Malaysia Airlines plane vanishes over Vietnam

From that piece:

The 777 is a big plane. It requires, at minimum, nearly a mile to land. And, says Quest, there's the matter of getting it someplace without setting off alarm bells. "You can't just fly a Triple 7 and not have a radar trace," he said. One senior U.S. official, citing information Malaysia has shared with the United States, told CNN that "there is probably a significant likelihood" that the aircraft is on the floor of the Indian Ocean.

ORLY? Apparently, someone has. Again, the Bay of Bengal is a very busy seaway, yet no-one saw a crash. Now, the obvious explanation is that it has crashed, but that raises even more questions.

Two sets of transmitters were turned off some 12 minutes apart. That, IMO, suggests deliberate action, not some kind of accident onboard.

And yes, it's a big plane. But skilled pilots have landed big planes successfully on all sorts of surfaces. How many mile-long flat roads are there in the area where it could be, a long way from civilization?

Here are two maps of the world's shipping lanes.





You can see that there are big gaps in the Bay of Bengal so it is possible?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/global-shipping-map/

Interesting, thanks, Lily.

Nothing that has ever happened before seems to cover this, and the conflicting stories and theories aren't helping.

I know, Bonny. This is truly bizarre. Someone did their homework well beforehand?

If we think it frustrating, we can imagine what those waiting feel.

Remember your OP of a week ago?

lily on Sat Mar 08, 2014 3:04 am
I hope to God that when I look at this thread again there will be some good news.

Who'd have foreseen that there would be NO news of any kind, just increasing wierdness.

 Never in a million years did I think that we would not know something definite about it, Bonny. Did you?

I think that it is possible that military radar has the information? At the moment it cannot be made public for some reason? Whilst a very long shot, is it possible that there could be some negotiations going on, for instance?

I think I'm just like everyone of us here, who want the passengers to be found safe. So forgive me if it seems I am clutching at straws.

This plane didn't crash by accident. And at this late stage there would be not point in some Terrorist Organization claiming responsibility because no one with any sense would believe them. Terrorism is in the moment.
So it almost certainly didn't crash.

They are doing a deep investigation on the crew - the captain has a simulator in his house and the co pilot has a habit of inviting ladies to look at his cockpit!         LL    

They have widened it to the passengers LL as they don't believe the pilots are suspicious.

They have gone back to take another look at the 2 young guys with the stolen passports.

Remembering 9/11 I assume they will be checking if any passenger has a pilot's licence or has been taking flying lessons recently. LL

You can bet your house on that LL. Also remember that there were a few plane tech people on board - the ones who worked on the 'invisibility' technology.

Interesting article

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/03/15/malaysia-airlines-defence-idINL6N0MC0GM20140315


* Regional air defences missed wandering airliner

* Indian radar may have been turned off at night

* Remote oceans barely covered by surveillance

By Peter Apps and Frank Jack Daniel

LONDON/NEW DELHI, March 15 (Reuters) - Whatever truly happened to missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, its apparently unchallenged wanderings through Asian skies point to major gaps in regional - and perhaps wider - air defences.

More than a decade after al Qaeda hijackers turned airliners into weapons on Sept. 11, 2001, a large commercial aircraft completely devoid of stealth features appeared to vanish with relative ease.

On Saturday, Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak said authorities now believed the Boeing 777 flew for nearly seven hours after disappearing early on March 8. Either its crew or someone else on the plane disabled the on-board transponder civilian air traffic radar used to track it, investigators believe.

It appears to have first flown back across the South China Sea - an area of considerable geopolitical tension and military activity - before overflying northern Malaysia and then heading out towards India without any alarm being raised.

The reality, analysts and officials say, is that much of the airspace over water - and in many cases over land - lacks sophisticated or properly monitored radar coverage.

Analysts say the gaps in Southeast Asia's air defences are likely to be mirrored in other parts of the developing world, and may be much greater in areas with considerably lower geopolitical tensions.

