malaysia officials they believe most likely location for MH370 is on land somewhere near Chinese/Kyrgyz border."
But again, this theory rests on an extraordinary run through the radar systems of several countries.

5. It was flown towards Langkawi island because of a fire or other malfunction
The loss of transponders and communications could be explained by a fire, aviation blogger Chris Goodfellow has suggested. The left turn that the plane made, deviating from the route to Beijing, could have been a bid to reach safety, he argues. "This pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event onboard that made him make that immediate turn back to the closest safe airport." He aimed to avoid crashing into a city or high ridges, Goodfellow argues. "Actually he was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000ft (4,000m) strip with an approach over water at night with no obstacles. He did not turn back to Kuala Lumpur because he knew he had 8,000ft ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier towards Langkawi and also a shorter distance." In this theory it would be assumed that the airliner did not make it to Langkawi and crashed into the sea.
But Goodfellow's theory has been disputed. If the course was changed during a major emergency, one might expect it to be done using manual control. But the left turn was the result of someone in the cockpit typing "seven or eight keystrokes into a computer on a knee-high pedestal between the captain and the first officer, according to officials", the New York Times reported. The paper says this "has reinforced the belief of investigators - first voiced by Malaysian officials - that the plane was deliberately diverted and that foul play was involved."

6. The plane is in Pakistan
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has tweeted: "World seems transfixed by 777 disappearance. Maybe no crash but stolen, effectively hidden, perhaps in northern Pakistan, like Bin Laden." But Pakistan has strenuously denied that this would be possible. The country's assistant to the prime minister on aviation, Shujaat Azeem, has been reported as saying: "Pakistan's civil aviation radars never spotted this jet, so how it could be hidden somewhere in Pakistan?" Like the Kazakhstan theory, this all seems far-fetched, not least because the junction between Indian and Pakistani air space is one of the most watched sectors in the world by military radar. And despite the remoteness and lawlessness of northern Pakistan, the region is watched closely by satellites and drones. It seems scarcely believable to think an airliner could get there unspotted.

7. The plane hid in the shadow of another airliner
Aviation blogger Keith Ledgerwood believes the missing plane hid in the radar shadow of Singapore Airlines flight 68. The Singaporean airliner was in the same vicinity as the Malaysian plane, he argues. "It became apparent as I inspected SIA68's flight path history that MH370 had manoeuvred itself directly behind SIA68 at approximately 18:00UTC and over the next 15 minutes had been following SIA68." He believes that the Singaporean airliner would have disguised the missing plane from radar controllers on the ground. "It is my belief that MH370 likely flew in the shadow of SIA68 through India and Afghanistan airspace. As MH370 was flying 'dark' without a transponder, SIA68 would have had no knowledge that MH370 was anywhere around, and as it entered Indian airspace, it would have shown up as one single blip on the radar with only the transponder information of SIA68 lighting up ATC and military radar screens." The Singapore Airlines plane flew on to Spain. The Malaysian jet could have branched off. "There are several locations along the flight path of SIA68 where it could have easily broken contact and flown and landed in Xingjian province, Kyrgyzstan, or Turkmenistan," Ledgerwood argues.

8. There was a struggle
One of the hardest things to account for so far with an innocent explanation is the way the plane was flown erratically. It went far above its "ceiling", flying at 45,000ft (13,716m) before later flying very low. Big fluctuations in altitude suggest there might have been a struggle, says Buzdygan. Post-9/11, cockpit doors have been strengthened against the possibility of hijack but there are still scenarios where access could be gained. Pilots talk to each other "over a beer" about how they'd deal with hijackers, he says. Buzdygan would have had no qualms about flying aggressively to try to resist a hijack. "I'd try to disorientate and confuse the hijackers by throwing them around," he says.

9. The passengers were deliberately killed by decompression
Another theory circulating is that the plane was taken up to 45,000ft to kill the passengers quickly, aviation expert Sean Maffett says. The supposed motive for this might have been primarily to stop the passengers using mobile phones, once the plane descended to a much lower altitude. At 45,000ft, the Boeing 777 is way above its normal operating height. And it is possible to depressurise the cabin, notes Maffett. Oxygen masks would automatically deploy. They would run out after 12-15 minutes. The passengers - as with carbon monoxide poisoning - would slip into unconsciousness and die, he argues. But whoever was in control of the plane would also perish in this scenario, unless they had access to some other form of oxygen supply.

10. The plane will take off again to be used in a terrorist attack
One of the more outlandish theories is that the plane has been stolen by terrorists to commit a 9/11 style atrocity. It has been landed safely, hidden or camouflaged, will be refuelled and fitted with a new transponder before taking off to attack a city. It would be very hard to land a plane, hide it and then take off again, Maffett suggested. But it can't be ruled out. "We are now at stage where very, very difficult things have to be considered as all sensible options seem to have dropped off," he says. It is not clear even whether a plane could be refitted with a new transponder and given a totally new identity in this way, he says. Others would say that while it is just about feasible the plane could be landed in secret, it is unlikely it would be in a fit state to take off again.

