[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:
Reports of Chinese satellite pics of a submerged plane along the flight path.[/quote]
Satellite images taken the day after the plane went missing… thank you China. They obviously don’t give a rats ass about their 150 or so citizens aboard.
So searchers go to the area… no parts or crash debris to be found.
More news. Boeing had diagnostic software on board that did a data dump 5 hours after take-off. Apparently, this has been confirmed by Boeing officials, but I can’t find official confirmation.
Also, from the WSJ:
U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU -2.04% Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.
Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. BA -0.99% 777’s engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program.
That raises a host of new questions and possibilities about what happened aboard the widebody jet carrying 239 people, which vanished from civilian air-traffic control radar over the weekend, about one hour into a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.
Six days after the mysterious disappearance prompted a massive international air and water search that so far hasn’t produced any results, the investigation appears to be broadening in scope.
U.S. counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner’s transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe.
The investigation remains fluid, and it isn’t clear whether investigators have evidence indicating possible terrorism or sabotage. So far, U.S. national security officials have said that nothing specifically points toward terrorism, though they haven’t ruled it out.
But the huge uncertainty about where the plane was headed, and why it apparently continued flying so long without working transponders, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for a reason that appears unclear to U.S. authorities. Some of those theories have been laid out to national security officials and senior personnel from various U.S. agencies, according to one person familiar with the matter.
At one briefing, according to this person, officials were told investigators are actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted “with the intention of using it later for another purpose.”
As of Wednesday it remained unclear whether the plane reached an alternate destination or if it ultimately crashed, potentially hundreds of miles from where an international search effort has been focused.
In those scenarios, neither mechanical problems, pilot mistakes nor some other type of catastrophic incident caused the 250-ton plane to mysteriously vanish from radar.
It’s a good thing John McClane is on board.
Oooops, the Chinese were mistaken. They’re sorry. And the Vietnamese are getting PO’ed that they’re spending a shitton of money deploying search assets all over the South China Sea on a wild goose chase.
[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:
Oooops, the Chinese were mistaken. They’re sorry. And the Vietnamese are getting PO’ed that they’re spending a shitton of money deploying search assets all over the South China Sea on a wild goose chase.[/quote]
The Chinese have certainly taken this cluster fuck to a whole 'nother level. The Viets are better off staying on land looking over some old US air bases just for shits and giggles.
From WSJ:
Correction: Satellite, Not Engine, Data Drove Investigators? Suspicions on Malaysia Jet Flying Time
U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for up to four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.
The investigators believe the plane flew for a total of up to five hours, according to these people, based on analysis of signals sent by the Boeing 777’s satellite-communication link designed to automatically transmit the status of some onboard systems to the ground.
Corrections & Amplifications: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said investigators based their suspicions on signals from monitoring systems embedded in the plane?s Rolls-Royce PLC engines and described that process.
Man this is the weirdest thing I have ever heard of. I don’t even know what to think. I am not sure if they should be looking for a downed plane, or be looking for a hi-jacked plane in cuba. You can’t just hide a 777.
[quote]pat wrote:
Man this is the weirdest thing I have ever heard of. I don’t even know what to think. I am not sure if they should be looking for a downed plane, or be looking for a hi-jacked plane in cuba. You can’t just hide a 777.[/quote]
SPECTRE did it. Haven’t you watched any James Bond?? Underwater man, and get some harpoon guns.
Missing Jet ?Pinged? Satellites With Location, Altitude for Hours After Disappearance
Communication satellites received intermittent data ?pings? from a missing Malaysia Airlines jet, giving the plane?s location, speed and altitude for at least five hours after it disappeared from civilian radar screens, people briefed on the investigation said Thursday.
The final satellite ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a ?normal? cruising altitude. The people declined to say where specifically the transmission originated, adding that it was unclear why the transmissions stopped. One possibility one person cited was that the system sending them had been disabled by someone on board.
From WSJ
I’m starting to believe this plane is wheels down somewhere.
Well, not really. But I don’t think it’s no longer impossible.
Malaysia Airliner Communications Shut Down Separately: US Officials Say
Two U.S. officials tell ABC News the U.S. believes that the shutdown of two communication systems happened separately on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. One source said this indicates the plane did not come out of the sky because of a catastrophic failure.
The data reporting system, they believe, was shut down at 1:07 a.m. The transponder – which transmits location and altitude – shut down at 1:21 a.m.
This indicates it may well have been a deliberate act, ABC News aviation consultant John Nance said.
U.S. investigators told ABC News that the two modes of communication were “systematically shut down.”
That means the U.S. team “is convinced that there was manual intervention,” a source said, which means it was likely not an accident or catastrophic malfunction that took the plane out of the sky.
U.S. officials said earlier that they have an “indication” the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner may have crashed in the Indian Ocean and is moving the USS Kidd to the area to begin searching.
It’s not clear what the indication was, but senior administration officials told ABC News the missing Malaysian flight continued to “ping” a satellite on an hourly basis after it lost contact with radar. The Boeing 777 jetliners are equipped with what is called the Airplane Health Management system in which they ping a satellite every hour.
I was watching CNN last night and they had some “experts” on that were exploring other theories. Again, the plane is so full of back up generators (one even works off wind speed) and redundant systems that things had to have been manually shut down.
The Malaysian U-turn theory that was debunked now seems to be credible enough to merit an Indian Ocean search. Good luck with that buddy!
The burning plane that was sighted off an oil rig in the South China Sea… not another word on that. So I’d say that the action is going on where they’re not saying, particularly off Vietnam.