"Several nations will be embarrassed by how easy it is to trespass their airspace," said Air Vice Marshal Michael Harwood, a retired British Royal Air Force pilot and ex-defence attache to Washington DC. "Too many movies and Predator (unmanned military drone) feeds from Afghanistan have suckered people into thinking we know everything and see everything. You get what you pay for. And the world, by and large, does not pay."

"TOO EXPENSIVE"

Air traffic systems rely almost entirely on on-board transponders to detect and monitor aircraft. In this case, those systems appear to have been deactivated around the time the aircraft crossed from Malaysian to Vietnamese responsibility.

At the very least, the incident looks set to spark calls to make it impossible for those on board an aircraft to turn off its transponders and disappear.

Military systems, meanwhile, are often limited in their own coverage or just ignore aircraft they believe are on regular commercial flights. In some cases, they are simply switched off except during training and when a threat is expected.

That, one senior Indian official said, might explain why the Boeing 777 was not detected by installations on India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an archipelago which its planes were searching on Friday and Saturday, or elsewhere.

"We have many radar systems operating in this area, but nothing was picked up," Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai, chief of staff of India's Andamans and Nicobar Command, told Reuters. "It's possible that the military radars were switched off as we operate on an 'as required' basis."

Separately, a defence source said that India did not keep its radar facilities operational at all times because of cost. Asked what the reason was, the source said: "Too expensive."

"SOMEONE ELSE'S PROBLEM"

Worries over revealing defence capabilities, some believe, may have slowed cooperation in the search for flight MH370, particularly between Malaysia and China. Beijing has poured military resources into the search, announcing it was deploying 10 surveillance satellites and multiple ships and aircraft. It has been critical of Malaysia's response.

While Malaysian military radar does appear to have detected the aircraft, there appear to have been no attempts to challenge it - or, indeed, any realisation anything was amiss.

That apparent oversight, current and former officials and analysts say, is surprising. But the incident, they say, points to the relatively large gaps in global air surveillance and the limits of some military radar systems.

"It's hard to tell exactly why they did not notice it," says Elizabeth Quintana, senior research fellow for air power at the Royal United Services Institute in London. "It may have been that the aircraft was flying at low level or that the military operators were looking for other threats such as fast jets and felt that airliners were someone else's problem."

Current and former officials say that - hopefully, at least - such an incident would be detected much faster in North American or European airspace. There, military and civilian controllers monitor radar continuously on alert for possible hijacks or intruders.

The sudden failure of a transponder, they say, would itself prove a likely and dramatic cause for concern.

"I can't think of many situations in which one would actually need to switch them off," said one former Western official on condition of anonymity.

U.S. and NATO jets periodically scramble to intercept unidentified aircraft approaching their airspace, including a growing number of Russian long-range bombers.

In some other areas, it is simply not seen as worth maintaining a high level of alert - or radar coverage itself may not even exist.

"NOTHING MUCH HAPPENS AT NIGHT"

Investigators now say they believe MH370 may have turned either towards India and Central Asia or - perhaps more likely, given the lack of detection - taken a southern course towards the Antarctic. That would have been an effectively suicidal flight, the aircraft eventually running out of fuel and crashing.

The waters of the southern Indian Ocean and northern Southern Ocean are among the most remote on the planet, used by few ships and overflown by few aircraft.

Australian civilian radar extends only some 200 km (125 miles) from its coast, an Australian official said on condition of anonymity, although its air defence radar extends much further. Australia's military could not be reached for comment on Saturday and if it did detect a transponder-less aircraft heading south, there is no suggestion any alarm was raised.

U.S. military satellites monitor much of the globe, including some of the remotest oceans, looking primarily for early warning of any ballistic missile launch from a submarine or other vessel.

After the aircraft's initial disappearance a week ago, U.S. officials said their satellites had detected no signs of a mid-air explosion. It is unclear if such systems would have detected a crash landing in the southern Indian Ocean.

