2014 Malaysian Planes Lost: Pacific and Ukraine

[Zombie Glenn Beck]

I haven't trolled through all the other posts, so apologies if this point has been covered before.

Having flown that route many times myself, (and in a 777, not that that has anything to do with it), I'd be very surprised to find there were not quite a large number of eye (or at least ear) witnesses to the aircraft hitting the sea. The number of fishing boats in those waters beggars belief. Overflying that area at night, there are so many fishing boats, each with a light, you could be forgiven for thinking you were overflying a huge city.

If I'm correct, it will probably be a day or two before any such eye/ear witnesses return to port.

Flight Radar24 is a compilation of unofficial personal receivers out in the world placed into one website in Russia for us all to watch. Whilst I love the App and use it frequently It doesn't cover all of the planet and is unreliable.

Remember ADS-B transmit receive data is "line of sight" and maybe, just maybe the data you are watching comes to an end because MH 370 moved out of sight of the receiver Flight Radar24 use in that part of the World.

"Not to be used for navigation" or proof of...

Damage done to the wing in 2012, according to what Ive skimmed a botched repair job would fit the bill of what happened.

I occasionally run an adsb receiver in South Vietnam, I never hooked it up to publicly transmit anything to the global internets, but I can confirm that "enthusiast" coverage over large parts of SE asia is spotty and random. Most of these gadgets are not online 24/7, not redundant in any way, and a lot of airspace isnt covered. Central Europe is different, but believe me, That the track disappeared but others were tracked says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

(And for those here who might be interested in looking at the ongoing search operation by tracking ships: publicly accessible martitime transponder - AIS - coverage is much worse. Last time I checked, there was a french electrical engineer working for a shipyard who set up a very capable yagi out of Saigon, but that's about it).

Well I will throw this out there. Thursday we were flying from HKG to Hano late morningi. While in HK airspace a ANA cargo flight reported a TCAS contact 3 miles, at 8 o clock, 1,000 feet below. HK atc called in the blind to the "unidentified" a/c, whih was squawking 1400 to initially identify itself, and when that did not work, to press ident, to which she got a "reply". She was able to verify their level. This went on till we transfered to Sanya, but the ANA guys were able to see the a/c and it was clearly "shadowing" them. I know the Chinese and Americans have being shadow boxing in the region of late, but this is the first time I have heard of a civilian a/c being caught up... At the time it was unnerving. Now,.... Just saying...

At the two hour + mark, they would have been abeam VVTS or a bit north talking to HCM control. The route runs up to the coast past Hainan then they would crossed into China through VHHH.

Just as an aside, on a course in the '80s about dealing with major incidents with numerous fatalities, one of the lectures was by Kentons, who at that time, and perhaps now, undertook the task of identifying victims from whatever remains were available at most of not all such events in the UK.

One of the many memorable things we learnt was the fact that in every such event, about 5% of the victims will be travelling under false identities, or secretly under their own identities, or otherwise are not quite what they appear to be. The speaker cited an amazing dance troupe of young girls, who turned out to be entirely male. Others were travelling on false passports, and on every flight, it seems, there is at least one gent with a lady not his wife/partner, who was supposed to be somewhere else entirely (the gent, not the lady).

So I wouldn't be too troubled or puzzled by this (I'm puzzled about why you are "troubled"); it's pretty much normal and doesn't mean anything.

This reminded me of the recent EY B777 that diverted into CGK with toilet fires. Could there be a reason why the B777 was/is being selected? I have noticed that on other aircraft types the toilets are normally located at the front and back, but vary rarely directly over the wing spar or centre tank. On other aircraft a device detonated at the rear toilets might be manageable especially considering it is so close to the LRBL.

Could the toilets in the mid cabin of the B777 somehow allow access to the centre fuel tanks through the floor, and if so could some crazy individuals have set this alight without need for anything more than an ignition source?

