Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

http://keithledgerwood.tumblr.com/post/79838944823/did-malaysian-airlines-370-disappear-using-sia68

by cloudwalking • 12 years ago

462 388 12 years ago

keithledgerwood.tumblr.com

redbad• 12 years ago

This is almost exactly how a plot device in Neal Stephenson's REAMDE plays out. In almost exactly the same part of the world. Bizarre.

beagle3• 12 years ago

I have not read REAMDE, but if that's the case - perhaps REAMDE was the inspiration, which makes it not bizarre at all.

sspiff• 12 years ago

Indeed, though I was a little suspicious about wether this was really possible. Maybe we'll find out soon.

_nedR• 12 years ago

Googled "Neal Stephenson README" expecting a thriller involving a government agency plot to inject malicious code into a open-source crypto-library, and the final commmit to the github project made by a hacker found murdered in front of the computer in his basement.

Was disappointed.

general_failure• 12 years ago

Reamde not readme

pajop• 12 years ago

that's probably CryptoLocker in real life - http://blog.malwarebytes.org/intelligence/2013/10/cryptolock...

ccozan• 12 years ago

More likely like a modern William Gibson plot. Mystery and modern technology in the same place. Objects that do not want to be tracked. Definitively Gibson style.

keypusher3• 12 years ago

No, you misunderstand. Stephenson actually had a hijacked 747 in one of his books shadowing another to avoid radar detection in the same way as described by this article.

viraptor• 12 years ago

I had the same reaction. Actually, first it's disk encrypting malware which requests payment in bitcoin, now this, what next is going to come true?

dredmorbius• 12 years ago

Which I've just finally gotten to reading in the past week or so, not realizing the parallels until I ran across them in the story. Pretty bizarre.

lawncheer• 12 years ago

One of the first things that went through my head when I heard this update.

madaxe_again3• 12 years ago

Stephenson specialises in seeing the possible and articulating it.

The world of Snow Crash and Diamond Age is a very palpable future.

ajtaylor• 12 years ago

Wow, you're absolutely correct. I read REAMDE about 2 months ago so the plot is still pretty fresh in my mind. It's a great, so consider this a recommendation.

linksbro• 12 years ago

Incredible theory. This entire situation is really a complete mystery.

ekianjo4• 12 years ago

If the plane has flown following most of that 777 trail, then it should at least narrow down a little where it went... but it's very unsure we even find out where it went. If this was planned from the very beginning, it would be well hidden by now.

I wonder what happened to the passengers - and if anyone realized what was happening after several hours.

HNaTTY• 12 years ago

Sadly, I find it hard to believe that passengers wouldn't have tried to use cellphones, and I'm inclined to think that the cabin became depressurized before the last report of contact (a ping off of an inmarsat sattelite) which is reported as 7.5 hours after takeoff.

akumen3• 12 years ago

Good theory. Yours is as good as anyone's at this point in time. Incredible, how we think that our tech is so advanced yet a commercial jet can go completely missing.

MH370 makes for an incredible setup to 'Lost'.

yaeger• 12 years ago

I think this whole thing could have been prevented if only the tracking systems could not have been turned off manually.

Why is that even possible? An oversight? If you think about just how many liberties we passengers had to give up after 9/11 worldwide, why was this still there? We can't take any liquids on board anymore but if the pilot wants, he can make the plane disappear at will? Yeah, the liquid thing was really the only security risk here...

Imho, tracking of planes should never be able to be turned off. Why should it? Could there ever be a situation were it would be vital to have these systems not running?

ekianjo4• 12 years ago

I think this whole thing could have been prevented if only the tracking systems could not have been turned off manually.

This was already answered several days ago. All electrical equipment has to be able to be switched off - there were cases where fires started in planes because electrical circuits could not be cut.

caf2• 12 years ago

In the case of the radar transponder there is the very prosaic reason that ATC doesn't want their screen filled with all the aircraft sitting at gates.

gambiting6• 12 years ago

>but if the pilot wants, he can make the plane disappear at will?

The pilot is the captain of the airship and can take any decision deemed necessary for the safety of the aircraft and its passengers and that decision is final(this is actually defined in the airspace law, would need to look for a quote). That means that the pilot has to have the ability to turn off any and all electrical parts of the aircraft if that would ensure its safety(in case of a fire). That power cannot and should not be taken away from the pilot - you don't want a plane crash due to a fire which couldn't have been put out because the burning thing was always-on due to some regulations.

josephlord• 12 years ago

Could missiles ever be targeted on the transponder beacon? I could imagine that it is preferable to turn off such beacons when landing/taking off from near war zones or when the terrorist threat is very high.

akumen3• 12 years ago

There are legitimate reasons to have a manual on/off switch:

1. In case of electrical failure to extend battery charges for 2-way communication.

2. If the device goes nuts and is better off.

3. To be turned off so that it doesn't interfere with a backup transponder.

jpalomaki• 12 years ago

I guess it is also a little bit uncertain if the plane is actually totally missing or if those who know just don't want to share their information with public.

msantos• 12 years ago

MH370 makes for an incredible setup to 'Lost'.

I believe it's more like Timtim's Flight 714

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_714

brc• 12 years ago

Tintin

akumen3• 12 years ago

You sir, won the internet for me today :)

jdimov6• 12 years ago

Yes, it would indeed be totally incredible if the plane was actually lost...

However, it is already evident that there is much more going on - that the forces involved are far from benign, that the events are far from random and that whatever is at stake is of a Very High Value to someone.

Flammy• 12 years ago

I'd really like to hear another knowledgeable person's analysis of this theory. At least its different than the endless hijackers/bombing/suicide/aliens run around.

KaiserPro5• 12 years ago

Nice idea, however I'd hope that modern radar is able to detect two aircraft of that size flying close together.

Unless the perpetrators know the various limitations of each radar installation?

ekianjo4• 12 years ago

It's a matter of radar resolution. Radars can't distinguish flies apart from each other, so obviously there are technology limitations anyway.

KaiserPro5• 12 years ago

It is indeed, in the 40's they had this issue, when planes were a ~mile apart they become a mush on the screen.

However thats not the case nowadays. Even if you had a nasty radar from the 80's you see that the trace is twice the size it should be. (We'll I'd hope)

I'd assume that military radar ops would be looking for this, as this is a great way to sneak assets about.

LordHumungous• 12 years ago

Maybe, but would the operators have the imagination to suspect it was something other than a glitch?

KaiserPro5• 12 years ago

Hindsight is a wondrous thing eh?

cnvogel• 12 years ago

It's likely that this could be detected by looking at recorded radar-data as a above-average number of "glitches" at this particular track.

But then, I also assume that modern radar systems have some way to automatically filter displayed tracks for "glitches" or temporary loss of contact to a airplane signal to avoid distracting or tiring out airspace controllers.

