Ugh, as if flying abroad wasn't bad enough. :(
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/u-s-probing-terror-concerns-missing-malaysian-airlines-jet-n47861
QuoteU.S. officials told NBC News on Saturday they are investigating terrorism concerns after two people listed as passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines jet turned out not to be on the plane and had reported their passports stolen.
First published March 9th 2014, 1:22 am
No doubt. Shit dont just disappear like that. No mayday call. Maybe a bomb got onboard.
Quote from: Dr. StrangeloveIt doesn't do any good if you keep it a secret!
Applies to nuclear deterrents and terrorist attacks. A terrorist attack that doesn't generate publicity is as useless as tits on a bull.
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on March 08, 2014, 12:30:43 PM
Quote from: Dr. StrangeloveIt doesn't do any good if you keep it a secret!
Applies to nuclear deterrents and terrorist attacks. A terrorist attack that doesn't generate publicity is as useless as tits on a bull.
Most terrorists seem to be dumbasses, so who knows.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 08, 2014, 11:29:08 AM
Ugh, as if flying abroad wasn't bad enough. :(
You really shouldn't be concerned about flying in the 1st world because of a potential 3rd world security breach.
Kuala Lumpur-Beijing and Malaysian Airlines are hardly third world.
Yeah. Malaysian Air pretty regularly has ads in The Economist. I don't associate that with dingy third-world airlines.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 08, 2014, 02:07:41 PM
Kuala Lumpur-Beijing and Malaysian Airlines are hardly third world.
It isn't about the airline or the route, it is about the airport administration.
Quote from: 11B4V on March 08, 2014, 11:31:27 AM
No doubt. Shit dont just disappear like that. No mayday call. Maybe a bomb got onboard.
Yeah, planes never just fall out of the sky.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 08, 2014, 04:06:12 PM
Quote from: 11B4V on March 08, 2014, 11:31:27 AM
No doubt. Shit dont just disappear like that. No mayday call. Maybe a bomb got onboard.
Yeah, planes never just fall out of the sky.
If Obama hadn't killed those people in Benghazi this would never have happened.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 08, 2014, 02:17:02 PM
It isn't about the airline or the route, it is about the airport administration.
Okay. But again, Kuala Lumpur? :mellow:
Yeah, this is all over the news here, as the bulk of the passengers are Chinese. Probably just an accident, but of course nobody is ruling anything out, as they haven't even found the debris yet (should be somewhere near Vietnam).
It's being reported that two of the people who were on board according to the flight manifest - an Italian and an Austrian - were in fact not onboard, but both reported their passports stolen within the last year or so (in Thailand, I believe).
It doesn't mean that it's connected, of course, but still curious.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 08, 2014, 06:25:00 PM
Yeah, this is all over the news here, as the bulk of the passengers are Chinese. Probably just an accident, but of course nobody is ruling anything out, as they haven't even found the debris yet (should be somewhere near Vietnam).
I think it's less likely to be an accident than an act of sabotage. It's really unusual for airliners to just vanish mid-flight without so much as a quick distress call. Of course, that Air France flight from Brazil to France that crashed into the Atlantic a few years back turned out to be an accident, but midflight accidents like that with not even a peep from the pilots are incredibly rare.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 08, 2014, 06:18:27 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 08, 2014, 02:17:02 PM
It isn't about the airline or the route, it is about the airport administration.
Okay. But again, Kuala Lumpur? :mellow:
Yeah, where else could they be? They clearly aren't 2nd. That leaves 1st and 3rd as the options.
The capital cities of a lot of countries are much better off than the rest of the country. I've always heard the designations applied to countries rather than splitting between regions.
Quote from: Jacob on March 08, 2014, 07:15:19 PM
It's being reported that two of the people who were on board according to the flight manifest - an Italian and an Austrian - were in fact not onboard, but both reported their passports stolen within the last year or so (in Thailand, I believe).
It doesn't mean that it's connected, of course, but still curious.
I wonder how common that is.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 08, 2014, 10:46:12 PM
Yeah, where else could they be? They clearly aren't 2nd. That leaves 1st and 3rd as the options.
The capital cities of a lot of countries are much better off than the rest of the country. I've always heard the designations applied to countries rather than splitting between regions.
The 2nd World was meant to refer to the Soviet Union and its allies (or other communist countries like China, though not in Mao's original formulation where it meant 1st World allies, pointedly directed at the USSR).
The whole "three worlds" concept is outdated at best, probably useless when it was actually relevant, and seriously pernicious at worst; so the intricacies of designating countries or regions within the scheme strikes me as an exercise in futility.
Latest news: some families called the mobiles of the passengers, got a connection, then lost the signal well after the plane went down :ph34r:
Most probably stolen phones. Or their loved ones told them a different story than what really happened.
Quote from: Caliga on March 08, 2014, 10:29:17 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 08, 2014, 06:25:00 PM
Yeah, this is all over the news here, as the bulk of the passengers are Chinese. Probably just an accident, but of course nobody is ruling anything out, as they haven't even found the debris yet (should be somewhere near Vietnam).
I think it's less likely to be an accident than an act of sabotage. It's really unusual for airliners to just vanish mid-flight without so much as a quick distress call. Of course, that Air France flight from Brazil to France that crashed into the Atlantic a few years back turned out to be an accident, but midflight accidents like that with not even a peep from the pilots are incredibly rare.
Terror really only works if it is obvious that it is an act of terror. Planes disappearing in mid-air by accident is well within the realm of possibility. We'll know when they find the wreckage. That may take a few weeks, I think.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 09, 2014, 02:28:51 AM
Quote from: Caliga on March 08, 2014, 10:29:17 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 08, 2014, 06:25:00 PM
Yeah, this is all over the news here, as the bulk of the passengers are Chinese. Probably just an accident, but of course nobody is ruling anything out, as they haven't even found the debris yet (should be somewhere near Vietnam).
I think it's less likely to be an accident than an act of sabotage. It's really unusual for airliners to just vanish mid-flight without so much as a quick distress call. Of course, that Air France flight from Brazil to France that crashed into the Atlantic a few years back turned out to be an accident, but midflight accidents like that with not even a peep from the pilots are incredibly rare.
Terror really only works if it is obvious that it is an act of terror. Planes disappearing in mid-air by accident is well within the realm of possibility. We'll know when they find the wreckage. That may take a few weeks, I think.
All sabotage isn't necessarily terrorism. Could be a disgruntled airline employee or the like.
:hmm:
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/no-terror-group-claims-credit-missing-jet-official-says-n48481
QuoteThe two stolen passports bear a troubling travel pattern, according to senior intelligence sources.
In at least one prior instance, the passports were used in tandem to board a flight.
Oh for fuck's sake, that side of the planet sees stolen passports every fucking day.
And quite frankly, if it was a catastrophic flight problem the pilots were probably too busy trying to control the plane to fiddle with the radio, especially if it's pitch down. That water comes up fast.
Even money says it was terrorists.
Anything else the crew should have gotten off a May Day.
Reasons why it's not terrorism:
1. Nobody's claimed responsibility, and you know how they love to brag. Not even the usual crazies have said anything.
2, Not enough Americans to make it worthwhile. Sorry, ROTW citizens, but you're just not worth the effort.
QuoteThe flight may have changed course and turned back toward Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian military officials said at a news conference Sunday.
But the pilot appears to have given no signal to authorities that he was turning around, the officials said, attributing the change of course to indications from radar data.
Could've been a significant electric/electronic failure event on board that prohibited even so much as a mayday; when you have a catastrophic systems failure like that, nothing works.
From what I've read in the newspaper and heard on the radio, most experts agree that the plane disintegrated in mid-air. It must be very sudden so that the pilot could not react at all. Will be years before we find out the reason.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 09, 2014, 09:27:54 PM
Reasons why it's not terrorism:
1. Nobody's claimed responsibility, and you know how they love to brag. Not even the usual crazies have said anything.
2, Not enough Americans to make it worthwhile. Sorry, ROTW citizens, but you're just not worth the effort.
There were plenty of Chiense though. Could have been the Uyghurs maybe?
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 09, 2014, 09:39:35 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 09, 2014, 09:27:54 PM
Reasons why it's not terrorism:
1. Nobody's claimed responsibility, and you know how they love to brag. Not even the usual crazies have said anything.
2, Not enough Americans to make it worthwhile. Sorry, ROTW citizens, but you're just not worth the effort.
There were plenty of Chiense though. Could have been the Uyghurs maybe?
They will target a Chinese domestic flight. Doesn't make sense for them to target a Malaysian air liner, because they are fellow muslims.
Uighurs?
Uighur, please. :rolleyes:
Re: the no communication thing - from what I've read, sending out a pilot triggered distress signal is secondary or tertiary in an emergency to assessing the situation and keeping the plane airborne. So if no automatic mayday signal was triggered, the pilots could very well have been too busy to send out any signals.
Re: the passports - I agree with Seedy about the common usage of stolen passports. It's just as likely that they were simply trying to go somewhere where they otherwise couldn't. Though I read a report that there's CCTV footage of the two people who used the passport currently being examined by the Malaysian authorities, so that could provide a lead (if true).
Caliga's pal that found amelia earhart's plane needs to get on this case.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 10, 2014, 10:18:28 AM
Caliga's pal that found amelia earhart's plane needs to get on this case.
:lol:
If the plane had exploded in the air would there more likely to be debris floating as opposed to a plane landing in the ocean intact?
The two stolen passports are connected to tickets purchased by two Iranian men.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 10, 2014, 12:57:43 PM
The two stolen passports are connected to tickets purchased by two Iranian men.
From what I've read, the tickets were purchased by an Iranian intermediary from a Thai ticket agent - with whom he did regular business over the years, the whole process being fairly standard for that place - and the holders of the tickets (from CCTV footage, as related by a Malaysian investigator) were Black and likely from Africa.
If that is true, I'm guessing they were illegal immigrants rather than terrorists.
If it was terrorism, arent they doing it wrong by keeping their acts a secret?
Quote from: Jacob on March 10, 2014, 04:49:00 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 10, 2014, 12:57:43 PM
The two stolen passports are connected to tickets purchased by two Iranian men.
From what I've read, the tickets were purchased by an Iranian intermediary from a Thai ticket agent - with whom he did regular business over the years, the whole process being fairly standard for that place - and the holders of the tickets (from CCTV footage, as related by a Malaysian investigator) were Black and likely from Africa.
If that is true, I'm guessing they were illegal immigrants rather than terrorists.
It was breaking news when I saw it so the details were not known to me. I still doubt terrorism though. I'm still thinking it was simply a terrible accident.
Quote from: Jacob on March 10, 2014, 04:49:00 PM
From what I've read, the tickets were purchased by an Iranian intermediary from a Thai ticket agent - with whom he did regular business over the years, the whole process being fairly standard for that place - and the holders of the tickets (from CCTV footage, as related by a Malaysian investigator) were Black and likely from Africa.
If that is true, I'm guessing they were illegal immigrants rather than terrorists.
If they were cheaters, God picked a shitty time and place to smite them. :(
I would imagine it will ultimately turn out that the plane was shot down by the Chinese.
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 10, 2014, 05:02:45 PM
If it was terrorism, arent they doing it wrong by keeping their acts a secret?
They aren't boastful.
They are quiet humble sorts of terrorists. They just want to be left alone to terrorize in peace and I get that.
:D
I suppose it's possible that a terrorist group has claimed responsibility, and it hasn't been reported for some reason. Perhaps they only informed the Chinese government and the Chinese haven't spread the word, or they have made some public announcement but nobody picked it up or took it seriously.
I read that a hitherto unknown Muslim Uighur group claimed responsibility with a PDF statement some time after the fact, but that the Chinese government dismissed the claim as being non-credible.
You know, even of they did do it I think there's a certain beauty to dismissing and then completely ignoring the claim.
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 10, 2014, 05:02:45 PM
If it was terrorism, arent they doing it wrong by keeping their acts a secret?
Maybe the terrorists aren't saying anything because none of them survived the crash?
Quote from: Jacob on March 10, 2014, 10:10:13 PM
I read that a hitherto unknown Muslim Uighur group claimed responsibility with a PDF statement some time after the fact, but that the Chinese government dismissed the claim as being non-credible.
You know, even of they did do it I think there's a certain beauty to dismissing and then completely ignoring the claim.
You know what's even more beautiful? Publicly ignore the claim; secretly arrest the entire group :menace:
Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2014, 10:19:27 PM
Quote from: Jacob on March 10, 2014, 10:10:13 PM
I read that a hitherto unknown Muslim Uighur group claimed responsibility with a PDF statement some time after the fact, but that the Chinese government dismissed the claim as being non-credible.
You know, even of they did do it I think there's a certain beauty to dismissing and then completely ignoring the claim.
You know what's even more beautiful? Publicly ignore the claim; secretly arrest the entire group :menace:
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder... or the beholden...
Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2014, 10:19:27 PM
You know what's even more beautiful? Publicly ignore the claim; secretly arrest the entire group :menace:
I hope a Tibetan monk takes a big sloppy shit in your shark fin soup during his quest for enlightenment.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 10, 2014, 10:53:09 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2014, 10:19:27 PM
You know what's even more beautiful? Publicly ignore the claim; secretly arrest the entire group :menace:
I hope a Tibetan monk takes a big sloppy shit in your shark fin soup during his quest for enlightenment.
If someone claims that he blew up a civilian airplane, he immediately becomes fair game for law enforcement, isn't it :menace:
Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2014, 10:58:09 PM
If someone claims that he blew up a civilian airplane, he immediately becomes fair game for law enforcement, isn't it :menace:
:yes: Plus any of his relatives within 3 generations.
But then who's going to pay for the bullets?
Quote from: Jacob on March 10, 2014, 10:10:13 PM
I read that a hitherto unknown Muslim Uighur group claimed responsibility with a PDF statement some time after the fact, but that the Chinese government dismissed the claim as being non-credible.
You know, even of they did do it I think there's a certain beauty to dismissing and then completely ignoring the claim.
I'm sure that plenty of loons deemed noncredible have claimed responsibility.
If it's a new group, how do they deterimine if they're credible or not though?
Looks like the terrorist trail is getting cold, and that it's looking like the usual human trafficking stuff.
Not that human trafficking itself brought the plane down. That would just be downright weird.
Quote from: Jacob on March 10, 2014, 10:10:13 PM
I read that a hitherto unknown Muslim Uighur group claimed responsibility with a PDF statement some time after the fact, but that the Chinese government dismissed the claim as being non-credible.
You know, even of they did do it I think there's a certain beauty to dismissing and then completely ignoring the claim.
ETIM? If so I've heard of these guys before but didn't think they were actively engaging in terrorism.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2014, 10:58:09 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 10, 2014, 10:53:09 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2014, 10:19:27 PM
You know what's even more beautiful? Publicly ignore the claim; secretly arrest the entire group :menace:
I hope a Tibetan monk takes a big sloppy shit in your shark fin soup during his quest for enlightenment.
If someone claims that he blew up a civilian airplane, he immediately becomes fair game for law enforcement, isn't it :menace:
To a certain extent, sure. But why arrest them in secret? That's just stupid.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 10, 2014, 11:05:02 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 10, 2014, 10:58:09 PM
If someone claims that he blew up a civilian airplane, he immediately becomes fair game for law enforcement, isn't it :menace:
:yes: Plus any of his relatives within 3 generations.
Neighbors, friends, former teachers-- really anyone from their ethnic group.
Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on March 11, 2014, 01:06:58 AM
But then who's going to pay for the bullets?
I don't think slow slicing requires bullets.
Saw an article earlier that said Malaysian military radar detected that the plane altered its course to the west and descended to a lower altitude and now appears to have been tracked as far as the Straits of Malacca. :blink:
:hmm: I wonder if this is more like that Greek airliner a couple of years back that lost cabin pressure and ended up flying out of control till it ran out of fuel.
Something I don't get...there are devices for more serious hikers that will pinpoint GPS location. Friends and family can track where you are at all times, and you can issue distress calls, etc. Why don't planes have something similar, made of something that won't blow up? Why should it be so hard to find a plane?
Also, don't they know where the plane disappeared?
From what I understand, the plan was following its normal flight path until it reached a point in the Gulf of Thailand south of Vietnam just inside Vietnamese airspace. At that point it 'disappeared', but it appears that instead of just blowing up or crashing into the sea it suddenly and dramatically changed course.
I did a little homework on the Greek airliner (actually Cypriot) and I slightly mis-remembered that accident: the plane's cabin pressurization system was accidentally switched off and so the plane always remained at outside pressure, which caused everyone to pass out... but it stayed on autopilot and when it reached Athens the autopilot kept it in a holding pattern till it ran out of gas. A flight attendant somehow managed to wake up and got into the cabin in an attempt to save the plane, but it ran out of gas and crashed before he was able to do anything.
So it sounds like this could not be a close analog since this aircraft apparently changed course for some bizarre reason.
UFO abduction then?
Quote from: alfred russel on March 11, 2014, 12:52:10 PM
Something I don't get...there are devices for more serious hikers that will pinpoint GPS location. Friends and family can track where you are at all times, and you can issue distress calls, etc. Why don't planes have something similar, made of something that won't blow up? Why should it be so hard to find a plane?
They do have such things (radio beacons). They just don't work from underwater, or when buried under rubble, etc.
QuoteAlso, don't they know where the plane disappeared?
