Flight MH 370, the missing Jumbo Jet..

[chain]

The shock is wearing off as we realize the missing airliner could have OUR loved ones aboard. Folks, this disaster affects each one of us no matter where we are, or what we do, let's hope and pray this apparent air disaster is resolved very soon!

What do you think really happened?

[Raider Bill]

Heck I wonder if they will ever find out. Airplane disappears 40k ft in the air out in the middle of the ocean..... Gonna take a lot of CSI'ing to figure it out.

[DanG]

I figure he flew into a cloud full of rocks in Vietnam or Laos.  The mountains over there are treacherous.

[DeepCreek]

I figure he flew into a cloud full of rocks in Vietnam or Laos.  The mountains over there are treacherous.

He was at 31,000 feet over the ocean. Kind of hard to find rocks up there. They have his radar track up until the point it disappeared. After that, if he was still in one piece, military radar, which doesn't depend on a transponder on the plane, would have been able to track him. There is no indication that any of those radars had contract beyond shortly after the transponder went silent.

They're in the water somewhere.

[Raider Bill]

I just heard on the radio that there maybe a Iranian involvement in this..take that with a salt tablet as DanG would say.

Other things they said was that the Pilot was some kind of pilot, guru, techie guy who  had a simulator of this plane in his house and practiced all the time..

That if it was a plane malfunction in just about any way there are so many alarms, warnings, and automatic transponder signals that would occur everyone would have known.

That leaves a catastrophic occurrence.

[Bert]

There was a plane crash In 2007 that took 9 or 10 days to find and over a month to find the black box. I'm with Bill, hard to believe  that there was no distress signal without some type of big time failure. I'm definitely not an expert but hold an Airframe and Powerplant license. Theres so may redundancies built into modern planes it would take a huge failure to bring one down with no time to signal. Wouldn't it be nice if they were floating out there somewhere like the miracle on the Hudson?

[DeepCreek]

The Iranian bought the tickets for the two who are known to have had stolen passports. Reports say he bought four total. He wasn't on the plane himself.

The pilot was very talented. He built his own simulator. There are pictures of it online.

In my opinion, there are only two logical scenarios:

1. Massive and catastrophic electrical failure, possibly a battery explosion, leading to loss of control and breakup or crash of the aircraft.

Why? Because the aircraft's radar transponder went silent and there was no mayday or other communications from the crew. In addition, there were no ACARS transmissions after the transponder went silent. ACARS is an automated message system that reports aircraft system information to the airline's maintenance people. If the plane had remained intact and airborne for any length of time, there would have been ACARS transmissions.

2. Bomb in the luggage. The airline, like most others, removes checked luggage if the owner doesn't board. That requires someone aboard to be sacrificed, either knowingly or unknowingly.  We don't know how well the checked luggage is otherwise screened. There has been recent intelligence gathered terrorist Internet chatter about a new undetectable bomb having supposedly been developed. The passengers with stolen passports whose tickets were purchased by a third party. The real reason they were on the plane may have simply been to get their luggage into the hold. All of this fits together, but isn't proof.

[Ianab]

Makes me think of the Quantas A380 that had an uncontained engine failure a few years back. Bit's of turbine flew in all directions and badly damaged the plane. They were lucky that it still flew. Could just as easily suffered explosive decompression / caught fire / lost flight controls (maybe all 3?)

Check the photos here and see how lucky they were.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/frightening-photos-from-the-report-on-the-qantas-a380-incident-show-exactly-what-happened-2013-7#qantas-atsb-1

Not hard to imagine how with a bit of bad luck that sort of damage would bring a plane down?

I see NZ is sending a P3 search plane up to help.

[GAB]

Fellows:
I am no aviation expert, but I think that if a catastropic failure occured at that elevation that there would be a large debris field easily spottable from the air.  Would someone explain to me why this would not be the case.  Gerald

[DeepCreek]

Fellows:
I am no aviation expert, but I think that if a catastropic failure occured at that elevation that there would be a large debris field easily spottable from the air.  Would someone explain to me why this would not be the case.  Gerald

I was of the same opinion, but the experts being quoted by the press say that the field would be so wide and the pieces so small they would be very difficult spot from the air.

[Magicman]

I would think that there would be floaters like suitcases, etc.  To me, it makes more sense that it went down whole, but at this point, who knows??

[chain]

Have been reviewing the Space Shuttle "Columbia" disaster back in 2003. It blew up as it enter the Earth's atmosphere...strewing debris over three states, over 2000 debris fields were found and as recently as 2011 a 4' piece of debris recovered from a lake near Natcogdoches, La.

Of course, NASA was watching closely as the disaster happened; the Shuttle exploding directly over U.S. land mass, big difference land vs. sea in recovery.

[Chuck White]

I originally felt that it made an unscheduled landing somewhere, but then if the plane had been comandeered, surely someone would have made a cellphone call to somewhere!

If it was terrorists, there was no warning given to the passengers, just got over some land (jungle) and poof.

No time for phone calls!

[sharp edge]

50 yrs. ago in the USN I was in VP-50 a squardon that did S.A.R.(sea air rescue) and other stuff in that place  We flew the P5M ( a sea plane that no one in the U.S every heard of ) We flew low and slow and was good at finding parts.  In 50 mission we never found any people alive. Finding parts isn't great.

A year after I got out they had to find one of our planes that went down, which caused a lot of broken hearts that never could  heal,

VP-50 went from P5M to P3 (eletral II) to P8 (737) now days.

I think a meter got the plane thats down now.