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

Civilian flight control and radar is designed and optimized for a fully cooperative system, extremely so. It's not designed for filtering through data to track down inconsistencies and identify potential bad actors, it's not a military air defense system.

gnaffle4• 12 years ago

From what I understand, the traces they are correlating now come from military radar (which is also why they have not been made public).

rrtwo• 12 years ago

Waiting for a crossover of this route with this http://project.wnyc.org/runways/

ohadron2• 12 years ago

This assumes 5000ft of stopping distance and a high density runway, which is far more than really needed. Especially considering that the operators of this flight are willing to take more risks than usual commercial flights.

There are probably thousands of additional landing strips, even more if the hijackers don't require keeping the plane in perfect flying condition.

pogue• 12 years ago

All these theories... It's obviously at the bottom of the ocean. If not, it's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlG28B-R8Y

pizza2• 12 years ago

a part of me wants the plane to suddenly re-appear exactly where it went missing with everyone on the plane unaware that it was lost

sumedh• 12 years ago

The old alien abduction theory.

drawkbox• 12 years ago

Langoliers, it is there, just slightly behind time.

leoc6• 12 years ago

It's obviously at the bottom of the ocean.

That's the default expectation in this kind of situation, but in this case it's actually slightly hard to see how it could have happened. The evidence suggests that when it first "disappeared", and likely for hours afterwards, the plane was under controlled flight by someone with at least some idea of what they were doing. Whoever was flying the plane could easily deliberately crash it at any time while flying over the ocean, of course, but if their intention was just to crash the plane somewhere non-specific, why not just do it right away or soon afterwards? So they very probably had other intentions.

And an airplane in a controlled cruise over the ocean is unlikely to just happen to crash into it by accident. It will obviously run out of fuel at some point, but the people flying the plane almost certainly planned to do something interesting with it before that happened: the likely candidates are a) land it or b) crash it into something notable. They probably had the ability to read the fuel gauge and/or an a priori idea of what the available range was, too. Now there are all sorts of ways their plan could have gone wrong, or could have succeeded by crashing the plane, but they nearly all involve the plane landing and/or crashing on land, or relatively near a coastline on the approach to land instead of the deep ocean. AFAICS it's easier to list ways in which the plane could be lost in the deep ocean:

1) A Flight 93-style battle for the cockpit erupts while 370 is over the ocean

2) The person flying the plane is a terrorist/hijacker/pirate who lacks real airliner flying expertise but has been equipped with a cheat sheet telling him in detail exactly what to do. Everything goes fairly well for a long time until something unexpected happens and/or he messes up one of his scheduled actions. At this point he likely panics and maybe does something rash

3) The people in control attempt a controlled ditch somewhere in the ocean, probably in order to rendezvous with one or more speedboats and transfer themselves and some or all passengers. This could very easily go wrong, but succeed or fail the plane will probably end up sinking either way

4) The people in control attempt to strike out across the ocean for some distant target which they guess is near the limit of their range. But they miscalculate, and by the time they realise it they're trapped over the ocean with no path back near land in time

Scenarios 3 and 4 are fairly unlikely if you believe the radar interpretations suggesting that the plane went west across Malaysia and then north, though.

bruceb2• 12 years ago

1. Is unlikely as door is very secure now. Passengers can't get in.

4. Seems a possibility.

downandout2• 12 years ago

There is a realistic possibility that those piloting the plane used this and/or other stealth techniques and landed intact. There are lots of groups around the world that would love to have a working $250M aircraft. Maybe there is a massive airplane chop shop that this went to, or someone wants to load it up with explosives and fly it to some country they disagree with.

Unfortunately, whether it landed or not, the odds that the passengers are alive are very small. A ransom demand would have been made by now.

nashequilibrium• 12 years ago

It doesn't make any sense to kill 240 people, including babies and kids. Especially if this is a terrorist act, they could not religiously justify that, especially since these are mainly Chinese people rather than American.

kiiski• 12 years ago

What makes you think these hypothetical terrorists are after Americans, not Chinese? And why is religion the only reason they could be doing this?

Robadob• 12 years ago

The Chinese are victims to terrorism to;

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230470990...

varjag• 12 years ago

Terrorists' rationales are often bizarre to non-indoctrinated: witness Oklahoma city bombing or Utøya. Besides if that was a doing of national separatist group in China, they'd have little problem with that.

houseofshards3• 12 years ago

my guess is that if it was hijacked by terrorists, the act is yet to come. They are after the plane, not the people.

KaiserPro5• 12 years ago

First, before you make statements like that, you need to understand the motivation of the people doing this.

And since we have no idea who did what, where, why and how, its far to early to judge if it made any sense or not.

That is not to say that I condone senseless violence. However to prevent further incidents you must understand the motivations of the perpetrators and understand from their world view. Just saying they are evil isn't going to help you understand why they did it.

After all if you don't understand how desperate they are, you don't know to what level they will stoop.

cyphunk• 12 years ago

did you just use killing of innocent children as a justification against the possibility of this being a terrorist act? Of all the arguments against potential terrorist foundations, and there are many, the action off killing of innocent women and children appears to be the exact thesis for such an action. check, history.

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

1. Not all terrorists are religious

2. Not all terrorists are after Americans

3. Religious terrorists can find a way to justify anything using their book of choice.

logicchains2• 12 years ago

Note that there was a 'terrorist attack' in China a week or two earlier, in which five Uighur separatists with knives killed 30 random people and wounded hundreds in a crowded train station, before being shot by police. This shows that there are definitely 'terrorists' (not using the scare quotes because I necessarily disagree that they're terrorists, only because I honestly don't know what they are) who are interested in killing large numbers of Chinese people in the name of their cause.

houseofshards3• 12 years ago

> A ransom demand would have been made by now.

That is exactly what I am scared of. That the intent was never to demand a ransom. Obviously they were after the plane - to use it as a weapon. Or use it as a carrier of some weapon.

final_approach• 12 years ago

In that case, it'd be much less suspicious to purchase a small private jet. No reason to hijack a big airplane everyone would be looking for.

ZoF2• 12 years ago

What makes this obvious?

ckozlowski• 12 years ago

The fact that the plane was taken up to 45,000, far above it's recommended limit, bothers me in this regard. What would the effects be on the passengers? Would this have been orchestrated in order to somehow incapacitate them?

I have no idea if the cockpit is pressurized separately from the rest of the plane, or if there's any way to tamper with the deployment of the plane's oxygen masks. It's all speculation on my part.

KaiserPro5• 12 years ago

its all pressurised under the same envelope. The pilots have oxygen masks.

caf2• 12 years ago

The pressurisation is not independent, but the emergency O2 is - the cockpit is supplied from tanks and the cabin from chemical generators.

