Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-370 goes missing

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saip
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Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by saip »

The Malaysian airliner crash, both the fake passengers seem to have bought the tickets at the same time. Looks more and more like a terrorist act. Plane attempted to turn back but no communication was sent. Not even an automatic distress message by the plane. Must have been catastrophic failure inside the cockpit. Recently there was this video about breaching the cockpit in 2 seconds (yes 2 seconds). This is done by using the drinks cart while a pilot opens the door for a bath room break.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by Mort Walker »

It is odd how it disappeared off long range radar and sensors. I still don't rule out that comms were jammed by military either Chinese or US and then inadvertently shot down by a ShAM. AA missile wouldn't necessarily destroy the plane instantaneously. Another thing is that it was last reported turned around. South China seas are brimming with sat & comms surveillance. I bet US DoD knows what happened.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by Prem »

Mort Walker wrote:It is odd how it disappeared off long range radar and sensors. I still don't rule out that comms were jammed by military either Chinese or US and then inadvertently shot down by a ShAM. AA missile wouldn't necessarily destroy the plane instantaneously. Another thing is that it was last reported turned around. South China seas are brimming with sat & comms surveillance. I bet US DoD knows what happened.
Wreckage is spotted in Andaman Sea. Were the pilots lips got sealed under the gun over their heads and forced to go toward Burma? More more like Faithfoollish style operation.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by saip »

Andman sea is way off the airline's route. No radar spotted the deviation? If that is true, what could be the targets? Could only be Indian.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by Nandu »

Jhujar wrote: Wreckage is spotted in Andaman Sea.
Where is that info from? Only thing I see is the airlines has asked Thai navy to search in Andaman sea, not that any wreckage has been sighted.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by member_28502 »

It should have shown up on Indian Radars as well if Andaman sea.
Some times it is wise not to report radar sightings as it may disclose location range and signal type.
Remember KAL 007 saga
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by putnanja »

Are any IN ships in that area? I guess they aren't, else India would have offered help too!
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by member_28502 »

Who spotted?
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by rohitvats »

Well, please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the position of planes across various air-traffic control corridors known because of transponders in the a/c which give out location of the plane? And because the hijackers had switched off these transponders during 9/11 attack, the hijacked flights went untraceable?

The act of flights being monitored by radars of various armed forces in the region is incidental and not part of the civilian surveillance and ATC effort...on the contrary, army and air force radars correlate civilian flights which pop-up on their radar with information like flight path and type passed on by civil aviation authorities. And in case of deviation, it leads to ORP being triggered in our case.

If that be the case then the flight disappearing from flightradar.com or civil ATC network could simply be the act of transponder being switched off...this would make the flight invisible till it showed up on some military radar in the region. In the meantime, the flight could have been diverted to intended target...whether the flight could have been rammed into some ground based high profile target would depend on how early (or late) it would have showed up on military radar and fighters becoming airborne to physically take down the airliner.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by Singha »

found on net:

First of all, the flight crew has to be able to turn off every single piece of electronic equipment from the cockpit in the event of an emergency such as an electrical fire. Just look at the disastrous results of Swissair 111 off the east coast of Canada - the plane had an internal fire within the in-flight entertainment system that the pilots could not switch off due to improper wiring.

Second of all, an aircraft can be tracked with the transponder off, but just not at most commercial airports. There are two types of radar - primary surveillance radar PSR and secondary surveillance radar SSR. PSR is what the military uses and it can detect any object that reflects the radar waves including airplanes with the transponder turned off. SSR is what air traffic controllers (ATC) use at commercial airports to track commercial aircraft as well as military aircraft squawking their IFF codes.

The transponder provides a lot more information to ATC than a 'blip' on PSR, such as the aircraft identification through the unique squawk code and its altitude.

There have been many instances of PSR being used to help aircraft navigate safely to an airport in case of transponder failure or a complete electrical failure. Fortunately, it never happened to me, but its been done.

With all the military airports in the northeast US, it should have been possible to easily track those 4 doomed airliners, but if you look a tthe reality of it all, nobody expected the consequences. Its easy with 20/20 hindsight to look back at it and realize the mistakes that were made.

