Malaysian Official Says Missing Plane Hijacked
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If you don't know, there is a highly sophisticated US naval air facility on the island of Diego Garcia. The Navy does deep space reconnaissance over there! among other things...
And they didn't detect a massive 777 flying north/south in and around the Indian Ocean?
That area is saturated in complex radar. Diego Garcia houses complex radar and satellite communications systems and who knows what else that is still classified.
Additionally, there are over 1,000 operational satellites in orbit!
IMO, this was a carefully and planned mission.
For all we know (tin-foil hat time) there could be behind the curtain negotiations with hijackers and/or missions being planned to recover the aircraft in case of wild extremists theories flying around on the Internet (0.1% on this) And as we all know today, nothing is that extreme anymore in the world we live in.
Disabling transponders takes three clicks of a wheel and it was most definitely done intentionally, the sharp, almost hairpin turn, this jet made and then strategically avoided radar are all signs of a sophisticated operation here. The WSJ reports that circuit breakers were accessed in order to shut down transponders, clearly requiring a high level of skill for aircraft maintenance opps. Sure, pilot can break a circuit but they will spend 20 minutes reading the flight maintenance manual AND contact ground before doing anything like this.
Finally - there were a few important people on board, including quite a few high-tech people involved with government contractions.
Whatever is happening, it might never make complete sense - or at least the general public might be out the loop and get whatever information THEY want us to hear. I don't know who THEY are but this whole situation is very strange and gets crazier by the day.
Edit: this bird was hacked
In two months there are EU elections. Plus the hijacking in switzerland shortly before this... Sound convinient.
Taiwan has a radar system that has a range of 5500km [0]. It was originally developed by the US in the 80s. Note that even though Taiwan is ~2500km from the last known position, it only provides 270 degree coverage. I'd assume they are firmly pointing at China and Korea, however from Diego Garcia the last known position and suspected locations are right in the field of view if looking towards China and Korea.
What does interest me is that the Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELT) cannot be disabled by pulling circuit breakers and would be picked up by satellite (SARSAT).
-The idea that the world is extreme, so there is an extreme explanation, is a logical fallacy
-The turn it made wasn't hairpin. Nobody knows the diameter of the turn. You've got confused by reading a summary map as an actual flight path.
-Transponders can be tripped easily, and pilots would know how.
-A plane with 200+ people on it flying between major cities will normally have an important person on it. Statistically.
-Apart from that, your post made perfect sense.
"It is not conclusive. I'm heading the investigation and nobody is saying that. It's not true. We are looking at the possibility, we're looking at all possibilities. We're doing every profile of the passengers and crew but there is no firm evidence or leads so far," he told the Telegraph.
I wonder if they could just make this shit up since they are not going to write down the name and put it in a safe for record anyway.
There's too much focus on speculation to keep this relevant in a 24/7 news cycle.
"Jane Doe's alleged rapist" or "Witness X claims to have seen"
I do agree with you that 24/7 coverage is excessive, though; wait until sufficient evidence has presented itself and then do your reporting (unfortunately the current media climate isn't very supportive of this).
Given the state of the investigation, it is totally irresponsible to claim a highjacking and also irresponsible to then report it without putting this into context.
Poor relatives. They are now proabably getting their hopes up.
There is no hard evidence for it, but a suicidal pilot who wanted to make sure his insurance paid out would also explain this. Suicidal and psychopathic.
It's horrific, but it has happened twice before.
Yes. Apart from insurance, someone might care about their image, even after death, so making a deliberate mistake and causing an accident, this might not be acceptable for them.
>Would there not be an easier way for a pilot to purposefully crash that would also be covered by insurance?
Maybe, but could it be done without leaving evidence on the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder?
One scenario that the current limited data fits, is an attempt to hide the evidence in deep ocean, far from the search area.
That data includes engine to satellite handshake, and military radar.
A lot of effort and time was wasted searching in the wrong place, even though the lack of wreckage beneath the last transponder location was an immediate sign that something might be unusual about this case. Meanwhile, possible evidence, such as floating wreckage in the Indian Ocean, was being lost.
