Malaysia Airlines 777 missing en route to beijing

[AniThyng]

Yeah, so, but what about the horndog co-pilot and the passports and Obama’s role in all of this?

I heard about the passport thing, but what's this about the horn dog co-pilot and Obama? I haven't been following that closely.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... light.html

[AniThyng]

So apparently Stuart slade of Armageddon fame thinks it's the copilot because he is religious yet likes hosting hot blondes and this fits the 9/11 hijackers. I'm not sure these people have any idea what a typical Malay Muslim professional is like. This is no disaffected radical, the copilot is the son of a senior civil servant and would likely have had a solid middle class upbringing.

In any case, does it make sense the plane could have evaded all the radar on the northern arc? If south, would Diego Garcia and the Australian long range radar network have realistically seen anything?

[Simon_Jester]

In fairness, it's hardly unprecedented for economically successful middle-class people to decide that they need to commit acts of violent terrorism. Political or religious ideology can make people's brains do funny things.

[fgalkin]

In fairness, it's hardly unprecedented for economically successful middle-class people to decide that they need to commit acts of violent terrorism. Political or religious ideology can make people's brains do funny things.

In fact, they are the primary group from which jihadists are recruited. The "poor uneducated jihadi" is a largely myth.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Simon_Jester]

Is that true of the ones that become international terrorists, or is it also true of the ones that join what are essentially guerilla movements within a single country?

I mean, I can visualize three kinds of people who get classed as "jihadis."

1) Local guerilla movements whose ideology is radical Islam. This is, de facto, what the Taliban is now in Afghanistan, what most of the Iraqi opposition has been in the war in Iraq, what the PLO and Hamas are in Palestine/Israel/the-land-formerly-known-as-Canaan.

You don't have to be especially literate or prosperous to be a good foot soldier for such a movement. Indeed, arguably it helps if you aren't, because it makes you easier to recruit and more desperate for whatever rewards the movement can scrape up.

In some cases it's even doubtful whether the members of this kind of movement are terrorists at all. You don't have to be a terrorist to want to blow up Humvees belonging to an occupying army. And whether you get called a "terrorist" for shooting collaborators seems to depend on whose side the person doing the calling is on.

2) Nativeborn members of a society that convert to a 'foreign' ideology (i.e. radical Islam when radical Islam is not otherwise common in their country) and become terrorists, launching attacks against their own country. Think Shoe Bomber. This is what Slade appears to be alleging that the Malaysian copilot was.

For (2), it probably helps if you are at least a bit reflective and literate, because you have to consciously consider your own ideology and choose a new one. On the other hand, you probably also have to be relatively... vulnerable, somehow. Either gullible, or emotionally vulnerable, or somehow lacking something most people have that prevents them from making major, unwise life changes. This seems like it'd be needed, so that you can be induced to change your lifestyle and adopt a violent radical one that may get you killed. A lot of people would be hard sells for something like that.

3) Genuine international terrorists. These are people who originate in one country, become familiar with its ideology and fully embrace it... then make a conscious decision to commit acts of terrorism in another country. The 9/11 hijackers were in this category.

I would expect these to, as a rule, be the most educated and richest of the lot, because they have to learn to be fully functional in multiple cultures, while still preserving their own attachment to their birth ideology. If they were stupid they'd get caught as soon as they entered the host country. Moreover, the skills to function in multiple countries and travel without raising suspicion are likely to be correlated with people who grew up with more money. And the broader horizons that come with having (relatively) more money and power.

[AniThyng]

Point taken, though it still stretches credibility for me, presumably nothing is off the table anymore. I'm pretty sure it has to have made the southern route though, It boggles my mind that it would have crashed or landed in central asia and NO ONE has managed to leak or claim this yet at all. Of course we may yet find out that there have been secret negociations for the past week or something like that...

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly, my intuition is that if the plane went down on land anywhere we'd have heard something, some scrap of indication or clue of what has happened, in spite of how big a place the world is. So the plane fell into the sea, and intuitively 'accident' strikes me as a more likely explanation than 'conspiracy' or 'terrorism by people with no obvious, logical target for their terrorism.'

[ray245]

It is more realistic to assume that the plane crashed, but there is some level of comfort in believing that the plane landed somewhere in the world.

[AniThyng]

It is more realistic to assume that the plane crashed, but there is some level of comfort in believing that the plane landed somewhere in the world.

It problem is not that it crashed, but where? Clearly a regular kind of accident is already off the table if the plane made a 180 turn back across the peninsula, so what actually happened?