Even if the aircraft were tracked on PSR, what were the ATC and military authorities supposed to do? Up until 9/11 pretty well every hijacked commercial plane landed safely at an airport other than its intended destination, so its not right just to shoot down a plane because the transponder signal is turned off!
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by Singha »

it tough to hide the arrival of a large plane like 777 even in a isolated jungle town these days when everyone has a cellphone.
a mystery worthy of a james bond film.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by Prasad »

Aren't there a lot of ships in that region? Flight paths are set in stone for commercial flights. Its amazing that there hasn't been any debris found yet. If it did crash. We should have seen something, unless the pilot diverted somewhere and crashed unable to reach his new destination.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by archan »

^ They say it turned back before they lost it.
Meanwhile...
While the world standard for a captain on a wide body aircraft is not less than 6,000hrs, a majority of which would be on high-performance modern airliners, airlines in India require a mere 2,500hrs. In the U.S., an airline co-pilot is required to have a minimum of 1,500hrs while in India a pilot qualifies with just 200hrs on a light piston-engine aircraft.
Why do we suck in just about every department? the entire article makes a depressing read on our regulatory authorities. There is so much that is so wrong about our country... wonder when will we get on with the rest of the better world.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by chaanakya »

archan wrote:^ They say it turned back before they lost it.
Meanwhile...
While the world standard for a captain on a wide body aircraft is not less than 6,000hrs, a majority of which would be on high-performance modern airliners, airlines in India require a mere 2,500hrs. In the U.S., an airline co-pilot is required to have a minimum of 1,500hrs while in India a pilot qualifies with just 200hrs on a light piston-engine aircraft.
Why do we suck in just about every department? the entire article makes a depressing read on our regulatory authorities. There is so much that is so wrong about our country... wonder when will we get on with the rest of the better world.
Despite that Plane crashes have not stopped in other Airlines having "high standards". Please be to remember that it is a Malaysian Plane that vanished. When Indian Plane crashed in India we did discuss it at length and come to possible causes. But then at that time nobody discussed Pakistan's record for for that matter Asiana Record.
Theo_Fidel

Re: Nukkad 72

Post by Theo_Fidel »

Not to mention many accidents in India were from foreign pilots with much experience flying but not in India. The Delhi Crash and the Mangalore one spring to mind, both with foreign pilots with aircraft experience but not necessarily experience with the particular airport, which was identified as the problem. Yes, standards need to be improved in India regularly too but by itself it will not improve safety. Need approach specific to problems in India.

If you ask me I’m more concerned about the management practices of airlines in India esp. on the Tarmac presumably to save cost. The buffer for mistakes/problems is very low in some instances and visible even to me, a lay person.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by member_28502 »

It can not fall nose and bury itself from 35,00 feet , it would come down like confetti on Macy's partade IMHO
Theo_Fidel

Re: Nukkad 72

Post by Theo_Fidel »

Or like Flight 800, sheared into 2-3 distinct pieces that then fall intact into the ocean.

It doesn’t help that the Malaysians and the Chinese appear to be mutually antagonistic. Both seem to be trying to show the other in poor light.
-------------------------------

It now appears 5 passengers checked in but never boarded the plane. They still took off?
Is this common? Anyone in the industry know?
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by Suraj »

It's hard to disintegrate in mid air and not leave debris. Not for a plane of this size in waters full of ships. From altitude, it would leave several sqkms of debris. Theories elsewhere suggest the plane went down straight into the water, which would explain the relative lack of dispersal. But things should still start to surface. Various theories for this that I recall:
* Hijackers overpowered cockpit
* Pilot went rogue (remember EgyptAir 990)
* Pilots incapacitated by cockpit issue.

Yes, the Malaysians want to reveal this themselves, while the Chinese want to find it so they can increase their claim on those waters. The Aussies are using the occasion to send their P-3s to snoop far from the search area, pissing the Malaysians off.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by member_28502 »

it is impossible (at least from known expert sources) that a plane of that size would be intact or break into just 4 pizza slices of different subtended angles
(to make unequal in sizes of slices) even if we assume that the nose dive in one piece like a Stuka bomber, it would then imply sufficient time to activate SOS or some kind of transmission, unless of course on the slices was having this "SOS" device as topping.

Or some one like in "Executive Decision" cut the wiring to all communications (they usually touch two wires to see if sparks fly)
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by chaanakya »

Theo_Fidel wrote:Or like Flight 800, sheared into 2-3 distinct pieces that then fall intact into the ocean.