EDIT: just to clarify -- I'm thinking of how tracking the precise location of a plane at all times is a problem that it seems like we should have a handle on by now, although not necessarily using cell phone technology. (I wasn't thinking clearly about the cell phone signals in this context, though, as people have been correct to point out.)
Cellphone tower records should provide more evidence, because there are sure to be some phones that were not in airplane mode.
Cellphones won't have enough power to connect more than about 50 km from the coast.
And who said there are?
If you read the story, you will see that the plane flew back across land. If you look at a map, you'll see there's no other way it could get to the Indian Ocean
This is a coverage map for one of 4 Malaysian mobile operators.
Also, I would not be surprised if they knew even more than we know now and are keeping it classified because of the possible terrorist element. If the plane is sitting around somewhere, you don't want them to know you know where it is first from watching it on CNN.
Can't say I blame them as the majority of people on board were Chinese nationals.
1. Hijacking gone wrong and the plane is in the ocean.
2. Pilot suicide and the plane is in the ocean.
3. Hijacking gone right and the plane is parked somewhere and all the passengers are dead and/or being held captive (least likely option).
That's it. Nothing else could have happened.
Like Helios 522
It only needs one person to do this, out of hundreds aboard, to give us a clue what happened. Nothing has been reported. If anyone had received a message, we should have heard about it.
Yes, that's true, but it is not so useful, because it would not add much information to what we already know. A message from a passenger would give some clues about what happened.
>Nothing in your argument makes (say) hijacking more likely than mechanical issues.
In the absence of more evidence, I prefer the simplest theory.
-
The simplest possible hijacking theory relies on one event:
1. A rogue pilot, acting alone, incapacitates the other pilot, disables the transponder, and incapacitates the passengers and crew by depressurizing the plane.
-
The malfunction theory relies on an event that has all the following complex series of effects:
1 disables all communications ability suddenly
2 deactivates the transponder, and then disables a data transmitter system a few minutes later, after the plane has begun to turn
3 incapacitates most of the passengers and pilots swiftly, but without incapacitating everyone aboard
4 somehow prevents the person(s) in control of the plane from using a mobile phone when they are over land
Both theories suffer from the issue that a passenger or crew could have attempted to send a text message before they were incapacitated, which would have been transmitted when the plane passed over land, but apparently nobody did this. Passengers only have a few minutes of emergency oxygen, but crew have more, I think.
It might add plenty of information. It tells us the plane did not pass near a cell phone tower at all which at minimum rules out all the "plane landed safely at x/y/z" theories. Even if it passes over land, many of those are weaker signals and not going to pick up at all so we can rule out any argument based on whether people tried to send text messages or not.
> The simplest possible hijacking theory relies on one event:
Wait so in one case you count 4 things as "one event" and in the other case you count 4 things as a "complex series of effects"?
I honestly don't see the difference: sure one pilot could have done everything. There are also single things that can happen to a plane that could generate all those effects. I don't claim that is more likely than a hijacking or suicidal pilot but it seems about as reasonable as either.
I do think the hijacking and pilot suicide angles have serious issues with the facts that people tend to hand wave away.
That doesn't mean it's impossible for a hijacking to be done quietly, with no demands, but it's further complicated by the fact that the aircraft has to land somewhere. It's also somewhat difficult to hide a plane as large as a 777, much less find an airport to land it where it'll go unnoticed. This increases the likelihood that if it were a hijacking, it was probably similar to PSA flight 1771 [1] and more inline with a murder/suicide than a ransom.
Although, imagine the possibilities terrorists could use a 777 for. Load it with explosives, biological weapons, radioactive materials... It's enough to make a politician want to ban flying altogether. Let's hope they don't find my comment.
Regardless, I'm not especially comfortable wagering a bet on the cause of MA370's disappearance. My initial instinct was to presume foulplay or an in-flight fire. Now I'm not so sure.