(For you who don't want to click: Ramzi Yousef checks in, using a fake ID, on a one-stop flight to Japan, A -> B -> Japan. From point A to point B he arranges a bomb to explode the centre fuel tank. He departs at point B. During the flight to Japan the bomb explodes but doesn't penetrate the fuel tank [different model of aircraft]. Philippine police finds out the fake ID is really Mr Bomber and raids his appartment. Damning evidence of foul play, and Mr Bomber ends up in US prison. Plan was to blow up about 12 US airliners simultaneously.)

Now, this has to do with the terrorist angle of this missing mystery as this COULD have been a repeat of the above. Some people questioned why terrorists would choose a Malaysian airline... simple answer is "convenience". IF terrorists did this (AND WE DO NOT KNOW THAT YET) they might just have chosen this flight for plain convenience. Nothing to do with Malaysia or even China for that matter. Just as in the case with the Philippine airline.

Malaysian Customs and Immigration takes photos of each departing passenger's face as well as electronically scanned fingerprints.

Stand by for the images of the four suspect passengers - if they are 'interesting'

If I turn off my phone and am international, it sounds like you are connecting to it when you dial the number so it still rings to the caller.

Was wondering if the recent spate of toilet fires on the flight from OZ to Mideast were a testing ground for something else that didn't work then, but it did this time. Both Muslim carriers, good airlines, and was wondering if any false passports were on the Etihad flight as well?? I'm just thinking out aloud......

If it was terrorists ,here is what they did:
Entered the flight-deck by force or for a visit by invitation of the crew at top of climb pluss a few minutes ,when coffe i provided .
Then incapasitated the crew and did 3 things that takes 2 seconds:
Firehandel 1 and 2 ,release and pull. Battery off.!

This will shut down any and all transmissions from the aircraft in less then 10 secunds.

As reported by many irritated professionals, this thread is unusual on this site for the sheer amount of amateur and extraneous speculation clogging it. However ; there's a reason for that. I've been lurking on this site for many years, only contributing to areas open to aviation enthusiasts, and never wanting to get in the way, and have watched carefully the reactions of professionals to many previous threads. The disproportionate non-expert response here seems to be precisely because of a spectacularly unusual lack of technical information for those with expertise to process in this timeframe.

Please can we put this recurrent theory to bed.

Short version - the ringing tone returned to the caller is bogus.

Why it happens -
Cellular phone systems first try to route a call to the last cell which was in contact with the phone. If this fails the system tries to locate the phone to other cells and then tries to divert to voicemail.
All of this searching takes time, during which a caller hearing silence would probably hang up before the call can be connected so the system returns a ringing tone to the caller. In most cases this is a successful strategy but it does mean that if the phone is not eventually found the caller is misled into believing that it is working OK but not being answered.

Well what do you know - we now have admission from officials at last that they tracked MH370 to the Strait of Malacca!! So why has everyone been searching Between Malaysia & Vietnam? If you were one of those searchers you'd be feeling rather PO wouldn't you? I mean how long have they known this - surely it just didn't come to light as of now. Raises the questions now that there is much more yet to be told that is obviously being held back. So much for SAR co-operation in the future. Politics/borders etc - first casualty is always the truth which we may never know.

[Zombie Glenn Beck]

One possibility we have to consider, is that this was some kind of structural failure and that Boeing and other interested parties are intentionally spreading FUD about missiles and hijackers and all that noise to distract from the fact that one of their planes just very likely had a catastrophic failure. Also sorry for the info dump.

[82_28]

I think it is a "deep scam" and it is just some bullshit meant for all of us depending upon where we fit into the grand PAL region. The fucking "PAL region" is what we should be asking about.

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

No choice. If you are serious, PAL's existence requires scrutiny. Fake borders and regions made up by wise, wise men. Famous actors in "security". Yet as of now "no clue" with all seeing monitors, as we are led to believe. Come the fuck on.

The purpose is in the mystery.

[Lord Balto]

Well what do you know - we now have admission from officials at last that they tracked MH370 to the Strait of Malacca!! So why has everyone been searching Between Malaysia & Vietnam? If you were one of those searchers you'd be feeling rather PO wouldn't you? I mean how long have they known this - surely it just didn't come to light as of now. Raises the questions now that there is much more yet to be told that is obviously being held back. So much for SAR co-operation in the future. Politics/borders etc - first casualty is always the truth which we may never know.

