Malaysia Airlines plane vanishes over Vietnam

The whole thing is strange at the moment. I do feel for the people waiting to hear even though they have been told what to expect. There is no closure for them this way.

I know, it starts to give false hope. We all know that, logically, for whatever reason, it is at the bottom of the sea and all aboard have perished, but as time goes on, people start thinking odd things. Was it hijacked and all the transponders turned off? Has it landed somewhere?

The pictures from the rescue planes and ships are desperately sad.



They're all loaded with rescue equipment, praying there's going to be a miracle and they will find survivors.   

Those guys probably return to base feeling so empty.   

It has certainly come down somewhere by now. But why has no one admitted to a terrorist attack? There's no point in being a terrorist if no one knows.

Some strange stories are starting to appear to fill the news vacuum:

From:

http://www.news24.com/Travel/Flights/Bizarre-Flight-MH370-passengers-phones-ring-but-no-one-answers-20140310

Beijing - The mystery surrounding the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has thickened somewhat as family members of passengers have reported mobile phones ringing, but nobody answering.

International Business Times reports that 19 families have signed a joint statement saying that passengers' cell phones connected after the flight had been reported missing. In each case, the phone would ring, but the call would be hung up.

The sister of one of the Chinese passengers among the 239 people on board the missing flight rang his phone live on TV twice at 11:40 on Sunday morning and heard it ringing. She called again later that afternoon and heard it ring once more.

The Mirror reports that she expressed her hope that if the call went through, police could locate the position.

A man from Beijing also called his missing brother, and reported to the airline that the phone connected three times and rang before appearing to hang up.

Relatives who signed the joint statement have asked Malaysia Airlines to reveal any information they may have been hiding.

The airline has not released any further details regarding the aircraft, however Malaysian Minister of Transport Hishammuddin Hussein said they were doing everything in their power to locate the plane and that they hope people understand that they are being as transparent as they can.

In the mean time, it has also been reported that the large oil slick spotted in the South China Sea, was found to be bunker fuel and not that of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

These eerie happenings have, of course, given rise to a number of conspiracy theories, one of which purports that the aircraft may have been hijacked by terrorists bearing fake passports and is now secretly stationed at an abandoned Vietnamese airport at this very moment.

Now that is very strange.   

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26513506

Some 40 ships and 34 aircraft from nine different nations are taking part in the search in the seas off Vietnam and Malaysia.

Commander William Marks from the US Seventh Fleet, which is taking part in the search, said he expected the plane's flight recorders to be floating in the water.

He said the recorders, also known as "black boxes", were fitted with radio beacons that can be picked up by radar.

Despite a wide search, radar had not so far picked up any signals, he said.

None of the debris and oil slicks spotted in the water so far have proven to be linked to the disappearance.

Flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing at 00:41 local time on Saturday (16:41 GMT on Friday). But radio contact was lost at 17:30 GMT, somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam.

There must be a rational explanation for it, but I can't actually think of one just now. It's more like an episode of Lost.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10687899/Malaysia-Airlines-jet-A-fake-passport-Two-days-and-500-please.html

Chu island Photo: Kham/ Reuters
By Malcolm Moore, Beijing7:00PM GMT 10 Mar 2014

At least two men travelling on board the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 were using stolen passports procured in Thailand – one of the world's hubs for forged documents.

Interpol says it now has 39 million lost or stolen passports in its database, although few countries are actively checking it.
And in China, it only takes two days to rejig a stolen passport with a new identity – and agencies offering counterfeit documents are easy to find.

"We are driven by the principle of putting the customer first," boasted one agency named Hongyu Passport, based in south China. "All our printers are imported and cost at least 100,000 yuan (£10,000). Please do not trust others. There is no such thing as a free lunch, especially in the grey market."

When contacted, a man at the agency who gave his name as Mr Liu said that for just over £500 he could provide a passport to enter the European Union.

"I normally use lost or stolen passports to make the fakes," he said.

"Normally it is OK, but I cannot guarantee your absolute safety if you try to get through customs."

To obtain the passport, Mr Liu asked for an initial deposit of around £120 and the photo, name, date of birth and date of issue for the passport.

"It will take two days to make it and I will then send you a video of the document. If you are satisfied you can wire the rest of the money by bank transfer and we will courier it to you."

A second agency, named the "Fake Passport and Visa Company", said it offered either a fully-forged passport or real documents that had been doctored.

"If you provide us with all the information to clone a passport, that is cheap," said a second man, named Mr Li. "But if we have to provide someone else's real personal information then that is much more expensive, though it is safer too.

"For an American passport with a European visa in it, it would cost you 25,000 yuan (£2,500) for a real one. Of course we cannot guarantee that you will not be caught."

According to Frontex, the European border agency, the number of forged passports being used to enter Europe has soared. In its last quarterly report, Frontex said there had been a 61 per cent rise in the number of fake passports discovered, with roughly 170 being caught every month.

The two men listed on the Malaysia Airlines passenger manifest, Christian Kozel and Luigi Maraldi, both lost their passports in Phuket. Mr Maraldi left his as a deposit when he rented a motorcycle and was told, when he tried to claim it back, that the shop had given it to another Italian.

The two men who used the stolen passports to travel on Flight MH370 bought their tickets at the Grand Horizon Travel agency and the Six Stars Travel agency in Pattaya. Police reportedly removed documents from both agencies on Monday.

