Quoting rcair1 (Reply 31): New Sanity Check. A slight update to the sanity check I did in thread 16. Been trying to do this for 12 hrs - I can't keep up with the rumors, The facts have not changed much. Stuff that has changed is marked with * and italic

can i just add one detail back in that everyone seems to have forgotten from early threads? what about the pilot who was asked to try to reach out and only heard muffled/muddled voices? if true, that's a very important piece of information that seems to be dropping out of the conversation.

Not sure whether these have been answered earlier but can I check the following:

The passengers manifest list - is it true that there are 20 telecommunication experts personnel in that flight - capable of intercepting signal/ radar?
Any billionaires in the flight (questioning why they would want to take a commercial flight instead of private jet if it is true)
Any insider info to confirm this?

What are the possibilities that the flight is hijacked and escorted to an undisclosed location?

What are the possibilities for the black box to malfunctioned?

Quoting chaseus1 (Reply 244): Then, a turn back toward some city for an attack, only to get lost at night. Even with GPS, at 500 mph, it may be hard to find a building or target at night, maybe harder than they expected. At some point, they panic, or just decide to end it, and everyone's gone. Maybe the passengers revolted. Who knows. Or they exceeded the flight envelope and the plane broke up.

Seriously, if that was the plan, they wouldn't be lost at night, the FMC can be programmed relatively easily for someone with mission planning and basic FMC knowledge. You wouldn't have to disconnect the autopilot except for the terminal phase of the attack. To prevent a passenger fightback, just depressurize the cabin for long enough and remain at high altitude long enough that would reduce the able-body count that can mount the fightback, etc etc etc etc.

Why is everyone seemingly so convinced it's hijacked or kidnapped? *shakes head*

This is clearly a new set of tiles....

And this is an interesting find.

item

zoomed in

Quoting N328KF (Reply 212): If this thing was flying around for several hours, most of which it was "off-scope" (officially), then the question becomes -- why did Malaysia not notice something amiss earlier and do something about it? With the way people are conditioned in the US after 9/11, there would have been a fighter escort within minutes.

Because the rest of the world *isn't* conditioned like the US after 9/11. The Malaysian authorities have already said (I can't remember who, one of the military guys contradicting another of the military guys) that they saw the blip and didn''t do anything about it because it didn't look hostile. An airliner at cruise acts a lot differently than a fighter/attack aircraft coming in on a bombing run. It was apparently just loafing along at normal cruising speed at a fairly normal cruising altitude without heading towards anything important, so they didn't think much of it.

Quoting bajamatic (Reply 246): that thing is very interesting

Were you able to see it? It certainly looks like a piece of heavy, metallic debris to me.

Quoting bajamatic (Reply 253): This is clearly a new set of tiles.... And this is an interesting find.

But the colors are off, and the shape looks more like a tanker than an aircraft...

Quoting bajamatic (Reply 253): This is clearly a new set of tiles.... And this is an interesting find.

It's pretty clear to me that that's a ship.

Quoting bajamatic (Reply 253): This is clearly a new set of tiles.... And this is an interesting find.

Looks like a ship to me...

Quoting Tangowhisky (Reply 240): By saying they did not see anything, they do not have to explain why jets were not scrambled.

Maybe they are like the Swiss, the fast jet pilots dont work at night!

Quoting Trin (Reply 255): Were you able to see it? It certainly looks like a piece of heavy, metallic debris to me.

It looks like a boat to me; one of the many boats on these maps. Same shape. It's a little "ghost" like, probably because this is a set of tiles overlaid on another set of tiles. But I'm pretty sure it's just a boat.

Quoting mandala499 (Reply 207): nfortunately for the WSJ bloggerjourno who keep going on about it, one of the critics is me, who once lectured him about satcom at an airshow when he made some silly comment about it. Let's see how this pans out!

Very Interesting.

Quoting suseJ772 (Reply 159): Chinese espionage theory would completely change if I knew they had enough fuel to make it to Iran via a roundabout method

There is, unfortunately, a lot of Iran paranoia both on these forums and in US media. Iran just signed a landmark agreement which by all accounts they have stuck to. Why would they try to hijack or destroy a plane of a friendly Muslim country just to throw it all away? Plus there were just 2 on-board.