Well, the plane disappeared from different radars at different times and places. Radar systems that were not explicitly tracking the plane have to have their data for the time period reconstructed, and the right data for that flight identified and analyzed. We may see additional data from other systems (like passing warships or other military air search radar systems).
This is weird. They aren't even certain which ocean to look in.
If it crashed in the Gulf of Thailand, it seems like it shouldn't be this hard to find. The Gulf of Thailand isn't that big and is pretty shallow.
OTOH, if in fact it did change course and went off into the Pacific or the Indian, and they aren't sure where exactly, I doubt it'll ever be located. It had enough fuel to go way out over both of those.
They do seem to have some clue about which planet to search on, which is good.
Quote from: Caliga on March 11, 2014, 12:08:26 PM
Saw an article earlier that said Malaysian military radar detected that the plane altered its course to the west and descended to a lower altitude and now appears to have been tracked as far as the Straits of Malacca. :blink:
The Malaysian military denied this.
Quote from: lustindarkness on March 11, 2014, 01:06:46 PM
UFO abduction then?
You'll be surprised about how popular this theory is. A lot of people over here, my wife included, simply won't acknowledge that the plane has crashed and everybody is dead.
To be honest I assumed planes were always being tracked. It is kind of extraordinary that one can just disappear in 2014 :mellow:
I think planes are always being tracked, if not by national aviation authorities. :ph34r: After 9/11 the US probably created a system to track every passenger jet in the world, they just won't admit that they have it -- which would explain their skepticism of the Chinese satellite pictures.
Amazing. Apparently the White House are briefing that the plane flew for four hours after it disappeared from radar. The Malaysians very strongly denying it.
This is really weird.
How do we know it was flying if it disappeared from radar? Do we have ground confirmation.
Quote from: Queequeg on March 13, 2014, 06:11:58 PM
How do we know it was flying if it disappeared from radar? Do we have ground confirmation.
Apparently the US claim that they received automatic transmissions from the engines hours after it disappeared from radar.
Quote from: Queequeg on March 13, 2014, 06:11:58 PM
How do we know it was flying if it disappeared from radar? Do we have ground confirmation.
I think it's data Rolls Royce have from the engines.
I heard that several days ago.
Quote from: Caliga on March 13, 2014, 06:21:12 PM
I heard that several days ago.
Yeah. The Malaysian's denied it. Tonight the White House that their data is that it did fly on.
Which poses lots of questions.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 11, 2014, 12:52:10 PM
Something I don't get...there are devices for more serious hikers that will pinpoint GPS location. Friends and family can track where you are at all times, and you can issue distress calls, etc. Why don't planes have something similar, made of something that won't blow up? Why should it be so hard to find a plane?
Radio waves don't travel very well through water.
Quote from: Caliga on March 13, 2014, 03:18:21 PM
If it crashed in the Gulf of Thailand, it seems like it shouldn't be this hard to find. The Gulf of Thailand isn't that big and is pretty shallow.
OTOH, if in fact it did change course and went off into the Pacific or the Indian, and they aren't sure where exactly, I doubt it'll ever be located. It had enough fuel to go way out over both of those.
Still surprising given how many radars and satelites must cover those areas.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 13, 2014, 06:53:47 PM
Still surprising given how many radars and satelites must cover those areas.
Malaysian radar? Vietnamese radar? Chicom satellites? Not exactly NATO.
Four hours? Not a bleep? So I guess the idea is that it went off the radar, was going for 4 hours, and then magically crashed?
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 13, 2014, 07:01:30 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 13, 2014, 06:53:47 PM
Still surprising given how many radars and satelites must cover those areas.
Malaysian radar? Vietnamese radar? Chicom satellites? Not exactly NATO.
Radar isn't exactly cutting edge, it's been around since the 40s.
Thai and Indonesian radar too, plus that of any naval ships in the area. I'm sure there are US and other satellites that go over that area as well.
I'm not one given to conspiracy theories, but something isn't right here.
Quote from: Neil on March 13, 2014, 06:27:46 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 11, 2014, 12:52:10 PM
Something I don't get...there are devices for more serious hikers that will pinpoint GPS location. Friends and family can track where you are at all times, and you can issue distress calls, etc. Why don't planes have something similar, made of something that won't blow up? Why should it be so hard to find a plane?
Radio waves don't travel very well through water.
Okay, but one would think that if they knew where it hit the water finding the plane would not be so difficult.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 13, 2014, 07:13:39 PM
Radar isn't exactly cutting edge, it's been around since the 40s.
OK, pussycat, you go put yourself in the hands of Malaysian radar operators.
Quote from: Caliga on March 13, 2014, 07:55:05 PM
I'm not one given to conspiracy theories, but something isn't right here.
Yeah, I initially thought that this must be an accident of some sort. I now think that it likely isn't just an accident.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 13, 2014, 08:31:53 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 13, 2014, 07:55:05 PM
I'm not one given to conspiracy theories, but something isn't right here.
Yeah, I initially thought that this must be an accident of some sort. I now think that it likely isn't just an accident.
There seem to be two reasonable possibilities: accident and terrorism. Are there reasons you think a long term disappearance makes the latter more likely?
Quote from: Caliga on March 13, 2014, 07:55:05 PM
I'm not one given to conspiracy theories, but something isn't right here.
Yeah. It feels more and more like, perhaps, a hijacking gone wrong. And it also feels a bit like perhaps the Malaysians aren't as keen at finding out as you'd expect.
If they can't find a crash site in the Gulf of Thailand soon, the only other non-hijacking explanation I can think of is the depressurization/hypoxia scenario I mentioned earlier like what happened with that Helios Airlines flight.
Maybe the pilots listened to heavy metal and made a suicide pact?
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 13, 2014, 09:16:16 PM
Maybe the pilots listened to heavy metal and made a suicide pact?
Were they rocking out to: Flight of Icarus by Iron Maiden :( :punk:
Quote from: Caliga on March 13, 2014, 09:14:52 PM
If they can't find a crash site in the Gulf of Thailand soon, the only other non-hijacking explanation I can think of is the depressurization/hypoxia scenario I mentioned earlier like what happened with that Helios Airlines flight.
How can you pull off a hijacking without a distress call? Aren't pilots locked away as a basic security precaution?
Sheilbh, the verdict isn't in yet, but are you starting to come around on my third world statement? :P
The wreckage will most likely be found in the last place they look.
From the Guardian liveblog. Again really striking that the reports in the US are that it carried on transmitting data, the Malaysians and Malaysian Airlines are totally denying it:
QuoteSome expert opinion on this back and forth about the transmitted data:
If the plane did crash, it's "highly unlikely" that it could send data for the four hours after it lost contact, as reported by the Wall St Journal but dismissed by Malaysian authorities as "inaccurate".
Peter Marosszeky, adjunct senior lecturer at the University of NSW's department of aviation has told the Guardian: "it is recording and transmitting in real time. It seems pretty strange that a plane could be destroyed and still transmit [data]."
Marosszeky also queried theories involving an onboard electronics failure. "The only thing that really strikes me is the fact that the aircraft has reporting systems on board which don't exactly rely on electronic systems, because the idea is if you lose electronics on the plane you can still track it."
Aircraft also carry an Emergency Location Transmitter (ELT) device which has its own battery pack, activates on contact with water and cannot be switched off manually, he said.
"For that to stop working would have to suggest there was a really intense explosion that would have destroyed that device as well."
Marosszeky also said it's "very unlikely" that the plane could crash into the ocean and not break up into visible debris, "unless there was complete and utter destruction."
I hope to god they find that plane. Otherwise, for the next 40 years we are going to hear dumbass theories about what happened.
I think the aliens may return the plane, but they normally don't return mass abductions. :area52:
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 13, 2014, 09:24:57 PM
From the Guardian liveblog. Again really striking that the reports in the US are that it carried on transmitting data, the Malaysians and Malaysian Airlines are totally denying it:
But hey, they have radar.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 13, 2014, 09:21:44 PM
How can you pull off a hijacking without a distress call? Aren't pilots locked away as a basic security precaution?
Sheilbh, the verdict isn't in yet, but are you starting to come around on my third world statement? :P
Simple, if the hijacker is the pilot :ph34r:
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 13, 2014, 06:53:47 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 13, 2014, 03:18:21 PM
If it crashed in the Gulf of Thailand, it seems like it shouldn't be this hard to find. The Gulf of Thailand isn't that big and is pretty shallow.
OTOH, if in fact it did change course and went off into the Pacific or the Indian, and they aren't sure where exactly, I doubt it'll ever be located. It had enough fuel to go way out over both of those.
Still surprising given how many radars and satelites must cover those areas.
Probably not many. Radar detection tends to be patchy over open ocean. Almost certainly so over the Indian ocean.
Also from the Guardian liveblog:
QuoteThe shutdown of two communication systems happened separately, 14 minutes apart, two US officials have told ABC news in the US, indicating a possible deliberate act.
The unnamed investigators believe the data reporting system shut down at 1.07am and the transponder at 1.21am, calling it a "systematic shut down."
ABC cited a source saying this disputes the theory of a single catastrophic theory.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 09:49:55 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 13, 2014, 06:53:47 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 13, 2014, 03:18:21 PM
If it crashed in the Gulf of Thailand, it seems like it shouldn't be this hard to find. The Gulf of Thailand isn't that big and is pretty shallow.
OTOH, if in fact it did change course and went off into the Pacific or the Indian, and they aren't sure where exactly, I doubt it'll ever be located. It had enough fuel to go way out over both of those.
Still surprising given how many radars and satelites must cover those areas.
Probably not many. Radar detection tends to be patchy over open ocean. Almost certainly so over the Indian ocean.
I have zero idea about how radar works. Do you just push a button and it automatically reports everything that moves within a certain distance, or do you have to specifically aim it at a particular area, height, or something?
Quote from: Monoriu on March 13, 2014, 09:46:09 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 13, 2014, 09:21:44 PM
How can you pull off a hijacking without a distress call? Aren't pilots locked away as a basic security precaution?
Sheilbh, the verdict isn't in yet, but are you starting to come around on my third world statement? :P
Simple, if the hijacker is the pilot :ph34r:
I'm thinking that you might be on to something here.
Yeah, I'm starting to think China was in the right when they kind of bitched about Malaysia being really bad at this. I got the impression when unnamed U.S. sources started to leak information that we had evidence the plane continued to fly for hours after its transponder was turned off that the U.S. was trying to be diplomatic...not wanting to just come out and say "Yeah, the Malaysian officials are full of shit, don't have the information we have or for some reason don't want to accept it" but wanted that information out there. FWIW it looks like a lot of search effort has been moved west into the Indian Ocean some I'm guessing that didn't just happen at random and that behind the scenes someone has prevailed on the Malaysians that there is strong evidence the plane went in that direction.
The earlier WSJ reports that the data collected was from a Rolls Royce system that resides inside the engines themselves and sends data to Rolls Royce was actually not accurate (no idea on whether that system continued to report data or not), as the WSJ has said in their most recent article:
QuoteSome people briefed on the issue initially described the transmissions as information that had been relayed from onboard monitoring systems embedded in the two Rolls-Royce PLC Trent 800 engines, not the idling satellite communications system.
From the same article:
QuoteMalaysia Airlines 3786.KU +2.13% ' missing jet transmitted its location repeatedly to satellites over the course of five hours after it disappeared from radar, people briefed on the matter said, as searchers zeroed in on new target areas hundreds of miles west of the plane's original course.
The satellites also received speed and altitude information about the plane from its intermittent "pings," the people said. The final ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a normal cruising altitude. They added that it was unclear why the pings stopped. One of the people, an industry official, said it was possible that the system sending them had been disabled by someone on board.
It looks like they aren't telling the WSJ yet where that final location was, but I'm guessing it was in the Indian Ocean which is why search efforts have been directed there. Also notable is it stopped transmitting at cruising altitude, so unless the plane just exploded in mid air four hours after turning off its transponder and deviating from its route the likelihood is someone on the plane realized the idled satellite communications system was still sending data and turned it off (from what I can tell this would be either the second or third communications system that most likely had been turned off intentionally by someone on the plane.)
Going West over the Indian Ocean they basically could have at maximum turned North and landed in India, Sri Lanka and maybe Pakistan. I'm sure all of those countries have comprehensive military radar and a wide-bodied jet would not have flown into their airspace without them knowing about it (with the caveat that maybe not in Sri Lanka's case.) Not all countries have very comprehensive radar systems, but considering the military tensions between India and Pakistan I'm sure they do, I'd also be surprised if Vietnam or Myanmar which have a militarized history don't have a pretty comprehensive radar system. I don't really know any of that and am just guessing, maybe all the countries in that region have major radar holes.
Also, my understanding is the point when the transponder was lost also roughly corresponds to the edge of the Malaysian civil radar range, which makes it even more suspicious that is right when the transponder was disabled. I've not heard for sure about Malaysian military radar, since they deny they saw it later on their radar, but I have heard that there are actually large swathes of that part of the world over the bodies of water where no military radar is active and you could actually fly a plane undetected. But again, if it landed any country it could have landed in would almost certainly have noticed it.
It seems to me the most likely two possibilities are a failed terrorist attack due to poor piloting or a very poorly planned hijacking. The first scenario is they wanted to use the plane to attack some key target somewhere in that part of Asia, but the inexperienced pilots they used perhaps got lost and flew the plane out into the ocean until it ran out of fuel and would have came down. The second scenario is maybe it was a traditional hijacking and the same thing happened, they turned intending to go somewhere and weren't able to properly manage fuel/navigation. It could be they were planning on landing somewhere in reasonable range and then making demands/demanding refueling but got lost, or maybe they were even planning on going somewhere like Africa not realizing the plane didn't have enough fuel until they were halfway across the Indian Ocean and hit E.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 13, 2014, 10:06:56 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2014, 09:49:55 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 13, 2014, 06:53:47 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 13, 2014, 03:18:21 PM
If it crashed in the Gulf of Thailand, it seems like it shouldn't be this hard to find. The Gulf of Thailand isn't that big and is pretty shallow.
OTOH, if in fact it did change course and went off into the Pacific or the Indian, and they aren't sure where exactly, I doubt it'll ever be located. It had enough fuel to go way out over both of those.
Still surprising given how many radars and satelites must cover those areas.
Probably not many. Radar detection tends to be patchy over open ocean. Almost certainly so over the Indian ocean.
I have zero idea about how radar works. Do you just push a button and it automatically reports everything that moves within a certain distance, or do you have to specifically aim it at a particular area, height, or something?
I believe there are both types of radar. Radar works by sending radio waves out and bouncing them back toward the radar station. Because of this most radar systems need a straight line of sight from the station to the object. Since the earth curves radar doesn't work so well on objects very far away, and because there is not many radar stations in the middle of the Indian ocean You can easily lose something out there.
@Otto
It was my understanding the reason the search had expanded to Strait of Malacca was because of Malaysian military radar.
Quote from: dps on March 13, 2014, 11:23:12 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 13, 2014, 09:46:09 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 13, 2014, 09:21:44 PM
How can you pull off a hijacking without a distress call? Aren't pilots locked away as a basic security precaution?
Sheilbh, the verdict isn't in yet, but are you starting to come around on my third world statement? :P
Simple, if the hijacker is the pilot :ph34r:
I'm thinking that you might be on to something here.
Maybe it was stolen. :ph34r:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/13/mh370_disappearance_could_the_missing_malaysia_airlines_plane_have_been.html
Maybe a couple years down the road, when everybody has forgotten about it, the plane will show up, fully loaded in fuel, and crash into a nuclear powerplant or dam :ph34r:
This is really weird. If the plane was intact and at least one pilot survived, they might even have managed a water landing in the Indian Ocean.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-radar-data-suggests-flight-path-1.2572287
Quote
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 radar data suggests flight path
'We are looking at sabotage, with hijack still on the cards,' senior Malaysian police official says
Thomson Reuters Posted: Mar 14, 2014 2:14 AM ET Last Updated: Mar 14, 2014 4:20 AM ET
Military radar-tracking evidence suggests a Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown across the Malay peninsula towards the Andaman Islands, sources familiar with the investigation told Reuters on Friday.
Two sources said an unidentified aircraft that investigators believe was Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints - indicating it was being flown by someone with aviation training - when it was last plotted on military radar off the country's northwest coast.
The last plot on the military radar's tracking suggested the plane was flying toward India's Andaman Islands, a chain of isles between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, they said.
Waypoints are geographic locations, worked out by calculating longitude and latitude, that help pilots navigate along established air corridors.
A third source familiar with the investigation said inquiries were focusing increasingly on the theory that someone who knew how to fly a plane deliberately diverted the flight, with 239 people on board, hundreds of miles off its intended course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
"What we can say is we are looking at sabotage, with hijack still on the cards," said that source, a senior Malaysian police official.
All three sources declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media and due to the sensitivity of the investigation.
Search area for flight MH370
Sources: CBC News stories, Reuters, AP (CBC)
Officials at Malaysia's Ministry of Transport, the official point of contact for information on the investigation, did not return calls seeking comment.
Malaysian police have previously said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.
The comments by the three sources are the first clear indication that foul play is the main focus of official suspicions in the Boeing 777's disappearance.
As a result of the new evidence, the sources said, multinational search efforts were being stepped up in the Andaman Sea and also the Indian Ocean.
Last sighting
In one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation, no trace of the plane nor any sign of wreckage has been found despite a search by the navies and military aircraft of more than a dozen countries.
