Malaysia Airlines MH370

re: conspiracy theories, yeah, check this part of the Helios wikiw:

Suspicions that the aircraft had been hijacked were ruled out by Greece's foreign ministry. Initial claims that the aircraft was shot down by the fighter jets have been refuted by eyewitnesses and the government.[citation needed]

Malaysia's air force chief has denied an earlier media report that the military last tracked a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner over the Strait of Malacca, far west from where it last made contact with civilian air traffic control when it disappeared four days ago.

I've been following the sprawling flyertalk thread on this and it's crazy that we still have almost no confirmed information of any kind about what might have happened.

An updated version of the last link I posted, which takes into account the latest developments:

http://www.lowyat.net/2014/03/was-there-a-problem-with-the-mh370-boeing-777-200-aircraft/

Possible life raft from missing plane found off of Port Dickson, 100km SOUTH of Kuala Lumpur.

http://www.nst.com.my/latest/font-color-red-missing-mh370-font-hopes-as-fishermen-find-life-raft-near-pd-1.509222

yeah and they lost it, dumbasses. -_- no info yet, but hopefully they'll send divers down to retrieve it soon (that's the paper I work for btw, and our reporter there has already got on a boat out to the location.)

the straits of malacca are notorious for having all kinds of weird crap in it though - won't be surprised if it was a life raft from a boat or a ship. I asked a flight attendant friend and he said he couldn't tell from the pic whether it was something that could have come from a plane.

another dead end :( :(

MALACCA: The life raft found 10 nautical miles from Port Dickson town on Tuesday is not from the missing MH370 aircraft said Kuala Linggi Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) enforcement head, Captain Abu Bakar Idris.

They've clarified the conflicting reports about the east and west coast signals detected:

1. Plane disappeared from air traffic control over the Gulf of Thailand at 1.30 am.
2. An unidentified aircraft, that they believe but can't confirm was MH370, was detected by the military's primary radar at 2.15 am, 200miles north of Penang, indicating the possibility of a turn back. They're currently comparing notes with other agencies including NTSB to determine the aircraft's identification, and continuing the search in the Malacca Straits based on that possibility.

Since nobody knows fuckall about anything I guess it doesn't hurt to post some rumors

http://i.imgur.com/CTuTaCo.jpg

Everyone loves a good yarn

It seems like the Gulf of Thailand has been searched pretty thoroughly by now. Makes it seem more likely that it did veer off course and continued (perhaps on autopilot) for some distance before crashing.

could make sense if it *did* pass through some controlled airspace or another and out of pride or embarrassment the slip up isn't being revealed

Think I found it. Can you?

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-xlarge/18k34qxd52d21jpg.jpg

My understanding is that most commercial traffic control systems by default just display the transponder blips. They have to be manually switched to show raw radar blips. If that's the case and the transponder was switched off, then it wouldn't show up on most commercial flight tracking systems, although presumably military systems should have still caught it.

Apparently Vietnam sent a crew to check out that Vung Tau email lead and didn't find anything:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-11/malaysia-probes-hijack-to-sabotage-terror-not-ruled-out.html

Day 5.

How hard would it be to subpoena the cellular carriers' databases for last pings from the passenger's phones?

i feel like that info would be readily given up by everyone involved if it was deemed worthwhile?

I can't remember, do other countries insist you turn your phone off or put it in airplane mode? Not that everyone does, but that'd mean the last tower contact would be on the runway.

but there's a bunch of repeats of passenger's phones ringing while the plane was in the air, then not ringing a little later. Anecdotal, but still.

I saw an article that suggested only 25% of people turn their phone off or put it in flight mode. The plane may have been fitted with inflight cell service, although that makes it less likely that we're connecting to ground stations. It's worth a try and one might hope the authorities are doing so, but who knows.

I hadn't heard of this. There's an online crowdsourced campaign to tag satellite imagery of the area, though apparently the system is overloaded currently:

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_25327037/tomnod-campaign-missing-malaysian-jet?source=inthenews

A new update but...who knows?

http://gawker.com/the-chinese-government-has-released-satellite-images-sh-1542506193

The Chinese government has released satellite images of three floating pieces of debris that are believed to be from the missing Malaysian Airlines flight. The photos, taken on March 9, show the suspected wreckage in the South China Sea, just southeast of where Flight 370's transponder turned off.