Were there any Uyghur Chinese on the plane? They recently did that subway attack in China.

Anything on the Malaysian passengers? If anything, it looked they were trying to go back to KL not out West (though that might have happened for one reason or another).

I'm going to still vote either pilot issue or some kind of mechanical failure that we just haven't seen before.

Quoting TheGov (Reply 238): I would bet beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody, somewhere who is monitoring any one of the 3000 + satellites orbiting this planet saw something.

I doubt someone is monitoring any of the satellites real time, full time.

An intelligence satellite is normally targeted for a specific target area. That part of the orbit gets intense scrutiny. The rest of the orbit, the sensing systems might actually be shut down to save power.

I don't think any nation would be 'wasting' resources on the Gulf of Thailand / South China Sea area where this plane disappeared in the middle of the night.

If one of those satellites happened to be within a window to 'see' the aircraft, I would be surprised.

Some areas of this globe get a lot of satellite information gathering activity, some areas get very little, some never get 'watched'.

Quoting bajamatic (Reply 253):

Container ship.

Quoting solarflyer22 (Reply 261): Were there any Uyghur Chinese on the plane? They recently did that subway attack in China.

One of the Chinese artists was a Uighur. He was the pax whose name was deleted/obscured on some early publicly released manifest lists.

Quoting mandala499 (Reply 252): Why is everyone seemingly so convinced it's hijacked or kidnapped? *shakes head*

Because the plane is nowhere near where it should be. If you shake your head at that then can you come up with a sane reason the plane is nowhere near where it is supposed to be? A reason that explains not only the plane not being where it is supposed to be but the communication issues as well. There are no sane answers at this point. Everything points to this being completely bizarre and a hijacking is hardly that crazy. At this point pretty much only alien abduction is off the table.

Squint your eyes when you look at those images. Sadly looks like a container ship.

There were some areas on tomnod that DID look like a floating field of debris.


www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/64249

Now, when you click that area, they say its completed, and brings up other areas.

But they had so many reports of that area that they made a map of it, which was linked earlier.

When I first saw that field of debris, I did a CNN I report, and noticed others did too. Interesting pictures of chucks of sheet metal crumpled up, etc. Just nothing big enough to make out for sure, except maybe a piece of fuselage with about five windows.

But I think this was east of Malaysia, along the known and planned flight path, and not in the Indian Ocean

Quoting Indy (Reply 265): At this point pretty much only alien abduction is off the table.

You and I may agree on that, however I am sure there are those who disagree  

Quoting bajamatic (Reply 253): This is clearly a new set of tiles.... And this is an interesting find.

Thanks for posting that for me - I'm afraid the image upload function completely defeated me.

And I do see it now - more than likely a container ship. Oh well. I got very concerned at first when I saw it.

Quoting JettTracer (Reply 251): The passengers manifest list - is it true that there are 20 telecommunication experts personnel in that flight - capable of intercepting signal/ radar?

A company in Austin Texas reported that 20 of their Chinese and Malaysian employees were on the flight. The company is Freescale Semiconductor.

The company has been in business for 50+ years and makes "stand-alone semiconductors that perform dedicated computing functions in electronics systems:

Such as smartphones, appliances, automobiles. The company has 18,000 employees worldwide including 3,000 in Malaysia and 4,000 in China at the company production facilities. These employees were more likely production management types rather than design engineers.

Most of their design work is done in the US and Europe.

Does anyone have an aspirin? Not for me .. for the moderators. Been gone all day and there's now 4 more threads that have rehashed the same stuff 9+ times now. What? Did I miss a reward for the first person to guess the correct events of this tragedy? Has there been a future SAR job offer for the first person to find this plane? This mass global confusion is almost as bad as not knowing anything at all. Okay, perhaps I could use an aspirin as well?   