No, actually, if you read the related story (Huffington Post seems to be Pseudo-information Central at this point) you will find that the Andaman reference is to the direction of the flight and not to its actual location. According to the story, some genius determined that the supposedly tracked direction was that normally used to get to the Andaman Islands. That the bone-headed press turned this into something entirely different says much about the reading comprehension of the average "reporter," not to mention reader, and not much else.

[RocketMan]

http://gawker.com/flight-370-deliberate ... socialflow

Source told Reuters on Friday that the Malaysian military has radar data indicating that Flight 370 may have deliberately flown hundreds of miles off course, raising the possibility of sabotage or hijacking.

"What we can say is we are looking at sabotage, with hijack still on the cards," a senior Malaysian police official told Reuters.

The data reportedly shows that Flight 370 abandoned its scheduled Beijing-bound course and instead headed west, towards India's Andaman Islands.

From Reuters:

Two sources said an unidentified aircraft that investigators believe was Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints when it was last plotted on military radar off the country's northwest coast.

This indicates that it was either being flown by the pilots or someone with knowledge of those waypoints, the sources said.

The Reuters report seems to correspond with a story in Friday's Wall Street Journal, which cited sources saying the plane flew for more than five hours after vanishing from radar.

According to the Journal's report, Flight 370 repeatedly "pinged" its location to satellites that transmitted data to Boeing. Malaysia Airlines didn't purchase a package that would have allowed them access to the satellite system's data, according to Boeing.

The Journal's sources said that, if the plane stayed in the air for the full five hours, it could have traveled more than 2,200 nautical miles.

[Lord Balto]

http://gawker.com/flight-370-deliberately-flew-hundreds-of-miles-off-cour-1543700290?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Source told Reuters on Friday that the Malaysian military has radar data indicating that Flight 370 may have deliberately flown hundreds of miles off course, raising the possibility of sabotage or hijacking.

"What we can say is we are looking at sabotage, with hijack still on the cards," a senior Malaysian police official told Reuters.

The data reportedly shows that Flight 370 abandoned its scheduled Beijing-bound course and instead headed west, towards India's Andaman Islands.

From Reuters:

Two sources said an unidentified aircraft that investigators believe was Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints when it was last plotted on military radar off the country's northwest coast.

This indicates that it was either being flown by the pilots or someone with knowledge of those waypoints, the sources said.

The Reuters report seems to correspond with a story in Friday's Wall Street Journal, which cited sources saying the plane flew for more than five hours after vanishing from radar.

According to the Journal's report, Flight 370 repeatedly "pinged" its location to satellites that transmitted data to Boeing. Malaysia Airlines didn't purchase a package that would have allowed them access to the satellite system's data, according to Boeing.

The Journal's sources said that, if the plane stayed in the air for the full five hours, it could have traveled more than 2,200 nautical miles.

So, let me get this straight. If I'm in Baltimore and I get onto Interstate 70 going west, I must be going to California?

As for Report A "corresponding with" Report B, well, I must say, none of this unsourced, unsubstantiated nonsense counts for a hill of beans.

And if the plane traveled vertically at light speed, it could have reached the moon. Quick, send a search party to the moon. JFC

[Lord Balto]

In the event of a radio/electrical failure, be able to safely terminate the flight using communication aids such as light gun signals and transponder squawks.

[solace]

(CNN) -- The mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 appeared to deepen as reports emerged that passengers' cell phones continued to ring long after the flight went missing Saturday.

After the torment of not knowing what has happened to their loved ones, relatives of MH370 passengers had resorted to calling their phones, and were greeted with ringtones.

The aircraft disappeared unexpectedly from tracking early Saturday. No distress call from the pilots was received, and search efforts to date have not yielded any conclusive results, only adding to the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the Beijing-bound flight.