The cabin generators can be disabled by tripping a circuit breaker (and they only last about 12 minutes anyway).

wazoox• 12 years ago

The cockpit isn't pressurised separately. It's possible to alter oxygen masks deployment, I know for sure it must be done landing at some altitude airports like Quito which are higher up than normal cabin altitude.

De pressurizing the plane would be extremely dangerous anyway, even with your oxygen mask on. Among other things the cabin temperature would drop to -50°C or so, the low pressure could induce fatal embolism, loss of consciousness, etc.

Tyrannosaurs9• 12 years ago

The cockpit isn't airtight - it would be at the same pressure as the rest of the cabin.

The recommended limit around 43,100 ft. 45,000 ft isn't that far above it so it's possible that there may be no impact on passengers at that level (if you're saying 43,100ft is safe, you're going to have a margin for error, it's not going to depressurize at 43,101 ft).

Certainly if it was part of your plan to incapacitate the passengers it seems overly complex, risky and uncertain.

That said, given what happened on Flight 77, if you were hijacking a plane, a plan to deal with the passengers would make a lot of sense. I'm just not sure this plan to do so does.

pavlov• 12 years ago

Can you expand on what groups might be able to orchestrate such a complicated hijacking?

A rogue state like North Korea would have the capability, but they don't really have the motive since they can acquire passenger airplanes by other means. (North Korea's national airline has 27 planes -- if they wanted to make a nuclear kamikaze plane, they'd just use one of those.)

Nanzikambe3• 12 years ago

Not to imply I think it's possible, but deniability is an obvious reason not to use your own aircraft.

zmb_2• 12 years ago

Maybe they didn't want the plane, but someone on the plane. For example, those 20 Freescale Semiconductor employees. North Korea has a history of abducting foreigners, including a South Korean movie director kidnapped by Kim Jong-il to produce films for him.

fafner9• 12 years ago

I think it's highly unrealistic. The plan simply involves too many risks. First of all how could the potential hijackers know that the Malaysian military wasn't properly monitoring the radar? There would have been a huge risk of the Malaysian military discovering it and scrambling jets.

The collision avoidance system only works when the transponder is enabled. So flying in the radar shadow of another aircraft would take some extreme skill. And wouldn't they have to adjust their position according to the position of the several radar antennas? What about potential mobile radar systems, e.g., on military ships? It would have also all depended on perfectly finding SIA68. What if it had a two hour delay? Not unlikely on international flights.

Where would they secretly land the aircraft? It takes a more than 1km straight and wide runway. And it has to be remote enough from any town or military installation. But they would have to bring large amount of supplies like jet fuel. (Which they would secretly get where?) They would have to deal with 240 people on board. Someone who would steal such an aircraft is certainly ruthless but ruthless enough to murder 240 people? They would have to hide the aircraft from satellite surveillance. It would take a ground crew to refuel and maintain the aircraft.

All in all there are so many things which could go wrong. And it's very unlikely that a bunch of amateurs could pull it off.

downandout2• 12 years ago

...it's very unlikely that a bunch of amateurs could pull it off.

The pilot had decades of experience and a flight simulator in his home where he could practice such things. If he was involved, he probably could have pulled it off.

...how could the potential hijackers know that the Malaysian military wasn't properly monitoring the radar?...

We don't know what the contingency plan was, because fighters weren't dispatched. Maybe pulling off this plan was a million to one shot, and they just got lucky.

IMO, the only reason that one would try for stealth in this situation is if their intention was to land the plane somewhere. If their intention was to crash, they didn't need stealth or 7 hours of flying time. They could have pushed forward on the stick for a few seconds and dove the plane into the ocean.

mikeash• 12 years ago

Personally, I find the whole military radar thing to be extremely suspicious. The fact that this plane flew over the whole country without being noticed even though it was tracked on military radar is just too implausible. Yet it happened.

Personally, I think perhaps somebody on duty was involved somehow. Perhaps bribed, perhaps threatened, maybe both, or just a co-conspirator.

It's a crazy idea and pretty unlikely. But to me it seems like the least unlikely scenario, for now.

I don't think it would take too much skill to merge your radar blip with another airliner. Just pull up behind it and slightly above it (to avoid the wake turbulence) and get close. Radar doesn't have superb spatial resolution, so you don't have to pull perfectly in line with the other plane. As long as you're fairly close to it (within a couple of plane-lengths, I would imagine) then the two planes will show up as a single radar contact. Sitting right behind another plane like that while it's cruising would not be too difficult.

stef25• 12 years ago

Why would you need a 777 when you can probably pick up old Russian cargo planes much easier and for a fraction of the cost and without needing super skilled pilots?

arethuza2• 12 years ago

Extreme long range? It was a 777-200ER (Enhanced Range) - that model holds records for distance flying:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#777-200ER

EA• 12 years ago

It's one thing to have a big airplane.

It's another thing to have a big invisible airplane.

Tyrannosaurs9• 12 years ago

Who is to say that any ransom demand would have been made publicly? It may well be that one has been made but that we just don't know about it.

fafner9• 12 years ago

The hijackers would probably want to make it public. It's an insurance for their safety right now. A government might simply bomb the parked aircraft and blame it on a crash or the hijackers.

houseofshards3• 12 years ago

An aviation noob here. I have a question:

If the flight starts another journey from wherever it is, will it be possible to track it via radar ?

ohadron2• 12 years ago

Only if that area is under radar coverage.

robmcm• 12 years ago

Apparently the rolls royce engines have a remote debugging ability that was not enabled on this flight, however it was still pinging home which is how they first noticed the course change. They had disabled all the other trackers, so if they were watching the news the chances are they have disabled these too.

[EDIT] ACARS - http://theaviationist.com/2014/03/16/satcom-acars-explained/

emeidi5• 12 years ago

If the plane is parked in working condition somewhere on this planet, thanks to the media coverage the hijackers now know that the jet engines will phone home the moment they start them.

But then again, this is hypothetical nonsense. The plane most probably crashed into the ocean.

karterk• 12 years ago

Good analysis, but I'm skeptical that this is not already accounted for in the military radars. Given that so many flights fly everyday in almost every route, it becomes really easy for any country to sneak an aircraft anywhere. Such a glaring loop hole should not exist. And we are talking about crossing the borders monitored by multiple countries here.

confluence3• 12 years ago

There are too many oddities in this whole story that don’t make sense if this theory isn’t the answer in my opinion.

Confirmation bias?

Slow burn fire randomly taking out communications systems and electronics undetected over a long period of time. Pilots freak out and head West for the coast, program way points on autopilot. Fire then cracks the hull, leading to a slow depressurization, incapacitating crew. Plane heads into the Indian ocean with all onboard unconscious or dead, until it runs out of fuel, and crashes into the ocean.

tomelders2• 12 years ago

1. Zig Zaging flight path between legitimate waypoints after transponders were turned off, plus some pronounced altitude changes suggest that Autopilot was not engaged.