I think when the United States became involved, we were able to paint an exacting picture of where 370 was flying, with other forensic details such as transponder no longer transmitting, and ACARS being disabled immediately following signing out with Malay ATC, then immediately executing a left turn, etc. The events such as ACARS pinging and following the radar blip from a few days ago, we were able to follow the route to where is disappeared. Now I'm sure we are deploying naval sonar assets, and we have a good idea where it's at. The question is, what was going on aboard the aircraft. And the problem is that we are now dealing with water several miles deep, not a mere 300' tops.

I think human factors are obvious, and that is was one or both pilots. ACARS wasnt completely disabled (fire in avionics bay) because it continued pinging, with the synchronized being handed to Vietnam ATC, failure to check in, ACARS disabled, and then a left turn, all within 10 mins. I think searching for debris would be futile, use of sonar looking for FDR pinging is they way to find it.

WSJ byline now says ... 'location and altitude' data was contained in the pings. Is there any 777 engineering document that outlines this method that we could read? If they had the location and altitude, with the timestamp (received onboard the satellite, or at the ground station) then it should be fairly trivial to calculate remaining fuel onboard, yes ?

Anyone remember a few months back the guy that made a 'gun' using TSA-approved items such as a spray-can, hair-dryer, ect which propelled coins and could puncture sheetrock? Some people just want to prove that 'it can be done.' We could very well be dealing with someone of the like I.E. Knew the FO allowed others in the flight deck in the past and took advantage of that and other knowledge. On the same token, it does seem like the crew (maybe a former employee) may have something to do with this disappearance. The FedEx flight where there was a soon-to-be former employee flew jumpseat and crashed the plane comes to mind... Once again, RIP all souls on board if it is indeed found at the bottom of the Indian Ocean like the White House is so inclined to assume

Quoting YVRLTN (Reply 229): Quoting nick33326 (Reply 69): a very sophisticated kidnapping in which the plane, crew and passengers are being held somewhere for a large ransom, or worse; At what point are they going to ask for their money or demands then? Surely by now...

Perhaps demands have already been made and said demands include not divulging that the aircraft/crew/pax are sitting somewhere as the ongoing mystery and worldwide agony will only add to potential payout kidnappers expect to collect?

Quoting YVRLTN (Reply 229): Quoting nick33326 (Reply 69): terrorists have taken this aircraft and plan to use it to deliver a payload of (chemical, biological or nuclear weapons?) to a large city, which could make attacks of 9/11 pale in comparison. Why go to a lengthy scheme like this which could easily fail? Surely far easier to steal a jet already parked on the ground, or even buy a retired airliner legally.

Indeed, it may be easier to steel a jet parked on the ground. But if the objective is terrorism, they've already succeeded to that end even without delivering any payload, haven't they? I don't think any event since 9/11 has received as much attention and news coverage as this. As far as buying a retired airliner legally, that would take a significant amount of money and, of course, paperwork. I think terrorists would prefer to avoid that!

I cannot even begin to imagine how it must feel to be a relative or a friend of a passenger on that ill fated flight.
The uncertainty of the situation is unbearable for us a.netters, I can only imagine how it must be for someone with a direct connection.

This has definitely been one of the most bizarre aviation accidents in recent memory.I think one thing that will come out of this is the need to have better, more reliable, and less manually changeable ways of precisely tracking an aircraft at all times. There should simply be no way to turn off a transponder. Just like there is no way of turning off a black box data recording.

Quoting boacvc10 (Reply 273): WSJ byline now says ... 'location and altitude' data was contained in the pings. Is there any 777 engineering document that outlines this method that we could read? If they had the location and altitude, with the timestamp (received onboard the satellite, or at the ground station) then it should be fairly trivial to calculate remaining fuel onboard, yes ?

This is a good start: http://tinyurl.com/mwud4k3

Quoting md80fanatic (Reply 271): Does anyone have an aspirin? Not for me .. for the moderators.

