Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 missing!

After 5 days the only place that plane could be is at the bottom of the ocean. There's not many places where you can land and hide a plane of that size without anybody knowing, especially after this long.
 
Hows this article:

http://www.news24.com/Travel/Flight...ngers-phones-ring-but-no-one-answers-20140310

Bizarre: missing Malaysia Airlines passengers' phones ring, but no one answers
2014-03-10 15:07

International Business Times reports that 19 families have signed a joint statement saying that passengers' cell phones connected after the flight had been reported missing. In each case, the phone would ring, but the call would be hung up.

The sister of one of the Chinese passengers among the 239 people on board the missing flight rang his phone live on TV twice at 11:40 on Sunday morning and heard it ringing. She called again later that afternoon and heard it ring once more.

The Mirror reports that she expressed her hope that if the call went through, police could locate the position.

A man from Beijing also called his missing brother, and reported to the airline that the phone connected three times and rang before appearing to hang up.

Relatives who signed the joint statement have asked Malaysia Airlines to reveal any information they may have been hiding.

The airline has not released any further details regarding the aircraft, however Malaysian Minister of Transport Hishammuddin Hussein said they were doing everything in their power to locate the plane and that they hope people understand that they are being as transparent as they can.

In the mean time, it has also been reported that the large oil slick spotted in the South China Sea, was found to be bunker fuel and not that of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

These eerie happenings have, of course, given rise to a number of conspiracy theories, one of which purports that the aircraft may have been hijacked by terrorists bearing fake passports and is now secretly stationed at an abandoned Vietnamese airport at this very moment.

According to 'citizen news' site Beforeitsnews.com, the aircraft may have been landed safely by terrorists/hijackers to later be used as a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ with passengers and crew now being held as hostages.


New York Daily News reports that other theories suggest that the 100-ton Boeing 777 carrying 239 people simply disintegrated in the air at 35 000 feet, possibly due to an explosion.

According to Scott Hamilton, a US-based aviation expert, the plane had been inspected just 10 days before and found to be in a 'proper condition,' meaning that it was highly unlikely that an explosion would have been caused by an aircraft fault.

He added that the airplane could only have been torn apart by a completely unexpected catastrophic event or a criminal act.

Some of the crazier conspiracy theories, cited by examiner.com, suggest that the plane could have been intercepted by a visiting alien UFO or transported to another world via an outer space wormhole.

Laughable to many, but you have to admit that as the days tick by and no conclusive reports on the airplane's fate have been released, the incident is starting to look a lot like an X-Files case.
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Interesting point about tracing the phone, especially if its connecting.
 
SaiyanZ said:
After 5 days the only place that plane could be is at the bottom of the ocean. There's not many places where you can land and hide a plane of that size without anybody knowing, especially after this long.
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All the evidence points to it flying for far longer than when it 'disappeared'.
Maybe the entire plane suffered a decompression and the crew and passengers passed out (I know, highly unlikely with such a big plane, but it has happened before)
It flew on until the tanks ran dry.
Chances are it then crashed, either in the ocean, or in dense jungle. No fuel slick, no burning debris field. Maybe it went down in a slow glide, and sank fairly intact.

As to why its transponder was shut off - dumb luck, malice - whichever way it goes, this story is going to have a strange ending.
It would be great to find survivors, but after so much time... :cry:
 
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_South_Dakota_Learjet_crash

On October 25, 1999, a chartered Learjet 35 was scheduled to fly from Orlando, Florida to Dallas, Texas. Early in the flight the aircraft, which was cruising at altitude on autopilot, quickly lost cabin pressure. All on board were incapacitated due to hypoxia — a lack of oxygen. The aircraft failed to make the westward turn toward Dallas over north Florida. It continued flying over the southern and midwestern United States for almost four hours and 1,500 miles (2,400 km). The plane ran out of fuel and crashed into a field near Aberdeen, South Dakota after an uncontrolled descent.
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NTSB-N47BA-slide0046_image002.jpg
 
MALAYSIAN PLANE'S PILOTS UNDER SCRUTINY AFTER MYSTERY

The captain of a missing Malaysian jet is said to be an engineering buff who assembled his own flight simulator, while friends of the co-pilot are defending his reputation after one report portrayed him as a cockpit Casanova.