2. Pilots turned off transponders before their last communication.

confluence3• 12 years ago

1. Waypoints far west outside of primary are conjecture. Can be explained by autopilot shutdown due to onboard emergency.

2. Not proven. ACARS can fail without pilot intervention. That's confirmation bias.

jballanc• 12 years ago

The folks over at airliners.net have pointed out that the 777's collision avoidance system only works if both planes' transponders are turned on. That doesn't mean this scenario is impossible, but it does raise the level of sophistication required.

Sadly, I feel like whatever happened, the amount of sophistication involved increasingly points toward the involvement of one or more state actors. If that's the case, I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever find out what happened to this plane...

ekianjo4• 12 years ago

Sadly, I feel like whatever happened, the amount of sophistication involved increasingly points toward the involvement of one or more state actors. If that's the case, I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever find out what happened to this plane...

Indeed. And not just the "what", but the "why" as well.

Fuxy• 12 years ago

That's exactly it why would anybody put this much effort into making a plane disappear and why this plane.

Given all this effort it is very unlikely any of the passengers will be found alive so what would warrant the murder of all the passengers.

Digging should turn up something very interesting.

Shivetya3• 12 years ago

time to figure out who was on that flight, perhaps it was someone so important that taking a plane full of passengers was worth the cost.

leoc6• 12 years ago

It's only one vague point of interest among many, but there were twenty Freescale employees on board flight 370. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/09/malaysia-airlines-...

wsc981• 12 years ago

I think it's most likely the plane will be used in a terrorist action. For example in the next week there's a nucleair summit being held in The Hague:

http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/EH-eSUP-2014-01-NSS....

It would be a very hard to reach target, though.

twistedpair4• 12 years ago

Why? Three cases of pilots committing suicide with big jets in the last few years. Silk Air 185, Egypt Air 990, LAM 470.

So either (a) it's an act of war by another country or (b) the far simpler a pilot committed suicide.

However, it if was a state actor, would you as the US tell people that? Wars cost trillions. Perhaps just sweep it under the rug.

ccarpenterg3• 12 years ago

I hope you're wrong. If a state was involved that would mean that boarding a plane is extremely dangerous from now on.

This case is really suspicious but I still think this was just an accident.

raverbashing2• 12 years ago

Yeah, because states were never behind any deliberate downing of a civilian aircraft, either through external hit or from within the aircraft.

aestra2• 12 years ago

Not really...

Nations (and other organizations) have been carrying out false flag operations since forever. In the 1960s there was Operation Northwoods - a plan by the US government to bomb US civilian aircraft and plant evidence it was Cuba who did it to justify invading Cuba. The Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on it and it would have been implemented except JFK wouldn't sign off on it.

So even if this had nation state involvement, it is about the same danger to get on an aircraft as it always has been, or go out in a crowded event, or theater, school, etc... which are also targets for terrorism. Example would be the failed Lavon Affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair

dragonwriter3• 12 years ago

If a state was involved that would mean that boarding a plane is extremely dangerous from now on.

Why, it wouldn't be the first either destruction or hijacking or both of a plane with nation-state involvement, so I don't see how it would change anything?

smoyer3• 12 years ago

"points toward the involvement of one or more state actors"

I agree ... and so I think it's become useful to identify the skills and knowledge of each of the jet's passengers. You have to assume that, in this case, the plane was hijacked in order to obtain one of the passengers.

Terrorism simply doesn't make sense!

etherael2• 12 years ago

20 freescale semiconductor employees on board.

StandardFuture• 12 years ago

Couldn't it maybe have been a piece of cargo that was the target and not a person? Perhaps, something that a passenger was traveling with?

jusben13692• 12 years ago

Isn't this an awfully complex way to get to one individual? Can't you just nab him at the airport at either end if you're so sure he's on the flight?

broolstoryco• 12 years ago

Satoshi was on board!

exelius4• 12 years ago

Or they were hijacking a plane to stuff it full of chemical weapons / radioactive material (think dirty bomb) with the intent of flying it over a major city and detonating it. It would be hard to do it in a western nation, but if you were aiming at a city near the "frontier" of India, Pakistan, etc. a bad actor could likely execute the plan before the jets they scramble could intercept the jet. There's a lot of bad stuff you could do with a flying metal tube capable of carrying 200,000 lbs of whatever you can get your hands on.

I don't think it was a state actor though. If it was a state actor, who would it have been? My bets are on Pakistan if it was a state actor; they're one of the only ones with a sophisticated enough intelligence organization to be able to hide a plane like this. In many cases, it's hard to tell where the ISI ends and the Taliban begins. Though the same could be said for Iran and Hezbollah, though the Iranian government has taken a reconciliatory tone with the west as of late and I don't think they'd risk it. It likely wasn't North Korea; the social engineering required would be too high and the North Koreans are largely incompetent at covert operations outside their borders due to their xenophobia. I don't think many other states with the capability to do something like this would risk it; the amount of publicity on this is too high.

If the plane was hijacked and successfully landed somewhere (and that's a big if -- IMO it's just as likely that it's at the bottom of the ocean and will never be found) it was probably a coordinated effort between a terrorist group and rogue elements within the Pakistani ISI. I don't think the older pilot was involved; there's been a lot made of his links to a controversial opposition leader in Malaysia, but his ideology doesn't align with any of the terror groups (Anwar Ibrahim is considered a liberal reformer) and all of the "controversy" around him is corruption-related -- not the type of thing that would cause someone to shift toward radical Islam.

herbig• 12 years ago

I think the level of sophistication required increasingly points to a much simpler explanation than terrorism.

Shivetya3• 12 years ago

why do people underestimate what terrorist groups are capable of? Some have training from various countries and quite a few have financial and material backing.

If anything, the common theme on this site was to find every possible explanation other than terrorism. Sorry to be the party pooper, but there are people out there who operate without regard to our beliefs and at times love to exploit the stories we tell ourselves.

leccine2• 12 years ago

I was lolling my head off. I never understood why a way more complicated explanation is more appealing to people.

thekevan• 12 years ago

"UPDATE - Monday, March 17, 2014 - 12:15 PM EST Some have raised the statement that TCAS doesn’t work if the transponder is disabled… this is only partially correct. Other planes TCAS would NOT see MH370 at all. MH370 would not actively query other planes as it’s transponder is off HOWEVER it could still listen to any transponder output from other planes that are actively transmitting. SQ68 would have been actively transmitting while in-range of Subang ATC center.