While the revelation that stolen passports were used to board Flight MH370 has raised fears of a terrorist attack, travelling to Europe on stolen documents is relatively common and the flight through Beijing is one of the cheapest routes from Malaysia.

A European diplomat in Kuala Lumpur told Reuters that the Malaysian capital was an Asian hub for illegal migrants, many of whom used false documents and complex routes including via Beijing or West Africa to reach a final destination in Europe.

"You shouldn't automatically think that the fact there were two people on the plane with false passports had anything to do with the disappearance of the plane," the unnamed diplomat said.

"The more you know about the role of Kuala Lumpur in this chain, the more doubtful you are of the chances of a linkage."
Additional reporting by Adam Wu

it seems that the plane exploded in the air.

Oh, why bother with security, and all that hassle for passengers if anyone can walk onto a plane with a fake passport?

Here's something else odd. That area is very busy with commercial shipping, fishing, etc. Surely if it had blown up, someone would have seen and heard it?

Quite, Bonny. Why bother.   

You would think that if that happened someone somewhere might have seen and/or heard something?

I remember when the tragic Sao Paolo to Paris flight was lost. That stupid Stella went so far as to suggest that it was a conspiracy as somewhere in Africa a freshly cleared runway would be there.   

There have to be at least fragments of something, somewhere......

That plane went into the depths of the Atlantic though, down thousands of feet. The water where this plane should be is only about 80m at its deepest. If it's in deep water, it's a very long way off course.

In passing, I was watching the search operations, with old enemies working together in the hope of finding survivors. It's a pity it always takes a tragedy to get the human race to pull together.

I posit a thought - why assume it went down in the sea? How about it landing somewhere? Just a passing thought, seeing how the story about the stolen passports is very prominent. LL

That is very true about the great depth of water that the Air France one went into.  

This is a very interesting article about the search.  

How can MH370 disappear? In the ocean, it's not hard: A comparison with AF447    case - See more at:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/how-can-mh370-disappear-in-the-ocean-it-s-not-hard-a-comparison-with-af447-case/article1-1193436.aspx

Thought about that too LL.

The whole area is rife with nationalistic groups, so why not consider that the two unknown men were perhaps members of such a group? Of course one can speculaye and see conspiracies al; over the [place, but still .... LL

If it's landed somewhere, then we're into James Bond territory, LL. Or.....I don't know what. It vanished over a fairly shallow sea, and simply isn't where it's supposed to be.

If it's gone so off-course, unnoticed, that it went into the South China Sea, then that is deep water.

Precisely so, Bonny. In deep water might be a more likely scenario.

Hope they find something soon.

Still no news, just more wierdness. From:

http://news.sky.com/story/1223758/malaysia-airlines-plane-what-has-happened

The missing Malaysia Airlines flight may be proving so hard to find because it could have vanished in an aviation "black spot", an expert has told Sky News.

Former Boeing 777 instructor and United Airlines captain Ross Aimer said it was "disturbing" that there had been no distress call from flight MH370's cockpit and that the plane's emergency locator transmitters had not sent any signals.

He said: "These are very sophisticated equipment that should have been working under any condition - in the water, in the jungle, after a fire, after an explosion - and none of them have talked to the outside world yet.

"There are spots in the world, however, that are called blind spots, where you can not communicate for some reason.

"Unfortunately, that area near Vietnam, over the Gulf of Thailand, those are some of the black spots, so perhaps at that time there was no data transmission between the aircraft and the airline."


Er, what? I find that less than reassuring....

Frankly, I am beginning to wonder if the plane was well off course, for whatever reason, and shot down over land by mistake. And whoever did it is terrified to own up due to the wrath of China.....

It's a strange phenomena, Bonny. There is an explanation to do with magnetic forces, but it always leaves me feeling a bit weird. It's Bermuda Triangle stuff, which is also explainable, but in the absence of proof these things always remain a mystery.
Let's hope this is not so in this case.

I can do without explanations that involve there being inexplicable 'black spots' in communications systems, Sabot. It starts me worrying about wormholes, tears in time, how many dimensions there really are. That sort of thing.

Human stupidity I can deal with; warps in the space-time continuum are another matter entirely.

It's only Planet Earth, Bonny. We just don't quite understand it all yet. The Magnetic Poles are not the same as the actual Poles, although one might wonder what is actual.
But you know me. I never fly. The Theory of Flight, which I have studied, might make sense to some, but it has never made sense to me. In my opinion it is gross impertinence, and asking for trouble.

They're supposed to be going too fast to fall down, with airflow at different speeds on the top and bottom of the wings....I think.

This is why a good few have landed safely without fuel/engines, like giant gliders.

I would be happier if an Expert could explain what these blank spaces are. It's like discovering there really are portals and stargates.....

It's not the straight and level flight that bothers me so much, Bonny, although even that can be so easily interfered with. It's how they get off the ground in the first place that is beyond me.

And no one is going to explain the blank spaces if they can possibly avoid it, especially as they are prone to change. Too much money invested.

Meanwhile, 20 passengers on the missing plane are world-class electronic geeks for a major Defense contracting company that specializing in such things as weapons that disappear planes and ships for the battlefield.
They are employed by a company designing and manufacturing cutting edge electronic weaponry for the Department of Defense.
Such weaponry includes those making it possible to vanish planes off the radar


Full article: http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=241642:from-mystery-to-cover-up-was-missing-mh370-engineered-to-deflect-attention?&Itemid=2#ixzz2vfygWag5
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I think I'll stick to reading the Fortean Times, it's making more sense than reality is at present.