Missing Malaysian Aircraft – is it possible…

Thanks for that – I needed a good chuckle.

its the fact that it just does not look like debris any more

My friend’s dad (yes, I know…) spent 30 years doing aerial reconnaissance for the US military. The exercise is, apparently, a bit more involved than just having a quick glance at a couple of photos online.

Guess what?

aerial reconnaissance

does not equal satellite images. Aerial recon mostly involves the correlation of imagery with electromagnetic sensor data, such as radar, infra red, radio etc. So far Aerial recon has spotted very little of what the satellite images purport to show.

My two theories:

Onboard fire/pilots overcome.

Hijack intent or trying to aim for US base. Shot down.

But that doesn’t explain why the aircraft was turned away from any safe landing area and flew for hours with no attempts to communicate before perishing. And a fire on board the aircraft would have brought it down much earlier. The only theory that fits for me is suicide. One pilot took out the other and the aircraft flew for hours with the passengers and crew blissfully unaware until it ran out of fuel. If they were in trouble Why turn right and aim for a remote US base hours away rather than turn left or completely around and and have several suitable landing strips within quick flight time away?

Deliberately aimed at the base?

Silence and misinformation on location/radar before?

Someone knows something. In this day and age for a plane to ‘vanish’?!

I think it highlights how out of touch the regulators are. Why do we still have ‘black boxes’? If the engine suppliers can monitor engine health in real time, plane status and position can be.

The engine monitoring system works thorugh the aircraft ACMS system and data is transmitted via ACARS, so there is no independant engine monitoring system and the system doesn’t continually stream data. Only the very latest aircraft (B787 and maybe A380’s) could possibly be capable of doing this assuming there was a global network out there capable of receiving the data being streamed from the aircraft – and storing and managing it. The aircraft was not where it was supposed to be – the regulators are entirely focussed on safety of the operation of the aircraft under normal operational circumstances. They don’t have a mandate on the security aspect of the aircraft – maybe they should in this day and age. If someone deliberately wanted to lose an aircraft then clearly it is possible to do so. This is why I personally think that this was done deliberately by one of the pilots rather than a hijacking or technical problem.

If you wanted to lose an aircraft then the middle of a vast empty ocean is the best way to do it. The pilot obviously knew this.

Aerial recon mostly involves the correlation of imagery with electromagnetic sensor data, such as radar, infra red, radio etc. So far Aerial recon has spotted very little of what the satellite images purport to show.

It involves looking at stuff from above.

But I’m glad we are agreed that it’s more involved than just clicking on a few website images.

yeah I don’t think I do agree, Aerial recon is not satellite imaging.
I’m just skeptical, that’s all. If you want to believe in some fantasy world they “they” know everything then do go ahead.

So far loads of false conclusions have been drawn in this investigation.

All I want to see is evidence, if they find even 1/10th of that imaged “debris” anywhere near the area where it was spotted and prove it is from mh370 then I will be happy. I am not saying it is not, I’m just saying the evidence is thin.

I think it highlights how out of touch the regulators are. Why do we still have ‘black boxes’? If the engine suppliers can monitor engine health in real time, plane status and position can be.

I rather think the complete lack of any physical evidence of what’s happened to MH370 rather reinforces the necessity for black boxes.

yeah you have to hope that from now on there will be some kind of cloud storage of FDR and CVR for the whole flight.

the latest report is of a debris field of 300 objects up to 15m in size from a thai satelite

also the earliest reports of debris were from a french satelite using radar not just visual

yeah you have to hope that from now on there will be some kind of cloud storage of FDR and CVR for the whole flight

and then you’d have a bunch of theories about the data being hacked or spoofed.

The pilot suicide theory seems the most plausible theory but it does still have some pretty big holes in it still. Once the suicidal pilot disables the other would it not be more simple to either ‘jam the sticks forward’ and stuff it into the ground/sea as opposed to flying aimlessly south until the fuel runs out. Maybe he just wanted to see some penguins.

