Flight MH370

[MahrinSkel]

Starting a topic on this because it has reached the point where it is unlikely that the plane just crashed, because with the length of time that has passed debris from the crash should have been found.  The question then is: WTF?

What's known is that last Saturday, the plane took off from Kuala Lumpur heading to Beijing.  Shortly after it reached cruising altitude, the telemetry systems and radar transponder were apparently shut off (14 minutes apart).  Malaysian military radars indicate that it then climbed rapidly to 45,000 feet and turned west.  An automated system that relays engine telemetry data continued to send "pings" to the satellite for another 2-3 hours, analysis of these signals seem to indicate that the plane flew to the Bay of Bengal/Andaman Sea, then turned either northwest or southwest (presumably calculated from signal strength and loss of signal data, hence the lack of precision).  At this point, the physical search is moving to the Indian Ocean southwest of Malaysia, as being the only place for a crash that hasn't already been eliminated.

This is not consistent with any accident scenario anyone has been able to come up with.  The problem is, it's hard to come up with another scenario that makes any sense, either.  If the plane was hijacked, why, and where the hell did they go with it?  This is a big aircraft, and it needs a large runway to land (and an even larger one if you ever want to take off again).  239 people (minus the number of hijackers, plus the crew) is a *lot* of people to control.  It was only fueled for the trip to Beijing, making it's range considerably less than the 9,000nm maximum for the type (central Asia to northern Australia is about the limit).

I've been puzzling over this for the last couple of days, and I can't get any answers that really make sense to me.  If they wanted hostages for political or financial purposes, why haven't we gotten a video of them and a list of demands?  If they wanted the plane for some Tom Clancy plot, why have they made "Where's the plane?" the number one question for every intelligence service in the world, guaranteeing that every 777 approaching off schedule or flight-plan gets scrutinized?  If they wanted to steal something that was on the plane, did they kill the passengers?  That would be stupid, if you stole a billion dollars, they'll chase you for years, if you kill 240+ people, they'll chase you *forever*.

I suppose it is possible there was a secret precious metals shipment on the plane (China has been buying the stuff like crazy), and the plane was hard-landed on an empty island somewhere while the thieves get clear, and the people will turn up eventually.  Otherwise, I can't come up with an answer that isn't at "lost in a dimensional vortex" levels of unlikely.

--Dave

[Kitsune]

Huh, that's weird.  I honestly hadn't been paying attention, with the initial news I thought, "Welp, plane crash." and didn't bother reading deeply into subsequent news.  The plane being in the air for that length of time definitely sounds like shenanigans after such a selective equipment failure, but I can't think of what they could've done with it that would not have been found by now aside from crash it in the ocean somewhere.

[SurfD]

Havent looked much into this, other then browsing through the related thread that popped up on MMO-Champ a while back, but I seem to recall some speculation that there was an oddly high number of passengers on the plain who worked in relatively high level positions in major research and technology companies.  Like, big minds from IBM, and the like.  There was some speculation that someone might have wanted to kidnap these people for their technical know-how.   However, that was getting pretty deep into "major-cold-war-brewing" type conspiracy theory territory.

[TheWalrus]

The first day I heard of it, my dad and I were talking and I said there were some people on board that plane that somebody wanted alive. It's easier to disappear a plane that several witnesses. I stand by my initial assertion. No evidence, it just seems bout right for the area.

[satael]

The missing Malaysia Airliner flew more than six and a half hours after its last communication with air traffic control. Seems very unlikely that this can be explained as an accident though it also sounds strange that a plane of that size could land anywhere unnoticed (and any terrorists associated with it would announce their "achievement"). Maybe it's just the pilot going off the deep end but you'd think that the rest of the crew would have noticed something after the plane went silent.

map of how far the plane could have flown in the 6 hours after the last communication

[TheWalrus]

I'm betting somebody's government and that's why there's been no demands. Because there won't be.

[ajax34i]

You're assuming sophisticated hijackers.  The pilots could have tried to explain the fuel situation or that a heavy can't land on just any runway, but faced with threat to passengers they may have decided to just obey the demands for a while and fly west with transponders off.  Then the plane ran out of fuel and went into the ocean, or crashed on the landing attempt who knows where.

I'd search off (and on) the coast of Somalia.

[Teleku]

For the transponders to have been switched off in a way the hijackers could tell, leads me to believe they were technically sophisticated, and knew what they were doing.  Hell, almost seems likely that the pilot or co-pilot was in on it.  Doesn't mean they didn't fuck up and the plane crashed in the ocean, but I'm willing to bet they understood exactly what the the plane could do.