RedToo.

It makes me shake my head in disgust at the sad lives people with no sense of humor must live. Life is so very enjoyable when everyone is dead serious.





The Jedi Master

In amongst all of the dark conspiracy, a simpler theory:

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/mh370-electrical-fire/

Not just Nightclubs, but strip clubs, consuming alcohol and buying hookers apparently as well.

My friend and I have had a couple of heated arguments on turning off communication with the plane and he was adamant that it was as simple as turning off a switch because they showed it on the news, I know that this is true of the transponder but not ACARS. In looking up info I found this interesting little exchange.
http://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-472227.html

The theory set out in the Wired link (electrical fire) is actually pretty comprehensive and logically set out and addresses most of the known anomalous facts, most notably the transponder and ACARS shutdowns...

I was thinking the same. Saw a documentary once which dealt with the Swissair crash at Nova Scotia, the investigators came to the conclusion, the fire destroyed all electrical systems, even the recorders went out at some point. They sat in a dark cockpit at the end.

Today's youth got our back



Just call them

But does that explain absolutely no communication from everyone on board? Someone in the cockpit told ATC good night, AFTER one communication device was shut down. Plus, no cellphone calls? No texts? No twitterizations? No comms at all from anyone... very odd.

The wired article really isn't anymore plausible than the nonsense on CNN. (Speaking of which, if I see that 777 "sim instructor" in his Levi's and tee shirt one more time I will post photos of Wolf and Anderson in bed together--I swear it!). First "Palau Langkawi". That would make sense as an immediate alternate. But if the guy is on fire with his mask on he isn't going to casually turn the airplane left with the Heading Bug. And he certainly isn't going to program langkawi into the FMC and use LNAV to make the turn. He is (they are) going to immediately put on his mask, establish intercom so the two can communicate through the masks, try to clear the smoke if possible WHILE he grabs the yoke and makes the turn. Tire fire--BS!! Jet tires today are formulated not to do that. They will certainly melt and sputter if the brakes get hot enough but they will not sustain a flame once the source of the flame stops. However, a fire is still a decent theory but no more plausible than a pilot going apesh!t. Climbing to put out the fire: Nonsense. No sane pilot would do that. Electrical arcing gets worse with altitude, not better. Trying to out climb and thereby "starve" the fire would be as insane as suicide. Fire means get on the ground ASAP!!! ASAP means get down and go fast. Flight Engineer: Not Wired's theory but worth mentioning. Anyone who is a "flight engineer" is someone who knows about airplanes that now decorate boneyards (see my comments about the DC-10 elsewhere at SimHQ). A flight engineer would be as lost on and as unneeded on a 777 as my grandmother. By "engineer" they probably misunderstood the non-US term for aviation mechanic. If so, he certainly wouldn't be lost but his presence on the plane really means nothing. In addition him, that plane carried doctors and housewives and atheists and lama lovers. Any one of them would be about as likely as any other to do something nefarious if they cared to. Focusing on one over the other is just the desperate graspings of people (like me) who haven't a clue. "Destroyed control surfaces"!? When I read that the writer lost any remaining credibility. I mean really! By the time the fire gets to the control surfaces, well, I'd think one's fate is pretty much sealed. "All was well" when the pilots signed off with KL. There I agree. ACARS comm: disconnecting the ACARS is not difficult. You just manually select an inoperative comm source (an SITA region far from your own, for instance), et voila!--disconnected. So the Wired guy claims to have come up with a simple theory. But really his theory is just as convoluted as the stuff spewing from the Anderson Cooper show. This has become a parlor game where we all serve no purpose other than to play the game.

Yeah, that wire theory has a ton of holes in it, just like every theory.

All the reasons you listed and I also don't buy he'd divert to a much further away airport because of obstacles around the closest one. If the plane is on fire you head for the nearest suitable place. We also know the plane flew for 7 hours past that point. He speculates the crew was already dead and it kept flying by itself but that seems farfetched.

It would also be a hell of specific fire to immediately destroy all comms, the transponder, the ACARS, kill the crew, but somehow leave the FMC and rest of the flight systems just fine to be programmed to divert and flying itself for hours afterward.

There are redundancy systems from radio comms as well. All those were immediately destroyed so no may-day call was made? Don't buy it.

Smokin', I'll grant you that the FMC is anomalous, however the rest of your points are really neither here nor there.
1- re: tires. He's speculating on one possible source of the fire. There could be any number of causes of fire disabling the radio/ACARS/transponder-
2- his first position is NOT that the pilot took it up to FL450; his first position is that that reading is most likely a radar read error. The "brought it up to 45,000ft to starve the fire" is proposed as an alternate if one is to accept the radar read to be correct.

