777 missing with 239 souls on board

[Tamara]

How about this. Since I was down on the Hornet today I could talk to three docents who were Navy pilots and then civilian for United and American. All retired but still keep up with things on a pilots forum. So I asked if they ever disappeared in a plane only to be found again. Joking with them there.

However, here is their thoughts about a possible scenario that they think is actually more probable than a 777 going down mysteriously. They know, and we now know, that the co-pilot had a habit of opening the cabin door to invite female guests onto the flight deck. They are also aware that there are some issues with Muslim extremists in Malaysia who have more typically put bombs in Aussie frequented hotels. Just relating that part as I can't say I've seen that but they are pulling info in from many pilots.

We also know the plane vanished on civilian radar because it is dependent of the plane's transponder. They believe it was turned off on purpose. They also think the plane then did a turn, dropped in altitude and headed off in a different direction. Being a night flight with 6-8 hours of fuel there would be a lot of places for the plane to go and land before sunrise. The end result is that the plane is now on the deck and possibly hidden with the purpose either to get a plane or get hostages.

Anyway that was their honest assessment and from their conversations with other pilots discussing the matter. They felt that was more likely than a 777 going down without a trace.

I would weigh that against which country they would piss off more and how vicious their counter terrorism teams are. If their teams are like the MOSSAD or like the KGB was, not much of a chance.

Going up with the target so no one can extract revenge on you is one thing; staying around to see who comes visiting is quite another. Do keep in mind that when we are talking about organizations, there are people who "stay around" after the attack, such as the leaders.

As it is, I don't know how revenge bent China or Malaysia are nor how much they care.

[tbm3fan]

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 a hijack that went bad for lack of fuel. Suppose there had been plenty of fuel then where might the plane had gone. Besides I don't think these kind of people really think much about a counter terrorism team coming to get them. You know some times crooks are smart but many times in the end they are dumb. Now if people keep their mouth shut...?

[sated buddha]

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 a hijack that went bad for lack of fuel. Suppose there had been plenty of fuel then where might the plane had gone. Besides I don't think these kind of people really think much about a counter terrorism team coming to get them. You know some times crooks are smart but many times in the end they are dumb. Now if people keep their mouth shut...?

I am wondering whether its possible to just land a plane as big as a 777 anywhere covertly without people knowing. I mean, it would definitely require a long enough runway right - which means a commercial airport somewhere. Even the Indian plane which was hijacked had to land on an airstrip. So does that mean we are talking about the involvement of a rogue country here? Because just a group of terrorists, even as sophisticated as the AQ, could not do this on their own.

Another question I wanted to ask you. You say one purpose would be to get a plane. For what? To use for a 9/11 style attack? Does a plane have a unique electronic signature like say a mobile phone? So that once in the air, it can be identified as the plane that disappeared, even if they alter its outer appearance and markings? Because otherwise you have a flying weapon - and every flying 777 would be suspect.

[Doktor]

Chill SB, don't go that CT path.

1. Remember that 747 that landed on a short strip and couldn't take off?

2. Transponders and all the other fancy gadgets went off, hence the plane vanished from the radar.

[Bigfella]

....or, something fucked up catastrophically and it crashed. Truth is we often don't know just what can go wrong with a plane until it does.

[Bigfella]

Yeah, well, I'm a pilot as well and I know about stalls. It's part of my training, from power off stalls to power on stalls, to spin recovery. To say nothing about retreating blade stall which is a factor about helicopters. (I don't fly helicopters but have had minimal training in them and worked around them a lot in the past)

So all she is saying is basic to me......and I find it very confusing of why an aircraft at 35K feet can't recover from a stall............unless something is preventing it.

Additional: it's wiki, but 1994 Fairchild Air Force Base B-52 crash illustrates that is is possible can recover if you have the altitude.

Tamara,

I don't know what happened. Neither do you. I'm sure you are a fine pilot, but I don't assume that means you know every possible thing that could go wrong with a 777. In fact, I'm betting there are a literal handful of people, pilots included, who even get close. I also don't doubt that you know something about air crashes, but I'm going to back the lady with the better qualifications. Doesn't mean she is right, just that she knows more about the possibilities.

As I pointed out above, we often don't know just what can go wrong with an aircraft under a certain unexpected combination of circumstances until it does go wrong. We simply don't know all the circumstances yet.

