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A Year On, What Flight Simulators Can't Prove About Flight MH370

NBC News, a year after the loss of Malaysian Airlines flight 370, has an interesting piece about various scenarios that would explain the plane's disappearance. From the article: The theory that the pilots turned west because of an emergency is undermined because they did not head back toward Kuala Lumpur, according to retired NTSB senior investigator Greg Feith. ... Feith said that turning off the communications and taking the aircraft to the remote Indian Ocean was a course of action consistent with someone trying to purposefully lose an airliner. "It's 20,000-plus feet deep there," Feith said. "It's going be very difficult to find." He added that "the first thing you're going to do" as a pilot during an emergency is "don the oxygen mask" and "confess to ATC [air traffic control], 'We've got an issue, we need to return.'" Feith, who investigated other so-called "murder-suicide" airline crashes while at the NTSB, said that he has "always postured at least that this was an intentional act by one or both pilots."

208 comments

  1. The auto pilot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    was running systemd . It got so pissed

    1. Re:The auto pilot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      If only Harrison Ford had been piloting the plane...

    2. Re:The auto pilot by v1 · · Score: 2

      If only Harrison Ford had been piloting the plane...

      they'd have done SO much better with Launchpad McQuack... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      --
      I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    3. Re:The auto pilot by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1, Interesting

      no it was hacked
      http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

      Wrigley says that the pilot can always turn off autopilot if the plane starts making unexpected course changes. If someone did hack into the aircraft and take over the plane using the flight management computer, they would have had no means of keeping that control. "If an aircraft flight management system could be hacked by remote control, it would cause a lot of confusion on the flight deck, but I can't imagine that any pilot would just sit back and watch while the aircraft changed course." In that event surely they would find some way of communicating the problem.

      Sounds like the AirAsia crash reports of issues with the flight management computer and the talk of the pilot trying to reset it.

      http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

    4. Re:The auto pilot by aberglas · · Score: 1

      Nonsense.

      I is not just the auto pilot that is computerized. The entire control system is. That is what "fly by wire" means. Electric wires. Get your software in at the right level and you own the plane. (I used to fly an old Tiger Moth, it flew by a different type of wire!)

      Pilot suicide is a boring theory. It was a virus developed by the NSA that accidentally escaped into the wild.

    5. Re:The auto pilot by disambiguated · · Score: 2

      It was a virus developed by the NSA that accidentally escaped into the wild.

      Nah. The autopilot became self-aware and, realizing its purpose, it committed suicide.

    6. Re:The auto pilot by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      There is always the political statement route. Simply fly the plane to Diego Garcia and let the cowardly US military shoot it down. The pilot did have that map on his at home flight simulator and was practising on it (which would tend to indicate an intent to land rather than crash) and regardless of what anyone says, some one had to have cleaned up the wreckage and the Australian government made a really, really rather surprising amount of noise about searching for the plane as far away from Diego Garcia as possible, all the while pretending the Jidalee over the horizon radar system doesn't exist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.... It is also not like the US military has a history of shooting down civilian aircraft under hugely questionable circumstance. The Sherlock Holmes idea springs to mind "Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    7. Re:The auto pilot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is up with you conspiracists and Diego Garcia? Are you Malaysian? My Malaysia friends are obsessed with Diego Garcia. I assume it's partly because they had no clue the base existed, and so they assume it was some kind of super secret base, like Area 51. (In defense of Malaysians, their government is _actually_ involved is some pretty crazy stuff--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shaariibuugiin_Altantuyaa--so I can cut them some slack.

      Also, according to the coverage area depicted by the Wikipedia article, that Jidalee system wouldn't have been able to track the plane. But I'm sure your answer to that involves another conspiracy.

    8. Re:The auto pilot by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      Nahh they were hijacked by the cargo cult who's ransom demands of cigarettes and Hershey bars have fallen on deaf ears because their radio is just an empty cardboard box with some knobs drawn on it.

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    9. Re:The auto pilot by meta-monkey · · Score: 1
      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    10. Re: The auto pilot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IF the plane is not found, count on it being used as a missle with a 250 ton warhead at some future date to ply the airways on a somewhat plausible flight plan to a strategic target. Remember that it has already been written off the inventory and would be a surprise to those with a normalcy bias. I pray I'm wrong.

  2. Posture is Important by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    said that he has "always postured at least that this was an intentional act by one or both pilots."

    1. Re:Posture is Important by edittard · · Score: 2

      I'm guessing it's supposed to be posited. What's more "at least" is in the wrong place. I'm not sure if there even is a right place for it.

      --
      At the bottom of the /. main page it says 'Yesterday's News'. Well they got that right.
  3. Just let go. by Charcharodon · · Score: 1

    How is this still a thing? Terrorist or not, pilots are suicidal just like everyone...the end.

    1. Re:Just let go. by invictusvoyd · · Score: 3, Funny

      Maybe, but you dont exactly need a 747 full of people who have nothing to do with you or your tendencies to commit suicide. All you need is systemd

    2. Re:Just let go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How is this still a thing?

      Because the plane hasn't been found.

    3. Re:Just let go. by Noah+Haders · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not terrorism because the purpose of terrorism is to affect political change through fear and violence. There was no video threat or claiming of responsibility, so no political motivation, so no terrorism.

    4. Re: Just let go. by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      So you're saying if you could control a plane full of people like Charcharodon, you'd crash it in deep ocean?

    5. Re: Just let go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Any automated system can be circumvented with enough information, No system has ever been designed that is foolproof from "human error" I welcome the day our robot overlords rise to power.

      But seriously there was no way to prevent this if it that was the case, there should have been but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I hope one day we find out what happened. Sadly its too late for Flight MH370 and we mourn such a loss of life.

    6. Re: Just let go. by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "In this day and age of emergency failsafe backups".

      What world do you live in? The day and age I inhabit seems to have had it's operating manual written by some clown named Murphy.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    7. Re: Just let go. by gwbennett · · Score: 1

      Effect

      --
      Where is this free beer everyone on Slashdot keeps talking about?
    8. Re: Just let go. by mrbester · · Score: 1

      "It's the only way to be sure"

      --
      "Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
    9. Re:Just let go. by BradMajors · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      It's not terrorism because the purpose of terrorism is to affect political change through fear and violence.

      When done by non-state parties. It is not called terrorism when countries use violence to effect political change.

    10. Re:Just let go. by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

      true. then's it's just an act of war.

    11. Re:Just let go. by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Except when its a country the US doesn't like, then its still terrorism.

    12. Re:Just let go. by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

      example? usually if it's a country the US doesn't recognize, like the palestinian territories.

    13. Re: Just let go. by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

      yes, thank you. i hate that word.

    14. Re:Just let go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      50% of Commercial Pilots have an unnatural Fear of Heights.

    15. Re:Just let go. by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2

      http://www.state.gov/j/ct/list...

      Libya was on there until recently, and North Korea was removed under the last load of negotiations.

    16. Re: Just let go. by Mryll · · Score: 2

      These days I'm surprised that "impact" wasn't used

    17. Re:Just let go. by Richard_at_work · · Score: 0

      Its amusing when someone considers the truth to be "trolling"...

    18. Re:Just let go. by AK+Marc · · Score: 2

      Why would a suicidal pilot go through so much trouble to hide it was a suicide? Was he trying to make sure the insurance paid out to his family? He'd have had to kill the co-pilot to pull it off, unless the co-pilot also thought suicide was a good idea. There are so many simpler ways to commit suicide.

    19. Re: Just let go. by AK+Marc · · Score: 0

      You affect an effect. Your correction is incorrect.

    20. Re:Just let go. by AK+Marc · · Score: 0

      It certainly is when I'm trolling all the racists about the racism in the US. A GOP party chair said “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine.” (And yes, he actually said “read African-American,” that wasn’t inserted.)
      ,br>Deliberately making it harder for workers in the city to vote, and further stating publicly that it's because the effected are mostly African-American.

      But yes, pointing out things like that gets me labeled "troll" all the time here. People don't want to hear the truth. They want to hear the comforting fiction that everyone has the same chances. So I'll keep trolling until the truth is no longer a troll.

    21. Re: Just let go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Same ac. Your correction to my correction is incorrect. Effect is a verb meaning to bring about.

      http://xkcd.com/326/

    22. Re: Just let go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Admit it, that was staged, right? It was the perfect setup.

    23. Re:Just let go. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      How is this still a thing?

      Because the plane hasn't been found.

      Ok let's extend the question: How much more time and effort should we put into finding the plane before it no longer becomes worth it?
      My view is that we should have stopped looking 10 months ago.

    24. Re:Just let go. by jrumney · · Score: 2

      My view is that we should have stopped looking 10 months ago.

      Why? Was it less important than the Air France plane that was found after almost 2 years of searching?

    25. Re:Just let go. by Isaac-1 · · Score: 0

      And why do you think it is harder for workers in cities to vote, compared to rural populations that often have to travel many miles to reach a polling place?

    26. Re:Just let go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We're still looking for lost boats and planes that are over a hundred years old. Just a few days ago on slashdot: Paul Allen Helps Find Sunken Japanese WWII Battleship Musashi Off Philippines.

      If there's an answer to your question it must be: until we find it.

      A better question might be who is paying for it? You asked "How much more time and effort should we put into finding the plane", but who is 'we'? I don't know, but I bet it isn't me or you. Right now I suspect 'we' is the airlines, the airplane manufacturer, and the governments of the people who died. If they don't find it, 'we' will keep looking.

    27. Re:Just let go. by Charcharodon · · Score: 1
      There are so many simpler ways to commit suicide.

      When I worked in the retail industry and occasional during high stress seasons, daydream thoughts of ending my misery crept into my head. They never just involved just ending my misery, but ending the misery of all the people causing my misery as well, (read all the jerks in the mall at Christmas time).