I find it rather unlikely that there is a place in central asia so isolated that a 777 outright crashing or even landing has not been noticed by anyone willing to communicate the matter to date. But I may be wrong in my understanding of how easy such a coverup would be.

[Dominus Atheos]

I find it rather unlikely that there is a place in central asia so isolated that a 777 outright crashing or even landing has not been noticed by anyone willing to communicate the matter to date. But I may be wrong in my understanding of how easy such a coverup would be.

Central Asia is pretty isolated. It averages less then like 20~ people per square kilometer. In real terms that means it's miles of empty ground between villages. Here's a map from the New York Times:



If it went down somewhere near or beyond the top red line, it's completely possible there was literally no one around for miles to see it.

[LaCroix]

Seeing that there is no "good" reason for terrorists to target this specific plane, what are the chances it will be turned into the biggest cruise missile known to history?

I mean - going by the theory it was hijacked and didn't crash - seeing that it seems to have made it a couple hundred miles at least before the satellite contact was broken, there probably was a competent man flying it. Which means they probably landed it safely, somewhere - an old military base, a smpathetic country, even building a suitable runway in the middle of "gobi desert" might be moderately hard, but doable if you throw enough money at it and plan accordingly.

It's never going to be used as an airliner, again - the part numbers are known, and every 777 landing anywhere for a looong time will be checked. You just can't file the numbers off such a thing.

It could become a private airplane for someone, but it would never ever leave that country, again, for the above reasons, and even then, it would be quite hard to hide it.

So the only possible plan I could envision was to steal a huge airplane, fill it up to the brim with explosives and fly it somewhere. Given the fact (proven by how long it took to find as little as we know now) that it can almost casually completely evade imminent detection, it could pop up just about anywhere with little to no forewarning.

[Thanas]

That theory is complete.....what. I don't even know.

Seen too much James Bond?

[Broomstick]

I see no reason it can't be repainted and flown if you assume it hasn't crashed but has safely landed. There are plenty of places in the world where security is lax or can be paid off, and no, airplanes are not routinely subjected to laser-eye scrutiny every time they land. We don't do that with 727's despite one being successfully stolen back in 2003. There have been reputed sightings since then, with it repainted and with a different registration number, but nothing ever confirmed.

I'm sorry if it disturbs people but yes, you can steal a big jet. You may not be able to fly it in someplace like Heathrow afterward but it's a big world and there are plenty of places that you could go with it.

[General Zod]

I see no reason it can't be repainted and flown if you assume it hasn't crashed but has safely landed. There are plenty of places in the world where security is lax or can be paid off, and no, airplanes are not routinely subjected to laser-eye scrutiny every time they land. We don't do that with 727's despite one being successfully stolen back in 2003. There have been reputed sightings since then, with it repainted and with a different registration number, but nothing ever confirmed.

I'm sorry if it disturbs people but yes, you can steal a big jet. You may not be able to fly it in someplace like Heathrow afterward but it's a big world and there are plenty of places that you could go with it.

You can't just steal a jet like that on a whim without some sort of massive support structure backing you up, and that sort of thing doesn't exactly pop up overnight. You'd figure with a scheme that needs so many people to pull off successfully somebody would have said something.

[Broomstick]

You would think so... but as I said, there is precedent for stealing a big jet. That doesn't mean doing so it easy, or cheap, just possible.

Personally, I think it's most likely on the ocean bottom somewhere but right now we don't know much for certain.

[General Zod]

You would think so... but as I said, there is precedent for stealing a big jet. That doesn't mean doing so it easy, or cheap, just possible.

Personally, I think it's most likely on the ocean bottom somewhere but right now we don't know much for certain.

I don't know if I'd call an isolated incident a "precedent". If small fishing boats can't go missing to pirates without everybody and their mother knowing about it in a short period, I don't really think it's possible for a giant passenger airliner to.

[Broomstick]

We don't find every boat that goes missing to pirates, we don't find every downed airplane. People like to have the illusion we can know and/or control everything but we don't.

[General Zod]

I realize we can't find everything, but I don't see any point in leaping to cockamamie theories to justify it.

[Alferd Packer]

This is probably the best breakdown of the most plausible theory I've yet read.

There has been a lot of speculation about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Terrorism, hijacking, meteors. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN; it’s almost disturbing. I tend to look for a simpler explanation, and I find it with the 13,000-foot runway at Pulau Langkawi.