The last sighting of the aircraft on civilian radar screens came shortly before 1:30 a.m. Malaysian time last Saturday, less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur, as the plane flew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand. That put the plane on Malaysia's east coast.
Malaysia's air force chief said on Wednesday an aircraft that could have been the missing plane was plotted on military radar at 2:15 a.m., 320 kilometres northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia's west coast.
This position marks the limit of Malaysia's military radar in that part of the country, a fourth source familiar with the investigation told Reuters.
When asked about the range of military radar at a news conference on Thursday, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said it was "a sensitive issue" that he was not going to reveal.
"Even if it doesn't extend beyond that, we can get the co-operation of the neighbouring countries," he said.
The fact that the aircraft - if it was MH370 - had lost contact with air traffic control and was invisible to civilian radar suggested someone aboard had turned its communication systems off, the first two sources said.
They also gave new details on the direction in which the unidentified aircraft was heading - following aviation corridors identified on maps used by pilots as N571 and P628. These routes are taken by commercial planes flying from Southeast Asia to the Middle East or Europe and can be found in public documents issued by regional aviation authorities.
In a far more detailed description of the military radar plotting than has been publicly revealed, the first two sources said the last confirmed position of MH370 was at 35,000 feet about 144 km off the east coast of Malaysia, heading towards Vietnam, near a navigational waypoint called Igari. The time was 1:21 a.m.
The military track suggests it then turned sharply westwards, heading towards a waypoint called Vampi, northeast of Indonesia's Aceh province and a navigational point used for planes following route N571 to the Middle East.
From there, the plot indicates the plane flew towards a waypoint called Gival, south of the Thai island of Phuket, and was last plotted heading northwest towards another waypoint called Igrex, on route P628 that would take it over the Andaman Islands and which carriers use to fly towards Europe.
The time was then 2:15 a.m. That's the same time given by the air force chief on Wednesday, who gave no information on that plane's possible direction.
The sources said Malaysia was requesting raw radar data from neighbours Thailand, Indonesia and India, which has a naval base in the Andaman Islands.
Maybe they went to visit the savages on North Sentinel Island. :)
Quote from: Monoriu on March 13, 2014, 10:06:56 PM
I have zero idea about how radar works. Do you just push a button and it automatically reports everything that moves within a certain distance, or do you have to specifically aim it at a particular area, height, or something?
As long as your radar is operating, it is detecting everything in its beam that is large enough and near enough to reflect radar energy back to the source. The problem is that the operators don't care about a lot of returns, and there is a fairly high false alarm rate (spurious returns generated by the environment or even in the equipment itself), so a short-duration detection of the airliner might not be seen as a valid contact. Even worse, unless someone paid attention to the return and designated it as a target of interest, no data on it would probably be recorded (there is simply too much data from raw radar for anyone to pay to record that mass of data except for specialized purposes like radar R&D or in especially sensitive geographic areas where you might want to go back and analyze patterns of behavior).
It is simply not true that it is more difficult to detect things on radar over the water. Generally, the opposite is true: you don't have ground return masking true target signals, since the sea is flat. However, it is true that, generally speaking, the longer-ranged the radar set, the less precise the return you get from it. Air search radars (the kind that would have tracked this aircraft) tend to be designed for long range but low precision.
Due to the curvature of the earth and the limited ability of radar frequencies to take advantage of atmospheric bounce, it is generally true that targets further away must be at higher altitudes to be seen by a given radar. When you hear about something flying "below the radar," that is what they are referring to: flying lower than the radar horizon at that distance. At some altitudes, this plane could have been only intermittently spotted by the radar, when the random environmental variation sometimes allowed radar returns. if that happened, the radar operators might have disagreed about whether there actually was a contact, and we would see the kinds of reports we are now seeing, with some people honestly believing that some radar was tracking the plane, and others honestly believing it was not.
I wonder if you could land a plane this size anywhere on earth without being detected. Some really remote, abandoned airstrip maybe?
There are probably a few places. If it was headed in the other direction and had enough fuel, Johnston Atoll might be one.
Grumbler's explanations give more insight into why there's so much confusion and conflicting info over the tracking of this airliner. I had wondered why an object he size of an airliner went missing, even if the transponder was turned off. I think the air traffic controller radars keep a record of activity? Something like that was said on the news, but even then it's hard to get the timing on it and sort through the info. This whole thing really opens up the problems inherent in commercial flight with the tracking systems. Transponders can be turned off, which is surprising to me that it's doable on a commercial aircraft.
Unsurprisingly, Pitbull is linked to this tragedy:
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/lyrics-of-pitbull-shakira-song-bear-uncanny-similarities-to-mh370-mystery
Quote from: KRonn on March 14, 2014, 07:44:16 AM
Grumbler's explanations give more insight into why there's so much confusion and conflicting info over the tracking of this airliner. I had wondered why an object he size of an airliner went missing, even if the transponder was turned off. I think the air traffic controller radars keep a record of activity? Something like that was said on the news, but even then it's hard to get the timing on it and sort through the info. This whole thing really opens up the problems inherent in commercial flight with the tracking systems. Transponders can be turned off, which is surprising to me that it's doable on a commercial aircraft.
Air traffic control radars do keep records of all tracks (actually, they keep the synthetic video, not the raw video, but ATC radars are so accurate that the distinction is meaningless), but ATC radars only focus on the areas surrounding airports. Between airports planes are on their own, so long as they stay in the traffic corridors at the approved altitudes.
Quote from: katmai on March 14, 2014, 01:29:05 AM
@Otto
It was my understanding the reason the search had expanded to Strait of Malacca was because of Malaysian military radar.
That was my understanding at one point but I thought the Malaysian military later denied they had ever seen the "blip" being reported in the news. I think the newly released information about the satellite system tracking its location probably shows the plane was deep over the Indian Ocean at the time of its last transmission to that system--as all the news outlets are reporting increased searching in that area and even India starting a land based search for the plane. (Which would call into question my theory that India has comprehensive radar if they believe it's possible a plane flew into Indian air space and crashed/landed without being registered by their radar.)
Edit: Actually looks like the Malaysian military has confirmed they had something that may have been the plane. I was actually reading an article in Xinhua of all places yesterday which complained about how every time one of the four parts of the Malaysian government dealing with this speak they contradict the other...must be maddening for the Chinese or anyone more directly connected to the tragedy.
The Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic was essentially where it was supposed to be, and while we did find a small bit of wreckage within the first week we didn't find the wreck for like two years. If this plane went down some random place in the Indian Ocean off of its flight plan I suspect it will never be found, or if it is found it will be serendipitous. I certainly wouldn't have any high expectation of it being found.
I really don't think this could be a 'conventional' hijacking. Airplane hijackings used to be more common and in every case I'm familiar with the hijacking was extremely obvious from the beginning of the incident, with the hijackers getting on the radio and making their intentions known or making the pilots communicate their intentions. Why would you hijack an aircraft and then do nothing with your hostages? Unless it's some never before seen 'black ops' government thing that Clancy fans dream about, it's not a hijacking.
I think it's possible the terrorists might have been flying to friendly territory and crashed it, either through incompetence or through Flight 93 esque intervention. If that were the case you'd expect cell phone calls from the family.
I'm gonna go with attempted theft/terrorism that ended in a crash due to incompetence.
I, for one, blame the Pope for this.
Quote from: Queequeg on March 14, 2014, 10:24:16 AM
I think it's possible the terrorists might have been flying to friendly territory and crashed it, either through incompetence or through Flight 93 esque intervention. If that were the case you'd expect cell phone calls from the family.
Unless the passengers were already dead. Depressurize the cabin and disable the emergency oxygen system, and the passengers are too busy trying to breathe to dial home.
I am not saying this is likely, but it fits the facts if there was, indeed, some kind of hijacking.
Jesus, that's fucking horrifying.
Quote from: Queequeg on March 14, 2014, 12:24:00 PM
Jesus, that's fucking horrifying.
Do you consider it horrifying that we are all going to die, and most of us from things far more unpleasant than hypoxia?
Context. The image of a plane flying at 40k feet for hours through the night, its passengers blue and frozen, illuminated by reading lights, until it lands on an unused stretch of road somewhere in India, ready to be used for nefarious purposes... that's creepy.
Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on March 14, 2014, 12:40:07 PM
Context. The image of a plane flying at 40k feet for hours through the night, its passengers blue and frozen, illuminated by reading lights, until it lands on an unused stretch of road somewhere in India, ready to be used for nefarious purposes... that's creepy.
And then a group of investigators enter the plane and discover it was possessed by Satan? Sounds like a winner. That script may have already been written though.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 14, 2014, 12:30:31 PM
Quote from: Queequeg on March 14, 2014, 12:24:00 PM
Jesus, that's fucking horrifying.
Do you consider it horrifying that we are all going to die, and most of us from things far more unpleasant than hypoxia?
I'd much rather die by myself in pain from prolonged wasting disease after having made peace with loved ones and family then relatively quickly and painlessly from hypoxia after a few moments of sheer terror as terrorists depressurize the cabin. It would be especially terrible if, as I suspect was the case for many on the plane, I was travelling with friends and family. That's nightmare stuff. Especially considering that my loved ones wouldn't know what the hell happened to me.
Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on March 14, 2014, 12:40:07 PM
Context. The image of a plane flying at 40k feet for hours through the night, its passengers blue and frozen, illuminated by reading lights, until it lands on an unused stretch of road somewhere in India, ready to be used for nefarious purposes... that's creepy.
Needs more snakes and a sharknado.
:lol: Sharknado!
Quote from: Caliga on March 14, 2014, 12:58:51 PM
:lol: Sharknado!
or, perhaps:
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fflowingdata.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F02%2Fmegashark-full2.jpg%3Ffit%3D625%252C9999&hash=cdbd7a81917612b35c8c850ae4a1d4366c895c8d)
Reminds me of how in GI Joe Lady Jaye used to shoot down Cobra fighter jets by throwing her spear at them. :cool:
Quote from: grumbler on March 14, 2014, 01:09:41 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 14, 2014, 12:58:51 PM
:lol: Sharknado!
or, perhaps:
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fflowingdata.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F02%2Fmegashark-full2.jpg%3Ffit%3D625%252C9999&hash=cdbd7a81917612b35c8c850ae4a1d4366c895c8d)
Sounds legit.
Quote from: Zanza on March 14, 2014, 01:58:27 PM
Quote from: grumbler on March 14, 2014, 01:09:41 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 14, 2014, 12:58:51 PM
:lol: Sharknado!
or, perhaps:
<picture of Mega Shark>
Sounds legit.
The question is, though, what happens when a sharknado moves over water (thus becoming a sharkspout) and happens to collide with Mega Shark during the latter's aerial movements?
Quote from: Caliga on March 14, 2014, 01:15:03 PM
Reminds me of how in GI Joe Lady Jaye used to shoot down Cobra fighter jets by throwing her spear at them. :cool:
Sid Meier used the example of Lady Jaye in order to develop phalanx versus stealth bomber combat engine.
Neat. :)
If you were to rank deaths from other than natural causes, being locked in an airplane cabin that's been depressurized honestly would rank pretty low on the list of "ways I wouldn't care to die." It's obviously going to be psychologically unpleasant but most deaths are except for people who are at a point where they really want to die (people suffering long painful terminal illnesses etc.) It won't be particularly terrible from a physical aspect compared to a long list of worse thing I could think up.
It would also make a lot of sense to do that, after U93 any hijackers wanting to turn the plane into a missile would be unlikely to not try to neutralize the passengers in some way. Although if the hijackers were the pilots they'd probably just keep the passengers uninformed as that's even easier I would think. No one is going to be able to tell from their position in the passenger seat precisely what they're flying over and if people get antsy about the heading (if they're even smart enough to notice the visual cues that might tell them they aren't going the way they expected) I imagine the pilot can just make up some announcement about a diversion etc, shit happens all the time.
Quote from: Queequeg on March 14, 2014, 10:24:16 AM
I think it's possible the terrorists might have been flying to friendly territory and crashed it, either through incompetence or through Flight 93 esque intervention. If that were the case you'd expect cell phone calls from the family.
It could even have been shot down, perhaps. Who'd want to admit they downed a plane, even a hijacked one, carrying a 150 Chinese citizens?
If the Malaysians shot it down, why would the US say that they didn't pick up an explosion?
Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on March 14, 2014, 07:29:55 PM
If the Malaysians shot it down, why would the US say that they didn't pick up an explosion?
Fuck knows. At this point I'm 80% sure it's aliens.
So is it just me or is this the most puzzling news story in, well, some years?
Quote from: grumbler on March 14, 2014, 11:17:07 AM
Quote from: Queequeg on March 14, 2014, 10:24:16 AM
I think it's possible the terrorists might have been flying to friendly territory and crashed it, either through incompetence or through Flight 93 esque intervention. If that were the case you'd expect cell phone calls from the family.
Unless the passengers were already dead. Depressurize the cabin and disable the emergency oxygen system, and the passengers are too busy trying to breathe to dial home.
I am not saying this is likely, but it fits the facts if there was, indeed, some kind of hijacking.
Can the pilots disable the oxygen system? It seems like something you'd never want to go off.
It can be disabled manually (that's what happened with that Helios Airlines plane... the maintenance tech did it on the ground I believe) and at least on that aircraft, could be turned back on from the cockpit, but not sure with the 777.
Someone at NewsCorp really needs to take away Rupert's iPad:
QuoteRupert Murdoch @rupertmurdoch 41m
World seems transfixed by 777 disappearance. Maybe no crash but stolen, effectively hidden, perhaps in Northern Pakistan, like Bin Laden.
Edit: His thoughts in full:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Biu_BwPIEAIsDzr.jpg)
:mellow:
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 14, 2014, 07:33:36 PM
Fuck knows. At this point I'm 80% sure it's aliens.
Certainly more plausible than, say, a depressed Egyptian first officer that decides he wants to ruin everybody else's day with his suicide and a Zero-G pitch-over nose dive at 650+ mph. Because that never fucking happens.
That last Rupert tweet reminds me of this:
http://youtu.be/yIMH50X0F-4
Col. Tanner: Six hundred million screaming Chinamen.
Darryl: Last I heard, there were a billion screaming Chinamen.
Col. Tanner: There *were*.
CountDeMoney: Really? That's all they've lost? The fuck, man.
At this point, I think a Nike factory in Thailand or Burma has just gained 239 new employees.
:D
QuoteKUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — A Malaysian investigation into the missing flight 370 has concluded that one or more people with flying experience switched off communications devices and deliberately steered the airliner off-course, a Malaysian government official involved in the investigation said Saturday.
Related Stories
The official called the disappearance a hijacking, though he said no motive has been established and no demands have been made known. It's not yet clear where the plane ended up, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
The official said a deliberate takeover of the plane was no longer a theory. "It is conclusive," he said, indicating that investigators were ruling out mechanical failure or pilot error in the disappearance.
He said evidence that led to the conclusion were signs that the plane's communications were switched off deliberately, data about the flight path and indications the plane was steered in a way to avoid detection by radar.
The Boeing 777's communication with the ground was severed just under one hour into a Malaysia Airlines flight March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian officials previously have said radar data suggest it may have turned back toward and crossed over the Malaysian peninsula after setting out on a northeastern path toward the Chinese capital.
Earlier, an American official told The Associated Press that investigators are examining the possibility of "human intervention" in the plane's disappearance, adding it may have been "an act of piracy."
While other theories are still being examined, the U.S. official said key evidence suggesting human intervention is that contact with the Boeing 777's transponder stopped about a dozen minutes before a messaging system on the jet quit. Such a gap would be unlikely in the case of an in-flight catastrophe.
The Malaysian official said only a skilled aviator could navigate the plane the way it was flown after its last confirmed location over the South China Sea. The official said it had been established with a "more than 50 percent" degree of certainty that military radar had picked up the missing plane after it dropped off civilian radar.
Why anyone would want to do this is unclear. Malaysian authorities and others will be urgently investigating the backgrounds of the two pilots and 10 crew members, as well the 227 passengers on board.
Some experts have said that pilot suicide may be the most likely explanation for the disappearance, as was suspected in a SilkAir crash during a flight from Singapore to Jakarta in 1997 and an EgyptAir flight in 1999.
A massive international search effort began initially in the South China Sea where the plane's transponders stopped transmitting. It has since been expanded onto the other side of the Malay peninsula up into the Andaman Sea and into the Indian Ocean.
Scores of aircraft and ships from 12 countries are involved in the search.
The plane had enough fuel to fly for at least five hours after its last known location, meaning a vast swath of South and Southeast Asia would be within its reach. Investigators are analyzing radar and satellite data from around the region to try and pinpoint its final location, something that will be vital to hopes of finding the plane, and answering the mystery of what happened to it.
The USS Kidd arrived in the Strait of Malacca late Friday afternoon and will be searching in the Andaman Sea, and into the Bay of Bengal. It uses a using a "creeping-line" search method of following a pattern of equally spaced parallel lines in an effort to completely cover the area.
A P-8A Poseidon, the most advanced long range anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare aircraft in the world, will arrive Saturday and be sweeping the southern portion of the Bay of Bengal and the northern portion of the Indian Ocean. It has a nine-member crew and has advanced surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, the department of defense said in a statement.
Another U.S. official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said investigators looking for the plane have run out of clues except for a type of satellite data that has never been used before to find a missing plane, and is very inexact.
