# Malaysia Airlines Loses Contact with Flight - 239 pax/crew



## SarahZ

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/08/malaysia-airlines-loses-contact-plane



> A search and rescue operation is under way after Malaysia Airlines said that a plane carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew on board went missing en route to Beijing.
> 
> The company said that it lost contact with the aircraft two hours after takeoff and it was now working with authorities who had deployed search and rescue teams to locate the aircraft, which had left Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am local time on Saturday (6.41pm GMT on Friday).


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## SarahZ

Update: They've started contacting next of kin. 

http://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/world/malaysia-airlines-flight-missing-with-239-people-including-2-canadians-1.1720011


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## Texan Eagle

This is very sad, and almost unbelievable. In today's day and age, an airplane with brilliant safety record like the 777 does not simply "go missing" with no contact for several hours. Something terrible must have happened to it to just drop off radar like this.

Let's wait and watch, hoping for a very unlikely miracle that some (better, all) passengers survive somehow.


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## Paulus

Texan Eagle said:


> This is very sad, and almost unbelievable. In today's day and age, an airplane with brilliant safety record like the 777 does not simply "go missing" with no contact for several hours. Something terrible must have happened to it to just drop off radar like this.
> 
> Let's wait and watch, hoping for a very unlikely miracle that some (better, all) passengers survive somehow.


The weird thing is that you'd normally be able to spot said terrible thing on radar.


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## Texan Eagle

Vietnam Navy now confirming the plane has crashed into the sea some 150 miles off the coast. No word yet if there are any survivors. 

http://my.news.yahoo.com/mas-aircraft-goes-missing--says-airline-023820132.html


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## brentrain17

prayers


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## SarahZ

This is incredibly sad.


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## Swadian Hardcore

Here's all I could find: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140307/1635Z/WMKK/ZBAA.

Looks like the plane dropped off public tracking before even leaving Malaysian airspace. What did the radar operators see?

Here is the usual flight path of MH 370: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140306/1635Z/WMKK/ZBAA.

Accroding to maps, 153 miles south of Phu Qouc Island would put the crash site near the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand, in Vietnamese airspace?


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## Texan Eagle

Swadian Hardcore said:


> Here's all I could find: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140307/1635Z/WMKK/ZBAA.
> 
> Looks like the plane dropped off public tracking before even leaving Malaysian airspace. What did the radar operators see?
> 
> Here is the usual flight path of MH 370: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140306/1635Z/WMKK/ZBAA.
> 
> Accroding to maps, 153 miles south of Phu Qouc Island would put the crash site near the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand, in Vietnamese airspace?


Flightaware is pretty unreliable in that part of the world. Even regular flights "drop off" regularly on Flightaware.

FlightRadar24 has this archived part showing the exact moment the plane disappeared from radar. Look at the "altitude" box on the left change abruptly from '35000ft' to '0ft' and the plane disappears thereafter. This is a heavy simulation, so be patient and let it load fully.

http://www.flightradar24.com/2014-03-07/17:20/12x/6.97,103.63/7


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## XHRTSP

Swadian Hardcore said:


> Here's all I could find: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140307/1635Z/WMKK/ZBAA.
> 
> Looks like the plane dropped off public tracking before even leaving Malaysian airspace. What did the radar operators see?
> 
> Here is the usual flight path of MH 370: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140306/1635Z/WMKK/ZBAA.
> 
> Accroding to maps, 153 miles south of Phu Qouc Island would put the crash site near the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand, in Vietnamese airspace?


You're not seeing what you think you're seeing. None of those are radar tracks. In the case of the prior flight, the line starts based upon ADS info within the vacinity of the Kuala Lumpur airport, from there no data is available until it reaches Hong Kong. At that point when new info is available, Flightaware simply draws a straight line between the two sets of positions. For the accident, same thing, but since the plane never reached Hong Kong, the feed stops in the vacinity of Kuala Lumpur and goes no further, even though the plane did.

You must remember that in large parts of the world there simply is no enroute radar coverage, or it's very spotty. Sequencing is done the old fashioned way with pilots giving their position and other revelant info to controllers, and the controllers doing some algebra to forecast where planes will be to avoid conflicts.


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## Swadian Hardcore

I understand now. Thanks for the FlightRadar24, Texan Eagle.


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## jis

XHRTSP said:


> You must remember that in large parts of the world there simply is no enroute radar coverage, or it's very spotty. Sequencing is done the old fashioned way with pilots giving their position and other revelant info to controllers, and the controllers doing some algebra to forecast where planes will be to avoid conflicts.


Indeed! You don;t have to go too far to find such. There is no radar coverage of the trans-atlantic tracks thata re used for flying from the US to Europe. And exactly, sequencing is done the old fashioned way with expected positions being recorded as a plane enters the oceanic route. At each registered checkpoint the plane is supposed to report back. When one doesn't that is when you know something went wrong. There may be other radio contacts like ACARS in case of the Air France flight that crashed into South Atlantic.


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## jis

Apparently two lengthy oil slicks consistent with the sort that one would expect from a large crashed airliner have been located off the southern tip of Viet Nam by the Viet Nam Air Force. Independent confirmation is awaited.

The location would be somewhere north of Igari in flight charts putting it at the border of Singapore WSJC and Ho Chi Minh VVTS control centers, more on the Ho Chi Minh side of the line I think. This would be consistent with reports that the last contact was with Ho Chi Minh.

See this chart. From vague reports the area in question maybe around Abop.

Just to repeat, all preliminary awaiting confirmation. Remember we are at present in the proverbial "fog of initial discovery".


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## MrFSS

jis said:


> Apparently two lengthy oil slicks consistent with the sort that one would expect from a large crashed airliner have been located off the southern tip of Viet Nam by the Viet Nam Air Force. Independent confirmation is awaited.


Any idea how deep the water is in that area? Locating the black box may be difficult.


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## pennyk

MrFSS said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> 
> Apparently two lengthy oil slicks consistent with the sort that one would expect from a large crashed airliner have been located off the southern tip of Viet Nam by the Viet Nam Air Force. Independent confirmation is awaited.
> 
> 
> 
> Any idea how deep the water is in that area? Locating the black box may be difficult.
Click to expand...

NBC news was stating that it took 2 years to recover Air France wreckage years ago, and was very costly. However, where this crash might have occurred, the countries involved do not have the kind of resources that France had. It looks like a difficult endeavor.


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## jis

Depth of Gulf of Thailand is 45m to 80m. Not anywhere near as deep as the middle of the South Atlantic. Also I have no reason to believe that China's resources are any less spectacular than France's notwithstanding what NBC might think. More than half the passengers were Chinese.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


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## OlympianHiawatha

Unless it was a D.O. Guerrero type event (_*Airport *_movie), as time passes and no one takes credit hopefully that will reduce the probability of terror. Now that opens the fear of catastrophic mechanical failure of a ship that has a stellar safety record.


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## jis

Or catastrophic pilot error.....

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


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## Paulus

jis said:


> Or catastrophic pilot error.....
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


Or a shark.


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## jis

It now appears that at least two passengers on board were using stolen Passports masquerading as someone they actually were not.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


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## Texan Eagle

Meanwhile today's Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is on its way from KUL to PEK normally. It must be quite a flood of emotions for the passengers taking the same flight today, thinking the same flight yesterday has gone missing with no traces of it even after 24 hours, especially if they go online to check status of their flight and the top results for "MH 370" are all "about crash, lost, missing"


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## SarahZ

jis said:


> It now appears that at least two passengers on board were using stolen Passports masquerading as someone they actually were not.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


Here's the article:

http://rantsofasassystew.com/2014/03/stolen-passports-prompt-terror-concerns-in-missing-jet-officials-say/


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## jimhudson

Talk about bad karma! If these guys bought those passports they sure didn't get their moneys worth!


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## Swadian Hardcore

Why have the searchers still not found the wreck? If the Gult of Thailand isn't that deep they should have found it by now. Right now it's daytime in Malaysia, they should be able to find it before sundown, or they'll really be in toruble. Why not use some satelite imaging?


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## Paulus

Swadian Hardcore said:


> Why have the searchers still not found the wreck? If the Gult of Thailand isn't that deep they should have found it by now. Right now it's daytime in Malaysia, they should be able to find it before sundown, or they'll really be in toruble. Why not use some satelite imaging?


You're looking for something relatively small, without the best equipment, in a relatively large area, with an imprecise location, at best, of where it went down. Even finding a floating ship can be difficult.


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## jis

I must say that Malaysian Immigration Border Posts have a little work to do. They were unaware of stolen passports that were reported to Interpol in 2012 and 2013? When were they planning to become aware I wonder.

Apparently even Malaysian Airlines was not particularly aware of them, or perhaps they do not do much checking of the traveler information that they collect, or perhaps they do not collect such after all. Who knows?

I must also say that it is really getting stranger by each hour that they are unable to find any parts of the plane anywhere. Perhaps they are looking at the wrong place? Afterall what happened to the plane after contacts was lost is not exactly known too well, is it?


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## Blackwolf

It certainly does seem to get a bit stranger. CNN is reporting in regard to the stolen passports:



> The two passengers who used the passports in question appear to have bought their tickets together.
> 
> The tickets were bought from China Southern Airlines at identical prices, paid in Thailand's baht currency, according to China's official e-ticket verification system Travelsky. The ticket numbers are contiguous, which indicates the tickets were issued together.
> 
> The two tickets booked with China Southern Airlines both start in Kuala Lumpur, flying to Beijing, and then onward to Amsterdam. The Italian passport's ticket continues to Copenhagen, the Austrian's to Frankfurt.


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## Texan Eagle

I find it more and more hard to believe as hours pass by. Its been about 48 hours now, there are about 40 ships and 25 airplanes engaged in search and rescue effort and yet absolutely *no clue* of where the plane is or what happened to it? A 777 is not exactly a small thing that can disappear into thin air, so what is going on?


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## GG-1

Texan Eagle said:


> I find it more and more hard to believe as hours pass by. Its been about 48 hours now, there are about 40 ships and 25 airplanes engaged in search and rescue effort and yet absolutely *no clue* of where the plane is or what happened to it? A 777 is not exactly a small thing that can disappear into thin air, so what is going on?


Hey maybe it was hijacked by an spaceship! h34r: :angry2: :giggle:  :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


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## XHRTSP

Texan Eagle said:


> I find it more and more hard to believe as hours pass by. Its been about 48 hours now, there are about 40 ships and 25 airplanes engaged in search and rescue effort and yet absolutely *no clue* of where the plane is or what happened to it? A 777 is not exactly a small thing that can disappear into thin air, so what is going on?



These things take time, they always do.


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## SarahZ

More updates:

http://rantsofasassystew.com/2014/03/floating-object-spotted-by-vietnams-navy-in-gulf-of-thailand/

http://rantsofasassystew.com/2014/03/vietnam-searchers-report-spotting-plane-debris-officials-say-they-found-piece-of-door-airplane-tail/

http://rantsofasassystew.com/2014/03/group-claims-disappearance-of-plane-was-political-act/


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## SarahZ

I've never traveled with a passport, so I always assumed your passport was scanned somehow. That's why I was surprised that nobody realized it was a stolen passport. I figured they would scan them or verify them against a database, something like that.


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## Bob Dylan

Texan Eagle said:


> I find it more and more hard to believe as hours pass by. Its been about 48 hours now, there are about 40 ships and 25 airplanes engaged in search and rescue effort and yet absolutely *no clue* of where the plane is or what happened to it? A 777 is not exactly a small thing that can disappear into thin air, so what is going on?


 As an old Navy hand who Sailed in Harms Way in these Waters back in the Vietnam War Era, I assure you that it isn't that easy to see and Locate Ships and Planes in these Waters! Our Electronic Equipment (I was a Radioman) was World Class for the Time but we still relied on "Lookouts" to see Potential Threats to our Ships! (Remember the USS Maddox and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident!?)

Also our Search and Rescue Units had difficulty in Locating downed Planes and Choppers, it was really a matter of Luck lots of times in finding them! 

Hopefully they'll Locate the Debris soon, but it will be a matter of Luck more than Science IMO!!! Last report I heard was that 3 American Citizens were aboard but it was Mostly Chinese and Aussies headed for China!


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## jis

SarahZ said:


> I've never traveled with a passport, so I always assumed your passport was scanned somehow. That's why I was surprised that nobody realized it was a stolen passport. I figured they would scan them or verify them against a database, something like that.


Since Malaysia actually still stamps entry and exit on Passports, they would have looked it up in some database. Of course the result of such a look up would only be as good as the quality of data in the database. Apparently said database had not been updated with information from Interpol in the last couple of years. OTOH same station also detected a Russian with a stolen Passport and stopped him from boarding the same flight. So it is kind of hard to tell what exactly went on there. The Prime Minister of Malaysia has said that an investigation of the border check post at KUL is being started to figure out why and how stolen Passports are going undetected there.


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## CHamilton

How likely is it that the folks with stolen passports went "undetected" because they knew who (and/or how much) to bribe, and the Russian with a stolen passport did not?


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## Ryan

jimhudson said:


> Texan Eagle said:
> 
> 
> 
> I find it more and more hard to believe as hours pass by. Its been about 48 hours now, there are about 40 ships and 25 airplanes engaged in search and rescue effort and yet absolutely *no clue* of where the plane is or what happened to it? A 777 is not exactly a small thing that can disappear into thin air, so what is going on?
> 
> 
> 
> As an old Navy hand who Sailed in Harms Way in these Waters back in the Vietnam War Era, I assure you that it isn't that easy to see and Locate Ships and Planes in these Waters! Our Electronic Equipment (I was a Radioman) was World Class for the Time but we still relied on "Lookouts" to see Potential Threats to our Ships! (Remember the USS Maddox and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident!?)
> Also our Search and Rescue Units had difficulty in Locating downed Planes and Choppers, it was really a matter of Luck lots of times in finding them!
> 
> Hopefully they'll Locate the Debris soon, but it will be a matter of Luck more than Science IMO!!! Last report I heard was that 3 American Citizens were aboard but it was Mostly Chinese and Aussies headed for China!
Click to expand...

Yep.

It's a big, big ocean and a downed aircraft is very very small. The parts of it that are still floating are even smaller still. When an airplane falls out of the sky, bad things happen to it (and that's assuming it fell out of the sky in one piece - if it exploded in midair, it gets even harder).

Add to that ships don't move all that fast. Time-distance problems are a harsh mistress.

It's quite likely that it's going to take weeks, and what is found will be found by sonar.


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## MattW

We're also assuming it hit the water relatively intact. If it was destroyed in mid-air, the debris could be anywhere, and very small, and subject to the upper-atmospheric winds which could reach as high as 120kts or higher at that altitude.


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## Swadian Hardcore

CHamilton said:


> How likely is it that the folks with stolen passports went "undetected" because they knew who (and/or how much) to bribe, and the Russian with a stolen passport did not?


That might be true. Things come at a price.



MattW said:


> We're also assuming it hit the water relatively intact. If it was destroyed in mid-air, the debris could be anywhere, and very small, and subject to the upper-atmospheric winds which could reach as high as 120kts or higher at that altitude.