[Merusk]

Don't forget the newest evidence that the plane ascended and then descended very quickly after the transponder was turned off. (The descent numbers are considered very incorrect as it would have had to do a nose dive at ~450mph)

There's any number of theories out there. Terrorism is only one and not even the most likely at this point. Decompression and a faulty o2 system are more likely than terrorists kidnapping ~300 people. Not that conspiracy lovers haven't worked that one out already.  Right down to hiding the people successfully, keeping them off of any mobile device while flying over other islands and also having modified an abandoned WW2 airstrip to later use the plane in a later attack. As if there's a non-zero chance of a stray 777 being shot down.  That's a straight out of COBRA level plan.

If it WAS terrorism I'm more inclined to believe that someone had a gun, shot a hole in the plane and a decompression event made everyone pass out because the terrorists wouldn't let them wear the o2 masks. The plane then flew on for hours before crashing.

[Zetleft]

 I've been thinking of this  since day one 

[Lantyssa]

It's the Russians.  Crimea wasn't enough for them, so now they're stealing people.

[KallDrexx]

I think trying to figure this out is futile from our end.  The problem is there is wayy too much conflicting information coming out that just makes no sense.

Hijacking makes absolutely noooo sense.  The cabin doors are very tightly locked and there's no way hijackers would have gotten into the cockpit before the pilots transmitted a distress signal.  Also, the fact that Malaysia's government last night said it's not just a theory that there was a hijacking, then immediately came out and said that what they just said wasn't true doesnt help matters.

Hijacking also doesn't make sense if it's true that the oil rig worker saw the plane on fire flying through the sky.

Loss of oxygen causing everyone to pass out doesn't really make sense because the automated pings the plane sends sends that data so we would have seen low oxygen warnings.

Flying west over Malaysia makes absolutely no sense, because it seems inconcievable to me that not one military radar would have picked that up and Malaysia would keep floundering in the South China sea (and it would take the US to say hey fuck faces, go to the indian ocean).

There's just a ridiculous amount of unknowns, and the problem is this is becoming a HUGE international strategic play on who can find it first, who has the better satellite and radar technologies to be able to track this down, China trying to score points against the Malaysian government, etc...

*edit* Also those altitude readings make no sense.  It claims the plane went up to 45,000ft (even though the plane has a ceiling of 43,000 ft) and then went wayyy down at over 450 MPH towards the ground and managed to stabilize.  That seems highly unlikely and it more sounds like the engines were transmitting bad data (giving credence to a failure of some kind).

[Khaldun]

Am I the only one who has read the Herge Tintin adventure "Flight 704"? Because it is almost fucking eerie how close some of that is to this case.

[01101010]

[Lakov_Sanite]

I'm not saying it was aliens but....

[NowhereMan]

So, Malaysians are pretty sure it was hijacked. I really thought it would be a technical fault and was pretty surprised to see this, although hijacking gone wrong may make more sense in terms of what we do know. However the Malaysian authorities have also pretty consistently managed to deny knowledge of anything before issuing a definitive statement just before announcing that their previous definitive statement was wrong and they've gone back to not announcing anything until they're certain. So I'm half expecting to find out tomorrow that they've found some recording of a distress call reporting a technical fault or something.

[slog]

http://vietnam.craigslist.org/for/4372477162.html

[Jeff Kelly]

The flight path is likely to be false

1. the machine didn't have enough fuel to be in the air for an additional seven hours after contact was lost
2. They derived this from engine data automatically transmitted by a monitoring system which only transmits data as long as the engine is running. This just means that the engine was still running 6 1/2 hours in. Which could have been the case if the machine was already on the ground and not travelling at 900 kph.

What people currently know or think is likely to have occurred.

- The radio and all automatic transponder systems that can be turned off from the coclpit have been turned off
- Not all of those systems have been turned off at the same time. The transponder was turned off first, the ACARS ten minutes after for example.
- The machine changed direction and dropped below radar visibility
- It was last seen a few hundred miles west of its last position and hundreds of miles off its flight path by a military radar
- the engine was still on 6 1/2 hours after it vanished.
- the plane must have deliberately chosen a flight path that kept it out of range from military and civillian radar installations because it hasn't been seen since.

There are two likely theories floated around

1. The plane was still in the air when the last engine data was transmitted, which means that it was in the air until fuel ran out and then crashed.
2. It was already on the ground by the time the last transmission came in at which point the engine was turned off (the system only transmits when the engine is running)

Some sources now point to the Muslim Uyghur ethnic group as possible perpetrators because allegedly one passenger on board of MH 370 was from the Xinjiang province of China and one of the triangulated flight paths from the picture in this thread would bring them very close to that region.

