Plane with 239 people on board crashes in Southern Indian Ocean

[Mr. Morden]

The fact that no one messaged out indicates that either they could not or were perhaps unaware that anything was wrong until it was too late.

Again, if they took the southern route, then they were basically over the ocean the whole time, and the cell phones wouldn't work.  There was that small strip of land in Malaysia/Thailand that they would have doubled back over, but that would have been early on in hijacking, and not clear if the passengers would have known what was wrong yet at that point.  Plus, even when you're flying over land, you're at such high altitude and speed that connecting to a cell tower on the ground isn't a slam dunk.  It worked on 9/11, because the planes were flying low, but that didn't necessarily happen in this case.

Assuming it's not a 1000 feet below sea level now and was a hijacking, how do one or 2 pilots take everyone's electronics without the passengers and flight crew rebelling?

Read this:

link

Yeah I get it but unless the passengers were dead, they need to gather every cell phone, that's a lot of gathering and if you miss one, you're kaput.  Oh well, we'll find out someday.

What?  No.  You don't need to gather any phones.  I'm saying that if they were flying mostly over ocean, then the phones wouldn't work.  And even if they were flying over land, they still probably wouldn't work.  That is, unless you're flying as low as the planes were flying on 9/11.  So there's no need to confiscate the phones.  Alternatively, the pilot can depressurize the cabin, and kill everyone, so he doesn't need to worry about this anyway.

More on this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/world/asia/questions-over-absence-of-cellphone-calls-from-missing-passengers.html?_r=0

[Mr. Morden]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html

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[Mr. Morden]

What keeps drawing me back to the pilot suicide theory is that it only takes one person (one of the two pilots) to pull it off.  These other theories, involving hijacking the plane, and flying it to Asia, inevitably require a larger constellation of accomplices, and you face the questions of "Why aren't there any links between the crew or passengers to known terrorist groups?  Why is there no online chatter among the jihadi groups, as there has been for other attacks?", etc.

[Mr. Morden]

This seems like a pretty simple, compelling argument: https://plus.google.com/106271056358366282907/posts/GoeVjHJaGBz

OK, but then how do you explain the satellite pings?  If it kept going for hours on that heading, then it would be very far away from either the northern or southern "arcs" on those maps.

[Mr. Morden]

To follow up my previous post….

I could buy the onboard emergency theory, but it only fits in with the satellite data if there was a second course correction.  So the sequence of events would be….

1) Onboard emergency knocks out the transponder, and any other means of communicating with the ground.

2) Pilot turns around to make an emergency landing at Pulau Langkawi.

3) Pilot realizes things are worse than he thought, and they won't make it to Pulau Langkawi, so he makes another course correction, perhaps to attempt a landing somewhere else--somewhere that isn't really a suitable landing strip for a 777--but he has to take the risk, because they'll be dead soon anyway.  The new heading is presumably towards the south.

4) Whatever the emergency situation is kills the pilot and everyone on board, but the autopilot keeps them flying on that brand new southerly heading until the plane runs out of fuel and crashes.

5) While on that heading, when everyone onboard is dead, but the plane is still flying, it sends out that signal to the satellite, which shows it still in the air, many hours after the accident.

[Mr. Morden]

Thailand releases their radar data.  They saw an unidentified flight that was probably MA 370:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/18/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/

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[Mr. Morden]

http://time.com/29958/malaysia-files-were-deleted-from-flight-simulator/

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[Mr. Morden]

The Australian Marine Safety Authority says they may have found the wreckage:

http://www.watoday.com.au/national/missing-malaysia-airlines-plane-debris-found-in-search-for-mh370-says-australian-prime-minister-tony-abbott-20140320-354xz.html

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[Mr. Morden]

Again, looking like this might be it:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/search-crews-objects-plane-search/story?id=22979627

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[Mr. Morden]

I'm watching the coverage via the Sydney Morning Herald's blog:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/missing-malaysia-airlines-plane-debris-found-in-search-for-mh370-says-australian-prime-minister-tony-abbott-20140320-354xz.html

Sounds like they'll keep searching until 9pm Perth time (which is just over 2 hours from now).  If they don't find anything, they'll resume the search first thing tomorrow morning.