Under the current set of circumstances you can imagine you don't think it could be a stall. Doesn't mean it didn't. Under the current set of circumstances she could imagine at the time Mary Schiavo thinks it is the most likely explanation. Doesn't mean it happened. A couple of days ago some folk had convinced themselves the plane was blown up by terrorists on forged passports to coincide with events in China. Now speculation has changed & become even wilder in some cases. We are all making this up as we go along. I prefer to err on the side of caution when it comes to speculation.

Until proven otherwise the most likely explanation for any plane crash is pilot error or aircraft malfunction or both.

[Triple C]

The Chinese believes they found the crash site, says CNN.

[Doktor]

Until proven otherwise the most likely explanation for any plane crash is pilot error or aircraft malfunction or both.

Actually watching way too many Air Crash Investigation on NG it is always a perfect storm from technical malfunction(s) and human error.

[lemontree]

How about this. Since I was down on the Hornet today I could talk to three docents who were Navy pilots and then civilian for United and American. All retired but still keep up with things on a pilots forum. So I asked if they ever disappeared in a plane only to be found again. Joking with them there.

However, here is their thoughts about a possible scenario that they think is actually more probable than a 777 going down mysteriously. They know, and we now know, that the co-pilot had a habit of opening the cabin door to invite female guests onto the flight deck. They are also aware that there are some issues with Muslim extremists in Malaysia who have more typically put bombs in Aussie frequented hotels. Just relating that part as I can't say I've seen that but they are pulling info in from many pilots.

We also know the plane vanished on civilian radar because it is dependent of the plane's transponder. They believe it was turned off on purpose. They also think the plane then did a turn, dropped in altitude and headed off in a different direction. Being a night flight with 6-8 hours of fuel there would be a lot of places for the plane to go and land before sunrise. The end result is that the plane is now on the deck and possibly hidden with the purpose either to get a plane or get hostages.

Anyway that was their honest assessment and from their conversations with other pilots discussing the matter. They felt that was more likely than a 777 going down without a trace.

I am starting to think on these lines too.
It seems fantastic but possible.

[citanon]

Like I said ....................... unless something is preventing it.

So perhaps the more correct thing to say is "Possibly (since we don't know yet), something caused the aircraft to stall and the crew did not recover from the stall."

Okay, granted, that is potentially slanderous and until the report is made, it can't be said, so perhaps nothing should be said.

Long story short, like I said, a cockpit that can't recover from a stall at 35K feet? Unbelievable unless there is something in our crew training that prevents it, there is something in our computers that prevents it, .................or there is something else happening on this planet that prevents it.

If that is what is happening, unrecoverable stalls, then perhaps we better be looking for more answers.

IMHO...........(little bit tense right now because I don't like being talked down to by the news).

Quite right.

Latest word is that the engines might have been sending out messages literally hours after the first loss of contact, meaning it was flying the whole time.

[Monash]

I am starting to think on these lines too.
It seems fantastic but possible.

A whole lot of things have to go wrong for this kind of scenario to be plausible.

1) The pilots have to invite one or two females into the cockpit
2) They have to select the (presumably attractive) female terrorists and only the female terrorists from every other female on board the plane.
3) The terrorists, having gained entry to the cockpit have to overpower the aircrew (without weapons - unless of course KL Airport security is totally compromised.)
4) They have to do this so quickly that the aircrew have no time to activate any alerts or transmit any warnings.
5) Having gained control of the cockpit the terrorists have to have the technical competence/training to fly the plane and/or at least turn off the auto-pilot, all transponders and other on broad monitoring and reporting systems - all of which implies at least some previous exposure to the Boeing 777's flight control systems.
6) Having organized all of this the terrorist cell responsible has to maintain complete security discipline and not make any public claim of responsibility.
7) Those involved have to have avoided any previous close association with active terrorist groups (i.e. be clean skins) because if they haven't post incident review by various international security organizations will 'ping' them and identify the group responsible - and so far on this front silencio.

[Tamara]

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 a hijack that went bad for lack of fuel. Suppose there had been plenty of fuel then where might the plane had gone. Besides I don't think these kind of people really think much about a counter terrorism team coming to get them. You know some times crooks are smart but many times in the end they are dumb. Now if people keep their mouth shut...?

Then you don't know about Soviet Citizens, Beirut, and the KGB? Long story short, 80's, perhaps late 70's, Soviet Citizens were kidnapped in Beirut. The KGB went in, violently killed some family members of a suspected supporter BEFORE they put down their demands, said release our people in 24 hours or else. Citizens were released and it was rarely, if ever, after that that such groups targeted Soviet citizens.