There was a similar crowdsourced search set up on Amazon's Mechanical Turk for Steve Fossett's small plane when he disappeared in the eastern Sierras.

there was also this, which I hadn't heard about until I saw someone mention it in the gawker comments

http://mashable.com/2014/03/12/malaysia-airlines-370-search-area/

ok, this is starting to make a lot more sense than "the plane flew for another hour over multiple air force bases and international airports in two different countries before crashing in a completely different body of water hundreds of miles of course".

there was also this, which I hadn't heard about until I saw someone mention it in the gawker comments

http://mashable.com/2014/03/12/malaysia-airlines-370-search-area/

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, March 12, 2014 2:36 PM (33 minutes ago)

it was posted in img form upthread about 10 hours ago.

*shrug*

*killfiled*

ahh i was looking on my iphone, didn't see it.

also sorry, i can't tell if you were killfiling me for that transgression or implying i had killfiled my homie 龜 who previously posted it. the latter isn't correct, he's my bro 4 life, i just wanted to assure him of that.

What, did I just hear something? Hmmm... strange.

.

.

.

lol

:)

i feel like i just got the death penalty for jaywalking

Ugh so if the Chinese satellite's photos are correct, I (think) that would put the wreckage right at the border between the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand

That puts a cloud of geopolitics over the incident - right now China's involved in a geopolitical dispute with pretty much all the SE Asia countries over who has control of the South China Sea (google "China nine dash line" for more infos)

I don't know if anybody would go so far as to accuse the Chinese government of withholding information but at the same time... I think this could be an angle?

I guess an explanation that is just as possible is taking some time to figure out whether pieces of wreckage that big could have come from a 777, which the NTSB seems to believe is not possible

i overheard a couple of people talking today how they suspected north korea might have shot the plane down since "they were flying right over north korea."

:/

Haha that's insane and stupid

But not that far fetched if they had been a little bit farther north http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/05/world/asia/north-korea-missiles/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/search-for-missing-malaysian-airliner-latest-possible-lead-may-be-falling-through/

Search planes dispatched by Malaysia on Thursday to examine an area where Chinese satellite images show what might be debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner didn't spot any debris, CBS News has been told.

The planes had "nil sighting," the Malaysian air force director of operations said.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304914904579434653903086282

WSJ reporting that US officials believe the plane could have flown for 4 more hours after contact was lost

Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program.

I can't tell from the story if this is a confirmed fact or another theory

you'd think that landing,crashing, or fuel exhaustion would be discernible from that data

that article says the engine data is transmitted every 30 minutes. so if they have that data they'd know when the plane stopped transmitting (within half an hour) right? the article is kinda vague there.

Raids on homes of crew denied

Hussien’s sixth point was deny reports of raids on the homes of crew members.

Reports suggesting that the Malaysian police searched the homes of the MH370 crew are not true. The Royal Malaysian police have issued a statement to that effect.

Not sure why they are so quick to deny that, I would have thought it was a legitimate line of enquiry in relation to possible suicide or malpractice by the crew.

They also denied the WSJ's report that the plane may have flown for a few hours after losing contact

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-370.html?hp&_r=0

SEPANG, Malaysia — After four days of reticence and evasive answers, the Malaysian military acknowledged on Wednesday that it had recorded, but initially ignored, radar signals that could have prompted a mission to intercept and track a missing jetliner — data that vastly expands the area where the plane might have traveled.

More informed speculation about what might cause a transponder to stop transmitting:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-transponder/

a few more details on the Indian Ocean theory

http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=22894802&ref=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FKB1J9l4sPE

U.S. officials have an "indication" the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner may have crashed in the Indian Ocean and is moving the USS Kidd to the area to begin searching.

It will take another 24 hours to move the ship into position, a senior Pentagon official told ABC News.

"We have an indication the plane went down in the Indian Ocean," the senior official said.

The official said there were indications that the plane flew four or five hours after disappearing from radar and that they believe it went into the water.

Pentagon officials said that the USS Kidd was being moved at the request of Malaysia and is heading towards an area where the Indian Ocean and the Andaman Sea meet. It has helicopters aboard that can scour the area.

Ok, so now we're back to where we were 2 days ago with a hijacking/hypoxia scenarios?

Also noted: the three large chunks of debris spotted by Chinese satellites yesterday that was consistent with an aircraft disaster was confirmed as not-wreckage (floating islands of garbage?)

i'm just assuming the plane is in antarctica

Probably should check out nearby volcanic islands for secret SPECTRE rocket bases also.

WSJ has corrected their story:

"U.S. investigators suspect Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 flew for hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, based on an analysis of signals sent through the plane's satellite-communication link designed to automatically transmit the status of onboard systems, according to people familiar with the matter. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said investigators based their suspicions on signals from monitoring systems embedded in the plane's Rolls-Royce PLC engines and described that process."

This would jibe with the "indications" that are leading US to shift search area to Indian Ocean.

¯\(°_o)/¯