Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Rajiv Lather · Post by **Rajiv Lather** » 17 Mar 2014 16:27

Renewed request for round the clock CAPs please.

Something that the Malaysians have found while checking up on the pilots has convinced them that the plane landed in STans. Quietly both China and Kazakhstan have begun SAR operations in their territory. It is very strange that the Chinese Navy seems to have withdrawn.

The needle is again pointing towards AQ/Uighur.

Paul · Post by **Paul** » 17 Mar 2014 16:31

Has Malasiya requested Bangladesh and Thailand/Myanmar for radar data? Or is this a false flag operation to judge radar coverage in the region? either by Unkil or Cheen?

Rajiv Lather · Post by **Rajiv Lather** » 17 Mar 2014 16:40

How is Australia in the limelight for having taken control of the search in the southern IOR ? Where is the mighty navy of the world's second "superpower" ? Major loss of face for the Chinese. They have been the biggest losers so far.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Mar 2014 16:41

harish_ch wrote:Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68 (another 777)?

http://keithledgerwood.tumblr.com/post/ ... sing-sia68

This theory fails here

It is my belief that MH370 likely flew in the shadow of SIA68 through India and Afghanistan airspace. As MH370 was flying “dark” without transponder / ADS-B output, SIA68 would have had no knowledge that MH370 was anywhere around and as it entered Indian airspace, it would have shown up as one single blip on the radar with only the transponder information of SIA68 lighting up ATC and military radar screens.

Military radars don't depend on the transponders pick up two objects as two objects as long as they are not flying together like Suryakirans. Even then it will show up as one huge object visible from a long long distance. Besides the SIA's own collision avoidance system would kick in for anything less that 10 km or 5 km or something. Remember the big hoohah created because an Su 30 came within 5 km of some civil aircraft?

If military radars allow this there will be a PAF aircraft tailing every civil plane entering India. Military radar precision and resolution has to be good or no anti aircraft missile will ever hit its target.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 17 Mar 2014 16:42

shiv wrote: What is the exact reason why the plane cannot be in the gap between the two arcs?

Those points apparently are in range of two, not one, INMARSAT satellites. Only one satellite picked up the pings. So we are told, seems plausible to me.

symontk · Post by **symontk** » 17 Mar 2014 16:45

But military radars can differentiate two aircrafts even if they fly closely, right?

symontk · Post by **symontk** » 17 Mar 2014 16:47

Only possibility is MH370 used a Over Flight approval for another approved flight and went over. And so no one is able to trace it. It changed the transponder of another flight and used its sqawk code

harbans · Post by **harbans** » 17 Mar 2014 16:48

^That's because the plane was plugged into the IOR Inmarsat system and not the Pacific Ocean one. Pics show INmarsat coverage areas:

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Mar 2014 16:48

Rajiv Lather wrote:Renewed request for round the clock CAPs please.

Something that the Malaysians have found while checking up on the pilots has convinced them that the plane landed in STans. Quietly both China and Kazakhstan have begun SAR operations in their territory. It is very strange that the Chinese Navy seems to have withdrawn.

The needle is again pointing towards AQ/Uighur.

Well about 150 hours ago these same Malaysians were searching hard in the Andaman sea and 150 hours before that they were looking off Vietnam.

The problem may be in believing what the Malaysians think. Their needles are pointing outwards in every direction but they are unable to say what their military was doing watching an unidentified aircraft, which they assume was 370, flying over Penang.

That plane has crashed somewhere.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Mar 2014 16:52

symontk wrote:But military radars can differentiate two aircrafts even if they fly closely, right?

Yes. The key is in "How close? ". The blogger leaves that bit out. If they are a few meters apart they can confuse radars, but huge airliners do not fly in close formation 4-5 meters apart like Suryakirans. A distance of less than 1 km (or maybe 5 km) is picked up on collision avoidance systems as a near miss. What this guy is saying is that the Malaysian plane was in a "near miss" style formation (at night) with the Singapore airlines plane for 6 hours and nobody noticed. That story is less credible than alien abduction.

Rajiv Lather · Post by **Rajiv Lather** » 17 Mar 2014 16:52

shiv wrote:
Rajiv Lather wrote:Renewed request for round the clock CAPs please.

Something that the Malaysians have found while checking up on the pilots has convinced them that the plane landed in STans. Quietly both China and Kazakhstan have begun SAR operations in their territory. It is very strange that the Chinese Navy seems to have withdrawn.