It’s one hell of a difference between wanting to kill yourself and wanting to kill yourself and 200+ other people. Is there any indication that he was a psychopath?

Pilot suicide- then why keep flying for hours?

It still points to incapacitated pilots or pilots hijacked- forced to keep flying? In alot of cases of hijack the pilot is forced to keep flying whilst the hijacker dithers or considers options? The Ethiopian plane that crashed into the sea was one where the hijacker dithered/changed mind on where to go and the plane ran out of fuel.

Pilot suicide- then why keep flying for hours?

The hole in the theory you’ve pointed out there is almost exactly the same size as the holes in any and every other half-feasible theory put forward so far.

The hole in the theory you’ve pointed out there is almost exactly the same size as the holes in any and every other half-feasible theory put forward so far.

Exactly.
Very thin evidence for anything right now.

If you look at jumpers they take ages to decide, we are not talking rational here are we.

yeah you have to hope that from now on there will be some kind of cloud storage of FDR and CVR for the whole flight.

It’s quite a leap from hourly messages via a system that can be disabled and a box in the back of a plane with two hours of data on it; to a live stream of data constantly connnected anywhere in the world, on a system that cannot be disabled in any way by the pilot.

Keeping it simple, if the plane flew for several hours, essentially straight, incapacitated crew after a problem (which caused the beacon to be turned off as we’ve seen in past crashes) seems like the most likely reason. IMO of course.

I rather think the complete lack of any physical evidence of what’s happened to MH370 rather reinforces the necessity for black boxes.

So long as you can find them.

Keeping it simple, if the plane flew for several hours, essentially straight, incapacitated crew after a problem (which caused the beacon to be turned off as we’ve seen in past crashes) seems like the most likely reason.

But the plane made at least 4* turns after the beacon was “turned off”. Something must have occured (coincidentally on the margin between Malaysian and Vientnamese air traffic control) that prevented the crew from comunicating in any way with the ground but enabled them to remain in control of the plane (but not enough control to drop altitude and head for a landing strip or controlled landing of any kind) for over an hour before finally heading out over the ocean.

* 1st to divert from planned flight path, 2nd and 3rd after passing over Malaysia as seen on military and 4th to change from last known heading to intersect with arc of satelite.

that’s why I wrote ‘most likely’ not that it’s the definitive answer. It still seems the most plausible as it’s the simplest. Again IMO. And of course, sometimes the more complex things do happen.

that’s why I wrote ‘most likely’ not that it’s the definitive answer. It still seems the most plausible as it’s the simplest.

I was pointing out that it’s not a simple scenario. The chain of events that would disable all comms but leave the crew able to perform certain elements of control, but not others is incredibly far fetched and needs a lot of subsequent coincidences to hang together.

The “full in control of the plane” scenario is the most likely at the moment. We are missing a motive but physically that is what appears to have happened.

If you are above the South China Sea and wanted to lose the plane you would do exactly what this plane has done. It it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it probably is a duck.

If it was suicide then why not keep flying for as long as you can? Maybe he was in 2 minds about it and wanted to delay the final moments until the very end – or maybe he didn’t have the courage to just push the sticks forward. He could have been a real vindictive b’stard and wanted the wreckage and passengers to remain undiscovered for as long as possible. Who knows what his motivations were – personal, religoius, financial? Why do convicted serial murderers like Ian Brady insist on not revealing the location of their victims graves?
Some people are just evil and vindictive because they can be.

Well no. The simplest solution is that it followed the planned flight path and landed at Beijing. Because that’s what happens 99%+ of the time. Therefore that is undoubtedly the most plausible solution.

OK, this is getting OT but we wouldn’t be asking for a solution if it had done that as we’d know the solution. It didn’t land in Beijing so we’re asking what happened. IMO the simplest solution is what I proposed.

It also didn’t keep flying “essentially straight” for several hours after the incident, so I reckon my solution is just about as plausible as yours.

IMO the simplest solution is what I proposed.

Except your opinion of what has happened has been overtaken by facts. So we know you opinion is wrong.

