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

seems legit

 

compelling, and simpler than the theory I linked above.

[rquoter]MH370 A different point of view. Pulau Langkawi 13,000 runway.

A lot of speculation about MH370. Terrorism, hijack, meteors. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN - almost disturbing. I tend to look for a more simple explanation of this event.

Loaded 777 departs midnight from Kuala to Beijing. Hot night. Heavy aircraft. About an hour out across the gulf towards Vietnam the plane goes dark meaning the transponder goes off and secondary radar tracking goes off.

Two days later we hear of reports that Malaysian military radar (which is a primary radar meaning the plane is being tracked by reflection rather than by transponder interrogation response) has tracked the plane on a southwesterly course back across the Malay Peninsula into the straits of Malacca.

When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and I searched for airports in proximity to the track towards southwest.

The left turn is the key here. This was a very experienced senior Captain with 18,000 hours. Maybe some of the younger pilots interviewed on CNN didn't pick up on this left turn. We old pilots were always drilled to always know the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us and airports ahead of us. Always in our head. Always. Because if something happens you don't want to be thinking what are you going to do - you already know what you are going to do. Instinctively when I saw that left turn with a direct heading I knew he was heading for an airport. Actually he was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi a 13,000 foot strip with an approach over water at night with no obstacles. He did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000 foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier towards Langkawi and also a shorter distance.

Take a look on Google Earth at this airport. This pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event onboard that made him make that immediate turn back to the closest safe airport.
For me the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense if a fire. There was most likely a fire or electrical fire. In the case of fire the first response if to pull all the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one.


If they pulled the busses the plane indeed would go silent. It was probably a serious event and they simply were occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, Navigate and lastly communicate. There are two types of fires. Electrical might not be as fast and furious and there might or might not be incapacitating smoke. However there is the possibility given the timeline that perhaps there was an overheat on one of the front landing gear tires and 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. A tire fire once going 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 only last for a few minutes depending on the smoke level. (I used to carry one of my own in a flight bag and I still carry one in my briefcase today when I fly).

What I think happened is that they were overcome by smoke and the plane just continued on the heading probably on George (autopilot) until either fuel exhaustion or fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. I said four days ago you will find it along that route - looking elsewhere was pointless.

This pilot, as I say, was a hero struggling with an impossible situation trying to get that plane to Langkawi. No doubt in my mind. That's the reason for the turn and direct route. A hijack would not have made that deliberate left turn with a direct heading for Langkawi. It would probably have weaved around a bit until the hijackers decided on where they were taking it.

Surprisingly none of the reporters , officials, 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. I guess we will eventually find out when you help me spread this theory on the net and some reporters finally take a look on Google earth and put 2 and 2 together. Also a look at the age and number of cycles on those nose tires might give us a good clue too.

Fire in an aircraft demands one thing - you 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 eighties. 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. In 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 simply overcame them and they had to ditch in the ocean. Just 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. 2+2=4 That for me is the simple explanation why it turned and headed in that direction.

Smart pilot. Just didn't have the time.[/rquoter]

https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13cv1gohsmbv5jmy221vrfyiz3vdhbop04

 

No idea why this is getting so much run. The systems were disabled several minutes apart, and no distress was communicated by the pilots after they were shut down.

 

If there is a fire on board I think you would communicate that to the ground crew.

 

Yeah, I'm sure, if nothing else, they would have communicated their intentions before pulling fuses and disabling communications and tracking. They would want to be able to communicate to their emergency airstrip so it could be cleared for their landing.

 

No distress, but there is now conflicting reporting about whether the systems were disabled separately and at what time. One system only transmits every 30 minutes, so they only have a 30 minute range when it stopped functioning - and that was within the same 30 minute range that the other one went down (which was shortly after the "all's good" communication). So after initially saying they were separate, now it seems they are unsure.

 

That said, NYT is reporting that the "left turn" was programmed rather than manual.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html?_r=0


WASHINGTON — The first turn to the west that diverted the missing Malaysia Airlines plane from its planned flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was carried out through a computer system that was most likely programmed by someone in the plane’s cockpit who was knowledgeable about airplane systems, according to senior American officials.

Instead of manually operating the plane’s controls, whoever altered Flight 370’s path typed seven or eight keystrokes into a computer on a knee-high pedestal between the captain and the first officer, according to officials. The Flight Management System, as the computer is known, directs the plane from point to point specified in the flight plan submitted before a flight. It is not clear whether the plane’s path was reprogrammed before or after it took off.