I'm not saying he's right. But I DO see his point that the 1st action of a PIC on identifying a problem is going to be to divert to the closest suitable airfield and the plot would suggest that's what occurred.

Essentially the only real hole is why the FMC would be used rather than manually using the yoke. Is it possible that an electrical fire might have affected the control interface?(is the 777 fly by wire? surely it has some electro/mechanical/pneumatic assist that could/would be affected by fire... but I'd expect there to be redundancies).

Will any emergency signals from the plane in deep ocean stop transmitting in 20 days ? If so we have maybe 15 days left to find it in an area of 3 million square miles of deep ocean (if that's where it is)

There are also as many professional investigators and pilots that say that a number of scenarios are possible within certain parameters that are still presumed.

If they knew what happened, they'd probably have a wreckage by now. But because they don't, other than the very strong evidence that the plane was deliberately diverted off course, there are still a number of ways this apparently could have happened.

I have no idea, I'm only piecing together what experts are saying, and not all of them agree on any one story.

The key to the mystery is that they cannot reconstruct the pilots' frame of mind at the time the flight was diverted. The most reasonable explanation is that the plane deliberately changed course by someone with flight experience- the pilots in the cockpit are the easiest explanation for that, whether forced by terrorists, whether in flight emergency, whether at least one of them had a personal grudge or was suicidal. The why is still lacking and cannot be inferred from the facts.

There appears to be one piece of information, however, which might be assumed that the pilot and co-pilot weren't working together as a team for evil purposes, since apparently they didn't request to be assigned together. The roster was decided without pilot decision. At least that might point to the idea that they didn't both conspire to do anything beforehand.

hmm, I think the electrical fire theory from Goodfellow is so far among the most plausible ones, in my eyes.. but apart from that i wonder if stealing a plane has ever been done in a similar fashion (to those scenarios that involve the pilots as perpetrators) and where it would go then without beeing found.. a 777 is just near to unhideable in todays world.

I wonder if some "cast-away-survivor" fantasy might be another scenario.. i.e. some deliberate escape from society to an island or so. Atleast I would prefer that over the terror-hysteria




well, yes and no, the pilots could theoretically have had a plan beforehand and then have been waiting for the ocasion to come up. Or the manipulation of the assignment mechanism.. there are endless ways around single constraints. I just hope they´ll find it

As I understand it, the assignment had nothing to do with the request from the pilots.

I don't know how those such things work in the airline industry, but it would therefore have to be agreed upon before the two:

"If we ever have the chance to fly together in the future, we're going to do such and such..."

Otherwise, it happens right then and there.

P1: "Say, you know what sounds good right now?"
P2: "Lay it on me."
P1 "Taking this thing to...."

that was, what I was talking about.. if an assignment mechanism goes trough forseeable cycles (aka "every 2-3 weeks i´ll work with joe on long distance" or even is clandestinely influenceable it wouldn´t be implausible at all. Blackmailing the pilots into something though, is less conceiveable in such an assignment scenario. Unless insider knowledge is involved.

That all makes the pilots the prime focus of investigation, as well as the max range of the plane (either in an accident by electrical fire scenario or a willfull wandering off course.) In the accident scenario, the route would be pretty straight on autopilot, in the other there would have to be a plausible destination.. both factors that should make the plane findable

Still, not a single peep from any of the 200+ passengers and flight attendants. In this day and age it's inconceivable that not one word from anyone. The electrical fire doesn't account for the silence.

Not a whole bunch of cell towers in the Indian Ocean.

The cell phone thing just seems dumb. It was the middle of the night flight and they crew I am sure told everyone to turn their phones off on takeoff then they went outside cell service almost instantly. Of course there is not going to be any cell pings.

Already countries including the U.S. are beginning to scale back the search. An ex- NTSA official tonight said on television that because of this aircraft's uncertain path ...the search area is more like 28 million square miles.

if this aircraft is sitting at the bottom of the Indian Ocean it most likely will never be found:

--the Indian Ocean is the world's 3rd deepest ocean
--because of the aircraft's uncertain flight path we are looking at 28 million square miles of search area
--the emergency signal inside the black box is good for 30 days

sadly, the families of the 239 people on board - will likley never have the closure they would like

Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2501 Cannot Be Found Over Lake Michigan

..but the year is 1950. some debris and body parts were found - and thats all of the 58 people on board that was ever found.
Alerie van Heest and a dedicated group of volunteers have spent a decade searching for the sunken fuselage and engines of the DC-4.
"It became an effort to provide closure to those families still waiting after more than six decades."


Van Heest published a book, "Fatal Crossing," last year about the crash and the quest to find the plane

http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_2...-plane-vanished

Local news channel`s features this last week. Another tragedy never solved.

actually it was solved when they found some wreckage and body parts ..... but the Korean war replaced those headlines the next day or so ...and this plane was forgotten by all except the families, friends and perhaps a few others

I can understand a guy committing suicide. I don't get how he can take 230+ with him.