If it was suicide then why not keep flying for as long as you can?

One possible explanation is that it allows plenty of time for the cockpit voice recorder to erase everything (it only covers the last 2 hrs) so *if* the pilot has killed/incapacitated the co-pilot and/or the crew & passengers, he can sit there in silence for hours and the CVR will tell investigators absolutely nothing.

Even if there is an entirely innocent explanation (ie everyone overcome with smoke/fumes/zombies) the aircraft has continued flying as a “ghost plane” for hours – chances are there’s sod all on the CVR.

If you assume deliberate pilot sabotage, it’s been brilliantly done. Go offline at the exact moment you’re on an international airspace boundary, confuse the radar then bugger off out the way to about the most remote location on the planet. Even if the crew & passengers are awake enough to realise what’s going on they won’t have mobile reception so can’t let anyone know. All that’s lacking is a motive although The Times today was saying that the pilot was deeply affected by the recent break up of his marriage.

aerial reconnaissance
does not equal satellite images. Aerial recon mostly involves the correlation of imagery with electromagnetic sensor data, such as radar, infra red, radio etc. So far Aerial recon has spotted very little of what the satellite images purport to show.

the difference is the satellite is looking straight down, from high altitude, and can effectively see deeper into the water, whereas the aircrew are looking at a chaotic ocean surface, churned up by strong winds, with light reflected off all over the place, white-caps on the wave tops confusing the eye. The satellite is seeing with the equivalent of a polaroid lens.

I’ll give you that.
It still looks like waves though. The size of the objects found are proportional to the weather on the day…

“essentially straight”

I was referring to the latter part of the flightpath, not the whole of it.

Anyway, I still see it as the simplest solution, you may disagree. That’s fine. We don’t know. It’s conjecture.

So how did they get to the “latter part” of the flightpath, which is hours after it went off the radar? Given a crew and aircraft capable of making all those turns and flying on for hours, why weren’t they capable of contacting anybody? It would have to be an extremely specific fire to knock out just the comms systems (oh, and not satcom), but still allow control of the aircraft. Not so simple at all.

What is simple is that there was nothing wrong with the aircraft and it was all done deliberately. If you wanted to “disappear” with a large aircraft then you’d do exactly what they did. Missing an obvious motive is a far lesser hole than there is in any other theory – not given all the recorded instances of people doing weird and mad stuff “without a motive”.

but still allow control of the aircraft. Not so simple at all.

But not enough control to attempt to land the plane.

The final turns are after they could have diverted to another landing strip to land the plane.

So the catestrophic series of events hypothesys relies on…

1) All comms being lost exactly on the boundary between Malaysia and Vietnam.
2) Depsite comms being lost (except Satcom) the pilots have enough control to enter a waymarked turn and climb to 40,000 ft.
3) The plane can then fly striaght for 1 hour and decend to 25,000 ft
4) During that hour it isn’t possible for the pilots to commuincate in any way or try to land the plane.
5) After an hour the pilots have enough control to carry out two more waymarked turns but still no comms or no ability to try to land the plane.
6) Something unknown then needs to happen to ensure the plane makes at least one final turn but keeps flying.
7) Coincidentally the final direction of the plane is directly towards one of the most remote locations on earth. Fly in almost any other direction and it gets picked up on military radar.

Seems unlikely.

Good point. I’d forgotten about that bit.

All these theories people have which rely on a huge series of unlikely events appear to be because they are reluctant to consider the possibility of a person doing something a bit bonkers. Despite that being perfectly normal.

assuming it was the pilot

the flight crew/copilot must have been prevented from interfering in some way that adds more complexity to the suicidal pilot theory

Not very much. Not given that even pilots sometimes need to use the toilet and the existence of anti-hijack cockpit doors.

If it was a hijack, by the pilot or a passenger, and the other cabin staff or passengers knew about it, wouldn’t they have used their mobile phones to send messages? The plane flew back over Malaysia, so you would expect some signal to be available?