Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-370 goes missing

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 12 Mar 2014 19:37

UB, Nice scenario. What if the co-pilot, the one who is geek is part of the plot? No need for hijackers etc.
Also what is No.17?
Vizag?

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 12 Mar 2014 19:40

Colombo is my ~~best~~ most horrible guess. Vizag has constant AA cover, I hope! Plus too long a trip over radar/yindoo-infested waters.

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 12 Mar 2014 19:41

UlanBatori wrote:So here is the latest estimate using our standard Predictor-Corrector Algorithm from UB Conspiracy Theories Inc., so well-proven in cricket matches in the distant past:

1. Hijackers were, to put it mildly, extremely well prepared. No comment on stolen passports etc, these guys were way smarter than I can imagine, so they must have had a fool-proof scheme, not one which would trigger a red flag if someone had decided to actually wake up and check with Inspecteur Clouseau d'Interpol.
2. Either pilots were already part of scheme (has anyone checked whether the actual pilots were the intended pilots? Watch "Thunderball" for how this is done..) or
3. At around the right time, cockpit door was opened (ever been on ***** airline? They don't use armored doors etc. or check ppls shoes, underwear, cavity-search).
4. Some form of coercion or deception was used to open door, so flight crew had no chance to reach for the hijack/ Mayday switch before they were at least incapacitated. They MAY have mumbled something into their mikes before passing out. (two pilot reports in the initial hours)
5. Trained pilots took over. They had at least a Nokia GPS (no Internet needed) cellphone to navigate.
6. Passengers were ordered not to move - or die immediately.
7. Systematic search for cellphones. Probably, anyone who did NOT produce a cellphone got beaten up.
8. Waited till edge of ATC region, then dived, turned off transponders, confirmed that no one was expressing concern, then turned to track across Thailand and AROUND Malay military radar.
9. Their comrades had driven a leaky boat in the ocean around there, causing an oil slick 9 miles long. They didn't bother to use exact same fuel etc because that entailed too much risk (why would anyone other than an airline or Air Force buy that brand of fuel?) because they expected the whole event to be over soon - or it didn't matter because the plane would have really disappeared.
10. Climbed back up to move faster. Inadvertently skimmed through Malay radar coverage and were spotted around 2:40AM. Dived back down when radar coverage showed on radar inside aircraft.
11. Flew over area known to be free of radar coverage, probably climbed to an altitude where passage over a ship would not arouse curiosity.
12. Landed. Maybe survived landing, maybe suffered damage that had to be repaired b4 takeoff again.
13. Passengers ordered out (I HOPE!!!!!). Sitting in some hall/ space covered with camouflage in a place where IR would not arouse curiosity (abandoned school? Tsunami-damaged bldg? Volcanic crater like in "U Only Live Twice"?
14. One or two surviving cellphones rang. Were immediately silenced, hopefully not along with their owners - these may have been phones that were in the collection bin, except but turned off. OK, so they now smashed/burned all phones. No more ring tones when Inspector Abdul checked.
15. Plane refuelled, repaired (maybe taking a long time) using a tanker boat brought in by sea to edge of airfield/controlled area.
16. Suicide "Missile" mission to take off. I HOPE they don't want the passengers or flt attendants around for that. Since 9/11/2001 ppl know what to expect on these flights, so they would fight to the death, at least for their families. Not easy to control inside a plane, much easier to keep them on the ground.

And the clock is ticking for No. 14. I hope the landing gear was damaged on landing badly enough to preclude any takeoff soon. Because the passengers' "use" to the terrorists expires as soon as the suicide flight takes off (certainty of massive retaliation regardless of the outcome of the 'missile' attack, and regardless of their treatment of the passengers).

Sorry to put this down here. I hope I can apply the "corrector" and delete this post soon when a better outcome is found.