Speculation quickly mounted on social media that these "phantom calls" amounted to evidence that the flight had not crashed, as has been widely assumed.
Conspiracy theories surround Flight 370
Aerial view of search is 'reality check'

"Frustrated! ... There are reports from family members that phone calls to their missing loved ones have 'rung through,' indicating the phones aren't on the bottom of the ocean," one Facebook user surmised.

However, technology industry analyst and "E-Commerce Times" columnist, Jeff Kagan told CNN that no conclusions can be reached concerning the ringing phones.

When a cell phone rings, he told "The Situation Room," it first connects with the network and attempts to locate the end-user's phone.

"If it doesn't find the phone after a few minutes, after a few rings, then typically, it disconnects and that's what's happening," he said.

"So, they're hearing ringing and they're assuming it's connecting to their loved ones, but it's not. It's the network sending a signal to the phone letting them know it's looking for them."

Kagan told Wolf Blitzer that the technology meant he couldn't speculate on what ringing phones in this situation could mean.

"Just because you're getting ringing, just because the signs that we see on these cell phones, that's no proof that there's any -- that's just the way the networks work."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asi ... le_sidebar

[Lord Balto]

(CNN) -- The mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 appeared to deepen as reports emerged that passengers' cell phones continued to ring long after the flight went missing Saturday.

After the torment of not knowing what has happened to their loved ones, relatives of MH370 passengers had resorted to calling their phones, and were greeted with ringtones.

The aircraft disappeared unexpectedly from tracking early Saturday. No distress call from the pilots was received, and search efforts to date have not yielded any conclusive results, only adding to the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the Beijing-bound flight.

Speculation quickly mounted on social media that these "phantom calls" amounted to evidence that the flight had not crashed, as has been widely assumed.
Conspiracy theories surround Flight 370
Aerial view of search is 'reality check'

"Frustrated! ... There are reports from family members that phone calls to their missing loved ones have 'rung through,' indicating the phones aren't on the bottom of the ocean," one Facebook user surmised.

However, technology industry analyst and "E-Commerce Times" columnist, Jeff Kagan told CNN that no conclusions can be reached concerning the ringing phones.

When a cell phone rings, he told "The Situation Room," it first connects with the network and attempts to locate the end-user's phone.

"If it doesn't find the phone after a few minutes, after a few rings, then typically, it disconnects and that's what's happening," he said.

"So, they're hearing ringing and they're assuming it's connecting to their loved ones, but it's not. It's the network sending a signal to the phone letting them know it's looking for them."

Kagan told Wolf Blitzer that the technology meant he couldn't speculate on what ringing phones in this situation could mean.

"Just because you're getting ringing, just because the signs that we see on these cell phones, that's no proof that there's any -- that's just the way the networks work."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asi ... le_sidebar

So, if I read this correctly, the phones are somewhere beyond cell tower range. That could be the bottom of the sea or it could be somewhere in Vietnam or Cambodia outside of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) or Phnom Penh--assuming Phnom Penh has cell towers. In fact, this proves with absolute certainty that the plane is not in New York City or some other metropolitan area. "Hey Satish, call off the search of Mumbai!"

This is a classic example of total lack of data resulting in wild media speculation based on rumor and innuendo. Face it, the plane's missing. That's all we know. Period.

[mentalgongfu2]

[url]http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/03/13/66121.htm
[/url]
Missing-Plane Records From 1980 Dissected