Even if TCAS on MH370 wasn’t working for some reason, an in-expensive portable ADS-B receiver paired with an iPad and Foreflight app would allow a pilot to receive the ADS-B output being transmitted by SQ68 at that time."

toomuchtodo• 12 years ago

Even if TCAS on MH370 wasn’t working for some reason, an in-expensive portable ADS-B receiver paired with an iPad and Foreflight app would allow a pilot to receive the ADS-B output being transmitted by SQ68 at that time."

http://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR

That ADS-B receiver runs about $20-30.

madaxe_again3• 12 years ago

I'm looking at Russia, and thinking that it would be very convenient for them for Ukraine to drop off the news... which it largely did when this broke.

Now what could cause that - perhaps a good mystery. Everyone likes a good mystery.

Baikonur is a pretty f'ing good place to hide something like a 777, and is very proximal to the last possible position. Been there. Middle of nowhere. Airstrip is high security, remote, and has underground hangers. Local populace are very well versed in "I see nothing". It's also jurisdictionally weird, being a bit of Kaz rented to Russia as sovereign territory, meaning that any legal search would be very tricky to arrange to say the least.

Add that to the big old pile of theories.

thenmar• 12 years ago

Wait, you don't seriously think that Russia disappeared a Malaysian airliner (and hundreds of international citizens) to distract the world (?) from Crimea. That's just fucking absurd.

brianbarker• 12 years ago

I don't hold much value to this theory for now, but it's not totally absurd given how many truthers think 9/11 was run by the US itself. This isn't as bad as that.

cc4392• 12 years ago

This whole affair is taking such a conspiracy laden turn that it makes me miss Tom Clancy.

Russians building up rhetoric and pushing tensions to a high not seen since the cold war? An airliner that mysteriously disappears with some evidence pointing toward an elaborate hijacking scheme? Tell me that doesn't sound like an outline for one of his books.

I'm not trying to be flippant with the fact that hundreds of people lost their lives or that friends and families are being crushed by the uncertainty. It's just a thought that springs to mind.

rjbwork• 12 years ago

An interesting theory and article, but I can't help but feel like this reads too much like one of the classic conspiracy theory articles about 9-11/lizards/aliens/Area 51, etc.

davidw• 12 years ago

That's what they want you to think.

fnsa• 12 years ago

A theory is that the cargo area of the plane contained valuable goods: gold, silver, diamonds, etc and that's what the hijackers were after.

From this: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-15/missing-malaysian-f...

the 777 can have up to 25 tons worth of cargo payload.

25 tons of gold is worth ~ $1B, that's quite a bit more than the value of the plane itself.

jdimov6• 12 years ago

No one in their right mind would attempt to transport 25 tons of gold on a commercial passenger flight.

pedalpete3• 12 years ago

How do you transport 25 tons of gold across land and sea?

My guess is air freight is the safest method, does it matter if it goes on a DHL 777 or a Commercial 777? Either way, the plane could be hijacked.

But I suspect you'd have somebody with an insurance claim for $1 billion in gold, and an insurance company going bankrupt as a result.

Nanzikambe3• 12 years ago

It does happen, security by obscurity is actually quite prevalent outside of Infosec: if nobody knows it's there how can it be stolen?

Search for "Heathrow Runway Robberies", etc. There were a number of documentaries on the subject, IIRC there were several gangs that specialized in jacking crap off planes in airports. It's possible (however unlikely) that some graduated beyond the airport.

conformal2• 12 years ago

agree, something very valuable was on that flight, whether it was a person/people or the cargo.

the 50 blocked-out seats indicate a heavy and/or oddly distributed cargo.

let's get real here - this is definitely not the work of hijackers, this is some intelligence service stealing a plane with something _very_ valuable on it. there are far too many what-ifs for even a large criminal or terrorist organization.

User87123• 12 years ago

1. Do you have any idea how many seats are typically blocked out on this route for Malaysia to China flights? This might happen on dozens of flights every day, so please provide some proof if 50 blocked-out seats is unusual.

2. If it is unusual, the cargo might be more prone to error. Is it possible the cargo shifted back, causing the flight to quickly rise to 45,000ft before stalling and crashing down?

jmnicolas• 12 years ago

It may be seen as heartless for the victims, but I still find comforting that in this day and age of widespread surveillance technology, one of the most tracked thing on earth can still disappear and leave everybody clueless.

It gives me hope that there will be still a chance for a resistance movement when the time will come.

72deluxe• 12 years ago

"Snuck" is a strange American word, the same as "dove" instead of "dived", eg. "he dove into the pool" instead of "he dived into the pool". I would read "snuck" as "sneaked". Another weird word is "gotten". And another strange and irritating phrase that is sneaking its way into English over here is "for free", but "free" is not a price so instead of "buy 3 eggs for £2.00", you get weird phrases "sign up now and get this egg for free", whereas it should be "sign up now and get this egg free" or "sign up now and get this egg for nothing".

Always interesting the difference between the languages over time.

With reference to the flight, I truly hope they find it somewhere safe.

threedaymonk• 12 years ago

You'll find much discussion of the growing popularity of snuck on Language Log: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/index.php?s=snuck

Snuck is "orig. and chiefly U.S." according to the OED, but it's definitely growing in British usage, too: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sneaked%2Csnuc...

gpjt• 12 years ago

"gotten" definitely sounds odd to me (I'm from England) but it's worth noting that we do keep that form in "forgotten".

Presumably both were acceptable over here at some stage. "I see no reason why gunpowder and treason should ever be forgot."

paulannesley• 12 years ago

The word “forgot” was chosen to rhyme with “plot”, so may not have been a normal use of the word/form.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes#Quotes_about_Fawkes

(Now you've made me want to watch V for Vendetta again!)

sschueller2• 12 years ago

Isn't it possible that one passenger may have left his cell phone on?

Maybe if you get all of the passengers numbers and check if any of the phones connected to a tower you could locate it?

emeidi5• 12 years ago

First of all, hijackers would have threatened passengers to give them their mobile phones.

If the plane indeed was landed on a remote airport with the passengers alive, the hijackers would have stripped the passengers of their clothes to ensure nobody could bring weapons or devices with them.

By now, most mobile phones (even the Nokia developing world ones) would have been out of battery.

userbinator• 12 years ago

I find it a little disturbing that the passengers would be so docile, especially after 9/11.

sschueller2• 12 years ago

There could still have been a phone in a checked bag. They may have also gone the route of suffocating everyone by climbing to 45,000 depressurized instead of threatening passengers and risking a hero.

Sure the batteries would be dead now but what about connection that were made before they landed? I though that data is stored by most phone companies upto at least 6 months.