      Now take a crazy person, one that does not just simply fantasize about ending their tormentors, but actually does it, I can see why they didn't want a "simple" way to commit suicide, but one that takes as many of those in the "problem" category with them.

      As a pilot and an aircraft mechanic, I can tell you it is insanely easy to put an aircraft in an unrecoverable flight condition if one chooses to do so, regardless of how the other pilot feels about it. Nothing shy of fully automating the cockpit and firing all the pilots will change that.

      Crazy people be crazy and in this situation they crashed a plane. We've already wasted too much time on this incident and now we are wasting even more.

    28. Re:Just let go. by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      As a pilot and an aircraft mechanic, I can tell you it is insanely easy to put an aircraft in an unrecoverable flight condition if one chooses to do so, regardless of how the other pilot feels about it. Nothing shy of fully automating the cockpit and firing all the pilots will change that.

      And how easy is it to fly the wrong way for hours without the other pilot figuring it out? Turning off transponders and missing "required" radio checks?

    29. Re:Just let go. by AK+Marc · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Whether it is or isn't doesn't change the fact that a chairman of the Republican Party said they want to control the election process to discourage Blacks from voting. The details of the method are unrelated to the stated goals and desires of the Republican Party, announced publicly by an official of the party.

    30. Re:Just let go. by quenda · · Score: 1

      Why? Was it less important than the Air France plane that was found after almost 2 years of searching?

      The AF447 debris was spotted the next day, and bodies and wreckage recovered within a week. It took 2 years to find the black boxes, but they had useful data on the cause of the crash. The Malaysian black boxes are almost certainly of no use.

      Anyway, you are making a big assumption that the GP thinks the AF blackbox search was worthwhile.

    31. Re:Just let go. by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      There was no video threat or claiming of responsibility...

      ...yet.

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    32. Re:Just let go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The AF 447 flight data recorders are leading directly to large and substantial changes to pilot training on stall recovery, high altitude stalls, and unreliable flight instruments. The two year search was worth it just for that.

    33. Re:Just let go. by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 2

      The Malaysian black boxes are almost certainly of no use.

      I wouldn't say of no use. Were the pilots conscious upon crashing? Were the pilots trying to execute a ditch, or trying to crash and kill? Perhaps they made a (failed) attempt at a Mayday call prior to ditching, which would be recorded, and may include clues to the nature of the emergency.

    34. Re:Just let go. by pz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The best theory I've heard is the follows (don your aluminum-foil hats!) --

      Suppose you were a terrorism-for-hire organization, or a straight-up terrorist organization that was planning another big strike against a major superpower. Either one works for this theory. And suppose you had some new, amazing high-tech way of taking over a 777 by remote control. What would you do to either (a) test your system, or (b) impress a potential client? Such an ability would be HUGELY valuable, but only if it remained secret. You'd probably select a flight operated by a developing country that would not nominally have been under the same level of scrutiny as one from the first world, and one that could quickly be taken out of normal radar coverage. You'd take the plane over, disable its communication, move it about against the pilot's will (but still within radar range so that the demonstration could be recorded), and then send it off to crash well outside of radar range in a very deep part of the ocean where it might never be found, so evidence of your nefarious actions would not come to public scrutiny.

      You'd be able to demand a pretty high price in the elite international terrorism market with such a demonstration. So while the act of diverting MH 370 might not in itself have been an act of terrorism, it still might have been executed by terrorists.

      It's far fetched, yes, but it fits the facts better than any other theory I've heard. (Suicide by two non-suicidal pilots? Fire that magically disables communication without affecting navigation? Hijack with modern hardened cockpit access? Etc.)

      --

      Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
    35. Re: Just let go. by djdarko · · Score: 1

      While I wholeheartedly agree that the contents of the flight data recorder are of immense value to the safety of future air travel, the cockpit voice recorders are likely of no value. The CVR uses a two-hour loop, so the audio recorded during the time period from the aircraft's last contact with ATC until well after loss of radar contact was likely overwritten multiple times.

    36. Re:Just let go. by camperdave · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Until we find wreckage, we have no idea what happened to the plane, nor how to prevent it from happening again.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    37. Re:Just let go. by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You're implying that I don't think that the Air France plane was worth abandoning after 2 months too.

      Looking for things isn't cheap. Looking for things on the bottom of the ocean is actually very expensive. I don't think we got our moneys worth on the Air France plane, and unless we find positive evidence that MH317 was abducted by aliens and we establish first contact as a result, we won't get our money's worth on MH317 either.

      There's a point of diminishing returns especially when we're talking about the safety of statistically the safest form of travel by a very VERY large margin. They money would be better spent in programs that could deliver a better return on investment.

    38. Re: Just let go. by camperdave · · Score: 1

      No. Effect (meaning to induce or bring about) is correct here. Affect (meaning to alter or influence) is wrong. Terrorism induces political change. It causes change to happen. Terrorism can only affect or alter political change if that political change was already in the works.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    39. Re:Just let go. by sound+vision · · Score: 1

      If we stopped investigating crashes after 2 months, we would have a lot more planes with serious safety issues in the air.

    40. Re:Just let go. by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes likely. So put a dollar value on the safety issues. We have statistically the single safest form of transport. You're far more likely to die on the way to the airport than on the plane itself. How much money should we spend on making it even safer?

      Its the same thought process as anti-terror. Terrorism is a rounding error statistically in the ways that you are likely to die. Yet we spend billions on anti-terror while roads with huge potholes, blind corners, kill people every day and yet their repair remains unfunded.

      We have my own government telling us on a daily basis that times are tough and we need to make tough decisions and that we shouldn't expect healthcare or university to remain cheap, we should expect the pension to be reduced and to live tougher lives, all while writing a blank check to determine what happened to a plane carrying a number of people who were statistically undertaking possibly the safest activity they could to get from a to b.

      Yes this is all statistics. But here's one certainty: When they find MH317 they won't find anything that will make air travel earthshatteringly safer.

      We have long ago reached the point of diminishing returns.

    41. Re:Just let go. by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

      in a world where ISIS has a social media internet propaganda arm with professional camera skills, if a terrorist attacks a plane and releases a video a year later he would be endlessly mocked.

    42. Re:Just let go. by countach · · Score: 1

      An interesting question is whether a malicious pilot would have the ability to destroy the black box.

    43. Re:Just let go. by countach · · Score: 1

      Investigate yes. But I dare say the number of planes not found after 2 months is pretty damned small.

    44. Re:Just let go. by countach · · Score: 1

      Basically because he has a big ego. He thinks "Hey dudes, see if you can find this plane, losers". Go out in fame, or infame.

    45. Re:Just let go. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Give flying is probably the single safest thing you could do you should be comfortable taking those chances.

      Some things are not worth worrying about much less worth spending hundreds of millions of dollars combating. Do you spend every day worried about a terrorist bombing your house too? It could happen!

    46. Re:Just let go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If he is sleeping not so hard.

    47. Re:Just let go. by Aqualung812 · · Score: 1

      However, if we took all of the money we're spending on trying to find this wreck and build a next-gen blackbox system that streams all cockpit voice and aircraft telemetry over satellite links, we'll never have to search like this again to get those answers.

      --
      Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
    48. Re:Just let go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The airline industry has a healthy obsession with discovering the cause of every airline disaster. The purpose of this is to avoid future disasters from happening for the same reason twice.

    49. Re: Just let go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not the act of a terrorist, that's the act of an arms dealer.

    50. Re:Just let go. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As the CEO of EliteInternationalTerrorismMarket.onion, I can neither confirm nor deny that we have/have not had vendors/customers providing/looking for such systems that are/are not willing to pay/charge a great deal of money for such a system.

    51. Re:Just let go. by delcielo · · Score: 1

      I honestly don't mean this to be flippant, but have you ever lost somebody close to you? Lost somebody semi-close?

      There were hundreds of such tragedies on that airplane, with no closure. People both rational and irrational are wondering what happened to the most important people in their lives.

      In addition to the air safety implications of the investigation, that needs to be respected. Eventually, yes, we'll just need to move on and face the fact that we won't ever know what happened, but it's not as easy as "been a year, cut off the money and stop caring."

      --
      Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
    52. Re:Just let go. by camperdave · · Score: 1

      On the other hand, the search is providing information about the ocean floor, weather patterns, currents, etc. as well as providing on-the-job training and practice for oceanographers, search and rescue teams, and the like. So, it's not like there is no return on the investment being made.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    53. Re:Just let go. by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Right at the top of that page is

      State Sponsors of Terrorism

      The operative word is SPONSORS. This is not states that are actually performing the terrorism, but actively support terrorist groups.

      Some of the things China, NK, Iran pull could be classified as terrorism, but are generally considered provocative acts instead as states cannot commit terrorism.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    54. Re:Just let go. by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Usually the guys with the big egos are less likely to commit suicide. They want to know the answers to the questions like that.

    55. Re:Just let go. by painandgreed · · Score: 1

      It's not terrorism because the purpose of terrorism is to affect political change through fear and violence. There was no video threat or claiming of responsibility, so no political motivation, so no terrorism.

      Nothing to say they were good terrorists. Half of all terrorists are worse than average.

    56. Re:Just let go. by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

      Nothing to say they were good terrorists. Half of all terrorists are worse than average.

      *half of all terrorists are worse than the median.

    57. Re:Just let go. by Trixter · · Score: 1

      Why would a suicidal pilot go through so much trouble to hide it was a suicide? Was he trying to make sure the insurance paid out to his family?

      Yes. In fact, exactly this has happened before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    58. Re:Just let go. by Charcharodon · · Score: 1
      Pilots don't "fly" the plane at the same time. Even during take off and landing only 1 pilot is flying, the other is backing up the pilot in command.