The data consists of attempts by an Inmarsat satellite to identify a broad area where the plane might be in case a messaging system aboard the plane should need to connect with the satellite, said the official. The official compared the location attempts, called a "handshake," to someone driving around with their cellphone not in use. As the phone from passes from the range of one cellphone tower to another, the towers note that the phone is in range in case messages need to be sent.
In the case of the Malaysian plane, there were successful attempts by the satellite to roughly locate the Boeing 777 about once an hour over four to five hours, the official said. "This is all brand new to us," the official said. "We've never had to use satellite handshaking as the best possible source of information."
The handshake does not transmit any data on the plane's altitude, airspeed or other information that might help in locating it, the official said. Instead, searchers are trying to use the handshakes to triangulate the general area of where the plane last was known to have been at the last satellite check, the official said.
"It is telling us the airplane was continuing to operate," the official said, plus enough information on location so that the satellite will know how many degrees to turn to adjust its antenna to pick up any messages from the plane.
The official confirmed prior reports that following the loss of contact with the plane's transponder, the plane turned west. A transponder emits signals that are picked up by radar providing a unique identifier for each plane along with altitude. Malaysian military radar continued to pick up the plane as a whole "paintskin" — a radar blip that has no unique identifier — until it traveled beyond the reach of radar, which is about 320 kilometers (200 miles) offshore, the official said.
The New York Times, quoting American officials and others familiar with the investigation, said radar signals recorded by the Malaysian military appear to show the airliner climbing to 45,000 feet (about 13,700 meters), higher than a Boeing 777's approved limit, soon after it disappeared from civilian radar, and making a sharp turn to the west. The radar track then shows the plane descending unevenly to an altitude of 23,000 feet (7,000 meters), below normal cruising levels, before rising again and flying northwest over the Strait of Malacca toward the Indian Ocean, the Times reported.
Oh christ someone stole the plane. The PM's confirming it, too.
Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on March 15, 2014, 02:05:50 AM
Oh christ someone stole the plane. The PM's confirming it, too.
I'm confused. Like stole as in took in order to get money or future use out of the asset? That makes no sense to me. This is so high profile how could anyone expect success?
There must be a terrorist angle...
Viable airports or strips it could've landed in:
QuoteData from X-Plane provides coordinates for runways around the world. A Boeing 777 pilot is quoted in Slate as estimating a runway length requirement of 5,000 feet. A recent Wall Street Journal article quoted sources stating the flight could have continued for 2,200 nautical miles from its last known position.The WNYC Data News team found 634 runways that meet these criteria, spread across 26 different countries. including such far-flung places as:Gan Airport (Maldives), Dalanzadgad Airport (Mongolia), Yap Airport (Micronesia), Miyazaki Airport (Japan)
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.guim.co.uk%2Fsys-images%2FGuardian%2FPix%2Fpictures%2F2014%2F3%2F15%2F1394894504775%2F801deab3-f236-451e-a486-87b045d0de80-460x276.png&hash=0c0cffc34c8083e32c72059aa96d59ebfb15ad2b)
Apparently the Malaysians are briefing that they think it went to the Chinese-Kyrgyz border. But it barely seems plausible that a plane could travel over north India, Pakistan or near Afghanistan without it being picked up by someone :mellow:
It's entering James Bond like territory.
Good narrowing-down job there.
The Malaysian government has become the laughing stock in this part of the world. They tell at least a different story every day. Different departments contradict themselves within the same day. One day we see high ranking generals denying that the plane went west, the next day we see their PM confirming the same reports. It took the US to leak the info to the media for them to admit the truth. And they treat the relatives of the passengers like they are a nuisance.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 15, 2014, 10:50:40 AM
Viable airports or strips it could've landed in:
Apparently the Malaysians are briefing that they think it went to the Chinese-Kyrgyz border. But it barely seems plausible that a plane could travel over north India, Pakistan or near Afghanistan without it being picked up by someone :mellow:
I've read somewhere that it is possible to land a plane on a highway.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 15, 2014, 11:18:46 AM
I've read somewhere that it is possible to land a plane on a highway.
The 777's wings don't retract into the fuselage, so even if the plane landed on a highway, it wouldn't blend into the traffic well.
Quote from: Jacob on March 15, 2014, 10:53:26 AM
It's entering James Bond like territory.
It will definitely get a movie.
Quote from: Liep on March 15, 2014, 11:57:59 AM
Quote from: Jacob on March 15, 2014, 10:53:26 AM
It's entering James Bond like territory.
It will definitely get a movie.
But it won't be as good as the book. They never are. :(
Quote from: Liep on March 15, 2014, 11:57:59 AM
Quote from: Jacob on March 15, 2014, 10:53:26 AM
It's entering James Bond like territory.
It will definitely get a movie.
I see a future of full employment for the asian american segment of the screen actors guild. At least for a few months.
BBC need to make sure that 6 year old articles doesn't end up in the most read section. For a moment I thought a SAS plane had just crashed with 172 passengers. :angry:
Here's another thing that supports the pilot is a highjacker theory - this was done on a overnight flight, and the plane makes a move west rather than continues east, in the opposite direction of the earth's rotation. This won't matter for radar etc, but whoever flew the plane definitely wanted to keep the passengers literally in the dark for as long as possible in order to minimise panic. Though if the last pinger was recorded 8 hours later then there would have been daylight or at least twilight. But I expect by then the passengers were either dead or incapacitated. This definitely looks like it was meticulously planned, and not just a spur of the moment thing, like a pilot suicide would have been.
What is scarier? If they figure out what happened or someone takes responsibility? Or that we never find out what really happened?
Quote from: lustindarkness on March 15, 2014, 03:25:38 PM
What is scarier? If they figure out what happened or someone takes responsibility? Or that we never find out what really happened?
I rather they figure out who did it, rather than we never find out. Hell, we're not even sure if the plane did crash. Until even that is ascertained, we may end up with another 9/11 tomorrow for all we know.
Or as Rumsfeldt might say, a known known is better than a unknown known, no better how bad the known known might had.
Quote from: Jacob on March 15, 2014, 10:53:26 AM
It's entering James Bond like territory.
A volcano?
Quote from: Jacob on March 15, 2014, 10:53:26 AM
It's entering James Bond like territory.
If the plane turned south after west and headed out into the Indian Ocean it looks like it may have been within range of: Diego Garcia :ph34r: :ph34r: :ph34r: :tinfoil: :Joos
Quote from: Caliga on March 15, 2014, 06:10:15 PM
Quote from: Jacob on March 15, 2014, 10:53:26 AM
It's entering James Bond like territory.
If the plane turned south after west and headed out into the Indian Ocean it looks like it may have been within range of: Diego Garcia :ph34r: :ph34r: :ph34r: :tinfoil: :Joos
You better not be accusing the seabees we have there. :mad:
As can be plainly seen from my emoticons, I was accusing three ninjas, a guy in a Tommy helmet, and a rabbi. :hmm:
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html)
The Australian Jindalee radar network would have picked up a large jet heading south (they can supposedly detect a cessna taking off in Jakarta). The Chinese would also have picked it up if it entered their airspace, but they'd be much less likely to tell anyone about it. It's looking more and more likely that it went toward Turkestan.
I know that there is a lot that doesn't make much sense, but would the two most likely outcomes be:
--there was an attempted hijacking, that led to transponders being turned off and the aircraft reoriented, but for whatever reason (perhaps due to a fight) the cockpit was incapacitated and the plane flew on a straight line into the Indian Ocean and crashed,
or
--the plane was hijacked and made a run for the south of Africa or the islands off the east african coast.
If that blip in the Indian Ocean is accurate, I can't imagine a flight path taking it around India or Pakistan without anyone noticing. Plus there are so many military assets around and off the coast of the horn of africa I figure the same.
Wouldn't most of India's military assets be in the West near Pakistan? Would it be possible to fly through eastern Indian and then cross the Himalayas and take advantage of the mountains to avoid detection?
I find the laxness of the Indians in particular to be staggering! :o
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/15/us-malaysia-airlines-defence-idUSBREA2E0JT20140315
Quote
Malaysian plane saga highlights air defense gaps
By Peter Apps and Frank Jack Daniel
LONDON/NEW DELHI Sat Mar 15, 2014 4:20pm EDT
(Reuters) - Whatever truly happened to missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, its apparently unchallenged wanderings through Asian skies point to major gaps in regional - and perhaps wider - air defenses.
More than a decade after al Qaeda hijackers turned airliners into weapons on September 11, 2001, a large commercial aircraft completely devoid of stealth features appeared to vanish with relative ease.
On Saturday, Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak said authorities now believed the Boeing 777 flew for nearly seven hours after disappearing early on March 8. Either its crew or someone else on the plane disabled the on-board transponder civilian air traffic radar used to track it, investigators believe.
It appears to have first flown back across the South China Sea - an area of considerable geopolitical tension and military activity - before overflying northern Malaysia and then heading out towards India without any alarm being raised.
The reality, analysts and officials say, is that much of the airspace over water - and in many cases over land - lacks sophisticated or properly monitored radar coverage.
Analysts say the gaps in Southeast Asia's air defenses are likely to be mirrored in other parts of the developing world, and may be much greater in areas with considerably lower geopolitical tensions.
"Several nations will be embarrassed by how easy it is to trespass their airspace," said Air Vice Marshal Michael Harwood, a retired British Royal Air Force pilot and ex-defense attache to Washington DC. "Too many movies and Predator (unmanned military drone) feeds from Afghanistan have suckered people into thinking we know everything and see everything. You get what you pay for. And the world, by and large, does not pay."
"TOO EXPENSIVE"
Air traffic systems rely almost entirely on on-board transponders to detect and monitor aircraft. In this case, those systems appear to have been deactivated around the time the aircraft crossed from Malaysian to Vietnamese responsibility.
At the very least, the incident looks set to spark calls to make it impossible for those on board an aircraft to turn off its transponders and disappear.
Military systems, meanwhile, are often limited in their own coverage or just ignore aircraft they believe are on regular commercial flights. In some cases, they are simply switched off except during training and when a threat is expected.
That, one senior Indian official said, might explain why the Boeing 777 was not detected by installations on India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an archipelago which its planes were searching on Friday and Saturday, or elsewhere.
"We have many radar systems operating in this area, but nothing was picked up," Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai, chief of staff of India's Andamans and Nicobar Command, told Reuters. "It's possible that the military radars were switched off as we operate on an 'as required' basis."
Separately, a defense source said that India did not keep its radar facilities operational at all times because of cost. Asked what the reason was, the source said: "Too expensive."
"SOMEONE ELSE'S PROBLEM"
Worries over revealing defense capabilities, some believe, may have slowed cooperation in the search for flight MH370, particularly between Malaysia and China. Beijing has poured military resources into the search, announcing it was deploying 10 surveillance satellites and multiple ships and aircraft. It has been critical of Malaysia's response.
While Malaysian military radar does appear to have detected the aircraft, there appear to have been no attempts to challenge it - or, indeed, any realization anything was amiss.
That apparent oversight, current and former officials and analysts say, is surprising. But the incident, they say, points to the relatively large gaps in global air surveillance and the limits of some military radar systems.
"It's hard to tell exactly why they did not notice it," says Elizabeth Quintana, senior research fellow for air power at the Royal United Services Institute in London. "It may have been that the aircraft was flying at low level or that the military operators were looking for other threats such as fast jets and felt that airliners were someone else's problem."
Current and former officials say that - hopefully, at least - such an incident would be detected much faster in North American or European airspace. There, military and civilian controllers monitor radar continuously on alert for possible hijacks or intruders.
The sudden failure of a transponder, they say, would itself prove a likely and dramatic cause for concern.
"I can't think of many situations in which one would actually need to switch them off," said one former Western official on condition of anonymity.
U.S. and NATO jets periodically scramble to intercept unidentified aircraft approaching their airspace, including a growing number of Russian long-range bombers.
In some other areas, it is simply not seen as worth maintaining a high level of alert - or radar coverage itself may not even exist.
"NOTHING MUCH HAPPENS AT NIGHT"
Investigators now say they believe MH370 may have turned either towards India and Central Asia or - perhaps more likely, given the lack of detection - taken a southern course towards the Antarctic. That would have been an effectively suicidal flight, the aircraft eventually running out of fuel and crashing.
The waters of the southern Indian Ocean and northern Southern Ocean are among the most remote on the planet, used by few ships and overflown by few aircraft.
Australian civilian radar extends only some 200 km (125 miles) from its coast, an Australian official said on condition of anonymity, although its air defense radar extends much further. Australia's military could not be reached for comment on Saturday and if it did detect a transponder-less aircraft heading south, there is no suggestion any alarm was raised.
U.S. military satellites monitor much of the globe, including some of the remotest oceans, looking primarily for early warning of any ballistic missile launch from a submarine or other vessel.
After the aircraft's initial disappearance a week ago, U.S. officials said their satellites had detected no signs of a mid-air explosion. It is unclear if such systems would have detected a crash landing in the southern Indian Ocean.
On India's Andaman Islands, a defense official told reporters he saw nothing unusual or out of place in the lack of permanent radar coverage. The threat in the area, he said, was much lower than on India's border with Pakistan where sophisticated radars are manned and online continuously.
At night in particular, he said, "nothing much happens".
"We have our radars, we use them, we train with them, but it's not a place where we have (much) to watch out for," he said. "My take is that this is a pretty peaceful place."
Well, you know... Indonesia isn't about to launch an air raid on Madras, and if any country can make the argument that the money could be better spent elsewhere, it's India.
Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on March 16, 2014, 02:13:00 AM
Well, you know... Indonesia isn't about to launch an air raid on Madras, and if any country can make the argument that the money could be better spent elsewhere, it's India.
They have an unstable neighbor armed with nuclear weapons.
I doubt that they turn off their radar stations on the Pakistani border. :huh:
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 16, 2014, 01:26:32 AM
Wouldn't most of India's military assets be in the West near Pakistan? Would it be possible to fly through eastern Indian and then cross the Himalayas and take advantage of the mountains to avoid detection?
I really have no idea about any of this stuff, but if the plane flew on a straight line through the himalayas from where it is on that map it would go through a huge chunk of india. Sort of the heart of the country. Also, how do you use the mountains to avoid detection? Fly between them? That doesn't seem plausible for a 777,
Quote from: alfred russel on March 16, 2014, 02:22:14 AM
Also, how do you use the mountains to avoid detection? Fly between them? That doesn't seem plausible for a 777,
Mountains return radar signals, and so create a lot of something called "ground return." To get rid of it, operators disable returns from the lower lobes of the air search radar in that sector of the radar scan. Anything flying low enough to stay in lose lower lobes won't be detected, even if they are (somewhat) above the height of the mountains.
The better argument against is the one you point out: how does the plane cross these densely-populated areas at altitudes low enough to avoid radar detection by civilian air traffic control radars and yet not be detected from the ground? A commercial airliner at a coupla thousand feet is pretty noticeable, by noise if nothing else.
I like this theory I saw on a blog:
QuoteI believe the two iranians on false passports hijacked the plane, turned off all tracking devices and flew at low altitude to a remote part of the pakistan/iran/afganistan area and landed the plane there. I believe they intend to use the plane as a weapon in the future. The plane easily had enough fuel to get to Iran. They carry at least 10% more fuel that what is required to reach the intended destination for safety reasons.... Also - The Iranian who purchased the two tickets was supposedly called Ali Kazam - which in my opinion is cryptic for alakazam - which basically means the same as abracadabra - in other words, they are playing with us saying he is a magician pulling off a feat of magic cunning or pulling the wool over our eyes
:bowler:
About as solid as evolution. :rolleyes:
Quote from: grumbler on March 16, 2014, 06:00:55 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 16, 2014, 02:22:14 AM
Also, how do you use the mountains to avoid detection? Fly between them? That doesn't seem plausible for a 777,
Mountains return radar signals, and so create a lot of something called "ground return." To get rid of it, operators disable returns from the lower lobes of the air search radar in that sector of the radar scan. Anything flying low enough to stay in lose lower lobes won't be detected, even if they are (somewhat) above the height of the mountains.
The better argument against is the one you point out: how does the plane cross these densely-populated areas at altitudes low enough to avoid radar detection by civilian air traffic control radars and yet not be detected from the ground? A commercial airliner at a coupla thousand feet is pretty noticeable, by noise if nothing else.
I figure that there are enough gaps in radar coverage that it's possible to avoid detection if you know what you're doing. Just turning off the transponder wouldn't be sufficient, but it's a big part of that because without it, even if you show up on radar, you're simply an unknown aircraft at that point. My question about it has been more along the lines of "where is there an airfield that something that size can land at without anybody noticing?"
Why does the NYT use maximum speed to plot max range? That makes no sense at all.
Quote from: dps on March 16, 2014, 08:33:33 AM
I figure that there are enough gaps in radar coverage that it's possible to avoid detection if you know what you're doing. Just turning off the transponder wouldn't be sufficient, but it's a big part of that because without it, even if you show up on radar, you're simply an unknown aircraft at that point. My question about it has been more along the lines of "where is there an airfield that something that size can land at without anybody noticing?"
I cannot imagine that some yahoo stealing an airplane would know enough to bring radar detection apparatus onboard and install it, then know how to use it and how to change course to stay outside of detection range. That is stuff that specialists have a hard time with.
Flying below the radar horizon is possible, but then you are so low as to be heard (and distinctly heard) from the ground, I would think.
You are correct to wonder about airfield sizes as well. Even the minimum lengths listed are for rated pilots; someone stealing a plane might need much more, because they aren't going to land in the most efficient possible way. Assuming that they were even going to try...