If the aircraft isn't found, I suspect this might become the mystery of the century.
One thing that sort of caught my attention, if you presume that they wanted to capture a plane rather than hold it hostage, is that it's a long-range variant, with a range of 7,725 nautical miles, enough to cross the Pacific and have a couple thousand miles of range left over.
Major crippling event and attempted recovery seems to also be more plausible than #2.
EDIT: Never mind, insurance explanation for #2 makes sense.
Question #2: Given the answer to #1, where could people like that land a plane?
Question #3: Isn't Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region about the same distance from the point of disappearance as Beijing, the flight's original destination?
Question #4: If the pilot wanted to avoid detection, what better flight path than north through the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh, the Tibetan plateau and the Himalayas at night?
Question #5: With the rampant speculation about this incident, and every kind of wild idea, why haven't we heard this wild idea anywhere?
"We have many radar systems operating in this area, but nothing was
picked up," Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai, chief of staff of India's
Andamans and Nicobar Command, told Reuters. "It's possible that the
military radars were switched off as we operate on an 'as required' basis."
Separately, a defense source said that India did not keep its radar
facilities operational at all times because of cost. Asked what
the reason was, the source said: "Too expensive."
2. Pilot suicide and the plane is in the ocean.*
I am not informed in any way on this one - but what has been documented around propensity of pilot mass murder?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990
Wikipedia has a relevant category:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Airliner_accidents_an...
That category includes hijacked or stolen planes that were thought to have been deliberately crashed, not only suicide attempts by the official pilot of a scheduled flight. There are also seemingly cases there of suicide by passengers not involving a full-fledged hijacking but involving a crash.
EDIT: I tried to go through all of the Wikipedia articles in this category and subcategorize them according to perpetrator and circumstance.
* Passenger suicide resulting in crash (1)
* Passenger attack against pilots resulting in crash (6, including all Sept. 11 attacks)
* Suicide attempt by pilot resulting in deaths of others aboard (1)
* Suicide by pilot resulting in deaths of others aboard (2)
* Disputed suicide by pilot resulting in deaths of others aboard (2)
* Suicide by pilot not during scheduled flight, with no passengers aboard (2)
The latter cases both involved disgruntled pilots who wanted to get back at their employers. Unfortunately, in one of the two cases the pilot also succeeded in murdering, not passengers, but coworkers on the ground. (One of the fatal passenger-attacks-pilot cases also involved a disgruntled airline employee who was not a pilot.)
I imagine there might be other cases of general aviation pilots deliberately crashing their planes to commit suicide without intending to injure anyone else. Many of those cases may never have been identified as suicides by crash investigators.
... yeah, apparently there were 16 identified general aviation suicides (typically killing only the pilot) in the U.S. between 1993 and 2002 and 8 between 2003 and 2012.
http://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oamt...
http://avstop.com/March_2014/aircraft_assisted_pilot_suicide...
And why didn't the hijackers contact the authorities by now?
We also don't have to assume a successful landing, just an intent of one, e.g. the plane could have crashed before then or the landing could have been ugly.
There's no failsafe way to allow entry from the cabin, even if a system of multiple secure coding for override is instituted in the cabin. And you can't depend upon ground based authentication for a number of reasons as things currently stand.
A dead mans switch, where a member of the flight crew must override a timed flight deck door release, would only work if the crew themselves were willing and capable.
And an Air Marshall who has overriding authority and perhaps access code is yet another security issue.
There are three scenarios with a dead mans switch.
Firstly, the flight deck crew may be unable to code against entry. This works as intended.
Secondly, the flight deck crew is friendly, and codes against entry. This works as intended.
Thirdly, the flight deck crew is hostile, and codes against entry. This last possibility needs a solution.
A solution might be that all flights ping ground stations at timed intervals, and that all flight deck dead man switch override code entries are transmitted to ground, instituting cross reference queries against flight deck and flight cabin personnel. All flights of a certain class would therefore require satellite communications capability.
Any dead man switch override event would be classed as a possible emergency.