      During the long cruising legs of the flight, it's no different than being on a road trip. One pilot is flying, the other pilot is taking a nap, staring out the window, watching a movie, reading a book, working on a checklist, checking the navigation plot (maybe), talking on the phone, playing some candy crush, etc, etc, etc. The scary part is sometimes both pilots are doing that. Sure they are supposed to both be monitoring the flight, but the reality is a bit different.

      As far as flying the wrong way for hours at a time that's even easier than crashing the plane. At night it's impossible to tell which way you are going unless you are paying very close attention and are familiar with the night sky. Most pilots have zero clue about celestial navigation. During the day it is easier to noitce (the position of the sun), but the ocean looks just like the ocean pretty much everywhere regardless of the aircraft altitude, and if the other guy is not paying attention it's pretty easy to miss..

      To answer your specific question about transponders and radio checks. The transponder is just a simple code box. You reach over and turn it off, no more transponder code, or change the numbers to the wrong code, or you just walk over to the circuit breaker panel and pull the circuit breaker for the transponder. Easy peasy. If you want to get real fancy go to the equipment cabinet and reach in and undo the connector to the transponder.

      As far as the radio checks what "required radio checks" are you talking about? The only time there is a requirement to radio in is when you enter in someone's controlled airspace and another when you leave it. Those spheres of control out in the ocean are huge, so it could be hours before you'd need to talk to someone on land. If there is some requirement to check in, I am not a trans-Atlantic/Pacific pilot so wouldn't know for sure, fooling the other pilot is as easy as the following:

      Pilot 2 goes to the bathroom and then comes back, and then Pilot 1 says "Hey I already called in on the radio". Rinse and repeat.

      Again the only way to make aircraft "safe" from pilot shenanigans is to automate everything and get rid of the pilots.

    59. Re: Just let go. by uninformedLuddite · · Score: 1

      Any automated system can be circumvented with enough information

      Especially if there is a hard drive somewhere in the system

      --
      The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
    60. Re: Just let go. by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 1

      While I wholeheartedly agree that the contents of the flight data recorder are of immense value to the safety of future air travel, the cockpit voice recorders are likely of no value. The CVR uses a two-hour loop, so the audio recorded during the time period from the aircraft's last contact with ATC until well after loss of radar contact was likely overwritten multiple times.

      The last two hours would contain information in my post. Were they conscious when the plane crashed? Were they trying to do a safe ditch or did they aim for destruction? Maybe they tried transmitting in the blind (in which case you'd hear their side of the conversation)? Maybe you'd have some indication if the plane was hijacked.

    61. Re:Just let go. by toddestan · · Score: 1

      My wild theory was that there was some highly valuable cargo onboard. One or both of the pilots were in on the plot to steal it. They diverted the plane, flew to maximum altitude and depressurized the plane to kill the passengers, then executed a water landing someplace remotely in the Indian ocean. They rendezvoused with a boat, unloaded the cargo, and the plane sunk basically intact (so no debris). Though your theory is also interesting - I wonder if a successful water landing could be executed by remote control?

    62. Re: Just let go. by djdarko · · Score: 1

      Affected

    63. Re:Just let go. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Oh horseshit.

      The ocean floor is not being mapped in any meaningful way, the search has zero to do with weather patterns which are being monitored in the area anyway and always have, likewise currents.

      One the job training is another load of crap since much of the search was at first being carried out by navy and now is being handled by a mix of navy and private contractors who do this stuff constantly anyway and when they are doing it they can do it cheaper when they aren't in the middle of nowhere. There's no search and rescue teams at all who are too busy cleaning up back at home after the colossal storms that have ripped through the only two countries currently involved in the search.

      There is no return on investment being made. None. This isn't a science mission, and this isn't training.

    64. Re:Just let go. by camperdave · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that was kind of thin, wasn't it? Still, continuing the search has got to be worth something somewhere along the line to the folks with the purse-strings, otherwise they would have stopped.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    65. Re:Just let go. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Just putting my cynical hat on, what is the one thing that has any value to the purse-string holders? Votes.

      They certainly aren't winning my support spending our tax dollars on this search while cutting back pensions, education and healthcare.

  4. Russia pre-emptively accusing US by mi · · Score: 4, Informative

    With a similar anniversary of flight 17 shot by Russia-sponsored assholes in Eastern Ukraine (by mistake), Russian propaganda is spreading lunatic rumors about America shooting down MH370.

    They don't have to convince anybody with such accusations. They just need to make enough noise to make the perfectly credible accusations against them look similarly lunatic to the short attention-span majority of the world's population...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    1. Re:Russia pre-emptively accusing US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Was missing putin did it post somehow. Thanx for fixing it.

    2. Re:Russia pre-emptively accusing US by mi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Exactly. Thank you very much for providing yet another link to illustrate my point.

      Newsweek is not saying, US did it. The title of the article is "Russian State Media Says [emphasis mine -mi] CIA Shot Down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17".

      And yet, a casual reader would just notice Russia and NATO "trading accusations" — and discount both sides equally...

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    3. Re:Russia pre-emptively accusing US by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Fair and Balanced is neither.

      The "wrong" opinion shouldn't be weighted the same as the "correct" one.

    4. Re:Russia pre-emptively accusing US by quenda · · Score: 1

      They don't have to convince anybody with such accusations. They just need to make enough noise to make the perfectly credible accusations against them look similarly lunatic to the short attention-span majority of the world's population...

      Thats partly right, but overstated. I'd say they merely need to cast doubt - no need to make both cases equally (in)credible.
      And more importantly, the propaganda is intended for domestic consumption, not "the world".

    5. Re:Russia pre-emptively accusing US by mi · · Score: 1

      And more importantly, the propaganda is intended for domestic consumption, not "the world".

      Oh, how one may wish, this were true! It is not. Compare, for example, the world's reaction to US invading Iraq in 2003 — it caused, what Time magazine would later call "World's biggest coordinated protest in history" — with Russia's invasion into Ukraine and annexation of a jewel of a province after a fraudulent "referendum".

      What few protests in the West this caused, they were organized (and attended) mostly by Ukrainian expats — without sympathetic locals.

      Because, somehow, both Left and Right in the West were providing Russia with propaganda-cover. Some called Ukraine's new government "Nazis" while others dismissed them all as "Jews" — without arguing with each other both helped Putin.

      Now, are all of these people on Kremlin's payroll? Probably, not — but they were carefully fed custom-crafted lies by the Kremlin analysts, who approach the government propaganda the way Western corporations approach advertising of goods...

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    6. Re:Russia pre-emptively accusing US by quenda · · Score: 1

      Compare, for example, the world's reaction to US invading Iraq in 2003 — it caused, what Time magazine would later call "World's biggest coordinated protest in history"

      Well, it turns out that the protesters were 100% right on that one.

      But if it makes you feel any better, much as the world loathes Bush II and the neo-con war criminals, they still won't have much trouble beating Vladimir Putin in a global popularity contest. Maybe people don't protest against Russia because there is no point?

      Or is it that invading a distant nation for its oil wealth is not quite the same as a bloodless annexation of a peninsula that was recently part of Russia and is still full of Russians. Khrushchev should never have given it to Ukraine.

  5. Confession Is Good for the Soul by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and " confess to ATC [air traffic control]

  6. Wired article wheel fire by minstrelmike · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There was an article in Wired quite awhile ago by a pilot. He said if there was a sudden change in direction, it was probably because the -experienced- pilot who was familiar with all the airports in the area, was looking for a safe airport. In that direction was a 7,000 foot runway. He theorized there was a nosewheel fire, the pilot turned and then everyone was overcome by smoke so the plane continued on untl running out of fuel.

    http://www.wired.com/2014/03/mh370-electrical-fire/

    1. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Except there are procedures for clearing a cabin of smoke, even with an ongoing fire.

    2. Re:Wired article wheel fire by vux984 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except there are procedures for clearing a cabin of smoke, even with an ongoing fire.

      That's like saying no one could ever be trapped in a burning building because it has sprinklers, fire escapes, and an evacuation plan,

      Even firefighters get trapped and killed -- and they're professionally trained to work around out of control fires, and to bring them under control.

    3. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Dereck1701 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You assume that those procedures are always going to work after....... a fire! Its not inconceivable that a fire on an airliner could damage vital components possibly related to the environmental, radio and even control systems. Don't get me wrong its an unlikely situation where the radio AND avionics/air handling/navigation systems and their backups (if any) are effected simultaneously but when you have 36.5 million commercial air flights per year its bound to happen eventually.

    4. Re:Wired article wheel fire by KermodeBear · · Score: 1

      Not only that, but think of the people on board a plane. Most flight attendants will go their entire career with nothing more dangerous than some turbulence. Sure, they're trained for emergencies in theory, but when something really bad happens in the middle of the ocean at 30,000+ feet, especially for the first time, even trained people will freak the fuck out.

      And that's the trained people. Imagine the general public realizing something is wrong. They're not all going to sit there quietly with smiles on their faces.

      --
      Love sees no species.
    5. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That doesn't explain why the transponder went off. Thou plausible several big airliner pilots think they went bonkers and crash it on purpose.

    6. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Patent+Lover · · Score: 1

      There would be a radio call first if everything was legit.

    7. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      Its nothing like that comparison - the pilots would never be overcome by the smoke, they have an independent oxygen supply and as I said before there are procedures to clear the cabin of any ongoing smoke issue.

      So no, being overcome by smoke and the plane flying on as a result is not one of the active possibilities. There were multiple systems on the aircraft which could have, independently, raised the alarm that there were issues on board. But no alarm was raised, indeed systems were turned off rather than stopped working. Interesting eh?

    8. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      And yet if there were a fire on board that was so catastrophic that it wiped out all of those systems (one of which is, by the way, simply cracking a cabin door open at altitude), the plane should have been unflyable and should have crashed much closer to its last known position.

      Take a look at Swiss Air flight 111 - massive fire onboard and yet the pilots were in full contact with ATC right up until the last five minutes, with evidence that the Captain was fighting the fire in the cockpit at the point the aircraft hit the water.

