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Post by Sailor on Mar 8, 2014 13:59:22 GMT -8
Bits and pieces of information have begun to form, but it remains unclear how they fit into the bigger picture, if at all. For instance, after the airline released a manifest, Austria denied that one of its citizens was onboard the flight as the list stated. The Austrian citizen was safe and sound, and his passport had been stolen two years ago, Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Weiss told CNN. Similarly, Italy's foreign ministry confirmed that no Italians were onboard MH370, even though an Italian was listed on the manifest. Police in Italy said the man's passport was stolen last year. A U.S. intelligence official said authorities are aware of reporting about lost or stolen passports used by passengers on the missing flight. "No nexus to terrorism yet," the official said, "although that's by no means definitive. We're still tracking." More here: www.cnn.com/2014/03/08/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane-missing/index.html?hpt=hp_t1I don't think anything can be ruled out at this point. For example, according to another story I read this morning this same airliner was involved in an accident in 2012 on the ground when a wingtip was broken off when it clipped the tail of another aircraft. Another 777 was involved in the crash at San Francisco Int'l last year when it suffered some kind of instrumentation or electronics malfunction and slammed into the seawall short of the runway and there is the case of the Air France airliner that crashed into the Atlantic after its electronics were fed faulty airspeed and other data according to the "black box" voice and data recorders that were recovered 2 years later. Apparently the aircraft had settled into its cruising altitude a bit earlier, supposedly the safest part of the flight and then simply vanished from radar. Also apparently there was no distress call or other indication of problems, but this information is several hours old and may well be incorrect. All anyone is reporting at this moment is oil or fuel slicks have been found on the sea off Vietnam's southern tip. They may be from this aircraft or be from some other source, those waters are heavily traveled. The "black box" flight data and voice recorders are going to have to be found before we can know for certain what happened. |
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Post by CommonSense on Mar 8, 2014 19:34:37 GMT -8
Hey Sailor,
Sounds to me that this was the work of a terrorist bomb. It would be surprising to me to hear it was anything else. Like you said the cruising stage is apparently the safest part of the flight and the pilots did not report any trouble at all. Disappearing from the radar also suggests that something devastating and sudden occurred up there. Combine that with the fact that there seemingly are no large pieces of debris seen yet makes me believe the aircraft exploded at high altitude and small pieces of the wreckage scattered many miles. RIP to all those on board and quick justice to those responsible.
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Post by Sailor on Mar 9, 2014 5:49:41 GMT -8
FOX is carrying a report on its website that there is some thought that the plane changed course shortly before disappearing, perhaps to turn back. If true, it widens the search area tremendously.
Besides aircraft, the USN is sending the destroyer USS Pinckney to assist in the search and Singapore is reported to be sending a submarine. IMHO both of these assets could be very valuable because of their ability to listen for the sonar transponders the "black box" recorders are equipped with. Pinckney also has a pair of helecopters equipped with sonobouys that can listen for and localize accoustic signals.
I'm not discounting the possibility of a bomb, it wouldn't take a big one to blow through the cockpit door and kill the pilots. But I'm also considering the possibility that a hijacking occured, perhaps with a member of the flight deck crew involved.
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Post by 101ABN on Mar 9, 2014 9:46:22 GMT -8
This is disturbing. A VN report states they saw what may be debris in the area where the oil slicks were seen. news.yahoo.com/vietnam-says-may-found-missing-jets-door-161951222.htmlWhatever happened, it was likely sudden and catastrophic as there were no distress signals. FTR, the Asiana 214 crash at SFO is now believed to be the result of pilot error. |
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Post by Sailor on Mar 9, 2014 15:28:36 GMT -8
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Post by CommonSense on Mar 9, 2014 16:02:20 GMT -8
Failed to get into the cockpit, got their cover blown and detonated the bomb? Whatever it may be it is pretty depressing.
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Post by 101ABN on Mar 9, 2014 19:45:04 GMT -8
Failed to get into the cockpit, got their cover blown and detonated the bomb? Whatever it may be it is pretty depressing. That's as good a guess as any at this point. |
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Post by Sailor on Mar 10, 2014 8:31:33 GMT -8
Why Malaysia Airlines jet might have disappeared The most dangerous parts of a flight are takeoff and landing. Rarely do incidents happen when a plane is cruising seven miles above the earth. So the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jet well into its flight Saturday morning over the South China Sea has led aviation experts to assume that whatever happened was quick and left the pilots no time to place a distress call. It could take investigators months, if not years, to determine what happened to the Boeing 777 flying from Malaysia's largest city of Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. "At this early stage, we're focusing on the facts that we don't know," said Todd Curtis, a former safety engineer with Boeing who worked on its 777 jumbo jets and is now director of the Airsafe.com Foundation. If there was a minor mechanical failure -- or even something more serious like the shutdown of both of the plane's engines -- the pilots likely would have had time to radio for help. The lack of a call "suggests something very sudden and very violent happened," said William Waldock, who teaches accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz. More here: www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03/08/why-malaysia-airlines-jet-might-have-disappeared/?intcmp=obinsiteLots of supposition and "what-ifs", but until the wreck is found and flight and voice recorders analyzed it's all we've got. USN destroyer Kidd has joined the search for the same reasons Pinkney has, but the potential "footprint" the plane could have come down in is at least as big as the state of Pennsylvania and there are lots of shipwrecks on the bottom in those waters, many uncharted. Finding a needle in a haystack would be easier I think.
