Malaysia Airlines Loses Contact With 777 en Route to Beijing

[starchyme]

The pilots have voluntarily let friends in the cockpit in the past. So the reinforced door is useless if they try to be "nice" to someone and let them up there.

Maybe someone knew about their weakness regarding beautiful south-african ladies and used it as a door-opener?

[Evan]

To turn off the transmission of ACARS requires leaving the cockpit, but they didn't do that, so I stand corrected. The general point I was making remains.

Untrue. The SBD transmitter breaker is in the cockpit.

[Peter Kesternich]

So, if this was a terrorist hijack to get hold of a plane for some sinister purpose, why didn't they steal a plane that was stored somewhere, or maybe just parked overnight? That would cause much less publicity and require a lot less knowledege and planning than what had to go into the disappearance of MH370.

[Peter Kesternich]

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/044307_Fl...ir_piracy.html

NaturalNews... The new Aviation Week and Space Technology

By the way - Iran doesn't need to commandeer a 777. It just recently decommissioned the last passenger-carrying 747-100 and now can convert it to whatever nefarious purpose it wants.

[BoeingBobby]

Breaking News

This is mostly for starchyme who I think should get a job as a screenwriter.


Craigslist Tehran:

Mar 14 Clean Boeing 777 passenger version 200 million USD OBO

Mar 12 nice rims and tires ﷼400 (killeen) auto parts - by owner

Feb 3 NEW IN BOX LEXANI WHEELS, VARIOUS SIZES AND STYLES! ﷼1 (USA DIRECT TO YOU!) pic auto parts - by dealer

[EconomyClass]

Local news says the investigation is now regarded as a potential crime, possibly involving Malaysian airline staff and passengers. It's that kind of world after all. It isn't the typical developing nation airline.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world...uiry-1.1727016

[Peter Kesternich]

(...)It's that kind of world after all. It isn't the typical developing nation airline.(...)

Meaning?

[BoeingBobby]

Interesting post I found on the PPRuNe Forums (posted by HeathrowAirport)

Here is what the requirements are for fuel:


Flag and Supplemental
FAR 121.645
Dispatchers may not dispatch, and Captains may not depart, on a flight operating under flag or
supplemental rules unless that flight has enough fuel to:
• Account for holding, approach, and landing. The airplane must carry fuel sufficient to hold
at 1500 feet above field elevation for 15 minutes upon reaching an Alternate Airport and then
conduct an instrument approach and land.
• Fly to, and land at, the airport to which it is released.
• After that, to fly for a period of 10% of the total time required to fly from the airport of
departure to, and land, at the airport to which it is released.
• After that, fly to, and land at, the most distant alternate airport specified in the flight release,
if an alternate is required.
• After that, fly for 30 minutes at holding speed 1,500 feet above the alternate airport (or
destination airport if no alternate is required) under standard temperature conditions.
Fuel to Destination
+ Fuel to Alternate
+ : 45 Minutes Reserve
= Fuel Required
Fuel to Destination
+ Reserve: 10% Total en route Time to destination
+ Fuel to Alternate
+ Holding: 30 minutes at 1,500 AGL overhead the alternate

[Peter Kesternich]

Loading excess fuel might also be common practice for Malaysian (not just Malaysia Airlines) aircraft. Malaysia has its own oil reserves and it might be cheaper to upload more when leaving home, rather than refuelling before returning home.

[BoeingBobby]

Loading excess fuel might also be common practice for Malaysian (not just Malaysia Airlines) aircraft. Malaysia has its own oil reserves and it might be cheaper to upload more when leaving home, rather than refuelling before returning home.

"Tankering" is often done for exactly the reason you mention. Fuel costs can very by big $$ from place to place. I know that when I fly into Afghanistan we tanker for the return trip because fuel in $10 US per gallon there.

[BlueMax]

Interview today with former NTSB investigator Greg Feith, he says the pilot(s) did this and makes interesting timeline point. The short time between the normal communication of Good Night, the plane flying normal course, and then the communications devices being shut off and the turn initiated by the plane, Greg says makes it very unlikely a terrorist could have stormed the cockpit subdued crew and then done the aforementioned in the minutes these actions occured. Only the experienced pilots could have done this sequence so quickly, per Greg.

Also found the end of today's update in AvHerald interesting:
There have been no attempts to contact Malaysia, the airline or any other party in order to seek ransom or other compensation in exchange for occupants or the aircraft. There was no hazardeous cargo on board, the cargo has been checked according to standard operating procedures. The satellite signals could also have been sent while the aircraft was on the ground as long as there was electrical power available.