The needle is again pointing towards AQ/Uighur.
Their needles are pointing outwards in every direction but they are unable to say what their military was doing watching an unidentified aircraft, which they assume was 370, flying over Penang.

This is a given that the pilot has proved to be quite clever, and has fooled the Malaysians. I am still keeping the passengers alive

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Mar 2014 16:56

A_Gupta wrote:
shiv wrote: What is the exact reason why the plane cannot be in the gap between the two arcs?
Those points apparently are in range of two, not one, INMARSAT satellites. Only one satellite picked up the pings. So we are told, seems plausible to me.

OK Thanks. That is quite clear.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 17 Mar 2014 16:58

harish_ch wrote:Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68 (another 777)?

http://keithledgerwood.tumblr.com/post/ ... sing-sia68

What is the procedure for filing a flight-plan that crosses multiple nations?

Suppose a flight plan is filed leaving destination X to destination Y, but no plane takes off from destination X. MH370 is going to fill that role. Is there some route possible where there is not a interactive hand-off between two Air Traffic Controls? Does this happen over the Bay of Bengal somewhere? MH370 now poses as the plane that was all along on this flight path, with the right transponder codes, talking normally to Air Traffic Control - so, e.g., Indian ATC would not know to look at this plane.

Since no alarm is raised about a missing flight from X to Y, data trackers that miss the take-off and initial portion of the flight will not raise an alarm, maybe?

Rajiv Lather · Post by **Rajiv Lather** » 17 Mar 2014 17:02

symontk wrote:Only possibility is MH370 used a Over Flight approval for another approved flight and went over. And so no one is able to trace it. It changed the transponder of another flight and used its sqawk code

If this happened; it is critically important for India. If they did it once, they can do it again, and re-enter Indian airspace this time with yet another transponder ID.

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 17 Mar 2014 17:06

symontk wrote:But military radars can differentiate two aircrafts even if they fly closely, right?

If one target flies very close to the other, maybe close under it, the radar returns of both targets may merge. This is allegedly how some israeli fighters tucked in closely below a commercial airliner when they took out the iraqi nuke installation. OSIRAK(?)

The story of that target destruction is anyway mired in controversy.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 17 Mar 2014 17:06

Still wholly plausible that the plane has crashed into the sea and debris hasn't been located right?

chetak · Post by **chetak** » 17 Mar 2014 17:07

Rajiv Lather wrote:
symontk wrote:Only possibility is MH370 used a Over Flight approval for another approved flight and went over. And so no one is able to trace it. It changed the transponder of another flight and used its sqawk code
If this happened; it is critically important for India. If they did it once, they can do it again, and re-enter Indian airspace this time with yet another transponder ID.

What happened to the original approved flight??

Wokay, never took off, I see..

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 17 Mar 2014 17:07

the malaysians are nice chaps, but they don't have a huge amount of experience with this sort of thing, nor are they used to a difficult air defense environment. they may not be super duper on the ball and some confusion is expected - and they wont have well rehearsed procedures and unlikely they have fighters on scramble alert at all times

best to cut them some slack

Harpal Bector · Post by **Harpal Bector** » 17 Mar 2014 17:09

Can two heavies get close enough to each other given the turbulence from the lead airplane?

Harpal Bector · Post by **Harpal Bector** » 17 Mar 2014 17:10

Harpal Bector wrote:
This is odd, I plotted the data on a wider timescale of 2 yrs and there is a morphological similar between the peak phenomena if you plot the rate of change/momentum. I don't think I have seen that before but it almost looks like the low dispersive lineshape pattern in Mar-Jun 2013 looks like a scaled down and stretched version of the chart from Nov 2013-present.

It looks like a lock in signal from a pump and probe spectroscopy experiment.

Actually there is another weird thing, the derivative pattern recurs every 8-9 months.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 17 Mar 2014 17:10

The merry-go-round starts up again.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/world ... ml?hp&_r=0

SEPANG, Malaysia — As the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stretched into a 10th day, the Malaysian authorities on Monday identified the plane’s first officer as the last person in the cockpit to speak to ground control. But the government added to the confusion about what happened during those key minutes by withdrawing its assertion that the radio signoff came after a crucial communications system was disabled.

But Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, the chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, clarified at a news conference early Monday evening that the communications system, known as an Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, had worked normally at 1:07 but then failed to send its next, regularly scheduled update at 1:37 a.m.

“We don’t know when the Acars system was switched off,” he said.

