Ask HN: Any insight here on what happened to flight 370? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any insight here on what happened to flight 370?

7 pointste_platt2 comments

The news on flight 370 seems to be turning more and more speculative and strange, including conflicting interpretations of data. Is there anyone here who can give a reliable summary of what is known and what can be reasonably inferred?

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A really good technical summary can found found here:

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/re...

I'll quote just a few lines of the summary here in case they move the location of the thread, and you need to search for it:

  **** SUMMARY PROVIDED BY MEMBER: rcair1
  (Post 77 from thread 23) ****

  First - synopsis
  - The ship took off normally and headed on course to Beijing

  - The last ACARS transmission was about 01:07 local.
  This does not mean ACARS was shut off - just that
  was the last transmission of ACARS data (See ACARS below)

  - The last comms were a normal hand-off from Malaysia
  to Vietnam control at about 1:30 local

  - It was a normal 'good night' on the Malaysian side,
  but Vietnam was not contacted.

  [rest of summary deleted]

This is just speculation, but given the absence of sightings or new leads, and with the information at hand, it will probably turn out that the pilot, the copilot, or another person having access to the flight deck and with a lot of knowledge of aircraft, took over the aircraft and ordered it to be flown to a point far SW of the last detected position, then crashed it into the ocean.

The possibility exists that we will never find the plane, because of the great number of possible crash sites and the absence of radar or other kinds of coverage in the South Indian Ocean region.

If the plane were flown to a land location and landed, it's very likely that someone would have revealed its whereabouts by now. A plane that size can't remain a secret for very long. This is why I think it was ditched in the water, and that implies that the plane and its passengers are lost.

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