That's just one theory, nothing more. I don't think we'll ever know.

But, .... something happened. I real sure of it now.

If it crashed, they need to at least find something. Disappearing without a trace (no bodies, or wreckage) is tough for the families. The search for closure would be a difficult one.

I'm not saying that I discount the fire theory. I just discount how it is presented by the Wired article. It's not nearly as obvious or simple as the writer implies. But a fire itself, or some other event that causes quick incapacitation is much easier for me to stomach than other theories I've endured. Conspiracy I discount completely for a number of reasons. Murder/suicide only works if the surviving occupant of the flight deck became incapacitated before he finished what he started. A fire that takes out both avionics and fight control wiring yet somehow extinguishes before the plane is destroyed completely STILL YET after all occupants have succumbed COULD leave the plane as a stable uncontrolled lawn dart. I hope against all my own intuition that somehow this scenario is discovered to be true. Suicide is just too awful to contemplate.

I don't disagree with you-

No one knows. If they knew, they'd either have a plane intact on the ground or a wreckage somewhere. The fire theory is put forth by one person while there are many others pointing out many other possibilities, and any one of them could possibly work.

My point was to illustrate that a suicide pact might have to be formed well in advanced until the pilot's rotation paired up, and I leave that up to others to think about whether that sounds plausible.

I know someone who is in his 80s now.

He retired in the 90's after 26 years as an Airline Captain and he received a lot of retirement money making him a multi-millionaire.

He used to fly the best 747 routes from the U.S. to Europe and Asia.

On a side note:

I am not familiar with Courtney Love.

I heard of her name but I don't know what she has done.

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20797871,00.html

Doesn't pay like it used to, that's for sure. The 747 routes in the 70's paid really well. Not so much for long route pilots any more. A friend of mine was a 777 captain (now flying 737 Pacific routes) and was pretty much struggling like all my other friends with a wife and 2 kids. They were renting when I met them. Wouldn't have even met them if times were like they were in the 70's. They'd be in a totally different neighborhood.

They had a much better idea where to look for the Titannic, and look how long it took to find that. And it was just in two giant pieces. Sad to say, but if this one landed or crashed in the Indian Ocean...we may never find her.

I don´t know, this is the 21st century, large, searched for things don´t go simply missing anymore..

If a plane breaks up on impact, some floating debris will be found somewhere and with ocean current modeling in combination with other data you should be able to find a rough estimate where to look. The only way to really make it likely to disapear would be to have an unobserved coursechange over the ocean and ditch it intact without anyone opening doors (no emergency slides, life-wests etc...)

If it was in controled flight over the ocean, it more then likely had a destination and more then likely will have reached that. I wonder if they include the glide-ratio into the search, I think a 777 should get at least a glideratio of 20:1 and with max altitude that may have been enough to reach something like jemen, oman or somalia where you might be able to not get discoverd imiately..





and the antena-infrastucture is aimed at the ground, reception up is marginal.. it works sometimes but not reliably. It would also depend on whether the pax would realize something was wrong at what time and if it really was malignous acting, they could have been dead. From poising the onboard food to simply using cabin pressure, there is not really a built in safety against a hostile crew or crewmembers.

http://nypost.com/2014/03/19/residents-on-remote-island-we-saw-missing-plane/

Residents of a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean say they saw a “low-flying jumbo jet’’ four hours after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished from radar for the last time, according to a report Tuesday.

The residents live on the remote island of Kudahuvadhoo in Maldives — which has an international runway that was among five the plane’s pilot had used for practice on his home flight simulator, according to Malaysian daily newspaper Berita Harian.

Kudahuvadhoo residents told the paper that the massive plane they saw rumbling above them at around 6:20 a.m. on March8 had Malaysia Airlines’ trademark white body and red stripes.

The strangest thing is what they would conclude if they saw for instance my flight simulator habits...

"sometimes he just get bored and crashes"

What is this stuff showing up infrequently on british
news sites saying the pilot's wife and kids moved out
of their house the day before the flight? I tried googling
it and all I get are repetitions of the same phrase,
word for word. Can't figure out where it originated,
and don't see any further elucidation, except a couple
of reader comments which add "and their whereabouts are
now unknown" or equivalents. Seems a pretty outrageous
comment to make without any further details. I'm inclined
to suspect sordid tabloid misrepresentation, but I can't
even determine that.

Re the Maldives island, there is a large airstrip on one
of the islands about 100km north of there, I wonder if
they just saw a regular flight in a non-standard holding
pattern for the single runway strip. I presume the airline
wizards here can quickly determine what the local traffic
would be there.

