Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

[Red is Dead]

Latest news - the plane changed course to the west before disappearing.

 

So they head out to beijing, discover a fault, turn back and crash?

[Dolfan in NYC]

NPR reported this morning that one of the stolen passports was being held by an Iranian teenager who was looking for asylum.

[Burgundy LaRue]

Yeah, the rogue passengers seem to be just a sad coincidence.  Someone trying to get away from an oppressive life and simply picked the wrong flight as their escape plan.

 

They're checking the Straits of Malacca and, I assume eventually, the Andaman Sea.  Which means the plane flew across Malaysia toward Beijing, then turned around and flew across Malaysia again completely undetected.

 

A Payne Stewart situation maybe, where the plane was turned around for mechanical reasons, then depressurized and rending everyone unconscious and causing the plane to fly lower than expected and missing its mark?

 

Everything else is too weird at this point.

[RonL21]

[RonL21]

Reports are now that the co-pilot was known to have invited women in the cockpit in the past and even smoked and posed for photos while flying.  Stuff like this happens and all the secrets come out from folks who want in on the story.

 

"My friend and I were I invited into the cockpit by (the) pilot and co-pilot, Fariq Ab Hamid, and sat there for the duration of the flight from takeoff until landing," Ms. Roos said in a Facebook message sent to The Wall Street Journal. She said at least one of the pilots was smoking during the flight.

 

"My friend and I were allowed to take photos in the cockpit without intervention, but didn't in any way distract the pilots from their duties," she said.

 

Ms. Roos said she didn't question the flight crew's professionalism and didn't feel unsafe during the flight. She said she wasn't trying to imply that Mr. Fariq had any role in the disappearance of Flight MH370 and expressed sympathy to the families of those aboard.

 

 

[Reed]

http://karlenepetitt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/mh-370-time-to-speculate.html?m=1 Not sure about the terrorist angle, but this theory does make a ton of sense.

 

 

I think the flight deck was compromised. The terrorists turned the transponder off. They told the captain to fly the plane toward a different city. Hong Kong comes to mind, but they could have turned back to Singapore, or head anywhere in range with one mission in mind: Create another 911 event.

I believe that captain initially followed their directions and when he realized what was about to happen, he put the plane into the ocean to save thousands of lives on the ground. If I were in that seat and they decided they didn't need me anymore, I would click off the autopilot and push the nose over in descent during my final breath.

The reason we cannot find this plane is we are looking in the wrong place.

The search crew should draw a line from the point of disappearance, incorporating the turning radius of the plane, to all major cities that could have been a target. Then they need to take the trajectory with the speed and altitude and look in those locations with a 30 mile width.

Why has nobody taken credit?

• Because they failed! 
• If they were planning on blowing up a plane, credit would be taken. 
• They are not showing their hand because they plan on doing this again and do not want us to know who they are.

 

Reports are saying the plane had veered thousands of miles of course and no distress call got sent, so yeah, I can see a scenario where the pilot was going along with them before he realized what was coming.

[Antacular]

Very possible. Would explain why no distress call was made.

There is no reason for someone to blow this plane up, unless there was a target on board. 

Apparently this author has never heard of Lockerbie.

[JRGoldman]

I can't imagine that terrorists would take over a plane and keep the pilots around to fly somewhere. I think had that been the goal, the terrorists would have done it themselves.

[Reed]

I can't imagine that terrorists would take over a plane and keep the pilots around to fly somewhere. I think had that been the goal, the terrorists would have done it themselves.

 

Eh, maybe they weren't experienced pilots and figured the actual captain could get them roughly to where the wanted to go? Then they'd off him and crash into something in the last few moments? Maybe they felt comfortable he'd do what they wanted with a knife to his throat?

 

Regardless, I think the pilot is obviously the key here. The 'No Distress' call is the most startling thing and suggests either 1) he chose not to or was warned not to 2) was unconscious/dead.

[Reed]

Man, this whole thing is just messed up. You know things are bad when "alien abduction" is by far the happiest scenario.

