Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 14 Mar 2014 15:12

they are welcome to send a UUV at their own cost and show off.

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 14 Mar 2014 16:38

i had a rotflmao moment when i saw the seismic event story
imagine the speed the plane must have been flying at to hit the seabed to create a measurable event...

nawabs · Post by **nawabs** » 14 Mar 2014 16:43

A waypoint is a named geographical point on the Earth's surface. Imagine you and your friends got together and decided to call some point at X° N and Y° W "foobar" -- now you have a waypoint called "foobar." You can say "I'm 10 miles north of foobar" and people will know where you are. There doesn't actually have to be something at foobar; it's just an arbitrary point that pilots use so we can discuss where we are. Prior to the advent of GPS (or other forms of area navigation such as LORAN), aircraft navigated using radio beacons such as NDBs and VORs. An aircraft could calculate its position relative to a radio beacon (e.g., I am 4 miles away on the 360° radial), but you'd have to know where the radio beacon was on your chart in order to know your position on the earth.

With GPS, we can define waypoints anywhere, even places with no radio reception. And as mentioned before, Waypoints are in the navigation computers and easy to program a flight path to rather than having to actually navigate while flying at night.

nawabs · Post by **nawabs** » 14 Mar 2014 16:50

Delete

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 14 Mar 2014 16:51

This report by Reuters gives the maximum detail about the possible flight path of the aircraft.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/03/1 ... 5S20140314

Relevant excerpt:

They also gave new details on the direction in which the unidentified aircraft was heading - following aviation corridors identified on maps used by pilots as N571 and P628. These routes are taken by commercial planes flying from Southeast Asia to the Middle East or Europe and can be found in public documents issued by regional aviation authorities.

In a far more detailed description of the military radar plotting than has been publicly revealed, the first two sources said the last confirmed position of MH370 was at 35,000 feet about 90 miles (144 km) off the east coast of Malaysia, heading towards Vietnam, near a navigational waypoint called "Igari". The time was 1:21 a.m.

The military track suggests it then turned sharply westwards, heading towards a waypoint called "Vampi", northeast of Indonesia's Aceh province and a navigational point used for planes following route N571 to the Middle East.

From there, the plot indicates the plane flew towards a waypoint called "Gival", south of the Thai island of Phuket, and was last plotted heading northwest towards another waypoint called "Igrex", on route P628 that would take it over the Andaman Islands and which carriers use to fly towards Europe.

The time was then 2:15 a.m. That's the same time given by the air force chief on Wednesday, who gave no information on that plane's possible direction.

The sources said Malaysia was requesting raw radar data from neighbours Thailand, Indonesia and India, which has a naval base in the Andaman Islands.

I have plotted these waypoints on SkyVector and this is what one gets:

The red dots from north to south are Port Blair, Car-Nicobar and Campbell Bay - each location has an airport (civil - military - military).

If the aircraft did travel east to west along way-points mentioned in the report, then one assertion I had earlier becomes correct - that the a/c flew over Thailand's airspace and not Malaysian hinterland and that is why RMAF did not intercept the aircraft.

This report also means we need to evaluate our radar capability in A&N.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 14 Mar 2014 17:09

Why would one do the Vampi - Gival instead of going direct from Vampi to Igrex?

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 14 Mar 2014 17:46

^^^ Is the hidden implication of all this that India should have some radar track of this flight?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 14 Mar 2014 18:01

We and thailand have been asked for radar data

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 14 Mar 2014 18:03

Singha wrote:We and thailand have been asked for radar data

i wonder if it passed over India undetected and landed in tsp with something really valuable

or crashed attempting to hit vizag

anupmisra · Post by **anupmisra** » 14 Mar 2014 18:06

Now that the Chinese have openly blamed the uighurs for this, it confirms my suspicions that this is a false flag operations by the Chinese. Here's my cross post from the paki thread (yeah I know).

Aha! The panda speaketh. The pieces are now falling into place. The more the Chinese threaten and bigger is their efforts to deploy an array of satellites, ships and pressure tactics on neighbors to "search" for the "missing" plane, the more I am convinced that this is a false flag operation by the Chinese. All those diversionary tactics are leading to a naught.

Look. I have no love lost for the Uighurs but same applies to the Chinese as well. This smells of a very complex and well coordinated operation and its got MSG written all over it. The victims are the poor folks on that plane. They are either dead or are enjoying the hospitality of the Chinese in some remote area of China. The ultimate goal was to somehow bring in the uighurs and lay the blame on them. Well, the uighurs and the Chinese deserve each other.

Remember the barking dog.

The Malays know something but are afraid of speaking out because they have a large Chinese population.

Remember the barking dog syndrome? Everyone is focused on:

1. The plane crashing into the sea/ocean soon after losing contact with KL ATC.
2. Others are focused on the Islamic terrorists who high-jacked the plane (recall the Eyeranians and the missing passports?).
3. Chinese satellites, after much delay, producing pictures of possible debris (later discounted)
4. An oil rig worker noticing a flaming fire ball
5. Drama at the Beijing airport with staged hysteria and the messages of goodwill lit up in candles.
6. And, now this threat.