It doesn’t help that the Malaysians and the Chinese appear to be mutually antagonistic. Both seem to be trying to show the other in poor light.
-------------------------------

It now appears 5 passengers checked in but never boarded the plane. They still took off?
Is this common? Anyone in the industry know?
If Boarding pass is issued then that would be NO Show and checked in Luggage offloaded to security area. Plane would take off after that.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by krishnan »

couldnt even locate the black box ???
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by ArmenT »

Marten wrote:So if the theory that the plane was hijacked is true, how come no one has raised a demand yet?
Looks very unlikely. Consider it this way - if they have mounted a major terror attack, why would they ever want to NOT publicize the attack?
In fairness, not everyone claims responsibility or raises demands right away. For instance, look at Lockerbie bombing. And UBL and the AQ didn't claim responsibility for Sept. 11 attacks for months either.
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Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by ramana »

It is three days since the Malaysian Airlines flight MH-370 from Kaula Lumpur to Beijing went missing. Early on it appears to be a case of aircraft malfunction. However reports of two passengers baording the plan with stolen passports and five passengers with checked in luggage but not boarding the flight all show some malfeasance at work.

Already Interpol complains its database of stolen passports was not queried by Malaysian Airlines.

Latest report says one of the two passengers was an African. Not clear whther the passenger had the Austrian or Italian passport.

Couple this with the earlier reports of shoe bombers wrt to Sochi Olympics most likely this is a shoe bomber with stolen identity.

But why MAS airline and that too to Beijing?

Maybe the Uighers out-sourced the attack to another AlQ in Middle East?

Please collect all the news in this thread.

Thanks, ramana
Theo_Fidel

Re: Nukkad 72

Post by Theo_Fidel »

^^
Good question.

Doesn't the black box have a transmitter of some kind.
--------------------

Thanx Chanakya,

My question was more on how common it is for 5 passengers to go missing after checking in. This is a matter of 1-2 hours after all usually. Seems odd to a lay person. I can see an occasional person go missing but 5!
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by Klaus »

The aircraft disintegrated at 35000 feet, somewhat contradicts earlier report of 20 km long oil slick. Differences come to the fore between Vietnam & Malaysia over the exact crash site, with Vietnamese rescue boats reporting having sighted a door.

If its a terror attack, the Uighurs would be high up on the suspect list, however cannot rule out SE Asia based terror orgs too, perhaps even disenfranchised members of Chinese ethnicities like the Hui.
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by Lalmohan »

there are many lines of enquiry - terrorism is one of them. hijack to unknown destination remains another. pilot error and equipment malfunction have also not been ruled out. and similarities to the air france crash of 2009 have also been mentioned.

more interestingly, a USN spokesman said that the P3C can detect something the size of a football on the surface of the sea - however, there is a vast area being searched right now
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by UlanBatori »

cross-posted from Tech Forum Civil Aviation thread

Inspecteur Clouseau says no one paying L'Interpol to check les passepeurtes
:(( that over a billion passports a year not being checked. Says sitting on Le Base de Data of over 40 billion stolen passports.

I wonder why: could it be that checking with L'Interpol is such a pain like everything run by Frogistanis? Or is a ripoff? Anyway, it sounds like Reporting To Interpol doesn't do diddly, if they are sitting on 40 billion unsolved cases.

With apologies for making snarky comments when nearly 300 families are grieving and so many innocents dead, BUT.. the other thing that is emerging is that travel documents being used by Chinese travelers, may well turn out to be 30% bogus/PhotoShopped. Like many things in China. So this incident of stolen passports may have nothing to do with why the plane went down. Maybe the seals on the doors were also Made In China ripoffs of Boeing parts. Whatever happened was explosive in nature, for there to be no MayDay signal, only "mumbled transmissions" of some sort.

Sounds pretty scary, though, that Pakis could board planes with ease using passports bought in the fleshpots of Phucket etc. Note that the two would have been TFTA, not Chinese, Malaysian or SDRE-looking. Two men, traveling together, tickets consecutive. Hmmm!!! White carnations behind the ears?

What do they mean, "African"? Those two guys don't look African, unless they mean Egyptian/Algerian/South African. They were traveling on very Oiropean passports. Austrians don't look like Africans, do they?
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by chaanakya »

Not very uncommon esp on international flights, transiting passengers, international terminal with lots of flights going out or coming in.. But 5 is certainly a large number. Three people seems to have been traced. two are not known. Offloading luggage is not a big issue, generally esp after 911.