The fuel would have gone out before most of the phones I would think. If they landed and passed any tower while doing so there is a chance something was picked up.

locusm• 12 years ago

You mean HLR? Its plausible that could turn something up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Location_Register#Home_loc...

uptown• 12 years ago

Cell phone signals can be jammed fairly easily. It's illegal to do-so in the states, but the devices are pretty easily obtained from what I've read. I'd imagine even easier in other countries.

gambiting6• 12 years ago

A very popular Chinese online shopping site has $50 GSM/WCDMA/HSDPA/LTE jammers that fit into your pocket and they offer free shipping all over the world. I imagine that getting one sent to the US would be very easy and since only 1% of all parcels are opened for inspection it would be unlikely to be ever found out.

lifeisstillgood• 12 years ago

I am not enthusiastic about jumping into speculation land, but I would be interested in knowing if the possibility of this being a accident followed by auto pilot is possible or totally disproven

My default assumption was they took off, an accident occurred that damaged cockpit and forced a turnaround, the damage was so great that the crew were unable to survive and turned on autopilot to stop an immediate crash, which then flew for seven hours till fuel ended, presumably with passengers pounding on the locked and hardened cockpit door.

So whilst I am in wild speculation territory I would like to know if there are some experts who might be able to say "bird strikes cannot disable radios" or "oxygen canisters do not leak" or "stewardesses can open the cockpit door" or some such.

I tend towards cockup not conspiracy myself.

(I recognise I may have missed discussions covering this and apologise if it is obvious)

gassit2• 12 years ago

Apparently the door can be opened.

They enter a code and if the cockpit doesn't reject it within a certain time frame the door opens.

See Helios flight 522.

Tyrannosaurs9• 12 years ago

Planes have flown for hours without any human intervention. That part of it is entirely feasible.

pedalpete3• 12 years ago

I'm not familiar with the inner workings of planes, but from what I've gathered, the timing of disabling the two tracking systems, which are on either end of the plane, is just about the same time it takes to get from one end of the plane to the other, and disable the 2nd tracking system (blackbox).

Therefore, it would be a great coincidence that both of these tracking systems would be disabled at the same time. It seems therefore that the most logical explanation is foul play.

I thought/hoped the same as you, that some sort of failure resulted in the tracking systems failing as well, and then the plane crashed, but it sadly doesn't seem as likely given the timing of events.

emeidi5• 12 years ago

So you say the pilot does not have switches in the cockpit to turn equipment on or off? They have to WALK through the whole plane to turn devices on or off?! Bollocks.

gassit2• 12 years ago

Where did you hear the black box was turned off?

jcfrei• 12 years ago

the pilots were shortly on the radio after the deactivation of ACARS (a signalling system). while this doesn't completely disprove your theory about the autopilot it still hints towards malicious intent.

appreneur3• 12 years ago

We are almost on the same page: here's my theory purely based on what I read!

1.Something happened like explosive decompression, Explosive decompression occurs at a rate swifter than that at which air can escape from the lungs, typically in less than 0.1 to 0.5 seconds.Everybody onboard(including pilots) would have died in less than a second due to castrophic mechanical failure which caused explosive decompression.

2.Plane was on autopilot there after ,nobody complained since nobody was alive.Fell silent into the ocean and rests there.

3.Plane blewup and disintegrated just like an endevaour....leaving only ash...nothing was left.

4.I dont know why boeing company is not talking about this much, they just are silent ....the biggest benefactor if pilot theory is right is boeing.Boeing benefits alot if its pilot error which caused the incident.

5.Boeing looses a lot if its mechanical or structural or some design failure...."The longer-range 777-300ER and 777-200LR variants entered service in 2004 and 2006 respectively"...they are relatively new...however malaysian airlines is boeing 777-200ER 1997 release...is it possible to have some structural or design or mechanical failure which caused explosive decompression...even pilots die in less than a second...if it occurs.

6.Boeing 787 Dreamliner: Cracks Found in the Wings of 40 New...this clearly shows even the latest 787 is not safe leave alone an old plane like boeing 777-200ER.

7.If its done deliberately by some pilot why nobody is claiming credit for it...ofcourse he wouldnt have done it for himself.

The whole media is trying to protect the company "boeing" by showing pilot has conspirators...I cannot see even 1% of people questioning boeing the company...

Latest Boeing 787 Dreamliner: Cracks Found in the Wings of 40 New....

All the more we should question boeing...

Jtsummers• 12 years ago

WRT 787, the cracks were a consequence of two things. The new(ish) production methods involved in the aircraft, and the absurdly aggressive outsourcing of the production. The 787 is (was?) in many ways at the bleeding edge of carbon fiber manufacture. Combine that with the stupid notion their management had of sending out 99% of manufacturing outside of final assembly to dozens of different companies (as a consequence of contractors sub-contracting work) meant that they didn't find the design flaws until late in the game. This particular 787 issue doesn't provide any evidence of potential issues with other aircraft.

morbius• 12 years ago

Nearly half of your "theory" (which isn't based off of any sort of clinically proven fact, btw) is incorrect.

First, the 777 is not an "old" plane. It's a very reliable and advanced aircraft with tons of redundancy; things don't just fail nowadays like they used to. Despite its age, there is absolutely zero reason why there should be a structural or mechanical failure. These aircraft aren't Chevrolets, they're built to stand up to daily abuse that they will likely never experience during their lifetime. Tell that to UPS and FedEx, which are still using 727s from the 70s.

Explosive decompression, even if it did happen, does not kill instantly. See also: Aloha Flight 243. Again, the 777 has very advanced pressurization systems. No reason that it should have killed everyone immediately.

Disintegration should have left debris. There was none.

Also, your statement about the 787 is irrelevant and misleading. The cracks found in the wings are hairline, and are caused by its composite construction. Things like this occur during the birth of an aircraft and get ironed out over the years, just like software. The 787 has nothing to do with the 777, which is a tried-and-true metal aircraft, and as I've reiterated before, age is irrelevant in these types of things. There has not been a single 777 fatality to date except the SFO Asiana disaster last year, which was caused by pilot error. The 777 seems to be a fairly bulletproof aircraft.

Conspiracy theories aren't really the best approach to anything. Boeing has proven itself with the 777, and the 787 is a revolutionary design that will have some problems, just like the first jet engines did in the 50s.

Let's leave the speculation to the NTSB and just tell who we love we love them. It's no use twisting around old evidence or constructing conspiracy theories at this point.

rajbala3• 12 years ago

There would have been calls/texts/tweets/facebook posts from the passengers if they were aware that something terrible was happening whether accidental or intentional.

Buge• 12 years ago

Do they have satellite phones? Over the ocean there is no cell reception.

mittermayr3• 12 years ago

What surprises me the most: In today's world, doesn't someone have access to global, real-time satellite data that goes down to 1-3m resolution? I thought we already accepted this as fact. Wouldn't such data provide visuals?

Houshalter2• 12 years ago

Yes, but it's not like every patch of land is monitored at all times. A satellite can only point it's camera at one place at a time.

mittermayr3• 12 years ago

surely so, but in the odd case that even one single image might have a plane on it, on the path the OP currently discusses here, might be enough to confirm further travel. the full step-by-step transition of the plan wouldn't even be necessary. just one shot with that plane. from somewhere.