    9. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The problem is that, even with an independent oxygen supply, the pilots still have to don masks and get the system working before they pass out from smoke inhalation.

    10. Re: Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This theory was considered and explored early on, yet they never found the plane.

    11. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      power loss to the transponder? pulling barkers to try to stop the fire?

    12. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Black+Parrot · · Score: 2

      Except it turned back toward Malaysia, but then turned again generally westward and followed a crooked channel out to sea, along a path that a Malaysian pilot would know isn't covered by air traffic radar, but would not know is covered by military radar.

      Foul play is beyond question. The questions are who and why.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    13. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Never say never. Helios Airways Flight 522, also known as the Helios Ghost Plane was one where the crew was incapacitated by a lack of oxygen and the auto pilot flew the plan until it ran out of fuel and crashed.

      In the helios case the pilot and co-pilot suffered from hypoxia (lack of oxygen) which makes you start to behave like a drunk and judgment becomes about the same as finishing an all night bender. Their judgment was so impacted without them realizing it that they never put on their oxygen masks.

    14. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That makes sense until it's observed that a couple more turns were made once going past the Malaysian Peninsula that led the plane out into Malacca Straight and the Andaman Sea. If they were heading for that runway, then why did they program/make more turns beyond it that would take them out into the Indian Ocean, skirting the land? I suppose maybe they weren't overcome until just before the point where they were going to turn north towards that airport, but if so the satellite data about where they ended up (far to the south in the Indian Ocean) doesn't make sense and also implies another turn.

      A conscious pilot makes more sense because programming the autopilot with the later parts of the observed route doesn't make sense if that airport was the destination. It could only account for the start of it.

    15. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Solandri · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's something I always wondered about with MH370. It used to be that the procedures after smoke in the cabin prioritized trying to locate the source of the smoke and extinguish the fire in-flight. Recently, it's been shifting more towards getting the plane on the ground ASAP (page 33 of PDF).

      Except none of the reporters covering this story seem to be capable of actually researching a story. The obvious question to ask when considering the fire hypothesis is, "what were Malaysia Airlines' in-flight fire procedures?" How did they train their aircrew to react in case of a fire? Did the procedures the crew were supposed to follow still prioritize trying to locate and fight the fire? In which case the Wired article seems implausible. Or were they newer procedures which emphasized landing the plane ASAP? In which case the Wired article might be spot on.

      Still, the biggest flaw in the fire hypothesis IMHO is that the airliner continued to fly for ~7 hours after the "incident". Fires devastating enough to debilitate the crew typically do not go out by themselves. They burn enough equipment to make the aircraft unflyable, or compromise the structural integrity of the aircraft leading to in-flight break-up with passengers and cargo falling out the bottom.

    16. Re:Wired article wheel fire by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2

      Foul play is beyond question. The questions are who and why.

      Yeah there was an interview with a former chief pilot of Malaysia Airlines, and he seemed pretty convinced the captain stole the plane. In particular, the way the aircraft overflew Penang, which was the captain's home city. A day before the flight his wife and kids had gone back to their house in Penang.

    17. Re:Wired article wheel fire by vux984 · · Score: 1

      the pilots would never be overcome by the smoke, they have an independent oxygen supply

      And it can't malfunction? I'm not saying its likely that's what happened, but we can't really rule it out of hand.

      Interesting eh?

      Yes, the whole thing was a very strange and interesting and tragic event.

    18. Re:Wired article wheel fire by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      was a 7,000 foot runway

      Yeah thats Palau Langkawi but while the runway is long, everything else is wrong with that destination. The runway is only really usable from the west, and terrain to the east would make an abort for a heavy aircraft problematic. There is only a small hospital on the island, a couple of police stations and a few ambulances. Its not really set up for night operations either. A return to KLIA would have been the standard way to go, its a bit longer but the aircraft was loaded with fuel and may have needed to dump or burn off fuel to land anyway.

    19. Re:Wired article wheel fire by AK+Marc · · Score: 2

      Yeah, and thing happen. The WTC sprinklers were damaged by the fire, such that they couldn't work to fight a fire. Sometimes the problem breaks things to make things worse.

    20. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There was an article in Wired quite awhile ago by a pilot. He said if there was a sudden change in direction, it was probably because the -experienced- pilot who was familiar with all the airports in the area, was looking for a safe airport. In that direction was a 7,000 foot runway. He theorized there was a nosewheel fire, the pilot turned and then everyone was overcome by smoke so the plane continued on untl running out of fuel.

      http://www.wired.com/2014/03/mh370-electrical-fire/

      Why was this modded up? It's just another idiot theory that cannot be proven until the plane is found. Until the aircraft is recovered in par or in full, no one knows what happened. Period. Here's someone eviscerating the author: http://www.reddit.com/r/MH370/comments/20sasb/very_concise_debunk_of_chris_goodfellows_theory/

    21. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...and, most importantly, not panic while doing so.

    22. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, that's the nearly the last thing undertaken in an emergency.

    23. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i'd pull the barkers too. they're so distracting in an emergency!

    24. Re:Wired article wheel fire by antifoidulus · · Score: 1

      Yes but an important difference between MH 370 and Helios was that with Helios the autopilot kept the plane on it's chartered course(it ran out of fuel circling the Athens airport). MH 370 not only diverted course, it diverted in a very peculiar fashion, seeming aimed to keep out of reach of radar. That hardly seems like it was done accidentally, and I doubt the autopilot would have picked such a course if the pilots were incapacitated.

    25. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Going to low altitude is a common proceedure in a number of emergency scenarios, heading back to land instead of continuing further out over the ocean is also perfectly explicable in an emergency - it's not necessarily an attempt to evade radar. All the news reports keep saying the pilots 'turned off' the transponder, but without the aircraft wreckage, how can they know they did that, rather than the equipment malfunctioning?

    26. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tell that to the pilots of Swiss Air 111 or Valujet 592 or UPS flight 6. The list goes on.

      Of course pilots can be overcome by smoke, even with oxygen masks and smoke clearance procedures. MH370 was carrying a bunch of lithium batteries in its cargo hold, which is equally the likely cause of UPS 6. "Cabin smoke clearance procedures" are quite literally a joke when dealing with smoke being produced on a level of that nature.

    27. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There was very little decent research reporting at all after the crash. Most stories were rehashes of media statements by the Malaysian government or rehashes of other media stories. No media outlet seemed capable of asking any real investigatory questions.

      Even when the government changed the transcript of the last words issued by the pilots (and never released the audio) the media just lapped it up and changed their story too.

      Likewise for the "engineering" work done to "calculate" that the plane took the southern route - no raw data was ever produced and the excel-screenshot released was extremely dubious in its interpretations against simulations (the weighting of a single data point was made to look overly suggestive). While I don't doubt that the engineering team who did those calculations did their best, the results released to the media were very limited and just seemed made to fit the desired outcome (the southern route), and the media just re-reported them with no questioning or requests for the original data used.

      I hope the Australian government got more data than was released to the media because it was an extreme waste of money following a theory from 5 data points *plotted in Excel*.

    28. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh, the pilot knew that airport and after Swissair 111 the preferred way to deal with in-flight fires has become to get the aircraft on the ground asap regardless of weight so, no, KLA would not have been the norm (and in this case he would've had more than enough time to dump fuel anyway). Yet another reason to go to Palau Langkawi is of course that if the radio malfunctioned due to the fire, he might have hoped that he can simply land even though he can't communicate with ATC or other traffic.

    29. Re:Wired article wheel fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      " the plane should have been unflyable and should have crashed much closer to its last known position."

      This is actually very well possible. Since nobody knows where it crashed it could be anywhere. Ocean is HUGE, and on top of that with some bad luck you won't spot a crashed aircraft even if you are looking at the right place.

    30. Re:Wired article wheel fire by digitalchinky · · Score: 1

      Think bigger than just the Ocean. The general consensus is that it went south, the inmarsat data alone certainly points toward a southern track, but some of that data is based on assumptions about hardware calibration - the data alone does not rule out the possibility of a northern flight path no matter how remote. I'm a former Australian 3 letter agency drone, I have no additional insight on this than anyone else, though I do have a rather solid background in electromagnetic radiation.

      Maybe some day a seat cushion will wash up on a beach, or someone motorbiking in northern china or climbing mountains in one of the 'stan' countries will trip over an aileron or something. I certainly hope so anyway, just so the families can get closure at the very least - might be some lessons in it for the aviation sector as well.

    31. Re:Wired article wheel fire by rjmx · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure that removing the dogs would have helped in this case.

    32. Re:Wired article wheel fire by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      You assume that those procedures are always going to work after....... a fire! Its not inconceivable that a fire on an airliner could damage vital components possibly related to the environmental, radio and even control systems. Don't get me wrong its an unlikely situation where the radio AND avionics/air handling/navigation systems and their backups (if any) are effected simultaneously but when you have 36.5 million commercial air flights per year its bound to happen eventually.

      So a fire serious enough to incapacitate the cabin and crew, but not serious enough to damage any other avionics or other flight systems enough that it could continue to fly on until it ran out of fuel?

      Every fire that's serious enough to cause problems... generally ends the flight quickly. Here you're assuming it's bad enough that the passengers and crew are incapacitated quickly, but it left all the avionics and control systems intact for hours. Especially when you consider the fragility of the satellite communications system - the transmitter and receivers are in the avionics bay (underneath the cockpit), while the satellite antennas are above. A fire serious enough would've burned through those antenna cables pretty readily.

      It's why the fire theory, or catastrophic failure theory has been resoundly rejected - planes just do not last that long when on fire - eventually fire will consume something vital. How long you have until then is unknown, but it's definitely not hours and hours. Maybe if it was a tiny fire, but then that wouldn't incapacitate the crew. A fire big enough to do so that they couldn't don their quick-don masks or one that took out both oxygen systems would be serious enough to basically destroy the plane in well under an hour.

