Who knows, with China breathing down their necks for answers, maybe their are just throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. Throwing darts? It's a puzzle for sure.
Bob
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Who knows, with China breathing down their necks for answers, maybe their are just throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. Throwing darts? It's a puzzle for sure.
Bob
I was wondering when China was going to get a little angry, considering it is mostly Chinese Citizens onboard,Quote:
Originally Posted by BobH
March hasn't been a good month for them
Comment: China debates blame for train station killings | SBS News
There was another stabbing incident there recently as well :(.Quote:
Originally Posted by gssixgun
Yeah I read that too David but that one probably was an argument between Vendors at a market and not related to terrorism, at least that was the latest I read..
Slightly off topic, but isn't it annoying that these days, everything is called terrorism, as if 'normal' crime is no longer existing. First start a war on 'terror', and then call everyone a terrorist. And if anyone speaks, you can kill the argument by saying 'why do you care? Do you have sympathy for the guy(s) who did X?' This is the ultimate dream for any government wanting to be able to treat 'undesirables' any way they please.
A guy hijacking a plane is a hijacker.
I'm curious though. If it is a hijack, at some point the people would have noticed and why then is there no telephone traffic from the passengers, or a distress signal from the pilots. I can't imagine that post 9/11 there would be no procedures for secretly sending out a distress signal. In fact, if I was an aircraft engineer who had to anticipate hijack scenarios, I would design it so that simply turning off the transponder at altitude would automatically trigger an emergency distress signalling.
1. There is no cell phone service at sea. Remember they were quite a way out before the plane deviated from its flight plan and they really don't know (or won't say) what direction it went from there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
2. There are times that ATC (air traffic control) may legitimately ask a pilot to turn off his transponder. In those cases, they REALLY don't want to see anything reported about your flight. Your suggestion would trigger all kinds of unwelcome alarms in ATC facilities at exactly the time they wouldn't want that.
3. There are transponder codes (squawks) to communicate unusual situations to ATC with your transponder: 7500 hijacked, 7600 comms out, 7700 emergency.
Interesting, what would be such a scenario? I'd assume that since the transponder is more or less saying 'I'm right here', turning it off would generally be a bad idea above a certain altitude.Quote:
Originally Posted by Splashone
Most of the time it will happen when your transponder is putting out erroneous data. Sometimes you need to "reboot" it, they may just ask you to turn off the altitude reporting, or in rare cases turn it off. If you are putting out erroneous data, you can trigger proximity alarms in other aircraft and ATC that they might not want to continually listen to if they are in error!
The real issue is why wasn't the plane tracked after the transponder was off?
The transponder is only an aid for ATC. It is interrogated by the radar and then replies with the assigned code and flight level (altitude in feet/100) for the aircraft. The radar still receives the "skin paint" when the transponder is off. ATC can still manually assign track data to that "raw" return and the computers are pretty good at keeping the data correlated. They don't like to do it because of the added work load, but the airplane did not "magically disappear" when the transponder was shut down. Granted they have to ask what the aircraft altitude is but (civilian radar rarely includes a height finder radar). The aircraft could have then descended below the radar horizon but then they would have burned WAY more fuel at lower altitudes. The military routinely deals with non-squawking aircraft...believe me a penetrating enemy aircraft is NOT going to be squawking or talking!
Case and point: BBC News - Berkin Elvan: Turkish PM accuses dead boy of terror linksQuote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
Fear mongering is fantastic until it isn't. It'll bite us all in the... in the long-run me thinks. But on a positive note. Look at all the resources that will be thrown at looking for this plane because of the war on terror if they claim its terrorism!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Splashone
This is exactly what isn't making sense to me...
I realize that the Indian Ocean is a big place but there are a ton of ships from every country that patrol and sail there I would think an "Unidentified" aircraft might raise some alarms from somebody..
