[breaking] Malaysian Airlines loses contact with Beijing-bound flight, 239 on board

Good question. I always think it ridiculous that I'm forced to show and re-show my passport/boarding pass eleventy-billion times prior to boarding...and this provides a good anecdote to support that viewpoint.

 

delete...[double post]

 

The pilot had 18,000+ hours flight time.

Apparently when he was not flying a Boeing 777, he was flying a Boeing 777.

His sim at home...which he put together.

 

In related news...

http://www.newstimes.com/news/world...kes-emergency-landing-in-Honolulu-5301247.php

 

Yeah would I think a simple (single) scan of the passport should show it flagged as stolen.

So I guess they're going to go to great lengths and expense to make sure each and every passenger is not packing...but a simple passport validation is too difficult or not feasible.

 

Also, people steal passports to be able to get into and out of certain countries to bypass visa requirements.... so not confirmed terrorism just because of stolen passports.

 

More:

1. Having a passenger with a stolen passport is very uncommon on a plane. Having 2 or more is exceedingly uncommon -- very very long odds. It likely requires cooperation from a government or someone on the inside of the airport/airline assisting. Not for amateurs. Stolen passports are sometimes used for drug smuggling and illegal immigration, but no one would be dumb enough to try several on the same plane, unless they had help.

2. The plane went down in an area where Malaysian radar gets spotty due to distance and Vietnamese radar has not yet fully picked up a full signal. It's basically a dead zone in terms of radar coverage. This is significant and perhaps revealing of a well researched operation.

3. The USS Pinckney (a destroyer that also has search and rescue capabilities) has been dispatched to the area. Seems like a strong response to find a missing plane.

 

Four confirmed.

*Early indications is that it was likely pilot error, but formal findings haven't been released.

They change the picture. Many country's passports (and even old US passports) can easily have their picture changed by a good forger. The important part is the passport book itself with all of the key information, most importantly previous stamps.

Everyone is going to speculate until we have facts. I don't think it is a conspiracy theory until you know one way or another. I see conspiracy theorists at those that refuse to believe what is easily proved by facts. Think 9/11 truthers.

They simply change the picture. Remember, passport scrutiny is far more thorough at the destination, when going through local customs.

This is the likely case, especially in countries like China.

1. This makes no sense, and certainly isn't verifiable. You only know about the stolen passports being used if the person is caught, and/or if the airlines query Interpol databases. The destination tells a lot as well, and people sneak in and out of China all the time.

2. Deadzone in terms of radar? The planes have GPS, which has no dead zones... unless they happened to pull in to a parking garage, which I doubt is possible at 30,000 feet going 500mph.

3. This is typical, we offer render aid if and when things such as this happen. Finding the root cause is important, as the region where this took place isn't exactly full of trusting neighbors. The sooner we can prove this was an accident or tragedy, the better.

 

Could it be that the USS Pinckney is already in South China Sea and as you mentioned, has search and rescue capabilities, which is why its being used to umm...search and rescue?

 

It is not uncommon at all what so ever and it probably happens on most flights in south east Asia. You would never even hear about it unless something like this happened. I know this because I spent quite a bit of time in Thailand and the Philippines... all these guys traveling and working from their laptops have visa issues all the time and if they just had another passport then these problems go away.

If someone from south east asia or china has an opportunity to go to another country and work and make some money but due to their countries restrictions they can't get in and get a work visa, then a stolen passport is the next logical step. IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME.

 

Exactly. It is pretty public knowledge where our ships are at any given time. Also, it has been confirmed that US Citizens were on the flight.

http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=79557

 

Yes, dead zones in terms of everything -- tracking the plane is not possible in this area. I'm sorry if you doubt what the military experts are saying regarding this. Check the transcript or replay of ABC's This Week from this morning, where a search and recovery ex-Air Force pilot confirmed what I said.

 

I don't think this is terrorism. The stolen passports mean absoultely nothing to me in this part of the world. Happens probably on most flights.


Missing Malaysia Airlines flight may have turned around before it vanished

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ia-airlines-flight-mh370-turned-around-search

The Malaysia Airlines flight missing with 239 on board may have turned around just before it vanished from radar screens, the country's air force chief said on Sunday as the government said it had contacted counter-terrorism agencies around the world.

The airline warned families to prepare for the worst as they endured a second day without news. The search of waters between Malaysia and Vietnam for any trace of flight MH370 has widened.

At least two people on the plane were travelling together on stolen passports, fuelling concerns about the Boeing-777's abrupt disappearance in the early hours of Saturday. However, experts said there were many possible reasons for why it vanished and for people to travel on false documents.

Malaysian officials said they were looking at four suspect identities and were examining the entire passenger manifest. Interpol confirmed that at least two passports were listed in its database as stolen and that it was examining other documents.

The international police agency's secretary general, Ronald Noble, said it had spent years urging countries to screen all passports systematically. "Now, we have a real case where the world is speculating whether the stolen passport holders were terrorists, while Interpol is asking why only a handful of countries worldwide are taking care to make sure that persons possessing stolen passports are not boarding international flights," he said.

Two-thirds of the travellers were Chinese, while the rest were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.

The vast search area in the seas between Malaysia and Vietnam expanded further on Sunday because of the plane's apparent turn off course. At least 40 ships and 22 aircraft from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, China and the United States are participating in the hunt.

The director general of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) said it had sent a patrol ship to gather samples from an oil slick to determine whether the oil came from the flight or a passing ship, the government-backed Bernama website reported. No debris was found nearby.

 

That is locating the wreckage, it is VERY easy to locate a plane that is in flight.

EDIT: Very easy to locate a modern passenger plane in flight.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/07/travel/malaysia-airliner-analysis/

FlightAware utilizes ADS-B, MH370 was equipped with ADS-B and abruptly lost contact. So, we're looking at a mid-air destruction more than likely. And seeing as planes at cruising altitudes take 3-4 minutes to descend at terminal velocity, it will be a huge wreckage area.
http://www.faa.gov/nextgen/implementation/programs/adsb/

 

Why would that not have shown on flight radar, though.

 

EDIT: To answer directly, radar was spotty in that area.

FlightAware does show a sharp turn just before contact was lost. Something could have happened mid-flight, like depressurization and the pilots in an effort o dive did so on an elongated corkscrew fashion.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140307/1635Z/WMKK/ZBAA/tracklog

The fact that there were no distress calls or alarms sent makes it pretty clear to me that it was a mid-air catastrophe and the cabin lost structural integrity. At that speed and altitude you'd see a break up similar to Space Shuttle Columbia, just on a smaller footprint scale... a few miles rather than few hundred miles.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23MH370&amp;src=hash">#MH370</a> Vietnam search and rescue aircraft spotted new floating object. Authorities are not sure what it is. <a href="http://t.co/m0peec6DVm">pic.twitter.com/m0peec6DVm</a></p>&mdash; Vu Trong Khanh (@TrongKhanhVu) <a href="https://twitter.com/TrongKhanhVu/statuses/442653199682383873">March 9, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

Looks like me theory about mid-air disintegration may have been correct.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/09/us-exclusive-probe-plane-idUSBREA280FF20140309

 

The sharp turn was while the plane was still on the ground. Flightaware and flightradar24 do not show a turn when contact was lost. Also, if they had turned around, they would have let it be known. Something, whatever it was, happened and made them stop sending signals immediately.

 

Explosive decompression typically leads to a large semi floating debris field. If the aircraft went down intact, everything will be contained to a smaller area. Air France Flight 447 went down in one piece.