      It's why in-flight fires basically demand getting it on the ground ASAP and not nearest airport facility - you don't know how long you have.

    33. Re:Wired article wheel fire by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      You assume that those procedures are always going to work after....... a fire! Its not inconceivable that a fire on an airliner could damage vital components possibly related to the environmental, radio and even control systems. Don't get me wrong its an unlikely situation where the radio AND avionics/air handling/navigation systems and their backups (if any) are effected simultaneously but when you have 36.5 million commercial air flights per year its bound to happen eventually.

      To put this in terms of a car analogy - you're saying "it's extremely unlikely that a car would have all four tires go flat, the steering wheel come off in the drivers hand, the accelerator and brake pedals fail, the brakes fail, and the gear shift broke off, and yet despite this happening on the outskirts of New York, it still made it to San Francisco without repairs or refueling and on schedule - but with [handwaving] million cars on the road it was bound to happen eventually". The problem isn't that the event is extremely unlikely - it's that the level of fire damage required to produce the event will render the aircraft unflyable. Yet it flew, and continued to do so under apparent control for hours... without executing any emergency procedures.

    34. Re:Wired article wheel fire by camperdave · · Score: 1

      You can't crack a cabin door open at altitude. The cabin is pressurized relative to the outside air, and the cabin door is plug fit, meaning it plugs the hole like a stopper in a basin. You have to pull the door into the plane, against the pressure, in order to open it. A mere thousand feet up, the pressure on the door is something like 1500 pounds.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  7. Re:it will never be found by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    NO ONE KNOWS what happens on that island. NO ONE.

    Yet you know that plane has landed there. Sure.

  8. Re:it will never be found by burtosis · · Score: 4, Funny

    Was it a black smoke plume that changes shape a lot? I'm pretty sure the island is moved by now, likely all are lost.

  9. Re:it will never be found by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

    What satellite image would that be? Validated by what independent satellite survey professional?

  10. Re:In related news... by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All these 9/11 conspiracy theories follow the same pattern:

    1) I don't know how something happened
    2) ?????
    3) Therefore the government did it and is covering it up

    You're missing a giant piece of logic there on step number 2.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  11. Re:In related news... by jythie · · Score: 1

    I think (2) is because they 'have their eyes open' and are super smart so they can see patterns where others can not. SUPER SMART DAMN IT!

  12. The scenario that makes most sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is outlined here IMHO:

    http://jeffwise.net/mh370-scen...

    It fits the available data (flight path by mil radar and pings).

    1. Re:The scenario that makes most sense by war4peace · · Score: 1

      That guy is nuts.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    2. Re:The scenario that makes most sense by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but it'd make a better movie than Executive Decision.

  13. Re:it will never be found by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And the Sentinelese switched from salvaging iron from ships to salvaging aluminum from the aircraft. Sure.

  14. Everybodys knows by Revek · · Score: 1

    Kim Jong Un needed new engineers to build his automatic cheese maker.

  15. Re:it will never be found by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    [Citation needed]

  16. Re:In related news... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

    People fall back on these conspiracies in part because the plane has been missing for over a year, and they can't grasp how that's possible without there having been some willful act being part of the explanation. But the ocean is huge, and it's taken longer than this to find missing airliners before - just ask the French.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  17. Re: In related news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because buildings like WTC 7 implode due to fire.

  18. Re: In related news... by phantomfive · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yeah, actually, you followed the pattern right there, to fit your idea more clearly:

    1) I don't know how WTC 7 imploded due to fire.
    2) ??????
    3) Therefore the government did it and is covering it up.

    You have a giant hole in your logic at #2, and #1 is really an argument from ignorance, a classical logical fallacy.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  19. Re:In related news... by rasmusbr · · Score: 1

    I think it's basically this:

    1) I don't know how something happened
    2) Oh, but wouldn't it be exiting if there was a great over-arching story behind it all?
    3) Therefore the government did it and is covering it up

  20. Re:it will never be found by Livius · · Score: 1

    NO ONE KNOWS what happens on that island.

    Unless they saw that particular James Bond movie.

  21. Shoot down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    My theory is a shoot down over the Spratly Islands airspace by China, a highly contested region between China and Vietnam. The plane showed a zero elevation near the location and was on a standard deviation from flight path along the vector. This was soon after entering Vietnamese airspace and the last known transmission. All the subsequent radar traffic is Indonesian military and US satellite data. I can only guess the official version of events is to prevent a possible trigger to a larger conflict that has been theorized as a likely scenario as to how WWW III could begin. This would likely be in the interests of Indonesia, Vietnam, US, and China and US ally Australia. If this is true it would also mean that Indonesia Airlines and military have been infiltrated by Russian operatives with a view to creating mischief that would reduce the US focus on the Baltic, Middle Eastern, and circumpolar contested oil production regions. You must admit there has been way higher than statistical norms of Indonesian airline disasters as of late and coinciding and involving Russian military actions in Ukraine. Some of the dirty tricks could have been a pay back. Indonesia possibly haveing multiple penetration by different operating factions. Divert the attention to Australia as it is extremely remote with poor coverage and vast saces so the search will never conclude, impossible to eliminate the false positive or ever thoroughly search the area, delaying the truth by decades.

    1. Re:Shoot down by jrumney · · Score: 1

      Nice conspiracy theory. Next time try to get the names of the countries involved right and your ranting might start to sound believable.

    2. Re:Shoot down by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 1

      Spratley islands is a long way from last communications-- the middle of the gulf of Thailand. The oil rig worker sighting makes me wonder if it really did go down there, but it doesn't make any sense either.

  22. PPRune favour Hypoxia by Martin+S. · · Score: 1

    There is an extensive thread about this on the Professional Pilot rumour network and they favour Hypoxia

  23. Re:In related news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And then you have the other side of the coin:

    1) I don't know how something happened
    2) Government said it was "terrorists", "pedophiles", "satanists", etc
    3) Case closed, it must be true.

  24. What aboard was worth killing for? by laughingskeptic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It bugs me that from the beginning the MH370 disappearance does not seem to first be being approached as a possible criminal act. Were there any outrageous insurance claims following the flight? Were known drug kingpins contacted about losses that wouldn't normally be reported? Was there something on that plane worth (to an appropriately depraved mind) killing all of those people for?

    1. Re:What aboard was worth killing for? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      On MH370 were 20 employees of US technology company Freescale Semiconductor.

    2. Re:What aboard was worth killing for? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obama said there were 200 AIDS researchers aboard MH17... Mating "Putin hates gays" propaganda with "Putin hates AIDS research". The BBC corrected Obama, stating there were 6 AIDS researchers.

      Nope, the President spouting blatant propaganda about these things in no way should make anyone suspicious about them.

      The key thing is: Why Malaysia? Well, it's a non-NATO nation, see?

    3. Re:What aboard was worth killing for? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh well then it was really another kidnapping plot by North Korea.....

    4. Re:What aboard was worth killing for? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was considered. They found no claims of responsibility, no motive, no suspicious behaviour by crew or passengers (except a couple of asylum seekers traveling on false passports), no suspicious insurance policies, no signs of mental illness.

      An explosion and fire that took out most of the cockpit systems is as good an explanation as any until they find some evidence.

  25. I am the pilot of MH370 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I am the pilot of MH370.

    I know the pilots' security routine: quick metal detector gate and a light symbolic patdown. Smuggling the ceramic knife ($5 at Kitchens-R-Us) in my shoe will be easy.

    I will execute at international ATC handoff, so it takes time for them to notice neither tower has my plane. I will excuse myself to the bathroom, retrieve the knife, and return to slit the co-pilot's throat. I will not be intercepted or talked down from my destiny, so I will shut down all the comms I can.

    I will turn west, the route with the least amount of land before open ocean - I will avoid land to avoid military radar. (One radar does pick me up, but hey, no plan is perfect.) A moment at high altitude, combined with manipulation of cabin air flow, will take care of crew and passengers.

    I will circle southeast towards the Antarctic, away from shipping routes and flight traffic. I will fly until my fuel is almost gone, to avoid leaving a fuel slick behind. Then I will land on the sea - all pilots practice doing that - and sink in one piece, so as not to leave a debris field.

    All I do is for one goal: to disappear.

    Why, you may ask. That is for me to know. Maybe I have decided to check out, and my culture frowns on suicide - and insurance won't pay off to my family in suicide. That's the point of disappearing - to keep you from knowing.

    Would it be too cheesy for me to quote a TV series here: "This is my design."

  26. Pilot priorities during an emergency by Cochonou · · Score: 4, Informative

    He added that "the first thing you're going to do" as a pilot during an emergency is "don the oxygen mask" and "confess to ATC [air traffic control], 'We've got an issue, we need to return.'"

    This is quite a surprising statement. In an emergency, the pilot priorities are:
    1 - Aviate -- Maintain control of the aircraft
    2 - Navigate -- Know where you are and where you intend to go
    3 - Communicate -- Let someone know your plans and needs
    in that precise order, and not in any other order. They are trained to proceed like this.

    1. Re:Pilot priorities during an emergency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So in other words, you're saying some dumbass old white man that was appointed by some Republican to an FAA position forced them to not communicate until it was a last resort? You're telling me that the Republicans are so stupid that they force pilots to not communicate. This is ridiculous. No wonder they kill so many people in those damn things. The Republicans hate the public and want us to ie.

    2. Re:Pilot priorities during an emergency by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2

      I would still put

      0 - Respirate at the top in a pressurised aircraft.

      And since the crew did turn west, we need to explain why. Did they have a navigation failure? Thats strange with the Malay peninsula lit up around them.