Of course the Malay military must have realized this, hence the ambiguity about where they were really interested in searching. Tried to buy time with the Vietnam search, then the cat was out of bag, then they may have put out the "life raft" scam. The earlier "door" scam apparently sank, as intended, before it was retrieved as well.

They cannot afford to say that it is terrorism because that would be a death warrant for the passengers. No sense in badgering the poor guys. Doctored Iranian images, whatever, they are trying their best to confuse matters and give the passengers some hope of being saved.

*********************
Response to the one about GPS failure/inertial nav.

These days, if all else fails, all you have to do is to come down to say 10,000 feet, and cellphone coverage will be available. These are not so remote areas, farmers, hunters, all carry cellphones and cal use them. So at least 1 passenger would have been able to send out a distress call. If allowed or alive. The comm silence HAS to mean crash or terrorist hijacking.

There you go. Only the highest standards of rumors for us at UB CTs. CT has to fit all known and reasonably certain facts.

Jet fuel is fairly easy to buy near any airport. Hundreds of liters of drained fuel post regularly mandated fuel inspections from large numbers of aircraft passing through are available and have to be disposed. Plenty of commercial contractors at every airport handling this disposal.

nawabs · Post by **nawabs** » 12 Mar 2014 19:41

But news feeds say that he was a recent convert to 777 and that even this was a training flight. I doubt whether he could manage the plane alone.

First officer on missing jet was transitioning to 777-200s

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/08/world ... index.html

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 12 Mar 2014 19:44

nawabs wrote:True. The 777 or any modern aircraft doesn't need GPS to navigate. If the GPS was disabled, the Inertial Reference Systems would continue to navigate with a very high degree of accuracy.

There would be some extra platform drift given the fancy maneuvers that seem to have been done but still reasonable accuracy could be assured

fanne · Post by **fanne** » 12 Mar 2014 19:45

If step 16 can Modi be one of the target, when he is doing a public meeting? Or Kalpakkam?

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 12 Mar 2014 19:47

And the slick may have been jet fuel all right, but a lab determined that it wasn't the right mix/brand that was put in that day into the 777. Sulfur/additive content very specific to field of origin and refinery. Impossible to predict 2 dins in advance. So this may have been a slip-up on their part. Was it a Vietnamese or Malay lab that announced it?

About this "first officer was new, poor thing!" I have the following observation:

If u were Osama BL, (Alla* forbid!) would YOU trust the MOST CRITICAL phase of the operation, to novice pilots? So the 9/11 pilots HAD to be highly trained, very experienced military pilots. Also think of the trouble of flying at low enough altitude (20 feet?) at 400 knots across a parking lot to hit the Pentagon, or hitting a building at 400 knots.

Same here. Don't assume that ANY pilot is a novice. Anyway, all it took was someone to open the door. Also, no question of "alone": It takes a team to keep 239 passengers terrified and not reaching for their cellphones.

Note that in this scheme, it's not a 1-step suicide mission. Eventual Step 16 may require only one pilot. This is the best hope for the passengers' survival, incidentally. No one wants them on board, and it takes too may 'pakis' to keep them under control. Even if they all rush to the rear the plane may go unstable.

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 12 Mar 2014 19:51

nawabs wrote:But news feeds say that he was a recent convert to 777 and that even this was a training flight. I doubt whether he could manage the plane alone.

First officer on missing jet was transitioning to 777-200s

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/08/world ... index.html

He would have been able to manage perfectly. He would not have been sitting right seat on an international flight without a very large number of simulator hours and plenty of ground school and a number of exams and tests passed. Recall from somewhere that he may have had in excess of 2800 hours of flight time in total. Maybe not regulatory authority legally OK but definitely very knowledgeable pilot OK, more than enough to safely land and take off on his very own, manage comfortably in the air and easily get from point A to point B.

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 12 Mar 2014 19:52

fanne wrote:If step 16 can Modi be one of the target, when he is doing a public meeting? Or Kalpakkam?

Would they have had the fuel or even interest??