Especially if it was flying across the Bay of Bengal toward India like they keep suggesting
Weirdness Multiplied :shrug:
In the paper today is a possible flight path that says the plane may have flown deep into Asia,I wonder if there is a possibilty it could have landed or went down over land?
Quote:
Originally Posted by gssixgun
If you are referring to commercial vessels the radar they carry is for navigation, surface radar, I believe. I don't think that they have air search radars generally. I could be wrong though. Warships obviously do carry various air search radars but that would depend on if they were operating them or not at the time 370 disappeared and were close enough to pick them up. Radar coverage in that area still could be plenty spotty.
Bob
Most air search radars have a mx range of around 250 miles if they are cranked out that far and most navies don't operate their radar unless they need to for security reasons. Also even if they did pick it up it would just be a blip on the screen with no identification and they don't record these things.
Is it possible that can't find it as its not there?
There is a potentially globally changing situation brewing in Ukraine, yet more news hours is dedicated to this (everyone loves a good mystery right?) So a government wants to divert attention, pretty good way to do it right?
Experts say the plane climbed right up to about its height limit then dropped, is it possible to refuel one of these at that altitude mid flight? Frankly I have no idea but if so, it would explain a lot. Fly it to somewhere it will never be found, a nice little secret compound somewhere for instance, passengers live out their lives no one ever finds them. And a lot of people benefit from the diverted attention.
I love crazy theories lol
Crazy theories abound. I still holding out for either a Langolier's situation or North Korea. Highly improbable but you never know.
Not to diminish the tragedy of the probable loss of life associated with the disappearance of flight 370, why is it more important/newsworthy than than the unfolding situation in the Ukraine? What does or does not happen there effects far more people and has the potential to be far more tragic should things turn even more violent. You really wonder about things being a distraction to ease minds. Just follow the bouncing ball sorta thing.
Bob
Altitude doesn't matter, the plane was not made to be aerial refueled. They have no way of knowing what altitude it was flying after the transponder was turned off.Quote:
Originally Posted by monkeypuzzlebeefeater
Let's take bets. I say that by next Thursday, if they haven't found anything, if Russia and America haven't gone to war, or there isn't some kind of terrorism going on someplace, we'll never hear of it again.Quote:
Originally Posted by BobH
Obviously. The passengers wouldn't keep silent though. Unless they were killed outright. But in that case, blowing up the plane would have been much easier and achieve the same thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by monkeypuzzlebeefeater
But if you go for crazy, why not say that the flight didn't exist in the first place? Just some computer hacking and suddenly there is a flight missing. It must be missing because the computer says it was there to begin with :p
On a more serious note: It's been reported that the flight systems could have been altered / taken over remotely. A security researcher who is also a pilot has spent 3 years working on it, and apparently it is possible to do just such a think, and alter GPS data, modify autopilot configuration or plain take over the plane. More food for conspiracy theories :)
Flight 19 all over again.
I almost pine for the good ole days when things were simpler like straight razor shaving. You know, plane goes down, massive debris field and go home folks it is all over.
Bob
They will find it,but I think it will be found someplace they never in thier dreams thought it would be.Quote:
Originally Posted by BobH
In the good old days when a plane went down and it wasn't at an airport it usually wasn't found. Thus the mandate for ELT's on all aircraft with 2 seats or more. A plane with congress critters on board went down in Alaska. Everyone looked, called out the guard and military...to this day it still has not been found.
The joke is that so far all the modern electronic gizmos seem to have been turned off and the ones that weren't aren't being too specific about the planes whereabouts. Maybe we are back in the good ole days after all. Lets hope it has a better ending than the Alaskan adventure.
Bob
On October 25, 1999, a chartered Learjet 35 was scheduled to fly from Orlando, Florida to Dallas, Texas. Early in the flight the aircraft, which was cruising at altitude on autopilot, quickly lost cabin pressure. All on board were incapacitated due to hypoxia — a lack of oxygen. The aircraft failed to make the westward turn toward Dallas over north Florida. It continued flying over the southern and midwestern United States for almost four hours and 1,500 miles (2,400 km). The plane ran out of fuel and crashed into a field near Aberdeen, South Dakota after an uncontrolled descent.[1] The four passengers on board were golf star Payne Stewart, his agents, Van Ardan and Robert Fraley, and Bruce Borland, a highly regarded golf architect with the Jack Nicklaus golf course design company.