It seems very likely though at this time that the machine was hijacked or stolen

[IainC]

2. They derived this from engine data automatically transmitted by a monitoring system which only transmits data as long as the engine is running. This just means that the engine was still running 6 1/2 hours in. Which could have been the case if the machine was already on the ground and not travelling at 900 kph.

I know that a lot of statements have been walked back or flat-out retracted as inaccurate, but the last I heard was that Rolls-Royce had agreed that the reports about data being sent from the engines were false. Did I miss an update that contradicted that?

[Jeff Kelly]

BTW: every expert interviewed is currently stating that even if the machine was hijacked it likely crashed because it couldn't have landed anywhere without it being noticed.

Which brings me to the conclusion that it most likely has landed and nobody knows where  

[K9]

I'm fairly amazed that this could pass over some of the most militarised airspace without being noticed; the projections of this plane landing somewhere in Kyrgystan or India seem remarkable. Likewise, if this had crashed on land, surely there'd be some fuck-off great fire that someone would have noticed by now?

[IainC]

I'm fairly amazed that this could pass over some of the most militarised airspace without being noticed; the projections of this plane landing somewhere in Kyrgystan or India seem remarkable. Likewise, if this had crashed on land, surely there'd be some fuck-off great fire that someone would have noticed by now?

A Learjet crashed in New Hampshire back in 1996 and it took 3 years to find it. Granted a Learjet is a lot smaller than a 777 but then New Hampshire is also a lot smaller than the Indian Ocean.

[Jeff Kelly]

I know that a lot of statements have been walked back or flat-out retracted as inaccurate, but the last I heard was that Rolls-Royce had agreed that the reports about data being sent from the engines were false. Did I miss an update that contradicted that?

Yes.

Although they are not stating which system made the contact (probably to not tip off the hijackers) at the press conference the Malaysian PM stated that the last reported satellite communication with MH 370 was Saturday at 8:11 am Malaysian local time. Unable to confirm precise location of the plane when it last made contact with satellites. However, based on new data, the aviation authorities of Malaysia, and the international counterparts, the last communication of MH 370 was in 1 of 2 possible corridors: Northern (border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Northern Thailand) or Southern (from Indonesia to southern Indian Ocean).

Rolls Royce and Boeing also stated that even though the engine reporting system wasn't active it was still sending 'pings' . That's because they ship every engine with that system and activating it is possible at any time once the airline subscribes to the service.

[Jeff Kelly]

The always called it satellite communication with MH 370 implying that it was a direct transmission from the flight to some other system and not a satellite image or something like that.

[Venkman]

If they wanted hostages for political or financial purposes, why haven't we gotten a video of them and a list of demands?  If they wanted the plane for some Tom Clancy plot, why have they made "Where's the plane?" the number one question for every intelligence service in the world, guaranteeing that every 777 approaching off schedule or flight-plan gets scrutinized?  If they wanted to steal something that was on the plane, did they kill the passengers?  That would be stupid, if you stole a billion dollars, they'll chase you for years, if you kill 240+ people, they'll chase you *forever*.

This whole paragraph comes straight from Die Hard, starting with the Detective Robinson asking about demands and culminating in Hans explaining why he had to blow up the building

Around Wednesday night I was thinking a TWA 800 scenario where it was accidentally (or "accidentally") shot down and nobody wanted to fess up to it.

But now I'm leaning botched hijacking and a crash.

Queue DB Cooper.

[calapine]

I know that a lot of statements have been walked back or flat-out retracted as inaccurate, but the last I heard was that Rolls-Royce had agreed that the reports about data being sent from the engines were false. Did I miss an update that contradicted that?

Yes.

Although they are not stating which system made the contact (probably to not tip off the hijackers) at the press conference the Malaysian PM stated that the last reported satellite communication with MH 370 was Saturday at 8:11 am Malaysian local time. Unable to confirm precise location of the plane when it last made contact with satellites. However, based on new data, the aviation authorities of Malaysia, and the international counterparts, the last communication of MH 370 was in 1 of 2 possible corridors: Northern (border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Northern Thailand) or Southern (from Indonesia to southern Indian Ocean).

Rolls Royce and Boeing also stated that even though the engine reporting system wasn't active it was still sending 'pings' . That's because they ship every engine with that system and activating it is possible at any time once the airline subscribes to the service.

The always called it satellite communication with MH 370 implying that it was a direct transmission from the flight to some other system and not a satellite image or something like that.