Quote from: Iormlund on March 16, 2014, 08:47:13 AM
Why does the NYT use maximum speed to plot max range? That makes no sense at all.
Because that's the information the Indonesian government gave them. Agree it makes little sense (not "no sense at all") but that's the data the NYT people have.
I imagine that they were picked up radar but nobody thought it notable. There is almost certainly a lot of planes flying over India at any given time. They probably saw it on radar and assumed it was just a normal flight.
Wouldn't military ATC software automatically cross-check those contacts with transponder data, though? It would be a fairly trivial thing to program and would bring instant attention to an unidentified flight such as this one. Grumbler?
Quote from: Iormlund on March 16, 2014, 09:18:50 AM
Wouldn't military ATC software automatically cross-check those contacts with transponder data, though? It would be a fairly trivial thing to program and would bring instant attention to an unidentified flight such as this one. Grumbler?
Yes. That's one of the things ATC has to worry about: non-commercial aircraft intruding into the commercial aircraft system. This wouldn't even be military ATC that would get an alert; commercial ATC would get an alert as well (within the range of their authority).
Planes that are below some altitude (I no longer remember what it is) are not subject to air traffic control rules unless in proximity of an airport, though. Now that I think about it, it might well be possible for the pilots stealing this plane to mimic civil aviation and thus escape any real notice. I don't know how common private aircraft are in Asia, but I know that in the US civil aviation is basically a matter of "stay low and slow and no one will care if you are in the air."
My uncle used to have his own plane and commented once that he could do whatever he wanted (i.e. no need to file a flight plan), yeah. He and my aunt used to fly down to Florida for the weekend on a whim sometimes.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 16, 2014, 09:11:04 AM
I imagine that they were picked up radar but nobody thought it notable. There is almost certainly a lot of planes flying over India at any given time. They probably saw it on radar and assumed it was just a normal flight.
I don't think that's likely. The Indians are pretty concerned about terrorism. Same with China.
EDIT: though I guess the "flying low" thing could make sense.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 16, 2014, 01:43:35 AM
I find the laxness of the Indians in particular to be staggering! :o
I'm sure New Delhi has been notified.
Quote from: grumbler on March 16, 2014, 06:00:55 AM
The better argument against is the one you point out: how does the plane cross these densely-populated areas at altitudes low enough to avoid radar detection by civilian air traffic control radars and yet not be detected from the ground? A commercial airliner at a coupla thousand feet is pretty noticeable, by noise if nothing else.
If you fly a 777 a few thousand feet over the ground through India, I think someone should notice. There are only about a billion people in the area.
Quote from: Caliga on March 16, 2014, 09:38:36 AM
My uncle used to have his own plane and commented once that he could do whatever he wanted (i.e. no need to file a flight plan), yeah. He and my aunt used to fly down to Florida for the weekend on a whim sometimes.
I've done a decent bit of flying on private planes. Under visual flight rules you're never required to file a flight plan, you can only fly under VFR where both the conditions allow it and if you're under 18,000 ft. Anything above that you are required to fly under instrument flight rules, further if you're flying under IFR it doesn't matter what altitude you are flying at you have to fly a flight plan. But if you're flying over 18k feet you
have to fly under IFR and you have to file a flight plan.
Many people that fly VFR still file a flight plan, though as it serves as a search and rescue tool. If you're flying from Tennessee to Florida, expected departure time of x and expected arrival time of y and you don't arrive then search and rescue knows the path you were supposed to take and can use that as a guide. Many pilots don't bother for short VFR flights but do bother for longer ones, just because it could in theory mean you get found and rescued if you crash and survive with injuries or at the very least it means your body will be found quicker in most cases and that can mean a lot for your family as just disappearing makes the legal issues around settling the estate and life insurance a lot more of a hassle.
Quote from: Jacob on March 16, 2014, 11:00:45 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 16, 2014, 09:11:04 AM
I imagine that they were picked up radar but nobody thought it notable. There is almost certainly a lot of planes flying over India at any given time. They probably saw it on radar and assumed it was just a normal flight.
I don't think that's likely. The Indians are pretty concerned about terrorism. Same with China.
EDIT: though I guess the "flying low" thing could make sense.
Yeah, but India rarely has it's shit together. Hell, during the Cold War some German guy flew all the way to Moscow and landed a plane in Red Square. So even security conscious countries can screw up.
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he he
Saw that elsewhere...tis a fake. Also, that's not a 777...hell, not even a Boeing.
I don't think it takes Sherlock Holmes to deduce those are fakes.
Quote from: Tonitrus on March 16, 2014, 04:50:51 PM
Saw that elsewhere...tis a fake. Also, that's not a 777...hell, not even a Boeing.
Air tragedies are just naturally associated with AirBus.
Latest Guardian article:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/flight-mh370-last-message-communications-disabled-malaysia
This stuck out:
QuoteAuthorities have not yet disclosed whether the person who issued the last message to controllers was Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, or co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, or an unknown third person. It is also unclear if such messages are recorded by air traffic control and are available for expert analysis to determine who the voice belongs to.
How is that still unclear? :blink:
You guys seem honestly astonished that somehow that side of the planet isn't run with the same level of proficiency, professionalism and technological confidence as our side of the planet. I think that's adorable.
I'm not surprised. I mean it took these people a week to figure out which ocean to look in.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 16, 2014, 06:42:04 PM
You guys seem honestly astonished that somehow that side of the planet isn't run with the same level of proficiency, professionalism and technological confidence as our side of the planet. I think that's adorable.
Huh, I live on this side of the planet, and I am astonished about the sheer level of incompetence displayed.
The good news here is that if the plane is found the passengers stand to earn many more frequent flier miles than anticipated. :P
That is because you've been hanging out with us for last decade ^_^
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2014, 07:10:57 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 16, 2014, 06:42:04 PM
You guys seem honestly astonished that somehow that side of the planet isn't run with the same level of proficiency, professionalism and technological confidence as our side of the planet. I think that's adorable.
Huh, I live on this side of the planet, and I am astonished about the sheer level of incompetence displayed.
You at least live in Hong Kong. I'm talking about the rest of the neighborhood to the south, where everybody's wearing black pajamas and grass skirts.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2014, 07:10:57 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 16, 2014, 06:42:04 PM
You guys seem honestly astonished that somehow that side of the planet isn't run with the same level of proficiency, professionalism and technological confidence as our side of the planet. I think that's adorable.
Huh, I live on this side of the planet, and I am astonished about the sheer level of incompetence displayed.
True, but that's just because you're a nationalist.
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Not sure why we're just now hearing about it, but apparently someone from the cockpit "signed off" with the phrase "alright, good night" *after* the transponder and ACARS were turned off. They are now doing voice analysis of the recording--obviously not how anyone would normally communicate with ATC. If it was the captain I imagine they will have some reasonably decent chance of determining it was him as he has apparently a bunch of "home improvement" and "how to" YouTube videos of himself showing people how to do various things. I basically feel pretty sure it was a member of crew committing suicide and they were willing to kill 200+ people in doing so.
Suicide is a possibility. But a counter-argument is that, if suicide is the objective, the pilot can simply ditch the plane in the South China Sea. What is the point of flying west for 7 hours more?
Don't most people who commit suicide I a grandiose way want to be remembered? If so, the pilot (or whoever) got his wish.
Suicide makes the most sense, people at the end are irrational. Who knows why he might want to keep flying for hours. I wouldn't be all that surprised it the plane went down shortly later, some of these software ideas suggesting it could have been flying for 7+ hours could end up being a false positive or maybe the long "handshake" really was able to continue after the crash. Anyway, if it's a hijacking there are really only a few scenarios and none make sense.
1. Refugee hijacking for safe passage elsewhere -- hijackers would have no reason to want the plane to be untrackable.
2. Hijacking to intentionally wreck the plane. Whatever terrorist group was behind it would want to claim responsibility right away. I know a Uighur group has, so maybe this is what happened and we just aren't taking it as seriously as we should.
3. Hijacking to steal the plane / take it hostage. Stealing is unlikely given the impossible logistics and lack of covert landing areas. If you want hostages you'd already be public.
Suicidal pilot just seems the most likely. The captain was very politically involved and the leader of his party had just been jailed in the same week his wife apparently moved out of their shared home with their child. We have no explanation on that yet, but he wouldn't be the first guy to get unhinged over his wife leaving him.
I agree that among all the theories, suicide makes the most sense. But I think we know far too little at this stage to draw any meaningful conclusions. I won't be surprised if new evidence emerges tomorrow indicating that the pilot has friends in some terrorist group. At this point I am willing to consider any theory other than alien abduction.
To me, if it's a pilot suicide, it does make sense that the plane would keep flying for so long and go into the drink in the southern Indian Ocean. If the guy can prevent the plane from ever being found then it will be hard to prove he committed suicide, and therefore it would have an impact on any life insurance payouts due to his family.
Quote from: grumbler on March 16, 2014, 09:27:53 AM
Now that I think about it, it might well be possible for the pilots stealing this plane to mimic civil aviation and thus escape any real notice.
Yeah, that was more what I had in mind when I posted about being able to avoid detection if you know what you're doing than someone installing radar detection gear
Quote from: dps on March 17, 2014, 06:26:13 AM
Yeah, that was more what I had in mind when I posted about being able to avoid detection if you know what you're doing than someone installing radar detection gear
Gotcha. Not so much avoid detection as avoid attracting attention. Agreed.
Quote from: Caliga on March 17, 2014, 04:56:30 AM
To me, if it's a pilot suicide, it does make sense that the plane would keep flying for so long and go into the drink in the southern Indian Ocean. If the guy can prevent the plane from ever being found then it will be hard to prove he committed suicide, and therefore it would have an impact on any life insurance payouts due to his family.
Seems a bit convoluted.
Quote from: garbon on March 17, 2014, 07:00:52 AM
Quote from: Caliga on March 17, 2014, 04:56:30 AM
To me, if it's a pilot suicide, it does make sense that the plane would keep flying for so long and go into the drink in the southern Indian Ocean. If the guy can prevent the plane from ever being found then it will be hard to prove he committed suicide, and therefore it would have an impact on any life insurance payouts due to his family.
Seems a bit convoluted.
Nah, convoluted would be that he's still alive, enjoying said insurance payouts after facial plastic surgery to become someone else.
Suicide necessitates that one of the pilots quickly incapacitated the other pilot after the start or that they were both suicidial, which is rather unlikely. This isn't like that TWA plane that just dropped into the ocean within a very short time.
Does the cabin crew in an airliner have any means to send a distress signal, such as using the onboard phones? In case of a single rogue pilot flying the wrong way for hours, they should have noticed the erratic flight pattern and called home, no? Unless that can be switched off in the cockpit too (which shouldn't be possible based on previous hijackings in my opinion).
Quick, perhaps dumb question, but why dies the pilot even have the ability to turn off the beacon and transponder? What purpose does that serve?
Quote from: HVC on March 17, 2014, 08:20:35 AM
Quick, perhaps dumb question, but why dies the pilot even have the ability to turn off the beacon and transponder? What purpose does that serve?
When a plane is on the ground, the pilot will turn off the IFF so that the ATC radars are not getting a zillion returns from planes parked around the airport.
I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense. Thanks.
Quote from: Zanza on March 17, 2014, 07:36:42 AM
Suicide necessitates that one of the pilots quickly incapacitated the other pilot after the start or that they were both suicidial, which is rather unlikely.
What makes you think that the pilot or pilots had to be incapacitated? What, a crew member can't get up to take a shit or get a drink or go crash for a quick nap in an empty seat in first class on a night flight at the end of a long week and somebody locks the cockpit door behind him, leaving him alone at the controls?
A lot of you would make really shitty detectives. Your brains lock on to one item, and go spinning right off into orbit. Suicide doesn't necessitate jack shit.
I thought about that possibility too, but it doesn't seem to work unless pilots can manually depressurize the cabin separately from the cockpit, or else the locked-out pilot could warn people what was going on and I would think someone would have made calls/sent texts about the situation. I don't know if it's possible to control cabin pressure in that way.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 17, 2014, 10:02:41 AM
What makes you think that the pilot or pilots had to be incapacitated? What, a crew member can't get up to take a shit or get a drink or go crash for a quick nap in an empty seat in first class on a night flight at the end of a long week and somebody locks the cockpit door behind him, leaving him alone at the controls?
A lot of you would make really shitty detectives. Your brains lock on to one item, and go spinning right off into orbit. Suicide doesn't necessitate jack shit.
If your scenario were true, there would be a high risk of someone calling in on a sat phone (much more common in that part of the world than in the West, due to cell phone limitations). The only way to avoid that is to incapacitate the passengers and crew.
Quote from: grumbler on March 17, 2014, 10:10:53 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 17, 2014, 10:02:41 AM
What makes you think that the pilot or pilots had to be incapacitated? What, a crew member can't get up to take a shit or get a drink or go crash for a quick nap in an empty seat in first class on a night flight at the end of a long week and somebody locks the cockpit door behind him, leaving him alone at the controls?
A lot of you would make really shitty detectives. Your brains lock on to one item, and go spinning right off into orbit. Suicide doesn't necessitate jack shit.
If your scenario were true, there would be a high risk of someone calling in on a sat phone (much more common in that part of the world than in the West, due to cell phone limitations). The only way to avoid that is to incapacitate the passengers and crew.
I dunno, there's a lot of incapacitation on a Boeing at 2am as it is. And terminal velocity after pitch down is not going to give many people a chance to wrap up their Words With Friends turns.
Personally, I'm not buying the Malaysian radar reports beyond the time that the transponder was turned off, mainly because it's only coming from the Malaysians, who I wouldn't trust with a brownie recipe let alone international air traffic management.
It's a big ocean, planes disintegrate upon impact, and sometimes wreckage isn't found, particularly when you're relying on parties in a region where all the players don't work and play well with others.
Plus, Asians have poor eyesight.
Quote from: Caliga on March 17, 2014, 10:07:09 AM
I thought about that possibility too, but it doesn't seem to work unless pilots can manually depressurize the cabin separately from the cockpit, or else the locked-out pilot could warn people what was going on and I would think someone would have made calls/sent texts about the situation. I don't know if it's possible to control cabin pressure in that way.
Yes, you can definitely intentionally depressurize the cabin. Read about Helios Airways Flight 522, it was accidentally depressurized because the pilots missed that the pressurization system was set to manual and one of the outflow valves had been left open, so essentially that flight as it got to cruising altitude everyone on the plane was rendered unconscious, including the pilots. The Greeks even did a flyby with a fighter jet and got visual on the copilot slumped over in his chair and the pilot not visible (ostensibly fell over into the floor.) Near the very end somehow a flight attendant was spotted climbing into the controls and trying to do something, but that happened right as the plane was flying into a mountain due to having no fuel left.
So anyway, a pilot could just lock the door, depressurize and go to 45,000 ft and good night passengers. It wouldn't necessarily kill them but it would incapacitate them for sure. We did hear rumors that the plane went up to 45,000 ft (but like CdM with his trust in the Malaysians I don't trust a lot of the various/contradictory technical stories we've heard), and the only reason you'd do that is to make the incapacitation happen more rapidly in my opinion. At regular cruising altitude it's theoretically possible for someone to be conscious for awhile, especially if they have some training. For example the famous Everest "zone of death" is only that "with caveats." People who have trained themselves can and have actually summited and gone all the way through the death zone without using portable oxygen bottles.
Oh, and "separately from the cockpit" doesn't matter. In my scenario the cockpit would be depressurized as well, however the pilot would have put an oxygen mask on in preparation. Much of the passengers would probably fail to secure their oxygen masks in time (you only have a few seconds.) Further, those things aren't portable, the passengers aren't going to be able to storm the cockpit. There are a few portable oxygen masks on the plane for flight attendants, if anyone could get to it in time.
Additionally the oxygen mask the pilot gets has more oxygen in it and is designed to last for a longish time (like maybe 30 minutes), for passengers they're just there for dire emergencies where during a theoretical brief moment when the plane loses pressurization but before the pilot gets them down to lower altitude (which he'd be doing very rapidly in such a scenario.) So the passengers would run out of oxygen long before the pilot did.
I would be astonished if the pilot could flip a switch and depressurize the cabin. The Helios Airways incident happened because the ground crew disabled the door seal system in order to test it, but they did that at the door. I can see no utility for a cockpit switch that could, by being accidentally and unknowingly triggered, kill or incapacitate the passengers and crew.
Quote from: grumbler on March 17, 2014, 11:29:50 AM
I would be astonished if the pilot could flip a switch and depressurize the cabin. The Helios Airways incident happened because the ground crew disabled the door seal system in order to test it, but they did that at the door. I can see no utility for a cockpit switch that could, by being accidentally and unknowingly triggered, kill or incapacitate the passengers and crew.
It's not a single switch, but it's definitely controllable in cockpit. First you set the pressurization system to manual, then you open one of the outflow valves.
That's actually what happened on the Helios flight by the way. The maintenance crew was indeed investigating reported strange sounds and etc that lead the previous pilots on the aircraft to believe there were problems with some seals or something, and that is why they had set the system to manual and had one of the outflow valves opened--was part of their testing.
