This missing plane..

[pete]

w
So right now you cannot dismiss anything, that includes sparing a thought for the souls onboard and their totally unknown status.

I watched some smug as f.uck talking heads on BBC 24 this morning and had exactly that thought. There's 260 sons and daughters out there somewhere who aren't coming home.

[tenkfeet]

Most of the reporting about the a/c has been total rubbish which leads me to think the majority of what is written is rubbish.

It all appears very controlled. Terrorists would want to make a "statement" of some kind rather than just hide would they not. The Indian Ocean makes a very very big hiding place. Pure speculation.

Hope they find it so the families get some kind of closure.

[hendeg]

OT but interesting anway - Watch an Entire Day of Air Traffic in One Astonishing Visualization

[rossybee]

OT but interesting anway - Watch an Entire Day of Air Traffic in One Astonishing Visualization

Brilliant

[vet111s]

I agree with Tut. I can't understand, especially in today's age of international paranoia induced surveillance, how a jet the size of a 777 was flown for up to 7hrs without someone noticing. Surely, as soon as it entered anyone's airspace the call should have gone out to them something along the lines of "unidentified bomber sized aircraft please respond".

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26603830

[tut]

As they are still clutching at straws and I have not yet heard any mention of the certainty, ie:- it has either crashed or landed, I looked at it from the point of view that whatever the reason it must have been planned. If it was a 9/11 scenario then the obvious would have been to turn the aircraft around and crash it into the Petronas Twin Towers, until recently the worlds tallest buildings. This would fit a hijack but not really the crew taking over the aircraft.

I can not see any reason for the aircraft to be crashed unless it was going to be done spectacularly, just to fly it until it ran out of fuel would be pointless. That leaves the aircraft being taken over for another reason, which would have to be a planned landing. How this could be done in secret I do not know, it would have to be a disused airfield with a serviceable runway and a hanger to hide it in. It would have to have been part of a team to achieve all that, never mind feeding and keeping alive 250 passengers. And what would be the point, there have been no ransom demands nor communications if that had happened?

What does point to a plan is that the ACARS was turned off followed by the transponder, then the aircraft was turned off course, this had to be done by the crew or hijackers. After that it would seem to be guesswork. To go off primary radar quickly it would have to have been dived down to very low level, not 5,000' that has been suggested which is far too high, but a few hundred feet to get below detection signature. This would have been possible as it was over the Indian Ocean, but what then, it has to go back over land if it is to touch down anywhere, and it would have then be seen and heard even if not by radar.

The reason why I looked at it again is at the news conference this morning they said that de-compression was still a possibility. They know that the radar aids were turned off and the aircraft turned through 90 degs, rather difficult to do if you are unconscious.

So back to square one except that they are now searching an area of millions of square miles instead of thousands, good progress after eleven days.

tut

ps:- the winner of the £108M has just been paraded on the news, can not understand anybody going public, but looks as if it has gone to a good cause, he is a car mechanic and racing driver, and they are a young normal looking couple.

[Gareth]

A flying bomb?
Just madness...but I hope it crashed because thinking that there is a potential flying bomb or these people have all been murdered if horrific.

[Rosssco]

BBC Theories..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26609687

[tut]

Well there is a new theory.

7. The plane hid in the shadow of another airliner
Aviation blogger Keith Ledgerwood believes the missing plane hid in the radar shadow of Singapore Airlines flight 68. The Singaporean airliner was in the same vicinity as the Malaysian plane, he argues.

tut

[Sanjøy]

BBC Theories..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26609687

The rapid ascent and decent is interesting and does point to human intervention. Were they trying to fight off bad guys or were they trying to look like they were?

Astounded that this can happen in 2014, it has made the world a much bigger place in my eyes as I thought nothing was not outside the prying eyes of spy sats.

Thoughts are with the families.

[graeme]

Occam's razor and all that. No hijack, no conspiracy, no theft, no terrorists, no suicide pact. Just an accident.

