Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: What we know and don't know
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/10/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-knowns-unknowns/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

(CNN) -- As the search for a missing Malaysia Airlines jet entered a fourth day Tuesday, investigators remained uncertain about its whereabouts.

Here's a summary of what we know and what we don't know about Flight 370, which was carrying 239 people when it disappeared from radar screens over Southeast Asia.

THE FLIGHT PATH

What we know: The Boeing 777-200ER took off from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, at 12:41 a.m. Saturday (12:41 p.m. Friday ET). It was scheduled to arrive in Beijing at 6:30 a.m. the same day, after a roughly 2,700-mile (4,350-kilometer) journey. But around 1:30 a.m., air traffic controllers in Subang, outside Kuala Lumpur, lost contact with the plane over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam.

What we don't know: What happened next. The pilots did not indicate any problem to the tower, and no distress signal was issued. Malaysian military officials cite radar data as suggesting the plane might have turned back toward Kuala Lumpur. But the pilots didn't tell air traffic control that they were doing so. And we don't know why the plane would have turned around.

'We have to find the aircraft'

THE PASSENGERS

What we know: There were 239 people on board: 227 passengers and 12 crew members. Five of the passengers were younger than 5 years old. Those on board included a number of painters and calligraphers, as well as employees of an American semiconductor company.

According to the airline, the passengers' 14 nationalities spanned the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and North America. Passengers from China or Taiwan numbered 154, followed by Malaysians, at 38. There were three U.S. citizens on the plane. Four passengers had valid booking to travel but did not show up to for the flight, according to the airline. "As such, the issue of off-loading unaccompanied baggage did not arise," it added Tuesday in a prepared statement.

What we don't know: Why two people who boarded the plane were using stolen passports, officials say.

Friends tell of fears as hopes dim for passengers

THE PASSPORT MYSTERY

What we know: The tickets for the two people who used stolen Italian and Austrian passports were bought Thursday in Thailand, according to ticketing records. Both tickets were one-way and had itineraries continuing on from Beijing to Amsterdam. One ticket's final destination was Frankfurt, Germany; the other's was Copenhagen, Denmark. The passports were stolen in Thailand from the two people to whom they had been issued -- the Austrian's was taken last year and the Italian's in 2012.

Interpol identified the men using the stolen passports as Pouri Nourmohammadi, 18, and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, 29, both Iranians. Malaysian police believe Nourmohammadi was trying to emigrate to Germany using the stolen Austrian passport. The men entered Malaysia on February 28 using valid Iranian passports.

What we don't know: Whether the stolen passports have any connection to the plane's disappearance.

Would-be immigrants have used fake passports to enter Western countries in the past.

THE SECURITY SCREENING

What we know: Interpol says the passports were listed as stolen in its database. But they had not been checked from the time they were entered into the database and the time the plane departed. Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said it was "clearly of great concern" that passengers had been able to board an international flight using passports listed as stolen in the agency's database.

What we don't know: Whether the passports had been used to travel previously. Interpol says it's "unable to determine on how many other occasions these passports were used to board flights or cross borders." Malaysian authorities are investigating the security process at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, but insisted it meets international standards.

How does a jet go missing?

THE CREW

What we know: The crew members are Malaysian. The pilot is Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old veteran with 18,365 flying hours who joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981. The first officer, Fariq Ab Hamid, has 2,763 flying hours. Hamid, 27, started at the airline in 2007. He had been flying another jet and was transitioning to the Boeing 777-200 after having completed training in a flight simulator.

What we don't know: What went on in the cockpit around the time the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers. The passenger jet was in what is considered the safest part of a flight, the cruise portion, when it disappeared. The weather conditions were reported to be good. Aviation experts say it's particularly puzzling that the pilots didn't report any kind of problems before contact was lost.

THE SEARCH
What we know: Thirty-four planes, 40 ships and search crews from 10 countries are scouring the South China Sea near where the plane was last detected. Debris in the area has turned out to be unrelated to the plane. "We have not found anything that appear to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft," Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of the Malaysian Civil Aviation Department, said Monday. Similarly, a slick in the area was determined to be from fuel oil typically used in cargo ships, not from the plane.

What we don't know: Whether the search is concentrating on the right place. Authorities initially focused their efforts around the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand, near the plane's last known position. But they have expanded efforts westward, off the other coast of the Malay Peninsula, and northward into the Andaman Sea, part of the Indian Ocean.

Jet was 'at safest point' in flight

THE CAUSE

What we know: Nothing. "For the aircraft to go missing just like that ... as far as we are concerned, we are equally puzzled as well," Rahman said Monday. The aircraft model in question, the Boeing 777-200ER, has an excellent safety record.

What we don't know: Until searchers find the plane and its voice and data recorders, it may be difficult to figure out what happened. CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen says the range of possible reasons behind the disappearance can be divided into three categories: mechanical failure, pilot actions and terrorism. But all we have are theories.

THE PRECEDENT

What we know: It's rare, but not unprecedented, for a commercial airliner to disappear in midflight. In June 2009, Air France Flight 447 was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when communications ended suddenly from the Airbus A330, another state-of-the-art aircraft, with 228 people on board. It took four searches over nearly two years to find the bulk of Flight 447's wreckage and most of the bodies in a mountain range deep in the Atlantic Ocean. It took even longer to establish the cause of the disaster.

What we don't know: Whether what happened to the missing Malaysia Airlines plane is similar to what happened to the Air France flight. Investigators attributed the Flight 447 crash to a series of errors by the pilots and their failure to react effectively to technical problems.


STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~The plane lost contact with air traffic control early Saturday
~A multinational search is under way at sea
~Two people boarded the plane using stolen passports
~The plane may have tried to change course, officials say

Go here to watch the news story:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/10/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-knowns-unknowns/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
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Source says Malaysia Airlines flight veered off course for an hour before vanishing as two Iranians using stolen passports ID'd

The latest scenario puts Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 over the Strait of Malacca with all its tracking systems inexplicably disabled. The new flight path came as authorities said Pouri Nourmohammadi, 19, and Delavar Seyedmohammaderza, 29, were not suspected of terrorist ties despite traveling with stolen passports. In the absence of any answers, some distraught relatives found hope that the missing passengers’ cellphones still rang nearly four days after going missing.

Investigators searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight believe it veered off course for more than an hour with its tracking systems apparently disabled before vanishing, according to senior military source.

In the new scenario, Flight MH370 drastically changed its route at a lower altitude, flying over Malaysia’s west coast, over the busy shipping channel of the Strait of Malacca.

Previously, Malaysian authorities have said the Boeing 777 with 239 people aboard disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for the Chinese capital Beijing.

At the time it was roughly midway between Malaysia's east coast town of Kota Bharu and the southern tip of Vietnam, flying at 35,000 feet.

"It changed course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait," the military official, who has been briefed on investigations, told Reuters.

As planes and ships from a coalition of countries scoured the Gulf of Thailand and Andaman Sea, Interpol released photos of two Iranians who flew on the plane using stolen passports.

The two men, identified as Pouri Nourmohammadi, 19, and Delavar Seyedmohammaderza, 29, traveled to Maylasia using their Iranian passports then switched to stolen Italian and Austrian documents.

Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said Tuesday the latest information about the pair made terrorism a less likely cause of the plane’s baffling disappearance.

Nourmohammadi was bound for Germany, where he was seeking asylum, Malaysian police chief Keloid Abu Bakar said.

Nourmohammadi’s mother was waiting for him in Frankfurt and contacted authorities after he didn’t show.

"We believe he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group," Khalid said.

The purpose of the Seyedmohammaderza’s flight had not yet been explained by authorities.

One of the two men traveling on a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner with a stolen passport was a 19-year-old Iranian man believed to be trying to migrate to Germany and had no terror links, police said Tuesday.

RELATED: MISSING MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT: MAN NAMED KAZEM ALI BOOKED TRAVEL FOR MEN WITH STOLEN PASSPORTS

The first concrete details about the missing plane did little to dispel the many conspiracy theories and questions tormenting the families of the missing passengers and crew.

Some relatives desperately searching for answers in Beijing said they heard a ringtone when dialing the cellphones of some of the missing passengers, making them think the phones were still online.

Others pointed to a Chinese instant messenger service called QQ that indicated that missing passengers’ phones were still active, the Washington Post reported.

In the absence of any sign that the plane was in trouble before it vanished, speculation has ranged widely, including pilot error, plane malfunction, hijacking and terrorism.

The airline says the pilots didn't send any distress signals, suggesting a sudden and possibly catastrophic incident.

Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad (left) and Delavar Seyed Mohammadreza (far right) traveled together on the missing Malaysia Airlines MH 370 flight.
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Why are the missing Malaysian Airlines passengers' phones still ringing? Relatives' agony as search zone now switches to entirely new area and Iranian man on missing passport traced and 'isn't terrorist'

Smartphones of the missing aboard Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 are still ringing according to reports

As many as 19 families of missing passengers have claimed to be connected - and airline says they have rung crew's phones

Growing frustration among relatives who have received no information on their missing friends and relatives

Malaysian police say one of the two men on stolen passports was Iranian asylum seeker, 19, and 'not a terrorist' as his mother was waiting for him
Fate of the Boeing 777 remains a mystery and search now concentrates on different sea at least 200 miles from where it was last recorded

The 'unprecedented mystery' behind the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 deepened on Monday when relatives claimed they were able to call the cellphones of their missing loved ones.

According to the Washington Post, family of some of the 239 people on board the vanished Boeing 777 said that they were getting ring tones and could see them active online through a Chinese social networking service called QQ.

One man said that the QQ account of his brother-in-law showed him as online, but frustratingly for those waiting desperately for any news, messages sent have gone unanswered and the calls have not been picked up.

This new eerie development comes as the Malaysian authorities said they had identified one of the men on two stolen European passports who were on the flight - and that he was not considered likely to be a terrorist

He was a 19-year-old Iranian asylum seeker called Pouiria Nur Mohammad Mehrdad who was trying to meet his mother in Germany.

Separately, the search for any trace of the missing airliner has now shifted to the Straits of Malacca, at least 100 miles away from where it was last recorded by electronic monitoring devices.

The dramatic shift raises the possibility that it flew undetected, crossing mainland Malaysia, before ditching into the sea.
However the phantom phone calls and online presence set off a whole new level of hysteria for relatives who have spent the past three-days cooped-up in a Beijing hotel waiting for some concrete information on the missing plane.


Repeatedly telling Malaysian Airlines officials about the QQ accounts and ringing telephone calls, they hoped that modern technology could simply triangulate the GPS signal of the phones and locate their relatives.

However, according to Singapore's Strait Times, a Malaysia Airlines official, Hugh Dunleavy has confirmed to families that his company had tried to call the cellphones of crew members and they too had also rang out.

He is reported to have told relatives that those phone numbers have been turned over to Chinese authorities.


One man who had asked police to come to his house and see the active QQ account on his computer was devastated to see that by Monday afternoon it had switched to inactive.

According to China.org.cn, 19 families of those missing have signed a joint statement confirming that their calls connected to their loved ones but that they rang out.

The relatives have asked for a full investigation and some complained that Malaysian Airlines is not telling the whole truth.

The International Business Times reported that the sister of one of the Chinese passengers also rang his phone on live television.

'This morning, around 11:40, I called my older brother's number twice, and I got the ringing tone,' said Bian Liangwei, sister of one of the passengers according to IBT.

At 2pm, Bian called again and heard it ringing once more.

'If I could get through, the police could locate the position, and there's a chance he could still be alive.'

However, at a press conference in Beijing, Malaysian Airlines spokesman Ignatius Ong said one of the numbers that had been passed on to the airline's head office in Kuala Lumpur failed to get through.

'I myself have called the number five times while the airline's command center also called the number. We got no answering tone,' said Ong.
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WHY ARE THE PASSENGERS' PHONES STILL RINGING?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2578020/Why-cellphones-missing-Malaysian-Airlines-passengers-ringing-Family-members-claim-loved-ones-smartphones-active.html#ixzz2vfoblYy4

After three days, wouldn’t the phone batteries be dead by now?

Not necessarily. Smartphones are renowned for their poor battery life and will typically last up to around 24 hours. But the batteries of older phones can last considerably longer.

