Malaysia Airlines loses contact with plane carrying 239 people

[ShowtimeSBMVP]

Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with a plane with 239 aboard enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The airline said in a statement early Saturday it was attempting to locate the Boeing 777 after it lost contact with Subang Air Traffic Control at 2:40 a.m. It was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m.

China's state-run news agency Xinhua reported the plane was lost in airspace controlled by Vietnam, and did not make contact with Chinese air traffic controllers.

The plane is carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members. The airline said it is working with authorities to locate the plane.

Boeing said on its Twitter account it is monitoring the situation, and "our thoughts are with everyone on board."



http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03...ing-23-people/









Malaysian jet probe sharpens focus on passengers, crew as new clues emerge


http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03...-indian-ocean/

[Rain Man]

Okay, so the mystery may be clearing up a bit. It's looking like an inside job by one or both pilots. One or both was still acting normal after stuff was being turned off.

So they were both in on it, or one was minding his own business and the other was secretly turning systems off.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/15/world/...html?hpt=hp_t1

[Excerpt from article]

The new satellite information, Najib said, leads authorities to be fairly certain that someone disabled the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, just before the aircraft reached the east coast of peninsular Malaysia.

"Shortly afterward, near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control," Najib said, "the aircraft's transponder was switched off."

ACARS is the system that routinely transmits information like turbulence and fuel load back to the airline and the transponder is a radio transmitter in the cockpit used to communicate with air traffic controllers.

The last voice communication from the cockpit a week ago were these words: "All right, good night."

They were uttered at the Vietnam air traffic control border, after ACARS and the transponder were shut off, Razak said. That suggests the incident on the plane began sooner than initially thought.

[Bowser]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I don't think so. I think they're always two-person crews these days.

Hmm. I remember to my early days when my dad worked for TWA and seeing the engineer station. Wouldn't be surprised that they did away with that position.

Maybe there were relief pilots on board if the flight was long enough and dictated relief be available?

[ShowtimeSBMVP]

Official: U.S. intelligence is leaning toward theory that pilots are responsible for fate of Flight 370. http://t.co/z990FkyYQ5

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) March 15, 2014

[Rain Man]

So we've got a rogue pilot or pilots who took over the plane. The passengers and flight attendant crew likely never knew what was happening. So the pilots went up to 45,000 feet and killed the passengers, then took off toward the Andamans. Maybe they went down to 23,000 feet to dump the bodies and weight or something.

So where did they go from there? This isn't a suicide mission, so they had a pre-planned destination. What are their possibilities?

1. Pakistan. A great circle route from Kuala Lumpur to the middle of Pakistan goes right over the Andamans and is quite feasible from a fuel perspective, but it also goes over India. Could they sneak over India? Probably not.

If they went around India over the ocean, it's a lot further. Do they have enough fuel? Are there U.S. Navy ships near Pakistan that could have detected the plane? They probably wouldn't have been looking for it at that point, so if they had enough fuel they're good to go.

2. Andaman Islands/other island. Could they have built an airstrip on a deserted island somewhere? Did they kill everyone on one of those uncivilized islands? This would be a somewhat easy place to hide a plane, at least for a while.

3. Bangladesh. It's a big Muslim country that's kind of on route if they were headed toward the Andamans. It would be easy to bribe some Bangladeshis, I bet, but this place is so densely populated that you're not going to land at a secret strip. It would have to be a commercial airport. The U.S. and Bangladesh get along well, so this seems like it would be hard to pull off.

4. Myanmar. They're not friends of the west, but I don't think they're friends of the terrorists, either. They're probably just as likely to steal the jet as they are to let the terrorists refuel. It would be a high risk move by the terrorists.

5. Sumatra or Borneo. Borneo's the wrong way, but maybe there are isolated places where you could build an airstrip. Seems like a lot of work, and Sumatra is probably too populated to pull it off.

6. Somalia. This is a dark horse, but if you look at the map, they might be able to make it.

7. Philippines. It's the wrong way, but it might be an opportunity like Sumatra.

8. One of the other non-Paki-Stans. You pretty much have to go over China. These don't seem very feasible.

9. Some other Middle East country. If you can reach these, you can reach Pakistan or Somalia, which seem like better fits.


My money is on either Pakistan via an ocean route (fuel allowing), Somalia (as a brief stop), or possibly Bangladesh as a brief stop.

[In58men]

Japs be like: You no fly over my whata no mo. I take plane.

[Planetman]

To Whom It May Concern,

Please pick up your Beoing 777. No question asked.

Just remove it from my yard. I'm going to need to start mowing soon.

[Imon Yourside]

[stonedstooge]

I think we found out where it went:

[alnorth]

According to cnn, US officials believe the southern scenario is more plausible than the northern scenario. If thats true, then its probably suicide.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by alnorth

According to cnn, US officials believe the southern scenario is more plausible than the northern scenario. If thats true, then its probably suicide.

That makes no sense at all. I think there's some misinformation going on.

The only way you'd do this is a pilot suicide scenario where he wanted to leave a mystery and didn't understand all of the ways to turn the plane signals off. Any other scenario would have him going in any other direction.

[kstater]

I think a country had it on radar and didn't catch it and doesn't want to make public the eff up. Could be down safely in that country.

[alnorth]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

That makes no sense at all. I think there's some misinformation going on.

The only way you'd do this is a pilot suicide scenario where he wanted to leave a mystery and didn't understand all of the ways to turn the plane signals off. Any other scenario would have him going in any other direction.

Well, as far as "didn't know how to turn the plane signals off", under any scenario at all, he would want to do so, it appears the pilot did everything he could, and he thought they were invisible. He wouldn't have known about the military radar, and that system which sent the satellite pings, he thought he had turned that off, too.

We would have found out by now if the pilots had any link to terrorist groups. They probably did not, and if they didn't, then suicide is all thats left.

edit: changed "they" to "he", if its suicide, then I doubt both pilots are in on it.

[alnorth]

Originally Posted by kstater

I think a country had it on radar and didn't catch it and doesn't want to make public the eff up. Could be down safely in that country.

Nope, that would not happen.

There would be no shame on it, hell Malaysia didn't notice on their military radar. If some nation went back and saw it in the records, they would have come out with it.

[Rain Man]

Yeah, if it was a suicide the pilot(s) didn't do their homework. I guess that's possible.

But I'm still going with misinformation. I think that plane headed to Pakistan or Somalia or maybe somewhere in Bangladesh, and the good guys are still tracking it down and want the bad guys to relax.

[tk13]

Originally Posted by kstater

I think a country had it on radar and didn't catch it and doesn't want to make public the eff up. Could be down safely in that country.

Or... a country has huge gaping holes in their air defense system, and they don't want to admit it.

Reuters reported today that sometimes India turns their military radars off to save money.

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."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A2E0JT20140315