Still, I don't think AF447 took this long to find, even though it crashed into the South Atlantic.


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## jis

For AF 447 the final position of failure was much better known due to the automatic ACARS messages. Apparently MH does not do ACARS or for some reason all such messages received have been protected carefully as deep secret. Remember ACARS is an additional service that airlines may subscribe to. It is not a mandatory item.

Since it is not known what caused the cessation of the ADS-B stream (one reason could simply be getting outside of radar coverage) and hence it is also not known which direction it continued to fly and how far. That is what is adding to the challenge. Add to that the fact that possibly the only radar coverage available in some parts of that world is from military radars that the owners of such facilities may not be ready to disclose the existence of. And you have a real witch's brew.


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## Swadian Hardcore

jis said:


> For AF 447 the final position of failure was much better known due to the automatic ACARS messages. Apparently MH does not do ACARS or for some reason all such messages received have been protected carefully as deep secret. Remember ACARS is an additional service that airlines may subscribe to. It is not a mandatory item.
> 
> Since it is not known what caused the cessation of the ADS-B stream (one reason could simply be getting outside of radar coverage) and hence it is also not known which direction it continued to fly and how far. That is what is adding to the challenge. Add to that the fact that possibly the only radar coverage available in some parts of that world is from military radars that the owners of such facilities may not be ready to disclose the existence of. And you have a real witch's brew.


But didn't the Vietnamese disclose that they detected the plane going down in the Gulf of Thailand with military radar? If so, how come no one has found it yet?


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## jis

Just because some Vietnamese General said something does not necessarily make it so.  In Asia you always wait for material proof. 

And the fact still remains, it is still a vast ocean and they are looking for a needle in a haystack. The oil slick is itself 16 km long and who knows how wide. That is a darned big area.

I am surprised though that in even such shallow water there is not a hint of the electronic beep from the black boxes. But hey, as I said earlier, maybe they are searching in a completely wrong place? We won't know for sure until we know.


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## jimhudson

Asked and Answered SW! (And if you haven't been at Sea or flown a Plane you have no idea how hard it is to spot them! And were talking about Governments that are known for secrecy and paranoia plus this area of SE Asia is somewhat of a Black Hole!


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## Anderson

Just a counter-point on the terrorist possibility: Stolen passports could mean anything from terrorism (of course) to immigration fraud of some sort, or anything else related to organized crime.


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## XHRTSP

Anderson said:


> Just a counter-point on the terrorist possibility: Stolen passports could mean anything from terrorism (of course) to immigration fraud of some sort, or anything else related to organized crime.



To second what you said, absolutely right. Stolen passports are irrelevant at this point. First you prove what caused the crash, and then and only then if terrorism is shown to be in play you start looking if the passports are connected.


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## railiner

jis said:


> Just because some Vietnamese General said something does not necessarily make it so.  In Asia you always wait for material proof.
> 
> And the fact still remains, it is still a vast ocean and they are looking for a needle in a haystack. The oil slick is itself 16 km long and who knows how wide. That is a darned big area.
> 
> I am surprised though that in even such shallow water there is not a hint of the electronic beep from the black boxes. But hey, as I said earlier, maybe they are searching in a completely wrong place? We won't know for sure until we know.


Yes.....I am surprised too, not a peep from one of the ELT's or modern equivalent, that a 777 is equiped with....these should work by either high g-force as in an impact, or by submersion...these would confirm the downing of the aircraft, and would make short work of finding its location any where on Earth.....


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## SarahZ

More on the passports:

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/no-terror-group-claims-credit-missing-jet-official-says-n48481


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## Swadian Hardcore

railiner said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> 
> Just because some Vietnamese General said something does not necessarily make it so.  In Asia you always wait for material proof.
> 
> And the fact still remains, it is still a vast ocean and they are looking for a needle in a haystack. The oil slick is itself 16 km long and who knows how wide. That is a darned big area.
> 
> I am surprised though that in even such shallow water there is not a hint of the electronic beep from the black boxes. But hey, as I said earlier, maybe they are searching in a completely wrong place? We won't know for sure until we know.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes.....I am surprised too, not a peep from one of the ELT's or modern equivalent, that a 777 is equiped with....these should work by either high g-force as in an impact, or by submersion...these would confirm the downing of the aircraft, and would make short work of finding its location any where on Earth.....
Click to expand...

They must be searching in the wrong area, possibly the oil slick was from another source. Or poosibly the Vietnamese caught an electronic signal but refused to publicize it.

Still, this long search seemms increasingly ridiculous. Hopefully by the end of today in local time.


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## railiner

I cannot see any reason why the Vietnamese would not publicize their reception of a signal, except the highly unlikely scenario that they were somehow complicit in the downing of the aircraft.....


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## Devil's Advocate

At first this sounded a bit like Air France 447, but without ACARS or ADS-B alerts or any sort of discovery it's starting to sound more like Varig 967. Personally I think that the two most likely answers thus far are...

1. Intentional or forced actions by the crew

2. Controlled decent during a fast spreading catastrophic fire.

Intentional actions by the crew because careful piloting with manually disabled location and communication hardware could allow for stealth movement to other areas.

Catastrophic fire because it could start in the electrical communications areas and burn through much of the aircraft during the decent leaving little in the way of immediately recognizable debris.



railiner said:


> I cannot see any reason why the Vietnamese would not publicize their reception of a signal, except the highly unlikely scenario that they were somehow complicit in the downing of the aircraft.....


Now that would be a fascinating (if rather unlikely) discovery. Aircraft is downed accidentally and cleaned up before international search reaches area. Maybe it impacted an unmanned drone at some point?


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## CHamilton

The mystery of flight MH370: How on earth, with all our technology, do we lose a giant plane?


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## Ryan

As it turns out, the ocean isn't blanketed with cell towers the way land is.

Who knew?

I guess you really do have to have been on a ship in the middle of the ocean to truly appreciate how utterly massive and desolate the ocean really is. It's somewhat awe inspiring.


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## jis

CHamilton said:


> The mystery of flight MH370: How on earth, with all our technology, do we lose a giant plane?


 This article in the last paragraph says



> With the Air France AF477 [sic!] FDR never recovered,


Clearly the author had not been paying attention to what came of the AF 447 FDR. It was recovered as this report from Air Transport World would strongly suggest:


> *Air France 447 FDR data show aircraft remained stalled in final minutes of flight*
> 
> Air France 447 took less than four minutes to fall from approximately 38,000 ft. into the waters of the South Atlantic following the disengagement of the autopilot on the Airbus A330-200, according to an interim report released by the French BEA Friday that is based on CVR and FDR analysis.


Further discussion in the comments section shows that the author still is not sure whether what he calls AF 4777's FDR was recovered or not. Oh well.... doesn't help his credibility much, does it? Looks like he had a slow day and wanted to knock off an article without spending too much time researching it.
Here is a definitive report on the recovery of the FDR and CVR of AF 447:

http://www.flyingmag.com/news/air-france-447-cvr-fdr-recovered

Actually the FDR was recovered before the CVR, undermining the lame excuse for the error that the author came up with suggesting that the FDR was recovered sometime after the CVR. He would have been better off simply taking the lumps and saying that he did not know.


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## Ryan

jis said:


> Looks like he had a slow day and wanted to knock off an article without spending too much time researching it.


Mission accomplished!


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## SarahZ

It took them five days to find Air France Flight 447 after it crashed into the Atlantic, and even then, it took another three weeks to locate most of the wreckage and 50 bodies. Some of those bodies were spread upward of 50 miles apart.

This is like finding a needle in a haystack. The ocean is deep and has currents. If the plane broke apart before impact, it's going to be even harder. I don't know why so many people think this aircraft should have been found within 24 hours.

Edit: I was posting right along with Jis.  Nice.


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## Paulus

Guys, they do not know even roughly where the plane went down. The circle is hundreds of miles in diameter, in an area not conducive to finding the black boxes (shallower water=less sonar range), and they do not have sophisticated search vessels for the most part (many of these ships could pass right over a fully intact airliner and they would be completely unable to spot a thing). Maritime search, for fully intact vessels with clear weather, is a very difficult problem; when you are searching for debris that is often indistinguishable from normal flotsam and spilled oil in the sea, it gets significantly harder.


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## Devil's Advocate

RyanS said:


> As it turns out, the ocean isn't blanketed with cell towers the way land is. Who knew? I guess you really do have to have been on a ship in the middle of the ocean to truly appreciate how utterly massive and desolate the ocean really is. It's somewhat awe inspiring.


Nonetheless I believe we're approaching the point where an MH370 that had lost power/control at the same time it lost communication would have been located in some form by now. This is not the Atlantic or Pacific ocean we're talking about. Nor is it a conventional search effort. Every vessel and every aircraft in this very busy area is either actively or passively watching for any trace of this flight. We're talking dozens of active search parties and potentially thousands of passive participants keeping an eye out for anything the slightest bit unusual. AF447 didn't have anything like this level of continuous surveillance.

On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I wasn't terribly surprised that zero evidence had emerged. On Monday I'm slightly more surprised. If we still don't have any corroborated evidence by the end of the week I will be genuinely shocked, despite the aircraft apparently being lost at sea. In any case it makes for juicy (if highly unlikely) speculation. When was the last time people were contemplating airborne disasters involving meteors or unmanned drones? Regardless of your particular position this turning out to be one curious result compared to virtual every other major incident involving modern aircraft.


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## jis

They have apparently determined from lab tests that the oil slick was not connected with the lost aircraft.


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## Ryan

Paulus said:


> shallower water=less sonar range


This isn't entirely accurate.


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## Paulus

RyanS said:


> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> 
> shallower water=less sonar range
> 
> 
> 
> This isn't entirely accurate.
Click to expand...

Sonar definitely gets funky but my understanding is that it is an accurate simplification for finding the black boxes.


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## Devil's Advocate

My understanding is that sonar could find a large debris field but identifying a specific device such as the FDR or CVR would come from divers or submersibles, either locking on to the homing beacon during the first 30 days or rummaging through the wreckage piece by piece thereafter.


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## Ryan

<- Former ASW officer

That understanding isn't accurate. Picture a sphere. That represents the volume where the black box can be heard.

Picture that sphere in the deep ocean, where the top of it just barely breaks the surface. Now picture it in shallow water. Which one is easier to find?

In practice there are a lot more variables. Temperature/Salinity differences, background noise, and a bunch of other things can muck things up. Shallow water ASW can be a real pain in the neck against a submarine that's quiet enough to blend in. But a black box pinging away is another story entirely.


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## Ryan

Devil's Advocate said:


> My understanding is that sonar could find a large debris field but identifying a specific device such as the FDR or CVR would come from divers or submersibles, either locking on to the homing beacon during the first 30 days or rummaging through the wreckage piece by piece thereafter.


You're thinking about active sonar that's mapping the bottom and looking for airplane shaped stuff.
Listening for the homing beacon is as easy as sticking your head underwater. The trick is being in the right place when you do that. Using a hydrophone so you don't get your hair wet makes the process a little easier too.


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## Devil's Advocate

RyanS said:


> Devil's Advocate said:
> 
> 
> 
> My understanding is that sonar could find a large debris field but identifying a specific device such as the FDR or CVR would come from divers or submersibles, either locking on to the homing beacon during the first 30 days or rummaging through the wreckage piece by piece thereafter.
> 
> 
> 
> You're thinking about active sonar that's mapping the bottom and looking for airplane shaped stuff.
> Listening for the homing beacon is as easy as sticking your head underwater. The trick is being in the right place when you do that. Using a hydrophone so you don't get your hair wet makes the process a little easier too.
Click to expand...

Are the FDR/CVR homing beacons setup to be easily detected by even rudimentary outdated technology such as that which may be possessed by pre-industrialized countries?


----------



## Ryan

I was a little flippant, the "ping" is at a higher frequency than you can hear, so it does take a little more than just sticking your head in the water.

But the gear isn't terribly complex, so if there isn't one readily at hand one can be shipped out pretty quick. The idea is to make them as easy to find as possible, so the bar is pretty low.


----------



## jis

Devil's Advocate said:


> Are the FDR/CVR homing beacons setup to be easily detected by even rudimentary outdated technology such as that which may be possessed by pre-industrialized countries?


As it turns out, one of the pre-industrialized countries involved with significant asset deployment now is the United States  



The Hill said:


> "Also, as I think you probably know, the [Defense Department] said over the weekend that the 7th Fleet has sent assets to search efforts, including the USS Pinckney, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, which is now in the vicinity and has two MH-60R helicopters equipped for search efforts on board," Carney continued. "Additionally a P-C3 Orion aircraft from our base in Okinawa is now in the region, and that's long-range search, radar and communications capabilities. So we're providing assistance."
> 
> Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/transportation-report/aviation/200349-wh-not-enough-info-on-missing-jet#ixzz2vavw4QoX
> 
> Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook


In addition Australia has also apparently deployed some assets.

So rest assured that they have equipment available that is a bit more sophisticated than a tin can and bailing wire, and even more sophisticated than a stethoscope.


----------



## CHamilton

Chinese satellites deployed in search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370


----------



## jis

There were no ACARS messages received after contact was lost according to Reuters.



> The Malaysian passenger jet that disappeared on Saturday did not make automatic contact with a flight data-monitoring system after vanishing from radar screens, two people familiar with the matter said.
> 
> The Boeing 777-200ER is equipped with a maintenance computer capable of talking to the ground automatically through short messages known as ACARS.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/10/us-malaysia-airlines-idUSBREA291D520140310

Here is another chart showing the location at which contact was lost according to Flightradar24:


----------



## RRUserious

The coverage on Bloomberg says the security at the Kuala Lumpur didn't even bother to check the database of stolen passports.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

RRUserious said:


> The coverage on Bloomberg says the security at the Kuala Lumpur didn't even bother to check the database of stolen passports.


In my experience the international arrival process is where most of the security is leveraged while the departure process is generally little more than a simple formality. Unless you broke the law in the country you're about to depart you're generally free to leave without much in the way of expectations or complications. The *airline* is generally the one who worries about the suitability of your departure documents, mainly because they want to avoid having to return you on the next flight or paying a large fine for failing to abide by their legal obligations.


----------



## Just-Thinking-51

From Flyertalk.com

"A large field of debris has been reported by a CX flight at position N9.72 E107.42 about 80nm southeast of Ho Chi Minh City, about 50nm off the south-eastern coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea and about 281nm northeast of the last known radar position. Ships have been dispatched to the reported debris field."

As someone who is trained in Search and Rescue. Find someone alive is the best outcome, find a body is still a success. Not find anything is the worse.


----------



## Ryan

Agreed, and we've pulled both out of the water.


----------



## SarahZ

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> As someone who is trained in Search and Rescue. Find someone alive is the best outcome, find a body is still a success. Not find anything is the worse.


Agreed. If anything, it would be best for the families. I know it gives a lot of people comfort to be able to bury their loved ones instead of an empty casket or some memento. 