[edit] Forgot to say that turning off transponders and or phone homes turns dead man switch into a coded entry switch. This of course can allow entry for hostiles into an already hostile flight deck.
How so? If you don't trust the pilots to the point where you want, who, the FAs? taking over the plane, you've got far bigger issues. An override system should be a remote-control thing requiring keys from multiple people.
From what I understand, no terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the recent Kuming massacre in China the week before the missing plane.
Uighurs separatists/terrorists are not that shy; they did claim responsbility are few times. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China)
If this were a hijack, it's either targeting at the Chinese (most likely Uighurs separatists) or an upgraded terrorist attack. Maybe I've watched too much 24 and Sherlock Holmes.
Maybe it was a hijacking gone wrong, and the plane went down?
Then again, the time gap between the disabling of systems suggests the hijackers ended up with enough control of the aircraft to send someone to see to it (presumably if they were engaged in a desperate battle with the crew and passengers, or if they lost control of the aircraft and the plane was going down, all of the hijackers would be busy dealing with the crisis).
The fact of "significant flying experience" and the disabling of the transponder suggests a professional operation -- maybe some country's intelligence agency wants one of the passengers badly enough they're willing to interfere with a couple hundred other innocent passengers? The outcome doesn't bode well for the missing, since they are now Witness Who Have Seen Too Much.
Or maybe the hijackers want all the passengers because they have a use for a couple hundred humans. Slave trading? Weapons testing? Wouldn't it be simpler (and bring a less thorough investigation) to just kidnap people off the street in some country with poor law enforcement?
The more I think about this, the less sense it makes.
And if it was still the case up to the point of disappearance, its latest livery was a bit... flamboyant [1]. Not exactly the sort of thing I'd want to try hiding.
[1] http://flightaware.com/photos/view/1342999-1276f63c75e647f6d...
But add in the "desperate madmen" factor and who knows.
http://www.boeing.com/assets/pdf/commercial/airports/acaps/7...
If this holds true, then the most likely perpetrators are Uyghur separatists. But this begs the question, how did they manage to evade being detected by the numerous radars?
[1] https://twitter.com/JonahFisher/status/444754310677553153
Sounds to me like a possible fight/commotion in the cockpit was the cause of the plane to fly in such a weird pattern.
Potential Scenario:
- Fight in cockpit results in the plane flying unexpectedly high ("above approved limit")
- Hijackers obtain control, turn off transponder and turn to their target location
- Unexperienced pilot (possibly learned how to only fly smaller planes) makes an "unevenly" descent to lower altitudes as he knows the plane is above its approved limit
- Rise again could be a second fight in the cockpit? Not sure on how to explain this one.
The rising and falling in altitudes makes me suspect this wasn't pilot suicide.
“A lot of stock cannot be put in the altitude data” sent from the engines, one official said. “A lot of this doesn’t make sense.” - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/world/asia/malaysia-milita...
Here's another scenario: hypoxia. Makes you retarded and euphoric. Like being drunk but with less disassociation. Suddently, it's a great idea to climb! Oh wait, nope. Better descend. Are we on course? Better turn.
Hypoxia and/or stress. Look at AF447. All pilots know what a stall is. But when you're flying at night in bad weather with S:t Elmo's fire all around you and the airspeed indicator stops working and you believe you need to climb, you might react without thinking. Oh, we're losing altitude? Better pull up!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRUf4NlwDc
He himself confirmed that satellite data (alledgedly cross-checked with US and other countries) shows the plane was still up in the air until at least 8:30AM Malaysian Time (~4-5 hours after the disappearance iirc).
Search and Rescue operations in the South China Sea (east of Malaysia) have been cancelled - the search now focuses west of Malaysia.
I quote (emphasis mine) : "the last satellite communication occurred in one of two possible corridors, a northern corridor, stretching approximately from the border of Kazakshtan and Turkemistan to northern Thailand, and a southern corridor, stretching approximately from Indonesia to southern Indian Ocean."
