Malaysian Airliner missing?

Silvaire said:
My guess remains - crashed in ocean (for whatever reason) and sank.

What puzzles me is why so many people are convinced there is no way that could possibly happen.
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One cow will walk through a gate, and another will just stand there.

Go figure ... :loco:
 
or you could just paint lines on the road and it won't cross them. They are cows after all...
 
Crashed in ocean and sank is the simplest, most obvious explanation. There are 3 facts, some more factual than others, that create mystery.

1) Transponder turned off. Just before
2) Course changed. Followed by
3) flying 4 more hours.

If it was just #1, and they found wreckage at that spot, it'd be case closed. Given the other 2 pieces of information and no wreckage found we're left going :dunno:

Silvaire said:
My guess remains - crashed in ocean (for whatever reason) and sank.

What puzzles me is why so many people are convinced there is no way that could possibly happen.
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Transponders turned off at different times. Engines kept reporting for hours, I would say this was no accident.

Tony
 
Why would you steal a plane and save it for later? That just gives your enemies time to figure out what's going on and prepare. If this was really a sophisticated, government-assisted terrorist plot, why not fly direct to your friendly landing spot, fuel up, then make your attack before the whole world is looking for you?

Occam's Razor suggests the plane crashed in the ocean, and they just haven't looked in the right place yet. Sure, this could have started as a hijacking, but rest of this stuff is very unlikely.
 
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Lindberg said:
Why would you steal a plane and save it for later? That just gives your enemies time to figure out what's going on and prepare. If this was really a sophisticated, government-assisted terrorist plot, why not fly direct to your friendly landing spot, fuel up, then make your attack before the whole world is looking for you?

Occam's Razor suggests the plane crashed in the ocean, and they just haven't looked in the right place yet. Sure, this could have started as a hijacking, but rest of this stuff is very unlikely.
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Occam's Razor is often correct. But not always . . . .

Why steal it now and save it for later? Maybe the opportunity to steal was too good to pass up. Maybe the target is too far to reach before news got out. Maybe prepping the plane for the mission will take too long. Maybe the rest of the players aren't ready yet. Maybe . . . . (this list could be as long as the speculation of what happened to the plane).

IN the meantime, keep on searching, but it would be nice if everyone could cooperate and share information with each other. This is looking rather like the Keystone Kops! It's a cluster . . .
 
dans2992 said:
The only way to tell if an incoming aircraft is a 777 would be a visual interception (for all practical purposes). Otherwise, it's just a blip on the radar, most all of which are legitimate.
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Maybe not at long range, but i'm pretty sure military radar can actually distinguish a 777 with the Rolls Royce engines from one with GE engines.
 
FYI, at the bottom of the revised article, the WSJ has modified it's information of an alleged continuation of flight from a "Rolls-Royce" data link to a "satellite-communication link":

Wall Street Journal said:
Corrections & Amplifications
U.S. investigators suspect Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 flew for hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, based on an analysis of signals sent through the plane's satellite-communication link designed to automatically transmit the status of onboard systems, according to people familiar with the matter. An earlier version of this article and an accompanying graphic incorrectly said investigators based their suspicions on signals from monitoring systems embedded in the plane's Rolls-Royce PLC engines and described that process
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WSJ Article
 
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If the engines were transmitting signals to satellites, can't they just triangulate based on when each satellite received the signal? Or does it only transmit to a single satellite when it comes into view?
 
First I think the plane is in the ocean somewhere. It went massively off course then crashed so they are simply looking in the wrong place. Why it would do that I have no clue.

I also find it shocking that the general public thinks it is odd that transponders have an off switch?
 
drotto said:
First I think the plane is in the ocean somewhere. It went massively off course then crashed so they are simply looking in the wrong place. Why it would do that I have no clue.

I also find it shocking that the general public thinks it is odd that transponders have an off switch?
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Mine has an off knob. I also have a breaker.
 
[email protected] said:
Just curious - Assuming I was a member of the general public, how would you explain the off switch?
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1. We turn them off on the ground.

2. We might need to turn it off to save power in certain circumstances.

3. Any piece of electrical equipment can malfunction and potentially cause a fire.

Yada yada yada.
 