It was between the two scheduled transmission times for the Acars system, he said, that the verbal signoff was given by radio at 1:19 a.m. A second communications system, a transponder that communicates with ground-based radar, then ceased working at 1:21 a.m.

Standing next to Mr. Ahmad Jauhari, Mr. Hishammuddin waved off numerous questions about why he had said a day earlier that Acars had been disabled at 1:07 a.m. “What I said yesterday was based on fact, corroborated and verified,” he said. In response to another question, he said that uncertainty about the chronology underlined the importance of finding the aircraft and its data recorders.

I would accuse the Malaysian authorities of doing their best to sabotage the investigation, but stupidity trumps malice as an explanation, does it not?

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 17 Mar 2014 17:12

chetak wrote:What happened to the original approved flight??

Wokay, never took off, I see..

Would this require official connivance at the point of origin of the original approved flight?

symontk · Post by **symontk** » 17 Mar 2014 17:12

But as Shiv mentioned, Osirak kind of type operations involved fighters which can fly closely with civilian aircraft. But has any one attempted to fly two civilian ones together

Coming to the transponder theory, Can transponder ids be changed thru hacking?

I don't reject the SIA68 theory except that still its two planes

My theory:

if there is a airline who have approved flights (it can be cargo too) from Malayasia which overflies India and Pakistan, and choose not to fly that day, its a very good theory

Rajiv Lather · Post by **Rajiv Lather** » 17 Mar 2014 17:15

There was a report of the father of the suspected flight engineer on board crying and defending his son. This person worked with private jets I believe. Is there some ID hardware that one can remove from one plane and attach/carry on another ? Then it is simple.

Some private plane filed a flight plan, but the flight never took off and its ID was used by the 370.

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 17 Mar 2014 17:22

btw singapore airlines uses SQ and not SIA

symontk · Post by **symontk** » 17 Mar 2014 17:35

Rajiv Lather wrote:Some private plane filed a flight plan, but the flight never took off and its ID was used by the 370.

It cannot be a private plane, it has to be regular scheduled one, but using the flight plan for the flight that didn't fly that day and that Malayasian air control send a confirmatory message saying that the aircraft left KL onto to India and Pakistan. Only if that message is received in India, here Chennai, the overflight is allowed

There are problems if you use private plane flight plane. I am not sure it can fly over Indian airspace without landing. That is the case even if it is for a regular airline company. I recall an incident with Airlanka (now Srilankan) in Trivandrum during 1984. The aircraft was on an unscheduled flight plan and it was carrying weapons for srilankan military. When it landed in Trivandrum for over flight checks and police checked the aircraft, the weapons were found and the aircraft was detained. It was let of after a diplomatic wrangle

And so the aircraft has to be scheduled. otherwise it has to land in India while overflying

Neela · Post by **Neela** » 17 Mar 2014 17:39

Some clues could come from the flight transcripts of the aircraft flying to JApan which was in Vietnam airspace ( was 30 minutes ahead) . Apparently the flying officers tried to help Vietnam ATC to contact MH370

We managed to establish contact with MH370 just after 1.30am and asked them if they have transferred into Vietnamese airspace.

"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 Sunday Times.

Read more: MISSING MH370: Pilot: I established contact with plane - General - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/nation/general/fo ... z2wDuSGtWr

Rajiv Lather · Post by **Rajiv Lather** » 17 Mar 2014 17:40

symontk wrote:
Rajiv Lather wrote:Some private plane filed a flight plan, but the flight never took off and its ID was used by the 370.
It cannot be a private plane, it has to be regular scheduled one

Agree with you. Then we have another problem - how do we manage to cancel the regular scheduled flight ? The operation was too well planned to be left to chance, and they had to know what ID to use beforehand. Hmm...

Peregrine · Post by **Peregrine** » 17 Mar 2014 17:45

JE Menon wrote:Still wholly plausible that the plane has crashed into the sea and debris hasn't been located right?

JEMenon Ji

One is a novice in matters pertaining to Aircrafts or their Capabilities or their Flight Patterns.

Request your views on the following :

Missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 : Did jetliner fly into area controlled by Taliban?

On Sunday Pakistani civil aviation officials said they had checked their radar recordings" and found no sign of the missing jet.

If the Pakis could check their Radar Recordings then so could the other Countries in the various Routes the Aircraft could have taken.

As such why have the other Countries not made any statement about their “Radar Recordings?
Cheers

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 17 Mar 2014 17:45

shiv: I was going to heartily endorse the "SIA_CT" when you poured thanda pani on it.