Honestly I am not picking a fight but the fire scenario wasn't posed by one person. It was posed among airline circles immediately. The Swiss Air crash has always been one of the more horrifying lessons to airline pilots. It was only when the reports started to suggest that the plane had been airborne/intact for hours that a fire became far less likely. I want it to have been a fire as awful as that is to write. But I am a tiny bit familiar with the 777. It's no MD-11 and it's no ValueJet DC-9. It has a sophisticated Electical and CB system. I just don't see a way for an electrical fire to sustain and spread enough to completely lawn-dart the plane and cut off crew O2 and comms. And no other type of fire that I can imagine seems capable of doing all that while keeping the plane intact. The early FMC input suggests that they had a hint of a problem and were weighing scenarios in case it got worse. This would not be at odds with the final "good night" transmission. It is perfectly normal to press on when small problems occur. But when they do, you plan a course of action together in case the problem gets worse. However, if that small problem is either smoke they smell or that is reported in the cabin, Swiss Air has taught us all that the problem isn't small and the turn must be soon if not immediate. As I write this it just gets more baffling, not less. Nothing makes sense.

About 10 years ago, an US booster rocket was set to fall in the North Atlantic after a launch. The United Statses government very kindly warned us to keep shipping out of the expected "splash" are on the appropriate day. We replied that we would divert shipping but could not move a 1,000,000 ton ( yes that's a million ton) concrete oil platform in the area and would have to shut down and remove workers at a huge cost. We were not "happy campers". The US response was; "we didn't know it was there"

A million tons of concrete, lit up like a Chistmas tree with a huge gas flare,that had been sitting in the same spot for years and they "didn't know it was there"..........so finding a wee little airplane...........good luck !


This is not a rant aginst the US, just an illustration of the fact that finding stuff is not as easy as it looks on TV or movies.

Investigators this morning reporting they will be attempting to restore deleted files on the pilots home simulation rig he had built. Not sure what they have - people download programs and delete them all the time but who knows.

I agree with PV1, the family angle has been dropped, there has been no followup on that front. What does his wife have to say about it?

well if life has tought us anything, then the difference between what people say and what really is the case. If they really didn´t know or just didn´t care for economic reasons, where too lazy to actually check or just plain ignorant, in any case they would have found you if multiple instances had searched you. Not even submarines allways get away, when there is just enough attention focus.. In any case, I am confident that at least traces will be found. I don´t see an airliner simply vanishing in 2014.




oh dear.. a lot of us will be in trouble once something happens and they start looking that up. I had pretty similar thoughts...if anything ever went wrong with me and the media found my youtube channel, it would get probably pretty absurd. I´d wagger a guess that anyone how ever owned any sim, at least once crashed into a highrise or did some fantasy crash-landing attempt.




the whole thing with the wife and kids moving out aiming at suicide seems quite unlikely to me, especially combined with the apparently not pilot-input oriented crew assignment, now how likely is it that a guy on the edge walks up to his co-worker in one day and says: ok, lets make this flight our last and comes through with that?!?

I´d still say, the gradual failure area (like an electrical fire) seems the most plausible to me, albeit a terror or "#%&*$# it all" scenario is quite a close second. I wonder, if it first area may include other things then gradual failure like from a fire, like for instance hacking.. I mean we are just likely to see some day some serious digital attack in aviation.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/11/hacking_aircraft_with_android_handset/

Albeit, it is highly unlikely that the pilots did not re-gain control or noticed and reported an attack after a while..

Finally, someone, somewhere should've spotted the plane if it flew anywhere near a populated area. The thing about the Maldives report is that it was a "low flying jumbo jet" (so low that supposedly they can make out the doors on the plane unless flying that low is SOP for all commercial planes on that area).

Now on the link above it supposedly said that the Malaysian officials denied the report. I read somewhere that the Malaysian PM called all the local newspaper's heads and discussed how they should report about the matter.

If there is any information I would withold from the public is it's how the pilot "knocked out the passengers". Poisoning is not a sure guarantee unless you're extremely lucky or was able to coerce everyone into ingesting something at the same time. Recall also that passengers on Flight 93 were able to call their relatives so passengers communicating to anyone outside is possible under certain circumstances. I'm leaning to the "cabin pressure" and "radical change in altitude" thing (though of course I'm no aviation expert).

I'm curious about the Malaysian government's interest on the matter, how far they're willing to stifle the media, what they want to hide, and the repercussions. One thing is sure, they're doing all they can to point the finger at the pilots. All these things: simulator, photos with teenagers, reports about the family seem to come across as attempts to get people to bite something about the pilots. Problem is, IF they're closely monitoring their media, why were the raw, extremely speculative information allowed to leak out?

I'll stop my speculation here.

Good article and graphics:

http://www.news.com.au/world/malaysia-ai...v-1226858579129

RedToo.

Australian Article on Possible Wreckage in Southern Indian Ocean

Possible wreckage from Sat Imagery. RAAF/RNZAF and USN P-3s/P-8s being sent to area...