For example, the Nokia 100 boasts a standby battery life of a staggering 35 days. Smartphone batteries can also last longer if the handset isn’t being used, and especially if the phone is in Flight Mode.

However, if the phone is in Flight Mode, it switches off all wireless activity meaning calls wouldn’t be able to connect, effectively ruling out this theory.

If the phone batteries are dead, wouldn’t the call go straight to voicemail?

In a word, yes. However, the process of sending the call to voicemail can differ depending on the service provider.

For example, the majority of phones will go straight to voicemail, or callers will get an out of service message if voicemail hasn’t been set up.

This will occur even if the phone is underwater, or not near a cell signal.

However, some service providers will ring once or twice before the phone goes to voicemail, or cut off. This may explain the reports that claimed phones rang before seeming to hang up.

Some reports claim the phones are just ringing and ringing though. How is this possible?

Telecoms expert Alan Spencer told MailOnline that if the phones are really ringing, they can categorically not be under the sea.

He added that the phones will only be ringing if they are ‘switched on, not in water, the battery is charged, and [they are] near a mobile cell site.’

This means that if the phones are genuinely ringing, the plane needs to have landed on land – not in the sea – and be in a location where there is cell service, rather than landing in the middle of a jungle, for example.

Why can’t network operators locate the phones?

A number of family members have asked the network operators why they can’t use the phone’s signal to locate the missing people.

Professor William Webb, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, told MailOnline: ‘The phones definitely won't be working. They'll be underwater, out of coverage and by this time out of battery.

‘So there's absolutely no way they could be used for triangulation.

‘As to why they are ‘ringing’ it'll be the same as if they were out of coverage - in some cases it may ring before going to voicemail.’

What about the T3212 timer I’ve read about?

The T3212 is a timer that causes a phone to periodically send a message to the network saying where it is.

But Professor Webb said this only works when the phone is turned on and it is in coverage. It won't work when the battery is dead.


What about reports that passengers are appearing online, on the QQ social network?

When people sign into social networks including QQ, as well as Facebook, they appear online.

This is the case whether they’ve signed in on a phone, tablet, PC, and laptop.


if missing passengers are shown as online, they may not be using the service on their phone. Instead they may still be logged in on another device.

If this other device shuts down or goes into standby, however, or there is a long period of inactivity, the social network will log them out, which may explain why some accounts went from online to offline over a period of three days.

How the search is widening - but has still to find a thing: Strait of Malacca is now main focus of air and sea search but China is deploying ships, planes and helicopters to the South China Sea to try to find any trace of the Boeing 777. Its authorities say more needs to be done to find what happened to the plane.
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I can understand the statements about the Smartphones showing as logged in, but for three days? I don't think so, not with the limitations on power. Also if those phones were underwater, they wouldn't ring, they would straight to voicemail.

Is the plane somewhere in Fairfax? No? Off topic then.

12 threads about this in OT.

Move it Wrote:
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> Is the plane somewhere in Fairfax? No? Off topic
> then.

It might be, they haven't found it anywhere else. ;)

Stabitha Wrote:
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> 12 threads about this in OT.

Off-topic sucks. It's more like a playground for Eesh. (No offense to Eesh).

What happened to Flight 370? Four scenarios fuel speculation among experts
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/10/world/asia/malaysia-plane-scenarios/

(CNN) -- A Boeing 777, one of the world's most reliable types of airliners, is missing, and no one knows why. Was it a bomb? Mechanical failure? A hijacking gone awry? Pilots and others in the aviation community are deeply disturbed by the mystery surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

It disappeared Saturday en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing over the Gulf of Thailand, somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam. It's hard to believe that such huge questions remain three days after the Boeing 777-200ER went missing, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members. These questions are so unprecedented that experts have been carefully speculating about possible explanations.

Here are four scenarios they're talking about, and the related facts:

1. Scenario: Mechanical failure?

Fact: The absence of a debris field suggests the possibility that pilots were forced to ditch the plane and it landed on water without breaking up, finally sinking to the ocean floor.

Analysis: But if that were the case, then why no emergency signal? These planes are able to perform a "miracle on the Hudson" maneuver. They have the ability to glide more than 100 miles and belly land on the water with both engines out, says former 777 pilot Keith Wolzinger, now a civil aviation consultant with The Spectrum Group. During the time it would take for a plane to glide 100 miles, it seems likely that pilots would be able able to send an SOS.

Fact: The missing plane had suffered a clipped wing tip in the past, but Boeing repaired it, and the jet was safe to fly, said Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya on Sunday.

Analysis: "Anytime there's been previous damage to an airplane, even though it's been repaired, and repaired within standards ... it kind of sends a warning flag," says Wolzinger. Experts agree the Boeing 777 is one of the world's most reliable aircraft. During its development it was subject to some of the most rigorous testing in commercial aviation history. "I've been talking with colleagues," Wolzinger says. "We're all baffled by this." The 777 boasts some of the most powerful and well-tested engines in the world, he says. "The reliability of airliner engines in general is impeccable these days," he says. "This is a safe plane."

Looking for a needle in a haystack

2. Scenario: Pilot error

Fact: So far, there are no known indications that pilot error contributed to the aircraft going missing.

Analysis: Some aviation experts have compared Flight 370 to the crash of Air France Flight 447 in 2009. All 228 passengers and crew died when the plane went down in a storm in the Atlantic en route from Brazil to Paris. After an expensive, nearly two-year search across the deep ocean floor, the twin-engine Airbus A330's wreckage was finally found and the voice and data recorders recovered. A French investigation blamed flight crew for failing to understand "they were in a stall situation and therefore never undertook any recovery maneuvers." But unlike Flight 447, weather was reported as good along Flight 370's scheduled route and didn't appear to present a threat.

Asiana Airlines Flight 217 -- a Boeing 777 -- fell short during a runway approach last July at San Francisco International Airport. Three people were killed and more than 180 others hurt. National Transportation Safety Board investigators have focused on pilot reliance on automated flight systems as a possible contributor to the crash, but a final report has not yet been released.

3. Scenario: Bomb? Or 'dry run'?

Fact: Two stolen passports have been linked to people who held tickets for the flight.

Analysis: This points to the possibility that someone on a terrorism watch list may have boarded the plane and blown it up. However, the stolen passports don't necessarily mean the plane was an actual target. It's possible, says former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo, that terrorists may have been performing a "dry run" for a future attack. Or, Schiavo said, "it could be just criminal business as usual," because "there are lots of stolen passports" used by travelers around the world.

Fact: So far, no debris field of plane wreckage has been linked to the 777, which would indicate a bomb blast.

Analysis: When Robert Francis, former vice chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, heard about the missing plane, his immediate thought was: "For some reason the aircraft blew up and there was no signal, there was nothing." The fact that the plane disappeared from radar without warning indicated to Francis "there was something unprecedented that hasn't happened before."

What about satellite technology? Is it possible that data from orbiting satellites might show a flash or infrared heat signature from an explosion? Very unlikely, says satellite expert Brian Weeden, who spent years tracking space junk in orbit for the U.S. Air Force. Dozens of government and private satellites orbit the earth, looking down from distances from 300 kilometers to 1,500 kilometers (185 to 930 miles). It's a long shot that one of them coincidentally floated over at the exact right time and location to capture a flash from an explosion.

However, there's an "off chance," Weeden says, that a super secret U.S. government satellite orbiting 22,000 miles in space might have grabbed evidence. These satellites are in geosynchronous orbit. As a group, they can observe virtually the entire globe. "We know that their mission is to detect ballistic missile launches via heat," says Weeden, now a technical adviser for Secure World Foundation. "We don't know if they're sensitive enough to track something like a bomb blast, even if that's what happened."

Then there's another unanswerable question: Would the government hesitate to release such an image for fear of revealing the satellite system's ultraclassified capability?

Who travels with a stolen passport?

4. Scenario: Hijacking?

Fact: Before it disappeared, radar data indicated the plane may have turned around to head back to Kuala Lumpur. Is that a clue that a hijacker had ordered the plane to change course?

Analysis: So far, there have been no reports that the flight crew sent any signals that a hijacking had occurred.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~'Baffled' experts speculate on what happened to missing airliner
~Did the plane ditch on the water and then sink?
~Ex-satellite tracker: It's possible but unlikely that satellites captured clues about the plane
~Ex-DOT inspector Mary Schiavo: It may have been a terrorism "dry run"

Wolf Blitzer was just on CNN reporting that a Malaysian official has "unofficially" told them that the plane changed direction and headed for an island near Sumatra.

Here it is...

Source: Jet was hundreds of miles off course
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- [Breaking news update at 1:23 p.m. ET]

The Malaysian Air Force has traced the last known location of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 to a spot above Pulau Perak, a very small island in the Straits of Malacca and hundreds of miles from the usual Kuala Lumpur to Beijing flight path, according to a senior Malaysian Air Force official. The official declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

If the Malaysian Air Force data cited by the source is correct, the aircraft was flying the opposite direction from its scheduled destination and on the opposite side of the Malay Peninsula from its scheduled route.

Previous accounts had the aircraft losing touch with air traffic control near the coast of Vietnam.

Source: Jet was hundreds of miles off course
Malaysian air force data cited

The Malaysia Airlines 777 was traced to the skies above a very small island hundreds of miles from the usual Kuala Lumpur to Beijing flight path, a senior official said

Watch the news story here:
http://www.cnn.com/?hpt=sitenav
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I dont understand what good all this electronic tracking shit does if the pilots or hijackers can just turn it off whenever they feel like it?

Stabitha Wrote:
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> 12 threads about this in OT.

You started two,numbnuts.

Mystery Malaysia flight may have been hundreds of miles off course
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was hundreds of miles off course, traveling in the opposite direction from its original destination and had stopped sending identifying transponder codes before it disappeared, a senior Malaysian Air Force official told CNN Tuesday.

If correct, these are ominous signs that could call into question whether someone in the cockpit might have deliberately steered the plane away from its intended destination, a former U.S. aviation investigator said.

"This kind of deviation in course is simply inexplicable," said Paul Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board.

However, veteran pilot Kit Darby, president of Aviation Information Resources, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that mechanical problems could still explain everything: A power failure would have turned off the main transponder and its backup, and the plane could have flown for more than an hour, he said.

CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes said the news "still leaves mechanical, terrorism (and) other issues as much in the air as they were before."
According to the Malaysian Air Force official, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media, the plane's transponder apparently stopped working at about the time flight controllers lost contact with it, near the coast of Vietnam.

The Malaysian Air Force lost track of the plane over Pulau Perak, a tiny island in the Straits of Malacca -- many hundreds of miles from the usual flight path for aircraft traveling between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, the official said.

If the data cited by the source is correct, the aircraft was flying away from Beijing and on the opposite side of the Malay Peninsula from its scheduled route.

Earlier, the head of the international police organization Interpol said that his agency increasingly believed the incident was not related to terrorism.

"The more information we get, the more we're inclined to conclude that it was not a terrorist incident," Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said at a news conference in Lyon, France.

Among the evidence pointing in that direction, Noble said: news from Malaysian authorities that one of two people said to be traveling on stolen passports, an Iranian, was trying to travel to his mother in Germany.

Further, there's no evidence to suggest either was connected to any terrorist organizations, according to Malaysian investigators.

However, CIA Director John Brennan said his agency is not yet willing to discount the possibility of a terror link in what he called a "very disturbing" mystery.

"No, we're not ruling it out. Not at all," he said Tuesday at a Council on Foreign Relations event.

The two passengers who have dominated headlines the last two days entered Malaysia using valid Iranian passports, Noble said at a news conference. But they used stolen Austrian and Italian passports to board the missing Malaysian plane, he said.

Noble gave their names and ages as Pouri Nourmohammadi, 18, and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, 29.

Malaysian police had earlier identified Nourmohammadi, using a slightly different name and age, and said they believed he was trying to migrate to Germany.

Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar of the Royal Malaysian Police said it doesn't appear the younger Iranian posed a threat.

"We have been checking his background. We have also checked him with other police organizations of his profile, and we believe that he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group," Khalid said.

After he failed to arrive in Frankfurt, the final destination of his ticket, his mother contacted authorities, Khalid said. According to ticketing records, the ticket to Frankfurt was booked under the stolen Austrian passport.

CNN obtained an iReport photo of the two men with two of their friends, believed to have been taken Saturday before the plane disappeared. In it, they are posing with the two others, whose faces CNN has blurred to protect their identities.