Consider this as a Chinese goal: Get the world to beat down on and condemn the uighurs and you get all the moral rights to run over their land.

Strategy: Create a global incident that is akin to the attack on the World Trade center towers. Include as many nationalities as possible.

Tactic: Highjack a passenger plane full of international tourists and homeward bound peaceful Chinese from the mainland and make it seem like a terror incident (blow it up and crash it into the sea).

False Flag: Create a diversion by releasing doctored satellite pictures, a white eye witness, flood the theory about fake passports and fake passenger persona....

Possible Scenario: Since no one will focus on the 150+ Chinese origin passengers, infiltrate the group with trained Chinese personnel who know how to manage a group of unruly passengers, and know how to fly a 777 at below radar scope levels. Monitor the flight after it takes off from KL, and as soon as it signs off with the ATC, commandeer the flight into a different direction. Chances are one or both the pilots are on it (which helps in the crew manually switching off the black box and the transponder beacons). Change course, fly at 500 feet over sea lanes which are not heavily trafficked or monitored by overlapping ATCs with state of the art technologies. Cross over Burma (which has rudimentary technology) and fly into mainland China. land at an airfield that can take a 777.

Future actions: Blow up the plane with most of the passengers and blame it on the uighurs (throw in a few dead uighurs in the mix). Or use the plane to attack one of China's landmarks and once again blame on the uighurs (piloted by, of course, a loyal Uighur pilot).

I know. A work of fiction but plausible. Remember the barking dogs theory. Follow the abrupt flight pattern changes after KL ATC's "good bye and good night" (a lost plane does not do that). It is clear someone was directing the flight patterns to avoid land over advanced nations. Besides, not many are focused on searching landing strips in China that can handle a 777 and a large hangar or looking at the passenger manifest with Chinese names. Trace their flight origins, how long they were in Malaysia and their backgrounds (any flight training, army backgrounds)....

Just saying...

Dilbu · Post by **Dilbu** » 14 Mar 2014 18:08

If that is indeed the case then shouldn't India have had the radar data all this while? Or did we fail to detect this flight because of gaps in radar coverage? I can see no reason for India not parting with the data days earlier if we had tracked it.

anupmisra · Post by **anupmisra** » 14 Mar 2014 18:12

Dilbu wrote:If that is indeed the case then shouldn't India have had the radar data all this while? Or did we fail to detect this flight because of gaps in radar coverage? I can see no reason for India not parting with the data days earlier if we had tracked it.

Remember the Chinese trawlers that were noticed off the AN islands not many months ago? Perhaps they were gauging the extent and reach of the radars. That's why the plane changed its course twice. See that map in one of the posts above.

saip · Post by **saip** » 14 Mar 2014 18:13

Denis Giles, Editor of Andaman Chronicle says 'no plane here'. Also, he says there is a 24 hour surveillance.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/world/asi ... ?hpt=hp_t1

Dilbu · Post by **Dilbu** » 14 Mar 2014 18:15

Yes there is a sharp deviation just like trying to avoid a radar but that last point is very close to land and it would have been picked up surely.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 14 Mar 2014 18:15

1000 planes use that airlane daily from asean,aus toward me,eu....maybe they were thought to be just a normal flight...

Dilbu · Post by **Dilbu** » 14 Mar 2014 18:17

Then was it being highjacked to a destination in Europe? What about refuelling etc in that case?

CRamS · Post by **CRamS** » 14 Mar 2014 18:19

The latest tech industry buzz word is "big data" analysis and of course it has its challenges. But boy, if there ever was one, this investigation is an example of micro data analysis

.

saip · Post by **saip** » 14 Mar 2014 18:20

From last way point IGREX it could have headed north through Burma and to mainland China.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 14 Mar 2014 18:21

Three choices...turned south ran out of fuel, sneaked over India to afpak spectre base, went over Myanmar back to cheen overlords.so now cheen And sher khan both hv a chance to browbeat India and poke aggressively in bay of bengal

cheen route cud be over yunnan, eastern Tibet, to gansu, to sinkiang where it can crash or blow up later to justify world coming down hard on Uighurs.

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 14 Mar 2014 18:26

A_Gupta, that is a question which is likely to come up as well...but we need to first understand the range of any sort of military radar on the island. As it is, whatever type it may be, is unlikely to have range more than 300-400 kms. Rough calculation on Wikimapia tells me that last way-point was >300 km from Car-Nicobar Island.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 14 Mar 2014 18:29

We need map of atc zonal coverage in indian airspace.who controls air over bob...port Blair..or vizag, ccu , mas also have slices.

Anurag · Post by **Anurag** » 14 Mar 2014 18:37

Time to plan a major naval exercise in the far east command.

fanne · Post by **fanne** » 14 Mar 2014 18:39

Maybe shut down Arihant trail for some time?

Klaus · Post by **Klaus** » 14 Mar 2014 18:42

Search area is being incrementally expanded to now include the entire BoB, this is getting very suspicious & reeks of a false-flag operation to carry out surveillance on Indian coastal assets (ATV, Kudankulam, INS Varsha etc).