WTF...

again


WTF.

2/3rds of the passengers are your citizens and another country had to ask you to dispatch planes for search.

WTF

Chinese Gov is respectful of int'l boundaries.
No trespassing and treating neighbours kindly is the PRC's motto.

you didn't know ?

Cheers,
Slug

Yea...you are making a mountain range out of mole hill...

This is Australia being, oh, how do you say...DIPLOMATIC by making a public statement INVITING China to participate. That's it.

Chinese navy would have gone there, invited or not. It'd be international waters, and have just as much right as anyone to be there. This is just diplomats being diplomatic. Doing their job. You read too much out of that.

oselian,

Suggest you actually look at an atlas.You know, has maps and distances in it.

The possible wreakage is 2000km south west of the most western airforce base in Australia. Orions are flying out there as we speak and have been for the last few days but takes 4 hours and they can only be on station for 2 hours.

For the chinese to help in practical terms they would have to fly out of an australian air base hence the diplomacy. More practical would be the rerouting of chinese satelittes to help, or any warships in the area.

We are despatching ships, planes etc and New Zealand and the US are already helping but its a needle in a hay stack as that part of the southern ocean is rough and poor visibility with storms that come up from the antartic. Note the object could well be a shipping container as they are often lost in that part of the ocean. the dimensions seem about right.

To me the proper statement for that is "we have shared this information with the chinese authorities" or "we are coordinating etc." But I'm not a Diplomat and that is already over and done with. Sometimes I'm very picky with how some statements are delivered.

If they're coordinating properly in the background then fine, wonderful.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26659951

oselisan,

suggest you read this article in full. By the way we would be sharing the information with the Malaysian Government who are the search co-ordinators after all.

2300 km/ 1429 miles SW of Perth, Australia.

If this turns out to be really MH370, they were way off course even if something happened that made them turn around to try to go back to Malaysia.

Oh for goodness sake. Now they are really getting carried away with " what could have happened" guesses.


http://t.mediaite.com/mediaite/#!/entry/cnns-don-lemon-is-it-preposterous-to-think-a-black,532a620ee56d0bb853563718/1

There's plenty of "debris" under and floating on the worlds oceans - some very small and some much larger pieces. I don't even bother reading the news stories like that. If i had lost a loved one in a situation like that i probably would have rather focused on "confirmed", instead of some "possible" plane debris.

but that's just me

I suspect the truth isn't so sinister as some might imagine.

Evidently the U-turn the plane performed was programmed 12 minutes prior to the electronics going dark. It's easy to suspect that the pilot was involved in nefarious shenanigans. But I know if I were a pilot I would have my divert ready to go and I suspect that the programming was simply a plan B scenario. But then suddenly something happened and the pilot had only enough time to punch in the divert program before being overcome by hypoxia or smoke or what have you, the plane turned to fly the new course but due to the crew's incapacitation it just followed that alternative flight course until running out of fuel and crashing in to the sea.

Of course anything is possible and nothing should be ruled out, but I suspect it will prove to be something tragic, not sinister.

LOL nice

if the pilot suspected depressurization the first thing he'd probably do is put his mask on and set a new altitude for the autopilot, not engage the alternate mode.

also i'm not sure but i have a feeling the closest alternate at the time the plane went dark on radar was closer to being straight ahead rather than off to the sides or behind. the 777 has an alternate mode that will select the nearest capable airport and if engaged while lnav is turned on (which is usual) it just follows the path.

Where's my can of Brawndo the Thirst Mutilator.

"...even a tiny black hole would suck in our entire universe"

I think I'm gonna weep myself to sleep tonight.

Gotta love it, CNN doesn't just spend half their broadcasts reporting on what's trending on twitter which is dumb enough... now they even use the idiots on twitter for what questions to ask their expert panel.


21st century journalism at it's finest.

Even more funny when the "expert panel" is made up of people who are in the same intellectual league as the idiots on twitter.

Oooor, they are in the process of sucking our entire universe into the tiny black holes that are located where their brains are supposed to be....[in our dimensions, this process is perceived as them talking utter BS]

....therefore....

...they're ALIENS! Da da daaaaaaa!

I'm not saying they are aliens...BUT IT'S ALIENS!!1!

LOL!

When they say possible object on the Australian Satellite photos, are those objects floating on the water or submerged?

Looking at those photos, they don't look like anything to me.

People are nuts:

http://greatgameindia.wordpress.com/2014...maersk-alabama/

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/201...eo-2919754.html

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/there-conspiracy-behind-flight-370-search-n59041

Lots of effort being put into the search:



RedToo.

Why has the U.S. not sent a carrier group or something.

We have more naval presence and assets than any other country in the world.

Maybe because they know what really happened and don't want to waste the assets?