Does one steal from the Mob?

There are certain things in life where people at least do stop and think for a moment that their action might be a very bad idea. Like Catharine Lorre and the Hillside Stranglers. They were fixing to add her to their kill list but when they realized who she was (Peter Lorre's daughter) and realized what heat that would bring, they went for an alternate target.

BUT...........if you hold a different opinion, so be it. I don't intend to debate it any further. I find that trying to do such with those outside police is often a frustrating, pointless exercise. Doesn't mean it is all in agreement inside, though. For example, I am on the side that believe it is only a clock ticking before the US has a Beslan. There are those on the other side where "Beslan? What's that?".

[Stitch]

I am wondering whether its possible to just land a plane as big as a 777 anywhere covertly without people knowing. I mean, it would definitely require a long enough runway right - which means a commercial airport somewhere.

Or a military base in a "friendly" country; those are much easier to control than a civilian airport.

[Oracle]

India steps up search, missing Malaysian plane's pilots under scrutiny

NEW DELHI: India on Thursday stepped up its search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane carrying 239 people, deploying three ships and three aircraft to the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a Navy source said.

The defence ministry ordered deployment of the vessels and planes to scour an area east of the islands in the Andaman Sea which are closer to Myanmar and Malaysia than India, a senior navy official said.

"India has formally joined the search operations this afternoon for the missing Malaysian airliner by sending three ships," the official said in New Delhi, adding that India was coordinating with Malaysia's navy.

Malaysia is no closer to finding the plane that lost radar contact on Saturday, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, amid confusion and contradictions about what could have happened to it.

The search for the plane now encompasses both sides of peninsular Malaysia, over an area of nearly 27,000 nautical miles (more than 90,000 square kilometres) — roughly the size of Portugal — and involves the navies and air forces of multiple nations.

The Indian operation "is being conducted from the naval headquarters in New Delhi. Being a maritime search and rescue operation, the government has asked the Indian Navy to lead and conduct the operations," the Navy official said, adding that two Dornier aircraft and one P-8I maritime surveillance plane have also been deployed.

He said the INS Saryu, INS Kumbhir and ICG Kanaklata Barua were expected to reach the search area some 111 nautical kilometres (60 miles) east of Campbell Bay, on one of the southern islands, by late on Thursday.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are Indian territory, although they are at least 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from the mainland.

India's coastguard joined the aerial search on Wednesday, deploying one aircraft also to the east of the Andamans.

Pilots under scrutiny

The captain of a missing Malaysian jet is said to be an engineering buff who assembled his own flight simulator, while friends of the co-pilot are defending his reputation after one report portrayed him as a cockpit Casanova.

Malaysian Airlines flight 370 disappeared six days ago and an international search and rescue effort in waters around Southeast Asia has failed to find a shred of evidence in one of the biggest aviation mysteries in history.

With little solid information to go on, authorities are investigating all 227 passengers and 12 crew for possible sabotage, although they stress no such evidence has come to light.

But it has brought captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and his first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, under scrutiny.

An Australian television report made waves this week by broadcasting an interview with a young South African woman who said Fariq and another pilot colleague invited them into the cockpit of a flight he co-piloted from Phuket, Thailand to Kuala Lumpur in 2011.

Passengers have been prohibited from entering cockpits during a flight since the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Malaysia Airlines said it was "shocked" by the reported security violation, but that it could not verify the claims.

Fariq, who joined the airline at the age of 20, studied piloting at a flight school on the Malaysian resort island of Langkawi.

The son of a high-ranking official in the public works department of a Malaysian state, he is a mild-mannered "good boy" who regularly visited his neighbourhood mosque outside Kuala Lumpur, said the mosque's imam, or spiritual leader.

Fariq also attended occasional Islamic courses, said Ahmad Sharafi Ali Asrah.

He rejected the account of the supposed cockpit security breach. "This story doesn't make sense and I feel it's just an effort to discredit Fariq or the airlines," Ahmad Sharafi said.

"He is a good boy and keeps a low profile." Fariq had a brief brush with fame when he appeared in a CNN travel segment with the network's correspondent Richard Quest in February, in which Fariq helped fly a plane from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur.

The segment portrayed Hamid's transition to piloting the Boeing 777-200 after having completed training in a flight simulator.

"It was interesting to watch the way he brought the aircraft in to land," Quest said, according to the CNN website, calling Fariq's technique "textbook-perfect".

The far more seasoned Zaharie joined MAS in 1981 and had logged 18,365 hours of flying time.

