The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370

[Legend]

It has been more than a week since the aircraft mysteriously vanished, and the suspected reasons and circumstances surrounding the vanish has changed each day, from midair disintegration to sabotage to hijack to the more tabloid accounts of alien abduction. 

Till now, no official explanation has been given, even with the intervention and assistance rendered by experts from so many countries, including good ol' Uncle Sam. 

 

If this was a sabotage attempt, I would have to say that it was well-planned and meticulously executed, and leaves so many top minds in the field scratching their heads. And what is the intent of the people who did this?  I can simply hope that the passengers and crew are still alive and that they would somehow, somehow, get out of whatever situation they are in and be home one day.

 

Are any of you following the news, and what do you guys think?

 

Unless it was part of a David Copperfield magic show, it is next to impossible to have an aircraft vanish without a trace these days without the benefit of even a bread crumb trail.

 

 

 

 

[Vegasvic]

From what I have been reading anyway, it seems most aviation experts believe the plane is at the bottom of the Indian ocean, due to their confidence that a plane that size would be unable to land anywhere in the world without being picked up by civilian/military radar, and instantly ID'd.

[Legend]

From what I have been reading anyway, it seems most aviation experts believe the plane is at the bottom of the Indian ocean, due to their confidence that a plane that size would be unable to land anywhere in the world without being picked up by civilian/military radar, and instantly ID'd.

Yes I read about this too. I got my doubts about what the aviation experts said however.

 

It does not explain the purported "still ringing" phones of some of the passengers when contact was attempted, assuming it was true. 

Also, I think that if the plane hit the water, a lot of the debris would float and be discovered. Up till today, no debris from MH370 has been found despite the intensive scouring of the seas that it could have crashed into.

[astonjenks]

The latest theory of the crew possibly being involved in the disappearance is quite plausible? As you all know communications with a plane are constant however comms ceased rather rapidly and without explanation. The theory that the crew switched all comms off could be valid, however is it possible? The re-routing is now known, according to BBC with the possibility of the plane being landed without trace somewhere incredibly difficult but not impossible as the radar systems in the Indonesian area are fallible?

 

Either way I too hope that all the passengers and crew make it if they are still with us.

 

AJ

[Legend]

The latest theory of the crew possibly being involved in the disappearance is quite plausible? As you all know communications with a plane are constant however comms ceased rather rapidly and without explanation. The theory that the crew switched all comms off could be valid, however is it possible? The re-routing is now known, according to BBC with the possibility of the plane being landed without trace somewhere incredibly difficult but not impossible as the radar systems in the Indonesian area are fallible?

 

Either way I too hope that all the passengers and crew make it if they are still with us.

 

AJ

If plane was hijacked as per the latest theory, AJ, then it was planned very elaborately. But to what ends? Till now, no statements have been issued by any entity claiming to have hijacked the plane, nor have any demands been made in the same manner.

We can only hope that the crew and passengers are still safe, though a little hope is lost each day that there are no news..

[martijnp]

I read every news item about the disappearance, the flight was over the indonesian ocean. One of the deepest oceans in the world (24,460 ft / 7.455 meters), it could be crashed there and sunk to the deep bottom of the sea. I'm not sure if our current technology can scan these deep sea...

 

All my thoughs to the passengers and flight crew

[importr]

Yes but no plane would hit the water without breaking up, surely?

So there has to be debris in the area, if that's what happened. The flight recorder locator beacon automatically activates on immersion in water and lasts about 30 days.

As for the theory that if the plane landed and no claims or demands have been made so far, it takes time to hide 200plus "hostages" which could explain the delay.

Either way this is a very bizarre incident and I feel for the families of those on board.

[panerai153]

Man if you read the NYTimes, there are about a thousand different conspiracy theories out there, and they are growing by the minute. Legend, AFA the ringing phones, when your cell phone is out of range of a cell tower, or is turned off, it will still ring, the ring you hear is the cell tower attempting to contact the phone, it's not the actual phone ringing. Many people have said"why didn't people on the plane use their cell phones to contact someone. Simply because the range of a cell phone is about 10 miles from the last tower it was in contact with. People who live in urban populated areas think that cells have infinite range, they don't, the signal is being handed off seamlessly from tower to tower, but when you get to the end of the line, and are 10 or so miles past the last tower, your cell starts to show"out of Range" or "no Signal". Believe me, when you live out in the country in isolated areas, you get plenty of those signals!! When it gets out of range, it now becomes and IPod. 

 

There are a fair number of pilots on the forum, commercial as well as Military and ex-military, You guys have a lot better knowledge base about transponders, radar, and other methods that the aircraft uses to identify itself and to be tracked. If this was indeed a hijacking, it certainly would seem that it would take several people on the ground as well as the pilot or pilots working in concert, not only in the air, but when the plane landed. It would need to be concealed, passengers either taken care of or disposed of, and then what? Was their something in the cargo hold that was valuable enough to risk stealing the plane for? Certainly doesn't seem like a hostage situation, you would think that as soon as the plane was safely on the ground the hostage takers would have started making demands, but thus far nothing. 

 

This may be the mystery of the century!!

[mymanmatt]

Amelia Erhart.We still don't know what really happened. I know today we have communication around the world. It seems like every single flight in the world is tracked by someone somewhere. Very  strange!! We may never know what happened or why.

[KB]

When this first happened the thing that struck me was the fact that onboard must have been over 200 mobile phones, iPads, Laptops etc, many of which you would think were being used at the time she went missing.

 

I said to my wife the only explanation I could think of that no message was sent was that the end came too sudden, in other words a mid air explosion. 