On India's Andaman Islands, a defence official told reporters he saw nothing unusual or out of place in the lack of permanent radar coverage. The threat in the area, he said, was much lower than on India's border with Pakistan where sophisticated radars are manned and online continuously.

At night in particular, he said, "nothing much happens".

"We have our radars, we use them, we train with them, but it's not a place where we have (much) to watch out for," he said. "My take is that this is a pretty peaceful place."

I'll be amazed if it is anything to do with terrorism, LL, as Malaysia has such a perfect target in the Petronas Twin Towers. And no-one is claiming responsibility for it. My money's on crime, for some reason not known to us, but which may be known to investigators.

"Several nations will be embarrassed by how easy it is to trespass their airspace," said Air Vice Marshal Michael Harwood, a retired British Royal Air Force pilot and ex-defence attache to Washington DC. "Too many movies and Predator (unmanned military drone) feeds from Afghanistan have suckered people into thinking we know everything and see everything. You get what you pay for. And the world, by and large, does not pay."

None of that article surprises me in the least, Lily. The assumption seems to have been that everyone in the military, etc., in that area operate at NCIS level, when in reality, at that time of night, in areas where 'nothing ever happens', operators may well have been asleep. Or in the loo. Or chatting up females on FB. Or drunk. It's human nature.

Crime ticks the boxes Bonny unlike terrorism.   What was in the hold for instance?

I know Bonny. If it was the ATC night shift, that would be something else but for many, activity slows down.

May be something, may just be more nonsense. From:

http://www.techspot.com/news/52211-hacker-demonstrates-how-to-hijack-an-airplane-using-an-android-app.html

A security consultant by the name of Hugo Teso claims he has created an Android app called PlaneSploit that would allow him to remotely attack and hijack commercial aircraft. He recently presented his findings at the Hack in the Box security conference in Amsterdam where, among other things, he exposed the fact that a number of aviation and aircraft systems have no security in place.

 Technology. The double edged sword in the wrong hands.

Don't really want to think about it but how can you ignore it?

I do hope the passengers and crew are still alive, and not suffering too much.

Amen to that Sabot.

Indeed, Sabot. Their families must be in pieces.

Bucket of salt needed with the media just now.

IMO, little more than hot air and speculation. And if the Malaysian Twin Towers were supposedly the target, then someone made a bit of a mess of it all, didn't they?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2581817/Doomed-airliner-pilot-political-fanatic-Hours-taking-control-flight-MH370-attended-trial-jailed-opposition-leader-sodomite.html

Doomed airliner pilot was political fanatic: Hours before taking control of flight MH370 he attended trial of jailed opposition leader as FBI reveal passengers could be at a secret location


Police investigate data from home flight simulator of captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53
Investigators speak of his 'obsessive' support for opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim
Police officers fear Ibrahim being jailed could have left Shah profoundly upset
Flight MH370 disappeared more than a week ago with 239 people on board
Despite a huge multinational search effort, no signs of the plane or a crash have been found
Malaysian Prime Minister said yesterday that the plane was deliberately steered off course
FBI experts say disappearance could be ‘act of piracy’, suggesting passengers are being held

Police are investigating the possibility that the pilot of missing Flight MH370 hijacked his own aircraft in a bizarre political protest.
The Mail on Sunday has learned that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was an ‘obsessive’ supporter of Malaysia’s opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim. And hours before the doomed flight left Kuala Lumpur it is understood 53-year-old Shah attended a controversial trial in which Ibrahim was jailed for five years.

Campaigners say the politician, the key challenger to Malaysia’s ruling party, was the victim of a long-running smear campaign and had faced trumped-up charges.

Police sources have confirmed that Shah was a vocal political activist – and fear that the court decision left him profoundly upset. It was against this background that, seven hours later, he took control of a Boeing 777-200 bound for Beijing and carrying 238 passengers and crew.