During pre-flight one of the steps is to verify that the pressurization system is set to auto, and another step is to verify that all of the outflow valves are closed. The pilots of the Helios 552 missed both steps (there is a record of them going through those steps, but they checked them off apparently without actually being certain--probably because the outflow valves are almost always closed and the pressurization system is almost always pre set to auto so they just rushed through it.) That's really exactly what you'd do to depressurize a plane in mid-flight, just set it to manual and open a valve.
On Flight 552 what instead happened is they took off that way. But there are still safe guards, for example an alarm goes off telling you the pressure is dangerously low, at which point they should have aborted their climb. Instead, the pilots mistook the alarm for something else and ignored it, continuing to climb. They eventually realized something was wrong and radioed for help, but they were clearly disoriented and confused and kept repeating confused diagnosis of what was going on before they stopped responding--because that's typical of how your brain works when you've subjected it to a low oxygen environment.
Yeah, I'm familiar with the Helios incident (I mentioned it earlier in this thread), and I also knew pilots have control over pressurization because in the case of the Helios flight, at one point when the crew was in touch with ATC they mentioned having a problem, and the ground tech who worked on the flight prior to departure actually asked them to check the pressurization control, but they either didn't understand him or didn't hear him, because obviously they didn't do that in time.
I can't believe it's gone unmentioned thus far, but everyone should read up on what happened with Helios Airways Flight 522.
Has someone brought up the Helios flight yet?
Quote from: Caliga on March 17, 2014, 11:52:28 AM
Yeah, I'm familiar with the Helios incident (I mentioned it earlier in this thread), and I also knew pilots have control over pressurization because in the case of the Helios flight, at one point when the crew was in touch with ATC they mentioned having a problem, and the ground tech who worked on the flight prior to departure actually asked them to check the pressurization control, but they either didn't understand him or didn't hear him, because obviously they didn't do that in time.
I am aware that the pilots can change the pressure control to manual from the cockpit, but I'd be astonished if they could flip a switch to open the outlet valves, whose only purpose would be to kill the passengers. However, further investigation shows that the cabin loses enough pressure naturally that this wouldn't be an issue.
So, never mind!
My non-pilot's understanding of the outflow valves is they are (when pressure control is set to manual) being partially opened and partially closed all the time to help create air flow and regulate cabin pressure. The only scenario I've been able to look up where it really makes 'sense' to manually control them involves setting the system to manual and closing them 100%, which you would do if you were ditching in water. It probably wouldn't make a huge difference, but all things being equal it would slow the rate at which water flooded the plane and you want the fuselage to sink below the surface as slowly as possible. Although most likely if you do a successful water ditching you'll have more than enough time to get everyone out of the cabin, and if you don't the fuselage is going to have broken apart as it hit the water so it's a moot point.
Quote from: grumbler on March 17, 2014, 11:29:50 AM
I would be astonished if the pilot could flip a switch and depressurize the cabin. The Helios Airways incident happened because the ground crew disabled the door seal system in order to test it, but they did that at the door. I can see no utility for a cockpit switch that could, by being accidentally and unknowingly triggered, kill or incapacitate the passengers and crew.
There's all kinds of weird switches and buttons on airplanes.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Fu5cCk3o.jpg&hash=7a07bb5312a23a8eed9b933acb4366cb5a8bc912)
Raz wins with the Far Side.
:D
Good one, Raz. :cool:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bi8uIU3CQAEGzWr.png)
I hope to God Courtney Love found it.
Courtney :wub:
She's unclean.
So?
If she finds the plane, it is probably because she had something to do with it. After Cobain, I believe she is capable of anything.
she's reposting what's been floating around the internet. it's a bunch of bs either way
http://www.bigbreakingnews.com/2014/03/did-reddit-find-malaysian-airlines.html#.UyaafoWi5go
I don't think that they are looking for an oil slick. A 777 isn't a ship, and doesn't burn oil. Jet-A would evaporate and not leave a slick.
Who are you to second guess Courtney Love, Grumbler?
Reports that a large passenger jet flew low over an island in the Maldives, some seven or so hours after MH370 disappeared:
Quote
Missing Malaysia Airlines plane may have been spotted over the Maldive Islands, it has emerged
By Jonathan Pearlman, Kuala Lumpur
8:32PM GMT 18 Mar 2014
The global hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight has shifted to a tiny island in the Maldives, where residents spotted a "low flying jumbo jet" hours after the aircraft disappeared.
Several witnesses in Dhaalu Atoll saw a plane heading south that bore the red stripe and white background of Malaysia Airlines planes.
The sightings, reported by a local news outlet, would have occurred more than seven hours after the plane, carrying 12 crew and 227 mainly Chinese passengers, lost contact with air traffic control and took its sudden westward turn during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in the early hours of Saturday March 8.
"I've never seen a jet flying so low over our island before. We've seen seaplanes, but I'm sure that this was not one of those. I could even make out the doors on the plane clearly," said an witness.
"It's not just me either, several other residents have reported seeing the exact same thing. Some people got out of their houses to see what was causing the tremendous noise too." The chances of another aircraft of that size flying over the island at the time were, according to Maldives sources, very low.
Though authorities are yet to confirm the sighting, the plane's pilot, Captain Zaharie Shah, is believed to have practised landing at Male International Airport in the Maldives on a three-screen flight simulator at his home. The machine has been seized by police.
......
Full article here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10706853/MH370-Maldives-Islanders-claim-to-have-spotted-low-flying-jet.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10706853/MH370-Maldives-Islanders-claim-to-have-spotted-low-flying-jet.html)
More here, maybe it's just people engaging in wishful 'witnessing' ? :
Quote
Some residents of Kudahuvadhoo Island in the Maldives have claimed to have seen a large low-flying aircraft, around 6.15am (Maldives time: GMT+5hrs). Any international flight passing over that island would be highly unusual and domestic transport uses small aircrafts. Police has now started an investigation.
http://www.maldivesfinest.com/seen-mh370-in-maldives (http://www.maldivesfinest.com/seen-mh370-in-maldives)
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.maldivesfinest.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F03%2Fmissing-mh370-maldives.png&hash=aa2eb467ce01af1259bcd68405a22f588f7f8222)
Heya Mongerino
Hey Mongers. :)
Quote from: mongers on March 18, 2014, 08:40:00 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 18, 2014, 08:31:09 PM
Quote from: mongers on March 18, 2014, 08:19:42 PM
Quote from: PDH on March 18, 2014, 08:16:57 PM
Heya Mongerino
Happy Spring, PDH. :cheers:
MONGERS!!! :bowler:
AR how's the fitness going?
Hi, Yi.
Kind of crappy...trying to get ready for a mid may marathon but am struggling.
Have you been riding through the south of england during your time off, or are you about to pick back up for Spring?
Quote from: alfred russel on March 18, 2014, 08:43:31 PM
Quote from: mongers on March 18, 2014, 08:40:00 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 18, 2014, 08:31:09 PM
Quote from: mongers on March 18, 2014, 08:19:42 PM
Quote from: PDH on March 18, 2014, 08:16:57 PM
Heya Mongerino
Happy Spring, PDH. :cheers:
MONGERS!!! :bowler:
AR how's the fitness going?
Hi, Yi.
Kind of crappy...trying to get ready for a mid may marathon but am struggling.
Have you been riding through the south of england during your time off, or are you about to pick back up for Spring?
Struggling as well, been the wettest winter on record here and I'm in the region that's had the most rain, so haven't been doing much.
Must go and find the fitness 2014 page, any idea how many pages it is back? :D
Quote from: mongers on March 18, 2014, 09:03:46 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 18, 2014, 08:43:31 PM
Quote from: mongers on March 18, 2014, 08:40:00 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 18, 2014, 08:31:09 PM
Quote from: mongers on March 18, 2014, 08:19:42 PM
Quote from: PDH on March 18, 2014, 08:16:57 PM
Heya Mongerino
Happy Spring, PDH. :cheers:
MONGERS!!! :bowler:
AR how's the fitness going?
Hi, Yi.
Kind of crappy...trying to get ready for a mid may marathon but am struggling.
Have you been riding through the south of england during your time off, or are you about to pick back up for Spring?
Struggling as well, been the wettest winter on record here and I'm in the region that's had the most rain, so haven't been doing much.
Must go and find the fitness 2014 page, any idea how many pages it is back? :D
Not far, but I have been talking to myself a bit since you left.
Some cat from Cincinnati has a theory that the maneuvers made by the Malaysian jet was to put it directly behind a Singapore Airlines flight from Singapore to Barcelona and hide in its 'radar shadow'. This particular flight's path took it over... DUUH-DUH-DUHHHHHH... Iran.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FVzeukqe.gif&hash=22596938042a07f405102e33ff460902ad9ac6c3)
How do you post gifs?
Just image tags.
Like this
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffc01.deviantart.net%2Ffs70%2Ff%2F2013%2F179%2F3%2F7%2Fbig_gif_hannibal_s01e13_3_by_septangularworld-d6b4rvm.gif&hash=d6c86c86f2d925874657a5a73d2741ea5ece2a53)
Rumor is the plane may have accelerated to such a high speed it actually broke free from Earth's gravity and was slung into space, where the crew and passengers would have been killed due to the lack of life support systems on the 777.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on March 19, 2014, 11:05:27 PM
Rumor is the plane may have accelerated to such a high speed it actually broke free from Earth's gravity and was slung into space, where the crew and passengers would have been killed due to the lack of life support systems on the 777.
Thanks, Obama!
If only Lee Majors had been the captain! :(
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sci-fimovieposters.co.uk%2Fimages%2Fposters-s%2FS-0017_Starflight_One_quad_movie_poster_l.jpg&hash=45c913c73f99ad753b51d5a485de7adeb3e512be)
Australia found the plane. Hopefully this can all go away now.
The news I saw on that was that satellites spotted 'something' in the southern Indian Ocean, but aircraft flying to that location didn't see whatever it was. :hmm:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/missing-plane-objects-may-mh370-debris-031945103.html?vp=1#Gp4ekoi
That's going to be a bit further south than people were thinking, isn't it?
Quote from: HVC on March 20, 2014, 07:12:33 AM
Australia found the plane. Hopefully this can all go away now.
They found something. We don't know if that's the plane yet.
Decades later, when we finally have pilot-less planes, they'll point to this incident as a justification to get rid of the pilots.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 20, 2014, 08:24:08 AM
Decades later, when we finally have pilot-less planes, they'll point to this incident as a justification to get rid of the pilots.
Greeting: Welcome aboard earth dwelling meatbags this is your captain speaking.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 20, 2014, 07:15:47 AM
Quote from: HVC on March 20, 2014, 07:12:33 AM
Australia found the plane. Hopefully this can all go away now.
They found something. We don't know if that's the plane yet.
If it isn't the Air Malaysia plane, I'm hoping it is Amelia Earhart's.
Found on Nikumaroro by a random British guy already. :sleep:
Quote from: Caliga on March 20, 2014, 08:50:43 AM
Found on Nikumaroro by a random British guy already. :sleep:
Well crap, what other things do we hope to finally find in the ocean? The long elusive giant squid, godzilla, or :cthulu:?
Hopefully it is one of those.
My post was a reference to a prior thread we had where TIGHAR came up. Those are they guys who think AE crashed on Nikumaroro/Gardner and survived for a short while as a castaway. Meanwhile according to this theory her Lockheed Electra was broken up by heavy surf and slid down the reef slope into the deep. Their forum is publicly viewable @ tighar.org and I lurk there because, while I've never come around to their theory, it's an interesting collection of folks with a lot of aviation knowledge between them (some of it professional).
Quote from: Valmy on March 20, 2014, 08:42:45 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 20, 2014, 08:24:08 AM
Decades later, when we finally have pilot-less planes, they'll point to this incident as a justification to get rid of the pilots.
Greeting: Welcome aboard earth dwelling meatbags this is your captain speaking.
Great, Bender is flying.
Incidentally I've seen this posted all over the place but not here:
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/mh370-electrical-fire/?utm_content=bufferd3885&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Seems plausible.
Silly Shielbh. It was a black hole wut dunnit.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnns-don-lemon-is-it-preposterous-to-think-a-black-hole-caused-flight-370-to-go-missing/
Quote from: derspiess on March 20, 2014, 10:20:38 AM
Silly Shielbh. It was a black hole wut dunnit.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnns-don-lemon-is-it-preposterous-to-think-a-black-hole-caused-flight-370-to-go-missing/
Somebody needs a remedial science lesson.
QuoteMary Schiavo, a former Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Transportation, said, "A small black hole would suck in our entire universe, so we know it's not that."
Maybe we are in a small black hole?
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 20, 2014, 10:05:08 AM
Incidentally I've seen this posted all over the place but not here:
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/mh370-electrical-fire/?utm_content=bufferd3885&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Seems plausible.
I've seen this scenario posted before (in fact, soon after the realization that the plane had changed course), and still think it the most plausible.
Saw something that debunked that...but I forget where.
Quote from: Ed Anger on March 20, 2014, 09:59:05 AM
Quote from: Valmy on March 20, 2014, 08:42:45 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 20, 2014, 08:24:08 AM
Decades later, when we finally have pilot-less planes, they'll point to this incident as a justification to get rid of the pilots.
Greeting: Welcome aboard earth dwelling meatbags this is your captain speaking.
Great, Bender is flying.
Better than having him do the baggage handling.
Quote from: Caliga on March 20, 2014, 08:57:53 AM
My post was a reference to a prior thread we had where TIGHAR came up. Those are they guys who think AE crashed on Nikumaroro/Gardner and survived for a short while as a castaway. Meanwhile according to this theory her Lockheed Electra was broken up by heavy surf and slid down the reef slope into the deep. Their forum is publicly viewable @ tighar.org and I lurk there because, while I've never come around to their theory, it's an interesting collection of folks with a lot of aviation knowledge between them (some of it professional).
I thought those were guys you've posted about before who were crazy...and didn't one of them come here once spouting random crazy stuff? Or am I thinking of something else...
Some of them are a bit odd, yes. What you're remembering is not one who came here, but one who found a post I made on here mocking him via Google and responded to it on their forum.
Quote from: Berkut on March 20, 2014, 12:43:43 PM
Saw something that debunked that...but I forget where.
Apparently the turn was made a while before the pilot signed off.
From Monday. Still the most plausible thing.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-17/finally-plausible-scenario-what-happened-flight-370
Then again, they have this going around the Kremlin...
Quote
Malaysian Flight 370 Hijacked by US Navy to protect 'Suspicious Cargo' – Russia
15 Mar 2014 A new report circulating in the Kremlin prepared by the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (GRU) states that Aerospace Defence Forces (VKO) experts remain "puzzled" as to why the United States Navy "captured and then diverted" a Malaysia Airlines civilian aircraft from its intended flight-path to their vast and highly-secretive Indian Ocean base located on the Diego Garcia atoll... Interesting to note, this report says, was that Flight 370 was already under GRU "surveillance" after it received a "highly suspicious" cargo load that had been traced to the Indian Ocean nation Republic of Seychelles, and where it had previously been aboard the US-flagged container ship MV Maersk Alabama. What first aroused GRU suspicions regarding the MV Maersk Alabama, this report continues, was that within 24-hours of off-loading this "highly suspicious" cargo load bound for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the two highly-trained US Navy SEALS assigned to protect it, Mark Daniel Kennedy, 43, and Jeffrey Keith Reynolds, 44, were found dead under "suspicious circumstances."
I was buying it until they talked about forty year old SEALs. :rolleyes:
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 21, 2014, 02:38:25 PM
I was buying it until they talked about forty year old SEALs. :rolleyes:
Ex-SEALs working for a specialized security company.
Quote from: The Brain on March 20, 2014, 11:25:23 AM
Maybe we are in a small black hole?
Possibly. I've heard a theory that we are actually 2D objects projected off the surface of a black hole. I am in no position to endorse or condemn this theory.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on March 21, 2014, 02:29:07 PM
From Monday. Still the most plausible thing.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-17/finally-plausible-scenario-what-happened-flight-370
I don't know, you'd think that a guy who's spent 18,000 hours in the cockpit and surely thousands more in that flight simulator of his would know exactly where the airstrips along the southern route would be and wouldn't become disoriented easily. If the plane did head south, it seems more likely that the pilots just died.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 21, 2014, 02:50:11 PM
Quote from: The Brain on March 20, 2014, 11:25:23 AM
Maybe we are in a small black hole?
Possibly. I've heard a theory that we are actually 2D objects projected off the surface of a black hole. I am in no position to endorse or condemn this theory.
I thought about it and we're not in a small black hole. katmai :contract:
I'm Not black you raciss scanditard.
Chinese have spotted what may be debris in the southern zone.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/mh370-china-satellite-sees-new-possible-debris-malaysia-n59396
I think it is ridiculous in the age of satellites, GPS, internet etc that we still have to look for a missing plane using search planes and telescopes. I refuse to believe that it is technologically impossible to track a large civilian plane even if it crashes into the ocean. They just don't bother putting those systems into the planes.
Are we going to have a news story every time the Chinese see a some junk floating in the water? Cause there's lots of junk floating in the ocean.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 22, 2014, 08:03:25 AM
I think it is ridiculous in the age of satellites, GPS, internet etc that we still have to look for a missing plane using search planes and telescopes. I refuse to believe that it is technologically impossible to track a large civilian plane even if it crashes into the ocean. They just don't bother putting those systems into the planes.
it would be technologically possible, but very expensive (since you would have to do this with sonar, not radio). "They just don't bother" raising ticket prices by $200/seat/flight (or whatever) to pay for "putting those systems into the planes."