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 12 Mar 2014 19:54

Would they have had the fuel or even interest??

Chetak, "u" want a full fuel load.

Not an empty plane. Much more TV-worthy that way. On 9/11 the buildings would have stayed fine except for maybe 2 floors, if it were not for the large fuel load.

rsingh · Post by **rsingh** » 12 Mar 2014 19:54

A_Gupta wrote:Transponder failure:
Boeing 777, Air India B773, March 10, 2014
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 776979.cms

Boeing 787, Air India B778, total transponder failure
http://www.aeroinside.com/incidents/typ ... dreamliner

It seems somebody has capability to alter electronics of the plane remotely. Suddenly we have news of transponder failure/ engine shutdown etc. Plane from India, Malaysia and Japan are involved. It happens along the st.line that connects K pore-Delhi-some remote US airbase in Afghanistan and Berlin. Each time no of passengers from EU or US is very low. Interesting , what was the nationality of passengers who skipped the boarding at Kpore.
On other hand I suspect Malaysian authorities know much more but cant bring it to public. You have to face public and say something.......thats what they are doing.

OK that was 18.5

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 12 Mar 2014 19:57

One thing about massas is they worry about their assets while Indics query if they even should worry!!!

nawabs · Post by **nawabs** » 12 Mar 2014 20:06

rsingh wrote:
A_Gupta wrote: It seems somebody has capability to alter electronics of the plane remotely. Suddenly we have news of transponder failure/ engine shutdown etc. Plane from India, Malaysia and Japan are involved. It happens along the st.line that connects K pore-Delhi-some remote US airbase in Afghanistan and Berlin. Each time no of passengers from EU or US is very low. Interesting , what was the nationality of passengers who skipped the boarding at Kpore.
On other hand I suspect Malaysian authorities know much more but cant bring it to public. You have to face public and say something.......thats what they are doing.

Then i doubt if covert state elements were involved, this problem would have been allowed to surface:

https://www.federalregister.gov/article ... nic-system

777 has had a request or notice in for change to FBW (Fly-by-wire) computer/reporting systems for security reasons- that there is a common (wired) link somehow between some of the FBW reporting systems and the inflight passenger entertainment systems- and possibly subject to hacking.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 12 Mar 2014 20:07

UlanBatori wrote:On 9/11 the buildings would have stayed fine except for maybe 2 floors, if it were not for the large fuel load.

OT.
But this is not entirely correct. While the jet fuel did make the fire stronger in 911 the key failure was the removal of the fire protection spray from the steel when the plane debris swept through the WTC. At that point just the office furniture/finishes burning was sufficient to bring down the buildings. Tests by the industry show the steel used failed at just over 400C a relatively cool temperature.

Prasad · Post by **Prasad** » 12 Mar 2014 20:10

UlanBatori wrote:
Would they have had the fuel or even interest??
Chetak, "u" want a full fuel load. Not an empty plane. Much more TV-worthy that way. On 9/11 the buildings would have stayed fine except for maybe 2 floors, if it were not for the large fuel load.

Great circle distance of Beijing-KL is just a tad more than KL-BOM. Puts things into perspective?
I'm not sure what to think of this mess at the moment given the bumbling (deliberate?) behavior during the press conference so far.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 12 Mar 2014 20:15

India has officially joined search today on Malaysia request. One cg dornier is searching the area east of nicobar.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 12 Mar 2014 20:22

CNN:

US Congressman Peter King: They have dropped the ball at every level

KING: No, so far they seem to have dropped the ball at every level. And I hate to be, you know, the Monday morning quarterback, but it appears as if they've done nothing right so far. Even if the navy was told about it yesterday, that's 48 hours after the fact. To me every minute counts here.

And that was such a key point, that the plane actually reversed course and was flying back over Malaysia toward Indonesia. I mean, why wasn't that made known? Why weren't jets scrambling? Why wasn't an alert put out on that immediately once they realized that was happening?