We know the story of MH370: A loaded Boeing 777 departs at midnight from Kuala Lampur, headed to Beijing. A hot night. A heavy aircraft. About an hour out, across the gulf toward Vietnam, the plane goes dark, meaning the transponder and secondary radar tracking go off. Two days later we hear reports that Malaysian military radar (which is a primary radar, meaning the plane is tracked by reflection rather than by transponder interrogation response) has tracked the plane on a southwesterly course back across the Malay Peninsula into the Strait of Malacca.

The loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire.
When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and searched for airports in proximity to the track toward the southwest.

The left turn is the key here. Zaharie Ahmad Shah1 was a very experienced senior captain with 18,000 hours of flight time. We old pilots were drilled to know what is the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us, and airports ahead of us. They’re always in our head. Always. If something happens, you don’t want to be thinking about what are you going to do–you already know what you are going to do. When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The captain did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer.

Take a look at this airport on Google Earth. The pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event onboard that made him make an immediate turn to the closest, safest airport.

For me, the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire. And there most likely was an electrical fire. In the case of a fire, the first response is to pull the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses, the plane would go silent. It probably was a serious event and the flight crew was occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such situations.

There are two types of fires. An electrical fire might not be as fast and furious, and there may or may not be incapacitating smoke. However there is the possibility, given the timeline, that there was an overheat on one of the front landing gear tires, it blew on takeoff and started slowly burning. Yes, this happens with underinflated tires. Remember: Heavy plane, hot night, sea level, long-run takeoff. There was a well known accident in Nigeria of a DC8 that had a landing gear fire on takeoff. Once going, a tire fire would produce horrific, incapacitating smoke. Yes, pilots have access to oxygen masks, but this is a no-no with fire. Most have access to a smoke hood with a filter, but this will last only a few minutes depending on the smoke level. (I used to carry one in my flight bag, and I still carry one in my briefcase when I fly.)

What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. You will find it along that route–looking elsewhere is pointless.


Ongoing speculation of a hijacking and/or murder-suicide and that there was a flight engineer on board does not sway me in favor of foul play until I am presented with evidence of foul play.

We know there was a last voice transmission that, from a pilot’s point of view, was entirely normal. “Good night” is customary on a hand-off to a new air traffic control. The “good night” also strongly indicates to me that all was OK on the flight deck. Remember, there are many ways a pilot can communicate distress. A hijack code or even transponder code off by one digit would alert ATC that something was wrong. Every good pilot knows keying an SOS over the mike always is an option. Even three short clicks would raise an alert. So I conclude that at the point of voice transmission all was perceived as well on the flight deck by the pilots.

But things could have been in the process of going wrong, unknown to the pilots.

Evidently the ACARS went inoperative some time before. Disabling the ACARS is not easy, as pointed out. This leads me to believe more in an electrical problem or an electrical fire than a manual shutdown. I suggest the pilots probably were not aware ACARS was not transmitting.

As for the reports of altitude fluctuations, given that this was not transponder-generated data but primary radar at maybe 200 miles, the azimuth readings can be affected by a lot of atmospherics and I would not have high confidence in this being totally reliable. But let’s accept for a minute that the pilot may have ascended to 45,000 feet in a last-ditch effort to quell a fire by seeking the lowest level of oxygen. That is an acceptable scenario. At 45,000 feet, it would be tough to keep this aircraft stable, as the flight envelope is very narrow and loss of control in a stall is entirely possible. The aircraft is at the top of its operational ceiling. The reported rapid rates of descent could have been generated by a stall, followed by a recovery at 25,000 feet. The pilot may even have been diving to extinguish flames.

But going to 45,000 feet in a hijack scenario doesn’t make any good sense to me.

Regarding the additional flying time: On departing Kuala Lampur, Flight 370 would have had fuel for Beijing and an alternate destination, probably Shanghai, plus 45 minutes–say, 8 hours. Maybe more. He burned 20-25 percent in the first hour with takeoff and the climb to cruise. So when the turn was made toward Langkawi, he would have had six hours or more hours worth of fuel. This correlates nicely with the Inmarsat data pings being received until fuel exhaustion.

Fire in an aircraft demands one thing: Get the machine on the ground as soon as possible.
The now known continued flight until time to fuel exhaustion only confirms to me that the crew was incapacitated and the flight continued on deep into the south Indian ocean.