Yes. The key is in "How close? ". The blogger leaves that bit out. If they are a few meters apart they can confuse radars, but huge airliners do not fly in close formation 4-5 meters apart like Suryakirans. A distance of less than 1 km (or maybe 5 km) is picked up on collision avoidance systems as a near miss. What this guy is saying is that the Malaysian plane was in a "near miss" style formation (at night) with the Singapore airlines plane for 6 hours and nobody noticed. That story is less credible than alien abduction.

BUT.. I have now shaken off the pani from my fur, and revived:
The above may be true for two aircraft in random close formation. BUT... radar like all else has its limitations. It sends out EM radiation, which means waves proceeding from a very well known point, and receives reflections/scattering from objects in the path of the beam.

AFAIK, this is a problem in polar coordinates: r giving distance, theta and phi giving azimuth in 2 coordinates. However, r is only obtained from displayed speed (Shift-e-Dopplar) and rate of change of the other coordinates, hain? OK, maybe they have two transmitters spaced, say, a mile apart to get stereoscopic effect and measure distance. The radar return is dominated by SIA since the other one is more or less in shadow.

Shift-e-Dopplar would be dominated by the SIA, which is closer and gives by far the stronger signal (the other one is in shadow. While diffraction will ensure that it does have some radar lighting it up, that is much less intensity than what lights up SIA. So signal processor says: Shift-e-Dopplar is meajured quite well and matches number displayed ujing SIA transponder, thank-u very much, BTW, it's a bit noisy, but I reject that noise. SIA it eej. The old story of 1,3,5,7,11,13 being prime numbers, so ALL odd numbers are prime numbers, 9 eej experimental error/noise.

Suppose theta and phi remain constant. while actual different in r is sufficient to not bother SIA's colljun radar (why should collijun radar care as long as separation distance is OK? the planes are not on convergent courses, hain? i.e., Suppose someone was ALWAYS in the shadow/same coordinates.

I bet collijun radar doesn't beep, say, when landing on runway parallel to one where another a/c is taxiing? Otherwise landing and takeoff and taxiing will be very interesting.

OK, SIA may have looked a bit bigger than usual. Is Malaysian military radar at 2AM on a Saturday night/Sundin morning alert enough to say: Aha! What looks like two aircraft to ur arrack-sodden eyes are INDEED two aircraft!! NO, don't believe that it is only SIAxxx - there is another aircraft in its "radar shadow!". I doubt that very much. There may be a good reason why this flight day and time were chosen, nothing at all to do with precise passenger or cargo manifest. Just plane type and crew.

Can such a maneuver be executed? Yes, if one plans ahead and knows Jio-Metry-e-Madarssa and the location of the military radar, and has SIAxxx position measured and monitored correctly. Won't work if there are TWO radars in operation simultaneoulsy, but I think we can rule that out for now, unless someone looks hard and has good saved data for past 1 week.

1 week ago I would have said that most airline pilots don't have the smarts to do that, but todin, I cannot say that.

I sure hope India has multiple radar coverage everywhere, or like u said, every flight that comes in over TSP will have JDAM-carrying flights along with them. Fortunately, most airlines prefer to skirt TSP coast rather than fly across. Wonder why SIA is so suicidal.

Remember that KAL007 got shot down mainly because the Soviets thought it was the C-130 that seemed to have disappeared, because it was flying close? OK, anti-collision system may not have been on KAL007, different era. But that was a very well-guarded region with multiple radar systems and they still got confused.

Neela · Post by **Neela** » 17 Mar 2014 17:46

Flying less than 4NM separation at same altitude is very unstable due to wake turbulence.
Hiding under the radar signature of another aircraft seems a little far-fetched as airlines have pre-determined altitudes and distances to maintain from other each other - this would have evoked suspicion from the other aircraft.

EDIT:Seems it is possible to hide under the signature of another aircraft:

It is my belief that MH370 likely flew in the shadow of SIA68 through India and Afghanistan airspace. As MH370 was flying “dark” without transponder / ADS-B output, SIA68 would have had no knowledge that MH370 was anywhere around and as it entered Indian airspace, it would have shown up as one single blip on the radar with only the transponder information of SIA68 lighting up ATC and military radar screens.