Yes Prasad some of us worried from day one on that aspect of flight could be towards India.

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 12 Mar 2014 20:32

I think they have suspected/known since 2:40AM, and must have started the response right then. See, this is where the "bumbling" makes perfect sense, and IS in fact the confirmation that this is potentially much worse than it looked even initially. US Congressdummies etc assume that the teesri duniya folks have no brains. I bet Malaysia has a Terror Response Team, and must have alerted all neighboring countries soon after. Which of course blows up my SL CT, because that's the first place that "Malaysia origin, flying West" triggered in my dirty mind. Then again, does the SL govt have much control in East SL? Or Indonesia in all the small islands there? Or, Alla* forbid, India in Nicobar region?

Colombo is still the most obvious target. Trincomalee/ Batticoloa, I have no idea of level of development, or political significance/ payoff of an attack. Radius of flight range may be large, but today I think flying low-level (b-lo radar) in that whole region will set off alarms instantly, so can't fly over a long distance. Not more than 30 mins, I would say, over land, or maybe 2 hrs over ocean along a fairly common flight route (like, headed for a major airport...). Other candidate airports/cities are MAS, TVM, COK. Rule out Diego Garcia, although that is where many of those airstrikes against the Taliban took off (Shomali Plain Pest-e-sha'eed, for instance), because the Americans will shoot down anything heading that way, and cover up any "successful" attack anyway. No CNN at Diego Garcia.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 12 Mar 2014 20:34

BTW is it possible for the 777 to execute a controlled water landing? A la Hudson river landing. Or is doing it at night simply impossible. If you remember the Hudson plane landed fully intact with zero debris in the river. And then it sank fully intact.

Sriman · Post by **Sriman** » 12 Mar 2014 20:40

Someone posted this on the Aviation Forums:

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 12 Mar 2014 20:42

Theoji,

Any aircraft can execute a "ditch", i.e. landing on water and can float for sometime depending on circumstances. However to hold up structurally, the landing needs to be at the slowest possible speed and on calm waters. Hitting the water at greater than 200kmph is almost like hitting a wall and if the waters are "wavy" it will result in the aircraft breaking up due to different parts of the aircraft being hit differently.

Hudson river had all the right conditions, it was a calm day with a very still river. The likelihood of finding such conditions in the ocean are next to null, even for a large aircraft like the 777.

The usual wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing

Check the statistics. Almost follows this pattern:
1) River landing you have high likelihood of surviving even in a big jet.
2) Sea landing, if you are on a low speed aircraft you should be ok. High speed + big aircraft have very poor track record.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 12 Mar 2014 20:44

Potentially could be done in shallow lagoon leading up some coral island...but at night..tough to imagine it working with a plane that big.

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 12 Mar 2014 20:51

If it landed intact, they would have managed to deploy at least one slide I would hope? And got someone out with a beacon on the slide which also acts as a raft?

The Hudson airplane sank (much faster) because someone opened the rear doors. The intact cabin is pressure-tight at least to 1 atmosphere, hain?

The oilrig email looks suspicious. Why would I give my passport number in an email? Why not just the directions to call my oil rig? Another drunken lout, most probably.

How exactly do you see a fire in the sky 50-75km away and no more than 5 miles up? I have not checked the horizon calculations, but that sounds like it is 9 degrees above the horizontal, or less...

Most probably a meteor if he saw it for 15 seconds and then nothing falling.
Easy enough to determine if there is actually an oil rig there (with all the ppl scanning ocean images), and if someone with this name sent it from there, so why all the fuss?

********************************************************************
The other thing is that the sea on the east side (under original flight path) is only like 150 feet deep: a few PLAN minesweepers/sub-hunters / helicopters will find any large wreckage there inside a couple of weeks, tops, just by sweeping for metallic echoes. West side beyond the coastal shelf is a different story.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 12 Mar 2014 21:11

UlanBatori wrote:If it landed intact, they would have managed to deploy at least one slide I would hope? And got someone out with a beacon on the slide which also acts as a raft?