Crito• 12 years ago

They probably do, but what is the coverage like? They aren't streaming and storing every square meter of the earth all at once, such that they can just roll back several days and start poking around, meter by meter, minute by minute. Real time high resolution satellite streams are undoubtedly something that need to be scheduled in advanced for particular times and places.

User87123• 12 years ago

You have to consider whether or not someone with access to that data would want to reveal it exists. If the US says they located the plane in the ocean, in a location that no one expected, everyone will be wondering how they came to that conclusion. You can't say it was a lucky guess.

mariuolo• 12 years ago

After all the revelations of the last few days, is there anything it may not have done?

gadders3• 12 years ago

Just a quick question, but I'd have thought the number of airports where a plane the size of MH370 could land would be quite small.

Is it not possible to work out the number of airports within it's range, and examine those?

mittermayr3• 12 years ago

here you go: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/03/15/mh370_the_...

gadders3• 12 years ago

Someone already thought of it! Perfect, thank you.

koyote• 12 years ago

Nothing stopping you doing a rough landing in a vast open area though, is there?

ratsbane• 12 years ago

You could land on any hard-packed dirt surface, especially if you weren't too concerned about being able to take off again.

corresation• 12 years ago

Much as with the maximum altitude ceiling, the numbers the media reports are generally best-practice recommendations that give you a high enough factor of safety.

If you don't plan on taking off again, and don't care much about the landing gear, a skilled pilot could land the plane on a runway shorter than 5000ft.

emeidi5• 12 years ago

Anybody else noticed that "Keith Ledgerwood" has exactly one post on his Tumbler blog? Conspiracy theorist looking for five seconds of Internet fame?

confluence3• 12 years ago

That seems about right.

3cham• 12 years ago

Found his Twitter here: https://twitter.com/keithledgerwood

he just need some space to write and tumblr was his choice

mh370• 12 years ago

I've got some animations of flight 68's path here: http://findmh370.tumblr.com/

saalweachter• 12 years ago

I really wonder how much of this rampant speculation is just people desperately wanting 300 people not to have died, either at all or just for no reason at all. Secret terrorist masterminds secretly hijacking a plane is more comforting than "sometimes shit happens and people die and there's nothing anyone can do".

joshgel2• 12 years ago

Great, except where are the dead people? And how did the plane keep flying for 7 hours after they were "dead"? Too many unanswered questions, me thinks.

ccarpenterg3• 12 years ago

Perhaps the plane didn't keep flying for 7 hours but it kept floating on the water for those 7 hours (at least that part/device).

keypusher3• 12 years ago

Except for the fact that multiple communications systems were deliberately turned off, and the place continued to fly for hours after that fact. I don't think anyone would have been particularly suprised if the place crashed into the ocean off the coast of Malaysia. In fact, that is what most people assumed at first, and that is why all the search and rescue efforts were focused in that area for the first 3 or 4 days. If you have been paying attention to what has come out after then, or read this article, I think you will see that does not appear to be the case.

thewarrior• 12 years ago

I remember reading that when the Israelis mounted their daring rescue mission at Entebbe in Uganda their three aircraft flew in formation so that it would appear as a single airplane on radar.

pitt19803• 12 years ago

Finding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is a problem google could solve by crowdsourcing the search on the google doodle

They could use an algorithm to generate different satellite images through the possible search images as the google doodle, they could put a toggle button, 'anything look like a plane or wreckage here?' Yes/no. For every yes, show it to more people, see if they agree

I’m sure google has better algorithm experts to figure out what the best images to show are than I can figure out,

but google can find that plane

I've already submitted this to google via email at proposals@google.com as suggested on http://www.google.com/doodles/about

I suspect there are people on HN who are fewer degrees of seperation from who figures out the google doodle than I am though

If you happen to be one of those people, who might be able to send a personal email, or send a text, or make a phone call to someone who could advocate for that being the google doodle, I would appreciate that

needless to say, if google was able to help solve this mystery, I would imagine that would be pretty good publicity for the company

Thanks for your consideration

(sorry for the spam) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7414422

pktgen3• 12 years ago

Isn't Tomnod doing this already (although I don't think they've updated their images to the newest area)?

pitt19803• 12 years ago

Think of the eyeballs Google could add to the project by making it the doodle though

MrBuddyCasino• 12 years ago

Interesting idea, but is there really up-to-date satellite imagery of the huge area to search for? I always thought sats can only make high-res pictures of narrow strips, which are then assembled by flying around the earth multiple times, which probably takes a few days/weeks. Anyone knows how this actually works?

GotAnyMegadeth• 12 years ago

Doesn't the NSA have all of the GPS tracking data for all of the smart phones on the plane?

d0ugie• 12 years ago

Why are we still looking for this damn plane? Thirty countries involved? Thirty nation's worth of ships, planes and satellite analysts, flying and sailing around and for what, some debris and a box? To buy the families closure of some sort? Maybe a defect in the 777? To keep hope alive that the passengers might be alive and safe somewhere captured by reasonable terrorists with a lot of food?

Doesn't seem worth the fuel.

These black boxes from what I heard stop pinging after a month. Can we stop then, and just move on in life until one day some seat cushion washes up in California and have a moment if silence? Without it pinging, just how wide an area can a ship in substantial depth detect a wingtip?

I realize you didn't, but if you ask me, they should just frame that copilot, say they found on his flight simulator evidence that he intended to make that "deliberate" turn every night, disabling the transponder with the ctrl+shift+T combination and purposefully crashing hours later each time in a different location, with known Islamic terrorists on his WhatsApp and Skype, or a suicide note, then call off the hunt, pay the families off for failing to screen this guy effectively, bam, there's your closure, problem solved.

/insensitivity

sergiotapia• 12 years ago

I expect this type of comment on Reddit, please take it there.

VolatileVoid• 12 years ago

Why?

I don't know, maybe to make aviation safer so it doesn't happen again, whatever "it" may be.

Why should Twitter bother debugging outages? Why should Facebook bother issuing post-mortems when bad things take their systems out? Just chalk it up to solar flares or blame some rogue developer and shrug your shoulders.

f1nch3r• 12 years ago

Doing this is sure cheaper and easier than building a bomber capable of deploying a nuclear weapon or another type of WMD. Definitely cheaper than building an ICBM.

Symmetry• 12 years ago

Interesting, but this would seem to chiefly expand the space of possible explanations for what went wrong by showing how the plain could have gotten into central Asia. It explains some of the bizarre behavior of the plane, but not all of it. So it's eliminated some of the burdensome details about the flight behavior at the cost of introducing burdensome details about complicated, secret, and successful planning. As a result, I'm even less sure about what happened to the plane now, but of course if that reflects my actual state of knowledge it's a good thing.

danielschonfeld• 12 years ago

If they shut off the transponder, which we know they did, how would they get the traffic information on their NDs? It goes away when you turn off the transponder. To the best of my knowledge that applies to both Mode-S interrogations and ADS/B ones.

gvb2• 12 years ago

The flights through that area are scheduled, it would be trivial to figure out which flights go in the direction you want to go and thus can hide behind. After that, you precalculate the intercept to a plane that works timing-wise before you take off. Non-trivial, but simple enough to do - on ground ahead of time you can get a computer to do all the work.