The bigger piece of the puzzle

The identification of one of the men helps peel away a thin layer of the mystery surrounding the passenger jet, which disappeared about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

But in the bigger puzzle of the missing plane's whereabouts, there were no reports of progress Tuesday.

Every lead that has raised hopes of tracing the commercial jet and the 239 people on board has so far petered out.

"Time is passing by," a middle-aged man shouted at an airline agent in Beijing on Tuesday. His son, he said, was one of the passengers aboard the plane.

Most of those on the flight were Chinese. And for their family members, the wait has been agonizing.

There were also three U.S. citizens on the plane, including Philip Wood.

"As of yet, we know as much as everyone else," Wood's brother, Tom, told CNN's "AC360" Monday. "It seems to be getting more bizarre, the twists in the story, where they can't find anything. So we're just relying on faith."

The challenge facing those involved in the huge, multinational search is daunting; the area of sea they are combing is vast.

And they still don't know if they're looking in the right place.

"As we enter into Day 4, the aircraft is yet to be found," Malaysia Airlines said in a statement released Tuesday.

Four scenarios
Days, weeks or even months

Over the past few days, search teams have been scouring tens of thousands of square miles of ocean.

They have also been searching off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, in the Strait of Malacca, and north into the Andaman Sea. The airline said Tuesday that authorities are still investigating the possibility that the plane tried to turn back toward Kuala Lumpur.

The search also encompasses the land in between the two areas of sea.

But it could be days, weeks or even months before the searchers find anything that begins to explain what happened to the plane, which disappeared early Saturday en route to Beijing.

In the case of Air France Flight 447, which disappeared over the Atlantic in 2009, it took five days just to find the first floating wreckage.

And it was nearly two years before investigators found the bulk of the French plane's wreckage and the majority of the bodies of the 228 people on board, about 12,000 feet below the surface of the ocean.

The Gulf of Thailand, the area where the missing Malaysian plane was last detected, is much shallower, with a maximum depth of only 260 feet and an average depth of about 150 feet.

"If the aircraft is in the water, it should make recovery easier than the long and expensive effort to bring up key parts of the Air France plane," Bill Palmer, an Airbus A330 captain for a major airline, wrote in an opinion article for CNN.

But if Flight 370 went down farther west, it could have ended up in the much deeper waters of the Andaman Sea.

No possibilities ruled out

Aviation officials say they haven't ruled out any possibilities in the investigation so far. It's hard for them to reach any conclusions until they find the plane, along with its voice and data recorders.

Malaysian police, who are tasked with looking at whether any criminal cause was at play, are focusing on four particular areas, Khalid said Tuesday: hijacking, sabotage, psychological problems of the passengers and crew, and personal problems among the passengers and crew.

He said police were going through the profiles of all the passengers and crew members.

Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told CNN's Jim Clancy that those involved in the search for the plane are determined to carry on.

"We just have to be more resolved and pay more attention to every single detail," he said Tuesday. "It must be there somewhere. We have to find it."

'Crucial time' passing

But if the plane fell into the sea, the more time that goes by, the harder the task becomes as ocean currents move things around.

"Crucial time is passing," David Gallo, with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday. "That search area -- that haystack -- is getting bigger and bigger and bigger."

Gallo described what will happen once some debris from the aircraft is found, though he stressed there's still no evidence the plane hit the water.

"Once a piece of the debris is found -- if it did impact on the water -- then you've got to backtrack that debris to try to find the 'X marks the spot' on where the plane actually hit the water, because that would be the center of the haystack.

"And in that haystack you're trying to find bits of that needle -- in fact, in the case of the flight data recorders, you're looking for a tiny little bit of that needle," he said.

Technology put to use

Countries involved in the search have deployed sophisticated technology to help try to track down the plane.

China has adjusted the commands for as many as 10 satellites in orbit so that they can assist with weather monitoring, communications and other aspects of the search, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.

And the United States has put a range of naval technology to use in the search.

That includes a Navy P-3C Orion aircraft, which can cover about 1,000 to 1,500 square miles every hour, according to the U.S. 7th Fleet.

The Orion, which is focused on the area off the west coast of Malaysia, has sensors that allow the crew to clearly detect small debris in the water, the fleet said.

CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest described the search as "extremely painstaking work," suggesting a grid would have been drawn over the ocean for teams to comb, bit by bit.

Quest said that the expanding search area shows how little idea rescue officials have of where the plane might be. But he's still confident they'll find it eventually.

"It's not hopeless by any means. They will find it.," he said. "They have to. They have to know what happened."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~NEW: Still could be terror, mechanical problems or something else, analyst says
~Missing flight was way off course, heading wrong direction, official says
~Plane's transponder had also stopped, Malaysian Air Force official says
~Aviation safety expert says course change "simply inexplicable"
Attachments:

Stabitha Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I dont understand what good all this electronic
> tracking shit does if the pilots or hijackers can
> just turn it off whenever they feel like it?

That's exactly what I was thinking too. I found this article that may help to clarify a few things...

There is precedent for a jetliner going missing
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/08/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-jet-missing/index.html?hpt=bosread

(CNN) -- How can a Boeing 777-200ER passenger jet go missing for more than a day? Turns out, it's not so easy.

That's not just because the state-of-the-art jetliner has a wing span of nearly 200 feet and a length of more than 209 feet. It's also because it's bristling with communications gear, including radios, automatic beacons, GPS and computer communications systems, according to CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest.

In addition to carrying UHF and VHF radios, the planes -- which cost more than $250 million apiece -- are equipped with Aircraft Communications and Reporting System technology. Embedded in the plane's computers, it tells the airline how the aircraft is performing -- speed, fuel, thrust. "If anything fails, it will send a signal to Malaysia Airlines," Quest said.

Though officials do not know what happened to Flight MH370, whatever it may have been must have been catastrophic, he said. "Planes don't fall out of the sky at 36,000 feet."

Asked to detail the communications devices aboard the missing jet, Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said, "It's not appropriate for us to discuss that right now."

Still, there is precedent for a modern jetliner to fall from the sky while "in the cruise" and lay hidden for months, Quest said.

On June 1, 2009, Air France flight 447 was en route from Rio De Janeiro to Paris' Charles de Gaulle International Airport when communications ended suddenly from the Airbus A330, another state-of-the-art aircraft.

"One of the first things we had was a series of ACARS messages that showed failure of the aircraft and degradation of the systems," Quest said. "What we didn't know was why. We knew what had gone wrong; we knew how it had gone wrong; we didn't know why it had gone wrong."

It took four searches over the course of nearly two years to locate the bulk of flight 447's wreckage and the majority of the 228 bodies in a mountain range deep under the ocean. It took even longer to find the cause of the disaster.

In May 2011, the aircraft's voice recorder and flight data recorder were recovered from the ocean floor after an extensive search using miniature submersible vehicles.

It was not until July 2012 that investigators published their report, which blamed the crash on a series of errors by the pilots and a failure to react effectively to technical problems.

France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis detailed how the pilots failed to respond effectively to problems with the plane's speed sensors or to correct its trajectory when things started to go wrong.

When ice crystals blocked the plane's pitot tubes, which are part of a system used to determine air speed, the autopilot disconnected and the pilots did not know how to react, the report said.

"The occurrence of the failure in the context of flight in cruise completely surprised the crew of flight AF 447," the report said.

The crew responded by over-handling the aircraft, which destabilized its flight path and caused further confusing readings, the report said.

"In the first minute after the autopilot disconnection, the failure of the attempt to understand the situation and the disruption of crew cooperation had a multiplying effect, inducing total loss of cognitive control of the situation."

The Airbus A330 went into a sustained stall, signaled by a warning message and buffeting of the aircraft, the report said.

"Despite these persistent symptoms, the crew never understood they were in a stall situation and therefore never undertook any recovery maneuvers."

The pilots responded by pointing the nose upward, rather than downward, to recover.

"That rewrote our understanding of what happens in massive crashes like this," Quest said. "In 447, you had a minor malfunction of the aircraft, and the pilot flew the airplane in a way that caused it to crash."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~The Boeing 777-200ER is bristling with communications gear
~In 2009, Air France 447 crashed into the ocean en route from Rio to Paris
~It took nearly two years to locate the bulk of the wreckage
Attachments:

First I have wondered why the transponder can be turned off. Seems to me that the breaker for it should be located where you can't turn it off while flying or some other fail safe design. If the Jet was at altitude and blew up into pieces there should be thousands of floating objects including bodies, which should be found. The fact they are finding nothing suggests it went into the sea intact. The fact it suddenly disappeared without the transponder showing decreasing altitude suggests it was turned off or the jet disintegrated, which conflicts with the lack of debris.

Well, disregarding the last part, latest updates now indicate that it did turn back and managed to fly west for about an hour...

"It changed course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait," the military official, who has been briefed on investigations, told Reuters." (See: goo.GL/fEjFKk)

Either gross incompetence there or the Malaysian authorities were deliberately lying for days, wasting precious time and rescue resources of 10 countries in the process.

12-2=10 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Stabitha Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > 12 threads about this in OT.
>
> You started two,numbnuts.

Regardless of who created the threads, this doesnt belong here.

People fail to realize that these jets fly at 5-7 miles up during cruise. I think the use of feet makes it difficult to quantify in real, everyday distances. The few times i've flown, the aircraft was pretty much at its operational ceiling most of the flight, and i can tell you right now, even a straight vertical plummet from that height would take a few minutes. The fact that there has been no visible trace, plus the fact that it was shown turning back, tells me it may have flown into something below radar detection altitude. The plane turning around could have also been something that happened without pilot input.

Oceanic 815 is the first thing that I thought of when I first saw this on the news... Hehe

Turn off the transponder and descend to below the radar coverage. Radar does not reach the surface (land or sea). The fact that the radar returns appeared to show the plane turning back could indicate such a scenario. Without evidence to show a particular outcome, we should keep open to other possibilities.

Maybe the Russians shot it down to divert media attention from Crimea? If so, it's working because everything I turn on the news it's "we still don't have any updates on the missing plane, but we'll still talk about it for 20 mins"

a fisherman near Kelantan saw a low flying aircraft in the morning of 8th march. he only made a police report after he saw the news about MH370 in the news. watch this youtube. it's in bahasa malaysia though http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

It's pretty obvious to me that one of two things could have happened to this aircraft.

1. It was hijacked, the transponders were ordered to be turned off, and it is now sitting on some tarmac in Sumatra.

2. The aircraft blew a door or window, lost compression, made the turn it did and flew until it ran out of fuel, and now rests in the Indian Ocean (where no one is currently searching, btw). Think Payne Stewart.

I haven't seen the data that you have. Do you know how long between sweeps of the radar that would have illuminated the plane? If the pilot intended to dive as fast as the plane would handle under the radar, how much time was there to do it?

The last seconds before it abruptly vanished from flightradar24 also show a strange behavior (see: goo.GL/LbsJOh). On the other hand, the earlier spotted oil slick and debris are now confirmed to be not from the plane.

metsfan123 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> People fail to realize that these jets fly at 5-7
> miles up during cruise. I think the use of feet
> makes it difficult to quantify in real, everyday
> distances. The few times i've flown, the aircraft
> was pretty much at its operational ceiling most of
> the flight, and i can tell you right now, even a
> straight vertical plummet from that height would
> take a few minutes. The fact that there has been
> no visible trace, plus the fact that it was shown
> turning back, tells me it may have flown into
> something below radar detection altitude. The
> plane turning around could have also been
> something that happened without pilot input.

You need to recheck your math there. The plane was at 35,000 feet (6.62 miles above sea level) and cruising at 543 mph. That's 9.05 miles per minute. At a straight vertical plummet the plane would reach the ground in 44 seconds, fast enough to avoid the next radar sweep. It wouldn't reach the ground at that speed anyway before disintegrating due to structural failure.

JSeal Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I haven't seen the data that you have. Do you know
> how long between sweeps of the radar that would
> have illuminated the plane? If the pilot intended
> to dive as fast as the plane would handle under
> the radar, how much time was there to do it?

Radar sweeps normally run 5 times a minute.

