Plane with 239 people on board crashes in Southern Indian Ocean

[Mr. Morden]

Maybe that's why Al-Qaeda is not taking responsibility for it yet ? Because they didn't reach their attack target and their "mission" was foiled ?

Al-Qaeda often doesn't claim responsibility for its attacks.  Or at least, back in the day, Al-Qaeda central would *never* claim responsibility.  They never actually claimed responsibility for 9/11, for example.  Of course, now that Al-Qaeda's been watered down into all these local franchises, the various affiliates will often claim responsibility for their attacks.  But Al-Qaeda classic never used to do that.

[Mr. Morden]

http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-wn-malaysia-airplane-missing-debris-20140309,0,113928.story#axzz2vTUAQeL9

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[Mr. Morden]

What the heck ?

First, the airport video-footage apparently showed that the 2 guys with the stolen passports were "Asian-looking".

Now, the guy from the investigation says they look like footballer Mario Balotelli:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2014/mar/10/malaysia-airlines-flight-370-search-continues-live-updates

Well, remember the racial confusion over the early pics of the Tsarnaev brothers?  People bring their own assumptions into things like this, and that colors what they see.

[Mr. Morden]

Here's an interesting theory:

http://mh370lost.tumblr.com/?og=1

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So that knocks out the transponder, and also decompresses the cabin, leaving everyone unconscious.  But the plane is still mostly intact, and so the autopilot keeps flying the plane, while everyone's unconscious/dead.  It eventually crashes into the ocean, but by that point it's very far away from the last point at which the transponder was working, so it's nowhere near wherever they're searching for it.

[Mr. Morden]

The slow decompression theory would make sense if the plane hadn't turned around and stayed at a high altitude.

Did it turn around?  The Malaysians said it did at one point, but according to this:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia-airlines-flight-370-mystery-deepens/

it sounds like they're not really sure that whatever they saw on the air defense radar was this flight.

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[Mr. Morden]

- plane didn't fly for hours, no data downloaded to Boeing/Rolls Royce after they lost contact

It didn't fly for hours, or we have no info one way or the other on whether it flew for hours?  If communications are knocked out, then how do they know whether it was flying or not after they lost contact?

Also, this is an interesting read:

link

It suggests that losing a flight when it's over the ocean is easier than you might think.

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[Mr. Morden]

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/malaysia-plane-sent-signals-to-satellite-for-4-hours-after-disappearing-1.1726992

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[Mr. Morden]

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/radar-shows-plane-deliberately-flew-toward-indian-ocean-reports-n52561

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The article also mentions that scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China report that they detected a "seismic event" consistent with a plane crash "on the sea floor close to where the missing jet disappeared from civilian radar screens" at 2:55am, which would have been ~90 minutes after the plane was last seen by civilian radar.

[Mr. Morden]

On that seismic event:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rival-theories-on-malaysia-flights-disappearance/2014/03/14/1bf1d5d6-abb5-11e3-b8ca-197ef3568958_story.html

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[Mr. Morden]

The theories are getting increasingly wild:

link

[Mr. Morden]

If it is some kind of hijacking, how many people would need to be involved?  Someone probably has some counterexamples, but it's hard for me to see how one man could hijack a commercial airliner by himself.  Even if he has a weapon, it would be too easy to be overpowered by the other passengers.  I'd assume you'd need at least three or four.

If authorities know the identity of everyone on the plane, then you can piece together which passengers would have known each other, and I'd imagine that there's a fairly limited number of suspects, especially since it sounds like the supposed hijacker(s) had sophisticated knowledge regarding the transponder, where to fly to, etc.

[Mr. Morden]

On the other hand, reading this: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/malaysian-airlines-flight-370-possibly-hijacked/

it sounds like hijacking a commercial flight might be easier than you would think.

[Mr. Morden]

Here's the plane's range:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/new-twist-in-the-hunt-for-missing-plane/2014/03/13/dcee10da-aae6-11e3-98f6-8e3c562f9996_graphic.html



If it really had 7 hours worth of fuel, than anywhere within the outer circle shown above is possible.

[Mr. Morden]

Even though it was a night time flight... some passengers would have known something was wrong. No phone calls? Flight-crews are very well trained when it comes to hijackings... if anyone knew something was wrong they did... and they didn't act? Or try to get a message out?

If the hijacking happened when they were out over the ocean, there'd be no way for them to call out, no?  I mean, you need a cell tower nearby for your phone to work.  Yes, they apparently doubled back and briefly flew over land again for a while, but I don't know how populated that area is, if their phones would have worked.

Also, according to this: http://time.com/25814/report-flight-370-shifted-altitude-and-path-after-dropping-contact/

they think the plane went all the way up to 45,000 feet before descending again.  It's possible they were trying to disorient the passengers.

[Mr. Morden]

Something to keep in mind (from that Wired article I linked to earlier):

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[Mr. Morden]

I give up on this.

They'll probably never find it, or they are just covering stuff up because they don't want to admit what happened.

They'll investigate the lives of the passengers who have any technical know-how about flying, and could potentially pull off a hijacking.  If it really was some kind of a hijacking, then there's a decent chance that there was advance planning, and clues left behind by whoever pulled it off.

If there was no hijacking…..then yeah, they may never find it.

[Mr. Morden]

Really, it looks like an incredibly cruel elongated suicide.

Yeah, that sounds like as strong a bet as any at the moment.  If one of the two pilots goes crazy, and decides to kill himself in a spectacular way that takes the rest of the passengers and crew down with him, then he incapacitates his copilot and locks the cockpit door to prevent anyone else from getting in.  Then he takes the plane to the deep waters of the southern Indian Ocean where authorities probably won't find the wreckage for years.  He wouldn't need any accomplices to pull this off, but could do it all on his own.

Though I guess I don't know whether the cockpit door is impenetrable.  The passengers on United 93 tried to get through it on their flight, but I don't think it's clear if they ever made it through.  What about the door on this model of plane?  In case of a hijacking, would a passenger revolt be able to make it through the locked cockpit door?

[Mr. Morden]

Yikes.  Now there are reports that one of the pilots was an active member of the opposition party in Malaysia.  And so some opposition leaders are warning the government against accusing the pilots of wrongdoing for political purposes:

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/malaysian-opposition-fears-political-aim-jet-crisis-n53826

[Mr. Morden]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10700652/Malaysia-Airline-MH370-911-style-terror-allegations-resurface-in-case-of-lost-plane.html

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[Mr. Morden]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html?_r=0

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[Mr. Morden]

Also, I can't help but think of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm9CxxZBR2U

[Mr. Morden]

The last transmission from the plane came after the transponder had been turned off, and they believe it was the voice of the co-pilot:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/17/us-malaysiaairlines-flight-idUSBREA2701720140317

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[Mr. Morden]

The last transmission from the plane came after the transponder had been turned off, and they believe it was the voice of the co-pilot:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/17/us-malaysiaairlines-flight-idUSBREA2701720140317

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Wait, I take that back.  This is a more careful explanation of the sequence of events:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/malaysia-plane-up-to-speed/

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[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.

[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