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

At the bottom ocean, sitting right next to it will be Dave Jamerson.

 

This has the feeling of a high-tech hijacking, of some sorts. B777's avionics bays are accessible outside of the cockpit, so it's plausible that somebody could have accessed the aircraft's internal computers.

The other thing to keep in mind is: whoever was piloting this aircraft went to GREAT lengths to avoid radar detection.

Bottom line, after cleverly executing such a high-tech hijacking, I have a hard time believing the ultimate goal was to aimlessly fly the aircraft over the Southern Indian Ocean until it ran out of fuel.

 

And none of the pieces floating around. The ocean is vast, but the 777 is big ass plane.

 

Aliens

 

Diego Garciaaaaaaa!!!!!

But seriously, this fascinates me still. I spent weeks following http://www.pprune.org/, an aviation forum that had an epic thread going with all kinds of scenarios. They had techs giving their own calculations based on available information and have real pilots of these planes explaining what could and could not have happened.

Based on everything I have read, I would guess the plane experienced some kind of decompression event, the crew tried to turn around, became unconscious, and then the plane was sucked into a black hole and teleported into a different universe.

 

several years ago, wasn't there a similar crash, think the plane belonged to air france?

 

Similar in that the aircraft mysteriously disappeared. Whether is the circumstances behind that jet "gone missing" were similar is unknown, of course. After several years, the French did find the crashed airliner (a remarkable feat, in my opinion) in the South Atlantic. They also determined what caused the crash, something like 4 years after the fact. I wouldn't be surprised if this missing Malaysian jet is found, eventually. And if they find it, I'm convinced that they will discover the reasons behind what happened. It will probably be a long wait. I feel for the families of the victims.

 

I don't have time to search for the link, but the story about that flight's final moments is horrifying.

 

I relatively certain that we KNEW that flight crashed, we just couldn't find the black box for awhile.

 

Yup. I read that they basically stalled out from 30,000 feet. So everyone in the plane knew they were going to die for a few minutes before impact. I can't even imagine.

 

I would've jumped right before the plane crashed and landed softly in the water.

 

From Wikipedia:

That almost makes me cry. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be on that plane. I basically don't breathe during landing and takeoff, I would have died before the plane hit the water.

 

Not that this is worth debating, but it's very possible most passengers aboard AF447 had no idea anything was wrong. Mind you, this plane went down in the middle of the night when most were asleep and a 16 degree nose-up angle isn't terribly alarming. Granted, the rocking back & forth would have likely been noticeable...but, again, middle of the night.

Either way, it doesn't make the loss of AF447 and 228 souls any less tragic.

That said, there's very little connection to be made between the losses of AF447 and MH370. One was entirely accidental and found shortly thereafter, while the other was seemingly deliberate and has vanished without a trace.

 

We really have no idea if there is any similarly, considering we don't know where the plane is, when it went down, or how/why it went down. We don't even know if it was deliberately trying to duck Indonesian/Thailand radar.

Hard to say if they would or wouldn't have known what was going on before knowing the answers to those questions.

 

Generally speaking, I agree that hard facts in this case are minimal...

That said, the unplanned change of course was 100% intentional, and all signs point to whoever was responsible for this going to GREAT lengths to avoid radar detection. In my estimation, there's no way something innocent happened.

 

Pretty sure I read that that could be explained if the pilots had suffered some kind of non-detrimental communications malfunction. They turn back towards Kuala Lumpur, become disoriented due to a decompression, and end up staying on a southernly course -- assuming they were in alternate mode. I don't know enough about flying to know what is or is not plausible in these situations.

However, when this all went down, I was keeping up pretty regularly with a professional pilots forum that was discussing protocols for different situations. Explaining in very fine detail what a pilot would do in a given situation. They bounced all kinds of scenarios off the wall, and many of them centered around this being intentional -- but nothing, absolutely nothing, confirms it. Not even the transponder or radar "ducking," which we don't even really know if that's what happened, or if Thailand dropped the ball and didn't want their neighbors to know how weak their system is.

But let's assume you're right, and this was intentional. Now let's discuss motives. Who could have made this happen? Likely only the pilot or co-pilot. Do either of them have any kind of motive to explain why they would want to do this? The pilot's association with the political dissident? The co-pilot seemed to be very fond of western girls, can't image he would be a Muslim extremist (but who knows?). So what other reason would they have for hijacking a plane and crashing it without making a single demand or leaving a reason?

Your scenario creates more questions than it answers. Not that any other doesn't, just pointing out that NOTHING should really be regarded as indisputable.

 

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost-581.html

Is the link to that professional pilots forum thread on MH370 for anyone interested in some of the technical details. There is a LOT of really interesting information here.

 

Hypoxia doesn't just disorient you; it kills you unless immediate action is taken. So, the idea of a complete communications failure (mind you, vital systems on a B777 are triplicated) followed by some sort of hypoxia-induced extreme unplanned deviation from course seems very far-fetched to me.

But I get the general spirit of what you're saying: it's very hard to definitively rule anything out. For me, personally, I'd be shocked if foul play wasn't involved. There were clear steps taken to avoid radar detection. That fact alone, rules out anything innocent to me.

 

Oh, they would have noticed for sure...

They were falling at greater than terminal velocity for a sky diver in stable position. The passengers would have been on the ceiling if not belted in. Everyone would have noticed falling at terminal velocity.

Further 16 Degrees is significant. The Costa Concordia listed at 20 degrees and was considered frightening (to say the least). Most boats that list more than 5 degrees or so is noticed by the passengers.

This is considered a heavy list and is probably around 16 degrees.

 

Well, at further risk of derailing this thread, I'll simply say: you can't compare a listing boat to a plane with a nose-up attitude.

Obviously, a listing boat is an immediate cause for concern since this situation is never normal. On a plane, a nose-up attitude is common not only on takeoff, but passengers have to assume altitude changes will be made mid-flight.

Either way, it doesn't make what happened any less tragic.