Mr. Byrd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's pretty obvious to me that one of two things
> could have happened to this aircraft.
>
> 1. It was hijacked, the transponders were ordered
> to be turned off, and it is now sitting on some
> tarmac in Sumatra.
>
> 2. The aircraft blew a door or window, lost
> compression, made the turn it did and flew until
> it ran out of fuel, and now rests in the Indian
> Ocean (where no one is currently searching, btw).
> Think Payne Stewart.

The whole point of terrorism is to send a political message. If no one claims responsibility, no message gets out, which would defeat the whole purpose of an attack. Obviously, al Qaeda knew they'd be hunted after 9/11, do you think they cared?

Math Checker Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> metsfan123 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > People fail to realize that these jets fly at
> 5-7
> > miles up during cruise. I think the use of feet
> > makes it difficult to quantify in real,
> everyday
> > distances. The few times i've flown, the
> aircraft
> > was pretty much at its operational ceiling most
> of
> > the flight, and i can tell you right now, even
> a
> > straight vertical plummet from that height
> would
> > take a few minutes. The fact that there has
> been
> > no visible trace, plus the fact that it was
> shown
> > turning back, tells me it may have flown into
> > something below radar detection altitude. The
> > plane turning around could have also been
> > something that happened without pilot input.
>
> You need to recheck your math there. The plane was
> at 35,000 feet (6.62 miles above sea level) and
> cruising at 543 mph. That's 9.05 miles per minute.
> At a straight vertical plummet the plane would
> reach the ground in 44 seconds, fast enough to
> avoid the next radar sweep. It wouldn't reach the
> ground at that speed anyway before disintegrating
> due to structural failure.

I'm clearly referring to a DROP, not a powered decent. In any case, I think people should make an effort to be informed about the world they live in, vs float in a cloud of popular myth and assumptions. :)

They've concluded that the plane didn't explode, because lots of floating debris would have been seen. Other than a sudden explosion, it's hard to see how terrorists could have gained control without the pilot or co-pilot being able to send a distress call. Of course, they could have let the terrorists into the cockpit. Also, people on the flight had cell phones and some likely had satellite phones. It seems likely that someone would have tried to call a relative. Of course, that would be true in the event of a mechanical failure, too. I haven't heard whether turbulence was expected that day. Strong turbulence followed by a mechanical failure could have plunged the plane into the ocean.

Woman says she and friend flew in cockpit with missing jet's co-pilot in 2011
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-cockpit-companions/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- The first officer aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines flight invited people he did not know into the cockpit of his plane during an international flight, a woman has told Australia's Channel 9 program, "A Current Affair."

Such a practice would be illegal on U.S. carriers, but not necessarily so on international ones, according to CNN Aviation Correspondent Richard Quest.

Access to the cockpit is up to the discretion of the captain.

In a statement, Malaysia Airlines said it was "shocked by these allegations."

"We have not been able to confirm the validity of the pictures and videos of the alleged incident," it said. "As you are aware, we are in the midst of a crisis, and we do not want our attention to be diverted."

The TV program said the woman, identified as Jonti Roos, e-mailed its producers about the incident after she recognized Fariq Ab Hamid, 27, as one of the two pilots who invited her and her friend -- who were both teenagers at the time -- to sit in jump seats in the cockpit during a December 2011 flight from Phuket, Thailand, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The teens were returning from a vacation, she said.

Hamid, who joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007, had compiled 2,763 flying hours by last Saturday, when the Boeing 777-200ER carrying 239 people went off radar screens.

The teens' privileged access in the cockpit lasted from takeoff until landing, Roos said.

"Throughout the whole flight, they were talking to us," Roos told the television program. "They were taking photos with us in the cockpit while they were flying. ... I was just completely shocked. I couldn't believe it."

According to her Facebook page, Roos studied at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and is living in Melbourne.

She said she and her friend were standing on line at the boarding gate at Phuket International Airport when the pilot and co-pilot walked past, then returned and asked if they would like to sit with them in the cockpit during the flight. "So, obviously, we said yes," Roos said. "I think anyone would have jumped at the opportunity."

Though the pilots entertained their guests during the flight, at one point commenting on one teen's nail polish, Roos said she felt safe throughout.

"I don't think there was one instance where I felt threatened or I felt that they didn't know what they were doing," she said. "They were very friendly, but I felt that they were very competent in what they were doing."

After the flight, she said, Hamid sent her a Facebook message, wishing her a safe flight home.

Roos said she was shocked when she learned that Hamid was at the controls of the missing plane.

"I couldn't believe it," she said. "When I saw all his friends and his family posting on his wall, obviously, my heart really broke for them and my heart broke for all the families of the passengers. It's a really sad story."

Asked why she had contacted the television program, Roos said, "It seems like everybody's completely in the dark and nobody has any information, so I thought the tiny bit that I have I just want to share and maybe it can help with something."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~"They were talking to us" the entire flight, Jonti Roos tells Australian TV show
~But the cockpit passenger, a teenager at the time, says she never felt unsafe
~Roos says she hopes her information might help investigators
~Malaysia Airlines is checking the report, spokesman says

It happened in one of my co-worker's flights. Pilot couldn't get a seat for his wife. She sat in the cockpit while he flew.

Soon as they landed, the passengers went to press and the pilot and co-pilot were suspended indefinitely pending investigation adn review.

Hmmmmmmm Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mr. Byrd Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > It's pretty obvious to me that one of two
> things
> > could have happened to this aircraft.
> >
> > 1. It was hijacked, the transponders were
> ordered
> > to be turned off, and it is now sitting on some
> > tarmac in Sumatra.
> >
> > 2. The aircraft blew a door or window, lost
> > compression, made the turn it did and flew
> until
> > it ran out of fuel, and now rests in the Indian
> > Ocean (where no one is currently searching,
> btw).
> > Think Payne Stewart.
>
> The whole point of terrorism is to send a
> political message. If no one claims
> responsibility, no message gets out, which would
> defeat the whole purpose of an attack. Obviously,
> al Qaeda knew they'd be hunted after 9/11, do you
> think they cared?

If you are insinuating that I think hijacking an airplane is synonymous with terrorism, then, sir, you misread my post or I did not make myself clear. In no way do I believe this to be a terrorist act. People have hijacked airplanes for many purposes, of which terrorism is but one of those reasons.

Mr. Byrd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's pretty obvious to me that one of two things
> could have happened to this aircraft.
>
> 1. It was hijacked, the transponders were ordered
> to be turned off, and it is now sitting on some
> tarmac in Sumatra.
>
> 2. The aircraft blew a door or window, lost
> compression, made the turn it did and flew until
> it ran out of fuel, and now rests in the Indian
> Ocean (where no one is currently searching, btw).
> Think Payne Stewart.

This plane was hijacked, but the hijacking did not go according to plan.

1) Hijackers instruct pilot to disable transponder: explains why last known position was wrong)

2) Explains why no debris was found because rescue teams were looking in the wrong place.

3) Explains why no distress signal was sent; pilots either killed or not allowed to use radio.

A struggled likely ensued in the cockpit, similar to Flight 93 on 9/11, and either the hijackers or the pilots downed the plane into the Strait of Malacca.

Has anybody checked Diego Garcia? It looks like the plane was making a beeline for it.

Mr. Byrd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hmmmmmmm Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Mr. Byrd Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> > > It's pretty obvious to me that one of two
> > things
> > > could have happened to this aircraft.
> > >
> > > 1. It was hijacked, the transponders were
> > ordered
> > > to be turned off, and it is now sitting on
> some
> > > tarmac in Sumatra.
> > >
> > > 2. The aircraft blew a door or window, lost
> > > compression, made the turn it did and flew
> > until
> > > it ran out of fuel, and now rests in the
> Indian
> > > Ocean (where no one is currently searching,
> > btw).
> > > Think Payne Stewart.
> >
> > The whole point of terrorism is to send a
> > political message. If no one claims
> > responsibility, no message gets out, which
> would
> > defeat the whole purpose of an attack.
> Obviously,
> > al Qaeda knew they'd be hunted after 9/11, do
> you
> > think they cared?
>
> If you are insinuating that I think hijacking an
> airplane is synonymous with terrorism, then, sir,
> you misread my post or I did not make myself
> clear. In no way do I believe this to be a
> terrorist act. People have hijacked airplanes for
> many purposes, of which terrorism is but one of
> those reasons.


Last time I heard, Hijacking was an act of terrorism.

metsfan123 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Math Checker Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > metsfan123 Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> > > People fail to realize that these jets fly at
> > 5-7
> > > miles up during cruise. I think the use of
> feet
> > > makes it difficult to quantify in real,
> > everyday
> > > distances. The few times i've flown, the
> > aircraft
> > > was pretty much at its operational ceiling
> most
> > of
> > > the flight, and i can tell you right now,
> even
> > a
> > > straight vertical plummet from that height
> > would
> > > take a few minutes. The fact that there has
> > been
> > > no visible trace, plus the fact that it was
> > shown
> > > turning back, tells me it may have flown into
> > > something below radar detection altitude. The
> > > plane turning around could have also been
> > > something that happened without pilot input.
> >
> > You need to recheck your math there. The plane
> was
> > at 35,000 feet (6.62 miles above sea level) and
> > cruising at 543 mph. That's 9.05 miles per
> minute.
> > At a straight vertical plummet the plane would
> > reach the ground in 44 seconds, fast enough to
> > avoid the next radar sweep. It wouldn't reach
> the
> > ground at that speed anyway before
> disintegrating
> > due to structural failure.
>
> I'm clearly referring to a DROP, not a powered
> decent. In any case, I think people should make an
> effort to be informed about the world they live
> in, vs float in a cloud of popular myth and
> assumptions. :)


u need to recheck ur common sense, vertical drop doesnt happen when travelling horizontal m8. Assuming both wings in tact, you would see somewhat diagonal path taking much longer than the 44 seconds you say. Also u forgot the fact that modern radar sweeps multiple times per minute.

I sure hope their on an island just waiting to be found with the best, happiest ending through their ordeal. For some reason, I'm still holding on to that hope. It hurts me when some people assume their dead and saying stuff like "may those souls RIP"
Attachments:

...
Attachments:

WTF!??!?!?! Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Woman says she and friend flew in cockpit with
> missing jet's co-pilot in 2011
> http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/world/asia/malaysia-
> airlines-cockpit-companions/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
>
> (CNN) -- The first officer aboard the missing
> Malaysia Airlines flight invited people he did not
> know into the cockpit of his plane during an
> international flight, a woman has told Australia's
> Channel 9 program, "A Current Affair."
>
> Such a practice would be illegal on U.S. carriers,
> but not necessarily so on international ones,
> according to CNN Aviation Correspondent Richard
> Quest.
>
> Access to the cockpit is up to the discretion of
> the captain.
>
> In a statement, Malaysia Airlines said it was
> "shocked by these allegations."
>
> "We have not been able to confirm the validity of
> the pictures and videos of the alleged incident,"
> it said. "As you are aware, we are in the midst of
> a crisis, and we do not want our attention to be
> diverted."
>
> The TV program said the woman, identified as Jonti
> Roos, e-mailed its producers about the incident
> after she recognized Fariq Ab Hamid, 27, as one of
> the two pilots who invited her and her friend --
> who were both teenagers at the time -- to sit in
> jump seats in the cockpit during a December 2011
> flight from Phuket, Thailand, to Kuala Lumpur,
> Malaysia.
>
> The teens were returning from a vacation, she
> said.
>
> Hamid, who joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007, had
> compiled 2,763 flying hours by last Saturday, when
> the Boeing 777-200ER carrying 239 people went off
> radar screens.
>
> The teens' privileged access in the cockpit lasted
> from takeoff until landing, Roos said.
>
> "Throughout the whole flight, they were talking to
> us," Roos told the television program. "They were
> taking photos with us in the cockpit while they
> were flying. ... I was just completely shocked. I
> couldn't believe it."
>
> According to her Facebook page, Roos studied at
> the University of Pretoria in South Africa and is
> living in Melbourne.
>
> She said she and her friend were standing on line
> at the boarding gate at Phuket International
> Airport when the pilot and co-pilot walked past,
> then returned and asked if they would like to sit
> with them in the cockpit during the flight. "So,
> obviously, we said yes," Roos said. "I think
> anyone would have jumped at the opportunity."
>
> Though the pilots entertained their guests during
> the flight, at one point commenting on one teen's
> nail polish, Roos said she felt safe throughout.
>
> "I don't think there was one instance where I felt
> threatened or I felt that they didn't know what
> they were doing," she said. "They were very
> friendly, but I felt that they were very competent
> in what they were doing."
>
> After the flight, she said, Hamid sent her a
> Facebook message, wishing her a safe flight home.
>
> Roos said she was shocked when she learned that
> Hamid was at the controls of the missing plane.
>
> "I couldn't believe it," she said. "When I saw all
> his friends and his family posting on his wall,
> obviously, my heart really broke for them and my
> heart broke for all the families of the
> passengers. It's a really sad story."
>
> Asked why she had contacted the television
> program, Roos said, "It seems like everybody's
> completely in the dark and nobody has any
> information, so I thought the tiny bit that I have
> I just want to share and maybe it can help with
> something."
>
> STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> ~"They were talking to us" the entire flight,
> Jonti Roos tells Australian TV show
> ~But the cockpit passenger, a teenager at the
> time, says she never felt unsafe
> ~Roos says she hopes her information might help
> investigators
> ~Malaysia Airlines is checking the report,
> spokesman says

