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03-07-2014, 07:50 PM | |
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Malaysia Airlines loses contact with plane carrying 239 people
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/ Last edited by ShowtimeSBMVP; 03-15-2014 at 09:02 AM.. |
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03-14-2014, 09:07 AM | #271 |
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So apparently this plane was on a route toward the Andaman Islands:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/world/...html?hpt=hp_t1 [Excerpt from article - I added the bold.] Yet another theory is taking shape about what might have happened to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Maybe it landed in a remote Indian Ocean island chain. The suggestion -- and it's only that at this point -- is based on analysis of radar data revealed Friday by Reuters suggesting that the plane wasn't just blindly flying northwest from Malaysia. Reuters, citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, reported that whoever was piloting the vanished jet was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands. The radar data doesn't show the plane over the Andaman Islands, but only on a known route that would take it there, Reuters cited its sources as saying. The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. That makes some investigators think the plane flew on for hours before truly disappearing. Aviation experts say it's possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have hijacked and landed the giant Boeing 777 undetected. But Denis Giles, editor of the Andaman Chronicle newspaper, says there's just nowhere to land such a big plane in his archipelago without attracting notice. Indian authorities own the only four airstrips in the region, he said. "There is no chance, no such chance, that any aircraft of this size can come towards Andaman and Nicobar islands and land," he said. I found this interesting from the same article: [Excerpt from article] • Another lead: Chinese researchers say they recorded a "seafloor event" in waters around Malaysia and Vietnam about an hour and a half after the missing plane's last known contact. The event was recorded in a nonseismic region about 116 kilometers (72 miles) northeast of the plane's last confirmed location, the University of Science and Technology of China said. "Judging from the time and location of the two events, the seafloor event may have been caused by MH370 crashing into the sea," said a statement posted on the university's website.
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03-14-2014, 09:19 AM | #272 |
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So it's like the show lost?
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03-14-2014, 09:20 AM | #273 |
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If it was captured by aliens, do you think they were able to do 239 anal probes in one week?
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03-14-2014, 09:25 AM | #274 |
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03-14-2014, 09:26 AM | #275 | |
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03-14-2014, 09:27 AM | #276 |
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03-14-2014, 09:30 AM | #277 |
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I was thinking about this on my walk to work today.
So let's say you want to hijack an aircraft in the modern world. You probably can't force your way into the cockpit any more, so you need another plan. You're either: 1. claiming a bomb or something and forcing the pilots to fly somewhere, which isn't going to work very well. You can't tell them to power down transponders and stuff and be able to confirm it. If westerners are on the flight they're probably going to bum rush you in this era, but Chinese people won't do it. 2. getting in via subterfuge. That would mean that you're either recruiting a pilot or copilot or (more likely in my opinion) recruiting a flight attendant who'll get the door open for a group of passengers to take over. If you're trying to steal a plane, you don't necessarily want passengers. My first thought was, 'why not steal a plane off the taxiway or something', but maybe that's harder. I guess you'd probably also end up with fighters following you. So now you've got the plane. You have to land it somewhere, which means you need an airstrip. You're either taking over some small airstrip or you're building your own. I wouldn't think the Andamans are the best place for that, but there are a couple of islands out that way that are nothing but unfriendly natives who repel civilization. Perhaps someone should go check on them and see if they've all been murdered so the terrorists can build an airstrip. You've got places in the Philippines where you might be able to build an airstrip undetected, and places in Borneo where you could, but they'd be easy to spot (eventually) by satellite unless you're doing some fast and sophisticated camouflage. So you land the plane. Now what? Presumably you're going to either fill it with gasoline or put a nuke on it and try to fly it into something. I'm not sure how easy or hard it is to wander into European or American airspace and not get intercepted relatively quickly. I would've thought it would be hard, but then again I didn't know that a plane could disappear in the first place. The bigger problem is the type of plane. This is apparently a 777-200ER, which has a maximum range of 7,725 nautical miles, or about 8,900 statute miles. http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commerc...00product.page. For reference, the distance from the Philippines to Los Angeles is about 7,300 miles and the distance from Pakistan to New York is about 6,800 miles. So in other words, that plane can get you pretty much anywhere, though I'll acknowledge that Nebraska may be safe. I'm presuming that's a loaded range and not an empty range, but they're probably loading it up with something. This thing also has to refuel and take off from that remote airfield, which is probably not easy to do. Do we have the satellite coverage and naval radars to monitor that big an area? So assuming that you successfully land this thing, refuel it, and take off, do you put a nuke on this thing and try to fly it into a city? It seems like a real long shot to do that, and is a pretty James Bond supervillain thing to do. The thing is, we might need to put some anti-aircraft guns around major airports, but I would suspect that it would be detected and intercepted before it reached a major city. And of course, for all we know it could be some Uighers hoping to kill some Chinese, but I'd be surprised if they could pull off a hijacking.
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03-14-2014, 09:49 AM | #278 |
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Wow. I had no idea that planes had a system like this. I wonder if it's ever been used.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/us/mal...html?hpt=hp_t1 Excerpt from interesting overall article: In a less sinister but equally lethal explanation, some experts theorize the plane mysteriously crashed somewhere because of mechanical malfunction. Perhaps it was an electrical failure. It's possible, though pilots have trouble embracing the thought. "I've been running that in my brain now ever since this thing happened," said Jim Tilmon, an aviation expert and retired American Airlines pilot. "One possibility would be a total electrical failure which is very, very hard to imagine because it has so many generators coming from different places," Tilmon said. "If all the engine generators fail, they still have what's called the rack. That's the generator that literally falls out of the bottom of the airplane, has a propeller on it, and ram-air turns that and gives them generating power enough to go ahead and fly the airplane safely. "Electrical failure -- it'd have to be total ... absolutely incredible like we've not heard of before," Tilmon said.
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03-14-2014, 09:49 AM | #279 |
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This is becoming VERY strange. So much misinformation to sift through.
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03-14-2014, 09:51 AM | #280 | |
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03-14-2014, 09:55 AM | #281 |
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As I think about it, that type of system couldn't possibly provide enough power to actually fly the plane. I think it's impossible from a physics viewpoint. Maybe it's enough to slow their descent and give them a longer glide path, or it's enough to power electrical systems if they still have engines.
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03-14-2014, 09:55 AM | #282 | |
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Quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
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03-14-2014, 09:57 AM | #283 | |
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03-14-2014, 09:58 AM | #284 | |
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03-14-2014, 10:09 AM | #285 | |
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So what's going on? You can fill a big plane with a lot of fuel (both in the tanks and I guess in the passenger area), but that's not going to give you much range.
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