Once you go dark, you fly the traditional way with GPS and nav aides (GPS, VORs, etc, are broadcast, so you can use them passively) backed up by manual nav with time, speed, and bearings. Note that handheld (throw it on the dash) pilot grade GPSes are readily available and relatively cheap.

Intercepting the target aircraft is do-able via visual contact if your navigation is reasonably good and the target aircraft is on time.

If you have help on the ground, they could use FlightAware to update the hijacking crew via something like HF radio, again a passive receive on the hijacked aircraft. This would be very helpful for the hijacking crew to improve their intercept by adjusting their speed so that they sneak up under and behind the target aircraft.

Edit: As thekevan points out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416153), the hijackers could use a ADS/B receiver (SDR and laptop or equivalent) to receive the position data from the target aircraft. This would make it pretty easy to form up on them. Again, this is passive (the target aircraft broadcasts its ADS/B information).

Redlen• 12 years ago

If this happened in North America would NORAD have been able to keep track of the plane?

wil4213• 12 years ago

I seriously doubt the plane ever reached land. Sadly, we will most likely find the plane at the bottom of the ocean.

LammyL• 12 years ago

This notion that mh370 was flying behind the Singapore jet to avoid radar is far fetched. Is the simple explanation much more likely that primary and secondary radar were both tracking the Singapore jet and the data wasn't matched properly? If the two jets were flying in tandem as you suggest, wouldn't you expect two hits on primary radar?

ZoF2• 12 years ago

In theory if one plane ghosted the other by staying quite literally behind it (in relation to the radar, not behind it front to back) there would only be one blip.

Difficult to the point of high improbability? Methinks yes.

coherentpony2• 12 years ago

Again, merely wild speculation.

I'd be ok with people not upvoting submissions that do nothing more than fear mongering.

gvb2• 12 years ago

It is a very interesting theory and plausible (more plausible than a cockpit fire IMHO).

cpncrunch• 12 years ago

Not really. Occam's razor says that it's more likely there was just one 777. Assuming this analysis is correct, that would lead me to suspect that the radar just picked up a different plane, and the accident plane is somewhere else completely. Either it flew for hours with the pilots unconscious, or they managed to land somewhere (gently enough so that the power to the satellite transceiver stayed on).

coherentpony2• 12 years ago

I didn't say it wasn't either a) interesting; or b) plausible. "Interesting" also doesn't really do anybody any favours here; 'plausible' is the only really relevant qualifier at play here. In fact, I'm well aware there are many plausible (that are simultaneously interesting) theories. But they're just that: theories. Crowd-sourcing theories may be helpful. Crowd-sourcing actual data is probably a lot more helpful.

lesterbuck• 12 years ago

If currently deployed military radars cannot distinguish between one and two 777s, we have a lot more to worry about than what happened to MH370.

wil4213• 12 years ago

If it was really hijacked then where are all of the calls from frantic passengers calling family members like on 9/11. I am calling BS on the hijack landing scenario. Do we really live in a word where our first thoughts are always terrorism.

I guess the government propaganda machine is really working when our only conclusion to things is it must be terrorism. More funding for the spooks!

ceejayoz• 12 years ago

Not many cell towers in the middle of the ocean.

wil4213• 12 years ago

Who uses a cellphone on a plane anyway?

I am talking about satellite phones they put behind some seats in commercial airplanes.

http://www.usairways.com/en-US/traveltools/intheair/business...

codr• 12 years ago

Much conspiracy.

tn133• 12 years ago

This is not an hijack terrorism. Terrorism is all about showing off, theatrics, fear. No one would make a plane disappear for the sake of terrorism. I have only two theories

1. China or some other country shot it down by mistake and trying to cover up. 2. Something of immense importance was present on that plane or may be a person.

In either cases substantial involvement of some state needs to be there.

keypusher3• 12 years ago

That is not necessarily true. If it is terrorism, it's possible this isn't over, and that the plane will be used in a future high-profile attack. And if the target was passengers, cargo, or something else entirely I don't think that logically leads to it being state-sponsored.

tn133• 12 years ago

If the plane is stolen for a future attack they have unnecessarily taken too much of trouble - First plan a theft which is incredibly difficult that hijacking and then ramming it somewhere - Then actually keep it hidden while half the world is searching for it. - Get rid of those passengers - Hiding a Boeing 777 is not same as hiding a cookie jar. The plane will need a runway, fuel etc. which needs to be provided for and can be easily tracked. - Terrorism is all about surprise. There is no surprise involved here. All the countries will now be much more cautious with any object that appears on their radar.

cylinder• 12 years ago

FYI CNN just discussed this theory on-air, of course didn't discuss any technical details, just called it "outlandish" and didn't give any credit to OP.

headgasket• 12 years ago

who is is john galt

aaron695• 12 years ago

I understand there will always be crackpot theories but why are they getting up-voted.

State sponsored? WTF. This would be an act of war. If you want to go to war why wouldn't you just attack the other countries. Why screw around stealing 300 international citizens first?

Pretty simple stuff, most likely an accident.

Or possibly a political/mental act by a very small group/one person that got lucky.

philip1209• 12 years ago

Would hydrophones be able to pick up the sound of an aircraft crashing into the ocean?

fishyninja• 12 years ago

How secure is the 777s flight management system? Could you hijack the controls (remotely or with temporary physical access) and prevent manual overrides when the change is noticed?

limnothrissa• 12 years ago

I think Keith is on the right track (excuse the pun).

1. The weather. Check on that. On a clear night it is possible to sneak up behind and tail an aircraft. Night Fighters did it all the time in WW2. And they had to get close enough and hang on and to check "friend or foe"! 2. Not sure where the FIR boundary was, but if it was close to their westward track (last radio call was a handover) more doubt on the ground. 3. They could have listened in to the radio calls of SIA68 with their radio. That would have given them height and position info too. So long as they did not transmit, nobody could have picked up anything from that. 4. If they had also switched off all the navigation lights nobody on the ground, or in SIA would be likely to have seen anything - rear view from a commercial aircraft is nil! Two aircraft at 35000 feet sound the same as one. 5. Timing on one other score was perfect. Night flight when radar operators are dozy, landing just before dawn - time to camouflage the plane from satellites, and a diversion of a China sea crash to confuse everyone.

Good thinking, keep it up. Looking forward to more insights!

Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

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