Yesterday, Malaysian police searched his house in the upmarket Kuala Lumpur suburb of Shah Alam, where he had installed a home-made flight simulator. But this newspaper can reveal that investigators had already spent much of last week examining two laptops removed from Shah’s home. One is believed to contain data from the simulator

Confirming rising fears, Malaysia’s prime minister Najib Razak announced yesterday that MH370 was deliberately steered off course after its communication system was switched off. He said it headed west over the Malaysian seaboard and could have flown for another seven hours on its fuel reserves.

It is not yet clear where the plane was taken, however Mr Razak said the most recent satellite data suggests the plane could have been making for one of two possible flight corridors. The search, involving 43 ships and 58 aircraft from 15 countries, switched from the South China Sea to the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean.

Data showing the number of plausible runways where the plane could have touched down - which need to be at least 5,000ft - offer a baffling number of potential locations.

According to a map drawn up by U.S. radio station WNYC, there are 634 locations which could fit, from Australia to the Maldives to Pakistan.
However, the true number is likely to be even higher, as estimates of how far the plane could have travelled have been increased since the calculations were carried out.

US investigators say faint ‘pings’ were being transmitted for several hours after the flight lost contact with the ground.  
Meanwhile, military radar showed the jet climbed to 45,000ft – above its service limit – which could have been a deliberate attempt to knock out the passengers and crew.

Anwar Ibrahim is a broadly popular democracy icon and former deputy prime minister whose prosecution on a charge of sodomy is seen by many Malaysians as political persecution.








The raids on Captain Shah’s home appeared stage-managed as a display of intent after the Prime Minister said the focus of the investigation was now on ‘crew and passengers’ as a result of the latest leads.

But investigators have told the Mail on Sunday inquiries into the background of the pilot actually began days earlier.

Malaysian police, helped by FBI agents from the US, are looking into the political and religious backgrounds of both Zaharie and his co-pilot. Zaharie’s home was sealed off yesterday as police spent an hour inside.

However, a senior investigation source said two laptops were taken from the property in low-key visits by police early last week despite a series of denials by officials that his home had been searched or raided.

One laptop taken away is thought to contain data from the flight simulator while a second contained little information. Zaharie’s personal laptop was not found, and is thought to have been with him in the cockpit of the plane, the source said.

Zaharie’s co-workers have told investigators the veteran pilot was a social activist who was vocal and fervent in his support of Ibrahim.
‘Colleagues made it clear to us that he was someone who held strong political beliefs and was strident in his support for Anwar Ibrahim,’ another investigation source said. ‘We were told by one colleague he was obsessed with politics.’

In their interviews, colleagues said Zaharie told them he planned to attend the court case involving Anwar on March 7, just hours before the Beijing flight, but investigators had not yet been able to confirm if he was among the crowd of Anwar supporters at court.

Zaharie is believed to be separated or divorced from his wife although they share the same house, close to Kuala Lumpur’s international airport. They have three children, but no family members were at home yesterday: only the maid has remained there.

JAILED FOR FIVE YEARS: MALAYSIA'S OPPOSITION LEADER

Anwar Ibrahim is a broadly popular democracy icon and former deputy prime minister whose prosecution on a charge of sodomy is seen by many Malaysians as political persecution.

Campaigners say the politician, the key challenger to Malaysia’s ruling party, was the victim of a long-running smear campaign and had faced trumped-up charges.

Captain Shah, who is thought to have attended the trial in Putrajaya hours before flying, is thought to be incensed by the verdict.
Co-workers have told investigators the veteran pilot was a social activist who was vocal and fervent in his support of Ibrahim.

Investigators said: ‘We are looking into the theory that Zaharie’s political beliefs may be a factor. There are huge sensitivities surrounding this but we cannot afford not to pursue any angle brought to our attention.’

