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

And this question comes too fruition.

Who was on the plane?

The conspiracy in me wants to question if the Gov was involved.

 

Thailand should be embarrassed too.

 

The Malaysian government has fumbled just about every single part of this incident and investigation.

 

I'm not really saying it's a govt fumble. It's the air traffic controllers who need to alert everyone to a missing heavy. It is the military's call (completely on their own) to scramble jets when they find that plane on radar doing weird maneuvers. That's exactly what happened with Payne Stewart's plane.

Are we to believe no one was monitoring the radar track, especially if air traffic properly notified all radar stations of the missing 777? Or was the radar info just being archived on a computer like security cameras??

 

Does Malaysia even have the capability to scramble fighter jets to check things out?

 

They have the jets for sure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_of_the_Malaysian_Armed_Forces

I guess the question is: Do they have pilots on 24/7 shifts for events like this? If not, why the hell do you even buy those planes, if you aren't going to use them for 24/7 defense? For festivals? Or maybe to plan attacks.

 

I'm pretty sure that neither the people in charge at Malaysian Airlines nor the people in charge in the Malaysian government can manage their own way to the bathroom.

 

In the air traffic control world, the loss of a "radar contact" or when a data block disappears is a huge deal. One that requires immediate action; so the idea that any sort of delay on ATC's part might have contributed to this gigantic mess is far-fetched, in my estimation.

The fact that this aircraft made it from one side of the Malay peninsula to well past the other side with no communication to ATC, over land and doing nothing remotely close to it's filed flight plan with no fighters scrambled to escort and investigate is inexcusable.

Seriously. What would you think if you lived in, say, Florida and a "rogue" aircraft just flew over the entire state without not a single thing being done by the government until after the fact?

 

You know you may be on to something.

 

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Why are transponders even accessible?

They should be inaccessible to the crew.

DD

 

good question.

I suppose it isn't really "why are transponders accessible?" but why are circuit breakers accessible. It probably doesn't matter. With enough info, you can go find the wire to cut, if your whole mission relied on it.

Now that we now the Malaysian Air Force had the plane on radar for over 200 miles, I'm now leaning to the plane got shot down by Malaysian Air Force for going back to Kuala Lumpur's skyscrapers while not complying to orders from a fighter jet escort.

The US Military would have done the same thing.

It's all about Public Relations now. You killed 250 people to save 5000. No wonder they are fumbling things in the media.

 

Has Jeremy Lin apologized yet?

 

On behalf of the Philippines of course.

 

That would be nuts, if true.

 

Malaysian plane saga highlights air defense gaps

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/15/us-malaysia-airlines-defence-idUSBREA2E0JT20140315


"Several nations will be embarrassed by how easy it is to trespass their airspace," said Air Vice Marshal Michael Harwood, a retired British Royal Air Force pilot and ex-defense attache to Washington DC. "Too many movies and Predator (unmanned military drone) feeds from Afghanistan have suckered people into thinking we know everything and see everything. You get what you pay for. And the world, by and large, does not pay.".........


..........Military systems, meanwhile, are often limited in their own coverage or just ignore aircraft they believe are on regular commercial flights. In some cases, they are simply switched off except during training and when a threat is expected.

That, one senior Indian official said, might explain why the Boeing 777 was not detected by installations on India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an archipelago which its planes were searching on Friday and Saturday, or elsewhere.

"We have many radar systems operating in this area, but nothing was picked up," Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai, chief of staff of India's Andamans and Nicobar Command, told Reuters. "It's possible that the military radars were switched off as we operate on an 'as required' basis."

Separately, a defense source said that India did not keep its radar facilities operational at all times because of cost. Asked what the reason was, the source said: "Too expensive."

 

You do remember, since 9/11, that Kuala Lumpur was a prime target city for planes crashing into buildings

So. This plane did a 180 to go back to Kuala Lumpur. Are you so sure that the Malaysian govt was not responsive. Maybe they did everything under their protocols. And simply are not sure how to tell the public that they shot down a plane

 

Anyone care to give some cliff notes? I'm too busy to untangle this whole web but I'm interested in the story...

 

My understanding is that after the last contact with Malaysian ATC, the plane was handed over to Ho Chi Minh ATC, which would explain why the Malaysians stopped paying attention for a while. I cant recall seeing a report stating who exactly failed to make contact with MH370 after an attempt, setting of the first alarm bells, but I'd assume it was Ho Chi Minh ATC, since the flight was handed over to them. As far as military radar not picking up the flight over the straight, I gathered that the military didn't pay any attention to commercial flights and probably assumed the dot was a plane flying an established KL to Europe or Mid East course (which it was at least for a period). I am not making any claims, just stating the way I understood from the reporting.

I read on a pilots forum that all electrical components are accessible to pilots because in the event of an electrical problem they need to be able to shut down any malfunctioning component in order to prevent further possible damage to the electrical system.

 

This article explains nothing more than an admiral's attempt to get more money

We still have no explanation to why fighters were not scrambled when the military picked up the plane on radar