Because I make light of something, doesn't mean I take the subject lightly... So that's to say, this may be in poor taste but:
Leaving Facebook...
Small private aircraft crash all the time and vanish without a trace. Often times years later some hiker spots something and that's how they find them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thebigspendur
True Story:
Hunting in the Colorado High Country one year I found a car that had recently been Pushed/Driven down into a ravine, you could see that the plates had been Ripped off the vehicle.. I hiked in and got the VIN, made sure nobody was in there, and called it in to the County Sherriff when I had a signal again.. Her response made me giggle, "Thanks, we love hunting season, you guys find everything that has been missing for the past year or so"
Yea, many incidents like that in our neck of the woods. You wouldn't believe how little evidence of a crash is visible from the air over a forested area. You virtually have to fly the same flight path as the crashed plane on the same heading it went in on to catch anything. Lakes may be slightly better if there is an oils slick.Quote:
Originally Posted by thebigspendur
Bob
DOH,this plane was not a 4 seater Piper:)
The evidence in a forested area comes long after the crash when the trees in the immediate area die from the fuel/oil spill (if there was any left in the plane).
Any airplane is miniscule when compared to the nearly 40 million square miles of possible crash sites with this incident.
I'd have to disagree with your first point, at least partially, in that there are indeed indications of a light plane crash in a heavily forested area immediately after the incident not including a fire. At least from the aerial photos we were shown of what to look for. The evidence is extremely difficult to detect from the air and a lot of initial air searches come up empty handed because of that. Better evidence may very well come later but once the initial air search has been called after a week or two a later search almost never happens.Quote:
Originally Posted by Splashone
No quibbles with the last one though.
Bob
Still unknown....
This is the best summary I have seen in the last 48 hours.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Get up to speed on latest developments - CNN.com
Been there and done that.Quote:
Originally Posted by BobH
The last one I found was in an area that had been well searched twice. I went out alone after the CAP had quit for the day with my homebuilt. We suspected the incident aircraft had been practicing off field landings. I went to a couple of places that I had done the same thing. I was beating up a couple of mud flats looking for "tricycle" tire tracks that just start and end on the flat. I found some and looked pretty hard but couldn't find the plane (a bright red super cub). I decided to go to the next...as I made a turn I caught a flash of red out of the corner of my eye. There is was just barely into the scrub mesquite at the edge of the mud flat. The plane was down in trees that did'nt exceed 8' yet had been missed by at least 3 aircraft at altitude and then almost by me at 50'.
Down in trees is very tough, I think the only thing harder is water...Despite all the aircraft civil/military (including photo reconn) and satellite crowd sourced search, Steve Fossett's plane in the Sierras wasn't found for more than a year.
Most searches for small planes that I have been on the search pattern was flown at 1500 feet IIRC and that was in a military C130 or twin Otter. You only went lower if a spotter called it. A moose looks surprising large from that height it would make you wonder how you could miss a colourful light plane. Anyway it is frustrating and in most cases futile with an a active ELT.
Bob
Here's an interesting take on the HOW, though it sheds no light on the WHY. The guy spends many words saying that 370 could have been flying in the communications/radar "shadow" of another plane.
Keith Ledgerwood
rs,
Tack
Unfortunately we live in a world where news is entertainment and a money producing enterprise so once a story happens it played to death and they do anything to keep it going. I'm surprised someone hasn't brought up alien abduction or the Bermuda Triangle.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tack
Quote:
Originally Posted by thebigspendur
I did, I did!! Right from the beginning! Lol!!
I feel for the passengers and all who loved them. I don't think this will ever be solved.
Tack, You might very well have something!!