Quote from: grumbler on March 22, 2014, 08:57:10 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 22, 2014, 08:03:25 AM
I think it is ridiculous in the age of satellites, GPS, internet etc that we still have to look for a missing plane using search planes and telescopes. I refuse to believe that it is technologically impossible to track a large civilian plane even if it crashes into the ocean. They just don't bother putting those systems into the planes.
it would be technologically possible, but very expensive (since you would have to do this with sonar, not radio). "They just don't bother" raising ticket prices by $200/seat/flight (or whatever) to pay for "putting those systems into the planes."
Is there any way they can make the transmitter float?
Quote from: Razgovory on March 22, 2014, 08:34:08 AM
Are we going to have a news story every time the Chinese see a some junk floating in the water? Cause there's lots of junk floating in the ocean.
:bleeding:
Quote from: grumbler on March 22, 2014, 08:57:10 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 22, 2014, 08:03:25 AM
I think it is ridiculous in the age of satellites, GPS, internet etc that we still have to look for a missing plane using search planes and telescopes. I refuse to believe that it is technologically impossible to track a large civilian plane even if it crashes into the ocean. They just don't bother putting those systems into the planes.
it would be technologically possible, but very expensive (since you would have to do this with sonar, not radio). "They just don't bother" raising ticket prices by $200/seat/flight (or whatever) to pay for "putting those systems into the planes."
I don't understand why you need sonar. If the plane goes underwater, you don't need to continue to track the plane: you just need to know where it crashed. I think you could accomplish a lot for less than $50k per flight (extrapolating your cost of $200/seat/flight). GPS would seem to be more cost effective.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 22, 2014, 09:26:48 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 22, 2014, 08:57:10 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 22, 2014, 08:03:25 AM
I think it is ridiculous in the age of satellites, GPS, internet etc that we still have to look for a missing plane using search planes and telescopes. I refuse to believe that it is technologically impossible to track a large civilian plane even if it crashes into the ocean. They just don't bother putting those systems into the planes.
it would be technologically possible, but very expensive (since you would have to do this with sonar, not radio). "They just don't bother" raising ticket prices by $200/seat/flight (or whatever) to pay for "putting those systems into the planes."
I don't understand why you need sonar. If the plane goes underwater, you don't need to continue to track the plane: you just need to know where it crashed. I think you could accomplish a lot for less than $50k per flight (extrapolating your cost of $200/seat/flight). GPS would seem to be more cost effective.
That's what the Transponder does.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 22, 2014, 09:19:07 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 22, 2014, 08:57:10 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 22, 2014, 08:03:25 AM
I think it is ridiculous in the age of satellites, GPS, internet etc that we still have to look for a missing plane using search planes and telescopes. I refuse to believe that it is technologically impossible to track a large civilian plane even if it crashes into the ocean. They just don't bother putting those systems into the planes.
it would be technologically possible, but very expensive (since you would have to do this with sonar, not radio). "They just don't bother" raising ticket prices by $200/seat/flight (or whatever) to pay for "putting those systems into the planes."
Is there any way they can make the transmitter float?
That is probably pretty easy.
The problem is getting the 300 ton aircraft it is inside to float along with it.
I don't think you'd want it to float, because then it would drift away from the wreckage and typically there's a strong desire to recover that, because it can aid the investigation and also people want their loved ones' bodies back if possible.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 22, 2014, 08:34:08 AM
Are we going to have a news story every time the Chinese see a some junk floating in the water? Cause there's lots of junk floating in the ocean.
:lol:
Quote from: alfred russel on March 22, 2014, 09:26:48 AM
I don't understand why you need sonar. If the plane goes underwater, you don't need to continue to track the plane: you just need to know where it crashed. I think you could accomplish a lot for less than $50k per flight (extrapolating your cost of $200/seat/flight). GPS would seem to be more cost effective.
GPS is one-way. It would tell the plane where it is crashing, but the pilots already know that, because they already have GPS.
If all you are interested in doing is tracking aircraft from satellites, you could have the aircraft transmit its GPS coordinates via Iridium every few minutes. That would cost (probably) some small thousands of dollars per flight (Iridium calls are expensive, but not that expensive, and you'd need somewhere to receive and record the calls). But, the fact of the matter is, that we pretty much know where commercial airliners are all the time from their IFF beacons, unless they suffer some catastrophe like MH 370, in which case the new system would fail as well.
There are a few flights that get outside of everyone's radar coverage for a while and so are not tracked via beacon, like that Air France jet that went down in 2009, but even then searchers knew pretty much were it went down, because it hadn't been out of radar contact long and would have been picked up by Azores flight control if it had gone much further.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 22, 2014, 09:19:07 AM
Is there any way they can make the transmitter float?
It would have to survive the crash intact in order to still be in shape to float. And even then, you'd need to tether it to the plane or it would just float away, and you'd be talking a lot of weight (and thus reduced payload) to have a tether strong enough to hold and long enough to reach the bottom of the ocean.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 22, 2014, 09:19:07 AM
Is there any way they can make the transmitter float?
Sure, just add root beer and two scoops of ice cream.
Quote from: grumbler on March 22, 2014, 12:23:54 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 22, 2014, 09:26:48 AM
I don't understand why you need sonar. If the plane goes underwater, you don't need to continue to track the plane: you just need to know where it crashed. I think you could accomplish a lot for less than $50k per flight (extrapolating your cost of $200/seat/flight). GPS would seem to be more cost effective.
GPS is one-way. It would tell the plane where it is crashing, but the pilots already know that, because they already have GPS.
If all you are interested in doing is tracking aircraft from satellites, you could have the aircraft transmit its GPS coordinates via Iridium every few minutes. That would cost (probably) some small thousands of dollars per flight (Iridium calls are expensive, but not that expensive, and you'd need somewhere to receive and record the calls). But, the fact of the matter is, that we pretty much know where commercial airliners are all the time from their IFF beacons, unless they suffer some catastrophe like MH 370, in which case the new system would fail as well.
I'm not sure why it couldn't be done for a cost in the low hundreds. Say a quick ping to a data center every 5 minutes--if each ping costs $5, that is still just ~$60 an hour (and that pricing seems high unless I'm missing something).
That new system wouldn't fail in the event of a catastrophe. We would know where the plane was within at most 5 minutes of its demise.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 22, 2014, 02:32:42 PM
I'm not sure why it couldn't be done for a cost in the low hundreds. Say a quick ping to a data center every 5 minutes--if each ping costs $5, that is still just ~$60 an hour (and that pricing seems high unless I'm missing something).
That new system wouldn't fail in the event of a catastrophe. We would know where the plane was within at most 5 minutes of its demise.
We already know where the plane is within 5 minutes of its demise, because its IFF goes blank. Except, you know, when we don't. This system would do exactly what the IFF transponder does, except at a higher cost and over the few regions of the world where there isn't radar coverage (but, where there aren't commair flights, either, by and large).
The cost would have to include the people monitoring all these flights, and the facilities for them to use.
And how many times a year do we lose commercial airliners, anyway? Is this really the problem we should be devoting new resources to?
Quote from: grumbler on March 22, 2014, 09:11:09 PM
We already know where the plane is within 5 minutes of its demise, because its IFF goes blank. Except, you know, when we don't. This system would do exactly what the IFF transponder does, except at a higher cost and over the few regions of the world where there isn't radar coverage (but, where there aren't commair flights, either, by and large).
The cost would have to include the people monitoring all these flights, and the facilities for them to use.
And how many times a year do we lose commercial airliners, anyway? Is this really the problem we should be devoting new resources to?
I think it is. The current system apparently is unable to reliably identify where a plane is within five minutes of its demise. I'm not sure why that is, but if it is possible to fix that, it should be explored. There are a lot of tangible costs in this situation: significant search and rescue costs, loss of airline revenue as some people lose confidence in aviation safety, and costs associated with legal uncertainty. Not to mention that lives may be lost while searching for a downed plane, or accidents may reoccur because we were never able to pinpoint what went wrong in a crash.
There is an App for that.
Quote(CNN) -- Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went down over the southern Indian Ocean, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday, citing a new analysis of satellite data by a British satellite company and accident investigators, and apparently ending hopes that anyone survived.
A relative of a missing passenger briefed by the airline in Beijing said, "They have told us all lives are lost."
Razak based his announcement on what he described as unprecedented analysis of satellite data sent by the plane by British satellite provider Inmarsat and the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch. He didn't describe the nature of the analysis.
But he said it made it clear that the plane's last position was in the middle of the remote southern Indian Ocean, "far from any possible landing sites."
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, delivers a statement Monday, March 24, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Razak announced that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went down over the southern Indian Ocean, according to a new analysis of satellite data. The plane has been missing since March 8.
Members of the Chinese navy continue search operations on Thursday, March 13. The search area for Flight 370 has grown wider. After starting in the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, the plane's last confirmed location, efforts are expanding west into the Indian Ocean.
Malaysia Airlines Group CEO Ahmad Juahari Yahya, front, speaks during a news conference on March 8 at a hotel in Sepang. "We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts" with the jet, he said.
He begged reporters to respect the privacy of relatives.
"For them, the past few weeks have been heartbreaking," he said. "I know this news must be harder still."
A Facebook page dedicated to the only American aboard the flight, Philip Wood, said of relatives that "our collective hearts are hurting now."
"Please lift all the loved ones of MH370 with your good thoughts and prayers," a post on the page said.
Debris spotted in Indian Ocean
The announcement came the same day as Australian officials said they had spotted two objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be related to the flight, which has been missing since March 8 with 239 people aboard.
One object is "a grey or green circular object," and the other is "an orange rectangular object," the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
The objects are the latest in a series of sightings, including "suspicious objects" reported earlier Monday by a Chinese military plane that was involved in search efforts in the same region, authorities said.
So far, nothing has been definitively linked to Flight 370.
Earlier, Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's acting transportation minister, said only that "at the moment, there are new leads but nothing conclusive."
A reporter on board the Chinese plane for China's official Xinhua news agency said the search team saw "two relatively big floating objects with many white smaller ones scattered within a radius of several kilometers," the agency reported Monday.
The Chinese plane was flying at 33,000 feet on its way back to Australia's west coast when it made the sighting, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
Two objects located in ocean
But a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft, one of the military's most sophisticated reconnaissance planes, that was tasked to investigate the objects was unable to find them, the authority said.
With the search in its third week, authorities have so far been unable to establish where exactly the missing plane is or why it flew off course from its planned journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
China has a particularly large stake in the search: Its citizens made up about two-thirds of the 227 passengers on the missing Boeing 777. Beijing has repeatedly called on Malaysian authorities, who are in charge of the overall search, to step up efforts to find the plane.
Malaysian and Australian authorities appeared to be more interested Monday in the two objects spotted by a Royal Australian Air Force P-3 Orion aircraft.
The Australian's navy's HMAS Success "is on scene and is attempting to locate the objects," the Australian maritime authority said.
Hishammuddin said Australian authorities had said the objects could be retrieved "within the next few hours, or by tomorrow morning at the latest."
Recent information from satellites identifying objects in the water that could be related to the plane has focused search efforts on an area roughly 1,500 miles southwest of the Australian city of Perth.
A total of 10 aircraft -- from Australia, China the United States and Japan -- were tasked with combing the search area Monday.
The aerial searches have been trained on the isolated part of ocean since last week, when Australia first announced that satellite imagery had detected possible objects that could be connected to the search.
Since then, China and France have said they also have satellite information pointing to floating debris in a similar area. The Chinese information came from images, and the French data came from satellite radar.
But Australian officials have repeatedly warned that the objects detected in satellite images may not turn out to be from the missing plane -- they could be containers that have fallen off cargo ships, for example.
On Saturday, searchers found a wooden pallet as well as strapping belts, Australian authorities said. The use of wooden pallets is common in the airline industry, but also in the shipping industry.
Hishammuddin said Monday that Flight 370 was carrying wooden pallets, but that there was so far no evidence they are related to the ones sighted in the search area.
The investigation into the passenger jet's disappearance has already produced a wealth of false leads and speculative theories. Previously, when the hunt was focused on the South China Sea near where the plane dropped off civilian radar, a number of sightings of debris proved to be unrelated to the search.
The sighting of the objects of interest by the Chinese plane came after a weekend during which other nuggets of information emerged about the movements of the errant jetliner on the night it vanished.
Military radar tracking shows that after making a sharp turn over the South China Sea, the plane changed altitude as it headed toward the Strait of Malacca, an official close to the investigation into the missing flight told CNN.
The plane flew as low as 12,000 feet at some point before it disappeared from radar, according to the official. It had reportedly been flying at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet when contact was lost with air traffic control.
The sharp turn seemed to be intentional, the official said, because executing it would have taken the Boeing 777 two minutes -- a time period during which the pilot or co-pilot could have sent an emergency signal if there had been a fire or other emergency on board.
Authorities say the plane didn't send any emergency signals, though some analysts say it's still unclear whether the pilots tried but weren't able to communicate because of a catastrophic failure of the aircraft's systems.
The official, who is not authorized to speak to the media, told CNN that the area the plane flew in after the turn is a heavily trafficked air corridor and that flying at 12,000 feet would have kept the jet well out of the way of that traffic.
Malaysia disputes reprogramming
Also over the weekend, Malaysian authorities said the last transmission from the missing aircraft's reporting system showed it heading to Beijing -- a revelation that appears to undercut the theory that someone reprogrammed the plane's flight path before the co-pilot signed off with air traffic controllers for the last time.
That reduces, but doesn't rule out, suspicions about foul play in the cockpit.
Last week, CNN and other news organizations, citing unnamed sources, reported that authorities believed someone had reprogrammed the aircraft's flight computer before the sign-off.
CNN cited sources who believed the plane's flight computer must have been reprogrammed because it flew directly over navigational way points. A plane controlled by a human probably would not have been so precise, the sources said.
Malaysian authorities never confirmed that account, saying last week that the plane's "documented flight path" had not been altered.
On Sunday, they clarified that statement further, saying the plane's automated data reporting system included no route changes in its last burst, sent at 1:07 a.m. -- 12 minutes before the last voice communication with flight controllers.
Analysts are divided about what the latest information could mean. Some argue it's a sign that mechanical failure sent the plane suddenly off course. Others say there are still too many unknowns to eliminate any possibilities.
CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien called the fresh details about the flight a "game changer."
"Now we have no evidence the crew did anything wrong," he said. "And in fact, now, we should be operating with the primary assumption being that something bad happened to that plane shortly after they said good night."
If a crisis on board caused the plane to lose pressure, he said, pilots could have chosen to deliberately fly lower to save passengers.
"You want to get down to 10,000 feet, because that is when you don't have to worry about pressurization. You have enough air in the atmosphere naturally to keep everybody alive," he said. "So part of the procedure for a rapid decompression ... it's called a high dive, and you go as quickly as you can down that to that altitude."
Authorities have said pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah was highly experienced. On Monday, Malaysian authorities said Flight 370 was co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's sixth flight in a Boeing 777, and the first time when he was not traveling with an instructor pilot shadowing him.
"We do not see any problem with him," said Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.
I tuned out the Malaysian government about 2 weeks ago.
They are going to find that the "debris field" floating off the coast of Australia is tens of thousands of Yahoo Serious VHS tapes.
So Malaysia has called it over. Plane gone, everyone dead. Surprise.
I would like to compliment the Chinese people for the admirable stoicism and calm demonstrated throughout this ordeal by the families of the victims.
In 30 years, people from this flight are going to start popping up, with no discernable signs of aging. :area52:
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on March 24, 2014, 01:33:40 PM
In 30 years, people from this flight are going to start popping up, with no discernable signs of aging. :area52:
No sign of aging, only significant decay after being scavaged by various forms of sea life.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 24, 2014, 02:29:17 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on March 24, 2014, 01:33:40 PM
In 30 years, people from this flight are going to start popping up, with no discernable signs of aging. :area52:
No sign of aging, only significant decay after being scavaged by various forms of sea life. :cthulu:
We took my little 7 year old niece out for dinner on Sunday, and my Dad and I are talking about the Malaysian flight, and I mention how it doesn't matter where it is, it's down at the bottom of the ocean.
And then I hear with a mouthful of chicken nuggets, "Amelia Earhart is at the bottom of the ocean, too." :lol:
Hopefully she doesn't post that on the TIGHAR forum. :(
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 24, 2014, 06:56:13 PM
We took my little 7 year old niece out for dinner on Sunday, and my Dad and I are talking about the Malaysian flight, and I mention how it doesn't matter where it is, it's down at the bottom of the ocean.
And then I hear with a mouthful of chicken nuggets, "Amelia Earhart is at the bottom of the ocean, too." :lol:
Kids are adorable. :)
Malaysia Airlines sent a text to the families to let them know :blink: :bleeding:
Stay classy, Kuala Lumpur!
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 24, 2014, 09:21:14 PM
Malaysia Airlines sent a text to the families to let them know :blink: :bleeding:
They could have flown employees out to tell the families in person, but under the circumstances they probably can't afford to lose any more planes.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 24, 2014, 09:21:14 PM
Malaysia Airlines sent a text to the families to let them know :blink: :bleeding:
They are incompetent and inconsiderate.
I guess if there were still long range flying boats or amphibious planes available, weather permitting, we might have had some debris identified by now?
Quote from: mongers on March 25, 2014, 08:16:01 PM
I guess if there were still long range flying boats or amphibious planes available, weather permitting, we might have had some debris identified by now?