Nobody could make this story up, even Hollywood hasn't that type of talent!!!

pYuDD Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mr. Byrd Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Hmmmmmmm Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> > > Mr. Byrd Wrote:
> > >
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> >
> > > -----
> > > > It's pretty obvious to me that one of two
> > > things
> > > > could have happened to this aircraft.
> > > >
> > > > 1. It was hijacked, the transponders were
> > > ordered
> > > > to be turned off, and it is now sitting on
> > some
> > > > tarmac in Sumatra.
> > > >
> > > > 2. The aircraft blew a door or window,
> lost
> > > > compression, made the turn it did and flew
> > > until
> > > > it ran out of fuel, and now rests in the
> > Indian
> > > > Ocean (where no one is currently searching,
> > > btw).
> > > > Think Payne Stewart.
> > >
> > > The whole point of terrorism is to send a
> > > political message. If no one claims
> > > responsibility, no message gets out, which
> > would
> > > defeat the whole purpose of an attack.
> > Obviously,
> > > al Qaeda knew they'd be hunted after 9/11, do
> > you
> > > think they cared?
> >
> > If you are insinuating that I think hijacking
> an
> > airplane is synonymous with terrorism, then,
> sir,
> > you misread my post or I did not make myself
> > clear. In no way do I believe this to be a
> > terrorist act. People have hijacked airplanes
> for
> > many purposes, of which terrorism is but one of
> > those reasons.
>
>
> Last time I heard, Hijacking was an act of
> terrorism.

In the old days, people used to hijack airplanes for political asylum reasons. Maybe hijacking for such a reason is making a comeback.

hTVNp Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Maybe the Russians shot it down to divert media
> attention from Crimea? If so, it's working because
> everything I turn on the news it's "we still don't
> have any updates on the missing plane, but we'll
> still talk about it for 20 mins"

Do you really think the Russians are so insane that they would kill hundreds of civilians (many including civilians of their own Allies) just to divert attention? How madly anti-Slavic do you have to be?

Old Guy with Grey Pubes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> pYuDD Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Mr. Byrd Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> > > Hmmmmmmm Wrote:
> > >
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> >
> > > -----
> > > > Mr. Byrd Wrote:
> > > >
> > >
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> >
> > >
> > > > -----
> > > > > It's pretty obvious to me that one of two
> > > > things
> > > > > could have happened to this aircraft.
> > > > >
> > > > > 1. It was hijacked, the transponders
> were
> > > > ordered
> > > > > to be turned off, and it is now sitting
> on
> > > some
> > > > > tarmac in Sumatra.
> > > > >
> > > > > 2. The aircraft blew a door or window,
> > lost
> > > > > compression, made the turn it did and
> flew
> > > > until
> > > > > it ran out of fuel, and now rests in the
> > > Indian
> > > > > Ocean (where no one is currently
> searching,
> > > > btw).
> > > > > Think Payne Stewart.
> > > >
> > > > The whole point of terrorism is to send a
> > > > political message. If no one claims
> > > > responsibility, no message gets out, which
> > > would
> > > > defeat the whole purpose of an attack.
> > > Obviously,
> > > > al Qaeda knew they'd be hunted after 9/11,
> do
> > > you
> > > > think they cared?
> > >
> > > If you are insinuating that I think hijacking
> > an
> > > airplane is synonymous with terrorism, then,
> > sir,
> > > you misread my post or I did not make myself
> > > clear. In no way do I believe this to be a
> > > terrorist act. People have hijacked
> airplanes
> > for
> > > many purposes, of which terrorism is but one
> of
> > > those reasons.
> >
> >
> > Last time I heard, Hijacking was an act of
> > terrorism.
>
> In the old days, people used to hijack airplanes
> for political asylum reasons. Maybe hijacking for
> such a reason is making a comeback.

Well, that's true too I suppose.

Commercial aviation radar has many dead spots especially over large bodies of water. If a plane is flown near-as-possible to the ocean surface its radar profile is lost to the clutter of the moving waves.

In this case the aircraft was out of radar range when its transponder went black.

Ruskies? Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> hTVNp Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Maybe the Russians shot it down to divert media
> > attention from Crimea? If so, it's working
> because
> > everything I turn on the news it's "we still
> don't
> > have any updates on the missing plane, but
> we'll
> > still talk about it for 20 mins"
>
> Do you really think the Russians are so insane
> that they would kill hundreds of civilians (many
> including civilians of their own Allies) just to
> divert attention? How madly anti-Slavic do you
> have to be?

I think it's unlikely in this case - too far away to make the point. They did shoot down that KAL over Kamchatka some years ago, and remained unrepentant after it was shown the fighter pilot knew it was a marked civilian aircraft. Nothing to do with anti-slav feelings.

If the plane descends below the reach of radar, then there would be no return. Radar is angled upward in relation to the ground at the radar site. That, along with the curvature of the earth, causes the altitude of the radar waves to increase the farther you get from the radar transceiver. If the plane descended below that altitude, primary radar could not paint it and it would "disappear" from radar.

Welcome to the Third World, where all the things you're used to simply don't exist.

That, or they're broken.

I read on a Chinese news website they have been calling their loved ones and their phones are actually ringing but no one answers. This would mean the phones are on. If they were the phones I mean we're dead it would go straight to voice mail but that isn't the case. They are still ringing.

The plane had a lot of fuel for a 5-6 hour flight, they could have landed in an area that didn't have "any country there" - air traffic control, military or nonmilitary, has its limits. If this is a pre-planned terrorist maneuver, they would know where and how to fly it.

uXdwv Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If the plane descends below the reach of radar,
> then there would be no return. Radar is angled
> upward in relation to the ground at the radar
> site. That, along with the curvature of the earth,
> causes the altitude of the radar waves to increase
> the farther you get from the radar transceiver. If
> the plane descended below that altitude, primary
> radar could not paint it and it would "disappear"
> from radar.

There would be a radar signature until the plane hit that point. There is no way for a 777 to make a controlled decent of more than 34000 feet without still being seen on radar. Even if the pilots max performed the jet, the highest rate of descent would be in the ballpark of 6-7000 fpm, so it would still have been a 5 minute descent. That includes dropping the gear and throwing out the boards. There is no way to just dip below radar without ripping the jet apart as there would not be enough drag to control the airspeed in relation to the descent angle (the plane would continue accelerating after a certain angle). This is not a C-17, it is an airliner and not designed to perform 10000+ fpm descents.

Truth or Rumors?? Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I read on a Chinese news website they have been
> calling their loved ones and their phones are
> actually ringing but no one answers. This would
> mean the phones are on. If they were the phones I
> mean we're dead it would go straight to voice mail
> but that isn't the case. They are still ringing.


if the phones are ringing this means they are in dry land not in ocean right ?

Do we know that there are no more radar signals after Pulau Perak? Genuinely asking. That's Malaysia's western border, so they wouldn't have anything further west. Has Indonesia said anything?

Oceanic 815 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I sure hope their on an island just waiting to be
> found with the best, happiest ending through their
> ordeal. For some reason, I'm still holding on to
> that hope. It hurts me when some people assume
> their dead and saying stuff like "may those souls
> RIP"

Highly unlikely they landed somewhere unnoticed. You cant land a 777 in a cornfield or a deserted stretch of road. I guess it's possible they could have made a controlled descent into a body of water and had some survivors.But I dont think this is going to be a Castaway script. It's certainly a mysterious situation.

The satellites were too busy last weekend over Ukraine and Dianne Feinstein's house to focus on a silly little airplane..

Oceanic 815 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I sure hope their on an island just waiting to be
> found with the best, happiest ending through their
> ordeal. For some reason, I'm still holding on to
> that hope. It hurts me when some people assume
> their dead and saying stuff like "may those souls
> RIP"

Just a guess, but I'd think that any field capable of accommodating a 777 that is within the fuel range of this flight, has been checked for unexpected traffic. That doesn't preclude a crash in the jungle somewhere, however. Surely there's all sorts of equipment on an over-water commercial flight that pings in the presence of water? An EPIRB type of thing? I don't know.

Truth or Rumors?? Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I read on a Chinese news website they have been
> calling their loved ones and their phones are
> actually ringing but no one answers. This would
> mean the phones are on. If they were the phones I
> mean we're dead it would go straight to voice mail
> but that isn't the case. They are still ringing.

There's no cell phone reception in outer space...

Mr. Byrd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's pretty obvious to me that one of two things
> could have happened to this aircraft.
>
> 1. It was hijacked, the transponders were ordered
> to be turned off, and it is now sitting on some
> tarmac in Sumatra.
>
> 2. The aircraft blew a door or window, lost
> compression, made the turn it did and flew until
> it ran out of fuel, and now rests in the Indian
> Ocean (where no one is currently searching, btw).
> Think Payne Stewart.

Scenario #2 sounds like a winner.

i believe the plane was "hacked". There is a report by the Federal Register titled "

"Special Conditions: Boeing Model 777-200, -300, and -300ER Series
Airplanes; Aircraft Electronic System Security Protection From
Unauthorized Internal Access"

It goes on to describe that these models of planes (777) have an onboard network that is vulnerable to attacks: "This onboard network system will be composed of a network file server, a
network extension device, and additional interfaces configured by
customer option. The applicable airworthiness regulations do not contain
adequate or appropriate safety standards for this design feature...14 CFR regulations and current system safety assessment policy and
techniques do not address potential security vulnerabilities which could
be exploited by unauthorized access to airplane networks and servers."

I would not propose whom may have been responsible if this is the case, and this scenario itself is a longshot, but as good as any hypothesis at this point.

HACKED! Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> i believe the plane was "hacked". There is a
> report by the Federal Register titled "
>
> "Special Conditions: Boeing Model 777-200, -300,
> and -300ER Series
> Airplanes; Aircraft Electronic System Security
> Protection From
> Unauthorized Internal Access"
>
> It goes on to describe that these models of planes
> (777) have an onboard network that is vulnerable
> to attacks: "This onboard network system will be
> composed of a network file server, a
> network extension device, and additional
> interfaces configured by
> customer option. The applicable airworthiness
> regulations do not contain
> adequate or appropriate safety standards for this
> design feature...14 CFR regulations and current
> system safety assessment policy and
> techniques do not address potential security
> vulnerabilities which could
> be exploited by unauthorized access to airplane
> networks and servers."
>
> I would not propose whom may have been
> responsible if this is the case, and this scenario
> itself is a longshot, but as good as any
> hypothesis at this point.



Nothing is out of question at this point. I feel sorry for those families. Hopefully they and the rest of the world have answers soon. My guess is a hostile guest of the first officer decided to crash the plane on purpose, who probably had an aviation background, considering the transponder turn off at the set point.

Any news on this? Why did the Malasyan officials lie about the position of the plane?

If I was searching in Fairfax County, it would be the old Lorton Prison grounds. My second choice would be that huge Korean church on Centrevill Rd that looks big enough to land a jet on.

They are up to something. Anybody else find it odd that they were searching with boats and planes in an area that they knew was nowhere near where the last known position of the plane was?

Confusion clouds search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- More than four days since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared over Southeast Asia, Malaysian officials not only don't know what happened to the plane, they don't seem sure where to look.

On Wednesday, officials announced they have once again expanded the search area. It now covers 27,000 square miles -- in the Straits of Malacca and in the South China Sea.