PM exited the press conference right after ending his speech, not answering questions.
I bet you could get $500,000,000 ransom for the safe return of the plane, the crew, and the passengers. The plane alone is worth $100 million.
Half a billion buys a lot of military hardware on the open market.
Odds are they are dead, at the bottom of the ocean. Flying low enough to avoid radar will significantly shorten the range (denser air at low altitude, etc).
Better than being dead.
If your company has 20,000 employees and it's routine for many of them to fly, then the odds are that something bad will happen eventually.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/02/tesla-employees-identif...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/10/connecticut-pla...
Below are some unusual airplane incidents, I'm sure there are many more than are on this list. The point is that everyone would say the below things would NEVER happen on an airplane, yet, they happened.
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/unusual.htm
Some highlights:
"A passenger brought aboard a crocodile hidden in a sports bag. The crocodile escaped, causing a panic among passengers who all rushed to one end of the plane. This caused an imbalance in the aircraft which led to loss of control and a crash."
"A stray bullet from training soldiers struck the landing plane, hitting an oxygen cylinder. A fire broke out and control of the plane was lost and it crashed."
"The aircraft was hijacked shortly after taking off from Ethiopia by three drunken escaped prisoners. They demanded to be flown to Australia, but wouldn't let the pilot stop to refuel. The plane eventually ran out of fuel and ditched 500 feet offshore killing 127 of 157 aboard."
"A passenger's cigarette caused a fire in the cabin which led to an oxygen tank exploding. The plane crashed killing 25 of 69 aboard."
"Two passengers were sucked out of the plane after a tire exploded in the wheel well causing damage to the fuselage."
"Out of boredom, the captain and flight engineer decided to experiment and see what would happen to the autothrottle system if the circuit breakers which supplied power to the instruments which measured the rotational speed of each engine's low pressure compressor were tripped. This led to engine overspeeding and destruction of the engine. Pieces struck the fuselage, breaking a window, causing rapid explosive decompression and a passenger was sucked out of the plane. The plane landed safely."
"An unrestrained German Shepard interfered with flight controls and caused the plane to crash."
"Without authorization, the pilot taxied half-way down the runway to try and clear fog. Braking done during the fog clearing overheated the brakes. Soon after takeoff, the overheated brakes caused a tire to burst which damaged a fuel line and started a fire. The plane crashed shortly after killing all 80 people aboard."
These below happened like 50+ years ago.
"A U.S. Army Air Force B-25 crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building in fog, killing 3 aboard and 11 on the ground."
"Carbon dioxide extinguishers were discharged in response to a fire warning in the cargo hold. The plane's nose was lowered for an emergency descent and due to a design flaw, carbon dioxide entered the cockpit and rendered the crew unconscious after which the plane crashed killing all 43 aboard. "
"The DC-3 disintegrated in flight outside of Quebec killing all 23 aboard.. A dynamite bomb was planted in the forward baggage compartment by Albert Guay, a jeweler, in a plot to kill his wife who was a passenger on the plane. Guay, who assembled the bomb, had his accomplice, Marguerite Pitre air expressed the bomb on the aircraft. Ms. Pitre's brother, a clockmaker, helped make the timing mechanism. The insurance policy was for 10,000 dollars. All three were hanged for their crimes. "
"The plane landed in Pacific Ocean, 2.5 mile short of the runway in the shallow waters of San Francisco Bay. All 107 people aboard were safely evacuated off the plane. The aircraft was recovered from the San Francisco Bay 55 hours after the accident, repaired and eventually flew back home to Japan and was in service for many decades."
"The aircraft crashed killing 61 of 82 aboard after colliding with a balloon."
Wow, that starts out like something out of The Onion: http://www.theonion.com/articles/pilot-tells-passengers-hes-...
> the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
I don't know who to believe.
Next they are gonna deny that MH370 existed at all.
That's the main problem with reporting on airline accidents - the media will jump on any early theory that comes out to try and be the first on the story, and loses interest by the time the actual investigation finishes...