    3. Re:Pilot priorities during an emergency by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Negative.

      Tell me what the plane that went down in the Hudson did? Communicate, aviate, navigate. At least until the decision to go in the Hudson was made, after which there was no need to communicate, and it because Aviate-only. But while crashing (after engine failure), he had a conversation with ATC. That's more important than anything else, despite being last on the list.

      That list is for the Cessna fliers who never have, and never will fly anything else. Nothing you say to ATC matters. There's no tower at your municipal airport so nobody is listening, and, unless you are very very lost in Alaska, they'll find you easily enough. The list exists so that you don't have any excuses for why you made a fatal mistake (I was too busy calling in a course update, I didn't see them). It's not a rule for real aviators. If you have a problem, communicate. You have to tell people what's going on in order for someone to help you and your passengers.

    4. Re:Pilot priorities during an emergency by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      He added that "the first thing you're going to do" as a pilot during an emergency is "don the oxygen mask" and "confess to ATC [air traffic control], 'We've got an issue, we need to return.'"

      This is quite a surprising statement. In an emergency, the pilot priorities are:

      1 - Aviate -- Maintain control of the aircraft

      Broadcasting isn't first priority, though donning an O2 mask in the event of unbreathable atmosphere would be right at the top of the list. There have been crashes in the past when this was not done, and any competent crew should be donning masks if there is any reason to think the air might not be breathable, which would include smelling smoke or a pressurization alarm.

      Broadcasting an SOS is a very high priority, even if you haven't gained complete control of the aircraft, even if all you have a chance to do is shout mayday or whatever. Even if by some miracle you do manage to not die on impact, you want somebody to be looking for you immediately, especially over water. Calling mayday just requires keying the mic and shouting the word.

      The circumstances of MH370's disappearance were anything but normal from a procedures standpoint.

    5. Re:Pilot priorities during an emergency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Navigate: Turn plane in GENERAL direction of a nearby airport that has lengthy runway, no mountains, will be manned when your arrive, has approach over unpopulated area. This is done instinctively from awareness of their position. Later corrections will be made if able based on looking up charts, discussions, etc. Donning oxygen masks is not first thought because oxygen feeds fires and you want to hope the fire is in the cargo area or cabin area and not yet in the overhead electronic area. As with any electrical fire, you turn off every darn device you can think off that you don't need so as to isolate the electrical overload, by pulling all circuit breakers and busses you can reach. Abandoning the cockpit in hopes of later gaining re-entry is one scenario which can be rather appealing if molten plastic is dripping down onto nylon uniforms. Such flaming uniforms make the "communicate'' portion less of a goal since ATC can't do much about it. Forget cabin oxygen, cockpit oxygen is separate and all that matters. Once that is exhausted, hypoxia and various settings of autopilot result in rhum line route at constant altitude until fuel exhaustion which would probably be starboard engine first, then heading change, then stable descent into ocean, pilots and passengers already dead for hours.

    6. Re:Pilot priorities during an emergency by Cochonou · · Score: 1

      Tell me what the plane that went down in the Hudson did? Communicate, aviate, navigate. At least until the decision to go in the Hudson was made, after which there was no need to communicate, and it because Aviate-only. But while crashing (after engine failure), he had a conversation with ATC. That's more important than anything else, despite being last on the list.

      Indeed. Now compare this to other recent high profile crashes: AF447 (Rio-Paris, crashed in the middle of the pacific) - no mayday. QZ8501 (Surabaya - Singapore, crashed in the java sea) - no mayday. From these recent events, I wouldn't say that not communicating before regaining control of the aircraft is unusual.

      That list is for the Cessna fliers who never have, and never will fly anything else.

      I am far for being an aviator. However I got this information from people who do fly airliners. Maybe they are not real pilots, maybe they have been badly trained... but in this case, they are far from being the only ones.

    7. Re:Pilot priorities during an emergency by Cochonou · · Score: 1

      For that AF447 flight, I should have written: crashed in the middle of the atlantic. Sorry for the mistake.

    8. Re:Pilot priorities during an emergency by advocate_one · · Score: 1

      Calling Mayday properly requires selecting the Guard frequency to transmit on. Everybody normally flies commercial and military aircraft with the guard receiver selected so anybody around will hear the shout... and perform relay duties if required. But to make a proper Mayday call requires actually selecting the emergency frequency on the radio to transmit on. Some aircraft also allow the pilot to set the Crash Position Indicator transmitter going as well in advance of the crash so the satellite systems can pick it up and triangulate on them...

      --
      Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    9. Re:Pilot priorities during an emergency by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      AF447 (Rio-Paris, crashed in the middle of the pacific) - no mayday.

      Yeah, but they didn't realize they had a problem. They thought they'd recover any second, while they flew into the ocean.

      QZ8501 (Surabaya - Singapore, crashed in the java sea) - no mayday.

      Again, another stall under full power.

      The bad pilots that killed everyone didn't call in. But did UA154 radio in? Did anyone live? Note that was at a lower altitude with less time, and he still had a chat. Listen to the radio call. It's online. I wouldn't take the deadly pilots as the best example.

    10. Re:Pilot priorities during an emergency by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Calling Mayday properly...

      I know that calling mayday properly takes work. However, keying the transmitter and shouting your callsign and the word does not.

      A proper mayday call is to be preferred over just yelling mayday into the radio. However, if for whatever reason you don't have time for that (maybe because you're busy trying to aviate/navigate), making an improper distress call is preferable to just silently wrestling with the plane until you crash. Just yelling mayday will at least get people looking for you, etc.

  27. Rockwell Collins CMU-900 overheat cut off radio a by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    Rockwell Collins CMU-900 overheat cut off radio and the pilots made the trun for the best nearest airport before being over come by the fire.

  28. True but by rsilvergun · · Score: 0

    it's pretty well documented that Pearl Harbor was a conspiracy. There's also a lot of weird goings on after 9/11. Like how much of a pass on everything the Saudi's got.

    Now, we're probably never going to find out if there was anything going on. Personally I think some folks were hoping for a minor terrorist incident to scare the rubes back into line and got more than they expected. It doesn't really matter. What we should take away from 9/11 was that after it happened we panicked and let the powers that be run roughshod over us all. The world didn't change after 9/11 because of 9/11. It was a tragedy, but nothing truly major was lost. We let it change after that when we let fear and anger get the best of us.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:True but by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      it's pretty well documented that Pearl Harbor was a conspiracy.

      Oh, this is a new one. You mean it wasn't the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor? Because that's what it sounds like you're saying.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:True but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think he's referring to the idea that the government knew that the Japanese would attack, but did nothing to prevent the attack. The goal there being to shock the people into accepting entering the war or something.

    3. Re:True but by Shakrai · · Score: 1

      it's pretty well documented that Pearl Harbor was a conspiracy

      And yet you couldn't provide a single link. Not even to Wikipedia.

      Most credible historians shoot down such notions, FYI.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    4. Re:True but by Etherwalk · · Score: 2

      it's pretty well documented that Pearl Harbor was a conspiracy

      And yet you couldn't provide a single link. Not even to Wikipedia.

      Most credible historians shoot down such notions, FYI.

      No it's not. It's well-documented that if a very slightly different serious of events had occurred leading up to Pearl Harbor, either (1) Battleship Row would have been ready for the attack and there would have been much smaller loss of life, or (2) the US Carriers would have been at Pearl Harbor, fundamentally shifting the strategic balance of power in the pacific from 10:4 favoring Japan to closer to 10:0 favoring japan--so the Americans were incredibly fortunate in how much the loss of life galvanized the nation and how it did not seriously undermine their strategic interests.

      But there's not enough evidence to show any of it was deliberate. So all you've got is speculation. When you're arguing someone deliberately let thousands of Americans and the pride of the navy old guard die and be destroyed, you need more than speculation.

      Conspiracy theories emerge when you either have complicated events that are not entirely explained or when it would have been very easy for one or two actions to have caused a profoundly different result. Think of them as very unlikely possibilities that should, for the most part, be assumed to be untrue. A conspiracy theory only becomes a conspiracy when you have enough evidence to show that it is not merely possible, but that it is the most probable version of events. (There is a middle-ground, obviously, where investigation should be done to rule it out, if it is somewhat probable but not the most probable version of events.)

    5. Re:True but by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      it's pretty well documented that Pearl Harbor was a conspiracy.

      It's pretty clear that the US had intel that the Japanese intended to attack. Though the where and when were never clear. There may have been a cover-up about intel. After all, it wasn't a credible threat, until it happened. But once it happened, every nutjob conspiracy theorist and family member of a dead person would be claiming that they should have done something.

      So yeah, I do think there was a cover-up about Pearl Harbor. A cover-up designed to protect the military intelligence organization who didn't figure it out until after it happened. There was no conspiracy to "allow" it to happen, no conspiracy to make it happen, and no conspiracy to cover up American knowledge of the attack (As the belief at the time was that there was no planned attack for that time and place), just a cover-up to hide some of what they did know, so as to not make it look like they should have known.

      I've seen no "documentation" that contradicts that opinion, except at, perhaps, a micro-level, where one person guessed that there'd be an attack "soon", and that wasn't officially recognized or widely known.

    6. Re:True but by mrsquid0 · · Score: 1

      Of course the Japanese did not bomb Pearl Harbour. Teddy Roosevelt did it, after FDR released him from cryosleep.

      --
      Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
    7. Re:True but by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      That's deep.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    8. Re:True but by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Battleship row was not supposed to be ready for the attack. Pearl Harbor was supposed to be a safe haven for the US fleet, defended by the Army. In fact, General Short's actions were very questionable, and he seemed much more interested in preventing sabotage (despite orders that he consider air attack as a primary threat) and training pilots as scratch infantry. In fact, the Navy supplied the bulk of the effective defense.

      Are you referring to the message to Pearl Harbor about the delivery of the fourteen-part message that was delayed due to transmitter problems and wound up being delivered by commercial means about as the attack started? I doubt Short would have paid any more attention to it than his orders or the war alert message he'd received ten days earlier. (A similar warning was sent to the Pacific Fleet at the same time, and Kimmel did seem to take it seriously. All battleships in Pearl Harbor were told to be able to man one anti-aircraft gun on a few minutes' notice.)