[DanG]

This is reminding me more and more of the Air France flight that flew into the ocean a couple of years ago.  They didn't know they had a problem until just before they hit the water...from 35,000 feet.  This one was supposedly 1 hour into the flight, which would put them over a mountainous wilderness in Cambodia.

[Brucer]

The news story is this: "The plane has disappeared, know one knows what happened, crews are searching, nothing has been found so far." Period. Full stop.

That's not good enough for the media, so they speculate. Dozens of tiny bits of information surface that only form part of the picture. But the media wants a "story" so they put the bits of information together in whatever way that makes a "story", even if it bears no resemblance to reality.

... He was at 31,000 feet over the ocean. Kind of hard to find rocks up there. They have his radar track up until the point it disappeared. After that, if he was still in one piece, military radar, which doesn't depend on a transponder on the plane, would have been able to track him. There is no indication that any of those radars had contract beyond shortly after the transponder went silent. ...

"The Malaysian military has radar data showing the missing Boeing 777 jetliner changed course and made it to the Malacca Strait, hundreds of kilometres from the last position recorded by civilian authorities, according to a senior military official."

"A high-ranking military official involved in the investigation confirmed the report and also said the plane was believed to be flying low."

... The Iranian bought the tickets for the two who are known to have had stolen passports. ...

"Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said the two men travelled to Malaysia on their Iranian passports, then apparently switched to their stolen Austrian and Italian documents. He said speculation of terrorism appeared to be dying down 'as the belief becomes more certain that these two individuals were probably not terrorists.' "

The current thinking now is that the two men were fleeing Iran and seeking refugee status. There are very few cases of Iranians carrying out suicide attacks.

... I am no aviation expert, but I think that if a catastropic failure occured at that elevation that there would be a large debris field easily spottable from the air.  Would someone explain to me why this would not be the case.

The wings falling off would be a catastrophic failure. Without it's wings, a plane at that elevation travelling at cruising speed would travel several miles. If it completely lost power it could glide much further. If there was a failure in one of the control surfaces, it could plunge straight down.

All that leaves an enormous area to search.

The problem with searching large areas is that if the searchers are low enough to identify debris, they have to fly an incredibly long search pattern. If they're high to scan a large area, they won't be able so see the smaller debris. On the ocean, the larger debris will sink immediately.

It can take days to years to find a large aircraft that disappears outside heavily populated areas. The search is most intense right after the crash because that's when there is the greatest chance of finding survivors. And that is what attracts the media.

PS: My quotes (in italics) are from this article, which is being updated routinely.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-was-well-off-course-military-says-1.2567697

[Ianab]

Certainly a mystery. But a plane with a disabled crew (lack of oxygen?) can continue to fly for hours until it eventually runs out of fuel and crashes. If it headed out into the Indian Ocean it could be thousands of miles away from the search area, or ANY land.

Ian

[WmFritz]

Certainly a mystery. But a plane with a disabled crew (lack of oxygen?) can continue to fly for hours until it eventually runs out of fuel and crashes. If it headed out into the Indian Ocean it could be thousands of miles away from the search area, or ANY land.

Ian

That was the situation that killed Golfer Payne Stuart in a Lear Jet. They left Florida bound for Texas and crashed in S.Dakota hours later.

http://www.golftoday.co.uk/news/yeartodate/news99/stewart1.html

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

I have not read all the replies but I don't miss the news on this subject.
Personally, I think the plane landed, by force.......somewhere.

[NWP]

I have not read all the replies but I don't miss the news on this subject.
Personally, I think the plane landed, by force.......somewhere.

I'm with Poston. Something straight out of a movie. Disable the transponder and land at some abandoned air strip.

[ely]

i feel like the plane went under the radar and flew someplace and landed. they could have disabled all cell phones/or plane radios with some sort of device in the luggage.
how many plane crashes had we had where the beacon did not ping when it  crashed? just curious.
its a bad deal no matter how you slice it, the next time we see that flight it may be shot down by jet fighters, bad guys could put any sort of armament on it and fly it wherever they want. i would say homeland security better keep their eyes open.

[DanG]

This is entirely possible.  The 2 guys with stolen passports are Iranian.  News media says they aren't linked to any terrorist orgs. but what do they know. :  Maylasian Air Force says the plane turned back and overflew Maylasia.  The plane has a range of 5700+ miles, well within range of Somalia and several other rogue nations.  No worries about cell phones, as they don't work out over the ocean, and satellite phones don't work inside a metal tube.  It will turn up somewhere, sometime.  Until then this is all speculation.

[Brucer]

... plane landed, by force.......somewhere.

... land at some abandoned air strip.

... flew someplace and landed.

I have an idea. Tell us where "someplace" might be. Seriously. You should be able to do it. Here's what to look for ...
- An airstrip in an unpopulated area.
- Has to be at least 1 mile long to land. 2 miles if it's going to take off.
- Needs to be paved & well-maintained (that aircraft weighs 600,000 pounds).

You can narrow the possibilities a lot. The plane disappeared off the civilian radar about an hour before it was widely reported. At a cruising speed of below 600 MPH, that gives you a pretty specific area to examine.

After that the military would have been actively looking for it so it would have to fly very low. Much of the landmass in the region is very mountainous. The aircraft would pretty much have to stay over the ocean, and the airfield would have to be near the ocean.

Don't forget, that's not a Beechcraft or a Cessna. The 777 is one huge airplane. If it were flying into a remote area, it would be noticed.

[POC]

North Korea?

[ely]

you probably right, it just disappeared, don't worry about it.