And yes blackbox will have a transmitter called ELT but if it is buried under water, signals would be difficult to trace.
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by saip »

If the plane exploded some one would have noticed, would not they? Like TWA flight off Long Island. I know that flight was close to the coast and so was noticed. The sea where it supposed to have gone down, appears to be shallow, around 150' on average and so the debris should have floated up already. It could have crashed over land and the area that the plane went over, is it thick jungle? That would take some time to search and air search may not even reveal anything. Still puzzling is no SOS messages and no signal from the locator beacons. In the Air France flight it was damaged and so no signal was received.

The five passengers who did not board, their luggage was off loaded.
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by Vayutuvan »

I can understand if the number of people missing a flight are five or so. But these people checked in but did not board. The baggages got offloaded but are they right ones? They could have meddled with the tags or the wrong luggage might have got offloaded. Could be an insider then. (All of this assumes this is a terrorist plot. If not there are several other explanations of course).

(Chaanakya answered already in nukkad)
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by saip »

From the passenger list, any VVIPs on board? So far except the nationalities nothing about the passengers themselves.
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by member_28502 »

It is highly likely that it was Italian passport associated with African looking national.

It is also possible that its a narco terror related Thai connection is from Narco angle to be looked into
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by ramana »

Looks like Chinese are very sensitive to the possibility of Uigher connection to the MH-370 disappearance. They have pressed ten sattelites to the search task!!! Didnt know they had so many that can be tasked.

Ten Chinese Sats pressed to locate Mh-370

Meanwhile Chinese netizens are speculating its Uigher related.

Uigher connections are speculated

Beijing - Amidst all the rumor and speculation surrounding the baffling disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 bound for Beijing, politically charged suggestions that terrorists were to blame carry the gravest implications for China.

Chinese and Malaysian officials are playing down the idea, in the absence of any evidence to support it. But that has not stemmed online allegations pointing the finger at Uighur separatists from the predominantly Muslim province of Xinjiang. Last week, the Chinese authorities blamed Uighur Islamic extremists for a knife attack in the southwestern city of Kunming that left 33 people dead and more than 100 wounded, though they have not produced any of the eight suspects whom police say they have detained.

“I am afraid the incident was launched by Xinjiang people,” read one such conjecture posted by @Chen Lei on the Tencent social media platform. “It is time to investigate Xinjiang and kill those who should be killed.” Of the 239 passengers aboard the plane, 154 were Chinese.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang warned against such rumor-mongers on Monday. “The investigation of the incident is still under way. It is too early to jump to conclusions,” he told reporters. He urged the public to “stay calm and … avoid circulating unconfirmed information.”

The head of Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, was equally cautious at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur on Monday. “To confirm what happened that day on this ill-fated aircraft, we need hard evidence,” he said. “This unprecedented missing aircraft mystery … is mystifying.”

Ability to carry out such an attack?

The investigation into the disappearance of flight MH370 “must include counterterrorism investigators,” says Rohan Guneratna, a terrorism expert at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, since two of the passengers on the plane were using forged passports.

China’s ambassador to Malaysia, Huang Huikang, told a reporter for Hong Kong Satellite TV that US Central Intelligence Agency officials were involved in the investigation because of “speculation about a hijack or terrorism,” according to a post on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform, by the TV reporter.

“Aviation security has been breached. ETIM is the only group with the operational capacity and intent to carry out attacks like this,” he adds, referring to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a shadowy Uighur group whose existence some other international security experts dispute.

In Kuala Lumpur, police Inspector General Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said on Monday evening that one of the two passengers carrying a false passport had been identified from airport closed circuit TV footage and that “he is not from Xinjiang, China,” according to The Star, a Malaysian newspaper. He refused to disclose the man’s identity or nationality, other than to say that he was not Malaysian.

No Uighur organization has ever shown the sort of operational capacity required to smuggle explosives onto an international flight and blow it up. Three Uighurs were sentenced to death in 2012 in a closed trial for allegedly trying to attack the cockpit of a Chinese domestic airliner with sharpened crutches, and in 2008 a Uighur woman was accused of bringing gasoline onto a plane in soda cans. The Chinese authorities have never publicly produced evidence to support those charges.