[BlueMax]

NY Times just posted this interesting update, ties in with the Greg Feith comment today:
SEPANG, Malaysia — A signaling system was disabled on the missing Malaysia Airlines jet before a pilot spoke to Malaysian air traffic control without hinting at any trouble, a senior Malaysian official said Sunday, shedding new light on a question important to determining why the plane turned far off its planned route and disappeared over a week ago with 239 people onboard.

Malaysia’s defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, offered the detail a day after the country’s prime minister, Najib Razak, ended days of hesitant, sometimes contradictory government statements about the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared over a week ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight.html?hp&_r=0

[Gabriel]

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/044307_Fl...ir_piracy.html

Five critical pieces of astonishing supporting evidence that Flight 370 passengers may still be alive.

• Fact #1: No crash debris has been located, despite an exhaustive search

The search for debris has involved over two dozen nations and is unprecedented in aviation history. If the plane had crashed in the ocean anywhere near its intended flight path, the debris almost certainly would have been located by now.

Yes, and you can put all the world resources in a search effort in point A that will yield nothing if the plane is in point B. The search didn't find the intact airplane after all, did it?

• Fact #2: The plane's transponder appears to have been manually turned off several minutes before other communication systems stopped transmitting

This almost certainly means someone deliberately disabled the transponder

Why would someone do that? Because they don't want to be tracked as they change course and take the plane to a new destination.

Because if the insurance company finds out that you committed suicide they will not pay the $ 1,000,000 to your wife, for example.

What's especially fascinating to me in all this is that once the transponder was turned off, this massive aircraft apparently went into "stealth mode" where nobody could track it. Although this seems to defy the laws of physics and radar

Laws of which you evidently don't understand a thing.

• Smoking Gun Fact #3: The plane's engines continued to broadcast performance data to satellite for four hours after radar contact was lost

These transmissions did not include data, they said, but the periodic contacts indicate to investigators that the plane was still intact and believed to be flying.

Obviously, this system cannot continue to transmit data if the plane has crashed or exploded. The existence of these signals is very nearly conclusive proof that the aircraft continued flying and did not crash or explode. This eliminates most of the scenarios which would result in the death of passengers

Or, that the plane did crash or explode precisely at the point where these signals ceased. Or wait, is the plane still sending signals?

• Fact #4: The mobile devices of many passengers continued to stay online for days after the disappearance

Ok, show me ONE SINGLE TELECOM COMPANY reporting that they had one of these phones in their network after the plane went missing and we'll start talking. Such a thing was said, not even as a rumor.

• Fact #5: Black box transponders are not broadcasting homing signals because the plane never crashed

And what is a blac box transponder? Oh, I forgot: Nothing!

Normally, when aircraft crash into the ocean, their black boxes emit homing signal transmissions so they can be located. But no signals were ever detected from Flight 370 black boxes.

When an airplane crash into the ocean, the only transmitting device is a pinger that sends short-range sound signals into the water, so you have to be with an underwater microphone NEARBY to detect the signal.

Could passengers still be alive?
If the plane kept flying for four more hours, then it was obviously being piloted with an intent to take it somewhere for some specific purpose.

Everything points to someone intentionally controlling the plane and disabling the location and communication systems.

Could this mean that the intention was to land the plane somewhere?
Yes.

But all the same hints make it possible that this was a murdercide by one or both of the pilots where they didn't want the plane to be located so nobody can prove that it was a suicidal action (with the implications that this has, for example, for an insurance policy).

[Gabriel]

Earlier, a source familiar with official US assessments of electronic signals sent to geostationary satellites operated by the UK’s Inmarsat said it appeared most likely the plane turned south over the Indian Ocean, where it would presumably have run out of fuel and crashed into the sea.
If so, just finding the plane - let alone recovering the “black box” data and cockpit voice recorders that hold the key to the mystery - would be a huge challenge.
The expanse of the Indian Ocean has an average depth of more than 12,000 feet, or two miles (3.5 km). That’s deeper than the Atlantic, where it took two years to locate wreckage on the seabed from an Air France plane that vanished in 2009 even though floating debris quickly pointed to the crash site.
Any debris would have been widely dispersed by Indian Ocean currents in the week since the plane disappeared.
The other interpretation was that the aircraft continued to fly to the northwest and headed over Indian territory.
The source said it was believed unlikely the plane flew for any length of time over India because it has strong air defence and radar coverage and that should have allowed authorities there to see the plane and intercept it.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/investigation-into-missing-plane-becomes-criminal-inquiry-1.1727016?page=3

[Evan]

"Tankering" is often done for exactly the reason you mention. Fuel costs can very by big $$ from place to place. I know that when I fly into Afghanistan we tanker for the return trip because fuel in $10 US per gallon there.

AvHerald reported that they were not tankering fuel. He also points out that signals coming from the plane could be sent from the ground as long as power is available so they weren't necessarily in the air for the entire time that the signals were being received.