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Post by tankcommander on Mar 10, 2014 15:07:22 GMT -8
I don't know if anybody else has mentioned it, but the tickets purchased with the stolen passports were sequential..... That gives me a bad feeling!
I just wonder what terrorist group would want to bring down a Malaysian airliner filled with mostly Chinese. Do the Muslims have it in for the Chinese?
I hope they find the airplane, but it's a big ocean, and they're still looking for Amelia Earhart.
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Post by Sailor on Mar 10, 2014 16:45:41 GMT -8
I don't know if anybody else has mentioned it, but the tickets purchased with the stolen passports were sequential..... That gives me a bad feeling! I heard it mentioned on the news that the tickets held by our "stolen passport" gumbahs were 1 way and purchased by some Iranian businessman. I don't know that the info has been verified however. Some do. I don't know if the knifing spree in the railway station in Kunming China was attributed to muslims though. I think they searched for nearly 2 years to find the Air France Flight 447 that crashed into the Atlantic, finding big pieces of it and many of the passengers on the bottom of the ocean, deep enough (more than 2000 fathoms or 12,000 feet) and the water cold enough to preserve the bodies. The flight data and voice recorder memories were still intact even after resting on the bottom for 2 years. The area being searched for this plane isn't as wide or (IIRC) deep as the mid-Atlantic region where FLT 447 came to rest, the authorities will keep searching until they find it. I listened to part of an interview on Hannity's radio show, a caller claiming to be a retired 777 Captain stated that the big plane is extremely rugged and unlikely to be knocked down by anything short of a major explosion either on-board (bomb or fuselage fuel tank (TWA 800)) or a surface to air missile (Iran Air shot down by USS Vincennes) tearing the fuselage apart. Anything other than that would likely leave the flight crew time to get off a "Mayday" or (unknown to me before today) for a dedicated data-link to broadcast an abnormal status reading to Malaysia Air's maintenance department according to this Captain. He made it quite clear that obviously he expected a finding of "terrorist attack" as the cause of this downing. |
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Post by tankcommander on Mar 10, 2014 20:18:14 GMT -8
Missing jet raises questions about real-time black boxes As rescuers continue searching for Malaysian Airlines flight 370, attention is turning to high-tech flight data recorders for answers – and the same questions many have raised for years are resurfacing. Could better black boxes save lives? Could they at least help locate the missing Boeing 777? And if the technology is so good, why isn’t it required by law? "There's no easy answer to that,” said Richard Hayden, director of Flyht Aerospace Solutions. “The airlines always plead poverty -- it’s too expensive, too cumbersome, they don’t have the bandwidth to handle it.” Hayden’s company makes a next-generation black box system called AFIRS (Automated Flight Information Reporting System), so advanced that it can be reprogrammed in-flight, at 30,000 feet, by beaming new commands to it off satellites. The AFIRS system transmits a plane’s position every 5 to 10 minutes via the Iridium satellite network, and every second when it detects an abnormality. But the system also records a vast array of data from the flight such as pressures, engine parameters, flap positions and altimeters. That information would have helped officials immediately see some of the contextual information leading to the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines flight, such as whether it was turning or maneuvering to avoid another plane. Four years ago, following the crash of Air France Flight 447, debate arose over the need for real time black boxes to continually record and transmit data from planes, The New York Times reported. Today, it has become an afterthought to locate a missing iPhone anywhere in the world, but tracking missing jumbo jets is still a challenge. www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/03/10/missing-jet-raises-questions-real-time-black-boxes/ Also on the Web |
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Post by 101ABN on Mar 10, 2014 20:23:09 GMT -8
I heard someone suggest that we should have one of our nuclear subs join the search.
Apparently they have the most sophisticated underwater listening systems on the planet and so would be able to detect the pinging from the black boxes more easily than anyone else.
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Post by tankcommander on Mar 10, 2014 20:32:23 GMT -8
I heard they can hear a shrimp fart!  |
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Post by Sailor on Mar 11, 2014 2:45:00 GMT -8
I heard they can hear a shrimp fart! I ain't going to give away any secrets ... but ...  I wouldn't be surprised if an LA or Virginia class SSN wasn't already there or on the way for that reason. The Singapore Navy has a diesel boat detailed to the mission. While it doesn't sound like much, today's SSKs have damned sophisticated sensors of their own, as good as or BETTER than that found in a Burke class destroyer which are pretty damned good in their own right. I was just on the FOX news site, the search area has been widened to include the mountains of Indonesia. There are also reports that passenger I-Phones have been ringing though no pickups and the airline has tried the aircraft crew phones also, though I must tell you none of these reports are confirmed. |
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