Days into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a federal judge rejected an attempt by the CIA to withhold records on four government planes that went missing in 1980.
Stephen Whitaker sued the CIA, the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of State in 2012, challenging the processing of his Freedom of Information Act requests on the 1980 disappearance of "four DC-3" airplanes.
The plaintiff's father, Harold William Whitaker, was piloting one of the planes believed to have disappeared over Spain.
In a motion for summary judgment, the government cited various FOIA exemptions, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly refused Monday to deem the search for records entirely adequate.
The ruling came two days into the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which remains missing Thursday.
Whitaker argued in his suit that the CIA improperly invoked FOIA Exemption (b)(3), which cloaks certain information that would reveal agency "functions," as well as "intelligence sources and methods."
The agency cited the CIA Act of 1949 and the National Security Act of 1947 to support its withholding of documents, but Judge Kollar-Kotelly found that "the CIA has too broadly applied the CIA Act to withhold information pursuant to Exemption (b)(3)."
FOIA processing materials cannot be denied on the grounds that they themselves are intelligence sources and methods, the ruling states.
Though Kollar-Kotelly said the State Department adequately showed that it searched for records on Whitaker, she denied the defendants summary judgment with respect to the records search on the co-pilot, U.S. Army Maj. Lawrence Eckmann.
"The court agrees with plaintiff that the State Department's search was inadequate and should have been revised to include a search for documents related to the disappearance of the DC-3 airplane that mention Eckmann, but not Whitaker," Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
She also ruled in favor of the CIA's withholding of records pursuant to FIOA Exemption (b)(5), finding that the agency properly invoked deliberative process and attorney-client privilege.
"The court is satisfied from the CIA's description of its review process that all reasonably segregable portions of these records have been produced," the 41-page opinion states.
Exemption (b)(6), which allows agencies to withhold private personnel and medical files, also shields information that Whitaker sought, according to the ruling.
Kollar-Kotelly also granted the defendants partial summary judgment with respect to certain claims Whitaker withdrew against the Defense Department.
Whitaker failed to show that State Department failed to process his request for his father's records under the Privacy Act, according to the ruling.
"The court rejects plaintiff's argument that the State Department was required to process his requests for his father's records under the Privacy Act as well as FOIA," the opinion states. "The Privacy Act does not speak to the access rights of relatives of deceased individuals."

[Lord Balto]

"Normally, ACARS doesn’t send an actual location," Waldock said. "They're sending essentially system data. They don't indicate altitude or direction. But as long as it’s pinging, you know the airplane is not down."

Investigators now say that based on ACARS information, Flight 370 deviated from its flight path and was in the air for hours after it ceased communications with air traffic controllers.

This is from a story in the Washington Post. Do you see the contradiction and the spinning going on here? They don't have any positional data, but the Post is sure the plane changed direction, whereas it could very well have continued on over Southeast Asia. It could, in fact, as far as the ACARS data was concerned, have continued on to Beijing and landed there. And yet no one even seems capable of seeing the incredible level of distortion going on.

[Lord Balto]

While the search for MH370 goes on, and may go on for days, if not weeks, the NTSB was able to report some good news on a somewhat related note.

“We’ve found the SS Minnow,” said a NTSB spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s been missing since 1964. This is a big deal. Unfortunately, it looks like the complement of seven has been lost. But along with the deceased, we found a functioning nuclear power plant built from bamboo and coconut shells. Too bad they couldn’t patch a three-foot hole in their boat.”

The NTSB also reported a 76-year-old mystery has finally been solved. “Also, we’ve found Amelia Earhart – alive,” continued the NTSB spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity. “She seems to be in great shape, and doesn’t look a day over 116.”

http://flatlinegov.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/no-information-but-misinformation/

[Lord Balto]

This from an exchange at HotAir:

According to that map, the plane would have run out of fuel just as it landed in Beijing.

The map isn’t depicting fuel capacity range, but is showing the four hour range that the engine transmissions data were assumed to indicate.

So, basically, the plane stops sending data at the very point it would have reached Beijing if it had continued on to its original destination. I know, "it's just a coincidence."

[8bitagent]

Malaysia 370 is probably in good company with the Solway Giant, Icelandic elves, Mothman, Jimmy Hoffa, OJ's knife and Mel Gibson's career

[Lord Balto]

Malaysia 370 is probably in good company with the Solway Giant, Icelandic elves, Mothman, Jimmy Hoffa, OJ's knife and Mel Gibson's career

All of those things, with the possible exception of Mel Gibson's career, which is clearly in the toilet, are on flight 370. I am reminded of Roger Zelazny's novel Last Exit to Babylon.