Wouldn’t the SIA68 flight have detected MH370? NO! The Boeing 777 utilizes a TCAS system for traffic avoidance; the system would ordinarily provide alerts and visualization to pilots if another airplane was too close. However that system only operates by receiving the transponder information from other planes and displaying it for the pilot. If MH370 was flying without the transponder, it would have been invisible to SIA68.

In addition, the TCAS system onboard MH370 would have enabled the pilot(s) to easily locate and approach SIA68 over the Straits of Malacca as they appeared to have done. The system would have shown them the flight’s direction of travel and the altitude it was traveling which would have enabled them to perfectly time an intercept right behind the other Boeing 777. Here is a picture of a TCAS system onboard a 777.

More here: http://keithledgerwood.tumblr.com/post/ ... sing-sia68

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 17 Mar 2014 17:51

Search around Australia picks up:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/sea ... d=22937761

Anurag · Post by **Anurag** » 17 Mar 2014 17:52

@UB: All desi airlines fly over TSP. I would think the threat would be highest for them...

symontk · Post by **symontk** » 17 Mar 2014 17:55

SIA is an airport code in China. Its also a code for an airline company in US

http://www.theairdb.com/airport/SIA.html
Airport IATA Code : SIA
Airport Name : Xiguan
Type : Airports
Runway Length : 9842 ft.
Runway Elevation : 1572 ft.
City : Xi An
Country : China
World Area Code : 713
GMT Offset : -8.0

__________________________________________
http://iata-codes.findthedata.org/l/128 ... e-Airlines
Airline Carrier Name Silver State Airlines
Carrier Entity 37913
DOT Airline ID 19325
Start Date for IATA Code 1960-01-01
Ending Date for IATA Code 2002-09-30
Region of Operations Domestic
World Area Code U.S.A. (Including Territories And Possessions)
Carrier Group Commuter Carriers
Carrier Group Regional Carriers (including Large, Medium, Commuter, Small Certified)
Unique Carrier Name Silver State Airlines
Unique Carrier Entity 37913
IATA code SIA
Unique IATA Carrier Code SIA

merlin · Post by **merlin** » 17 Mar 2014 17:56

Harpal Bector wrote:Can two heavies get close enough to each other given the turbulence from the lead airplane?

IIRC, they need to maintain at least 2 minutes distance between takeoffs (or was it 1 minute?) and that is due to wake turbulence. So I guess some minimum distance applies especially between heavies.

Rajiv Lather · Post by **Rajiv Lather** » 17 Mar 2014 17:58

A_Gupta wrote:Search around Australia picks up:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/sea ... d=22937761

Since the Chinese and American navies are absent; this looks like a lame attempt at subterfuge. Trying to fool the Nasties, we are sill looking in the deep ocean.

vasu raya · Post by **vasu raya** » 17 Mar 2014 18:03

hmmm...the first and last ping were giving a location clue because they were in coverage areas of 2 sats, I think this piggybacking is a plausible one, and the hitch point was before it entered radar coverage in Andamans, no wonder the Malays were asking for raw radar data

here is two heavies flying close enough while refueling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTPft87iK34

IAF would know how that looks like on its radar

CRamS · Post by **CRamS** » 17 Mar 2014 18:08

Can we not get satellite images of any floating debris from the vast Indian ocean area (2 million squares miles or so is the number I heard)? I mean Uncle has peeping Tom toys that can find out the color of underwear of who them deem as "bad guys" from 1000s of miles away. Of course there should be some floating debris to find them, and I am assuming Uncle has already done a massive combing operation of the entire Indian ocean with his toys, and turned up nothing. Or is he not telling us what he found?

Anurag · Post by **Anurag** » 17 Mar 2014 18:16

Wonder what they have found after searching the pilots residence that has promotes this Taliban/AF-PAK NW theory... They're hiding something.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Mar 2014 18:17

symontk wrote:But as Shiv mentioned, Osirak kind of type operations involved fighters which can fly closely with civilian aircraft. But has any one attempted to fly two civilian ones together

Well any large aircraft such as an AWACS getting refuelled by a similar sized aircraft would fit the bill. There must be images on Uncle Gokul's image dhoond function.

I know absolutely zero about radar, which is why I qualify to make the most expansive and general statements. In the case of microscopes the resolution cannot be any smaller than the wavelength of the light used for illumination. I don't see why it should be any different for radar. I am simply guessing and then stating as fact that if the wavelength of the radar wave is long then any planes that are closer together than that radar wavelength will be seen as one object. If no one questions this statement then I must be right. 400% is the usual figure of my rightness.