Malaysian Airlines flight 370 disappeared six days ago and an international search and rescue effort in waters around Southeast Asia has failed to find a shred of evidence in one of the biggest aviation mysteries in history.

With little solid information to go on, authorities are investigating all 227 passengers and 12 crew for possible sabotage, although they stress no such evidence has come to light.

But it has brought Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and his First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, under scrutiny.

An Australian television report made waves this week by broadcasting an interview with a young South African woman who said Fariq and another pilot colleague invited them into the cockpit of a flight he co-piloted from Phuket, Thailand to Kuala Lumpur in 2011.

Passengers have been prohibited from entering cockpits during a flight since the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Malaysia Airlines said it was "shocked" by the reported security violation, but that it could not verify the claims.

Fariq, who joined the airline at the age of 20, studied piloting at a flight school on the Malaysian resort island of Langkawi.

The son of a high-ranking official in the public works department of a Malaysian state, he is a mild-mannered "good boy" who regularly visited his neighbourhood mosque outside Kuala Lumpur, said the mosque's imam, or spiritual leader.

Fariq also attended occasional Islamic courses, said Ahmad Sharafi Ali Asrah.

He rejected the account of the supposed cockpit security breach.

"This story doesn't make sense and I feel it's just an effort to discredit Fariq or the airlines," Ahmad Sharafi said.

"He is a good boy and keeps a low profile."

Fariq had a brief brush with fame when he appeared in a CNN travel segment with the network's correspondent Richard Quest in February, in which Fariq helped fly a plane from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur.

The segment portrayed Hamid's transition to piloting the Boeing 777-200 after having completed training in a flight simulator.

"It was interesting to watch the way he brought the aircraft in to land," Quest said, according to the CNN website, calling Fariq's technique "textbook-perfect".

The far more seasoned Zaharie joined MAS in 1981 and had logged 18,365 hours of flying time.

Online tributes in Malaysia portray a man so fond of flying that he assembled his own flight simulator so that he could indulge his passion at home.

The webpage, which has garnered more than 400 comments largely from well-wishers, shows pictures of the complex set-up including Zaharie posing in front of it.

Zaharie also has a YouTube channel to which he has uploaded videos showing him cheerfully explaining how to fix an air-conditioner, patch damaged windows, and other DIY projects.

Malaysian media reports have quoted colleagues as calling Zaharie a "superb pilot", who also served as an examiner, authorised by the Malaysian Civil Aviation Department, to conduct simulator tests for pilots.

Malaysia Airlines has declined to offer details on the two men, and no other red flags have emerged publicly. Authorities have denied media reports that investigators raided their homes .

The near-total lack of information pointing to the plane's fate necessarily means that authorities need to examine the spectre of possible wrongdoing by those who could have held its fate in their hands, analysts said.

The mysterious disappearance of the plane from radar has led to speculation over whether its communications were deliberately shut down by someone on board, one of many theories bandied about.

In three of the four flights used for the 9/11 attacks, hijackers who seized control of the aircraft are believed to have manually turned off each plane's transponder, which sends flight data back to air-traffic control.

Terence Fan, an aviation expert at Singapore Management University, cited the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 in October 1999 in the Atlantic Ocean -- which killed 217 people -- as an example of a crash allegedly deliberately caused by a pilot.

A US investigation said the first officer crashed the jet when the captain went on a break, findings disputed by Egyptian officials.

"I am not saying such a scenario happened here, we don't have any evidence at all, but this is one possible scenario," he said.

"Certainly, the pilots play a very crucial role."


Source : Sapa-AFP /kd
Date : 13 Mar 2014 12:11
 
Garyvdh said:
In three of the four flights used for the 9/11 attacks, hijackers who seized control of the aircraft are believed to have manually turned off each plane's transponder, which sends flight data back to air-traffic control.
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Surely after 9/11 , it should have become apparent to make the planes transponder inaccessible from inside the plane.
Or that any attempt to switch off the transponder would trigger an immediate safety code or signal from the aircraft that air traffic control could monitor. :confused:
 
Pic of the Chinest satellite image:

hkg9594849.jpg
 
Compton_effect said:
This has probably been asked before, but why does a plane's transponder have a manual knob that you can turn to switch it off?
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Guy on the radio said it can only go off under four conditions and one of these is the trip switch but that flicking it off would be highly unlikely - probably under duress. Never listened intently so don't quote me. I do remember that much though.

