Malaysian Flight Disappearance 'Deliberate'

An anonymous reader writes "Malaysia's Prime Minister announced at a press conference that Flight 370, which disappeared a week ago, was diverted as a result of 'deliberate action.' The investigation has now focused in two ways: first, they're looking more closely at the passengers and crew, and second, they've narrowed the search for the plane down to two corridors. One stretches from Kazakhstan to northern Thailand, and the other goes from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean. 'That conclusion was based on a final signal from the plane picked up on satellite at 8:11 a.m. on March 8, nearly seven hours after ground control lost contact with the jet, he said.'

The Prime Minister said the plane's communications system and the transponder system were both disabled early on during the flight. The time of the plane's final satellite contact would have put its fuel reserves very low. 'Police on Saturday morning drove into the residential compound where the missing plane's pilot lives in Kuala Lumpur, according a guard and several local reporters who were barred from entering the complex. ... Experts have previously said that whoever disabled the plane's communication systems and then flew the jet must have had a high degree of technical knowledge and flying experience. One possibility they have raised was that one of the pilots wanted to commit suicide."

Comments

Tracking

[Dan East]

It slightly blows my mind that companies (airlines) would buy a piece of hardware that costs hundreds of millions of dollars, which is incredibly mobile and used to travel thousands of miles at a time, with a huge amount of liability (billions potentially), and not include any kind of built in, always-on, hard-wired tracking device. Especially in this day and age. We're just talking about pinging tiny little packets of positional data every few minutes.

Re:Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

not include any kind of built in, always-on, hard-wired tracking device

They experimented with hard-wired positional tracking, but the cables became very long.

Helios flight disaster.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

There are very few clues. Some tantalizing pings, between 4 to 6 on the satellites, some delay in transponder being turned off etc are the bare facts on which these elaborate theories are being spun. But I keep thinking about the Helios flight disaster. The maintenance crew had left the cabin pressurization in "manual" mode. The pilot did not notice. The plane warned about cabin pressure. But the pilot was confused and continued to climb to cruise altitude. Deprived of oxygen, all of them died when the oxygen ran out. Pilots never put on the mask and died soon. Plane without pilots, may be with a few passengers alive for half an hour longer, flew on auto pilot for several hours. One crew member, a flight attendant, a former navy diver was seen in the cockpit lugging a (probably empty oxygen) cylinder by the chase planes. Eventually ran out of fuel and crashed in the mountain.

It is possible somehow both pilots lost control of the plane and it flew on auto pilot, following whatever route was programmed into it.

Re:This plane was stolen for money. IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

The pilot(s) could sell it for $23 million dollars and live high off the hog.

Yes - there's a huge black market in 777s.

Re:Watch out

[quenda]

Whatever country the hijackers are from better watch it because US bombs will be coming there way (especially so if the country has oil or other natural resources)

So we learned nothing from the 2001 US bombardment and invasion of Saudi Arabia then?

Re:Suicide By Jet Plane

[king neckbeard]

And you end up with a population that's better at auto-erotic asphyxiation.