Malaysia Airlines 777 missing en route to beijing

[AniThyng]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26492748

Malaysia Airlines 'loses contact with plane'

Malaysia Airlines says it has lost contact with a plane travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 people on board.

The airline said in a statement that flight MH370 disappeared at 02:40 local time on Saturday (18:40 GMT on Friday).

It was expected to land in Beijing at 06:30 (22:30 GMT).

"Malaysia Airlines is currently working with the authorities who have activated their search and rescue team to locate the aircraft," the carrier said.

The flight was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members.

Malaysia Airlines is the national carrier of Malaysia and one of Asia's largest, flying nearly 37,000 passengers daily to some 80 destinations worldwide.

Not the kind of news you want to hear when due to take a airasia flight back to KL in 4 days time. A big malaysian jet has not crashed in decades, and the last time was a hijacked 737.

[Thanas]

As if the world had a shortage of bad news lately.

[Broomstick]

Sounds bad - no contact, and enough time has gone by that they'd be on the ground now just because of the fuel limits. Reports are that contact was lost over Vietnam, over land, so it (or what remains) should be located fairly quickly. I expect we'll hear something more by morning.

[TimothyC]

Sounds bad - no contact, and enough time has gone by that they'd be on the ground now just because of the fuel limits. Reports are that contact was lost over Vietnam, over land, so it (or what remains) should be located fairly quickly. I expect we'll hear something more by morning.

What I've seen has it going off radar over the Gulf of Thailand.

[montypython]

Some folks I've heard have said that an electrical problem would be a very likely cause of the crash, given that the plane is a 777 and the specific airline in question.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Yahoo, but still news:

UPDATE [12:37]: Tuoi Tre, a leading daily in Vietnam, reports that the Vietnamese Navy has confirmed the plane crashed into the ocean. According to Navy Admiral Ngo Van Phat, Commander of the Region 5, military radar recorded that the plane crashed into the sea at a location 153 miles South of Phu Quoc island.

[Wicked Pilot]

Some folks I've heard have said that an electrical problem would be a very likely cause of the crash, given that the plane is a 777 and the specific airline in question.

Anyone saying that is pulling it straight out their asshole. There are ungodly amounts of redundancies build into an airliner's electrical system, really the only way to knock off power completely would be a catastrophic fire that just couldn't be isolated. Even in that case there's still plenty of time to get an emergency call out and a turn towards land.

Not saying you're wrong though, it's not like my crystal ball is providing any answers..

[AniThyng]

Some folks I've heard have said that an electrical problem would be a very likely cause of the crash, given that the plane is a 777 and the specific airline in question.

Can you clarify? From a safety standpoint I an not aware of MAS being substandard in any way. I mean there have been some incidents I've heard of but the last hull loss was a small plane landing in bad weather and a hijackedplane in 77.

An opposition party politician tweeted that there must be a new Bermuda triangle to explain why Malaysia hasn't find the jet yet. What a jackass, I dislike the ruling government as much as anybody but he's lost my vote for sure.

[Broomstick]

What I've seen has it going off radar over the Gulf of Thailand.

I stand corrected, then. Well, it's not the first time initial reports were less than perfect.

Some folks I've heard have said that an electrical problem would be a very likely cause of the crash, given that the plane is a 777 and the specific airline in question.

Who are these "some folks" and what are their qualifications to discuss electrical problems in the B777? An airplane like that has triple redundancies as a design feature, fire suppression systems, and probably a bunch of other safety features I'm not aware of (not being an expect on that type of airplane). It's not impossible, but really, this sounds like a "pull it out of my ass" guess at this point.

Frankly, I don't see how anyone can venture a guess here, what with the airplane being underwater and nothing recovered as of yet.

Apparently, there's a multi-national effort to look for the wreckage, and I'm always happy to see international cooperation as opposed to friction and conflict. I just wish it was over something less tragic than a big plane going down.

ETA: There are reports just coming in that "liquid" and "rubbish" have been spotted on the ocean surface. >sigh< Not really a surprise it appears to be a crash.

[AniThyng]

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/08/world ... e-missing/

Excerpt

Bits and pieces of information have begun to form, but it remains unclear how they fit into the bigger picture, if at all.
For instance, after the airline released a manifest, Austria denied that one of its citizens was onboard the flight as the list stated. The Austrian citizen was safe and sound, and his passport had been stolen two years ago, Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Weiss told CNN.
Similarly, Italy's foreign ministry confirmed that no Italians were onboard MH370, even though an Italian was listed on the manifest. Malaysian officials said they were aware of reports that the Italian's passport was also stolen, but had not confirmed it.