I really hope they're able to find something soon and figure out what happened, if anything to give their loved ones some peace. I can't imagine what they're going through right now. I would be out of my mind with grief and worry.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

Finding something relevant is probably in the range of a couple days to a couple weeks. Figuring out what actually happened is probably months or even years away. At least if other lost aircraft are any indication. Personally I'm finding this event more and more interesting, but even as our curiosity skyrockets the fate of the plane itself seems to be playing a smaller and smaller role in this story. Yes lives were probably lost, but we lose multiple MH370's worth of people on the road each and every day and nobody seems to be sobbing over them or worrying about what their families are going through. While we're freaking out about MH370 thousands of other people are starving to death or being bonded into slavery or tortured or terrorized and yet so very few of us seem to care or even notice. Our whole concept of life and death and risk and suffering is so confused and convoluted that I can scarcely comprehend it. We are all going to die. Most of us are going to suffer extreme loss at some point in our lives. Who among us has managed to make it to adulthood without realizing this? In most respects we just move along like nothing happened, which is already pretty extreme if you think about it, but then one very specific type of transport suffers an unusual failure and suddenly billions of people are demanding answers. Fleets of every sort are deployed. Tools and experts from around the world are brought in. Surveillance technology of every form is leveraged. Wall to wall coverage is maintained every minute of every hour for days on end. Not because we're actually going to save anyone, but just because we want to find out where they went. I'm not sure what to make of it but this is the first news story in a rather long time where absolutely everyone I know is aware of it, including the people who never read or listen to the news.


----------



## Swadian Hardcore

They're expanding the search area to a 100-nautical mile radius. Meanwhile, the oil slick has been found not to be from the plane.

http://time.com/#18231/malaysia-arlines-flight-mh-370-china-action/


----------



## RRUserious

Devil's Advocate said:


> RRUserious said:
> 
> 
> 
> The coverage on Bloomberg says the security at the Kuala Lumpur didn't even bother to check the database of stolen passports.
> 
> 
> 
> In my experience the international arrival process is where most of the security is leveraged while the departure process is generally little more than a simple formality. Unless you broke the law in the country you're about to depart you're generally free to leave without much in the way of expectations or complications. The *airline* is generally the one who worries about the suitability of your departure documents, mainly because they want to avoid having to return you on the next flight or paying a large fine for failing to abide by their legal obligations.
Click to expand...

How did they depart without first arriving? And did they arrive under a false identity?


----------



## Devil's Advocate

According to the most recent press conference the Malaysians have now identified four specific areas they focusing on. These areas were listed as [1] hijacking, [2] sabotage, [3] psychological problems, and [4] personal problems. Interestingly all of the focus points seem to revolve around intentional actions. None of them involve equipment failure or malfunction or pilot error. So, if we are to understand (and believe) the press conference it would appear that the current line of reasoning among the Malaysians potentially involves more of an EgyptAir Flight 990 or SilkAir Flight 185 angle than an Air France 447 explanation. The plot thickens.



RRUserious said:


> Devil's Advocate said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RRUserious said:
> 
> 
> 
> The coverage on Bloomberg says the security at the Kuala Lumpur didn't even bother to check the database of stolen passports.
> 
> 
> 
> In my experience the international arrival process is where most of the security is leveraged while the departure process is generally little more than a simple formality. Unless you broke the law in the country you're about to depart you're generally free to leave without much in the way of expectations or complications. The *airline* is generally the one who worries about the suitability of your departure documents, mainly because they want to avoid having to return you on the next flight or paying a large fine for failing to abide by their legal obligations.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> How did they depart without first arriving? And did they arrive under a false identity?
Click to expand...

Perhaps they arrived using Iranian documents or they were smuggled or they used the same passports in both directions. The point is that if they are not caught on arrival they are unlikely to be caught at all, unless they are the suspected of a crime or otherwise provoke suspicion. Based on statements from multiple sources it appears the possessors of the falsified documents have been identified. Apparently they were Iranian citizens intending to immigrate to or request asylum in Western Europe rather than to commit acts of terror.


----------



## jis

RRUserious said:


> Devil's Advocate said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RRUserious said:
> 
> 
> 
> The coverage on Bloomberg says the security at the Kuala Lumpur didn't even bother to check the database of stolen passports.
> 
> 
> 
> In my experience the international arrival process is where most of the security is leveraged while the departure process is generally little more than a simple formality. Unless you broke the law in the country you're about to depart you're generally free to leave without much in the way of expectations or complications. The *airline* is generally the one who worries about the suitability of your departure documents, mainly because they want to avoid having to return you on the next flight or paying a large fine for failing to abide by their legal obligations.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> How did they depart without first arriving? And did they arrive under a false identity?
Click to expand...

Well the guys from whom the Passports were stolen did arrive into Malaysia and so would have an entry stamp. Assuming that they were admitted for extended stay, they would be OK. Alternatively, it is not that hard to get a fake entry stamp in a Passport in Thailand or Malaysia either.
The guys who were carrying the Passports now would most likely have arrived quite legitimately using an Iranian Passport. After all there is no ban on travel between Iran and most Asian countries.

Actually the statement that they could not be caught at departure in Malaysia is not exactly true. Unlike the US, Malaysia has full court departure immigration processing, though apparently not as thorough as it could be. You actually get a departure stamp in your Passport when you depart from Malaysia. Been there and done that many times, and got many departure stamps in my Passport to validate. Actually you even (used to?) get a stamp in your Passport when you go from mainland Malaysia to Island Malaysia, or at least you used to 6 years back.

The airlines actually worry more about proper paperwork for the arriving end, and don't worry too much about the departing end, except in places like the US, where the airlines are responsible for collecting the I-94s from departing on-immigrants.

Anyway things are getting curiouser and curiouser....

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/11/malaysia-airlines-military-idUSL3N0M835C20140311


----------



## Devil's Advocate

jis said:


> RRUserious said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Devil's Advocate said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RRUserious said:
> 
> 
> 
> The coverage on Bloomberg says the security at the Kuala Lumpur didn't even bother to check the database of stolen passports.
> 
> 
> 
> In my experience the international arrival process is where most of the security is leveraged while the departure process is generally little more than a simple formality. Unless you broke the law in the country you're about to depart you're generally free to leave without much in the way of expectations or complications. The *airline* is generally the one who worries about the suitability of your departure documents, mainly because they want to avoid having to return you on the next flight or paying a large fine for failing to abide by their legal obligations.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> How did they depart without first arriving? And did they arrive under a false identity?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> *snip*
> 
> Actually the statement that they could not be caught at departure in Malaysia is not exactly true.
Click to expand...

Which statement is that?

Yes, you can absolutely be "caught" at departure. However, if you're not a suspect in the country you're in, are not a person of interest in the country you're in, and are not on some sort of international watch list then chances are you'll be allowed to leave. Most countries are happy to see you arrive, spend your money, and then go somewhere else. If something is going to tick them off it generally involves NOT leaving. Even in cases where you overstay your visa (or waiver) the mere act of voluntarily leaving can often prevent detention and even sidestep potential legal proceedings against you.



jis said:


> Unlike the US, Malaysia has full court departure immigration processing, though apparently not as thorough as it could be. You actually get a departure stamp in your Passport when you depart from Malaysia. Been there and done that many times, and got many departure stamps in my Passport to validate. Actually you even (used to?) get a stamp in your Passport when you go from mainland Malaysia to Island Malaysia, or at least you used to 6 years back.


In my experience there is no real connection between receiving a stamp in your passport and "full court" processing of your status. These days the whole stamping thing has become rather arbitrary. Sometimes they stamp the passport, sometimes they stamp the visa/waiver, and sometimes they don't stamp anything at all. The trend I'm seeing is that many countries are focusing on collecting visual and biometric histories that are probably not processed in real time but that could be used to come looking for you should something provoke their interest later.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

More Updates

(Reuters) - Malaysia's military believes a jetliner missing for almost four days turned and flew hundreds of kilometers to the west after it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country's east coast, a senior officer told Reuters on Tuesday.

...



> Malaysian authorities have previously said flight MH370 disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for the Chinese capital Beijing. "It changed course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait," the senior military officer, who has been briefed on investigations, told Reuters. That would appear to rule out sudden catastrophic mechanical failure, as it would mean the plane flew at least 350 miles after its last contact with air traffic control, although its transponder and other tracking systems were off. Malaysia's Berita Harian newspaper quoted air force chief Rodzali Daud as saying the plane was last detected at 2.40 a.m. by military radar near the island of Pulau Perak at the northern end of the Strait of Malacca. It was flying about 1,000 meters lower than its previous altitude, he was quoted as saying.
> 
> There was no word on what happened to the plane thereafter.
> 
> The effect of turning off the transponder is to make the aircraft inert to secondary radar, so civil controllers cannot identify it. Secondary radar interrogates the transponder and gets information about the plane's identity, speed and height. It would however still be visible to primary radar, which is used by militaries. Police had earlier said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might explain its disappearance, along with the possibility of a hijack, sabotage or mechanical failure.


Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/11/us-malaysiaairlines-flight-idUSBREA2701720140311


----------



## MrFSS

Quite honestly I haven't read in detail all the news reports linked in this thread, but is it possible the plane may have made it back to land and crashed in a jungle or other remote place?


----------



## Devil's Advocate

MrFSS said:


> Quite honestly I haven't read in detail all the news reports linked in this thread, but is it possible the plane may have made it back to land and crashed in a jungle or other remote place?


Absolutely. However, there would generally be an explosion or fire with an aircraft of that size carrying that much fuel. Things that tend to draw attention on both the micro and macro scale. Not to mention that the idea of remote locations devoid of human activity is mostly an urban myth at this point. With seven billion people on this planet it's exceedingly rare to find a place on land where nobody ever goes. Which is part of what makes this whole story all the more perplexing. You could presume a much more complicated answer where the plane flies further and further away until it finally reaches some lawless African outpost with a runway just barely long enough to handle a 777 running on fumes, but then it becomes difficult to explain who would do that and why. Did someone have some sort of mental breakdown? Was there some especially valuable cargo on this flight? Did someone concoct an extremely elaborate insurance fraud scheme? The answers begin to range from strange to bizarre.


----------



## saxman

MrFSS said:


> Quite honestly I haven't read in detail all the news reports linked in this thread, but is it possible the plane may have made it back to land and crashed in a jungle or other remote place?


I thought this too, but the ELT (emergency locator transmitter) should have gone off then. They are suppose to set off when having an impact.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

Multiple outlets are now reporting on a potential new angle involving apparently routine and intentional misconduct on the part of the low hours high status first officer.



> A pretty blonde tourist has told how she and a teenage girlfriend were invited to spend an entire flight larking about in the cockpit on a previous Malaysian Airlines flight with [the] co-pilot of the now missing flight MH370. The two girls took pictures and were entertained after they were picked out of the check-in queue to join the pilots for the flight from the holiday island of Phuket to Kuala Lumpur. Ms Rose told how she and her friend sat in two spare jump seats for the whole journey, including take-off and landing. She said the pilots reportedly wanted Ms [Rose] and Ms Maree to change their travel arrangements and extend their stay in Kuala Lumpur and join them on a night on the town.


Perhaps we're on the verge of discovering another Aeroflot Flight 593 type incident.

Link: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/flight-mh370-copilot-entertained-women-in-cockpit-and-smoked-on-previous-flight-9183812.html


----------



## Swadian Hardcore

There have been accidents when a plane crashed but did not explode. But for such a large plane with so much fuel, it's unlikely. There's speculation that maybe the plane nosedived into the Gulf of Thailand and embedded itself in the seabed, since the Gulf of Thailand is not very deep.


----------



## railiner

MrFSS said:


> Quite honestly I haven't read in detail all the news reports linked in this thread, but is it possible the plane may have made it back to land and crashed in a jungle or other remote place?


Something like that island in the recent tv series "Lost"?......


----------



## PRR 60

There is no possibility that a plane could hit water at high speed and simply enter the water whole and embed. Hitting water at speed is like hitting concrete. The plane would break up on impact. Items would be floating.

Given that they have not found a trace of anything, the only firm conclusion I can reach is that they are looking in the wrong place. Locating the right place is the trick. With the conflicting reports of what was or was not picked up by Malaysian military radar after the plane's transponder went off, it could be almost anywhere.

Airliners.net is now up to 14 topics and over 4000 posts about MH370. I think there are about 4000 different theories. In all my time of following aviation as a fan, this is by far the most bazaar incident ever.


----------



## Swadian Hardcore

PRR 60 said:


> There is no possibility that a plane could hit water at high speed and simply enter the water whole and embed. Hitting water at speed is like hitting concrete. The plane would break up on impact. Items would be floating.
> 
> Given that they have not found a trace of anything, the only firm conclusion I can reach is that they are looking in the wrong place. Locating the right place is the trick. With the conflicting reports of what was or was not picked up by Malaysian military radar after the plane's transponder went off, it could be almost anywhere.
> 
> Airliners.net is now up to 14 topics and over 4000 posts about MH370. I think there are about 4000 different theories. In all my time of following aviation as a fan, this is by far the most bazaar incident ever.


Thanks for explaining. I'm a lurker on that site too, but I can't read through every theory about MH370. As I said, maybe a possibility is that it crashed in the rainforest and didn't explode. But it's unlikely, so they're probably looking in the wrong place.


----------



## Just-Thinking-51

Command and Control of the search function is lacking. Sure it's a big space, but it been years since we lost a aircraft and never located the crash.

We as a country should just "Do it". Our reason will be as cheap as three US passengers, on a US built aircraft. Spend the time, the money, put the boots on the ground and get it done. Sure toes will be step on, but in the end we will have a answer.

Time to read Devils Advocate rant and rave post #73 again. I am spend way too much time on this event.


----------



## Paulus

This is not an unprecedentedly or even unusual length of time to be searching for the aircraft.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

Paulus said:


> This is not an unprecedentedly or even unusual length of time to be searching for the aircraft.


Then it should be easy for you to name some incidents involving widebody commercial aircraft operating in scheduled service with a major airline that took forty or fifty reconnaissance craft from a half dozen countries (including two superpowers) five or more days just to locate the first signs of the crash area. Good luck with that.


----------



## jis

Apparently a new area has been added to the search area, which is so far north that now India is joining the search(!!!!) likely due to its proximity to Indian Territory around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal!!!! The mystery thickens further!

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/12/mh370-malaysia-airlines-search-expands-third-possible-sighting


----------



## SarahZ

I ran across this today:

http://www.policymic.com/articles/85047/how-you-can-help-find-the-missing-malaysia-airlines-flight

It's interesting in concept and shows just how massive/difficult this is going to be.

I wonder if they've opened themselves up to trolls tagging willy-nilly, though. Hopefully, they have people double-checking the tags before sending a ship to investigate.


----------



## Texan Eagle

Can anyone do a roundup of all theories and conspiracies around MH370 so far, so that when the plane is finally found we can see how far from the truth everyone was? The ones I have read so far are-

1. Rapid decompression. Plane exploded mid-air and remains scattered over a large area.

2. Slow decompression. Crew and passengers died of oxygen deprivation. Plane flew as far as fuel would take it and crashed somewhere

3. Loss of spatial awareness. Plane plummeted one-piece into the sea

4. Terrorists/bomb blast exploded the plane mid-air

5. Hijacked and taken off-course. Crash landed somewhere in forests or similar inaccessible terrain

6. All communication systems down due to some catastrophic mechanical failure but plane has emergency landed at some small island

7. Malaysian/Vietnamese/Chinese military shot down the plane in mistaken identity and massive cover-up is going on

8. Hot blonde girls in cockpit distracted the pilots causing lack of awareness and/or crash

Anyone heard more ideas?