Also, here's one of the satellite pics:

[Mr. Morden]

Here's a useful map:



Also, apparently, the weather is poor and visibility bad there at the moment, so they're not having much luck.

[Mr. Morden]

And, they need to be quick: In 18 days, the battery of the flight recorder is running out and then they'll likely never find it.

This graphic suggests that even if the black box is still pinging, it's possible that it's too deep for them to ever find it:

[Mr. Morden]

Btw, if this is the plane, then its location suggests that after it doubled back across the Malay Peninsula, it went almost straight south.

[Mr. Morden]

If you have some free time, you can search through satellite pictures of the Indian Ocean, to see if you can find any of the debris:

http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/552252

Btw, one of the experts I saw on TV sounded skeptical that the supposed 24 meter long feature in the satellite image came from the plane.  He said that that would be big enough to be something like a wing, but a wing would likely sink.  The things that would float would be much smaller objects, like life preservers and seat cushions.  If that's true, then it seems like there's a decent chance that they never find anything.  Or maybe they'll find a couple of seat cushions somewhere, but it would have drifted so far from the crash site by now that there's a strong chance that they'll never find the vast majority of the wreckage.

When was the last time that a plane went missing, and no wreckage was ever found?

[Mr. Morden]

OTOH, China just announced that they have a satellite image of a 22.5 meter long object that might be the same debris that was in the American satellite pic released a few days ago.  The object was spotted 120 km away from the debris in the American picture, but the currents are fast, so that's not surprising:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/03/malaysia-asks-us-underwater-surveillance-2014321211913431982.html

[Mr. Morden]

It seems they found some wooden pallets and some strapping belts/seat belts yesterday/today.

But of course this could also apply to pallets from cargo ships that were thrown overboard ...

It sounds like they spotted that from one of the planes, but weren't able to retrieve them…and then when they tried to go back and find them again, they'd drifted away?  (Or maybe I was misunderstanding?)  In any case, for any such debris that they might find, they'll obviously want to take it aboard one of the ships that's in the area now, and try to determine whether it's actually from flight 370.

[Mr. Morden]

New altitude information:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/

Plane dropped to 12,000 feet when it made its turn, which might suggest some kind of accident on board.  Pilots would fly low if a crisis caused the plane to lose pressure, since at the lower altitude, passengers would be more likely to survive.

OTOH, the 9/11 hijackers also flew low, so who knows.

[Mr. Morden]

A new piece of news on the co-pilot….this was his first time out on a 777 without a trainer looking over his shoulder:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10718863/MH370-Co-pilot-was-flying-Boeing-777-for-first-time-without-trainer.html

[Mr. Morden]

Here's one of the objects spotted by the Australian air force plane:

[Mr. Morden]

Various new folks are tweeting about the families of passengers being called into an emergency meeting with Malaysian officials, and a press conference to be held shortly.  They might have some big news that they're ready to announce.

[Mr. Morden]

https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/448086964534009856

"Sky Sources: relatives of missing plane passengers to be booked on charter flights to take them to Australia"

Sounds like they may have some evidence that the debris that was spotted is from MH370.  But we'll find out for sure at the top of the hour, when the Malaysians hold a press conference.

[Mr. Morden]

https://twitter.com/7NewsSydney/status/448095584985956353

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[Mr. Morden]

Most logical place for it to be is the southern Indian Ocean, and all lives are reported lost.

So now the work to be done is figuring out the cause. It appears to have been put on autopilot, or so goes the thought and dipped to 12,000 feet to avoid air traffic. That it may have lost pressure is a very real possibility.

Except that after it turned west and flew across the Malay Peninsula, it apparently then went south.  And after it went down to 12,000 feet, I'm assuming that it went back up to a cruising altitude at some point, because otherwise it would have run out of fuel much more quickly (since fuel consumption is much greater at lower altitudes).  Sounds like someone was at the controls, at least long enough to make those multiple course changes.  But exactly who and why remains as clear as mud.

[Mr. Morden]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11226334

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[Mr. Morden]

Satellite images show over 100 possible pieces of debris, but none of them have yet been recovered by any of the ships in the area:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=23060860