The lack of a clear direction prompted Vietnam to say Wednesday that it's pulling back on its search efforts until Malaysian authorities come up with better information on where to look.

"We have scaled down the searches for today and are still waiting for the response from Malaysian authorities," Phan Quy Tieu, Vietnam's vice minister of transportation, told reporters.

He described as "insufficient" the information provided so far on the airline, which vanished early Saturday over Southeast Asia with 239 people on board.

At a news conference Wednesday, Malaysian transportation minister Hishamuddin Bin Hussein defended his government's approach.

"We have been very consistent in the search," he said.

The path of the plane

Part of the cause of the veiled irritation on the Vietnamese side seems to concern the deepening mystery over the path the plane may have taken after it lost contact with air traffic control on its scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

A senior Malaysian air force official on Tuesday told CNN that after the plane lost all communications around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, it still showed up on radar for more than an hour longer. Before it vanished altogether, the plane apparently turned away from its intended destination and traveled hundreds of miles off course, the official said.

It was last detected, according to the official, near Pulau Perak, a very small island in the Straits of Malacca, the body of water between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Those assertions, reported by CNN and other new organizations, have fueled surprise among aviation analysts and a fresh burst of theories about what might have happened to the plane. They also appear to have created tensions between some of the different countries involved in the search efforts.

Uncertainty over exact path

But some Malaysian officials have reportedly cast doubt on the details of the change in direction.

The New York Times cited Tengku Sariffuddin Tengku Ahmad, spokesman for the Prime Minister's office, as saying that he had checked with senior military officials, who told him there was no evidence that the plane had flown back over the Malay Peninsula to the Straits of Malacca, only that it may have attempted to turn back.

The Prime Minister's office didn't immediately return calls from CNN seeking comment Wednesday.

But the air force chief Gen. Rodzali Daud didn't go as far as denying that the plane had traveled hundreds of miles off course.

The air force is still "examining and analyzing all possibilities as regards to the airliner's flight paths subsequent to its disappearance," he said in a statement Wednesday.

Rodzali said it "would not be appropriate" for the air force to "issue any official conclusions as to the aircraft's flight path until a high amount of certainty and verification is achieved."

He denied, though, that he had made statements to a Malaysian newspaper similar to those that the senior air force official made to CNN.

Searchers find no trace

The reported change of course would fit in with some of the areas that search and rescue teams have been combing over the past several days.

Forty-two ships and 39 planes from 12 countries have been searching the sea between the northeast coast of Malaysia and southwest Vietnam, the area where the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers.

But they are also looking off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, in the Straits of Malacca, and north into the Andaman Sea -- areas that would tally with a change of direction by the plane.

They are also searching the land surface in between those areas.

So far, though, searchers have found no confirmed trace of the plane anywhere.

Vietnam scales back searches

Vietnamese authorities, who have been heavily involved in the search, appeared to be showing increasing frustration Wednesday with the information coming from the Malaysian side.

"Up until now we only had one meeting with a Malaysian military attache," Phan, the vice transportation minister, said. "However, the information they have provided is insufficient."

Vietnam informed Malaysian authorities that the plane was turning westward at the time it disappeared but didn't hear anything back, Phan said.

For the moment, Vietnamese teams will stop searching the sea south of Ca Mau province, the southern tip of Vietnam, and shift the focus to areas east of Ca Mau, said Doan Luu, the director of international affairs at the Vietnamese Civil Aviation Authority.

Doan also told CNN that Vietnam has asked Malaysian authorities to clarify which location is the focus of their search, but that it has yet to hear back.

Families' frustration

Families of those on board the plane also want to know more, and some have vented their anger.

"Time is passing by, the priority should be to search for the living!" a middle-aged man shouted at meeting with airline officials in Beijing on Tuesday before breaking into sobs. His son, he said, was one of the passengers aboard the plane.

Other people at the meeting also voiced their frustration at the lack of information.

Most of those on the flight were Chinese. And for their family members, the wait has been long and anguished.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Wednesday appealed to families of the people on board to be patient.

"What we want to tell them is that we must, indeed, consider their feelings," Najib said. "The families involved have to understand that this is something unexpected. The families must understand more efforts have been made with all our capabilities."

The Chinese government had on Monday urged Malaysia to speed up the investigation into what happened to the plane.

Analysts puzzled

The possibility that the plane changed direction and flew over the Straits of Malacca has perplexed aviation experts.

Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, said he thinks the information, if correct, ominously suggests that someone purposefully cut off the transponder -- which sends data on altitude, direction and speed -- and steered the plane from its intended destination.

"This kind of deviation in course is simply inexplicable," Goelz said.

Other experts aren't convinced that there was necessarily foul play involved. They say there could have been some sort of sudden catastrophic electronic failure that spurred the crew to try to turn around, with no luck.

"Perhaps there was a power problem," said veteran pilot Kit Darby, former president of Aviation Information Resources, adding that backup power systems would only last about an hour. "(It is) natural for the pilot, in my view, to return to where he knows the airports."

Still, while they have theories, even those who have piloted massive commercial airliners like this one admit that they can't conclude anything until the plane is found.

Authorities have said they're not so far ruling out any possibilities in their investigations.

For now, the massive multinational search has yielded no breakthrough -- which has only added to the heartache for the friends and family of the 239 passengers and crew on board.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~NEW: Vietnam says it's scaling down its searches Wednesday
~NEW: Information from Malaysian authorities is "insufficient," a Vietnamese official says
~A Malaysian air force official tells CNN that the plane showed up on radar after it lost contact
~The plane flew way off course, heading in the wrong direction, the official says

Go here to watch the route of the plane..
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Attachments:

Crowdsourcing volunteers comb satellite photos for Malaysia Airlines jet
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/us/malaysia-airlines-plane-crowdsourcing-search/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- You -- the person now reading this story -- can help experts solve the mystery of what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared over the open sea.

In fact, thousands of aspiring good Samaritans are volunteering their time to scour part of the plane's search zone using detailed satellite images posted online by DigitalGlobe, a Colorado firm that owns one of the world's most advanced commercial satellite networks.

So many volunteers have joined the effort that the firm's website -- with its pinpoint pictures of everything floating in the ocean -- has crashed.

It is a busy week for "crowdsourcing," the Internet phenomenon where information is gathered from John and Jane Q. Public -- people like you -- and from your social media postings.

"This is a real needle-in-the-haystack problem, except the haystack is in the middle of the ocean," Luke Barrington of DigitalGlobe told CNN affiliate KMGH. "I will ask you to mark anything that looks interesting, any signs of wreckage or life rafts."

DigitalGlobe's satellite photos taken 400 miles above the Gulf of Thailand can capture a detail as small as a home plate. The challenge is finding the manpower to scour 1,235 square miles of such images on one of DigitalGlobe's websites, Tomnod.com -- with more pictures to be posted this week from satellites above the Strait of Malacca, said Abby Van Uum, an Edelman publicist retained by DigitalGlobe.

That's where crowdsourcing comes in.

"In many cases, the areas covered are so large, or the things we're looking for are so hard to find, that without the help of hundreds of thousands of people online, we'd never be able to find them," Barrington said.

One volunteer, Mike Seberger, 43, found a fascinating image in a matter of minutes: the silhouette in the ocean has the scale of a Boeing 777-200, the same model of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

His discovery can be seen on his CNN iReport page, which is also a form of crowdsourcing used by CNN.

"At first, I skipped past it, thinking, 'Nah. No way I would find anything that quickly,' " Seberger told CNN on Tuesday. "But then I kept scrolling back to it and thinking to myself, 'It does resemble a plane....'

"I played with the zoom on my browser a bit, and took a screenshot at 200%, which is what I uploaded" to CNN iReport, said Seberger, a manager of information technology in the Chicago area.

But Seberger does have his doubts: "Looking at it objectively, the shape of 'my' object appears plane-like and the dimensions are consistent with a 777-200. That said, I feel it is more likely to be a boat."

DigitalGlobe and the Tomnod.com website officials have yet to respond to his flagging of the curious image. "Their site is getting slammed, apparently, because about half the time that I try to access it, I get an error page, and sometimes even though I log in, no map loads," Seberger said Tuesday. "The site got slammed like healthcare.gov."

Company officials weren't available to respond to CNN's requests for a comment Tuesday.

In response to the Malaysia Airlines plane's disappearance, DigitalGlobe activated its subscription service to emergency managers, which provides online access to satellite images before and after the incident, the firm said on its website. The photos are used for emergency response, damage assessment and recovery.

The company performed a similar "global crowdsourcing campaign" in November's Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, allowing volunteers to tag online more than 60,000 objects of interest from satellite photos. The information was forwarded to emergency responders, the firm said.

The firm also tracked damage last year in the Moore, Oklahoma, tornado and the Colorado floods. In another case, the satellite imagery also helped locate the remains of two missing hikers in Peru, the affiliate reported.

The firm, based in Longmont, also uses geospatial big data, which is "information and insight taken from imagery and derived from various sources such as social media," the firm said.

The company used the technology in satellite images of the recent Sochi Olympics in Russia and cross-referenced the photos with social media data "to analyze overall activity, linguistic composition and mood for people around Sochi," the firm said.

DigitalGlobe and tomnod.com offer their satellite photos of ocean in crowdsourcing effort.
Attachments:

Malaysia Airlines MH370 / TomNod crowd-search
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1103537



CNN PRODUCER NOTE MikeSeberger said he read an article about DigitalGlobe's crowdsourced search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and decided to help out. He said he saw this image very quickly after he started looking at sections of the map. "At first, I skipped past it, thinking, 'Nah. No way I would find anything THAT quickly,' he said. "But then I kept scrolling back to it and thinking to myself, 'It DOES resemble a plane.'"

He said he couldn't tell what section of the map he was looking at, but he flagged it so someone else could take a look. He didn't see anything else that looked unusual.

Seberger said he thinks it's unlikely that this image shows the missing plane and assumes that he proably saw a ship that was in the area.

You can read more about the search on CNN.com.

- davidw, CNN iReport producer


I was able to get onto the TomNod site earlier today, and found a VERY interesting satellite image. Scale looks proper for a 777-200. I don't know how to tell the lat / long of that map, but am hoping by tagging it on TomNod that they will take a closer look and notify the searchers / authorities if appropriate. The website seems overloaded with traffic, but the link is: http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/6060 (image attached).
Attachments:

I think they are looking at the wrong place. This plane might have crashed somewhere in the Indian ocean so someone will find a piece of debris from it a month or two from now, or it can even take longer....Since the transponder was shut off and the plane flew for another 1 hour and 10 minutes, it might have been shot down by a US missile and the authorities are concealing this because of the Iranians who possibly had a terrorist plot in mind. It really is very suspicious....maybe the plane crashed on the land....it's a matter of chance when they find it.

UFO Man Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Truth or Rumors?? Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I read on a Chinese news website they have been
> > calling their loved ones and their phones are
> > actually ringing but no one answers. This would
> > mean the phones are on. If they were the phones
> I
> > mean we're dead it would go straight to voice
> mail
> > but that isn't the case. They are still
> ringing.
>
> There's no cell phone reception in outer space...

Actually there is cell phone reception in space. Astronauts from the International Space station would call their families all the time using their cell phones. Coverage was limited to certain times during the day as I recall when the satellite was in a position near the station.

Slant eyed liars Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> They are up to something. Anybody else find it odd
> that they were searching with boats and planes in
> an area that they knew was nowhere near where the
> last known position of the plane was?

I completely agree, something is definitely afoot.
Attachments:

This will get better in the future when the entire ATC system becomes satellite driven. It will take advantage of the Iridium satellite system for instruction and guidance. It will be next to impossible for a plane to just disappear from detection unless it literally drops from the sky. But it is only in the first phases of development now.

So, do you think we've solved this mystery yet? If not, it won't be long. With all these great ideas I'm sure we will figure it out. Thanks FFXU!

FFXU Is On The Case Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So, do you think we've solved this mystery yet? If
> not, it won't be long. With all these great ideas
> I'm sure we will figure it out. Thanks FFXU!

You're welcome, all ready our team of couch ridden misfits are scanning the area and picking the lint out of their navels as the clock continues to click. In the end, CNN will thank us and Meade will sing our praises!
Attachments:

Plane won't be found where most people are searching.