There is no point speculating further until more evidence surfaces, but in the meantime it serves no purpose to malign pilots who well may have been in a struggle to save this aircraft from a fire or other serious mechanical issue. Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah was a hero struggling with an impossible situation trying to get that plane to Langkawi. There is no doubt in my mind. That’s the reason for the turn and direct route. A hijacking would not have made that deliberate left turn with a direct heading for Langkawi. It probably would have weaved around a bit until the hijackers decided where they were taking it.

Surprisingly, none of the reporters, officials, or other pilots interviewed have looked at this from the pilot’s viewpoint: If something went wrong, where would he go? Thanks to Google Earth I spotted Langkawi in about 30 seconds, zoomed in and saw how long the runway was and I just instinctively knew this pilot knew this airport. He had probably flown there many times.

Fire in an aircraft demands one thing: Get the machine on the ground as soon as possible. There are two well-remembered experiences in my memory. The AirCanada DC9 which landed, I believe, in Columbus, Ohio in the 1980s. That pilot delayed descent and bypassed several airports. He didn’t instinctively know the closest airports. He got it on the ground eventually, but lost 30-odd souls. The 1998 crash of Swissair DC-10 off Nova Scotia was another example of heroic pilots. They were 15 minutes out of Halifax but the fire overcame them and they had to ditch in the ocean. They simply ran out of time. That fire incidentally started when the aircraft was about an hour out of Kennedy. Guess what? The transponders and communications were shut off as they pulled the busses.

Get on Google Earth and type in Pulau Langkawi and then look at it in relation to the radar track heading. Two plus two equals four. For me, that is the simple explanation why it turned and headed in that direction. Smart pilot. He just didn’t have the time.

Chris Goodfellow has 20 years experience as a Canadian Class-1 instrumented-rated pilot for multi-engine planes. His theory on what happened to MH370 first appeared on Google+. We’ve copyedited it with his permission.

1CORRECTION 9:40 a.m. Eastern 03/18/14: An editing error introduced a typo in Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s name.

[Thanas]

The 1998 crash he is referring to actually was a MD-11 from JFK to Geneva, but other than that easy mistake I find his theory convincing.

[Simon_Jester]

I think the theory Alferd linked to is good.

It is more realistic to assume that the plane crashed, but there is some level of comfort in believing that the plane landed somewhere in the world.

Which is more disturbing? A plane crash, or a plane making a controlled landing and the 200+ passengers never being heard from again?

Seeing that there is no "good" reason for terrorists to target this specific plane, what are the chances it will be turned into the biggest cruise missile known to history?

This actually undermines the whole concept of the plane being stolen- because it's a big, risky way to get said "cruise missile." Because it'd be hard to get the plane anywhere near major targets without its nonresponsive and unscheduled nature getting it shot down. Planes flying over the ocean may not be subject to air traffic control, but planes flying over heavily populated areas are.

This is why I'm skeptical of the whole 'hijacking' theory, there's no coherent motive or explanation. Even a completely bizarre thing like "navigation computer flying plane in bizarre directions while crew and passengers pass out and die" seems more plausible than "airliner inexplicably stolen, then vanishes without a trace, despite being nearly impossible to fence."

[AniThyng]

if you had the planning capability to steal a plane with crew member complicity, why not steal a cargo plane and have it "crash" in the ocean. I doubt anyone would spend half as much effort looking for a cargo plane with 3 crew members compared to a jet with 240. Aside from the fact that apperently crazy pilots might only be available from unlikely backgrounds flying passengers, I mean.

Anyway, about the turnaround to Langkawi theory, that doesn't match now with the satellite ping arcs, and there is a closer airport at Kota Baru (on the east coast).

[ray245]

I think the theory Alferd linked to is good.

It is more realistic to assume that the plane crashed, but there is some level of comfort in believing that the plane landed somewhere in the world.

Which is more disturbing? A plane crash, or a plane making a controlled landing and the 200+ passengers never being heard from again?

The later, but from the POV of the passengers' families and friends, it is reasonable to assume that they would prefer the second option. At the least there is some hope that their loved ones could be alive and could be rescued than the later.

[AniThyng]

Yeah but as it stands on the other hand they may never know if they truly passed on or not if the plane us never conclusively found.

[Zaune]

Anyway, about the turnaround to Langkawi theory, that doesn't match now with the satellite ping arcs, and there is a closer airport at Kota Baru (on the east coast).

Still, it holds water overall. Grabbing all the altitude you can to buy time isn't an unreasonable course of action whatever the nature of the in-flight emergency, and from a quick web-search is seems that Langkawi is a much less busy airport than Kota Bharu; if they'd lost comms and possibly their transponder then it makes sense they'd aim for somewhere with less crowded airspace.