<p>Simplifying things, there are two possibilities, and that’s about it. (1) The pilots (or someone else coercing them) committed mass murder/suicide in a bizarre manner by flying the plane out into the middle of the Indian Ocean, or (2) the pilots (or someone else coercing them) took the plane to another country with the involvement of that country. I tend to favor the second because it has some logic to it. </p>
<p>First, let me say that I feel terribly for the passengers, and for the families. This tragedy has directly affected hundreds of families and the thousands of people who know them.</p>
<p>Second, however, I find this mystery very intriguing – like reading a very good mystery story and trying to figure out what happened. I wish we had more, and more accurate, information so that experts around the world could speculate realistically on what might happened and we could then learn the truth much sooner.</p>
<p>This theory was posted (linked) by a commenter to today’s NYT piece on the latest elements of this story. In effect it suggests that the pilot “hid” from radar by flying in the radar shadow on another plane until he was past the airspace where there was military flight surveillance. I’d love to hear busdriver’s assessment of whether this is plausible.</p>
<p><a href=“http://keithledgerwood.■■■■■■■■■■/post/79838944823/did-malaysian-airlines-370-disappear-using-sia68-sq68”>http://keithledgerwood.■■■■■■■■■■/post/79838944823/did-malaysian-airlines-370-disappear-using-sia68-sq68</a></p>
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Perhaps somebody tried to do (2) but failed.</p>
<p>From everything I am reading (which obviously is not exactly great), the military radar picked up the plane (or at least, an unidentified plane) on their screens, and basically ignored it. I suspect knowing a little bit about how radar works, that the ‘radar shadow’ theory is more about CYA then what really happened. Yes, it is possible for something to be in the ‘radar shadow’ of another object, but doing that with something the size of a 777, it may be my admittedly small knowledge, but I doubt that. I could see a small plane hiding in a bigger one, but a 777 has such a large signature on a radar screen that to hide, would require something bigger I would guess…I think that one might be back door Malay military trying to hide from the embarassment. </p>
<p>As to what happened, I doubt it was coerced,if someone tried to break into the cockpit and succeeded, there would be time for a mayday of some sort, likewise, if for example someone grabbed the flight crew and passengers as hostages to force the pilots to do what they wanted, why wouldn’t the pilots radio a mayday, lots of ways to do that, there would have been time. It sounds like an inside job, whether it was one pilor or the other or both, don’t know (the last radio message seems to have come from the co-pilot).</p>
<p>What doesn’t make sense is if this was someone making a statement, where is the statement? From what I read,even the usual crazies who claim responsibility for anything that happens, are silent. If the pilot wanted to commit suicide, why all the mystery, why turn off the transponders, which if anything would make it seem more like it was terrorism or a hijacking? Just doesn’t make sense. </p>
<p>One of the things that is probably hurting the investigation right now is people with information may be hesitant to turn it over to the investigators. For example, if there is satellite technology that picked up the aircraft that is very state of the art military intelligence, would they turn that over, and give up what they are able to do? I recall there were times, like with the KAL007 plane forced down by the USSR back in the 80’s, that the intelligence agencies knew what had happened, but couldn’t talk about it without revealing secrets. I do think more is known than is being told, but I suspect it also doesn’t solve the problem. </p>
<p>A lot of people have come up with the idea of the plane being taken, for example, that it could have been some sort of terrorist group wanting the use the plane as a flying bomb, where they would land it on the uninhabited islands to the east of India, load it with explosives, and use it as a flying bomb into India, flying below radar, or they took the plane and were planning on turning it over to another government, like North Korea, to be able to steal the technology (any other country that wanted a 777 to steal technology could easily buy one). Being a plane likely to be full of Chinese nationals, maybe they figured if the plane disappeared the Chinese government would get angry, and sever ties with Malaysia, whether it was people from Malaysia not wanting the country to be close to China, or a rival country wanting to smear Malaysia in Chinese eyes? Yeah, over the top speculation, but I haven’t seen anything else that explains the bizarre scenario we see unfolding…</p>
<p>I really do feel for the families, not knowing is the worst, because while many presume whatever happened the passengers are dead (killed by the hijackers, by the flight crew, or when the plane crashed), not knowing is the worst. What makes it even more incredible is in this day and age of no privacy, of such a small world, with all the surveillance equipment and technology covering the globe, that something like a 777 could disappear without a trace, as if it had been taken to Mars. People talk about the Bermuda Triangle, but those cases rarely are that mysterious when looked at, you can understand why the things that happened did, but this, it is like the plane was spirited away…there was something on NPR yesterday talking abut this, they were talking to an author who wrote a book about an 18 year old girl suddenly disappearing, seemingly without a trace, and that the shock is that in this day and age, that is even possible. </p>
<p>I think it is going to take a while to find out, and I think the longer it takes, the most likely scenario is the plane went down in the Indian Ocean. Why it went down may never be known, if it was a suicide, why would the person do it wait 6, 7 hours to go down? They could have cut the transponders flown out into the ocean for an hour, and crashed it, and no one would be any cleared than they are flying out 6 hours…also, with a suicide, usually the person committing suicide leaves a note, would someone planning something spectacular like this do it without leaving anything behind?</p>
<p>Why did the hijackers want to fly to the south of the Indian Ocean? There is no place to land there. Even if they can land on a tiny island they cannot move the airplane somewhere else. It’s more likely that they flew north and it’s hard to evade radar in the large area of of west China. I wonder they should search in China.</p>