----------



## Devil's Advocate

In very basic terms this is what I can list off the top of my head...

Explosive Decompression - Lack of debris along scheduled route remains unexplained.

Distraction of Pilot(s) - Lack of passive communication (ACARS/ADS-B) or debris remains unexplained.

Intentional Explosion - Lack of debris remains unexplained.

Mechanical Failure - Lack of communication and lack of debris remains unexplained.

Electrical Failure - Lack of debris along scheduled route remains unexplained.

Communication Failure - Would need to be combined with another failure to explain result.

Pilot Suicide - Seems plausible but lack of debris remains unexplained.

Insurance Fraud - Seems unlikely and lack of debris remains unexplained.

Extended Loss of Oxygen - Seems plausible if it created confusion resulting in new routing.

Sudden Loss of Oxygen - Would need to be combined with another failure or miscue to explain result.

Fast Burning Fire - Seems plausible to me but lack of passive communication or debris remains unexplained.

Successful Hijacking - Lack of notice or demands remains unexplained.

Unsuccessful Hijacking - Lack of debris remains unexplained.

Aircraft Collision - No other aircraft reported missing from the area.

Drone Collision - Seems plausible to me but lack of debris likely requires a cover-up.

Meteor Collision - Probability is extremely low and lack of debris remains unexplained.

Weather Phenomenon - Weather was clear and lack of passive communication or debris remains unexplained.

Severe Turbulence - Lack of passive communication and lack of debris remains unexplained.

Friendly Fire - Seems plausible to me but lack of debris likely requires a cover-up.

Fuel Exhaustion - Lack of rafts and seat cushions remains unexplained.

Total Failure of Repaired Wing - Lack of debris remains unexplained.

Partial Failure of Repaired Wing - Lack of passive communication remains unexplained.

Electromagnetic Pulse Attack - Lack of collateral effects and debris remains unexplained.

Widespread Confusion and Lack of Logistical Focus - No doubt about it.

Aliens, Wormholes, Flying Dutchman, Sea Monsters, etc. - Grow up, get a clue, educate yourself, live a productive life.


----------



## jimhudson

Chris: You forgot "The Twilight Zone!"


----------



## Paulus

Devil's Advocate said:


> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> 
> This is not an unprecedentedly or even unusual length of time to be searching for the aircraft.
> 
> 
> 
> Then it should be easy for you to name some incidents involving widebody commercial aircraft operating in scheduled service with a major airline that took forty or fifty reconnaissance craft from a half dozen countries (including two superpowers) five or more days just to locate the first signs of the crash area. Good luck with that.
Click to expand...

Air France 447 took five days before wreckage was found, two years before black boxes found, and that was with a much better idea of where the plane went down. Also, quite frankly, you are overspecifying. What exactly makes a scheduled commercial flight easier to find than say an RB-36H which similarly disappears (no specific incident in mind, merely another big plane)?


----------



## Ryan

AF447 went down on June 1.

This story on June 2 reports finding the wreckage from the air:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/world/europe/03plane.html


----------



## Paulus

RyanS said:


> AF447 went down on June 1.
> 
> This story on June 2 reports finding the wreckage from the air:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/world/europe/03plane.html


Sigh. And I even went and double checked on it too.


----------



## SarahZ

Paulus said:


> RyanS said:
> 
> 
> 
> AF447 went down on June 1.
> 
> This story on June 2 reports finding the wreckage from the air:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/world/europe/03plane.html
> 
> 
> 
> Sigh. And I even went and double checked on it too.
Click to expand...

Ryan is like a fact-checker combined with a ferret.


----------



## jis

Just because y'all want to know....

http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/ghost-flights-the-planes-that-disappeared-just-like-malaysia-airlines-flight-370/story-fnizu68q-1226850216236

As for why a Super Connie is described as a jet(!!!) darned if I know.


----------



## jis

Chinese satellite images may have some images of parts of the crashed plane...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2014/mar/12/mh370-search-extended-into-andaman-sea-live-updates

The location is south-east of the last contact location.


----------



## Ryan

SarahZ said:


> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RyanS said:
> 
> 
> 
> AF447 went down on June 1.
> 
> This story on June 2 reports finding the wreckage from the air:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/world/europe/03plane.html
> 
> 
> 
> Sigh. And I even went and double checked on it too.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Ryan is like a fact-checker combined with a ferret.
Click to expand...

I only know because I thought it was longer than that and checked it the other day.


----------



## SarahZ

RyanS said:


> SarahZ said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RyanS said:
> 
> 
> 
> AF447 went down on June 1.
> 
> This story on June 2 reports finding the wreckage from the air:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/world/europe/03plane.html
> 
> 
> 
> Sigh. And I even went and double checked on it too.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Ryan is like a fact-checker combined with a ferret.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> I only know because I thought it was longer than that and checked it the other day.
Click to expand...

Dude. Don't be modest.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

US investigators have apparently released information revealing that the MH370 aircraft continued to send routine maintenance data as part of the operator's engine contract with Rolls Royce. The data was apparently sent in thirty minute increments via a maintenance communication network (presumably terrestrial ACARS) long after all other communication had ceased. By reviewing this data the investigators have determined the aircraft continued flying for up to four hours longer than previously indicated and that this discovery could place the aircraft thousands of miles beyond where most search efforts are currently focused.

Link: http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304914904579434653903086282-lMyQjAxMTA0MDEwMzExNDMyWj







_Radius map (via Flyertalk c/o beowl) of estimated aircraft range._

Inner circle is the radius of the distance to original destination;

outer circle is an assumption about radius plus fuel reserves, winds aloft.

This development would create an even more massive and unprecedented search area. It also potentially includes landing sites in countries with poor security and pseudo lawless areas. It just gets stranger and stranger and there is no way I'd want to be associated with this flight, directly or indirectly, in any shape or form.



Paulus said:


> Devil's Advocate said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> 
> This is not an unprecedentedly or even unusual length of time to be searching for the aircraft.
> 
> 
> 
> Then it should be easy for you to name some incidents involving widebody commercial aircraft operating in scheduled service with a major airline that took forty or fifty reconnaissance craft from a half dozen countries (including two superpowers) five or more days just to locate the first signs of the crash area. Good luck with that.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Air France 447 took five days before wreckage was found, two years before black boxes found, and that was with a much better idea of where the plane went down. Also, quite frankly, you are overspecifying. What exactly makes a scheduled commercial flight easier to find than say an RB-36H which similarly disappears (no specific incident in mind, merely another big plane)?
Click to expand...

As already mentioned initial searching for AF447 found physical evidence by the next day. I think it's important to separate reconnaissance from recovery. Nobody is disputing that it can take months or even years to recover an aircraft lost in remote locations or unusual circumstances, but initial discovery of scheduled commercial passenger accidents rarely takes more than a day or two. AF447 is a recent and famous accident that is featured in numerous articles, a documentary, and a book. An incident or accident involving a scheduled commercial flight will generally occur in or around a major population center or along a major traffic route and have many more people and resources looking for it than a general aviation aircraft. MH370 has something like sixty ships, thirty aircraft, a dozen helicopters, ten satellites, and a few hundred news organizations looking out for any trace of the plane. Even those dopey morning show families who place their "gifted" offspring at the controls of a private aircraft don't get this kind of coverage when baby Einstein brings down the plane.


----------



## the_traveler

jis said:


> Chinese satellite images may have some images of parts of the crashed plane...
> 
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2014/mar/12/mh370-search-extended-into-andaman-sea-live-updates
> 
> The location is south-east of the last contact location.


If a satellite photographed the (possible) debris on Sunday, why did they wait 3 days to release that potential data? :huh: Especially if there are many nations, ships and planes searching for the missing plane.


----------



## jis

the_traveler said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> 
> Chinese satellite images may have some images of parts of the crashed plane...
> 
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2014/mar/12/mh370-search-extended-into-andaman-sea-live-updates
> 
> The location is south-east of the last contact location.
> 
> 
> 
> If a satellite photographed the (possible) debris on Sunday, why did they wait 3 days to release that potential data? :huh: Especially if there are many nations, ships and planes searching for the missing plane.
Click to expand...

China now says it was released by mistake and it does not show anything relevant to the search. Very strange.

Meanwhile the WSJ report has been refuted by the folks who are managing the search, and neither Boeing nor Rolls-Royce have corroborated the story. So maybe it is Rupert Murdoch spicing things up a bit, or maybe not. Who knows?

Maybe NSA knows all along what exactly happened too, and are leaking small bits as they see convenient to chosen recipients like the WSJ???? This is getting really maddening.

The cycle seems to be, publication of new rumors in reputable news outlets while it is night in Asia, followed as surely as night follows the day, by denials and refutations as it becomes daylight in Asia and night in the west.


----------



## Ryan

This whole thing just gets more and more bizarre as time goes by.

I feel really bad for the families.


----------



## SarahZ

RyanS said:


> This whole thing just gets more and more bizarre as time goes by.
> 
> I feel really bad for the families.


Ditto.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

I have begun to lose track of the number of supposedly significant findings and surprise reversals at this point. New information is becoming almost impossible to believe. Between the unusual nature of the event itself and the terrible track record of the folks releasing and disseminating updates it's looking more and more like one massive charlie foxtrot.


----------



## Ryan

I love The Onion:



> KUALA LUMPUR—Following a host of conflicting reports in the wake of the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 last Saturday, representatives from the Kuala Lumpur-based carrier acknowledged they had widened their investigation into the vanished Boeing 777 aircraft today to encompass not only the possibilities of mechanical failure, pilot error, terrorist activity, or a botched hijacking, but also the overarching scope of space, time, and humankind’s place in the universe.








http://www.theonion.com/articles/malaysian-airlines-expands-investigation-to-includ,35524/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=LinkPreview:1efault


----------



## trainman74

Well, there _was_ that "Twilight Zone" episode about the flight that travels into the past... (Wikipedia summary)


----------



## Texan Eagle

Looks like somebody found the plane.

_(I'm probably going to hell for this but I LOLed) _


----------



## Just-Thinking-51

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA2D0DG20140314?feedType=RSS&irpc=71

Can the plane be intact? If a skilled pilot was use navigation points to fly the aircraft, then he/she would know the range of the aircraft, and had a plan on where to go.

This has cross the line into the Twilight Zone.

Edit: on poor use of a word.


----------



## Ryan

Texan Eagle said:


> Looks like somebody found the plane.
> 
> _(I'm probably going to hell for this but I LOLed) _


Me as well.

Edit: In case the listing gets pulled:


----------



## jis

The route allegedly followed by the plane that the investigators are willing to disclose so far looks like this (from the Guardian):






See http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/14/mh370-search-for-missing-plane-extends-to-the-indian-ocean-live-updates

For all one knows anything is possible ranging from - it crashed somewhere - to - it is sitting at an abandoned airfield in Baluchistan, or any other idea that one can come up with. :unsure: :wacko: :blink:


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## AmtrakBlue

What I've been wondering is, if it was hijacked, how did they prevent passengers from using their electronics to "call home"? I suppose there are things available for blocking signals.


----------



## jis

AmtrakBlue said:


> What I've been wondering is, if it was hijacked, how did they prevent passengers from using their electronics to "call home"? I suppose there are things available for blocking signals.


If both pilots in the cockpit were in it together no one in the back would have known for quite a while that anything was amiss, and by then they were over open vast ocean with no cell connectivity. Just speculating of course, like everything else related to this bizarre sequence of things unfolding on this one.


----------



## JayPea

Does anyone remember if any wreckage from KAL 858, the Korean Airlines flight that was bombed from the skies in November 1987, was found and if so, how soon after the bombing was it found? My memory is a bit hazy but the two incidents kind of remind me of each other.


----------



## Ryan

Wikipedia claims that some wreckage washed up on a beach, but that neither the CVR nor the FDR were recovered.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

AmtrakBlue said:


> What I've been wondering is, if it was hijacked, how did they prevent passengers from using their electronics to "call home"? I suppose there are things available for blocking signals.


Under normal circumstances you cannot place phone calls via personal electronics during 95%-99% of a commercial flight. Under special circumstances, such as flying very low near a major metro area, you may be able to get a short call or text message through, but not at cruising level or over a large body of water. Some airlines provide internet or other connectivity through their own hardware but all of that can be disabled through various means.


----------



## jis

Here is a more detailed map:


----------



## Devil's Advocate

jis said:


> Here is a more detailed map:


Are those primary radar stations?


----------



## CHamilton

Today's Malaysia Airlines 370 News: What It Means That Apparently It Kept on Flying


----------



## Ryan

That's an excellent article with a good bit of technical information. Rare to see that these days, sadly.


----------



## jis

Devil's Advocate said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> 
> Here is a more detailed map:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Are those primary radar stations?
Click to expand...

The circles are I think VORs and the pink areas are restricted airspace for some reason or the other. That is where the military radars thing comes into play I guess.


----------



## XHRTSP

The circles with the compass rose are indeed VORs. The Red shaded area are special use airspace boundaries. Some are restricted areas, but most aren't. Nothing on the map shows where you can expect radar coverage.


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## Crossover

In fairness to this topic, my comment is removed .


----------



## AmtrakBlue

Just heard they expanded the search to Kazakhstan.

Edit: wrong location/spelling


----------



## CHamilton

Malaysia Airlines flight disappearance appears to be deliberate, official confirms



> The disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines flight last Friday appears to be the result of deliberate action. That's according to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, speaking to reporters earlier today. Najib stopped short of using the word "hijacking," but instead stated that "evidence is consistent with someone acting deliberately from inside the plane," CNN reported.
> 
> 
> That statement follows days of speculation and troubling details about the flight's trajectory after it vanished from air controller screens shortly following take-off. An earlier report from The Wall Street Journal revealed that the flight's satellite communications system continued to send pings for around four hours after the loss of radar contact, raising the possibility that the plane had been intentionally ferried away to a distant location. Subsequent findings honed in on the plane's trajectory, suggesting that it was intentionally flown northwest towards the Indian Andaman Islands — and followed a course that would be well-known to someone with aviation training....
> 
> Now, according to Najib and other officials, a growing collection of information has shifted the investigation to focus on a scenario where the plane's disappearance was intentional. According to the Associated Press, it now appears that the plane's last known satellite ping came about seven and a half hours after takeoff, and that the craft deviated significantly from its original trajectory, turning back and crossing over peninsular Malaysia after its transponder was switched off. Sources familiar with the investigation now speculate that one or more individuals with flying experience took control of the aircraft, switching off communication devices and strategically re-routing the plane to avoid radar detection. It's still unclear, however, exactly where the plane was flown following that final point of contact.


----------



## Just-Thinking-51

Seven and half hours, pull up a map and do the math. Search and Rescue is sometime that simple. That aircraft was going someplace.