Well… I just ran across this. It seems that the plane did divert west. It followed established aviation corridors that are used by commercial flights, this one being SE Asia to the Mid East and Europe. There are way points along the route and this plane went over all of them, under control. So this was no ghost ship on auto pilot.
On that westward heading what do we have? Sri Lanka, south India, maybe some smaller remote islands. Did the plane have enough fuel to reach Pakistan or Somalia? I’d think that a refuel was out of the question.
We have a P-8A Poseidon in the area, India has some as well. This is a great surveillance and recon aircraft, worth reading up on.
I don’t know how much fuel was on board, but here’s where the plane could be just based on 4 hours of flight time after the last known location.
Possible terrorist target? Huge naval shipyard in the Indian Ocean.
Perhaps some disgruntled Chagossians? lol
I saw another map with a bigger 2500 mile radius, including Pakistan and Somalia. I’d think that the better-known bases like Diego Garcia have been looked at already.
My $ is still on SE Asia, lots of old usable bases where a plane could be covered up for a while. The turn to the west was a ruse to throw everyone off and it may have worked. It just makes no sense to head west unless the plane could make Pakistan or Somalia, anywhere else has too many eyes on it.
In SE Asia, all they have to do is doctor up the plane’s transponder and appearance, refuel and take off to who knows where. The military community is taking this very seriously.
[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:
Possible terrorist target? Huge naval shipyard in the Indian Ocean.
Perhaps some disgruntled Chagossians? lol[/quote]
I’m not sure they would reveal this kind of information right away but I bet they are investigating each of the passengers for possible terrorist links. Assuming they find absolutely nothing they might pursue this theory less. I’m not sure if a terrorist would be smart enough or even need to go as far as making travel itinerary plans in beijing when they were planning an
“alternate flight plan”.
[quote]beachguy498 wrote:
I saw another map with a bigger 2500 mile radius, including Pakistan and Somalia. I’d think that the better-known bases like Diego Garcia have been looked at already.
My $ is still on SE Asia, lots of old usable bases where a plane could be covered up for a while. The turn to the west was a ruse to throw everyone off and it may have worked. It just makes no sense to head west unless the plane could make Pakistan or Somalia, anywhere else has too many eyes on it.
In SE Asia, all they have to do is doctor up the plane’s transponder and appearance, refuel and take off to who knows where. The military community is taking this very seriously.[/quote]
Real life plans like this don’t always turn out as good as in the movies. If they succeeded in successfully stealing this plane and landing in a remote location whatever their next step is has plenty more room for fuck ups.
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
[quote]beachguy498 wrote:
I saw another map with a bigger 2500 mile radius, including Pakistan and Somalia. I’d think that the better-known bases like Diego Garcia have been looked at already.
My $ is still on SE Asia, lots of old usable bases where a plane could be covered up for a while. The turn to the west was a ruse to throw everyone off and it may have worked. It just makes no sense to head west unless the plane could make Pakistan or Somalia, anywhere else has too many eyes on it.
In SE Asia, all they have to do is doctor up the plane’s transponder and appearance, refuel and take off to who knows where. The military community is taking this very seriously.[/quote]
Real life plans like this don’t always turn out as good as in the movies. If they succeeded in successfully stealing this plane and landing in a remote location whatever their next step is has plenty more room for fuck ups.[/quote]
Anything can go wrong if it hasn’t already gone wrong.
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
[quote]beachguy498 wrote:
I saw another map with a bigger 2500 mile radius, including Pakistan and Somalia. I’d think that the better-known bases like Diego Garcia have been looked at already.
My $ is still on SE Asia, lots of old usable bases where a plane could be covered up for a while. The turn to the west was a ruse to throw everyone off and it may have worked. It just makes no sense to head west unless the plane could make Pakistan or Somalia, anywhere else has too many eyes on it.
In SE Asia, all they have to do is doctor up the plane’s transponder and appearance, refuel and take off to who knows where. The military community is taking this very seriously.[/quote]
Real life plans like this don’t always turn out as good as in the movies. If they succeeded in successfully stealing this plane and landing in a remote location whatever their next step is has plenty more room for fuck ups.[/quote]
Lots of upside, too.
If “they” managed to steal a commercial airliner loaded with passengers, then whatever comes next would seem to be more straightforward. “They” have the upper hand now, because no one knows who or where they are.
Load up the plane with fuel and fly it into whatever town is the capital city of their oppressor.
[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
[quote]beachguy498 wrote:
I saw another map with a bigger 2500 mile radius, including Pakistan and Somalia. I’d think that the better-known bases like Diego Garcia have been looked at already.
My $ is still on SE Asia, lots of old usable bases where a plane could be covered up for a while. The turn to the west was a ruse to throw everyone off and it may have worked. It just makes no sense to head west unless the plane could make Pakistan or Somalia, anywhere else has too many eyes on it.
In SE Asia, all they have to do is doctor up the plane’s transponder and appearance, refuel and take off to who knows where. The military community is taking this very seriously.[/quote]
Real life plans like this don’t always turn out as good as in the movies. If they succeeded in successfully stealing this plane and landing in a remote location whatever their next step is has plenty more room for fuck ups.[/quote]
Lots of upside, too.
If “they” managed to steal a commercial airliner loaded with passengers, then whatever comes next would seem to be more straightforward. “They” have the upper hand now, because no one knows who or where they are.
Load up the plane with fuel and fly it into whatever town is the capital city of their oppressor.
[/quote]
We were talking at work, the plane might be in a hangar somewhere out of sight. Hiding in plain sight perhaps. All that needs to be done is dispose of a lot of bodies and wait.
