I haven't seen any discussion here about that missing Malaysia Airlines flight. All of the scenarios that I would have dismissed as ridiculous or so improbably as to be essentially impossible seem to be all that are left. Here are some interesting thoughts by a pilot (who has an MFA) http://airchive.com/blog/2014/03/17/op-ed-high-alert-until-mh370-is-found/ I would have thought that it would have been impossible to land a 777 somewhere without ANYONE noticing it -- on radar or even by sight. The fact that we've found no crash remnants anyplace at all is very disturbing. Anyone hear anything that seems particularly credible and disturbing?
Just kidding... I wasn't paying so much attention and also the media in my country is focused much more on Ukraine... But the fact that security agencies can track every single person they want, but can't find one of the biggest planes is a bit disturbing... As for the article - it's possible it has been hijacked, of course (unfortunately), but this is a situation where all kinds of conspiracy theories could take place. Can't imagine how it is for the passengers' families though
My guess is the pilot is involved and that he deliberately diverted the plane. There are a lot of terrorist/rebel groups operating in that region. If I'm right, I just hope nothing bad has happened to the passengers.
My worst fear is that it has been successfully stolen by extremists to use as a delivery system for a large quantity of high explosives.
Where would they deliver it that it wouldn't get shot down? You can't fly unidentified jets over any large country.
Can you imagine the pressure of making a decision about whether to shoot down a plane not knowing if it was carrying explosives or not, but was last known to be carrying over 250 innocent people.
Fair bet it crashed in the ocean. Small chance it landed anywhere. It would have had to fly very low to get past radar, China's especially. And some of those areas are so heavily populated someone would have reported seeing a jet fly that low. Possibly with lights off at night, but it's just so unlikely. Hijacker or horrid pilot are about the only options left that fit the evidence. Could be they took it to 45K feet to kill everyone. Could be they went to 45K feet when the autopilot was shut off, suggesting a takeover. You have to wonder though why a terrorist would want the plane to disappear as opposed to crashing for all to see. Maybe there were plans to get somewhere they were unable to get to. Given 9/11, probably not a hard decision. I don't know that those people are alive either way. You could fly at night and the passengers just think the jet was on course. But to manage that many hostages there would need to be more than one or two hijackers.
The families can only hope that their loved ones died by having the oxygen cut off and they all just went to sleep and died. Any other death would just be gruesome.
It's cool everyone. Courtney Love found the plane. Man, good thing she was on the case, huh? http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/courtney-love-thinks-she-may-have-found-missing-malaysian-plane-20140317
You can buy planes for this purpose if that was your thinking. Plus there are much easier planes to steal than a passenger commercial airline.
A whole bunch of people beat her to that story. Those images were on Reddit along with the claim some Greek ship was on it's way to check. If you look at the coordinates it is in the Malaca Strait and that's short of the arc they are searching along.
My guess is it was a pilot suicide. Unfortunately he took quite a few other lives with him. If it was a terrorist attack, they would have attacked something, said something or done something. You don't just land a 777 off field someplace. I think one of the pilots waited for the other to take his bathroom break and locked the door on him, then flew off in a direction that would keep him mostly invisible and flew along until he ran out of fuel.
The problem with that, not that it didn't happen, is when the pilot couldn't get back in everyone knows something is wrong. The cockpit door is not impossible to break down, just difficult. And while one can turn off the sat phone connection in the plane (sat phones need a clear view of the sky), they were bound to fly over some cell towers when over land. Maybe they were too high for a cell tower, I don't really know. I think one scenario that fits is, as you say, lock the pilot out, fly to 45K, open the vents to the outside air and shut down the O2 tanks, if that is possible. Now you are flying a plane full of dead people. But why drag it out? I suppose if you wanted to make the plane hard to find.
When a plane is at a certain height, cell phone towers do not try to connect with phones for the fear that it could interfere with the plane. I saw this along with quite a bit of information, including that a pilot can indeed fly to a certain height, depressurize the cabin, AND turn off the oxygen all from the cock pit. With that done, the pilot could just fly until the fuel runs out,hoping the plane never is found and that no one knows it was a suicide. Suicides don't pay out life insurance policies.
Now they are saying that someone on the plane may have hacked the plane's computer system and changed the plane's direction.
Cell phone towers are passive. How would they "know not to connect"? And besides, that phone/wifi issue with planes has been discarded. It's only on take off and landing now. Questions Over Absence of Cellphone Calls From Missing Flight’s Passengers
Do people routinely use cellphones on planes at altitude? We have dozens of cell towers in close proximity of our house and I still get nothing but a crappy signal. Most tower antennae are tuned to radiate outwards not upwards, it's a waste of energy.
They also are saying now that the pilot was at the court sentencing of a somewhat radical politician during the day before flying the plane that evening. http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/court-was-compassionate-towards-anwar-with-5-year-sentence-says-ibrahim-ali
I though that too, but there is really too much other conflicting evidence by way of Malaysian military radar records etc.
Sean Hannity is making jokes his guest not getting long with Muslims and Obama in the middle of talking about the pilot's family leaving him the day before the flight and going to the court case the day of. Sometimes I might be over sensitive, but some of these tv personalities are just so disconnected.
Speculation is all over the place. I too saw the article yesterday about the plane having 'turned around' at some stage. There has been talk that perhaps the passengers will be held for ransom. (Which means we'll find out the truth, at the very least.) By now, the plane has either crashed OR landed. If it crashed in the ocean, there should be some debris? If it crashed on land, surely there would have been a plume of smoke a mile high that somebody would have spotted, burning wreckage, etc? Just strange. I hope this doesn't turn into one of these never-solved mysteries. I feel so sorry for the passengers, whatever has happened, and their families who must be desperate by now. @chicagoliz 's link is scary as hell, and presents a plausible scenario. Yikes. I do hope that plane is found, and very soon...