I wonder what the CCTV footage of these individuals passing passport control would reveal...

[AniThyng]

On a side note, while I'm not sure if it's really that impressive that ASEAN member states are cooperating ( I know there are overlapping disputes etc but this is hardly a Cold War) , but I am dissapointed that it really has turned into a local let's pin this on the ruling government issue. Never,ind the racism at home and abroad. ( oh haha Asians and Muslims right, either incompetence or suicide har har)

[Broomstick]

Fingerpointing is a typical outcome of any airplane crash regardless of location or ethnicity of personnel.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

On a side note, while I'm not sure if it's really that impressive that ASEAN member states are cooperating ( I know there are overlapping disputes etc but this is hardly a Cold War) , but I am dissapointed that it really has turned into a local let's pin this on the ruling government issue. Never,ind the racism at home and abroad. ( oh haha Asians and Muslims right, either incompetence or suicide har har)

Malaysian immigration has always been rather incompetent. What's new? Someone just told me he went through the X-ray machine on his own and no one bothered to man the station.

[AniThyng]

Anecdotal I'm sure. I also fly out of KL and have never seen such a thing.

[Zaune]

Also, the plane was bound for China; I'd be surprised if there was a flight into that country from its less well-off neighbours that didn't have a couple of would-be illegal immigrants on it.

[Danny Bhoy]

Also, the plane was bound for China; I'd be surprised if there was a flight into that country from its less well-off neighbours that didn't have a couple of would-be illegal immigrants on it.

Are you implying that Malaysia is less well off than China? As far as I know, Malaysia has a higher per capita GDP than China.

I suspect that there would be more Chinese nationals trying to enter Malaysia illegally than the other way around. Those Malaysians trying to enter China illegally are more likely to be fugitives than the usual immigrants.

[Pelranius]

What about Indonesians trying to enter China?

Or migrants (Malaysian or otherwise) who are using Beijing as a transit point?

[AniThyng]

Also, the plane was bound for China; I'd be surprised if there was a flight into that country from its less well-off neighbours that didn't have a couple of would-be illegal immigrants on it.

Are you implying that Malaysia is less well off than China? As far as I know, Malaysia has a higher per capita GDP than China.

I suspect that there would be more Chinese nationals trying to enter Malaysia illegally than the other way around. Those Malaysians trying to enter China illegally are more likely to be fugitives than the usual immigrants.

Higher than china as a whole, but probably lower than say, shanghai or Guangzhou individually. Still, usually it's been chinese nationals overstaying tourist visas to work in the sex industry, not the other way around.

[Tony Stark]

According to BBC news when I was watching earlier, 2 passengers were using stolen passports.

[Lolpah]

Some suggest that the passengers might have been drug smugglers. Using stolen passports seems to be a modus operandi among them.

Of course, there's also a fear that these two might have been terrorists who downed the plane, but for now we can only speculate.

Is there any information on whether all the other passengers were genuinely on the plane, or might there have been other fake identities too?

[Broomstick]

So far it seems only those two, but information is far from complete on any of this.

[InsaneTD]

We probably won't know the full story for months, if not years.

[Sea Skimmer]

The water in that area is very shallow for open sea, it may have gone down shallow enough to be reached with SCUBA gear, and it can't be over about 300ft because nothing in the Gulf of Thailand is. That should mean very rapid location of the wreck, given that it was being actively tracked in the first place, and then rapid black box recovery. We should have a pretty good idea of what happened within weeks from that. Full story, well that will depend on what happened sure.

[Lolpah]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/ ... 1720140309
So apparently, the authorities are now considering the possibility that the aircraft turned back before disappearing:

"What we have done is actually look into the recording on the radar that we have and we realized there is a possibility the aircraft did make a turnback," Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told reporters at a news conference.

Also, there possibly are two more suspicious passengers:

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said authorities were also checking the identities of two other passengers, other than the men on the Austrian and Italian passports.

"All the four names are with me," said Hishamuddin, who is also defense minister. "I have indicated to our intelligence agencies and I have also spoken to international intelligence agencies for assistance."

He said help was also being sought from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). However, an attack was only one of the possibilities being investigated.

"We are looking at all possibilities," he said. "We cannot jump the gun. Our focus now is to find the plane."

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the head of the department of civil aviation, later told reporters only two passengers were being investigated and that authorities were checking CCTV footage of the two as they boarded the aircraft.

[Broomstick]

The only way we're going to get real answers is to find the damn airplane. Which may take considerable time.