Yes that was what I was thinking or the plane was put down with that hope, which would widen the search area. Is that a radio beacon? Is it part of the slide/life raft?

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 12 Mar 2014 21:17

The slide does act as raft, the pictorial instructions (used to until recently) tell you to use your knife or box-cutter (ha ha!) to release the raft when enough people have got in. Nowadays on Ulan Bator planes they have some sort of built-in rope-cutter, per the instruction sheet.
Then there is some water-activated beacon there, I am fairly sure. Don't know what kind. Even the individual life-jackets have a water-activated beacon, I think.

chaanakya · Post by **chaanakya** » 12 Mar 2014 21:17

Conspiracy theories galore. Now malaysia claims that it could have been near Phuket ( and probably passengers are happy vacationing there). Lack of transparency and confusion is what gets Malaysian Airlines a Good Airlines Rating?

Missing jet may have strayed towards Andaman and Nicobar Islands; India joins search

The flight disappeared from civilian radar screens shortly before 1.30am on Saturday, less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, as it flew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand bound for Beijing. What happened next is one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation history.

Malaysian air force chief Rodzali Daud told a news conference that an aircraft was plotted on military radar at 2.15am, 200 miles (320 km) northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia's west coast.
...
....
There was no word on which direction it was headed and still no clue what happened aboard, prolonging the agonizing wait for news for hundreds of relatives of those on board.

A position 200 miles northwest of Penang, in the northern part of the Strait of Malacca, would put the plane roughly south of the Thai holiday island of Phuket and east of the tip of Indonesia's Aceh province and India's Nicobar island chain.

Indonesia and Thailand have said their militaries detected no sign of any unusual aircraft in their airspace.

The position is hundreds of miles west of the point where the Boeing 777-200ER dropped off air traffic control screens. Malaysia has asked India for help in tracing the aircraft and New Delhi's coastguard planes have joined the search.

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 12 Mar 2014 21:21

So per UB CT's this is all an excuse to have lots of activity with airplanes buzzing around near Aceh and SL coasts. Curious that SL has said nothing, hain? Don't they also have some sort of Navy and airplanes.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 12 Mar 2014 21:26

UB thats the splash down area for the BO5 test when it happens!

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 12 Mar 2014 21:29

From comment posts in The Guardian:

A Malaysian newspaper reported on Sunday that the pilot of another flight made brief contact with flight MH370 via his emergency frequency, at the request of Vietnamese aviation authorities who had been unable to reach it as expected. Vietnam has said it believes the flight never entered its airspace. The unnamed man said his Japan-bound plane was deep into Vietnamese airspace when officials asked him to relay to MH370 to establish its position, and that he succeeded at about 1.30am local time. “The voice on the other side could have been either Captain Zaharie [Ahmad Shah, 53,] or Fariq [Abdul Hamid, 27], but I was sure it was the co-pilot.
“There were a lot of interference ... static ... but I heard mumbling from the other end.
“That was the last time we heard from them, as we lost the connection,” he told the New Straits Times. He said he did not think any more of it at the time, as losing connections was common.

There are obviously a lot of questions at the moment about the significance of stolen passports. This piece from 2012 examines the stolen passport trade in Thailand, which it says is sizeable.

A leader of a major ring of passport thieves, Muhammad Ather Butt, was arrested at the Thai border in 2010. The gang was linked to the Islamic radicals who carried out the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people. “The gang also allegedly provided forged passports for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, which has been accused of plotting the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, in which 10 militants killed at least 164 people and injured more than 300, and to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam separatist group in Sri Lanka,” the story says.

Didn't they say there were FOUR bogus passports? Only two Eyeranians have been identified. What about the other two?