According to what I read the last engine data was from ACARS at 01:07 via satcom. ACARS was turned of at some point later (or at least didn't make any reports), but the satellite connection it uses (via british INMARSAT) stayed active and the last stay-alive-ping was received 7 hours after take-off.

Which is sort of mind blowing.

[Jeff Kelly]

What angers me because no journalist has asked it yet is:

According to experts the plane couldn't have landed anywhere or crashed on land because it would very likely have been spotted already. At the same time though the same plane that basically every country on earth is looking for can be in the air for seven hours after they've lost contact without it being spotted and that's totally likely.

Yeah, right.

[calapine]

I'll add some info for all those who haven't following this too closely  

This is the known flight path of MH370. The first leg is the normal route, before the transponder was turned off. The subsequent lines are the path of an active radar contact the Malaysian military tracked and believes to be the plane.




This second image is the now assumed flight direction based on analyzing the satcom pings received for another 6-7 hours. This was most likely down by calculating the signal runtime or signal strength, thus two different possible paths.

[Teleku]

What Im kind of amazed at is that you apparently can turn off the transponder.  Seems like the kind of thing you'd want to make impossible to turn off regardless of what a man with a gun to his head would like to do.  I mean, is there any scenario at all where your want a large commercial jet liner flying anywhere without the ability to easily be tracked?

[MahrinSkel]

What angers me because no journalist has asked it yet is:

According to experts the plane couldn't have landed anywhere or crashed on land because it would very likely have been spotted already. At the same time though the same plane that basically every country on earth is looking for can be in the air for seven hours after they've lost contact without it being spotted and that's totally likely.

Yeah, right.

It's a big sky, and as a former radar tech, I can tell you that civilian radars and radar operators are completely dependent on the "synthetic" radar of the transponder system, turn that off and you're invisible.  Military radars are different, but don't have nearly the coverage.  If you avoided military installations and certain borders (Iran and Pakistan are probably out as destinations, for example) they'd never see you.

--Dave

[calapine]

What angers me because no journalist has asked it yet is:

According to experts the plane couldn't have landed anywhere or crashed on land because it would very likely have been spotted already. At the same time though the same plane that basically every country on earth is looking for can be in the air for seven hours after they've lost contact without it being spotted and that's totally likely.

Yeah, right.

The Malaysians already look back in that regard. They let an unknown, un-cooperative contact cross their entire territory (over land) and didn't bother/weren't able to launch QRA fighters.

After leaving Malaysian airspace and radar cover it's normal the planes location is unknown. So it either crashed while over sea or something went wrong again.

[Jeff Kelly]

Marin, that was exactly my point. If it could have flown for seven hours without anybody noticing then it could bloody well also have landed/crashed on land without anyone noticing it.

It took Malaysia five days to realize and confirm that an unidentified radar contact by its own military was in fact MH 370 and even if it stayed over water the flight would have crossed a lot of civil and military radar installations on its way westwards.

The fact of the matter is simply that they don't know wherever the fuck that plane is at the moment.

[calapine]

The fact of the matter is simply that they don't know wherever the fuck that plane is at the moment.

I think that is a given 

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah, I tried working out where you could have flown and landed the aircraft, and I came up with a course that went north over the Himalayas, lots of nothing out there to make an unrecoverable landing, some former Soviet military installations in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan that it could have reached.  But then you're getting into a much larger plot.  Anyway, military radar coverage of the Himalaya region is shit, especially over the Myanmar/Bangladesh portions, and once you were past them you are truly in the ass end of the universe.  Not many people, and communication in and out of the region is pitiful (forget cell coverage, most of these areas don't even have wired phone lines).

--Dave

[calapine]

Yeah, I tried working out where you could have flown and landed the aircraft, and I came up with a course that went north over the Himalayas, lots of nothing out there to make an unrecoverable landing, some former Soviet military installations in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan that it could have reached.  But then you're getting into a much larger plot.  Anyway, military radar coverage of the Himalaya region is shit, especially over the Myanmar/Bangladesh portions, and once you were past them you are truly in the ass end of the universe.  Not many people, and communication in and out of the region is pitiful (forget cell coverage, most of these areas don't even have wired phone lines).

--Dave

Well, if you cross Bangladesch and then turn left towards the Himalaya that produces exactly the satellite signal path they released.*




Edit: I think we just know too little. Reminds me of the AF447 flight I followed when it happened. Lot's of theories, no one could understand how the plane just vanished and it the end it was basically two competent pilots crashing a functional plane into the water.

Edit2: * I expressed myself sloppy, sorry. Those lines are not a "flightpath" (or a number of tracks) but a possible position line for the last ping received from the satcom. Ie. the last estimated position sits somewhere on these red lines.