In the days after Flight MH370 disappeared, Zaharie was affectionately described as a good neighbour and an eccentric ‘geek’ who had a flight simulator at home simply because he loved his work so much.

Malaysian officials initially appeared keen not to direct any suspicion towards Zaharie or his co-pilot, 27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid, who was last week revealed to have invited two women passengers into the cockpit and smoked on an earlier flight to Phuket.

But evidence of the way the plane’s transponder and communication systems were disabled and the way the plane was expertly flown over the Indian Ocean apparently using navigational waypoints meant only a skilled aviator could have been at the controls. Investigators were also baffled by why, if hijackers took over the plane, there was no Mayday call or signal from the two pilots to say the cockpit had been breached.

At yesterday’s press conference, the suspicion over the pilot’s involvement mounted as prime minister Najib Razak said that investigators had found ‘deliberate action’ on board the plane resulted in it changing course and losing contact with ground crews.

As a result of the new information, Malaysian authorities had ‘refocused their investigation on crew and passengers aboard’, he said. Police sealed off the area surrounding Zaharie’s home and searched the house shortly after the press conference.

Mr Razak said the new satellite evidence shows ‘with a high degree of certainty’ that the one of the jet’s communications devices – the Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System  was disabled just before it had reached the east coast of Malaysia. ACARS is a service that allows computers aboard the plane to relay in-flight information about the health of its systems back to the ground.

Shortly afterwards, near the cross-over point between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic controllers, the plane’s transponder, which emits an identifying signal, was switched off or, less likely, failed.

According to a military radar, the aircraft then turned and flew back over Malaysia before heading in a north-west direction.







A satellite was able to pick up a ‘ping’ from the plane until 08:11 local time, more than seven hours after it lost radar contact, although it was unable to give a precise location. Mr Razak went on to say that based on this new data, investigators ‘have determined the plane’s last communication with a satellite was in one of two possible corridors – north from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan through to northern Thailand, and south from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

If as suspected the plane was diverted into the Indian Ocean, the task of the search teams becomes more difficult, as there are hundreds of uninhabited islands and the water reaches depths of around 23,000ft.

Countries in the plane’s potential flightpath have now joined a huge effort to locate the missing passengers, but China described the revelation as ‘painfully belated’. And FBI investigators say the disappearance of MH370 may have been ‘an act of piracy’ and that the possibility that its hundreds of passengers are being held at an unknown location has not been ruled out.

Meanwhile, leading aviation lawyer James Healy–Pratt, who is helping relatives, said Malaysian Airlines had declined to buy Boeing’s Airplane Health Management system, which monitors systems in real time and could have alerted it to any potential problems, rather than having to recover a black box.

‘If the transponder was manually disabled then one can only hope that the black boxes were not also manually disabled,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, the truth will never be known.’

The revelations about Zaharie’s political affiliations are highly sensitive in a country where political dirty tricks are widespread.

One of the investigation sources said: ‘We are looking into the theory that Zaharie’s political beliefs may be a factor. There are huge sensitivities surrounding this but we cannot afford not to pursue any angle brought to our attention.’

Separately, a police source told the Mail on Sunday: ‘I can confirm our investigations include the political and religious leanings of both pilots.’

Zaharie joined Malaysia  Airlines in 1981. He became a captain about ten years later  and has clocked up 18,360 hours of flying experience.
Additional reporting: Ian Gallagher


GOUGED HIJACKER'S EYE AND SAVED 398 - BY BA PILOT WHO RESCUED HIS PLANE 14 YEARS AGO

By CAPTAIN BILL HAGAN

A British Airways pilot who tackled a maniac on his packed jet reveals how the threat of hijack can spring from anywhere – and tells how the fate of Flight MH370 has brought details of his horrific encounter flooding back to him...



I was asleep in my bunk when I was jolted awake by the sudden lurching of the plane, British Airways flight BA 2069 from Gatwick to Kenya.