It would explain why the phones of pax show them log in to there accounts on messages service.

Time to bump this to a #1 on the CIA, NSA, FBI list of to do things.


----------



## Swadian Hardcore

AmtrakBlue said:


> Just heard they expanded the search to Kazakhstan.
> 
> Edit: wrong location/spelling


What? Kazakhstan?! That's very far away the route.


----------



## AmtrakBlue

Swadian Hardcore said:


> AmtrakBlue said:
> 
> 
> 
> Just heard they expanded the search to Kazakhstan.
> 
> Edit: wrong location/spelling
> 
> 
> 
> What? Kazakhstan?! That's very far away the route.
Click to expand...

It's been determined that the plan left it's route and I've heard that there are indication's that it was still flying 7 hours after it disappeared.


----------



## Bob Dylan

Cue the Theme and let Rod Serling introduce us to "The Twilight Zone!"


----------



## XHRTSP

Crossover said:


> Some areas in the oceans are said to be supernaturally charged with vortex energy. I.e Bermuda Triangle . There are such places .


Uh, no not true. That's total pseudoscience.



> I think some of those points on the map are military satellite stations (pink no fly zones , military airspace) that send GPS grid coordinates to naval ships and military aircraft and tracking the grid coordinates of the ships and aircraft by satellite .


No, not sure where you're getting that info from, but that's not true either.


----------



## Swadian Hardcore

If they're really searching in Kazakhstan, then it's nearly impossible to find the plane now. If someone really hijacked and landed it, they probably parked in in a hanger already or camoflaged it.

This is turning very interesting.


----------



## XHRTSP

Swadian Hardcore said:


> If they're really searching in Kazakhstan, then it's nearly impossible to find the plane now. If someone really hijacked and landed it, they probably parked in in a hanger already or camoflaged it.


Any hanger large enough for a 777 is going to be at a major airport with plenty of security, so not a good option unless you're going to suggest a government is behind this. As far as camo goes, that's not going to stop satellites, they see in many different parts of the spectrum.

If that plane's on land it's probably in a bunch of pieces on the side of a mountain some where. Once your hijacking is successful and you're where you want to go, I'm not sure what the motivation would be to go to such lengths to hide the aircraft.


----------



## SarahZ

Additionally, it's pretty hard to miss a 777. Also, you need a nice, flat landing strip that's at least 7000 feet in length (1.3 miles). That's why these, "They hijacked it and landed it on a remote island/field," theories don't wash with me. It's not like stealing a prop plane.


----------



## NW cannonball

CHamilton said:


> Today's Malaysia Airlines 370 News: What It Means That Apparently It Kept on Flying


Good article, thanks.

This from the Malaysian Chronicle goes into the political background and includes map with VOR names and details on flight history including strange altitude changes.

Seems the Malaysian PM will resign. And the FBI *is* assisting Malaysian officials with their inquiries.


----------



## XHRTSP

SarahZ said:


> Additionally, it's pretty hard to miss a 777. Also, you need a nice, flat landing strip that's at least 7000 feet in length (1.3 miles). That's why these, "They hijacked it and landed it on a remote island/field," theories don't wash with me. It's not like stealing a prop plane.


I'm sure the 777 demonstrated landing distances are shorter than that, especially if low on fuel. Really the bigger limiting factor would be the runway or other surface's load bearing ability. Though in this outlandish scenario where this has happened, I guess whomever's flying the plane wouldn't necessarily care if the wheels sank a little on rollout.


----------



## Crossover

In fairness my comment is removed .


----------



## Ryan

Crossover said:


> What I'm saying is opinionated not based on fact .


Finally, you post something I can agree with.

Your analysis of the map isn't exactly what I would call correct.


----------



## Crossover

In fairness my comment is removed .


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## Crossover

In fairness my comment is removed .


----------



## tp49

NW cannonball said:


> CHamilton said:
> 
> 
> 
> Today's Malaysia Airlines 370 News: What It Means That Apparently It Kept on Flying
> 
> 
> 
> Good article, thanks.
> 
> This from the Malaysian Chronicle goes into the political background and includes map with VOR names and details on flight history including strange altitude changes.
> 
> Seems the Malaysian PM will resign. And the FBI *is* assisting Malaysian officials with their inquiries.
Click to expand...

I read both the New Straits Times and The Star from Malaysia at least once or twice a week and have looked every day since the plane disappeared (a habit I picked up after spending part of my honeymoon in KL). Nowhere in any of those sources does it mention the possible or imminent resignation of the Malaysian Prime Minister. The source linked in the quote is the only one reporting it. I would discount this until one of the two major English language daily's report this as so.


----------



## XHRTSP

Crossover said:


> XHRTSP, I was in the military . This is a satellite/aviation map . I said I think those points on the map are military satellite/radar stations which send GPS grid coordinates to military aircraft and naval ships by way of satellite . The pink circles you're referring to may mean restricted airspace for military aircraft only (No Fly Zones for commercial aircraft ). They also show the range that the satellites cover in circumference according to nautical miles or square miles . The compass points represent their azimuths that is how grid coordinates are calculated at random and the range in circumference is determined . Military and Commercial aircraft operate on different radar, radio, and satellite frequencies and wavelengths . Naval and Commercial ships use different sonar , radio, and satellite frequencies and wavelengths .
> 
> I said that some areas of the ocean are said to be supernaturally charged with vortex energy . Here's what I meant , some parts of the ocean floor at certain depths may have heavy mineral deposits that are physically charged enough to scramble the instruments on aircraft and ships . In certain cases this has been annotated and documented , yes even Bermuda Triangle. I said I don't believe this is the case by what myself and others may come to believe . I said I believe this maybe a hijacking by terrorists .
> 
> What I'm saying is opinionated not based on fact .


Everything you just said was total garbage. Whatever specialty you were in the military, it obviously didn't qualify you in this field.


----------



## jis

Is he really suggesting that the VORs are military satellite/radar stations yadda yadda yadda? Sigh


----------



## XHRTSP

jis said:


> Is he really suggesting that the VORs are military satellite/radar stations yadda yadda yadda? Sigh


I don't know, maybe this is what happens to you when you have a bad reaction to the anthrax shots...


----------



## Texan Eagle

SarahZ said:


> Additionally, it's pretty hard to miss a 777. Also, you need a nice, flat landing strip that's at least 7000 feet in length (1.3 miles).


That's the recommended length. A 777 can land on much shorter runways if the pilot has balls to do it and/or they don't want to takeoff again. Check out this video, from touchdown at 7:30 in the video to slowing down to taxi crawl speed at 7:59, this 777-200ER (same model as MH370) was (almost) stopped in 3200 feet based on my knowledge of this airport and measuring on Google Earth. If a pilot can do it on regular flight with passengers, a rogue 777 can surely do it in even less.

Yesterday NPR published a map showing some 634 airstrips that are at least 5000' long in the range of MH370. If we assume they can land in 3000-3500 feet, that would add a ton of more possible airstrips.


----------



## Crossover

In fairness my comment is removed .


----------



## XHRTSP

You don't get to spout pseudoscience and claim technical knowledge you clearly do not have and then run behind the 'it's only my opinion' excuse. You're 'opinions' deserve to be mocked, if only to serve as a warning to others not to go down the same path of nonsense you have.


----------



## SarahZ

Texan Eagle said:


> SarahZ said:
> 
> 
> 
> Additionally, it's pretty hard to miss a 777. Also, you need a nice, flat landing strip that's at least 7000 feet in length (1.3 miles).
> 
> 
> 
> That's the recommended length. A 777 can land on much shorter runways if the pilot has balls to do it and/or they don't want to takeoff again. Check out this video, from touchdown at 7:30 in the video to slowing down to taxi crawl speed at 7:59, this 777-200ER (same model as MH370) was (almost) stopped in 3200 feet based on my knowledge of this airport and measuring on Google Earth. If a pilot can do it on regular flight with passengers, a rogue 777 can surely do it in even less.
> 
> Yesterday NPR published a map showing some 634 airstrips that are at least 5000' long in the range of MH370. If we assume they can land in 3000-3500 feet, that would add a ton of more possible airstrips.
Click to expand...

Oh wow. Cool video. Thanks for the knowledge!


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## Crossover

In fairness my comment is removed .


----------



## CHamilton

Final words from jet came after system shutdown


> KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- The final words from the missing Malaysian jetliner's cockpit gave no indication anything was wrong even though one of the plane's communications systems had already been disabled, officials said Sunday, adding to suspicions that one or both of the pilots were involved in the disappearance.....
> Authorities have said someone on board the plane first disabled one of its communications systems -- the Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS -- at 1:07 a.m. Around 14 minutes later, the transponder, which identifies the plane to commercial radar systems, was also shut down. The fact that they went dark separately is strong evidence that the plane's disappearance was deliberate.
> On Sunday, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference that that the final, reassuring words from the cockpit -- "All right, good night" -- were spoken to air traffic controllers after the ACARS system was shut down. Whoever spoke did not mention any trouble on board, seemingly misleading ground control.


----------



## jis

Crossover said:


> I see what this is about . You're too politically correct to assume that I'm making up false statements and jumping to false conclusions and hiding behind them by saying it's just my opinion . I'm not hiding behind nothing .If its a factual statement , yeah , I'll back it up . I don't see nowhere on this forum that says I have to be politically correct to make a response . I joined because I support Amtrak . I didn't join this forum to cause problems but I do play by the rules . Now does this help clear the air ?


Actually no it doesn't. What does political correctness have to do with misidentifying a VOR depicted using standard notation on a Navchart as some other thing which it is not? :unsure: :wacko: You are still being quite incoherent IMHO, and trying to ascribe motives of political correctness to others where there does not appear to be any. Just admit it that you were wrong in interpreting the symbol for VOR on the Navchart, and suggesting that anything in the Navchart shows the location of a radar, instead of spewing all this mumbo-jumbo about "political correctness" and we'd all be squared away nicely.


----------



## jis

CHamilton said:


> Final words from jet came after system shutdown
> 
> 
> 
> 
> KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- The final words from the missing Malaysian jetliner's cockpit gave no indication anything was wrong even though one of the plane's communications systems had already been disabled, officials said Sunday, adding to suspicions that one or both of the pilots were involved in the disappearance.....
> 
> Authorities have said someone on board the plane first disabled one of its communications systems -- the Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS -- at 1:07 a.m. Around 14 minutes later, the transponder, which identifies the plane to commercial radar systems, was also shut down. The fact that they went dark separately is strong evidence that the plane's disappearance was deliberate.
> 
> On Sunday, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference that that the final, reassuring words from the cockpit -- "All right, good night" -- were spoken to air traffic controllers after the ACARS system was shut down. Whoever spoke did not mention any trouble on board, seemingly misleading ground control.
Click to expand...

Does the ACARS system send a "I am now shutting down" message when it is shut down? Since it is a "send a message when necessary, otherwise just remain ready to do so" kind of system, unless it notifies that it is being shut down, how would one know the exact time when it was shut down? Yes you can know when the last message was received from it, but how does that correlate with when it was actually shut down?


----------



## Crossover

In fairness my comment is removed .


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## Crossover

In fairness my comment is removed .


----------



## Ryan

Yeah, that's not going to work for us.

What symbols mean on a map isn't a matter of opinion.

If you get your facts wrong, you're going to get corrected on them. Hopefully politely, but you're burning through goodwill faster than Imelda Marcos burnt through shoes.


----------



## jis

For those interested in a very good summary of the current status of the Search operation of MH370 I would recommend reading *Reply 4* on this page: http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/6027228/


----------



## Crossover

In fairness my comment is removed .


----------



## SarahZ

Crossover said:


> I'm say this again . I'm not going to say I'm wrong . If what I'm saying is make sense to you then respond . If it doesn't , ignore it and move on . That's it . It's that simple .


What is so hard about admitting you were wrong? I do it all the time (look up the thread a bit, where I'm corrected about the 777's landing strip requirements).

Being wrong about a scientific *fact* is not the same as someone saying you are wrong because your opinion about something arbitrary doesn't match theirs.

If I say oranges are delicious and you think they're disgusting, that is an opinion, and neither one of us is wrong. We just differ.

If I say oranges are orange and you say they're blue, then you are wrong, even if you keep saying it's your opinion they are blue. They simply *aren't*, and that is a fact, unlike our opinions about whether or not they are delicious.

Also, the people who know radar are not going to let it go because spreading opinion masqueraded as fact is what leads to misinformation. I don't know anything about radar, so if you hadn't been corrected, I may have been tempted to believe what you had said. If people who are wrong about scientific facts aren't corrected, then it leads to others believing what they say and spreading that incorrect information.


----------



## Ryan

Crossover said:


> I'm say this again . I'm not going to say I'm wrong . If what I'm saying is make sense to you then respond .


Keep on saying it.

Isn't going to change a)the fact that you're wrong and b)you're going to get called out on it.


----------



## pennyk

RyanS said:


> Crossover said:
> 
> 
> 
> I'm say this again . I'm not going to say I'm wrong . If what I'm saying is make sense to you then respond .
> 
> 
> 
> Keep on saying it.
> 
> Isn't going to change a)the fact that you're wrong and b)you're going to get called out on it.
Click to expand...

Says the "fact checker ferret." Also.... I would be willing to bet that Jis has* facts* to back up everything that he is saying.


----------



## Crossover

In fairness my comment is removed .


----------



## leemell

Crossover said:


> .
> 
> I said that some areas of the ocean are said to be supernaturally charged with vortex energy . Here's what I meant , some parts of the ocean floor at certain depths may have heavy mineral deposits that are physically charged enough to scramble the instruments on aircraft and ships . In certain cases this has been annotated and documented , yes even Bermuda Triangle. I said I don't believe this is the case by what myself and others may come to believe . I said I believe this maybe a hijacking by terrorists .
> 
> What I'm saying is opinionated not based on fact .


OK, you are saying "some parts of the ocean floor at certain depths may have heavy mineral deposits that are physically charged enough to scramble the instruments on aircraft and ships. In certain cases this has been annotated and documented..." Please cite where this is annotated. Second, you than say that this is an opinion. Which is it, fact or opinion.


----------



## leemell

I agree completely with jis on the nav map. The symbols are not subject to interpretation. I have four years working on military combat radars and computers and am a licensed pilot and have fair amount of knowledge in these areas.


----------



## jis

Crossover said:


> All I said was an observation . There is no right or wrong answers .


The circles on a Navchart with compass directions are VORs. Any other "observation" or "opinion", whether "politically correct" or otherwise is just plain wrong. Period. So yes there are many possible wrong answers and yours was one of them, irrespective of whether you accept it or not.


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## Crossover

In fairness my comment is removed .


----------



## Ryan

Crossover said:


> I said I think those points on the map are military satellite/radar stations which send GPS grid coordinates to military aircraft and naval ships by way of satellite . The pink circles you're referring to may mean restricted airspace for military aircraft only (No Fly Zones for commercial aircraft ). They also show the range that the satellites cover in circumference according to nautical miles or square miles . The compass points represent their azimuths that is how grid coordinates are calculated at random and the range in circumference is determined .


These are not opinions. They're factual statements that are false.