I predict someone will claim to be a psychic and then say that the plane will be found somewhere with survivors (once they know more facts, obviously).

Then I predict that a skeptic on this forum will criticise that psychic.
 
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GreGorGy said:
Guy on the radio said it can only go off under four conditions and one of these is the trip switch but that flicking it off would be highly unlikely - probably under duress. Never listened intently so don't quote me. I do remember that much though.
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But why is there an off switch?
I worked on a big mining project, where we fitted haul trucks with a experimental collision avoidance system and transponders. One of the first things we decided to do was NOT have a off switch for the system. There was a number of discussions with the mine, labor unions, even a rep from the Chamber of Mines. Even if that meant a truck standing in a parking bay for a week would suffer a battery drain - the risk was just too high.

So why does a Boeing 777 airliner have a off switch for the most critical part of its safety system?
 
Compton_effect said:
So why does a Boeing 777 airliner have a off switch for the most critical part of its safety system?
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There is only one reason I can think of. Sometimes the air traffic controllers need the pilots to temporarily turn of the transponders to "clean up their displays" when there is heavy traffic.
Having too many planes on the display at the same time can make it unreadable, so the controller asks the pilot to turn his off for a few minutes while he lands his advance list of planes.
When the read-out is more clear again, then he instructs the pilot to turn them on again and he proceeds to clear the next batch of planes.
 
Garyvdh said:
There is only one reason I can think of. Sometimes the air traffic controllers need the pilots to temporarily turn of the transponders to "clean up their displays" when there is heavy traffic.
Having too many planes on the display at the same time can make it unreadable, so the controller asks the pilot to turn his off for a few minutes while he lands his advance list of planes.
When the read-out is more clear again, then he instructs the pilot to turn them on again and he proceeds to clear the next batch of planes.
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Something tells me that process is going to get a serious redesign after this incident. :erm:
At the very least the transponders will transmit a off command if switched off.
 
I don't know that it is an off switch but a fusebox trip switch so not something that is big and red and on the dash board but something that can be accessed in need only. Like I said, I was listening with one ear and ignoring it with the other :)
 
Everything in a plane has an OFF switch to electrically isolate any area of the plane in case of shorting and/or fire I would presume...
 
Garyvdh said:
There is only one reason I can think of. Sometimes the air traffic controllers need the pilots to temporarily turn of the transponders to "clean up their displays" when there is heavy traffic.
Having too many planes on the display at the same time can make it unreadable, so the controller asks the pilot to turn his off for a few minutes while he lands his advance list of planes.
When the read-out is more clear again, then he instructs the pilot to turn them on again and he proceeds to clear the next batch of planes.
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Did a bit of my own reading on the subject, and seems like they can be switched off for this reason. They can apparently malfunction on occasion too (reporting false altimeter reading to ground control), and in that case they can be turned off and altitude given manually to prevent confusion. Seems like it's just a safety feature, but seems a bit stupid not to have a fail safe built in that prevents broadcasting plane info but still sends a simple signal (couple of beeps) to traffic control\other aircraft (letting them know another plane is in the area and may be having trouble).
 
Gibson said:
Did a bit of my own reading on the subject, and seems like they can be switched off for this reason. They can apparently malfunction on occasion too (reporting false altimeter reading to ground control), and in that case they can be turned off and altitude given manually to prevent confusion. Seems like it's just a safety feature, but seems a bit stupid not to have a fail safe built in that prevents broadcasting plane info but still sends a simple signal (couple of beeps) to traffic control\other aircraft (letting them know another plane is in the area and may be having trouble).
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If the plane is in trouble they can set a code on the transponder.

I didn't think the transponder did anything other respond to activation by radar. It's not a transmitter other than when pinged. In other words, radar has to 'see' the aircraft. The transponder assists the radar in letting it know what it 'sees'.

There is still tracking when an aircraft is out of contact with radar. The crew report their position on the oceanic track and when they expect to be at the next waypoint and their speed. I'm not sure that this applied in this case. In other words, I'm sure there was radar contact for the duration.
 
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