  

QUICK INTRO....I have been a reader of Airliners.net for many years and now just signed up as a result of the extra ordinary circumstances in relation to MH370 which I have followed since day1...I am an ex QF longhaul F/A .. my period of employment by QF being 1989-2011

SO... here's my theory based on my knowledge and the 'confirmed' info given by the 'authorities' via the press conferences thus far given to the public...

one of the pilots incapacitated the other pilot..could be done quickly with the right tool, and believe it or not, some airlines allow their flight crew onto aircraft WITHOUT going thru pre flight sreening that pax go thru.. ie NO body/hand luggage screening of flight crew

this lone pilot now has complete control of aircraft..turning off 'systems' ..telling cabin crew via phone AND pax via inflight PA, that due to a 'problem' they need to return to KL.. AVOD must be shut down because of the 'problem'... inflight crew inform cabin crew that 'such and such' will be happening via handset..cabin crew believe what they are being told...no reason not to!!! and pax believe what the flight crew tell them too!!...all the more believable on a flight IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

and I actually believe the 'turnback' and 'ping' heard by the military belongs to MH370 (the Malay military and authorites 'incompetence' is a WHOLE OTHER ISSUE)

I conclude that MH370 has been 'hijacked' by a suicidal flight crew member...and flown over the Indian Ocean and taken a quick dive into the ocean...no time for ANYONE (pax or crew) in the cabin to react...as they were told all is fine...in the DARK OF THE NIGHT they were just returning to KL to fix the 'problem'

now after day 6 I fear the depth and vastness of the Indian Ocean has 'swallowed' MH370 .....along with the fact that no one is searching that ocean

If we go down the hijacking route, what about a failed hijacking? Say for example somebody hijacks the plane, either a pax or one of the crew, and says fly it to XXX location (in a W, N/W direction). So the crew comply and it's turned off the flight path and heads out to the Indian ocean. Once over the ocean the crew say they are not going to comply and the hijackers get desperate and set off a bomb there and then. Alternatively what if they said they were going to use it as a weapon and the Captain decides he would rather ditch the plane than kill more innocent people on the ground.

Kind of far-fetched I know but it's not an angle I have seen discussed before.

Quoting cal764 (Reply 274): The FedEx flight where there was a soon-to-be former employee flew jumpseat and crashed the plane comes to mind...

The pilots were able to land that plane... amazingly.... and after a couple of struggles with the attacker, and then regaining control of a stress damaged plane.

[Edited 2014-03-13 20:06:48]

Quoting davidzill (Reply 272):

I'm getting confused by all these conflicting media reports. There are stories saying ACARS was disabled 10 minutes before the transponder likely intentionally but wouldn't all the satcom reporting hardware get disabled or is there enough granularity to disable just the engine reporting for some reason. Then there are stories that say it was "pinging" for 4 hours after the transponder stopped. These don't make any sense together and both are coming from the same sites and the same sources. Are the RR engine reporting systems using a different computer and antenna than the non-subscribed but pinging Boeing systems.

I'm going to go with the simple idea that either ACARS was enabled or disabled and not halfway disabled.

We should just mandate planes tweet their ACARS messages so we don't have to depend on off hand info...

so many posts/theories on 'mechanical' reasons.....i'm stripping it back to basic 'human' factors...a human is the most 'flawed' item on any aircraft!

I suggested this before, but I believe that if this was a hijacking, it would have been people from Malaysia wanting to do a very embarrassing act upon the government and the military. They could be a minority ethnic group, someone extremist/radical group. They would be persons who look like Malaysians so no problem getting on board this flight. That may also explain the difficulties of the government and the military in the public handling of this disaster.

On the possibility of the PIC or FO taking over the a/c would meant having to incapacitate them within the cockpit or making sure they could not re-enter the cockpit. Let's try this scereio. The PIC takes over the plane when the FO is going to the lav. The a/c is turned, the autopilot is set, shut off the transponder then the pressurization turned off, to incapacitate everyone on board shortly. The flight it is 'seen' by the island radar and continues until its fuel runs out, somewhere over the Indian Ocean.

Quoting undertheradar (Reply 278): I conclude that MH370 has been 'hijacked' by a suicidal flight crew member...and flown over the Indian Ocean and taken a quick dive into the ocean...no time for ANYONE (pax or crew) in the cabin to react...as they were told all is fine...in the DARK OF THE NIGHT they were just returning to KL to fix the 'problem'

Until some authority states they saw MH370 on their primary radar crossing Malaysia, or Sumatra, or Nicobar Islands, or Southern Thailand, then... sorry... Getting to Indian Ocean the aircraft has to pass MORE THAN ONE of those authorities and their military primary radars.