<p>Of note is that the government of Pakistan claims that it did not show up on their radar. This is the government
that quite clearly connived in the hiding of Osama Bin Laden for years, and jailed the person found to have helped find him.</p>
<p>I would trust any such statement from them about as far as I could throw that plane.</p>
<p>^^^ yup!</p>
<p>Perhaps there is a new Bermuda Triangle in the Indian Ocean. No matter how we look at it, this has been a bizarre case from the first day. Ultimately, there will be a logical explanation, but this case has also reinforced how different the reality of our security is versus our perception of governments that can trach everything and everyone. On the one hand, we think someone can read all our emails or check terrorists in a far-away desert from space and more sci-fi episodes. On the other hand, a plane can disappear for 10 days in 2014. Quite the awakening! </p>
<p>Yes. I thought the NSA was scanning everyone’s telephone and email messages. If the pilot was intent on suicide, I don’t think logic factors into where the plane went down. If he was in such a state, he could have flown on for 7 hours, just in a semi-deranged, depressed, whatever state of mind and time lost meaning. </p>
<p>3Trees, I think the scenario the private pilot speculated about “hiding from the radar” under the shadow of another airplane is as unlikely as can possibly be. Finding the airplane that is going the direction you want to go (while you’re both flying 500 knots or so), at night, flying formation with it for several hours without the other pilots or passengers noticing it…unlikely. Formation flying is challenging and exhausting, even for those who know how to do it. The 777 pushes around a lot of air, and there would be all sorts of wake turbulence. He’d be lucky not to hit the other airplane, much less not be noticed. Really unlikely.</p>
<p>There are so many things coming out that are very probably unreliable and just plain wrong. I have to wonder if the information they are coming up with is actually just from another airplane, and this one didn’t fly for several hours after loss of contact. 40,000 foot loss in a minute? I don’t know if you could do that even if the airplane broke in two, you sure couldn’t do it on purpose. I have to wonder if it was an electrical malfunction, where they lost pieces of their comm equipment, and eventually depressurized, losing consciousness and their nav system going to an alternate flight plan. Probably not a fire, as you generally only have about 20 minutes to land before loss of control (unless it was very slow, and suppressed by fire extinguishing equipment…but they would have made a distress call, unless the comm was the first thing to be lost). And these pilots are getting accused for something they didn’t cause. Though that seems less likely than the intentional takeover theory, I just don’t trust the information they’re putting out there yet. I hope they find the data recorder soon.</p>
<p>Busdriver, what do you think of this theory? </p>
<p><a href=“https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13cv1gohsmbv5jmy221vrfyiz3vdhbop04”>https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13cv1gohsmbv5jmy221vrfyiz3vdhbop04</a></p>
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<p>From what I understand air space over Pakistan and India is the most watched in the area because of the hostility between India and Pakistan. It is generally believd that the plane would have been noticed if it went that way. Funny how this becomes an issue of trustworthyness. </p>
<p>Actually, emily, that scenario seems like the most plausible one to me. That is, if they end up discovering that the data they thought were receiving several hours after the event ends up being from another aircraft. Not as likely if the data they have is accurate.</p>
<p>Just a few holes in his theory, and maybe it’s because he’s an “old” pilot. Unless they were unable, the pilots probably would have whipped out a quick ATC call giving their intentions (you don’t want to descend or turn into other aircraft), and then told the controller to standby. Plus, nowadays people don’t keep a running tally of all airports in front, to the side and behind them, they can just take a quick look at their nav display and see them. ATC has a whole list of other runways that may be closer that people are not aware of (military fields, etc). You wouldn’t purposefully ignore them unless you lost comm due to a malfunction. Also, not putting on oxygen masks in case of a fire, saying it’s a “no-no”? If you can’t breathe, you pass out. Smoke or fumes, you instantly put on the mask, it’s procedure. He must be a REALLY old pilot.</p>
<p>Another dispute with what he said, the 1998 Swissair DC-10 that crashed off of Novia Scotia. I blame the captain on that one. He directed the co-pilot to run the checklist and dump fuel, as they were heavy, with a fire underneath the cockpit. Had he descended quickly and went right for the airport, they probably would have made it. You’re lucky if you have 20 minutes, so you must head for the airport as fast as possible, first priority.</p>
<p>But notwithstanding those points, I think it’s a better theory than most. Though I know nothing about the runway he was talking about, and do not know if it was in their database.</p>
<p>Busdriver, I would assume that the nav system was not working in this scenario and since he flies out of Malaysia all the time he would likely be very familiar with runways capable of landing a 777. </p>
<p>I don’t recall the part about not putting on oxy masks. I did read somewhere that maybe going up to 45,000 was done to deprive fire of oxygen, but I also have heard that the quick descent to 20,000 from that height would cause plane to break apart. </p>
<p>Someday months from now, some debris will wash up on some shore. Until then …</p>
<p>Who knows, it might be sooner than that. Apparently the Malaysians finally passed over the radar data to someone who might actually know how to interpret it. And they are changing the timeline of events already. I’m sure much will change on a daily basis.</p>
<p>So am I correct in assuming that once the transponder was turned off, air traffic control had no idea this plane was even in the air? So wouldn’t that create a high risk for an in air collision between flight 370 and other planes in the area? That is an awful scenario. Do planes have their own systems that tell them how close they are to other aircraft to back up air traffic control?</p>
<p>They are currently discussing the probability of the theory from the article linked on March 17 by emilybee.on CNN.</p>
<p>CNN is going slightly nuts over this. There is other news in the world.</p>