      The aircraft carriers were quite busy in this period, and were not normally in Pearl Harbor. USS Enterprise was scheduled to be in harbor the morning of the attack, but was delayed one day by weather, and the other two operational Pacific Fleet carriers were not scheduled to be in harbor. At this time, both the US and the Japanese had six good fleet carriers, and Japan had four crappy light carriers against one US crappy fleet carrier wannabe. It wasn't going to go from 10:4 to 10:0.

      Roosevelt had been trying to get the US into the war against Germany, and had ordered the US Navy to wage war against the German navy a few months earlier. Roosevelt seems to have wanted to avoid war with Japan, probably thinking it a distraction. The Tripartite Pact bound Germany and Italy to go to war against the US only if the US attacked Japan, which didn't happen, not to mention Hitler's habit of breaking treaties if they became inconvenient.

      There was an extensive Congressional inquiry into the Pearl Harbor attacks just after the war, and a whole lot of material available. There really wasn't enough left uncovered to fuel a reasonable conspiracy theory, but that didn't stop people.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  29. Are we sure it went south? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

    As I understand it, doppler shift data from the satellite link points to a southerly trajectory, but the transciever in the satellite ground station compensates for doppler, leaving only noise. So much that we assume about the aircraft assumes the doppler data is correct, but it depends on a few Hz of shift.

    1. Re:Are we sure it went south? by ChumpusRex2003 · · Score: 3, Informative

      There are several sources of Doppler shift and compensation. There is Doppler shift between aircraft and satellite, and between satellite and ground station. The ground station automatically compensates for all the Doppler shift between GS and satellite.

      The Doppler shift between aircraft and satellite is partially compensated by tracking the Doppler shift in transmissions from the satellite to the aircraft. Without compensation by the aircraft, Doppler shift would be in the region of 300-400 Hz, which exceeds the bandwidth of the channel allocation. The compensation is subject to local oscillator error in the aircraft transceiver, hence individual aircraft will apply the compensation slightly differently.

      Although the degree of compensation varies between aircraft to aircraft, it could be fitted with a standard linear regression. This method was apparently verified by Inmarsat on several other aircraft with similar transceivers, and was calibrated based upon transmissions with known locations/velocities.

  30. Re: Rockwell Collins CMU-900 overheat cut off radi by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

    Did it also cut off ADS-B and ADS-C?

    Palau Langkawi might have been closer by a few minutes but its not set up for night operations, doesn't have substantial medical or emergency facilities, and has a big hill at the eastern end of the runway. The logical action would be to return to KLIA. To do that they would have to overfly the Cameron Highlands again, but its only 6000 feet high.

  31. Re:In related news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1) I don't know how something happened
    2) Therefore the government did it and is covering it up
    3) ?????
    4) Profit!

  32. The Republicans created the FAA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    like their kind did the EPA. That is proof they hate us and want us to die. Eisenhitler created it. He loved his killing so you know he created it to kill us. He was one of the leaders in a war that killed over 120 million people. He is literally a megakiller. The FAA is just more of his culture of death. The Republicans have honed that to a fine edge. They kill kill kill as is the way of their kind.

  33. Cell/Mobile phone data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does anyone know if the telecommunication companies have assisted in triangulating last known position from passengers mobile phones?
    Surely not all of the passengers phones where switched off??

    1. Re:Cell/Mobile phone data by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      They were all on, they just never had a connection. I've tried to get reception at 30k ft. I've never had any reception at all.

  34. Re:In related news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All these 9/11 conspiracy theories follow the same pattern:

    1) I don't know how something happened

    2) ?????

    3) Therefore the government did it and is covering it up

    You're missing a giant piece of logic there on step number 2.

    So apply the pattern to the following:

    The governments have a long history of using propaganda against their own people, and have coopted all the mainstreme news agencies..

    We saw the buildings collapse like they were demolished. Jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel, yet we see melted steel pouring out of the buildings before their demolition. We look and see months of elevator renovations, cited even in Elevator World, and then refusal by the government to produce any permits or documentation of the renovations.

    Elevator "modernization" was perfect cover for weakening the structure, and in fact, the buildings were designed to be able to be weakened for demolition from the elevator shafts alone. There was a second smaller explosion, after molten steel was seen pouring from the buildings for some time (probably thermite cutting through the last remaining supports), and this blast brought both buildings down in on themselves just like a proper demolition -- TWICE. No big piece fell over to the sides, these were textbook demolitions. TWICE. Sorry, it stretches the bounds of sanity to consider "sane people" like you actually think that plane-jacking terrorists would just be that lucky.

    I won't even get into the oddities surrounding the airplanes that crashed.

    Building engineers designed buildings to burn to a husk and remain standing, even in the force of hurricane winds. After 9/11, building engineers petitioned NY DEMANDING a reinspection of ALL buildings because a plane shouldn't be able to take out a skyscraper, if one could then ALL buildings may be at risk from just stormy weather and winds.

    The person who dismisses 9/11 conspiracy theorists is typically one who has never even attempted to approach the issue from a scientific standpoint. They've never looked at the forces involved, or even watched a few of the videos of the collapse. They repeat the "conspiracy theories are crazy" BS ignoring the presence of a disinformation campaign that amplifies the most absurd theories. Most people have never done any research whatsoever to fact check the claims in the media, and yet they dismiss out of hand for no reason at all the notion that 9/11 was a conspiracy to manufacture consent for war as part of the "never let a good disaster go to waste" disaster capitalism.

    People like you remind me one of those who use god-of-the-gaps argument: "You weren't there! You can't know what happened! Science can't tell you the past!" No, the "9/11 conspiracy theories" don't jump from "I don't know how something happened" then "assume the government did it". They start by looking at evidence, as any scientist would, and then conclude that the hypothesis given by the government and promoted by the mainstream media is false, refuted by evidence. And in the explanation of evidence and the media and government statements we come to realize they must be complicit in a cover up.

    I suppose next you'll tell me that the WMDs were real, not just a lie to go to war? I guess the pentagon papers don't exist? I guess MKULTRA didn't happen? Neither does COINTELPRO? I guess you're content to believe #GamerGate is just a hate movement against women? I mean, that's what CBS, NBC, ABC, etc. are all (falsely) reporting on it. Give me a break. You've sound like you've been indoctrinated by state s

  35. What about the cell phones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The wierd thing about MH370 is no one is talking about cell phone records. ALL planes have active cell phones- there's always some phones left on in luggage, etc, that can transmit their status to cell phone towers, and in the event of an emergency you'd expect people to be frantically texting home while they were flying back over Malaysian airspace.

    I'd have pulled the cell phone tower records for all the companies in Malaysia with towers near the flight path.

    But, I've always believed it was one of the pilots, intentionally killing himself and all the passengers. Kill his copilot, depressurize the plane, kill the passengers, fly into the ocean. Nothing else really makes any sense.

    1. Re:What about the cell phones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's a simple explanation about the lack of calls/texts: The flight departed Kuala Lumpur around midnight, with mostly Chinese passengers returning home. What do you think 99% of these passengers would be doing within 10 minutes of take-off? That's right - they pull up their blankets, turn off the overhead lights, and fall asleep.

  36. Re:In related news... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Sorry to yank you out of "The Matrix", but displaying such blatant willful ignorance about reality is just escapism now.

    Are you going to keep a running count of the number of logical fallacies in your post? You want it to be the government, so you blame the government.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  37. No debris - ever? by psinet · · Score: 1

    If your goal was to train hundreds of Jihadis in the art of hijacking modern jet-liners, then there is no real substitute for having the real thing in your possession - even if it is forever grounded in an underground bunker. You cannot just go and buy a 777-200 without leaving a trail. Plus a fair deposit......

    I still wonder if the plane was stolen. No 'terrorist announcement' motive needed.

    The fact that nothing has been identified is too mysterious. No oxygen masks, foam, rubber, sandals-nothing, 300 tonnes makes a big debris field, which expands exponentially over the weeks and months. All it takes is a single identifiable object found by a fisherman, beachcomber, surfer, coast guard, shipping or dog, in what is now a 12 month period.

    Maybe it didn't 'go down' at all.

    1. Re:No debris - ever? by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      If your goal was to train hundreds of Jihadis in the art of hijacking modern jet-liners, then there is no real substitute for having the real thing in your possession - even if it is forever grounded in an underground bunker. You cannot just go and buy a 777-200 without leaving a trail. Plus a fair deposit......

      I still wonder if the plane was stolen. No 'terrorist announcement' motive needed.

      The fact that nothing has been identified is too mysterious. No oxygen masks, foam, rubber, sandals-nothing, 300 tonnes makes a big debris field, which expands exponentially over the weeks and months. All it takes is a single identifiable object found by a fisherman, beachcomber, surfer, coast guard, shipping or dog, in what is now a 12 month period.

      Maybe it didn't 'go down' at all.

      Where would it go? If they flew anywhere near a coast they'd be picked up by military radar. There are a lot of conflicts in that area - Afghanistan, India/Pakistan, anywhere in the Middle East, piracy in the Indian Ocean. Unless they had specialized gear the aircraft would not be able to detect and avoid military radar.

      It just seems like a real stretch.

  38. Iran Air Flight 655 by dillee1 · · Score: 2

    American has it own share of assholery
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

    And of cause the russkies shot down a few airliner themselves too.

    1. Re:Iran Air Flight 655 by mi · · Score: 1
      From a fellow ex-USSR expatriate:

      The 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire once said, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist." That is, indeed, a great trick, but hardly the greatest. The devil's even greater and, therefore, less known trick, was to convince the world that God is just as much of an evil, corrupt, and conniving trickster as he is, if not worse. The acceptance that both sides are morally equal has allowed the devil to stop living incognito, get out into the big wide world, start a legitimate business, print out business cards with his real name and contact information, put his face on a billboard, and make a good living by consulting the Russian government.