Quoting tomlee (Reply 281): I'm going to go with the simple idea that either ACARS was enabled or disabled and not halfway disabled.

You can shut down ACARS but the SATCOM will still attempt to maintain a connection to the satellite. Apparently the breaker to remove power from the SATCOM is in the E/E bay which is not easily accessed in flight, and was not accessed, because the system continued pinging.

It is fascinating that these pings contain location data, if the reports are true, though I suppose that would help the sat pick a beam?

Quoting nupogodi (Reply 224): No, this route has good radar coverage. They dropped off SSR and ADS-B, other flights in the area don't.

I beg to differ, and I do operate in that area reasonably frequently.

Aircraft do drop off ADS if they finish with one FIR and log onto the next, not all FIIRs have clean handovers. The ADS we are talking about here requires the crew to log on to VVTS, for VVTS to accept the connection, and then for the crew to send a manual position report.

Quoting tomlee (Reply 281):

I liken the SATCOM system to a router. It continues to check in with the satellite "server", even if it has no data to send.

Quoting nupogodi (Reply 285): You can shut down ACARS but the SATCOM will still attempt to maintain a connection to the satellite. Apparently the breaker to remove power from the SATCOM is in the E/E bay which is not easily accessed in flight, and was not accessed, because the system continued pinging.

The problem is the news story stated not the SATCOM controller but some Boeing maintenance system but not RR engine report was sending pings because it wasn't subscribed but still sent reports saying it was ready. Wouldn't all the maintenance data have to go through the ACARS system before it gets sent. Maybe if it makes sense that it was just the modem sending pings but that isn't what the news story said.

Did a quick search for Washingtonpost- did not find anything.



Helpful graphic - Apologies is this is a repost ...

I have heard that they took on 2 additional hours of fuel - so you could probably draw another circle between the two shown here and that covers pretty much all the places the plane could be either in one piece or not. Wonder what % of the Earths surface area that is.

So here's a thought.....

The Navy is headed to the Indian Ocean now because we got fed up with what appears to be a goat rope Search and Rescue and called the CIA and had them look at what satellite data they have. I thought it odd that today of all days, the White House speaks and a ship heads off. One would think there'd need to be a security clearance to release information from whatever satellite assets we have in the area. The White House would obviously be in the loop on this. Ship sails off on its own and by this time tomorrow the plane is found.

It just seems a bit odd the Navy would send a ship off on a 24 hour cruise on a hunch. Just seems odd to me.

Airplane DID NOT have ANY mechanical issue!!!!!!!!! So, then what???? 100% certainty that a/c was commandeered. Okay, by who???? Duh, the PILOT!!!!! I know I'll be the recipient of much backlash, but the aviation community and public deserve some resolution and peace of mind (though that perhaps will be elusive), and the FAMILIES of the passengers NEED to know what the hell has happened. It is CLEAR AS DAY...again, as some of this I've posted previously on thread 19 post 21...just a mere coincidence that TURNAROUND and failure of transponder occur immediately after handoff to ATC...come on, like terrorists would no precisely when this moment of flight would take place. Other electronics on a/c disabled separately, at different moments (gee, seems like someone knows this a/c fairly well, AND has a decent knowledge base vis a vis electronics). Dude had his own flight simulator at home...be interesting to see if he had flown many simulations flying at very specified FL's through specific flight paths at specific times (you think????). Dude knew the in and outs of avionics...who could have possibly done a better job of making this plane go dark in that specific airspace, duh...US intelligence just SO concerned over this terrorist action, NOT!!! Wow, these terrorists...makes perfect sense that they would target this by and large RANDOM plane, make no demands or claims and achieve nothing (oh, but maybe it was a dry run . Yeah, sure). And for those out there who are still, for reasons I frankly no longer understand, clinging to this mechanical failure/accident possibility...you can't be serious...please reevaluate all that is known...no signals, TURNED off SEPARATELY...NO DEBRIS...NO ELT...NO COMMS...NO EVIDENCE OF TROUBLE AT ALL, ANYWHERE...this hypoxia/ depressurization theory is now a complete joke...and I apologize SINCERELY for my tone, but I am frustrated at the resistance to what is now SO SO OBVIOUS...I don't pretend to know why, or how (in regards to incapacitating co-pilot), or whether the plane has indeed fallen into Indian Ocean or landed on some remote runway, but what is now unequivocal is this LONE ACT...so much more supports it but I'll leave it here for now...and sometimes the answer to WHY??? is simply because HE COULD (with more complicated underlying factors obviously driving this decision)