[Niners Fan in CT]

One theory I've read is that there were apparently a bunch of defense techies on board. Some have said maybe the plane was hijacked, flown to some location and they are trying to hatch something with the techies, I don't know.. 

 

So weird. I hope everyone is alive but I mean who knows at this point what's going on.

[piranesi]

Isn't that the plot of MOONRAKER?

[Brian Fowler]

Not unless there was a spaceship ontop of the plane.

[Burgundy LaRue]

This theory makes a lot of sense.  At the least, it's plausible--

 

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

[Reed]

Another thing about no one claiming responsibility: the terrorists themselves probably don't even know what happened. You don't want to come out and say "This was us!" only for it to turn out the passengers over powered the guys and landed in some remote place somewhere and are just waiting to be found.

 

Don't terrorist organizations care about not looking incompetent?

[piranesi]

Can a 777 land in a remote place?  Doesn't it require like a two mile runway to land?

[Antacular]

Haven't you seen their recruitment videos? All those monkeybars; these are very sophisticated organizations.

[Reed]

Haven't you seen their recruitment videos? All those monkeybars; these are very sophisticated organizations.

 

I remember reading that in Osama's hideout they actually found that he'd encouraged low-level terrorists to "put together good resumes"  and learn more skills if they wanted to move up the career ladder. He also used power point.

 

Osama = Michael Scott.

[Antacular]

I wonder if when Osama referred to them being "vested," he meant stock options or a bombjacket.

[Burgundy LaRue]

Can a 777 land in a remote place?  Doesn't it require like a two mile runway to land?

 

It's one reason why the human trafficking angle, while frightening, would be hard to pull off.  Flying a plane like that during the night with no instruments would be tough--though the pilot had over 18,000 hours of air time, along with owning a personal flight simulator.  If you're going to risk that sort of thing, he would be someone to look at for the job.

 

So even if hijackers manage to get the pilot to cooperate and fly the plane wherever, there's still the issue of 239 people to deal with, folks who are scared out of their minds.  Someone would likely risk it and jump the hijackers.  And nearly everyone had phones on them, I'm sure.  Someone would call a family member and tell them to notify authorities..

 

And, like you mentioned, you can't exactly land a 777 just any old place. 

 

That's a lot of planning to make a plane disappear.  And you stil have to hope no one realizes the plane is off-course for a while in order to pull off the job.  Could that have happened?  I guess so.  But it would be tough.

[Niners Fan in CT]

More theories, less Osama...please.

[Antacular]

Impossible.

[Reed]

This story is genuinely unsettling and may put me off flying more than any plane crash ever could. How can a giant frigging plane with 200 people on it just vanish into thin air?

 

I know it's a bit disrespectful to say "This is like something out of a sci-fi/horror movie" but that's exactly what it is.

[RonL21]

I know it's the slimmest of possibilities, but the fact that it's even slightly a possibility that there may be survivors is amazing at this point. No evidence at all and it's been nearly a week. That plane could be in some remote village or as far as the middle of the Indian Ocean sinking to the bottom or anywhere in between.

[LooseCannon]

An explanation of why phones are still ringing:

“When you place a call it takes a few moments for the call to be completed, so phone companies typically start the ringing tone so you know it is ringing,” he says. “[That way] you know it is being connected so you won’t hang up and try again.”

There are several steps to the connection process, he says. When you make a call to a mobile device, the carrier finds the closest cell tower to where the recipient of the call last was registered. If the recipient isn’t in the range of that tower, it continues expanding out to larger areas to try to find the network the recipient is on. If it can’t find the recipient, the call disconnects, goes to voice mail, or gives an error message. Phone calls can end up disconnected because the network is over capacity or if a caller has repeatedly called too many times, he says.

“Basically the carrier is placing you on hold while it searches for the other phone, and the sound you hear instead of hold music is ringing,” Mr. Kagan explains.

This can even happen when a phone is destroyed, waterlogged, out of network, or entirely off, he says. The phones won’t stop ringing until the carrier terminates the phone number.