 

Of course the absence of any debris (so far) seems to make that less likely.

 

If it is a Hijack then they must also have some way of jamming signals, but then again as already pointed out, to what end?

 

The plane has either been on the ground or under the sea for the past week, if it is on the ground then whoever has it certainly is in no hurry to let the world know.

 

Ken

[ceejay]

I'm going with my theory...

 

Plane is cruising at around 40,000 feet @ at around 500mph over the ocean. It suffers a catostrophic structural failure (possibly due to an explosion)

The plane disintergrates in 100,000 tiny pieces and is they are scattered over a 50-100 mile radius. Most of them parts ~95% sink without a trace. The rest are floating around waiting to be discovered in a year-2 years time.

 

If it was an explosion, then again possibly intensional, but from a loaner (with an accomplice?) wanting to go somewhere other than the planes original destination.

Al-Quaida will be desperately trying to find a link between the the dissapearance and themselves to claim responsibility.

 

Other than that a tragic accident and my thoughts go out to the family & loved ones of the lost.

 

Don't believe the media hype, they have to sell news

[Legend]

Man if you read the NYTimes, there are about a thousand different conspiracy theories out there, and they are growing by the minute. Legend, AFA the ringing phones, when your cell phone is out of range of a cell tower, or is turned off, it will still ring, the ring you hear is the cell tower attempting to contact the phone, it's not the actual phone ringing. Many people have said"why didn't people on the plane use their cell phones to contact someone. Simply because the range of a cell phone is about 10 miles from the last tower it was in contact with. People who live in urban populated areas think that cells have infinite range, they don't, the signal is being handed off seamlessly from tower to tower, but when you get to the end of the line, and are 10 or so miles past the last tower, your cell starts to show"out of Range" or "no Signal". Believe me, when you live out in the country in isolated areas, you get plenty of those signals!! When it gets out of range, it now becomes and IPod. 

 

There are a fair number of pilots on the forum, commercial as well as Military and ex-military, You guys have a lot better knowledge base about transponders, radar, and other methods that the aircraft uses to identify itself and to be tracked. If this was indeed a hijacking, it certainly would seem that it would take several people on the ground as well as the pilot or pilots working in concert, not only in the air, but when the plane landed. It would need to be concealed, passengers either taken care of or disposed of, and then what? Was their something in the cargo hold that was valuable enough to risk stealing the plane for? Certainly doesn't seem like a hostage situation, you would think that as soon as the plane was safely on the ground the hostage takers would have started making demands, but thus far nothing. 

 

This may be the mystery of the century!!

Thank you A. As far as I remember, when the phone of someone I was dialing was switched off, it would likely divert to a pre-recorded message telling me that the phone was switched off or out of range of coverage. I have no idea that it would continue to "ring".

 

I do believe that the plane was hijacked in some way, but as mentioned, this would really require an elaborate plan, taking into account the number of people involved, many of them Chinese. If you have seen how the Chinese behave at airports when there were delays or events displeasing to them in any way, you would know what a daunting task that would be.

 

We, as outsiders planted safely on the ground with our loved ones, have the luxury to speculate and guess and wonder. I just hope that the mystery gets solved soon, if nothing else, it would serve as a painful lesson for the aviation industry globally. If this incident is, or suspected to be a result of hijacking or an act of terrorism, security at airports and on flights might soon be at an unprecedented high level since 911. 

[pcardoza]

If the intent were to simply crash the plane as an act of terror, I don't see where the actions taken would play into the situation.   Why turn the plane and disable all transponders?   Terrorists do what they do for the notoriety and public display of their actions.    My guess was that it was a hijacking which may have gone bad and the plane ended up crashing.    I would be happily shocked if they find that the plane actually landed somewhere.

 

I'm totally surprised that given the military defense systems around the world today, that this plane was able to "disappear" as it apparently has.    I'm one who believes there has to be more to the story than is getting out in the news.

[Limestone]

If the plane is on the ground, it is only ELT, ie the regular emergency transmitter, which can give any signal.
And it starts automatically when the aircraft is subjected to large accelerations or decelerations.

If the aircraft landed normally they have to turn the ELT manually.
It has not perceived any ELT signals reported officially.

 

The ELT can´t be located under water, but the Black box has an "Under Water Locator" that automatically gives off a distress signal for over 1 month and can be noticed up to 10km deepth.

 

I think it´s quite hard to make a plane dissapeer in the middle of the air and then land it unnoticed somewhere else.

I think that most likely it´s an explosion/technical fault that caused it to.

 

One can compare the tracing of the Air France plane that disappeared in 2009. It took 2 years before we found some subject of the investigation and were at great depth almost 3000 meters in the Atlantic.

[nikki6]

From what I'm getting of it, there was some corroding of the skin layer of the comms ariel on the top of the plane. If that cracks and let's loose, there go pretty much all comms and also cabin decompression, passengers and pilots pass out, hence no calls, messages etc. it hits water and goes down deep. Black box and other transponders on this model aren't the best on the market, quite far from it, so if the radar/ariel has destroyed while pinning off the fuselage, you then have very little emissions coming from an older plane at a crazy depth, parts of the Indian Ocean have shown to be so deep as to be unable to gauge the depth.

One of many theories I'm sure. Just hope they find live people if I'm wrong!!

[asciwhite]

[Mike on a bike]

At this point theories abound but going back to Limestone's post"One can compare the tracing of the Air France plane that disappeared in 2009. It took 2 years before we found some subject of the investigation and were at great depth almost 3000 meters in the Atlantic." I have a feeling resolution/discovery will be far down the road.

[hiker01]

ET........  phone home???