After they lost the transponder, they turned to a specific heading. No way does a pilot with that much experience not know where his emergency landing airport is while in cruise. I don't know the flight plan, but that airport would have been logged. They never made it, but no wreckage was found between where they turned and the emergency destination from the flight plan. If flight plans don't have that in the commercial world (Pete?) then the pilot knew what his plan was in his head anyway. When things go wrong, you don't get the map out, you already know where you're going.

(EDIT: Palau Langkawi from the BBC article. 13,000 ft runway, closer than turning back to KL. Not a coincidence. That was the destination.)


Two reasons to ascend, and neither are bad-guys. The risk of ascending to silly heights where you can't control the a/c doesn't make sense unless there's a more immediate problem:

1) Put a fire out. Lower oxygen up there.
2) Increase your glide distance if you expect you're going to lose power before you get to land.

I favour fire. It knocks out electrical systems. Transponder and ACARS and possible comms all go dead. They turn to emergency heading. They ascend to try to put the fire out. Smoke knocks out the crew. They continue on autopilot on that heading until fuel runs out.

I guess wreckage will be found 6ish hours beyond the airport they were aiming for, wherever that is (see the flight plan, or just draw a line on the heading they turned to and you'll find it).

[tut]

Transponder loss is not an emergency Graeme, not sure if the pilot would have even been aware of it. Plus unless he is instructed by ATC he would remain on his flight path and not turn off it if it was an emergency that he was still in charge of.

If so he would have made a transmission to ATC. Any scenario other than catastrophic breakup or the pilot deliberately trying to hide the aircraft, he would have made a transmission.

All cockpit doors nowadays are armoured and impossible to break down. If a hijacker even tried then the pilot would press his panic button and send out a MAYDAY. If a pilot leaves the cockpit, the door locks, and he has to give a password to get back in to prove that he is not being forced. Specific instructions are that the door is not opened for any reason, even if cabin crew and passengers are being killed. I realise that not every pilot may be able to follow that through, but if he was rational he would realise that if he did not then he would probably be dead anyway.

After 9/11 it is not feasible to suppose that 250 passengers would not take out one or two terrorists that would probably not be armed with anything more than a plastic knife.

tut

[Claws]

I think Greame is spot on with the fire theory.


Once it starts eating away at wiring, you can sing Elton John down the radio, but nobody will receive it. Things being shut down also points to some wiring issues as things go "offline"

I think they are looking far too close to where they "lost" the plane. Where it could be is a mystery, too much cloak and dagger concerning radar tracking after transponder shutdown. Once you have a fire eating away at the wiring, you will get all sorts of false readings and commands to ancillaries. It probably just fell out the sky at the point where the pilots nor the autopilot had any control of flight inputs

Must say, I did have a laugh at the aircraft carrier theory though

[Sanjøy]

Occam's razor and all that. No hijack, no conspiracy, no theft, no terrorists, no suicide pact. Just an accident.

After they lost the transponder, they turned to a specific heading. No way does a pilot with that much experience not know where his emergency landing airport is while in cruise. I don't know the flight plan, but that airport would have been logged. They never made it, but no wreckage was found between where they turned and the emergency destination from the flight plan. If flight plans don't have that in the commercial world (Pete?) then the pilot knew what his plan was in his head anyway. When things go wrong, you don't get the map out, you already know where you're going.

(EDIT: Palau Langkawi from the BBC article. 13,000 ft runway, closer than turning back to KL. Not a coincidence. That was the destination.)


Two reasons to ascend, and neither are bad-guys. The risk of ascending to silly heights where you can't control the a/c doesn't make sense unless there's a more immediate problem:

1) Put a fire out. Lower oxygen up there.
2) Increase your glide distance if you expect you're going to lose power before you get to land.

I favour fire. It knocks out electrical systems. Transponder and ACARS and possible comms all go dead. They turn to emergency heading. They ascend to try to put the fire out. Smoke knocks out the crew. They continue on autopilot on that heading until fuel runs out.

I guess wreckage will be found 6ish hours beyond the airport they were aiming for, wherever that is (see the flight plan, or just draw a line on the heading they turned to and you'll find it).

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/mh ... ical-fire/

[tut]

Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah was a hero struggling with an impossible situation trying to get that plane to Langkawi.

What a load of bollocks, another theory that he has tried to turn into fact.

tut