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 12 Mar 2014 21:31

The Malaysians are coming off very badly in this. It is simply unforgivable that it took them 4+ days to give out the information that there was an unidentified aircraft flying west toward Malacca just after they lost radio contact with flight 370. And even then they did that in fits and starts, with military sources saying things to reporters under condition of anonymity, followed by an official denial, followed by new statements which appear to confirm what the anonymous source said. It's no wonder the Vietnamese got fed up and stopped searching the places the malaysians were telling them to search.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 12 Mar 2014 21:32

UB, What if there were others with false passports that we dont know about?

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 12 Mar 2014 21:35

Maybe the crew decided to defect and join Air India?

(Apologies in advance!!)

BTW, the CTs from the lesser entities

Bojinka, Cojinka! These oiseule talking heads make me sick. The Pakis' first demo of 9/11 was on the IA flight that came from Katmandu and was diverted via Amritsar, where the murdered the young passenger. Allies of the US govt!

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 12 Mar 2014 21:57

What I am worried about is when the cost of the search would become more than the "cost of the losses". That point is fast approaching.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 12 Mar 2014 22:18

To add to rohitvats' excellent post, here's a map of Malaysian radar coverage

member_26011 · Post by **member_26011** » 12 Mar 2014 22:23

It appears that the routing for these flights takes them over IGARI M765 BITOD and then north. IGARI is under Singapore and BITOD in Ho Chi Minh. Apparently, it left IGARI but it is not clear if it made BITOD, and somewhere here ADS-B totally dies, which was being tracked, at least openware, by FR24. If the turn is to be believed, it would put it right on track to NTW, and is about 126nm from BITOD. It would make sense from the reported altitude that they were on a best glide (though I don't know how much they could cover). There are too many navaids and closed off regions on the charts along that flight path reported over land for this to be not monitored, I feel, to have it just show up later at another point on the west side. My most optimistic guess is it went down somewhere along the BITOD-NTW axis but there are too many unknowns, of course, so that this is all major guess work here at best.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 12 Mar 2014 22:37

Ub It could be SL. May be the Malayasian military radar cooridinates at 2:40AM are also incorrect.

Thailand/Malaysia host the LTTE remanants.

All those searching near Vietnam is waste work. Its like searching under the street lamp because there is light when the object is lost somewhere else.
Should look near SL coast.

member_28502 · Post by **member_28502** » 12 Mar 2014 22:39

Air India plane in near miss as Pakistan ATC gives incorrect information
PTI | Mar 12, 2014, 07.26 PM IST

something like this could be the cause?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 902246.cms

Prasad · Post by **Prasad** » 12 Mar 2014 22:40

UlanBatori wrote: Colombo is still the most obvious target. Trincomalee/ Batticoloa, I have no idea of level of development, or political significance/ payoff of an attack. Radius of flight range may be large, but today I think flying low-level (b-lo radar) in that whole region will set off alarms instantly, so can't fly over a long distance. Not more than 30 mins, I would say, over land, or maybe 2 hrs over ocean along a fairly common flight route (like, headed for a major airport...). Other candidate airports/cities are MAS, TVM, COK. Rule out Diego Garcia, although that is where many of those airstrikes against the Taliban took off (Shomali Plain Pest-e-sha'eed, for instance), because the Americans will shoot down anything heading that way, and cover up any "successful" attack anyway. No CNN at Diego Garcia.

To do that, wouldn't you have to get past any radar that we have in andaman? Certainly when you approach the mainland, it would be picked up. Especially if it deviated from normal airliner traffic lanes.

rgosain · Post by **rgosain** » 12 Mar 2014 22:48

Guys at risk of sounding trite, the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of this flight has a number of parallels with the events in TinTin Flight 714, the setting for which is the Indonesian Archipelago. Like Conrad's Lord Jim, events around the Straits have a steamy atmosphere and mystique.

nawabs · Post by **nawabs** » 12 Mar 2014 22:49

Delete