The meaning of these symbols have factual meanings and aren't open to opinion or interpretations.

This isn't rocket surgery. Suck it up, say "my bad" and move on.

Or you can take your ball and go home.

Either way, just stop.


----------



## jis

One thing that becomes obvious at looking at the Inmarsat coverage diagram is how they came about creating the two arcs of the last ping. It is also interesting that the last ping was about 7 hours into a flight that supposedly took off with enough fuel for about 7.5 hours. As for the northern arc, it leaves me wondering how good India and China's primary radar coverage is - possibly very good, but who knows?

Here is a very good article from NY Times presenting the band of possible areas where the plane could have landed up based on information known so far:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html?hp&_r=0

Another very good summary can be found in this FlyerTalk Wiki post.

Frankly I finally got the complete picture after reading this and the FlyerTalk summary. It does not help when outfits like CNN draw completely wrong diagrams and then try to explain what has essentially become unexplainable because of the wrong diagram being used.

Looking at that diagram in the NY Times article, if you believe that the Chinese and Indians have decent primary radar coverage, the northern arc starts looking very very unlikely.

Also remember, that as they try to fly northwest, they would be facing severe head winds this time of the year, considering the way the monsoons flow. So they would have covered much less ground distance with the fuel that they had.


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## tp49

Considering the way the Chinese control their airspace I have a very hard time believing the northern arc is a likely scenario.


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## Crossover

In fairness , my comment is removed


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## leemell

Crossover said:


> To leemell ,That's what this is an opinion .I've been explaining this since last night .You can't base wrong or right answers on an opinion . I was using the paranormal explanation as a figure of speech . As for the map , I didn't draw any conclusions about it at all , I made an opinion . They said I drew conclusions about the map inwhich I didn't thus making them believe I was wrong about the map . They misinterpreted what I said which is the reason why this huge unecessary debate about being right or wrong about what I said .


Is the annotation and documentation opinion. What is the cite?


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## Just-Thinking-51

Children please....


----------



## XHRTSP

tp49 said:


> Considering the way the Chinese control their airspace I have a very hard time believing the northern arc is a likely scenario.


Well, most of us would think that but it's not always true. Radar is expensive to install and operate, and China's a vast country. I couldn't see this situation occurring if it were a KAL jet coasting in from the East China Sea near Shanghai without comm or transponder, you better believe they would have been intercepted. But out west there's a lot of mountainous wilderness, I'm sure there are holes in coverage quite large.


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## Crossover

In fairness my comment is removed .


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## Swadian Hardcore

Turns out that 777 might not have crashed after all. This is the craziest accident I've heard about in a long time.


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## jis

Here is an NY Times article that talks of how Malaysian Armed Forces screwed up in not intercepting a radar target that no one knew for sure what it was. It apparently flew right over Butterworth/Penang, and apparently the folks who were in charge of monitoring the primary radar did not even notice!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/world/asia/series-of-errors-by-malaysia-mounts-complicating-the-task-of-finding-flight-370.html?hp

Sounds pretty bad doesn't it?


----------



## jis

XHRTSP said:


> tp49 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Considering the way the Chinese control their airspace I have a very hard time believing the northern arc is a likely scenario.
> 
> 
> 
> Well, most of us would think that but it's not always true. Radar is expensive to install and operate, and China's a vast country. I couldn't see this situation occurring if it were a KAL jet coasting in from the East China Sea near Shanghai without comm or transponder, you better believe they would have been intercepted. But out west there's a lot of mountainous wilderness, I'm sure there are holes in coverage quite large.
Click to expand...

The question though is, what routing would they use to get out west? It would have to cross into China either across the McMahon Line (one of the most heavily monitored area with all sorts of claims and counter claims that has led to at least one outright conflict and is subject to frequent incursions, shootings aerial incursions etc.), or fly all the way across India and then cross the heavily guarded India/China border in the west. What other ways do they have of getting in there with maybe 5 hours worth of fuel left after their little wiggly jaunt in the Bay of Bengal?

Admittedly, I have no clue. but this is the question that comes to mind. Of course all would depend on how good primary radar monitoring is in China and India. If they are even half as bad as apparently the Malaysians turned out to be according to the other NY Times article I posted in the previous message to this, then of course all bets are off.


----------



## tp49

XHRTSP said:


> tp49 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Considering the way the Chinese control their airspace I have a very hard time believing the northern arc is a likely scenario.
> 
> 
> 
> Well, most of us would think that but it's not always true. Radar is expensive to install and operate, and China's a vast country. I couldn't see this situation occurring if it were a KAL jet coasting in from the East China Sea near Shanghai without comm or transponder, you better believe they would have been intercepted. But out west there's a lot of mountainous wilderness, I'm sure there are holes in coverage quite large.
Click to expand...

The thing is though that China's airspace is strictly controlled by the PLA. Hence my belief that that the PLA has a good idea as to what is going on in their airspace. And as jis mentioned above the Indo-Chinese border region is an area that is well covered militarily. The same thought came to me if per chance it flew over Burma and the "Golden Triangle" region. The third thing that gives me pause is Beijing's reaction to the situation. If the plane flew over China you can bet that Beijing would be rubbing this fact in the faces of anyone in the region that they could. However, as of now, Beijing has remained quiet except to blast (and rightly so) Malaysia's handling of the investigation.


----------



## jis

It is absolutely mind-boggling how many people seriously think that all GPS devices send their position information to a satellite!

Hence the argument that if there were Smartphones with GPS on them in the plane that was turned on, then the GPS satellite would know where the Smartphone was located and hence where the plane was.

Another misconception is that somehow if you have a cell phone that will automagically start working no matter which country you are in, or even in the middle of the ocean, only if you could get to a low enough altitude perhaps. Trust me, even when you have a global roaming account it does take some amount of cajoling quite often to get it to work.


----------



## Andrew

Remember, who ever crashed this plane didn't do it alone...


----------



## railiner

jis said:


> It is absolutely mind-boggling how many people seriously think that all GPS devices send their position information to a satellite!
> 
> Hence the argument that if there were Smartphones with GPS on them in the plane that was turned on, then the GPS satellite would know where the Smartphone was located and hence where the plane was.
> 
> Another misconception is that somehow if you have a cell phone that will automagically start working no matter which country you are in, or even in the middle of the ocean, only if you could get to a low enough altitude perhaps. Trust me, even when you have a global roaming account it does take some amount of cajoling quite often to get it to work.


Wonder what the chances were of someone on board having an Iridium phone....(global satellite coverage)....of course it would have to be not in "airplane mode" for detection.

But wonder if they checked to see if Iridium could possibly have some contact from anyone on board with an account.......All possibilites, no matter how unlikely, should be checked out in an event dragging on this long.....


----------



## leemell

Crossover said:


> To leemell ,That's just a figure of speech but I will give you one , try Palmyra Island .


That is not a cite, just and island name.


----------



## Ryan

Andrew said:


> Remember, who ever crashed this plane didn't do it alone...


I'm not sure why you say that, they certainly could have.
There's also the implicit assumption in there that the plane was a) crashed and b) crashed on purpose. Neither of them have been confirmed yet.


----------



## Green Maned Lion

To sum up our current unquestioned understanding of this situation.

1) there was/is a plane of Malaysian Air

2) it took off.

3) it dissappeared.

4) the Malaysian government either consists of peerless imbeciles or knows stuff it isn't talking about.

5) Crossover doesn't realize that admitting your wrong when you are makes you look better than arguing forever about inaccurate irrelevant nonsequitors about opinion vs fact.


----------



## SarahZ

Green Maned Lion said:


> To sum up our current unquestioned understanding of this situation.
> 
> 1) there was/is a plane of Malaysian Air
> 
> 2) it took off.
> 
> 3) it dissappeared.
> 
> 4) the Malaysian government either consists of peerless imbeciles or knows stuff it isn't talking about.
> 
> 5) Crossover doesn't realize that admitting your wrong when you are makes you look better than arguing forever about inaccurate irrelevant nonsequitors about opinion vs fact.


Gold star for you!


----------



## WhoozOn1st

_Happy St. Patrick's Day!_

"NSA can track every email, but it can't find a plane" -- http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247007/Ron_Miller_NSA_can_track_every_email_but_it_can_t_find_a_plane

"For all our brains and all our computers and all our data, an airplane can still just disappear without a trace for nine days and we can't find it. In fact, we have no bloody idea where it is. We are told after nine long days that there are 370 runways within the fuel capacity range of the airliner that could have accommodated landing a jet of this size."


----------



## XHRTSP

WhoozOn1st said:


> _Happy St. Patrick's Day!_
> 
> "NSA can track every email, but it can't find a plane" -- http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247007/Ron_Miller_NSA_can_track_every_email_but_it_can_t_find_a_plane
> 
> "For all our brains and all our computers and all our data, an airplane can still just disappear without a trace for nine days and we can't find it. In fact, we have no bloody idea where it is. We are told after nine long days that there are 370 runways within the fuel capacity range of the airliner that could have accommodated landing a jet of this size."


Tracking every airborne commercial aircraft in the world is not really within the scope of the NSA. I think someone just has an axe to grind.


----------



## MattW

Here's another interesting theory that is frankly, workable. It sounds ok to me, but I'm not a pilot so I'll let those who know more than I do draw further conclusions: http://keithledgerwood.tumblr.com/post/79838944823/did-malaysian-airlines-370-disappear-using-sia68-sq68


----------



## Ryan

Very, very interesting. Seems plausible.

Next question is "to what end"?


----------



## XHRTSP

MattW said:


> Here's another interesting theory that is frankly, workable. It sounds ok to me, but I'm not a pilot so I'll let those who know more than I do draw further conclusions: http://keithledgerwood.tumblr.com/post/79838944823/did-malaysian-airlines-370-disappear-using-sia68-sq68


Totally implausible. TCAS is tied to the transponder, if you turn it off, no TCAS display. At least that's every system I've worked with, maybe the 777 is different, but I don't believe that's going to be the case.

Second, yeah good luck setting up that kind of rendezvous. You need a lot of situation awareness, prior planning and coordination among the two crews, and 'smash' (over taking velocity) to execute a straight ahead rejoin. Unless Singapore 68 is in on it, good luck.


----------



## WhoozOn1st

XHRTSP said:


> Tracking every airborne commercial aircraft in the world is not really within the scope of the NSA. I think someone just has an axe to grind.


But tracking everybody's phone calls and e-mails IS!? Axe to grind or not, how do you come by your knowledge of particular facets of the NSA's operational scope? Perhaps you can share a document with us.


----------



## XHRTSP

WhoozOn1st said:


> But tracking everybody's phone calls and e-mails IS!? Axe to grind or not, how do you come by your knowledge of particular facets of the NSA's operational scope? Perhaps you can share a document with us.[/center]


The NSA does not have infinite personnel with an infinite budget that can do infinite things. If you want to complain about what they have been doing in relation to privacy violations, fine, I'm probably 100% with you on that, but it's not at all relevant to this thread.

break break

If anyone from the NSA is reading this thread (bomb, jihad), which I now know you are, no I don't want you tracking my airplane.


----------



## railiner

XHRTSP said:


> break break
> 
> If anyone from the NSA is reading this thread (bomb, jihad), which I now know you are, no I don't want you tracking my airplane.


:giggle:


----------



## Swadian Hardcore

Still don't know what the heck happened to that frigging plane huh? Nothing like this has happened in years! That 777 seems to have vanished into this air. Amelia Earhart II, with a plane that's about 20 times bigger.


----------



## SarahZ

I saw a thing on the news today in which they compared it to looking for a postage stamp in Central Park, except instead of having a long line of volunteers walking across every square inch hand-in-hand, you have the added complication of most of Central Park being underwater.

I really feel for the families. It would be hard enough for me to accept that my loved one had died. I think it would be even harder to have that tiny glitter of hope that they're out there, alive somewhere, but I may never know. I can't even begin to wrap my head around that.


----------



## afigg

XHRTSP said:


> MattW said:
> 
> 
> 
> Here's another interesting theory that is frankly, workable. It sounds ok to me, but I'm not a pilot so I'll let those who know more than I do draw further conclusions: http://keithledgerwood.tumblr.com/post/79838944823/did-malaysian-airlines-370-disappear-using-sia68-sq68
> 
> 
> 
> Totally implausible. TCAS is tied to the transponder, if you turn it off, no TCAS display. At least that's every system I've worked with, maybe the 777 is different, but I don't believe that's going to be the case.
> 
> Second, yeah good luck setting up that kind of rendezvous. You need a lot of situation awareness, prior planning and coordination among the two crews, and 'smash' (over taking velocity) to execute a straight ahead rejoin. Unless Singapore 68 is in on it, good luck.
Click to expand...

I agree. Pulling in behind the other plane would be very difficult to do with or without cooperation and coordination from the lead airplane. These are commercial airliners, each with a large radar cross section, not military fighter aircraft. Maintaining a close enough separation not to be periodically detected as a 2nd track by the various surveillance and tracking radars over a long route would be quite challenging. Yes, aircraft can be bunched together to create a single track or fewer tracks than aircraft in the group, but this is done by military fighter aircraft and pilots which can train and learn to coordinate to fly in close formation.
I am not saying that puling in and maintaining a close distance behind another airliner is impossible, but it would require impeccable timing and a lot of luck. I could not see the close track holding up to examination of recorded radar data, if the countries it flew by or over saved the radar track and raw detection data files. BTW, MH 370 would not have to pull in behind another 777, any other large jumbo jet would do in this scenario.


----------



## jis

A good explanation of the two arcs for last position can be found in the following blog:

http://ogleearth.com/2014/03/flight-mh370-search-data-in-google-earth/


----------



## jis

An interesting theory which almost works IMHO....

http://www.airtrafficmanagement.net/2014/03/exclusive-mh370-crew-succumbed-to-fire-catastrophe/

It gets very close to running afoul of Occam's Razor by the time you have to assume that at the right moment the flight crew was incapacitated and then onwards the plane continued flying in some random direction, which very well could have been south south west, and finally ran out of fuel and crashed.

As far as theories go this one seems to be the best one that does not involve rogue pilots.


----------



## XHRTSP

The problem with that hypothesis and pretty much all other catastrophic failure ideas is that it doesn't really allow for the plane to be engines running seven hours later. An electrical failure or fire so bad they couldn't call for help would have brought the airplane down in a hurry. Only a rapid decompression would fit that bill, but that goes against the radar track, altitude changes, and lack of transponder returns.


----------



## jis

As I suggested it sort of gets a bit beyond an Occam's Razor test, but probably not as much beyond as many other hypothesis. But I do agree with you in general.


----------



## CHamilton

Missing Malaysia plane: 10 theories examined

BBC News Magazine



> As the search for Malaysia Airlines missing Boeing 777 moves into its 11th day, a multitude of theories about the plane's fate are circulating on forums and social media. Here, former pilots and aviation experts look at some of those theories.


----------



## PRR 60

An article from CNN by an A330 pilot stating that a deliberate act is not the only possible explanation:



> Those trying to draw conclusions from the information trickling from the investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 should go carefully. It is plausible that, as Malaysia's Prime Minister asserted, the plane's flying for hours after losing contact with air traffic control was "consistent with deliberate action," but it's not the only logical explanation of the airplane's bewildering trajectory.