The presence on flight MH370 of two passengers carrying forged passports that had been stolen in Thailand is not as suspicious as it might seem, according to Xu Ke, a former airline pilot who now teaches at the Zhejiang Police College in eastern China.

“I think it is most likely that the two foreigners carrying forged passports were illegal migrants” heading to Europe, he says. Both had bought tickets at the same time in Thailand for one-way trips from Kuala Lumpur to Amsterdam via Beijing. One of the passengers carrying a foreign passport was then booked to fly to Copenhagen, Denmark, and the other to Frankfurt, Germany, according to the Associated Press.

Doubts mid-air explosion

Such people-smuggling through China is not uncommon. In January, a group of six illegal migrants carrying forged passports, transiting through Beijing Capital airport en route to Europe, were detected and detained, according to a report in the Legal Evening Post, a Beijing daily published by the ruling Communist Party.

Mr. Xu also doubts that the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 blew up in mid-air, given the lack of visible debris in the ocean near the spot where Malaysian air traffic controllers lost touch with the plane.

“If there had been an explosion, debris would have been detected by now” over a large area, assuming that search and rescue teams are looking in the right place, says Xu. “But nothing has been found. I think the possibility of an explosion is slight.”

Xu points out similarities between Saturday’s apparent tragedy and the sudden disappearance in 2009 of an Air France plane over the Atlantic, which crashed into the sea without any emergency call for help from the pilots. That was later found to be the result of mechanical failure and pilot error, though the plane was flying through a severe storm at the time, while the weather was fine when the Malaysia Airlines plane dropped off the radar.

“We simply do not have enough evidence to draw any conclusions yet,” says Xu.

No credible claims or responsibility have emerged, so far, for bringing the Malaysian airliner down.

An email signed by “The Leader of the China Martyrs’ Brigade” declaring that the incident was “a response to the Chinese authorities’ harsh crackdown and persecution of Uighur people” appeared to be a hoax. Even Boxun, the often unreliable Chinese exile website that published the email, dismissed it. - http://www.csmonitor.com/
Why BRF interest in this incident?

Well TSP can do the same and claim its Cashmeri terrorists that did it.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by Gus »

Theo_Fidel wrote: My question was more on how common it is for 5 passengers to go missing after checking in. This is a matter of 1-2 hours after all usually. Seems odd to a lay person. I can see an occasional person go missing but 5!
well..if all 5 were traveling together, it makes a little sense that all 5 missed boarding...

Usually in intl' flights they make every effort to get you boarded...PA announcements, airlines people running around calling out names in lounges etc. - mainly because of rebooking hassles that are considerably difficult than domestic. in domestic they will shut the door on time and it stays closed, unless they have significant number delayed due to connecting flight (and usually they know they are being delayed and on their way).
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by ramana »

Officials rule out flight was targetted

Radar trace shows the plane was turning back. Most likely equipment malfunction and the plane broke up in mid-air accountg for lack of debris.
Then we have the intriguing fact of two passengers on stolen passports onteh flight.
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by ramana »

UK Mirror adds masala
Four suspects travelling on stolen passports:US



Also:
No ACARS contact made unlike Air France Airbus

And

Vietnamese officials claim debris found. Dont know if this old news or new information.
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by Suraj »

Mid-air breakup should generate lots of debris, not account for lack of it. A large plane won't just be vaporized. There was a huge mass of wreckage from TWA800, and even the tragic Kanishka bombing yielded quite a bit of debris, including large parts from the fuselage.
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Re: Nukkad 72

Post by Vayutuvan »

Gus wrote:well..if all 5 were traveling together, it makes a little sense that all 5 missed boarding...
Looks like they are not traveling together as 3 of them were located. Is that correct? By the way what is a significant number? Is it a percentage computed based on data mining over the historic averages data coupled with online scheduling algorithms? If so, if the algorithm says go, they will offload the baggage and take off, I suppose.
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by Vayutuvan »

4 with wrong passports is > 1%. That seems to be rather high compared to the reliability of the entire flight system (including the aircraft, flight path, and MTBF figures). Not to say this is a one-off failure but still.
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Re: Malaysian Arilines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Post by Vayutuvan »

It would hard to detect debris if there was a really big explosion (say 4 x 2 bags exploded in different parts of the cargo hold) the debris could have got distributed over a large part of some remote jungle.
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