Evidence HIGHLY suggestive of plane takeover, likely with help from
insiders. Someone should check on history of plane crew and pilots.

Plane had fuel to remain airborne until ~8:30am. Could the plane reach Africa, Iran, Pakistan in that time?

A fully refueled plane with hundreds of innocent hostages would become a very dangerous and an unstoppable weapon!

Time is running out and authorities need to ask the right questions and look in the right places!!!

seems awful fishy that 4 days of searching by 10 different countries and NOW out of the blue the Malaysian AF has this data of the airplane turning around and going a whole different direction. Something stinks with this story....

What's inexplicable is the Malaysians are only now saying the aircraft turned west out over the Malacca Straits. Well thanks to all the man hours, costs and efforts that went into looking in the wrong location.
How the hell did that happen?

There were Electrical problems in the aircraft...The crew realizes this and attempts to turn back.....Because of problems they get the wrong heading..... and the plane goes way off course....Problems grow and over come aircraft and it vanishes an hour or so later...

it is hard to believe that Boeing would not incorporate communications into these aircraft that CANNOT be turned off by anyone, a SIMPLE GPS location device for real time tracking, in the event of hi-jacking a $250 million dollar aircraft that can be used in devasting ways? how is this possible? Where are the mandates to track these potential missiles? Wow! Where is your aircraft that could now be used as a missile? Hook them up to real time satelite tracking to norad. arghhhh

I did some research on the plane, a Boeing 777-200ER. It has a range of 7,700 Nautical Miles or a little over 8,500 ground miles. That's like going from Boston to LA, back to Boston, then back half way to LA in the SAME flight without stopping. It costs around $300 Million and is a massive aircraft. This plane could have made it to East Africa easy.. lots of unstable countries over there..

Notice how they disable the plane's tracking prior to making the turn... they wanted people to think it crashed into the ocean.. and waste time searching there.. This is even more interesting... taken directly from a cited Wikipedia article:

On April 2, 1997, a Malaysia Airlines -200ER named "Super Ranger" broke the great circle "distance without landing" record for an airliner by flying eastward from Boeing Field, Seattle to Kuala Lumpur, a distance of 10,823 nautical miles (20,044 km), in 21 hours and 23 minutes.

10,823 nautical miles without landing is baffling. That's 12,454 miles on the ground. (Coast to coast in the US 5 times without stopping.) It also holds the record for flying without fuel, which it did for more than 2 hours (after the tanks were empty) and landed safely.

Boeing: 777-200/-200ER Technical Characteristics
http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commercial/777family/pf/pf_200product.page

Malaysia Airlines mystery: US issued warnings over Boeing 777 'weak spot'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10691089/Malaysia-Airlines-mystery-US-issued-warnings-over-Boeing-777-weak-spot.html

American transport officials warned of a potential weak spot in Boeing 777s which could lead to the "loss of structural integrity of the aircraft" four months before the disappearance of Malaysiaairlines Flight MH370.

The Federal Aviation Administration in Washington drew up an Airworthiness Directive in November. It was triggered by reports of cracking in the fuselage skin underneath a Boeing aircraft's satellite antennae.

In its directive the FAA, which is responsible for supervising the safety of American-made aircraft such as Boeing, told airlines to look out for corrosion under the fuselage skin.

This, the FAA said, could lead to a situation where the fuselage was compromised leading to possible rapid decompression as well as the plane breaking up.

"We received a report of cracking and corrosion in the fuselage skin underneath the SATCOM antenna adapter," the FAA warned. "During a maintenance planning data inspection, one operator reported a 16-inch crack under the 3-bay SATCOM antenna adapter plate in the crown skin of the fuselage on an aeroplane that was 14 years old with approximately 14,000 total flight cycles.

"Subsequent to this crack finding, the same operator inspected 42 other aeroplanes that are between 6 and 16 years old and found some local corrosion, but no other cracking. Cracking and corrosion in the fuselage skin, if not corrected, could lead to rapid decompression and loss of structural integrity of the aeroplane."

The FAA directive in November called for additional checks to be incorporated into the routine maintenance schedule of the worldwide 777 Boeing fleet.

According to a Malaysia Airlines spokesman, the missing aircraft was serviced on February 23, with further maintenance scheduled for June 19.

The FAA stated that carrying out necessary inspection work would cost airlines $3.060 (£1,841).

With terrorism now appearing less likely as a cause of the Malaysian airlines disaster, which claimed 239 lives, focus has switched to problems with the aircraft or pilot error.

Despite both the Boeing 777 and Malaysia Airlines having good safety records, there have been other incidents which could prove relevant during the investigation of the disappearance.

In 2005, a 777 operated by Malaysia Airlines suffered problems with its autopilot system on a flight between Perth and Kuala Lumpur.

It led to the plane pitching up into a sudden 3,000-foot climb, almost causing the plane to stall.

The problem led to another airworthiness directive to correct a computer fault that had been found on 500 Boeing 777s.

Airworthiness directives are commonplace, similar to car recalls.

In the majority of cases, airlines are told to look for and correct the fault, if found, during maintenance.

On rare occasions an entire fleet will be grounded as happened in January last year when the FAA ordered Boeing to stop flying its flagship 787 Dreamliner after faults were discovered with the plane's batteries.

While investigators from Malaysia and the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington search for the plane's black box, they will also be able to glean vital information from a live-data stream broadcast during the flight.

Known as Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, it is the equivalent of an "online black box".

However James Healy-Pratt, an aviation lawyer who has represented bereaved families in other air accidents, warned they face a long wait before the original black boxes are recovered.

A Boeing spokesman said it was working with the NTSB as a technical adviser.

"The team is now in position in the region to offer whatever assistance is required."

The company declined to comment further.
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Airlines do not put a full tank of gas in the plane - they fill it with the minimum amount of fuel to save weight, and therefore ultimately fuel costs. Google Wikipedia Flight Planning.

Former Keller man said to be passenger on missing jetliner

A former Keller resident was one of the 239 passengers on a Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared off radar screens early Saturday, less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.

Philip Wood, 50, works for IBM and was on flight MH370, his father, Aubrey Wood, told The New York Times and KTVT/Channel 11.

Aubrey Wood declined to comment when contacted by the Star-Telegram, saying he would not talk to media organizations until Monday. CBS 11 reported that the embassy had notified him that his son was on the flight.

Aubrey Wood told The New York Times that the family had little information beyond what had been reported in the news media.

“We’re all sticking together,” he said from his home in Keller. “What can you do? What can you say?”

“We’re relying on our Lord. He’s the one who carries the load.”

Wood’s mother, Sandra, told NBC 5 that Philip Wood had visited Keller last week and that she was at peace because of it.

Wood’s ex-wife, Elaine, posted a status to Facebook that said, “Philip Wood was a wonderful man. Although we were no longer married, he is still family.”

The Times reported that Philip Wood lives in Kuala Lumpur, previously lived in Beijing and has two sons in Texas, the younger one a student at Texas A&M University. The newspaper reported that Wood’s father also worked for IBM and retired from the company.

On Saturday night, the family released a statement to NBC 5 that read: “Philip Wood was a man of God, a man of honor and integrity. His word was gold. Incredibly generous, creative and intelligent, Phil cared about people, his family, and above all, Christ. Though our hearts are hurting, we know so many families around the world are affected just as much as us by this terrible tragedy. We ask for your prayers, not only for ourselves, but for all involved during this difficult time.

“As a family, we are sticking together through Christ to get through this. Thank you for your understanding.”

As of late Saturday, Vietnamese ships and planes were still hunting for the missing Malaysian jetliner. They had found no wreckage close to where they spotted two large oil slicks.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/03/08/5632547/keller-man-said-to-be-passenger.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

xVEkW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Airlines do not put a full tank of gas in the
> plane - they fill it with the minimum amount of
> fuel to save weight, and therefore ultimately fuel
> costs. Google Wikipedia Flight Planning.

Or they tanker it if the fuel price is significantly lower at the departure point. News said it had 7-1/2 hours onboard, but that would be at altitude; at low altitude it would burn 2 or 3 times as much per hour and go slower (thicker air = drag).

I can't speak from too much knowledge of Malaysia's foreign affairs, as all I know is from the reading I've done since I heard about this story, but taking a look around them it doesn't seem unlikely that some combination of corruption, incompetence, lack of resources, or outright assistance from one of their neighbors could have happened. They aren't exactly sitting in the freedom capitol of the world. Vietnam, Laos, Burma... Not countries I would want to run into in a dark alley.

Q. and A. on the Disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/world/asia/q-and-a-on-the-disappearance-of-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370.html?_r=0

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has left investigators, aviation experts and the authorities in several countries at a loss to explain what happened. As the search and inquiry continue, Matthew L. Wald, a correspondent for The New York Times, answers a few basic questions:

Q. How could a Boeing 777 simply vanish? Aren’t they always tracked by radar or satellites?

A. Radar coverage is not universal, especially over water. In areas without radar, pilots are generally required to radio in their positions at fixed intervals, mostly to assure that air traffic controllers can keep aircraft out of one another’s way. Between intervals, something could go wrong.

Planes like the 777 also have automatic systems that send out data on engine performance and other technical functions. Those signals go to a maintenance base, not to air traffic control. Air France used those signals to help determine what happened when its Flight 447 disappeared over the equatorial Atlantic. Investigators may be doing something similar in Kuala Lumpur.

Q. Plane crashes most often happen on landing or takeoff, but this flight vanished almost an hour after takeoff when it was cruising. What could cause a plane to crash at that point in a flight?

A. In three crashes at sea in the last few years, the aircraft’s speed-sensing systems have malfunctioned. In two of those cases, crews failed to diagnose and cope with the problem. (In the third, there was probably nothing they could have done.) A deliberate act by a pilot, terrorism or an attack in the cockpit could be other causes.

Q. Shouldn’t the signals from transponders or “black boxes” have pinpointed the aircraft by now?

A. If the black boxes are in water, “pingers,” which emit a tone, are activated. But these are audible only in a limited area. And the plane may not be in the water.

Q. Why would the authorities not have found debris after so many hours of searching?

A. They may not be looking in the right place. The plane flies at 10 miles a minute, and no one knows exactly when it crashed, or whether it departed its assigned track before doing so.

Q. How far from its last known location could the aircraft have strayed?
Continue reading the main story

INDONESIA

A. While we know where the last radio contact was, we do not know how long after that the airplane crashed, so it is hard to say. A jetliner cruising at 35,000 feet could glide as far as 80 or 90 miles after losing engine power if the pilots still had control.

Q. Are there any signs that terrorism might have been involved?

A. No group is known to have claimed to have destroyed the plane. Beyond that, not enough is known to speculate.

Q. If the plane had a major malfunction, wouldn’t the pilots have called for help and sent distress signals?

A. Pilots have a mantra for setting priorities in an emergency: aviate, navigate, communicate. The first priority is to fly the airplane. Telling air traffic controllers on the ground what is going on comes third, since doing so is unlikely to instantly yield any help with the crisis in the cockpit, whatever it may be. If the pilots are fighting to keep the plane aloft, they may not have time to use the radio.

Q. Could one of the pilots have crashed the plane deliberately?

A. It’s been known to happen: The crashes of an EgyptAir flight from Kennedy International Airport in 1999 and a SilkAir flight in Indonesia in 1997 were attributed to intentional acts by cockpit crew members. But nothing is yet known publicly to suggest that that happened on the Malaysia Airlines flight.


Q. Have other planes disappeared in this way in recent years?

A. There is no record of big planes simply disappearing, though they may take some time to find. A few pieces of debris from Air France Flight 447 were spotted floating in the Atlantic the day after the plane crashed in June 2009, but it took five days to find most of the wreckage. Small aircraft may be missing for much longer if they go down in remote areas. Steve Fossett, the daredevil adventurer who flew around the world solo in a plane and set records in a balloon, took off in his private plane in Nevada on Sept. 3, 2007, and his remains were found in October 2008.
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Search area with titles...
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Live: Search for missing Malaysia Airlines moves to west of peninsula as records show it flew another 350 miles after disappearing

Officials believe they have made the first major breakthrough since the jet carrying 239 people vanished
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-live-3219331#ixzz2vkhx0QNI

Here is a timeline of events in the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight:

Saturday, March 8
•Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Flight departs at 12:41am (1441 GMT Friday), and is due to land in Beijing at 6:30am (2230 GMT) the same day. On board the Boeing 777-200ER are 227 passengers and 12 crew.
•Airline loses contact with plane between 1-2 hours after takeoff. No distress signal and weather is clear at the time.
•Missing plane last has contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu.
•Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam says plane failed to check in as scheduled at 1721 GMT while flying over sea between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City.
•Flight tracking website flightaware.com shows plane flew northeast over Malaysia after takeoff and climbed to altitude of 35,000 feet. The flight vanished from website's tracking records a minute later while still climbing.
•Malaysia search ships see no sign of wreckage in area where flights last made contact. Vietnam says giant oil slick and column of smoke seen in its waters.
•Two men from Austria and Italy, listed among the passengers on a missing Malaysia Airlines flight, are not in fact on board. They say their passports were stolen.

