<p>I sat next to a pilot on a flight last night. He and his pilot friends believe that either the plane crashed in a dense jungle or the pilot decided to end his life and knowingly dove the plane at the proper speed and angle (as to avoid break up on impact) deep into the depths of the ocean to avoid beak up on contact.</p>
<p>I am curious to know what the proper speed and angle would be to avoid break up on contact with the ocean. The pilot must have been a skilled engineer too, because I doubt his manuals show the formula on how to keep the airplane intact (while still killing everyone). Perhaps he did some computer modeling on what would happen, spent many hours pondering the science of it, while suicidal.</p>
<p>Or perhaps it’s just a huge amount of water to search, like finding a needle in a haystack.</p>
<p>Apparently military radar is very unreliable (they’ve accused airliners of doing acrobatics because of the variance in altitudes reported), that area of the world has fairly primitive radar, with the only contact from pilots being position reports on high frequency radios. </p>
<p>
Boggles my mind to think that someone would want to take a plane full of passengers with them on a suicide mission. And if he did, it would seem to me that he would want the plane to break up so that it would be found. People who go on rampages and kill groups of people want attention.</p>
<p>Pilot suicide was suspected and not ruled out in the Egypt Air crash in 1999. I hope investigators are scrubbing the details of everyone’s lives on that flight. If it was a hijacking, there are likely co-conspirators on the ground. </p>
<p>Heard on the news today that they now know that the transponder was turned off BEFORE the last pilot communication of “Allright, good night”.</p>
<p>That implies that it was purposeful and not a malfunction, doesn’t it? If the transponder was not working, would the pilots be aware of that? And if someone (say the pilot) turned it off, would the rest of the crew be aware of that?</p>
<p>I can’t determine how they can possibly determine the difference between a transponder turned off, and a transponder malfunction. Especially in a non radar environment, how are they going to know the transponder is off/malfunctioning, or if they are just too far out to read it. The way you usually figure out your transponder is off, is when you get a call from ATC saying, “Check your transponder”. That’s usually right after takeoff, when you realize that you forgot to turn it on in the first place, oops. Otherwise, it is not very obvious.</p>
<p>The rest of the crew would have absolutely no idea about the transponder. And even the guy in the other seat, he looks away for a second and you put your hand down there and turn it off. Some people like to keep the cockpit dark at night, and the other person would never see you do it.</p>
<p>Wow. There are just so many variables here that add up to so many different scenarios. I hope they get to the bottom of it soon.</p>
<p>There’s been two well-substantiated pilot suicides on commercial aircraft (Egyptair and Silkair 185). In neither of those cases did the plane go off radar and fly for hours in the wrong direction like this.</p>
<p>I haven’t been following this closely - that would be a full-time job! I’ve been assuming that the plane is in the ocean somewhere and feeling awful for the families who are enduring this long period of uncertainty. But then I saw this:</p>
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<p>Early this morning BBC reporter Jonah Fisher tweeted, "Being briefed by Malaysia officials they believe most likely location for MH370 is on land somewhere near Chinese/Kyrgyz border.”</p>
<hr>
<p><a href=“Flight 370 disappearance: Missing airliner apparently flew to Central Asia.”>http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/15/flight_370_disappearance_missing_airliner_apparently_flew_to_central_asia.html</a></p>
<p>Even if the crew or hijackers managed to land the plane somewhere unobserved, how could they possibly control all the passengers? Weren’t there almost 300 people on board? How could they keep them under control on the plane, and when they got to their destination? </p>
<p>Ummm…no to be gross but they probably killed the passengers right off the bat. The last thing a hijacker would want would be to deal with passengers if they aren’t being used as leverage or for ransom. </p>
<p>How could hundreds of people possibly be killed? Even if hijackers smuggled guns onto the plane, even if there were 10 of them, as soon as they started shooting people they would be jumped by other passengers. </p>
<p>This story is so bizarre. If I were one of the family members, I’d be latching onto any story that allowed me to hope that my loved one was still alive. When they are all almost certainly in the ocean.</p>
<p>Could the hijackers have been prepared with gas masks for themselves, then release a toxic gas into the cabin to get rid of the passengers?</p>
<p>We never know. The passengers could have been killed by poison and the hijackers could have landed
in a secret location in a big country.</p>
<p>You’d hope that int’l customs could discover gas masks and toxic gas…but based on how awful this situation is, it wouldn’t surprise me if it couldn’t…</p>
<p>I didn’t say they were shot. I’m not a mass murderer so I don’t really have a good idea to kill that many people, but I’m guessing there had to be a way. I’m guessing a whole lot of people know something that aren’t saying. I’m also sure every country is scrambling to figure this out - especially us - before that plane comes after us. I find it so interesting to see the true weaknesses in all the radar and technology if a plane truly can’t be traced.</p>
<p>At this point I can’t imagine what is happening to those passengers if they aren’t dead.</p>
<p>If crew members were involved, maybe they managed to get these things past security. </p>
<p>It’s too awful to think about. The families must be in agony.</p>
<p>I agree with psych_. The pilot would not need to turn off communication to commit suicide.</p>
<p>An aviation expert on CNN last night was speculating that whoever was flying the plane took it to 40,000 feet deliberately . . . in order to depressurize the main cabin. Apparently the supply of oxygen to the passangers’ oxygen masks won’t last long. Very efficient mass murder . . . sounds horrific.</p>
<p>Yes. I heard that the passengers oxygen supply lasts only 10 minutes. </p>