I knew there was something seriously wrong but I thought maybe the aircraft had been damaged. It was only when I heard my co-pilot shouting for help and opened the door that I saw there was an intruder. He looked like a terrorist.

I knew we were all in grave danger as he had seized the controls and we were plummeting at full speed towards the ground. If I had considered it necessary to kill him to save everyone else on board, I would have. My wife and two of my children were on the flight, as were singer Bryan Ferry and five members of the Goldsmith family.

I didn’t speak – I just punched the man hard and managed to pull his body back just enough to make the plane pitch up from its dive. The week before I had been speaking to my young son about how to survive a shark attack, by sticking your finger in its eye, and that gave me the inspiration to do that to the intruder.

After I had gouged his eye he came away from the controls to fight me, allowing the co-pilot to stabilise the aircraft. I shouted loudly for help and three male passengers rushed to my aid. They grabbed the hijacker – who I later learned was a 27-year-old mentally ill Kenyan student called Paul Kefa Mukonyi – and dragged him to the back of the plane and tied him up.
If he had been at the controls for just a few extra seconds we could all have died. The plane stalled three times, nearly went upside down and was plummeting to the ground.  

While I was still catching my breath I made an announcement to reassure the 398 passengers on board that it was over. I forgot about any rule book and just said: ‘A bad man has tried to kill us all, but everything is fine now.’

The plight of the Malaysia Airlines flight has brought the horror of that day, December 29, 2000, flooding back to me.

If there was an explosion, debris would have been spotted by now. I believe this must have been a deliberate and planned act. Pilots are encouraged to secure the safest outcome, which may well mean you comply with the demands of the hijackers.

On long-haul flights a pilot will notify air traffic control of the aircraft’s exact location every 30 minutes. I would be asking the Malaysian authorities to check the voice of whoever made the last call from the plane to see if it was the pilot.
I just hope there are answers soon, for the families who are facing this awful wait.

FROM TERRORISTS TO TINTIN... THE WORLDWIDE CONSPIRACIES THEORIES

The internet has been abuzz with conspiracy theories about flight MH370’s disappearance, from terrorists to Tintin, some vaguely plausible, others simply ridiculous...

THE PLAUSIBLE

Flying bomb: According to this theory, the plane has been taken to Vietnam, where it is waiting to be used as a weapon in a 9/11 style attack.

Passengers alive: Because some relatives of passengers have heard ringing tones on their loved ones’ mobiles, rather than being put straight through to voicemail, they believe it is evidence they were still alive. In fact, not all such calls do go straight to voicemail, especially if the battery is also destroyed.

THE LUDICROUS

Alien involvement: Cyber posters looking on flight mapping website Flightradar24 spotted one object (identified as a Korean airliner) which appears to streak across the screen at an incredible speed around the time of MH370’s disappearance. A glitch on the website, said Flightradar.
Silicon connection: With an IBM executive and 20 members of a Texan IT company aboard, some have concluded a Chinese kidnap plot is afoot, with a transfer on to a ‘black site’ for interrogation.

...AND NOT FORGETTING THE HERGE HYPOTHESIS!



Tintin connection: In his comic book Flight 714, published in 1968, Belgian cartoonist Hergé penned a plot which resembles some aspects of the Malaysian mystery.

In the plot, set in the Far East, Tintin, Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus are offered a lift in a millionaire’s private jet. As event unfold (panel 1 above), the aircraft is hijacked by the pilots and brought to a deserted volcanic island; (2) the jet manages to make a rough landing on a makeshift roll-out runway; and (3) gunmen surround the plane and Tintin’s dog Snowy makes a run for it.

After several close shaves – and even a meeting with aliens – the friends finally make it safely on to Flight 714 and to their original destination, Sydney.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2581817/Doomed-airliner-pilot-political-fanatic-Hours-taking-control-flight-MH370-attended-trial-jailed-opposition-leader-sodomite.html#ixzz2w5dppIbk
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