Quoting mandala499 (Reply 284): Until some authority states they saw MH370 on their primary radar crossing Malaysia, or Sumatra, or Nicobar Islands, or Southern Thailand, then... sorry... Getting to Indian Ocean the aircraft has to pass MORE THAN ONE of those authorities and their military primary radars.

Air Force Chief Gen. Rodzali Daud said data analysis showed an intermittent plot to the west of the country, which was spotted last at 2:15 a.m., about 45 minutes after Flight 370 was lost from all radar over the South China Sea.

The object was some 200 miles northwest of Penang at an altitude of 29,500 feet. "I'm not saying it's MH370, we're still corroborating'' with civilians and experts to identify the aircraft, Gen. Rodzali told the briefing.

The military radar operators would have assumed that the unidentified aircraft was a civilian flight and so wouldn't have sounded the alarm to scramble jets, Gen. Rodzali said.

That doesn't qualify?

Quoting LTC8K6 (Reply 287): I liken the SATCOM system to a router. It continues to check in with the satellite "server", even if it has no data to send.

I understand that an Immersat terminal would have its own diagnostics functions but the news stories say Boeing's non-subscribed airplane data was sending pings not just the modem but maybe they are just confusing things. Do planes use distributed ACARS or is it all managed in one system. Also it wouldn't make much sense to just disable the engine ACARS and not disable the SATCOM modem if someone didn't want to be tracked.

Quoting tomlee (Reply 288): The problem is the news story stated not the SATCOM controller but some Boeing maintenance system

AHM / EHM / etc all go over ACARS, which has VHF/HF/SATCOM available as downlinks, and the latter two only if installed and subscribed. They had SATCOM installed though, so when the hardware was powered it was maintaining a connection with the satellite. That is my understanding of the system.

Quoting LTC8K6 (Reply 287): I liken the SATCOM system to a router. It continues to check in with the satellite "server", even if it has no data to send.

We call it a keep alive signal in telecom. "Hello, I'm here but nothing to send."

Maybe I missed this in previous posts but when the press say ACARS stopped transmitting does that mean there was an abrupt end to a steady stream of reports or was that the last engine report at the top of climb or beginning of cruise which also coincides with the ATC handoff on which case you might expect no new transmissions unless there was a problem. The transponders then going off may have been the first indication of a problem not the lack of ACARS.
Also wouldn't it be unusual for one of the two flight crew to leave the cockpit at a point when there is an ATC handover?

Quoting mandala499 (Reply 284):

. but 'UNTIL' ... doesn't mean it cant be a possibility... you've only just highlighted the MANY military 'areas' of various countries....keeping in mind that the 'ping'/'blip' on the Malay military radar still hasn't been confirmed as to WHAT IT ACTUAL WAS!! they just say it 'wasn't hostile'!!!

Is there a possibility that one of the passengers attached a Luggage GPS Tracker? Could this be an item that searchers havn't asked the next of kin to the passengers yet because its an after thought?

For those of you who do not know what this is, Google Luggage GPS Tracker.

These are relatively cheap, small and simple. I am not sure if these will transmit underwater or not, but perhaps this is a route that hasn't been though of yet with passengers families.

Quoting yvphx (Reply 298): I am not sure if these will transmit underwater or not

"Transmit" to where? If the plane is over an ocean, what is it connecting to to transmit?

Bottom line is to believe that, you also have to believe that the cell phones are working.