Online tributes in Malaysia portray a man so fond of flying that he assembled his own flight simulator so that he could indulge his passion at home.

The webpage, which has garnered more than 400 comments largely from well-wishers, shows pictures of the complex set-up including Zaharie posing in front of it.

Zaharie also has a YouTube channel to which he has uploaded videos showing him cheerfully explaining how to fix an air-conditioner, patch damaged windows, and other DIY projects.

Malaysian media reports have quoted colleagues as calling Zaharie a "superb pilot", who also served as an examiner, authorised by the Malaysian Civil Aviation Department, to conduct simulator tests for pilots.

Malaysia Airlines has declined to offer details on the two men, and no other red flags have emerged publicly. Authorities have denied media reports that investigators raided their homes .

The near-total lack of information pointing to the plane's fate necessarily means that authorities need to examine the spectre of possible wrongdoing by those who could have held its fate in their hands, analysts said.

The mysterious disappearance of the plane from radar has led to speculation over whether its communications were deliberately shut down by someone on board, one of many theories bandied about.

In three of the four flights used for the 9/11 attacks, hijackers who seized control of the aircraft are believed to have manually turned off each plane's transponder, which sends flight data back to air-traffic control.

Terence Fan, an aviation expert at Singapore Management University, cited the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 in October 1999 in the Atlantic Ocean -- which killed 217 people -- as an example of a crash allegedly deliberately caused by a pilot.

A US investigation said the first officer crashed the jet when the captain went on a break, findings disputed by Egyptian officials.

"I am not saying such a scenario happened here, we don't have any evidence at all, but this is one possible scenario," he said.

"Certainly, the pilots play a very crucial role."

US suspects missing Malaysian plane flew on for hours: Report

WASHINGTON: US investigators suspect the missing Malaysian airliner was in the air for four hours after its last confirmed contact, and may have been diverted to an unknown location, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

It said US aviation investigators and national security officials are basing their theory on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing 777's Rolls-Royce engines, which suggested the plane flew for a total of five hours.

The WSJ attributed the information to two unidentified sources "familiar with the details". Contacted by AFP, Rolls-Royce in Singapore said it could not comment on an ongoing investigation.

"We continue to monitor the situation and offer our support to Malaysia Airlines," the British engine maker said in a statement from Singapore.

The report could mean that the Malaysia Airlines flight, which had 239 people on board, travelled for hundreds of miles after its last contact with air traffic control at around 1:30 am Saturday (1730 GMT Friday) — about an hour after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.

Search teams are already covering a huge area comprising 27,000 nautical miles (more than 90,000 square kilometres), from the South China Sea to the waters west of Malaysia.

Malaysian investigators have made clear that they are still considering hijacking as one of their lines of inquiry and the CIA has not ruled out a terror link.

"US counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner's transponders to avoid radar detection," the WSJ reported, citing "one person tracking the probe".

It went on to say that the uncertainty over the plane's course and why its transponders were not working "has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for a reason that appears unclear to US authorities".

Officials had been told that investigators were pursuing the theory that the plane was diverted "with the intention of using it later for another purpose", the WSJ quoted one source as saying.

New Scientist magazine also reported that Rolls-Royce had received "at least two bursts of technical data" from flight MH370 at its British monitoring centre in Derby, which keeps a real-time track of its engines in use on civilian aircraft around the world.

One of the data sets was sent on takeoff, the other during the climb towards Beijing, the magazine said on its website on Wednesday.

It said the engine data was "filtered" from a larger report from the plane's Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) system — which puts out information about location and airspeed.


Malaysia Airlines has said that all its aircraft are equipped with ACARS, but has said that "no information was relayed" by the system installed on flight MH370 and that there was no distress signal from the cockpit.

Frustration over the shifting focus of the search and apparent lack of concrete information on the plane's flight path has led to accusations of a chaotic and confused response by the Malaysian authorities and the airline.

What is one to make of all these developments?

[tbm3fan]

BUT...........if you hold a different opinion, so be it. I don't intend to debate it any further. I find that trying to do such with those outside police is often a frustrating, pointless exercise. Doesn't mean it is all in agreement inside, though.

That's good because I was relaying what some former military and civilian commercial pilots think my have happened. I didn't dimiss it out of hand as anything is possible. Same regarding the plane having a technical problem where anything is possible. However, I do stand by the comment that most terrorists do not put much thought into who might come after them. Stupid criminals are a world wide.

Should note that all three have time on the 777.