CNN


----------



## Ryan

I'm not sure how much of that I buy.

Anything is possible, but the set of conditions that would shut down all communications (save for the "ping"), but leave the airplane physically to fly for hours, and incapacitate the crew seem pretty remote to me.


----------



## XHRTSP

He's just looking out for his own. Despite any evidence people are already getting on TV and blaming the pilots essentially for the mass murder of their passengers. You know they had to be involved because one dared to have political views, and the other smooth talked to some ladies a year ago, and they're both probably Muslim. Imagine you're a family member and as far as you know your husband, son, father is dead on the bottom of the sea floor, behind held hostage on some al quada desert landing strip, or who knows. And then some ass wipes on FOX News start suggesting they suffocated their passengers to death so they could make some unknown political point, because well we don't have any other explanations.


----------



## jis

RyanS said:


> I'm not sure how much of that I buy.
> 
> Anything is possible, but the set of conditions that would shut down all communications (save for the "ping"), but leave the airplane physically to fly for hours, and incapacitate the crew seem pretty remote to me.


OTOH, it is not any more remote than some of the other nonsense that people are bandying about either.


----------



## Green Maned Lion

There is no evidence. Being a life long devout Pastafarian I can tell you what happened. His Holiness the Flying Speghetti Monster reached out with His Noodly Appendage and sent then to the Great Trattoria in the sky Saving and Absolving them of all their Sins with his Noodly mercy and kindness.

And you have about the same level proof to prove me wrong as to prove Fox wrong.


----------



## XHRTSP

Green Maned Lion said:


> There is no evidence. Being a life long devout Pastafarian I can tell you what happened. His Holiness the Flying Speghetti Monster reached out with His Noodly Appendage and sent then to the Great Trattoria in the sky Saving and Absolving them of all their Sins with his Noodly mercy and kindness.


At the rate CNN is going I'm sure you're theory will make it on the air by 8.


----------



## Just-Thinking-51

Sadly, he might be right.


----------



## SarahZ

Swadian Hardcore said:


> Still don't know what the heck happened to that frigging plane huh? Nothing like this has happened in years! That 777 seems to have vanished into this air. Amelia Earhart II, with a plane that's about 20 times bigger.


I thought you might find this interesting. It was published in our local paper today.

http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2014/03/with_malaysia_airlines_flight.html

Edit: I'm not trying to compare the two situations. It just sounds like a few posters, including Swadian, love a good mystery.


----------



## Texan Eagle

Texan Eagle said:


> Pakistan, India, Taliban say know nothing about missing plane.
> 
> Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan, who are seeking to oust foreign troops and set up an Islamic state, said the missing plane had nothing to do with them.
> 
> "It happened outside Afghanistan and you can see that even countries with very advanced equipment and facilities cannot figure out where it went," he said. "So we also do not have any information as it is an external issue."



You know **** has gone out of hand when the freaking TALIBAN have to be involved in search and rescue!  :blink:


----------



## Guest

So at what point do we call off the search?


----------



## jis

For AF447 they did not call off the search until they found the CVR/FDR several years later. So this will go on for quite a while.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

Guest said:


> So at what point do we call off the search?


No one agency or group can dictate how long everyone else will continue to search so this question hinges on the context and the country.

Countries that are not directly linked to the disaster may only participate for a few days before ceasing active participation unless and until new evidence is found. Thanks to what many see as unexplained confusion or even intentional obfuscation on the part of the Malaysian authorities some countries have already ceased active searching at various stages of the operation. Vietnam was one of the first countries to postpone active searching due to confusing and contradictory information provided by the Malaysian authorities.

China probably won't stop searching until someone has something useful to tell the families of the passengers. The US probably won't stop searching until they believe Boeing is no longer threatened by suspicion of a catastrophic defect. Malaysia probably won't stop searching until both interested superpowers are pacified. Other countries will participate as long as they feel they have something to gain from doing so. Smaller countries will eventually run out of money to continue searching while larger countries will eventually run out of pressing reasons to continue.


----------



## gswager

Theory #11- "Bermuda" Triangle had been re-emerged.


----------



## PRR 60

Australia satellite imagery has located two suspicious floating objects in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Perth. Aircraft have been dispatched to investigate.

Sydney Morning Herald


----------



## SarahZ

PRR 60 said:


> Australia satellite imagery has located two suspicious floating objects in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Perth. Aircraft have been dispatched to investigate.
> 
> Sydney Morning Herald


I hope this is something. I hate to hope for wreckage, since that likely means no survivors, but I also know that will bring some peace to the families who have been waiting and hoping for so long. My heart goes out to them.


----------



## Jean

These objects are reported to be over 2,200 kms south-west of the south-west corner of Australia, if that makes sense. This is a very remote area. Aircraft are said to be there now (but still searching), plus a merchant ship is nearby. Our news media is reporting poor visibility. One object is reported to be 24 metres long and the other smaller.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BjJuiRcCYAE8tMs.jpg:large

http://www.amsa.gov.au/media/incidents/images/DIGO_00718_01_14.jpg


----------



## Devil's Advocate

Apparently there is no further information even after planes and boats arrived in the area and the search has been called off until morning. This whole experience has just been one tease after another. It's rather surreal flying on a plane while the continuing mystery of a lost aircraft is displayed on seatback screens via satellite television. The longer the delay continues the more my doubt grows that we'll ever reach a satisfying conclusion as to what happened and why.


----------



## SarahZ

Devil's Advocate said:


> Apparently there is no further information even after planes and boats arrived in the area and the search has been called off until morning. This whole experience has just been one tease after another. It's rather surreal flying on a plane while the continuing mystery of a lost aircraft is displayed on seatback screens via satellite television. The longer the delay continues the more my doubt grows that we'll ever reach a satisfying conclusion as to what happened and why.


My optimism deflated a bit when the Australian PM stated that this is an area known as a "garbage dump", in that the sea currents tend to bring quite a bit of junk to this area. He stressed that the two pieces could be random waste, part of an old ship, etc.

Sigh.


----------



## Bob Dylan

Doesn't look promising for finding any remains! (And after all this time that's the probable outcome of this tragedy) as has been said and based on personal experience, finding anything in this really remote area if the world would be comparable to finding a grain of sand in the Sahara!

You are now leaving a place known as "The Twilight Zone!". RIP


----------



## MrFSS




----------



## jis

Now it is coming out that Inmersat had predicted within two days of the crash that it is most likely somewhere in the South Indian Ocean. See:

http://gma.yahoo.com/satellite-company-says-predicted-missing-planes-location-10-224715287--abc-news-topstories.html

The best projected path calculations diagram I have seen so far is this one:






I can't find a good online article to provide an URL for, but it is becoming clear that the last location being in Southern Indian Ocean as opposed to somewhere in China/Kazakstan is supported by the satellite ping sequence. It is not merely based on the assumption that any plane flying through Indian, Pakistani and Chinese airspace would have been detected. I read the analysis in an article and it is pretty convincing, and is apparently the reason that _Inmarsat_ has been convinced since day 2 after the crash that the plane is in south Indian Ocean. That advice was apparently ignored by the Malaysian authorities back then.

Apparently it is the US NTSB and the Australians that started working based on that information on their own independent of the Malaysians, and when the Malaysians would not budge someone started strategic leaks about the satellite pings. And as we know, what followed, followed. Pretty strange if you think about it.

Of course all this does not mean that anything will be found soon. That is an entirely different kettle of fish given the high winds a strong ocean currents in that area of the Indian Ocean. Normal folks apparently try to avoid that area like the plague, if they can help it.

Here is a nice chart of the ocean currents, with the search area roughly marked in pink:

:






The currents are important since if they do find floating debris associated unequivocally with the aircraft in question then they will need the current information to compute back to the location of crash from the location of debris, so as to know where to look at the bottom of the sea 2 to 3 miles down for the rest of it.

The computations of where it could have come down to be more precise would have to take both fuel and wind direction and speed at the altitude flown. The wind direction at various altitudes are roughly known at that time, but altitude flown is not so at best the computations would be a rough estimate properly fit with the intercepts with the distance from satellite rings, based on ping times, constrained by the ground speed range of the plane. It is a fascinating curve fitting problem, if you think about it.

Also BTW it is not just current, but surface winds that would have an impact on where the floating debris lands up. So just using ocean current info for the computation is not enough, and might lead one widely astray.

Of course until they find something, anything, all the analysis of ocean currents and surface winds in the area is somewhat moot..


----------



## Devil's Advocate

Thanks for the updates Jis. I feel like I'm starting to get mystery fatigue from all the premature discoveries that seem to end up going nowhere. For the most part this tragedy has felt rather distant to me, almost like watching a movie or a documentary of a long passed event. Although I've visited Southeast Asia several times and traveled on the 777-200 more times than I can remember it's never been to Malaysia itself or on Malaysian Airlines. But there have been a couple moments when the story felt a bit closer to home. On my first flight after the plane went missing I remember having an odd moment when seeing hundreds of video screens all displaying the latest updates on the missing aircraft while flying. There was another time when I followed a link and found myself visiting the youtube channel of the missing captain. It wasn't any different than hundreds of other channels I've visited over the years. Here was the captain talking about random everyday topics just like any other uploaded. He wasn't ranting about anything or showing any anger or disdain. He was just living his life and making his way through the information age just like any of us. It was interesting and surreal to see him in that context, rather than the nutty flight simulating jihadist that the media had been teasing us with.


----------



## jis

Read Reply 26 (from Pihero) in this airliners.net thread to get a good description of how one goes about narrowing the area of possibilities using all 7 ping point + last known position and a few assumptions. I alluded to this in my earlier post on this subject above.

Also note that the statement made in Reply 9 summary that all 7 pings are not needed is just plain wrong, and arises due to the author's lack of understanding of the mathematics involved. BTW this thread is actually part 42, not part 41 as stated in the first post in the thread. The thread title is right and the first article is wrong.


----------



## MIrailfan

maybe the Langoliers have them?


----------



## jis

Another apparent flip-flop from Malaysian officialdom. Apparently four days after denying it, now they say that the plane was carrying a cargo of Lithium batteries!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2586308/Missing-jet-WAS-carrying-highly-flammable-lithium-batteries-CEO-Malaysian-Airlines-finally-admits-dangerous-cargo.html#ixzz2wd98HO00

BTW, the ATC communication has been released. You can see it at:

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1094577-mh370-transcript.html#document/p1


----------



## Just-Thinking-51

Time for a US Navy Aircraft Carrier group. That area is far from land and we need a mobile air base there. The carrier group includes all sort of ship with a underwater search ability. A submarine hunter should have no problems finding a pinging black box.

As for the local government refusing to search that far south. Well that like admitting it was the pilot that was at fault, better to think north. 

It's the blame game.


----------



## Paulus

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> Time for a US Navy Aircraft Carrier group. That area is far from land and we need a mobile air base there. The carrier group includes all sort of ship with a underwater search ability. A submarine hunter should have no problems finding a pinging black box.
> 
> As for the local government refusing to search that far south. Well that like admitting it was the pilot that was at fault, better to think north.
> 
> It's the blame game.


Sadly, the S-3 is no more.


----------



## Devil's Advocate

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> Time for a US Navy Aircraft Carrier group. That area is far from land and we need a mobile air base there. The carrier group includes all sort of ship with a underwater search ability. A submarine hunter should have no problems finding a pinging black box. As for the local government refusing to search that far south. Well that like admitting it was the pilot that was at fault, better to think north. It's the blame game.


No need to bring a _shock and awe_ fleet to a _search and rescue_ situation.


----------



## X

jis said:


> Now it is coming out that Inmersat had predicted within two days of the crash that it is most likely somewhere in the South Indian Ocean. See:
> 
> http://gma.yahoo.com/satellite-company-says-predicted-missing-planes-location-10-224715287--abc-news-topstories.html
> 
> The best projected path calculations diagram I have seen so far is this one:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I can't find a good online article to provide an URL for, but it is becoming clear that the last location being in Southern Indian Ocean as opposed to somewhere in China/Kazakstan is supported by the satellite ping sequence. It is not merely based on the assumption that any plane flying through Indian, Pakistani and Chinese airspace would have been detected. I read the analysis in an article and it is pretty convincing, and is apparently the reason that _Inmarsat_ has been convinced since day 2 after the crash that the plane is in south Indian Ocean. That advice was apparently ignored by the Malaysian authorities back then.
> 
> Apparently it is the US NTSB and the Australians that started working based on that information on their own independent of the Malaysians, and when the Malaysians would not budge someone started strategic leaks about the satellite pings. And as we know, what followed, followed. Pretty strange if you think about it.
> 
> Of course all this does not mean that anything will be found soon. That is an entirely different kettle of fish given the high winds a strong ocean currents in that area of the Indian Ocean. Normal folks apparently try to avoid that area like the plague, if they can help it.
> 
> Here is a nice chart of the ocean currents, with the search area roughly marked in pink:
> 
> :
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The currents are important since if they do find floating debris associated unequivocally with the aircraft in question then they will need the current information to compute back to the location of crash from the location of debris, so as to know where to look at the bottom of the sea 2 to 3 miles down for the rest of it.
> 
> The computations of where it could have come down to be more precise would have to take both fuel and wind direction and speed at the altitude flown. The wind direction at various altitudes are roughly known at that time, but altitude flown is not so at best the computations would be a rough estimate properly fit with the intercepts with the distance from satellite rings, based on ping times, constrained by the ground speed range of the plane. It is a fascinating curve fitting problem, if you think about it.
> 
> Also BTW it is not just current, but surface winds that would have an impact on where the floating debris lands up. So just using ocean current info for the computation is not enough, and might lead one widely astray.
> 
> Of course until they find something, anything, all the analysis of ocean currents and surface winds in the area is somewhat moot..


INMARSAT must have changed their minds, as you say, 'they were convinced it was in the South Indian Ocean.'

Chris McLaughlin, Senior VP, yesterday in an interview on Fox TV News said (about 5:45 in the video link below) they came up with a suggested arc to the north and south where authorities may want to start looking.

http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/03/21/satellite-company-inmarsat-says-its-data-could-help-find-malaysia-airliner


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## jis

Actually what he said is not inconsistent with the further conclusions that were drawn regarding the final location. It is not clear to me whether that work was entirely done by Inmarsat or it was NTSB that did further refinement on an initial draft done by Inmarsat. If you look at the article that I gave a reference to, it says:



> Inmarsat, the maker of satellites, told ABC News that they had an "initial idea" on March 9 and by March 10 were "fairly certain" that the search parties should look in the south Indian Ocean for the vanished plane.


 So notwithstanding what was said at the FOX interview, ABC news had been told as mentioned above. Which leads me to the following speculation....

Unfortunately, at FOX he was not asked the next obvious question which should have been asked, about the possible flight paths that are consistent with all the pings and the arcs defined by each. That is the analysis that slightly favors the southern location apparently. He was not asked and he did not volunteer anything that he was not asked. Indeed he was very very careful in answering the questions. he avoided speculations almost completely, and he did not volunteer an iota of additional info beyond what was asked. I wish Kelly had asked the question about flight paths consistent with all pings. As you know the arcs defined are not flight paths. They just define a set of points from where the last ping could have been received.