I haven't been following the story, but it kind of seems like this might be a case of: "we don't know for certain what happened, but the plane almost certainly crashed, its a big ocean and we don't have a chance in hell of finding it, and we don't want to look anymore".
Quote from: alfred russel on March 25, 2014, 08:20:33 PM
Quote from: mongers on March 25, 2014, 08:16:01 PM
I guess if there were still long range flying boats or amphibious planes available, weather permitting, we might have had some debris identified by now?
I haven't been following the story, but it kind of seems like this might be a case of: "we don't know for certain what happened, but the plane almost certainly crashed, its a big ocean and we don't have a chance in hell of finding it, and we don't want to look anymore".
I am pretty sure the PLA will look for the plane in the years to come. They have already sent people, ships and planes to Perth.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 25, 2014, 09:31:28 PM
I am pretty sure the PLA will look for the plane in the years to come. They have already sent people, ships and planes to Perth.
The PLA is better than me. If I can't find my keys within 10 minutes, I give up and just surf the net all day. And that is when I can narrow the search area to my condo. If you told me my keys were somewhere in the Indian Ocean, I wouldn't bother getting out of bed.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 25, 2014, 09:53:53 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 25, 2014, 09:31:28 PM
I am pretty sure the PLA will look for the plane in the years to come. They have already sent people, ships and planes to Perth.
The PLA is better than me. If I can't find my keys within 10 minutes, I give up and just surf the net all day. And that is when I can narrow the search area to my condo. If you told me my keys were somewhere in the Indian Ocean, I wouldn't bother getting out of bed.
Disaster response is one area that the communists are getting better at. They know they'll score legitimacy that way. The population demands closure and to see the black box and the bodies. It is their chance to show that they are better than the Malaysian government. Not that it is a very high bar in the first place.
Lol yes.
Governments that are worse for Ethnic Chinese than Malaysia:
Fascist Japan
:hmm:
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/last-call-report-about-co-pilot-latest-bad-twist-jet-n78846
QuoteLast Call: Report About Co-Pilot Latest Bad Twist in Jet Mystery
A Malaysian official denied a report Saturday that the co-pilot of the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight made a "desperate" cellphone call before its demise, further complicating the confusion-shrouded investigation.
Malaysia's New Straits Times, citing unidentified investigators, said they discovered co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid had placed a call when the plane was flying about 200 nautical miles northwest of Penang. Its low altitude allowed for a telecommunications tower to pick up the signal, according to the report.
NBC News has not been able to independently confirm the report, and a Malaysian official said Saturday he "doesn't think this is true."
The latest knocked-down report comes as an earlier New Straights Times report last month claimed the plane was flying at a low altitude to avoid being detected by radar. But Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, head of a new Joint Agency Coordination Center, later said, "We don't know what altitude the aircraft was travelling at."
The New Straights Times said that the co-pilot's call had not been disclosed by officials earlier because the probe is ongoing and revealed information could compromise the investigation.
Malaysian officials are focusing their attention on the crew and pilots after police cleared all 227 passengers of any involvement in the plane's tragic disappearance on March 8, when it left Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.
Many experts also maintain that only someone with extensive knowledge of a Boeing-777 would have been able to switch off the communications systems on the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
While the investigation becomes more complicated, the search continues to grow in desperation, as the batteries on the black box could die any day, erasing any hope searchers have of picking up "pings" from the location of the ill-fated jet. Batteries of a black box last about a month, and the plane went missing more than five weeks ago.
Four "pings," which could be from Flight 370's black box have been detected by a U.S. Navy "Towed Pinger Locator," but Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Saturday that "the signal from the black box is rapidly fading."
After expressing optimism about the search on Friday, Abbott cautioned on Saturday that the hunt might continue "for a long time."
"No one should underestimate the difficulties of the task still ahead of us," Abbott said.
— Elisha Fieldstadt
I'm not going to believe their denial this time :contract:
Quote from: Monoriu on April 12, 2014, 08:29:19 PM
I'm not going to believe their denial this time :contract:
And there are no tanks in Baghdad! Nor in Tianaman Square!
I think Malaysia has joined China, Russia, and North Korea as the governments least likely to tell the truth, even when it is obvious they are lying.
Quote from: grumbler on April 12, 2014, 09:13:26 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on April 12, 2014, 08:29:19 PM
I'm not going to believe their denial this time :contract:
And there are no tanks in Baghdad! Nor in Tianaman Square!
I think Malaysia has joined China, Russia, and North Korea as the governments least likely to tell the truth, even when it is obvious they are lying.
What I don't understand is, in Malaysia's case, there is no need to be dishonest about it. It is most likely the action of a rogue pilot. Not much the Malaysian government can do to prevent it. What is the point of lying then?
Quote from: Monoriu on April 12, 2014, 10:08:03 PM
What I don't understand is, in Malaysia's case, there is no need to be dishonest about it. It is most likely the action of a rogue pilot. Not much the Malaysian government can do to prevent it. What is the point of lying then?
Oh, the lying is worse than that; the loss of the plane is most likely due to an on-board accident, which the Malaysian government could do even less about than the rogue pilot scenario. Unless the loss was due to some maintenance fuckup that could be traced to the government-appointed board of governors.
Of course, this report is just about as vapor as could be. A newspaper with no cred cites un-named sources who claim that a phone call was never made but may have been "attempted?" Yeah, right.
It boggles the mind that they think they can get away with this shit.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/missing-jet-recordings-may-have-been-edited-experts-n94941
Doesn't look like this will be much help, that could have drifted in from somewhere thousands of miles away.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/french-investigators-check-plane-debris-remote-french-island-clues-mh370-n400586
QuoteFrench Investigators Check Plane Debris on Remote French Island for Clues in MH370 Hunt
by Tom Costello, Nancy Ing and Erin McClam
Investigators are studying an airplane fragment discovered Wednesday on an island in the Indian Ocean, but they say it is too early to tell whether it might hold a clue to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 last year.
Boeing investigators have looked at photos of the fragment and say that they believe it is from a 777 aircraft, sources told NBC News Wednesday afternoon.
They believe it is a piece of a wing or flap from a Boeing triple 7 and there is only one 777 missing in the world right now — MH370.
The BEA, the French counterpart to the National Transportation Safety Board, said it was also studying the fragment, which was found by a crew cleaning the coastline of rugged Reunion Island, a French territory east of Madagascar off the southern tip of Africa.
The French newspaper Le Figaro reported that the fragment was about 6 feet long and could be a piece of a wing. The fragment appeared to have been in the water "for a long period," the French Interior Ministry told NBC News.
Sebastien Barthe, a spokesman for the BEA, said it was too soon to tell whether the fragment was part of Flight 370 or even part of that model of aircraft, the Boeing 777. He said French investigators are working with their counterparts in Malaysia and in Australia, which has led the ocean search.
The Malaysian jet, carrying 239 people, disappeared about an hour into its journey from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
A joint investigation by Australia and Malaysia used satellite data to conclude that the plane probably changed course and headed south for hours before running out of fuel somewhere over the Indian Ocean.
Using boats, planes and sophisticated sonar equipment, crews from around the world have scoured tens of thousands of square miles of the open ocean, but no confirmed piece of the aircraft has been found.
At the United Nations, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters that he has sent a team to verify the identity of the plane wreckage.
"Whatever wreckage found needs to be further verified before we can ever confirm that it is belonged to MH370," he said.
Tom Costello
I suppose they can trace it's path with the current that brought it, even if it's thousand of km away, I'm guessing the current used to bring it to this exact spot would have been narrower. Combined with the plane's last known trajectory, it might be possible to narrow it down further and start new searches in a new area.
As you can see in this video, there's a lot of seashells attached to the wing. It's possbile that they might be able to trace the origin of them if they're an uncommon species.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/airplane-debris-major-lead-mh370-hunt-australia-deputy-pm-says-n400836
Apparently the Prime Minister of Malaysia is now saying the flaperon that washed up on Reunion was definitely part of MH370.
Flaperon
Flaperoff
Flaperon
Flaperoff.
Breath.
In through nose
Out the mouth.
TOO SOON
Really good article by the Atlantic on this flight that comes to the conclusion that it was almost certainly the Captain who did it
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/mh370-malaysia-airlines/590653/
I agree that was a good article, but I was under the impression that the consensus was settled on the Captain as the perpetrator years ago.
I feel thoroughly informed.
Executive summary? What was his motive, and how did he manage to do it?
Quote from: Caliga on December 31, 2019, 09:19:25 AM
I agree that was a good article, but I was under the impression that the consensus was settled on the Captain as the perpetrator years ago.
Yeah, the modelling of that flight on the Captain's flight simulator program was pretty conclusive.
Quote from: The Brain on December 31, 2019, 01:02:43 PM
Executive summary? What was his motive, and how did he manage to do it?
Motive unknown, but he likely did it by sending the co-pilot out of the cockpit, locking the door, and depressurizing the cabin. The emergency breathing systems only last 15 minutes.
Quote from: The Brain on December 31, 2019, 01:02:43 PM
Executive summary? What was his motive, and how did he manage to do it?
Just read the article. It's only 60 pages.
I read it. Just like the German guy (AFAIK), the lack of motive seems weird to me. I can totally believe that they were suicidal, but that doesn't explain why they were homicidal.
Murder-suicide isn't all that uncommon, and not sure how you can ask dead guys what motivated them in order to gain a general understanding of why they felt compelled to murder others in their act of suicide. :hmm:
Quote from: Caliga on December 31, 2019, 02:37:59 PM
Murder-suicide isn't all that uncommon, and not sure how you can ask dead guys what motivated them in order to gain a general understanding of why they felt compelled to murder others in their act of suicide. :hmm:
Do you include stuff like guy murdering his wife and then killing himself in murder-suicides? How common is suicide that involves murdering strangers?
Quote from: The Brain on December 31, 2019, 02:40:30 PM
Do you include stuff like guy murdering his wife and then killing himself in murder-suicides? How common is suicide that involves murdering strangers?
Obviously pretty common for suicide vest guys. This is clearly different.
Maybe he really hated dickheaded Chinese tourists. :hmm:
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 31, 2019, 02:43:20 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 31, 2019, 02:40:30 PM
Do you include stuff like guy murdering his wife and then killing himself in murder-suicides? How common is suicide that involves murdering strangers?
Obviously pretty common for suicide vest guys. This is clearly different.
Maybe he really hated dickheaded Chinese tourists. :hmm:
Suicide vests seem to me to be murders that involve suicide, not the other way around. As you say it's not the same thing.
Is there any reason the cockpit needs the controls to dwlressure the cabin?
Quote from: Caliga on December 31, 2019, 02:37:59 PM
Murder-suicide isn't all that uncommon, and not sure how you can ask dead guys what motivated them in order to gain a general understanding of why they felt compelled to murder others in their act of suicide. :hmm:
Murder suicides usually involve people the killer has a grudge against, or some sort of twisted love or relationship. They don't typically involve hundreds of unrelated victims.
Wasn't there also that depressed pilot that crashed a jet into the Alps several years ago?
Yeah the GermanWings flight.
And there's a few other examples of planes being deliberately crashed by the pilot.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on January 01, 2020, 07:51:19 AM
Quote from: Caliga on December 31, 2019, 02:37:59 PM
Murder-suicide isn't all that uncommon, and not sure how you can ask dead guys what motivated them in order to gain a general understanding of why they felt compelled to murder others in their act of suicide. :hmm:
Murder suicides usually involve people the killer has a grudge against, or some sort of twisted love or relationship. They don't typically involve hundreds of unrelated victims.
Typically people who are about to take their life aren't acting at all rationally.
Though for a minority it appears to be a calculated rational response to a given set of circumstances.
Bottom line is that in these investigations identifying the pilot as suicidal doesn't explain what happened. The investigation can't stop there if you want to know what caused the crash.
Quote from: The Brain on January 01, 2020, 12:20:44 PM
Bottom line is that in these investigations identifying the pilot as suicidal doesn't explain what happened. The investigation can't stop there if you want to know what caused the crash.
It should move on from investigating the cause and onto how to stop it happening again.
As I said before; is there any logical reason why pilots should have a button to depressurise the plane?- honest question here. As I can't think of one based on my limited knowledge of planes. Seems its just giving them one more way to kill people.
I would guess...that if a plane at altitude had some kind of breach in the fuselage, the recovery procedure would be to get people's masks on, depressurize the plane, and descend to a comfortable altitude as quickly as possible.
But really, I'm just talking out my ass.
Quote from: Tonitrus on January 01, 2020, 04:34:43 PM
I would guess...that if a plane at altitude had some kind of breach in the fuselage, the recovery procedure would be to get people's masks on, depressurize the plane, and descend to a comfortable altitude as quickly as possible.
But really, I'm just talking out my ass.
Hey, if anyone's gonna be talking out of their ass, it's going to be me. :mad:
Quote from: mongers on January 01, 2020, 04:56:35 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on January 01, 2020, 04:34:43 PM
I would guess...that if a plane at altitude had some kind of breach in the fuselage, the recovery procedure would be to get people's masks on, depressurize the plane, and descend to a comfortable altitude as quickly as possible.
But really, I'm just talking out my ass.
Hey, if anyone's gonna be talking out of their ass, it's going to be me. :mad:
Nah, Jim Carrey has dibs.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on January 01, 2020, 07:51:19 AM
Murder suicides usually involve people the killer has a grudge against, or some sort of twisted love or relationship. They don't typically involve hundreds of unrelated victims.
I was talking specifically about mass murder suicides, which as far as I know are often directed against random strangers. See: the other pilot suicides already mentioned, the Las Vegas concert mass shooting, the guy who shot up that McDonald's in San Diego, the Luby's Cafeteria shooting in Texas, etc.
I kind of get it from the suicidal pilots point of view...Imagine your life is chaotic/falling apart and the one thing you love is flying massive jets with the considerable skill you have. There is something romantic about being the only one on a flight that is totally off the grid, and crashing yourself with the sunrise (a plane full of dead people that you killed is a bit creepy, but you can't have everything go your way in this world).
Quote from: Tyr on January 01, 2020, 01:35:22 PM
Quote from: The Brain on January 01, 2020, 12:20:44 PM
Bottom line is that in these investigations identifying the pilot as suicidal doesn't explain what happened. The investigation can't stop there if you want to know what caused the crash.
It should move on from investigating the cause and onto how to stop it happening again.
As I said before; is there any logical reason why pilots should have a button to depressurise the plane?- honest question here. As I can't think of one based on my limited knowledge of planes. Seems its just giving them one more way to kill people.
Quick research suggests that it is not a "button that can depressurise the plane" but rather a manual control system that can be used in case the automatic system is not functioning correctly and maintaining the pressure within the designated limits.
Edit: 30 seconds further research (ie., reading another answer further down the page) also suggests that the option is there in case there is a door malfunction (or warnings of one) where it is better to depressurise the plane manually than have the door blow and explosively decompress. Also, there's a suggestion that a fire in certain locations can be starved of oxygen by depressurising the plane.
Quote from: alfred russel on January 01, 2020, 06:40:10 PM
I kind of get it from the suicidal pilots point of view...Imagine your life is chaotic/falling apart and the one thing you love is flying massive jets with the considerable skill you have. There is something romantic about being the only one on a flight that is totally off the grid, and crashing yourself with the sunrise (a plane full of dead people that you killed is a bit creepy, but you can't have everything go your way in this world).
Yeah. And in the GermanWings case I think he'd developed a condition that meant he would have to stop flying which was something he really loved and that was another factor with his depression.
No pilot should be allowed to be inside the cockpit alone. If one of the pilots needs to go to the washroom, somebody should sit next to him.
In the long-run, AI should fly planes.
Quote from: Monoriu on January 01, 2020, 09:30:01 PM
No pilot should be allowed to be inside the cockpit alone. If one of the pilots needs to go to the washroom, somebody should sit next to him.
Why would you want to have someone sit next to the copilot taking a dump in the bathroom?
Quote from: grumbler on January 01, 2020, 09:40:01 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on January 01, 2020, 09:30:01 PM
No pilot should be allowed to be inside the cockpit alone. If one of the pilots needs to go to the washroom, somebody should sit next to him.
Why would you want to have someone sit next to the copilot taking a dump in the bathroom?
:blush:
There's not enough room in an airplane restroom anyway.
Quote from: grumbler on January 01, 2020, 09:40:01 PM
Quote from: Monoriu on January 01, 2020, 09:30:01 PM
No pilot should be allowed to be inside the cockpit alone. If one of the pilots needs to go to the washroom, somebody should sit next to him.
Why would you want to have someone sit next to the copilot taking a dump in the bathroom?
Moral support and encouragement? :unsure:
Quote from: Caliga on January 01, 2020, 06:37:03 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on January 01, 2020, 07:51:19 AM
Murder suicides usually involve people the killer has a grudge against, or some sort of twisted love or relationship. They don't typically involve hundreds of unrelated victims.
I was talking specifically about mass murder suicides, which as far as I know are often directed against random strangers. See: the other pilot suicides already mentioned, the Las Vegas concert mass shooting, the guy who shot up that McDonald's in San Diego, the Luby's Cafeteria shooting in Texas, etc.
And a key factor is finding out what made them homicidal and what signs that indicate this that you can look for. Many many people (AFAIK the vast majority) who are suicidal are not homicidal. There is a very imporant difference between these two kinds of people, and understanding this difference is fundamental to understanding the cause of the Malaysian crash (in this case).