Malaysia Airlines MH370

Incredible. So what was the most implausible of paranoid scenarios is now the inescapable conclusion: this was no accident, but a hijacking, of an unprecedented kind.

The fact that no one has taken credit yet suggests there was or is (intended) to be an Act 2, whatever the fuck that might be. Terrifying mystery.

Maybe the perpetrator(s)' plan didn't count on those 'pings'-- maybe they wanted the world to conclude it was an accident, lost at sea.

But for days now, everyone's been looking for debris in the wrong place. Jesus. Now that plane *must* be found.

If it was hijacked the most plausible explanation is that there was a confrontation leading to a crash or the idiot hijackers accidentally flew it into the sea.

not nec a hijacking tho. coulda been pilot/second officer going nuts

Yeah - what I find most 'suspicious' is that everything happened in the narrow window between leaving Malaysian airspace and entering Vietnamese airspace. Whoever did it obviously also knew the best time to divert the plane, since the rest of the route would have been overland (mostly) through national airspaces

taking hostages/victims is not the only possible intention behind a hijacking btw, whatever the "inescapable conclusion" (please) turns out to be

taking hostages/victims is not the only possible intention behind a hijacking btw

True, at this point there's nothing to go on to conjecture who or why, motives or intentions. All we can conclude, has been concluded by authorities at this point (I believe) is that this was indeed intentional; the plane was intentionally diverted, its path meant to escape detection. All the rest is sheer speculation. Anything's possible-- maybe the pilot just went crazy. Maybe it's an elaborate terrorist plan. Maybe it's piracy.

This hardly seems like a real life event anymore, but a fictional plot. It's an uncanny mystery in a contemporary world that has come to seem, to us living in it, all too "known" (where we assume "everything" is in principle known to or detectable by technologically sophisticated intelligence-gathering powers, for ill and good, governmental and other).

Ok, so is there any chance at all that the plane did not crash?

langoliers

Ok, so is there any chance at all that the plane did not crash?

Don't know about likelihood, but believe that's possible, yes-- at least, nothing so far excludes it.

Last I heard, the plane was flying for 7 hours (!?) after losing contact with air traffic controllers. Could be anywhere.

Unless they landed in the literal middle of nowhere, it'd be amazing if a plane full of hundreds of people could be secretly/successfully landed anywhere, unnoticed. But I guess it's possible it ended up on land somewhere indeed in the middle of nowhere, where no one would even see signs of a crash.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2014/03/16/world/asia/16flight-map/16flight-map-articleLarge.jpg

The satellite communications box fitted on the plane is of an older generation and is not equipped with a global positioning system, the person said. But investigators have managed to calculate the distance between the “ping” from the plane and a stationary Inmarsat-3 satellite orbiting above the Equator and over the Indian Ocean. The satellite can “see” in an arc that stretches to the north and south of its fixed position, but without GPS it can only say how far away the ping is, not where it is coming from, the person said.

Satellite transmission data analyzed by U.S. investigators showed that the Malaysian Airline (MAS) System Bhd. jetliner’s most likely last-known position was in a zone about 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) west of Perth, Australia, said two people in the U.S. government who are familiar with the readings. Razak was told that is the most promising lead on locating the plane, one of the people said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-15/malaysia-sets-new-search-zone-as-flight-deliberately-diverted.html

...I mean, of all places to go.

huh

that would place it somewhere between the periphery of diego garcia and australian military radar coverage, if the aim was to find the deepest and most remote place in the indian ocean to down the plane

those bloomberg quotes seem to based on discounting the northern route hypothesis because military radar coverage is that much denser there rather than anything that positively places it southwards

it sounds like this could have been an apolitical suicide mission. one wonders when the passengers realized something was up (assuming this was in fact something done intentionally by one of the pilots.)

that's a helluvan assumption; perhaps u shd write some speculative fanfiction?

I'm no "fan" of the person or persons who did this, imago

Speculation on how MH370 may have avoided detection by shadowing other airplanes:
http://theaviationist.com/2014/03/15/mh370-shadowed-other-planes/

cf. Miami Vice (2006)

I'm increasingly convinced this was no suicide plot. If, as the latest reports are saying, the pilots were involved, they must have being planning to land that plane somewhere. The only question is whether they succeeded or not.

... and if I had to put money on it, I'd say they did.

none of this makes sense. If this was a suicide mission driven by politics, it would have been faster and easier to just take off and crash the plane into Putrajaya, Malaysia's administrative capital, which is just a 15 min drive away from KLIA. it also doesn't explain why the pilot(s) chose to keep on flying for 7 hours instead of just downing the plane once they reached open ocean.

if it went up north, passing by the airspaces of at least four different countries, why didn't one of those countries notice or investigate an unidentified aircraft flying by? now you're talking about a multinational conspiracy... -someone- must have seen or heard something. it feels like every theory being explored has a counter-explanation rendering it moot.

So what ARE the possibilities if it didn't explode in mid air and crashed at the same spot?