Hope that clarifies more than it confuses.

Anyway, as it appears the focus on the southern trajectory has been growing for almost a week now, even before the Malaysians were apparently fully on board. The events as we see them dows not suggest any change of mind on part of Inmarsat at least to me.


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## jis

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> Time for a US Navy Aircraft Carrier group. That area is far from land and we need a mobile air base there. The carrier group includes all sort of ship with a underwater search ability. A submarine hunter should have no problems finding a pinging black box.


Seems like an ideal task for _SSN-23 Jimmy Carter_, with its MMP to launch ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles). It is the only _Seawolf Class_ submarine equipped to do so.


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## NW cannonball

jis said:


> Just-Thinking-51 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Time for a US Navy Aircraft Carrier group. That area is far from land and we need a mobile air base there. The carrier group includes all sort of ship with a underwater search ability. A submarine hunter should have no problems finding a pinging black box.
> 
> 
> 
> Seems like an ideal task for _SSN-23 Jimmy Carter_, with its MMP to launch ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles). It is the only _Seawolf Class_ submarine equipped to do so.
Click to expand...

Uh-uh. Carrier strike group costs -- dunno? how many? million USD/day.

Yah, the carrier has more ASW planes and helos than already committed to the search, but without some localization, it would be looking for the same spit in the ocean as the rest of the international search effort.

Military submarines -- probably have real good ability to find sonar pings like from the black boxes - but have same problem with enormous search space -

There *could* be USNAVY submarines searching already -- but *if* there are they will never disclose where they are or any of their capabilities.



> A submarine hunter should have no problems finding a pinging black box.


Look at the range of the "submarine hunter". Enough to make the flotilla relatively safe.

Then look at the size of the search area. OMG.

Needle in haystack, spit in the ocean.

Consider how long it took to recover the AirFrance crash boxes after the crash. And consider the really really strong winds and currents in the southern ocean.

If a person I've met who works on SSN-23 is on the job, I know they will do their best -- but success is not likely on this search.


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## Anderson

Well, and it's not like plopping a carrier group in the South Indian Ocean has any incidental benefits for national security. If it were in the Western Pacific or Arabian Sea (or the Arctic) you could make a case...but that's too far from anywhere.

I've seen some theories running from plausible to outlandish to "unlikely but sure interesting to ponder", but I get a feeling this isn't going to end in any resolution for quite a while.


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## Just-Thinking-51

Give a Aircraft Carrier Group something to do. Other than haphazard sailing around the ocean. Waste fuel, putting hours on airframes. Hunting for a ping, aircraft debris is better than going in circles in a ocean doing nothing.

The issue is now land based aircraft can only stay on station for a few hours before return home. The search arc is so far from land.


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## jis

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> The issue is now land based aircraft can only stay on station for a few hours before return home. The search arc is so far from land.


Yep. It is roughly 4 hours out, four hours back, and about 2 hours at station doing the actual search. This is what the Aussies at Perth said yesterday.
BTW, it is safe to say that most of the aircraft is way deep down and not on the surface. That is why eventually, if one is to find it, very sophisticated underwater equipment able to operate at the depth of 2 to 3 miles will be needed.


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## afigg

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> Give a Aircraft Carrier Group something to do. Other than haphazard sailing around the ocean. Waste fuel, putting hours on airframes. Hunting for a ping, aircraft debris is better than going in circles in a ocean doing nothing.
> 
> The issue is now land based aircraft can only stay on station for a few hours before return home. The search arc is so far from land.


Boy, people in the US are really not paying much attention to what else is going on in the world right now beyond the missing airliner. After annexing Crimea, Russian troops are reportedly continuing to build up on the Ukrainian border and there is real concern that Russia & Putin will move into eastern Ukraine. The Syrian civil war continues and has been spilling over into Iraq. Libya is in chaos and the flow of oil from Libya has fallen off again. Pakistan is getting increasingly unstable. Russia may break away from the sanctions on Iran and enable Iran to back out of the tenative agreements with the West over its nuclear program. North Korea spent the week shooting off a bunch of missiles to get attention, but then again that SOP for North Korea.
In the current global circumstances, the US administration and military is not likely to want to tie up a major strategic asset, a carrier battle group, way off in the southern Indian ocean where it can't respond if one of the crisis areas spins out of control. I suspect that is a factor in why the US asked the Australians to take the lead on the search with their naval and air assets rather than commit a number of ships from the 7th fleet.

Meanwhile, the last I checked, CNN is still doing its wall to wall coverage on the missing airliner with almost no new data to report. At this point, I think the odds are increasing that we will not find the 777 wreckage for decades. The search area is still too big. If debris that is confirmed to be from MH 370 is not found soon, we won't know where to look within any manageable sized area. Then the wreckage could sit there until a future time where technology advances to where the wreckage might be found during detailed ocean floor mapping surveys.


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## RRUserious

This is gonna be worse than AF447. Took roughly 2 years to find the wreckage with a much more precise record of where it crashed. This could be many more years than that. Or never.


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## Paulus

Flight is confirmed lost in the southern Indian Ocean based on satellite tracking data. No positive ID of wreckage yet.


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## Devil's Advocate

How can you have confirmation without positive ID?

This whole sordid story has been full of false positives that weren't worth the tissue paper they were smeared on.


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## Paulus

Devil's Advocate said:


> How can you have confirmation without positive ID?
> 
> This whole sordid story has been full of false positives that weren't worth the tissue paper they were smeared on.


Last position was in the middle of the ocean with no possible landing strips within range.


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## Bob Dylan

Official Announcement from the Malaysian Govt: The Plane and its Occupants Sleep with the Fishes @ at the bottom of the Indian Ocean! RIP


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## The Davy Crockett

Pilot suicide?


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## Paulus

The Davy Crockett said:


> Pilot suicide?


Not consistent with other examples of pilot suicide. It will be years, however, before we know what happened and we may simply never know.


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## Devil's Advocate

Paulus said:


> The Davy Crockett said:
> 
> 
> 
> Pilot suicide?
> 
> 
> 
> Not consistent with other examples of pilot suicide. It will be years, however, before we know what happened and we may simply never know.
Click to expand...

You care to list some examples of what you think this is event is consistent with? So far as I can tell pilot suicide makes about as much sense as anything at this point, despite your flippant and unsubstantiated reply to the contrary.


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## Paulus

Devil's Advocate said:


> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Davy Crockett said:
> 
> 
> 
> Pilot suicide?
> 
> 
> 
> Not consistent with other examples of pilot suicide. It will be years, however, before we know what happened and we may simply never know.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> You care to list some examples of what you think this is event is consistent with? So far as I can tell pilot suicide makes about as much sense as anything at this point, despite your flippant and unsubstantiated reply to the contrary.
Click to expand...

Hardly flippant or unsubstantiated. EgyptAir Flight 990, Japan Airlines Flight 350, LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470, Royal Air Maroc Flight 630, and SilkAir Flight 185 were all sudden and deliberate actions to destroy the airplane as quickly as possible. Additionally, the other members of the flight crew generally are not on board with the suicide plans (and we know for a fact that they fought it on EgyptAir 990 and Japan Airlines 350) which makes "Fly until fuel exhaustion in the middle of the ocean" rather unlikely as a means of suicide.

The A-10 suicide back in 1997 does bear rather a lot of similarities with this actually, transponder off, couldn't find for weeks, suicide crash near fuel exhaustion way off course, but that was a single seat flight. I suspect that there's probably a few other single seat suicides that took place in a similar fashion, but I'm not aware of any airliners that went down that way.


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## XHRTSP

It only has to be consistent with the evidence available to be plausible, not necessarily consistent with precedent.


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## Texan Eagle

Either my knowledge of English is not as good as I thought, or Malaysia uses a different English than I know, but can someone please explain how can the Malaysian government say the plane is *confirmed *to be at the bottom of Indian Ocean when there is no wreck nor black box located or retrieved?

I understand they arrived at this conclusion based on extensive analysis of satellite ping data and the fact that there are no suitable landing strips in that area, but isn't this at best a *conjecture* or *assumption* rather than *"confirmed truth"?*


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## Ryan

If the last position and time make it impossible to be anywhere else, then yeah. That's pretty much confirmation.


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## Devil's Advocate

Paulus said:


> Devil said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Davy Crockett said:
> 
> 
> 
> Pilot suicide?
> 
> 
> 
> Not consistent with other examples of pilot suicide. It will be years, however, before we know what happened and we may simply never know.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> You care to list some examples of what you think this is event is consistent with? So far as I can tell pilot suicide makes about as much sense as anything at this point, despite your flippant and unsubstantiated reply to the contrary.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Hardly flippant or unsubstantiated. EgyptAir Flight 990, Japan Airlines Flight 350, LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470, Royal Air Maroc Flight 630, and SilkAir Flight 185 were all sudden and deliberate actions to destroy the airplane as quickly as possible. Additionally, the other members of the flight crew generally are not on board with the suicide plans (and we know for a fact that they fought it on EgyptAir 990 and Japan Airlines 350) which makes "Fly until fuel exhaustion in the middle of the ocean" rather unlikely as a means of suicide.
Click to expand...

People who are about to commit murder and/or suicide are not always in a hurry. In fact the decision to proceed and the process of performing it may take on a ritualistic theme which could last a substantial amount of time. One thing that is extremely consistent with previous attempts of in flight suicide are measures taken to prevent or hinder the discovery of the cause. Both in the form of loss of communication and the disabling/disruption of monitoring equipment. It's also not unprecedented for the perpetrator to gain exclusive access to the flight deck or to fight with those who are either unaware of or uncooperative with their decision. For these and other reasons murder-suicide by commanded collision or via fuel exhaustion in a location that precludes easy rescue or discovery does not seem terribly far fetched to me.


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## jis

Interesting tidbit about the grand 777 Simulator that is being frequently used by CNN, from _airliners.net_:



> It's not a certified simulator used for pilot training and has no motion system. It's amateur-built and cost a small fraction of the cost of the simulators used by airlines. It's referred to as an "entertainment simulator". It's used by the general public who can pay for the experience. Current price $149 (Canadian). I believe the "captain" who appears in most of the CNN simulator segments is a private pilot with no airline experience.
> 
> http://uflysimulator.ca/


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## CHamilton

SEAFLOOR EXPERTS PUBLISH NEW VIEW OF ZONE WHERE MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370 MIGHT LIE





> 27 May 2014
> 
> 
> WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new illustration of the seafloor, created by two of the world’s leading ocean floor mapping experts that details underwater terrain where the missing Malaysia Airlines flight might be located, could shed additional light on what type of underwater vehicles might be used to find the missing airplane and where any debris from the crash might lie.
> 
> The seafloor topography map illustrates jagged plateaus, ridges and other underwater features of a large area underneath the Indian Ocean where search efforts have focused since contact with Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was lost on March 8. The image was published today in Eos, the weekly newspaper of the Earth and space sciences, published by the American Geophysical Union.


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## Devil's Advocate

Fascinating story and thanks for the link. For some reason I cannot help but wonder if someone (presumably one of the pilots) chose this area specifically because it would be such an unlikely and enormously difficult location to search. I'm no expert in any sense of the word, but I've read about and watched documentaries on dozens of airline crashes and I keep coming back to intentional cessation of communication followed by intentional redirection. In other news they also apparently released the "raw" satellite data to the public.

Link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/27/mh370-malaysia-airlines-missing-plane-satellite-data-released


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## Bob Dylan

To use the old Mafia line: Flight 370 Sleeps with the Fishes!


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## caravanman

My gut feeling on this is that a major sudden calamity affected the plane... After all, there were hundreds of passengers, and many flight attendants not on the flight deck. Given that the plane was supposed to have flown back over land at some point, someone could have used a mobile phone if they were all still alive?

Let's hope they find its location soon.

Ed


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## jis

Looks like a flaperon that could be from a 777 has been found on the beach of Reunion Islands in south west Indian Ocean, and is causing some amount of excitement....

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/07/29/mh370-experts-analyse-wreckage-plane-wing-found-reunion-island_n_7896548.html







Another article http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ca0fe9f3e1c34132894f28433992b9fb/us-official-debris-photo-belongs-boeing-777


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## Swadian Hardcore

Saw it on Airliners. Can't they find a serial number of something?


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## Bob Dylan

Sadly the plane and all aboard are Sleeping with the fishes!

I would think there should be some kind of # or markings so as to be able to trace this part as SH said?


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## SarahZ

And now I know "flap" is actually an abbreviation. I thought they were just flaps, period. :blush:


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## Swadian Hardcore

No, it's not a flap. Flaps are not flaperons. I believe flaperon means "flap-aileron". Ailerons control the roll of the aircraft.


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## Ryan

Ailerons control the plane in the roll direction. Flaps change the shape of the wing to generate more lift at low speed. This magical floating part can do both. 

I'm sure they'll be able to find a serial number and track it down. It's way out in the middle of nowhere, going to take a little bit of time to get the right experts in place.


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## tp49

It was bound to happen sooner or later but I'm hopeful that with this discovery if it is in fact MH 370 that the families can finally get some closure.


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## SarahZ

Okay, so "flaps" on their own are a real thing. Also, the thing I call the "flap" is, indeed, a flap (I looked it up), so I was basically just confusing myself.


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## AmtrakBlue

SarahZ said:


> Okay, so "flaps" on their own are a real thing. Also, the thing I call the "flap" is, indeed, a flap (I looked it up), so I was basically just confusing myself.


Stop flapping your lips about these flaps. :lol: Don't you have more packing to do?


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## Swadian Hardcore

Let's hope this piece gets confirmed to be something soon. It could still be from a Yemenia A310 that crashed.


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## tp49

Swadian Hardcore said:


> Let's hope this piece gets confirmed to be something soon. It could still be from a Yemenia A310 that crashed.


Based on the currents and the location the Yemenia plane crashed it's not likely to be that aircraft.


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## Devil's Advocate

tp49 said:


> It was bound to happen sooner or later but I'm hopeful that with this discovery if it is in fact MH 370 that the families can finally get some closure.


Did the families of MS990 or MI185 receive closure? I think we're an awful long way from closing the case of MH370. If anything we may simply be scratching the surface of many more questions to come.


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## Texan Eagle

They don't even have to match it specifically to plane operating the MH370 flight, even if it can be established that the flaperon-like piece belongs to a 777, that is pretty clear evidence it came from MH370. After all, no other 777 has ever crashed into the sea, and a part as big as a flaperon would not just fall off from a regular flight without anyone noticing it amiss.


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## jis

Swadian Hardcore said:


> No, it's not a flap. Flaps are not flaperons. I believe flaperon means "flap-aileron". Ailerons control the roll of the aircraft.


A flaperon is a double purpose control surface. It is used as the inboard aileron on a 777 (777s also have a outboard pure aileron). It is also used as a low speed lift enhancement control surface like the other slotted flaps on the wing for that purpose. At low velocity it is deployed as a lift flap while it still deflect up and down in conjunction with the aileron motion needed.


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