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 14 Mar 2014 18:50

Was the aircraft trying to mask its presence or raise minimum suspicion by flying along international long distance air traffic? And BTW, the search should be in Andaman Sea and not Indian Ocean...unless, the Uncle is hiding something, which I think it is. There is a reason a long range aircraft was high-jacked and DG is not out of my head...

Also, the straight line connecting the way-points would not the exact route but position of the aircraft when it emitted the data.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 14 Mar 2014 18:54

Flying low level to evade radar will also significantly shorten possible range. Further, keep in mind that flying for several hours past the time of last contact will probably overwrite the FDR/CVR , which runs in a loop. That means that even if they're found, they will contain nothing useful beyond the path the plane took to get where they were found, if those who took over kept quiet.

Muppalla · Post by **Muppalla** » 14 Mar 2014 18:55

fanne wrote:Maybe shut down Arihant trail for some time?

You are close but could be more than that.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 14 Mar 2014 18:57

Reeks of cheen clawing their way into bob.

anupmisra · Post by **anupmisra** » 14 Mar 2014 18:59

Dilbu wrote:Yes there is a sharp deviation just like trying to avoid a radar but that last point is very close to land and it would have been picked up surely.

The last recorded turn was towards Phuket. If this was a lost plane, they could have seen the lights from that tourist paradise and headed towards it. Yet the plane deviated away 90 degrees from that direction and headed towards AN. Someone was looking to avoid the radars.

member_28352 · Post by **member_28352** » 14 Mar 2014 19:00

This is a good excuse for China/Unkil to probe aggressively in the BoB. If possible India should find the aircraft pronto and bring the matter to an end. It is also quite possible that the ship crashed in the sea off Vietnam and both Chin and Unkil know this. However they are using this opportunity to map Indian nuclear assets.

Rajiv Lather · Post by **Rajiv Lather** » 14 Mar 2014 19:04

Why ? Money or politics/ideology
Who ? for money pirates, embedded with LTTE or AQ - for ideology/politics, AQ/Taliban, AQ/Uighurs, LTTE
Where ? for money plane lands in either Myanmar, Thailand or Indonesia
for politics/ideology, the same as above but with additional requirement for refueling in case it is AQ/Taliban or LTTE operation. Uighurs will probably try to negotiate from where they are.

If AQ/Taliban are involved, they will try to refuel, rig the plane and target India, Pakistan or DG.
LTTE can try to target either Colombo or a big target in India.

Note: The American base in Singapore can also be a possible target. The plane may have crashed trying to accomplish one of the above. I personally think, most of the passengers may well be alive.

Rajiv Lather · Post by **Rajiv Lather** » 14 Mar 2014 19:07

By the way, as you might have guessed from above, I don't think the Americans or the Chinese are the operators here; they can only be included as possible targets.

anupmisra · Post by **anupmisra** » 14 Mar 2014 19:08

AP Report

A US official told Associated Press that the Malaysia Airlines plane sent signals to a satellite for four hours after the aircraft went missing early last Saturday, raising the possibility the jet carrying 239 people could have flown far from the current search areas. It also increased speculation that whatever happened to the plane was a deliberate act

The wheels are in motion. Watch this space.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 14 Mar 2014 19:12

Jdam on ccu, hyd, blr, maa well within range of potential plans.

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 14 Mar 2014 19:23

The satellites also received speed and altitude information about the plane from its intermittent "pings," the people said. The final ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a normal cruising altitude. They added that it was unclear why the pings stopped. One of the people, an industry official, said it was possible that the system sending them had been disabled by someone on board.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 3396580350

dinakar · Post by **dinakar** » 14 Mar 2014 19:24

Singha wrote:We need map of atc zonal coverage in indian airspace.who controls air over bob...port Blair..or vizag, ccu , mas also have slices.

Here it is.. link

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 14 Mar 2014 19:32

Funny thing is, I don't think we have fighter coverage in Peninsular India...Mig-29K are in Goa while eastern seaboard - having multiple airbases - seems to be w/o fighter squadrons. Tambaram trains QFI pilots but I doubt it has fighters - GE reveals only Kiran trainer aircraft which are likely used for training.

Same is the case with Arakkonam - it houses the big birds (Tu-142 and P-8I) but has no fighters as far I know. Though, GE image shows half a dozen Jaguars which are likely to have been there as part of some exercise.

It's time for either Navy to get 2 x Squadrons of Su-30MKI and deploy them one each on east and west coast. in the interim, get a detachment from Pune or Goa for Peninsular India.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 14 Mar 2014 19:34

dinakar wrote:Here it is.. link

Are the concentric rings around individual A&N islands the range of their civilian radars ? There's clearly enough space in between for MH370 to fly through undetected. Of course the military radars may have much longer range, but may not have actively tracked the flight.

Thanjavur AFS will host MKIs, but not for another 2-3 years it seems.

nawabs · Post by **nawabs** » 14 Mar 2014 19:35

Extra

member_28352 · Post by **member_28352** » 14 Mar 2014 19:41

The closest Airbase with some decent air power is Kalaikunda in WB. Though I don't think it has Rambhas.