Silvaire said:
My guess remains - crashed in ocean (for whatever reason) and sank.

What puzzles me is why so many people are convinced there is no way that could possibly happen.
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Lots of people think that happened. The difference is, it usually doesn't take a week to find it in this day and age. Additionally, it looks increasingly like the cause of the tragedy to be foul play, so until the plane is found, one has to consider the worst case scenario.
 
They do not see the transponder as a TV. They see it as a safety device that should be left on.
I believe we will be seeing a Trojan Horse in the future...This is scary. If they never find this airplane its tucked away in a hangar somewhere being turned into......?

Tony
 
I believe that could happen. But with the evidence that it flew for hours and the transponder was turned off and other systems turned off not all at once but one by one. Everything points to foul play.
 
dell30rb said:
Maybe not at long range, but i'm pretty sure military radar can actually distinguish a 777 with the Rolls Royce engines from one with GE engines.
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How?

No way we can tell that sort of thing with what we have in operation.
 
drotto said:
I also find it shocking that the general public thinks it is odd that transponders have an off switch?
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You shouldn't be so shocked. The general public don't study aviation and the reasons for the off switch aren't super obvious. The way the transponder is described in the media is, it sort of an electronic license plate that identifies the plane, so you don't get to switch off the license plate on your car do you? It has to be on at all times.

I think they are right to ask the question of why there is an off switch. It's not a dumb question.
 
I find it interesting that a bunch of pilots would not be able to think of various reasons a transponder signal could be lost without switching it off.
 
1600vw said:
I believe we will be seeing a Trojan Horse in the future...This is scary. If they never find this airplane its tucked away in a hangar somewhere being turned into......?
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Most think it will be a dirty or atomic/nuclear bomb. I think it would be more likely some kind of biological weapon. Spray a large metropolitan area while on approach/departure with some type of highly communicable flesh eating disease, for instance.

Terroist plane is in, done, and gone before any symptoms show. People disperse across the country before any symptoms show. Bad news.

I'm sure world leaders are sweating this one out, we should be too.
 
Everskyward said:
I find it interesting that a bunch of pilots would not be able to think of various reasons a transponder signal could be lost without switching it off.
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We aren't any smarter than the general public, we just like to say we are.
 
PPC1052 said:
Would you buy a smoke detector that can be turned off?
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Yup - I've got a couple of them - for the false alarms and "off-nominal cooking events". :D

Same reason we've got SBY and OFF selectors on the transponders...
 
Dav8or said:
Lots of people think that happened. The difference is, it usually doesn't take a week to find it in this day and age. Additionally, it looks increasingly like the cause of the tragedy to be foul play, so until the plane is found, one has to consider the worst case scenario.
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That's TSA type government thinking, and it's wrong.
 
People keep saying the xspondr was turned off. It seems that if we know anything, it's simply that it stopped working, or mode c was lost. But we don't even really know that much, since so far everything we've been told has been wrong.
 
If it's sitting on the ground outdoors in the mideast I'm sure that we might be able to find it. I have to believe we are looking at airbases (military or civil) in that area with great regularity.
 
1600vw said:
I believe we will be seeing a Trojan Horse in the future...This is scary. If they never find this airplane its tucked away in a hangar somewhere being turned into......?

Tony
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Precisely what I've been thinking. The plane had enough fuel to reach Pakistan, a primarily Muslim country that already has nuclear weapons.
 
airguy said:
You have evidence to the contrary?
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Yes. Millions of years of human experience tells us that reality almost never reflects the most fetched aka "worst case" scenario. Even 9/11 was not that big of a deal statistically. You're still way, WAY more likely to die because of a mechanical failure or pilot error than terrorism. But it sure is a lot more fun to spend OPM fighting boogeymen. It's also more conducive to building fiefdoms and concentrating power within government.
 
Can anybody smarter than me find a map of this route? I'm not even sure where to look honestly.

"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 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."

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA2D0DG20140314?irpc=932
 
Ruthless53 said:
Can anybody smarter than me find a map of this route? I'm not even sure where to look honestly.
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I couldn't find a source for the airways, but here it is based on the waypoints:

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