The fact that the turn away from Beijing was programmed into the computer has reinforced the belief of investigators — first voiced by Malaysian officials — that the plane was deliberately diverted and that foul play was involved. It has also increased their focus on the plane’s captain and first officer.

This is how they apparently know this:

Flight 370’s Flight Management System reported its status to the Acars, which in turn transmitted information back to a maintenance base, according to an American official. This shows that the reprogramming happened before Acars stopped working.

 

So per this, the US and UK are in agreement that the plane was still in the air at 8:00 AM? Sorry if already discussed, I'm not totally caught up. If so, that would seem to kill the above theory.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/15/world...es-flight-370-chronology/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

 

It sounds kind of plausible, but does not fit the information that the plane was still sending signals several hours later. I assume that would not have been the case if the plane had burned/exploded/crashed into the sea. I doubt that a debilitating fire would be going on for that many hours?

 

I personally think that if the plane is still intact, that the US government has a 70-80% chance of knowing where it is already - and they are still just quietly planning what to do about it.

 

It sounds like Malaysia just yesterday decided to share their raw data with us so that we can do our own analysis. I expect that is going to lead to a breakthrough, because they clearly don't know what the hell they're doing.

 

the theory was that the fire could've been a tyre fire, so it wouldn't be detrimental to the aircraft's health, just enough smoke to incapacitate the pilots and send the plane on a autopilot into the Indian ocean.

How odd would it be if the plane actually floated on impact and the survivors are all just living on the plane now, floating around the Indian ocean...

 

That's a far fetched theory.

Why are people coming up with far fetched mechanical type theories in an effort to avoid what by now seems like the most plausible scenario?

 

Probably not enough fresh water in plane for this.

 

Planes aren't designed to float indefinitely.

 

Maldives island residents report sighting of 'low flying jet'

http://www.haveeru.com.mv/news/54062

Residents of the remote Maldives island of Kuda Huvadhoo in Dhaal Atoll have reported seeing a "low flying jumbo jet" on the morning of the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Whilst the disappearance of the Boeing 777 jet, carrying 239 passengers has left the whole world in bewilderment, several residents of Kuda Huvadhoo told Haveeru on Tuesday that they saw a "low flying jumbo jet" at around 6:15am on March 8.

They said that it was a white aircraft, with red stripes across it – which is what the Malaysia Airlines flights typically look like.

Eyewitnesses from the Kuda Huvadhoo concurred that the aeroplane was travelling North to South-East, towards the Southern tip of the Maldives – Addu. They also noted the incredibly loud noise that the flight made when it flew over the island.

"I've never seen a jet flying so low over our island before. We've seen seaplanes, but I'm sure that this was not one of those. I could even make out the doors on the plane clearly," said an eyewitness.

"It's not just me either, several other residents have reported seeing the exact same thing. Some people got out of their houses to see what was causing the tremendous noise too."

Mohamed Zaheem, the Island Councilor of Kuda Huvadhoo, said that the residents of the island had spoken about the incident.

A local aviation expert told Haveeru that it is "likely" for MH370 to have flown over the Maldives. The possibility of any aircraft flying over the island at the reported time is extremely low, the expert added.

The Malaysia airlines jet disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing. Investigators say it was deliberately diverted off course.

Twenty-six countries are now helping to hunt for the plane after satellite and military radar data projected two huge corridors through which it might have flown.

Satellite data suggests that the last "ping" was recieved from the flight somwhere close to the Maldives and the US naval base on Diego Garcia.

But the Maldives is not amongst the countries that Malaysian authorities had sought help from in its search for the missing jet. Malaysia has listed the countries that it had appealed for assistance: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and France.

 

I agree. That article was almost insulting...I read it as "you idiots who have never flown a plane, it wasn't a hijacking, the pilot was making an emergency landing... sheesh!"

 

This. Remember the Hudson River landing? You could tell that plane was sinking slowly.

 

Not sure how much you guys get around the net, but there has been a plane spotted from Tomnod website: " http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1002982/pg1 "



And here is a theory that is about the only one that makes sense:

( http://keithledgerwood.tumblr.com/p...ysian-airlines-370-disappear-using-sia68-sq68 )

 

yeah, nice runway there for it to land on.