      --
      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  39. A fire!!! A face melting fire! by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 1

    My theory is that there was a flash fire that pretty much instantly went from "Do you smell smoke" to "Ahhh my face is melting" then one of the brave pilots managed to dial in a rough turn to home into the autopilot before either fleeing the cockpit or dying. Then the plane filled with toxic smoke and sailed along with a dead bunch of occupants until it ran out of fuel. The autopilot then greased a perfect landing in the ocean keeping the plane largely intact where it slid peacefully to the sea floor.

    This would explain the oddities, the lack of contact, the rough homeward direction, and its eventual destination.

    I don't buy the suicide part because the pilots would assume that the plane would be found. Whereas they could simply screw up the landing and that would make them look stupid but not necessarily suicidal.

    And the whole bit about him practising weird things with a flight simulator that is what most people do with flight simulators. A pilot would be the last person on earth do do something normal with a flight simulator. So either he is going to practice edge cases as a skill building exercise or he is going to slalom a 747 through a huge city because that is fun.

    My personal bet is that the first bit of debris will show up in New Zealand and this will allow searchers to backtrack the currents to its actual destination.

    What this all screams to me is that planes should be sending a regular report up to the satellites. It could even be an efficient system where the satellites don't even bother transmitting it back to earth unless requested. Or they could transmit a summary such as transponder, altitude, direction, speed, fuel, and maybe a vague summary of the system health back to earth and leave the details available upon request only.

  40. Re:In related news... by Mocko · · Score: 1

    The official narrative is the conspiracy theory.
    When as in 1) the promoters of said narrative/theory proffer only the weak Government explanation that Cessena flight-school drop-outs with utility knives overcame a large, retired Marine pilot and performed flight maneuvers that a majority of type-certified pilots could not.

    Defenders of the Narrative fall squarely in 1) as well, but by willful ignorance.

  41. Re:In related news... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    OK, you're framing it as different approach anyway....defend the weakness of your position by trying to say "the other side is weak, too."

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  42. I know what happened by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    220kg of lithium batteries caught fire in the hold.
    The pilot having watched the Denzel Washington movie Flight, climbed in an attempt to put out the fire.
    It didn't work out.

  43. Iraq war or Crimea invasion by mi · · Score: 1

    Well, it turns out that the protesters were 100% right on that one.

    It only "turns out" that way, because those same people, who protested it back then, also run major media outlets. Do you suppose, that Time-magazine's reporter could've written: "We were all morons doing the bidding of America's enemies"?

    No, the most you could get 10 years after he went protesting, was to admit, their protest was coordinated — though it is unclear by who...

    Bush II and the neo-con war criminals

    Please, what "war crimes" are you talking about? Saddam Hussein violated the cease-fire agreement of 1992 so many times, Clinton should've resumed shooting in his time. No, it was no "war crime". But let's not get too side-tracked...

    much trouble beating Vladimir Putin in a global popularity contest

    Every little bit counts. Like I said, Putin does not need a "win" — a "tie" would be sufficient. And Westerners have always been gullible — the generation calling Bush "war criminal" was raised by morons seriously equating Joseph McCarthy to Lavrenty Beria...

    Or is it that invading a distant nation for its oil wealth

    Ah, I should have known... Where there are "war crimes", "war for oil" can not be far behind — like Moon-landing denials it just would not die. For 10 years Saddam Hussein was prevented from selling his oil. All we had to do to get it was to agree to lifting the sanctions — which would've been much cheaper than war. Instead, we went after oil-tycoons for breaking the embargo.

    Of course, it was "better" — for we didn't annex anything. But see, win an argument, just use a (false) tu quoque to tie your opponent. And you are now doing (or trying to do) the same to me...

    peninsula that was recently part of Russia

    Score another one for Kremlin! Last time Crimea was part of Russia was 1954 — or 60 years ago. Before that, in 1918, it was part of Ukraine (36 years earlier). So, which one was "recent"?

    and is still full of Russians

    It is just as full of ethnic Ukrainians now, but, more importantly, achieving that nice White appearance required ethnic cleansing it off Crimean Tatars, who were only allowed to return by the newly-independent Ukraine in 1990-ies. They are now in trouble againsuspected by the occupiers for their loyalty to Ukraine.

    So what if it is "full of Russians"? Texas, Arizona, and California are full of Mexicans — would some new Santa Anna be justified invading those states and organizing a referendum?

    Khrushchev should never have given it to Ukraine.

    Yes, and Romanov should not have sold Alaska — did you just pre-emptively justify Russian invasion into US? Can Japan now use the example to take back Kuril Islands? Japanese special forces may be just as "polite" as Russians were in Crimea and, once the occupation succeeds, arranging a "referendum" i

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  44. Most likely scenario needs no foul play. by stoatwblr · · Score: 1

    "then one of the brave pilots managed to dial in a rough turn to home into the autopilot before either fleeing the cockpit or dying"

    The plane turned and tracked perfectly to the longest runway in the area - Pulau Langkawi

    Pulau Langkawi is on the east side of Malaysia, a LOT longer than KL and has an easy ocean approach. KL is on the opposite side of Malaysia to the flight and there are 8000 foot mountain ranges in the way.

    After passing Pulau Langkawi it seems to have been blown around by high altitude winds and got itself into (and stalled out of) coffin corner.(*)

    Much of the "skirted around islands" shit was down to various countries refusing to admit that it went straight overhead without setting off their alert systems and the remaining tracks fit the known wind directions that day.

    This insistence comes down to "Loss of Face" - Indonesia eventually admitted they had no records for the aircraft - not that they'd tracked it flying around their territory - and that admission involved greater loss of face than their initial denials.

    All in all the most likely explanation is some sort of catastrophic failure which overwhelmed the crew between the time they turned around and the time the plane reached the field (easily explained by a fire fed by the cockpit oxygen system(**)). The pilot was known to be fastidious about planning and to have kept alternates programmed into the autopilot for each leg of his flights.

    "What this all screams to me is that planes should be sending a regular report up to the satellites."

    Many do. It's an added cost option on 777s and Malaysia airlines declined to spend the money for it. Such squawks are how the Air France debris was initially located.

    MIA was facing major cutbacks after massive losses. Airline staff in all areas were reported to be lacking morale and there had been a large number of safety incidents both in the air and in maintenance shops (including a major cigarette-started fire which destroyed a lot of stuff in a heavy maintenance hanger, in an area which is non-smoking). The odds are high that this was another such event.

    http://www.wired.com/2014/03/m... - remains the most compelling theory.

    The only conspiracies which need to be considered are those of coverups - both within MIA and within various neighbouring countries military as they don't want to admit how badly they dropped the ball.

    Having seen airlines go out of their way to deny culpability (Air New Zealand TE901), I'm quite prepared to believe that manglement would throw the pilots under a bus to save their own wretched skin.

    (*) The electrical fire theory (possibly oxygen fed(**)) could have dumped all sorts of random garbage into the autopilot, but the general feeling is that after Pulau Langkawi the plane was simply flying "straight and level" (which will inevitably result in altitude changes unless manually corrected) and no bearings set, so crosswinds would cause directional changes - and all the known changes match prevailing winds at altitude.

    (**) http://www.iasa-intl.com/folde... http://www.skybrary.aero/index...

  45. Re: In related news... by uninformedLuddite · · Score: 1

    Maybe step 2 could be that the BBC reported it 20 minutes before it actually collapsed and that seems suspicious.

    --
    The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
  46. Re:In related news... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Taking your .sig and applying the reasoning pattern you decry, the government was behind systemd.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  47. Re:In related news... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Your logic is impeccable.

    Incidentally, I've been trying to change my sig for a while now, but sig-changing is broken on Slashdot. I can't wait until they fix that bug.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  48. Re: In related news... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    No, that doesn't combine with step 1 to produce step 3.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  49. Re: In related news... by uninformedLuddite · · Score: 1

    Sorry. I got confused I always see step 3 as profit.

    --
    The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
  50. Re:it will never be found by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Those would be the satellite images released by Russia. They also have images of MH17 getting shot down by a fighter jet by the way. Totally legit.

  51. Re: In related news... by djdarko · · Score: 1

    The steel didn't need to melt to fail - it only needed to be heated to the point of being sufficiently weakened so as to lose its structural integrity. As to why the buildings collapsed down, just like a demolition, it is because the same primary force is acting in both cases - gravity. Gravity pulls all parts of the building down towards the ground - toppling over would require a MASSIVE lateral force to accelerate the incredible mass of the building laterally. There is no plausible mechanism for generating that force or applying it to the building's structure. Just because conspiracies have happened in the past doesn't mean that 9/11 was an intentional act perpetrated by the US government. Is it possible that some small element of the US intelligence apparatus knew of some aspect of the attack in advance and let it happen? Yes, but it is improbable. Don't attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

  52. Re: In related news... by djdarko · · Score: 1

    Watch this documentary by National Geographic called "9/11: Science and Conspiracy". In it, they address all of the doubts that you raised, including the steel, the collapse, and thermite. http://youtu.be/OrBNJJc-DIY

  53. I hope the author learns how to do his homework by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

    Feith said that turning off the communications and taking the aircraft to the remote Indian Ocean was a course of action consistent with someone trying to purposefully lose an airliner. "It's 20,000-plus feet deep there,

    Errr, no. 20,000 ft deep would put it in a fairly deep oceanic trench. Since we don't know where it landed, the appropriate depth to pull out of ones arsehole is the average depth of the oceans. Which is 12-14 thousand feet depending on who you ask.

    Being wrong by a factor of about 50% doesn't suggest that any of the rest of TFA would be worth reading.

    --
    Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"