I was reading it takes 4 hours to fly from Perth and 4 hours to fly back thus allowing those Orion planes only 2 hours or less of flight time in the search area.

Send a carrier group closer to the search area so the planes can have more time to spend over the search area.

Australia has no aircraft carriers?

Because we are broke ???

Nope, we flogged her off to China for scrap in 1982. Name was HMAS Melbourne. Was going to be replaced by another second hand British job but that got tangled up in the Falklands war and so we ended up without a carrier. Pretty sad for the poor navy aviators, had to operate from HMAS Albatross (Navy land base). From Wiki;

HMAS Melbourne (R21) was a Majestic-class light aircraft carrier of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Operating from 1955 until 1982, she was the third and final conventional aircraft carrier(I) to serve in the RAN. Melbourne was the only British Commonwealth naval vessel to sink two friendly warships in peacetime collisions. More here;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Melbourne_(R21)

Crikey Dugite,sound as if she was jinxed. Bet the Navy were glad to see the back of her.

Other question is they don't have an airborne tanker on station near the search areas to refuel those search planes in midair?

Don't they have experts that can analyze the ocean's water temperature and currents so they can estimate where the debris would had been carried off to and in what direction between the time the satellite photos were taken and the time the search planes would had arrived in the area?

I expect so.

"The U.S. Pacific command said it was sending a black box locator in case a debris field is located. The Towed Pinger Locator, which is pulled behind a vessel at slow speeds, has highly sensitive listening capability so that if the wreck site is located, it can hear the black box pinger down to a depth of about 20,000 feet (6,100 meters), Cmdr. Chris Budde, a U.S. Seventh Fleet operations officer, said in a statement"

This was posted on the internet 7 minutes to 1 hour ago:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/24/mh370-chinese-plane-spots-white-objects-live-updates

http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedormine...rn-search-area/

About time they give those poor families some Closure, 2 weeks is an eternity for those who gone.

odd, news outlets are saying with certainty that the flight ended in the Indian ocean, yet they still haven't recovered anything, and they simply dispatched vessels for unidentified floating debris.

how many items were tagged by satellites the last 2 weeks? why automatically assume this is it?

They shouldn't make an announcement every time they see something floating in the ocean on satellite.

It's like crying wolf over and over and it's difficult on the families of the passengers.

Heck, as of right now they don't even know for certain that the area southwest of Perth is where the 777 went down because not one piece of debris seen on the satellite photos have been recovered to prove it is part of the 777.

"....new analysis of satellite data suggests the plane went down in the Southern Indian Ocean."

Suggests? How about physical evidence in hand? MH has handled this incident very poorly. Seems like they're just trying to sweep the mess under the rug and move on.

So who was the idiot who decided it was a good idea to send the relatives a text saying that 'we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived'.

Also that a UK satellite has confirmed that it went down in the Southern Indian Ocean,but still no conclusive proof?

Let's assume they're right on this one- if that is the case, it sounds like something sinister happened. The equipment being shut off, the plane changing way off course headed nowhere near land but to a remote, pointless region of ocean. The scenario of a pilot murder/suicide still could fit within these parameters, it's almost as if perhaps one or both of the pilots incapacitated everyone, including themselves, the deed is easier done as the plane eventually goes into the drink. The most ironic part about this are the two apparently Iranian passengers with stolen passports who went through all the trouble to steal away for Europe.

If I was related to one of the passengers, I will be suing and looking to file criminal charges!

Equipment being shut off screams that it wasn't something sinister. Imagine you were on the flight deck with the desire to end it all. Just do it. None of that equipment means a thing. Nobody can stop you. All they can do is watch, transponder on or off.

Taken together- equipment turned off, and headed off in the wrong direction to the middle of nowhere makes a case that it can't be ruled out yet. It doesn't prove it, but makes the case. I make the inference because of the possibility raised before in order to take the passengers out of the equation, they could have knocked out or executed all of them by removing the air pressure- but then I thought that they or (one of them) could have deliberately taken themselves out with them the very same way- knocked out or already dead while the plane may have coasted way off course until the plane hit the water.

In the end, it's still not known what happened to make it crash, you can't rule that out yet. It can be suggested that someone wanted to take the plane off and die in quiet peace somewhere this way, unlike that co-pilot of that one airline who tricked the pilot out of the cockpit and put the jet into the ocean screaming his prayers or whatever. Just a theory, though.

The blame game begins:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...ial-delays.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worl...h370-relatives/



assume beyond any reasonable doubt? Isn't that an Oxymoron?

Has anyone heard that the plane was carrying a shipment of LiPo batteries? I got this from my mechanic who is really into RC flying but haven't heard it anywhere else. Those batteries scare me so much that I will only charge them outside.

A friend of mine went to some international airline conference here in Vienna where LiPo was specifically discussed for the risks. These things like to burst into flame when pressure changes and are not the most perfect cargo for an airliner...