- was hijacked or taken over by crew/captain/someone & crashed somewhere in water, everyone dead (possible survivors probably dead by now)
- was hijacked or taken over by crew/captain/someone & crashed somewhere over land, everyone dead instantly
- was hijacked or taken over by crew/captain/someone & crashed somewhere over land, some still alive
- accidentally shot down & covered up, never to be revealed until accidentally discovered, everyone dead
- purposefully shot down & covered up, never to be revealed until accidentally discovered, everyone dead
- was hijacked and landed somewhere safely, everyone now captured (plane to be sold/used for scrap parts/used for a future attack?)
- was hijacked and landed somewhere safely, everyone now executed (plane to be sold/used for scrap parts/used for a future attack?)

The last four seem to require some preplanning and help from an external party/country/organisation, the first three maybe less so.

Anything else?

Has hypoxia been ruled out? The crew getting confused through lack of oxygen and making strange decisions has been suggested. The fact that none of this makes sense any way you seem to look at it might point to a lack of rational actors.

Hypoxia doesn't explain ACARS and both transponders being turned off at different times, or the aircraft flying low enough to escape radar detection. the plane would have also crashed long before the last satellite contact time of 8.11am.

ok, those also exclude it being shot down imo

a plane flown by someone who is desperate/crazy is much more likely to crash just by accident

They didn't have to do it all manually, the auto pilot just needs to be given new waypoints (which a mere mortal without a pilot's training wouldn't know how to do) - source: a representative from our national airport said this in an interview a couple of days ago.

Yeah, given what we think we know, it seems unlikely whatever happened was the result of some impulsive/irrational hijacker. There's a degree of deliberateness to this, what with turning off the GPS system and whatnot.

And now there's this:

A signaling system was disabled on the missing Malaysia Airlines jet before a pilot spoke to Malaysian air traffic control without hinting at any trouble, a senior Malaysian official said Sunday

Patrick Smith on transponders:

Second, some clarity, please, on the topic of transponders. The media is throwing this term around without a full understanding of how the equipment works. For position reporting and traffic sequencing purposes, transponders only work in areas of typical ATC radar coverage. Most of the world, including the oceans, does not have ATC radar coverage. Transponders are relevant to this story only if and when the missing plane was very close to land. Once over the ocean, it didn’t matter anyway. Over oceans and non-radar areas, OTHER means are used for position reports and tracking/communicating (satcomm, datalink, etc.), not transponders.

Readers also have been asking why the capability exists to switch off a transponder. In fact very few of a plane’s components are hot-wired to be, as you might say, “always on.” In the interest of safety — namely, fire and electrical system protection — it’s important to have the ability to isolate a piece of equipment, either by a standard switch or, if need be, through a circuit breaker. Also transponders will occasionally malfunction and transmit erroneous or incomplete data, at which point a crew will recycle the device — switching it off, then on — or swap to another unit. Typically at least two transponders are onboard, and you can’t run both simultaneously. Bear in mind too that switching the unit “off” might refer to only one of the various subfunctions, or “modes” — for example, mode C, mode S — responsible for different data.

As long as it isn't found, every single news report/statement/interview regarding what might have happened should end in "unless..." I think. Unless...

A signaling system was disabled on the missing Malaysia Airlines jet before a pilot spoke to Malaysian air traffic control without hinting at any trouble, a senior Malaysian official said Sunday

yep our transport minister confirmed this in the press conference - ACARS was switched off before ATC received the last words from the cockpit ("Alright, goodnight").

a military source told us they believe the plane flew towards the Bay of Bengal, going as low as 5,000 ft. Over water that's fine, but it gets a lot more hazardous once it crosses into land, at night. plus, at that altitude, they'd lose about two hours of fuel (says my ex-pilot dad), which means they must have landed somewhere to refuel if the 8.11am satellite ping is correct.

Unless....

http://www.pisau.net/russia-puzzled-over-malaysia-airlines-mh370-capture-by-us-navy-prayformh370/

Wtf? Is this like fan fiction or something?

russian media been in overdrive anti-american propaganda of late. huge huge lol at description of nsf diego garcia as 'vast'.

Wow, I always get amazed when I see media that outright lies to its citizens like that, though I shouldnt in this day and age I suppose.

*cough*rupert murdoch*cough*

i love the passive agressiveness of it - 'malaysia airlines mh370: what happened? i'm confused'

The source is this:

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com

not Russian media, afaict.

http://www.boston.com/2014/03/14/potentially-legitimate-theories-the-missing-malaysia-airlines-flight/d8siKbMiJKfKhc1TvZjtrK/singlepage.html

Except that a meteor wouldn't have turned off transponders separately.

ah, just regular old conspiracy theorists. i'd seen some things from russian tv earlier today that were right in line w/ that craziness.

http://www.bigbreakingnews.com/2014/03/luggage-found-floating-at-sea-possibly.html ?

... but what about the satellite pings six hours later, then? Unless...

Every news link relating to this story should end in possibly.html

Definitely gonna trust "bigbreakingnews.com"

can anyone translate this - http://www.gazzetta.gr/plus/article/596555/kanena-ihnos-apo-boeing

it's greek to me

Bigbreakingnews do include their sources though: greek news sites (boat that was on its way is greek).

But floating luggage near where contact was lost wouldn't explain everything after. Can planes fly on if their luggage compartment is open or gone?