Interesting story if true.

I did a search after posting and nothing of real value came up. It is true though that Malaysia is a large manufacturing base for the LiPo batteries used in RC.

I have.

On the 2nd day.

Who would you sue and what exactly are the criminal charges you would be filing? No one even know what happened.

Well if we combine intent with fire, we get a suicide/elope/statement pact between Islamist or homosexual pilots who depressurise to kill the passengers, but inadvertantly set off a catastrophic fire on the LiPo batteries. Efforts are made to limit or extinguish the fire but the pilot(s) are overcome after setting the autopilot in a straight line from the random heading they ended up on.

Or it could be aliens.

okay, it went down, I think many people including me (from my posts earlier) expected that tragic scenario. The weird thing is, the "blame game" article above was about finding the wreckage... I cannot for the life of me, imagine how the blame game would proceed when we get to the cause of the crash. I predict a disgusting, slimy, political state of affairs even in the face of such a tragic event. I can only sympathize with the relatives.

I don't like how the message was given

I have this feeling that they don't want to waste resources searching for survivors or bodies. It's a feeling so I won't back it up with reasons. Even with Air France, they continued the search for bodies, I think 20+ days after the crash has been confirmed.

I hope I am proven wrong about this suspicion and will hear that recovery efforts continue further at a reasonable time. The same way I am glad to see that China and Malaysia have devoted the largest amounts of resources in the search.

People have survived more than a hundred days adrift. There was a hijacking where the pilot was forced to crash his plane to the sea and some survived that IIRC including the pilot. I can only imagine some of the relatives clinging to the most improbable hopes.

/rant off

Flight(s) of Oz - Malaysia MH370, Lost, Twilight Zone, Asiana, Crowley 777, Oso, Oscar(s) & MSM Mystery Religion

http://subliminalsynchrosphere.blogspot.com/2014/03/flights-of-oz-malaysia-mh370-lost.html

While Malaysia Airlines has handled this mess poorly, the mainstream media has been no less guilty of poor reporting. Jon Stewart rips the media a new one: (scroll down a bit for the video)

http://www.uproxx.com/up/2014/03/jon-stewart-went-town-cnn-neverending-mh370-coverage/

Well I will admit to not following this thing very closely.

Batteries or not, a possible fire has nothing to do with the plane doing a 180 and flying another direction with its equipment shut off.

If they can get the CVR and the FDR from the wreckage they should know more.




The Jedi Master

Wiki already has a page for it.

I don't know how accurate and truthful the information there is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370

Someone posted this comment in one of the news articles I found online today about MH370:

Not necessarily Jedi. Well I agree its odd, but all scenarios are odd. The turn as a result of a fire is not only understandable but prudent. The equipment stuff I have no answer for other than that a fire, explosion or massive short could cause damage in the E&E compartment and from there anything could happen.

There's a history of what planes have done as a result of inflight fires. This one has not conformed to any of them. Weren't they closest to Singapore when contact was lost? Why would they not have continued on to there instead of heading BACK?

Unless the pilots were caught unaware, not very good (ie kinda stupid), and extremely unlucky to lose navigation and comms, but lucky enough not to lose flight controls or autopilot...it just stretches credulity to think a simple cargo fire resulted in this bizarre outcome. Now if they'd crashed in the South China Sea, sure. But SW of Australia??



The Jedi Master

I´d disagree.. I´ve seen people doing silly things while beeing cognitivly impaired by dehydration and I imagine toxic fumes may work likewise... resorting to distorted original intentions and number slips are a comon error, so dialing in a course 180 degrees is actually not unimaginable.. I think there was an electra-crash in Brasil where the pilot fouled up numbers in his head..

interesting that Israel has increased security involving inbound flights

How big is that plane in the video on this CNN page?

What model is that?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/29/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/

----------
My feedback on such:

First you don't have all the bodies or the time frame to back up the statement that everyone died so don't say something so final as "All lives are lost". The accurate statement for that is, "The chances of survival are remote/low." Be truthful!

You want to appear good and caring by saying that you're not giving false hope. How about not giving false hope in an honest way. Anyone with common sense will indeed think that you're not going to search for survivors because you think that there's none.
----------

This is why the clarification is needed that they will search for survivors. They messed up that's why a mixed message is coming through.

DEVELOPING STORY

I too struggled to keep my car moving when my gas tank gauge needle hits E.

OMG ; the stupidity is endless.

Yep that's CNN for ya.

They can turn a bump in the road into a possible earthquake in seconds.

well, journalism used to be a profession before it became a swearword ;=)

I also found this Reuters tidbit quite non-informative:

I think I learned more from the missile knowing where it is by knowing where it isn't.



The Jedi Master

Hahahhahaha.

Everyday I wake up and I get on the internet and the first thing I do besides checking my email is hoping to see the headline:

"MH 370 wreckage found"