Sunday, March 9
•Malaysia Airlines says fears worst and is working with U.S. company that specialises in disaster recovery.
•Radar indicates flight may have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing before disappearing.
•Interpol says at least two passports recorded as lost or stolen in its database were used by passengers, and it is "examining additional suspect passports".
•Investigators narrow focus of inquiries on possibility plane disintegrated in mid-flight, a source who is involved in the investigations in Malaysia tells Reuters.

Monday, March 10
•The United States review of American spy satellite imagery shows no signs of mid-air explosion.
•As dozens of ships and aircraft from seven countries scour the seas around Malaysia and south of Vietnam, questions mounted over whether a bomb or hijacking could have brought down the Boeing airliner.
•Hijacking could not be ruled out, said the head of Malaysia's Civil Aviation Authority, Azharuddin Abdul Rahmanthe, adding the missing jet was an "unprecedented aviation mystery".
•The disappearance of the Malaysian airliner could dent the national carrier's plan to return to profit by end-2014, equity analysts said. Shares in MAS hit a record low on Monday.

Tuesday, March 11
•Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble names the two men who boarded jet with stolen passports as Iranians, aged 18 and 29, who had entered Malaysia using their real passports. "The more information we get, the more we are inclined to conclude it is not a terrorist incident," Noble said.
•Malaysian police chief said the younger man appeared to be an illegal immigrant. His mother was waiting for him in Frankfurt and had been in contact with authorities, he said.
•Malaysian police say they are investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.
•Malaysia's military believes missing jet turned and flew hundreds of kilometres to the west after it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country's east coast, a senior officer told Reuters. The jet made it into the Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping channels, along Malaysia's west coast, said the officer.
•A Colorado-based company has put "crowdsourcing" to work in search for a missing jet, enlisting Internet users to comb through satellite images of more than 1,200 square miles (3,200 square km) of open seas for any signs of wreckage.

Wednesday, March 12
•The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet expands to an area stretching from China to India, as authorities struggle to answer what had happened to the aircraft that vanished almost five days ago with 239 people on board.

I'd say at this point its fairly obvious the authorities have no fucking idea where this plane is or was.

It's so obvious from the pilots' names. The pilots wanted to go to Mecca or get their 64 virgins, whichever came first.

Allahu Snackbar Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's so obvious from the pilots' names. The
> pilots wanted to go to Mecca or get their 64
> virgins, whichever came first.


One of the two of them is reported to have had two women in the cockpit for the duration of a flight two years ago.

thisisajokeright Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Allahu Snackbar Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > It's so obvious from the pilots' names. The
> > pilots wanted to go to Mecca or get their 64
> > virgins, whichever came first.
>
>
> One of the two of them is reported to have had two
> women in the cockpit for the duration of a flight
> two years ago.

This is who they let into the cockpit this time...
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HA!

Report: Final Words from Jet Were 'All Right, Good Night'
http://www.nbcnews.com/#/storyline/missing-jet/report-final-words-jet-were-all-right-good-night-n50626

The last words from missing the Malaysia Airlines plane were “all right, good night,” Malaysian officials reportedly told anxious relatives in China on Wednesday.

That sentence was uttered to Malaysian air traffic controllers in response to the routine handover to their Vietnamese counterparts.

The flight then disappeared from civilian radar screens, Malaysia's civil aviation officials told families in a packed hotel meeting room in Beijing, according to a reporter for the Singapore Straits Times who attended the event.

The Straits Times said relatives were angry at the Malaysian officials for not confirming whether the Boeing 777 had been subsequently detected on military radar screens.

The report could not be independently verified by NBC News.

Ex-NTSB investigator weighs in on Flight 370
Go here to watch the video:
http://www.nbcnews.com/#/storyline/missing-jet/report-final-words-jet-were-all-right-good-night-n50626
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These muslim terrorists need to all be nuked and eliminated. Obama needs to start putting nuclear warheads on his wonderful drones.

Jet's path a mystery

More than four days since it vanished, officials don't seem to know where to look for the Malaysia Airlines jet.

(CNN) -- More than four days since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared over Southeast Asia, Malaysian officials not only don't know what happened to the plane, they don't seem sure where to look.

On Wednesday, officials announced they had once again expanded the search area. It now covers 27,000 square miles, more than double the size of the area being searched just a day before.

Such a dramatic expansion at this stage of the investigation is troubling, said CNN aviation expert Richard Quest.

"At this stage in the investigation and search and rescue, I would have expected to see by now a much more defined understanding of what the route was, where the plane was headed and a narrowing of the search consequent upon that," he said on CNN's "New Day."

Indeed, the lack of a clear direction prompted Vietnam to say Wednesday that it's pulling back on its search efforts until Malaysian authorities come up with better information on where to look for the plane.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished early Saturday with 239 people on board during a flight between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.

Phan Quy Tieu, Vietnam's vice minister of transportation, said the information Malaysian officials provided was "insufficient."

"Up until now we only had one meeting with a Malaysian military attache," he said.

For now, Vietnamese teams will stop searching the sea south of Ca Mau province, the southern tip of Vietnam, and shift the focus to areas east of Ca Mau, said Doan Luu, the director of international affairs at the Vietnamese Civil Aviation Authority.

At a news conference Wednesday, Malaysian transportation minister Hishamuddin Bin Hussein defended his government's approach.

"We have been very consistent in the search," he said.

READ: Timeline of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Confusion over flight path

But even figuring out where authorities believe the plane may have gone down has been a difficult and shifting proposition.

In the immediate aftermath of the plane's disappearance, search and rescue efforts were focused on the Gulf of Thailand, along the expected flight path between Malaysia and Vietnam.

Over the weekend, authorities suddenly expanded their search to the other side of the Malay Peninsula, in the Straits of Malacca where search efforts now seem to be concentrated.

That location is hundreds of miles off the plane's expected flight path.

An explanation appeared to come Tuesday when a senior Malaysian Air Force official told CNN that the Air Force had tracked the plane to a spot near the small island of Palau Perak off Malaysia's west coast in the Straits of Malacca.

The plane's identifying transponder had stopped sending signals, too, said the official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Malaysia's civilian administration appeared to dispute the report, however.

The New York Times quoted a spokesman for the Malaysian prime minister's office as saying Tuesday that military officials had told him there was no evidence the plane had flown back over the Malay Peninsula to the Straits of Malacca.

The Prime Minister's office didn't immediately return calls from CNN seeking comment Wednesday.

Then, in another shift, Malaysian authorities said at a news conference Wednesday that radar records reviewed in the wake of the plane's disappearance reveal an unidentified aircraft traveling across the Malay Peninsula and some 200 miles into the Straits of Malacca.

However, it wasn't clear whether that radar signal represented Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Gen. Rodzali Daud, head of the Malaysian Air Force, said at the news conference.

Rodzali said Wednesday that officials are still "examining and analyzing all possibilities" when it comes to the plane's flight path.

Malaysian officials are asking experts from the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority and National Transportation Safety Board to help them analyze the radar data.

The FAA said Wednesday that it "stands ready to provide any necessary additional support."

The agency has already sent two technical experts and another official to Kuala Lumpur as part of a NTSB investigative team.

How you can help find the plane

No trace

The search zones includes huge swaths of ocean on each side of the Malay Peninsula, as well as land.

Forty-two ships and 39 planes from 12 countries have been searching the sea between the northeast coast of Malaysia and southwest Vietnam, the area where the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers.

But they are also looking off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, in the Straits of Malacca, and north into the Andaman Sea.

So far, searchers have found no trace of the plane.

What happened leading to the plane's disappearance also remains a mystery. Leading theories include hijacking, an explosion or a catastrophic mechanical failure.

Suggestions that the plane had veered off course and that its identifying transponder was not working raise obvious concerns about a hijacking, analysts tell CNN. But a catastrophic power failure or other problem could also explain the anomalies, analysts say.

In a sign authorities are looking at all options, Kuala Lumpur police told CNN they are searching the home of the airliner's Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah.

Families' frustration

As the vexing search drags on, frustration has grown among friends and family of those who were on board.

"Time is passing by. The priority should be to search for the living," a middle-aged man shouted before breaking into sobs during a meeting with airline officials in Beijing on Tuesday. His son, he said, was one of the passengers aboard the plane.

Other people at the meeting also voiced their frustration at the lack of information.

Most of those on the flight were Chinese, and the Chinese government has urged Malaysia to speed up the pace of its investigation.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Wednesday appealed for patience.

"The families involved have to understand that this is something unexpected," Najib said. "The families must understand more efforts have been made with all our capabilities."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~NEW: FAA says it's ready to help Malaysia with more resources to interpret radar data
~Police in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, say they're searching missing pilot's home
~Amid confusion over route, Malaysian officials seem unsure where to look for plane
~The search zone now encompasses 27,000 square miles
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"Indeed, the lack of a clear direction prompted Vietnam to say Wednesday that it's pulling back on its search efforts until Malaysian authorities come up with better information on where to look for the plane."

That's my fave part -- 239 are missing feared dead and you don't give a fuck?? Okay. It disappeared in YOUR airspace, assholes!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2014 01:02PM by thisisajokeright.

What a fucking joke. Those nimrods in malaysia have no idea where to look for this plane. It is now even worse than a needle in haystack because they dont even know where the haystack is.

Sounds crazy but this plane could have been sucked up by a Alians. There are hundreds of planets in the universe so there must be life on some of them. Their technology could be much more advanced than ours.

Alian abuction? Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sounds crazy but this plane could have been sucked
> up by a Alians. There are hundreds of planets in
> the universe so there must be life on some of
> them. Their technology could be much more advanced
> than ours.

Or Time Travellers...

Movie, "Millennium." Earthlings from the far future have screwed up the DNA pool with excessive GMO tinkering. The only way to save Earth is to go back and get some people from the period before cloning and use them to inject good DNA back into the pool. So what they do is find in newspaper articles where an airliner crashed. They use their technology to create a time nexus to the point before the plan crashes. The airliner sits in suspended animation in the future. The first thing is the door opens and the future people tell the occupants that all will need to get off the plane. Then once all the good humans are removed, they put sickly volunteers to replace them while taking their ID's, etc. Then the airline is returned to current time to allow the pending crash to happen. What fowls up the works is when somehow one of the future humans survives the crash and gives up the game.

The fate of the plane revealed at last...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I16_8l0yS-g

How could the Malaysia authorities lose track of the plane? Here's how...
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Was flight MH370 lost in an aeronautical black hole or did catastrophic power failure prevent air traffic control plotting its every move?

•Boeing 777's transponder should provide information to traffic controllers
•But at 1.20am on Saturday, transponder on flight MH370 stopped working
•Experts baffled by loss of communication and subsequent lack of debris

•One theory links 20 defence tech experts on board to electronic warfare
•Another suggests a bomb went off while plane flew over Malaysian jungle
•There are also 'aeronautical black holes' in the region that could mean the plane is hundreds - or even thousands - of miles away from searches

•Nuclear experts are now using a 'infrasound' to find out if an explosion took place at the altitude of the plane

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2578197/Is-Boeing-777-hiding-invisibility-cloak-lost-black-hole-Experts-try-unravel-mystery-Malaysia-Airlines-missing-aircraft.html

With technology tracking our every move, it seems incredible that a plane carrying 239 passengers could vanish into thin air.

Yet despite flight data recorders, location transponders and radio communication, the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 disappeared on a midnight flight out of Kuala Lumpur on Friday.

Experts are baffled by the loss of communication, with some putting forward theories of mid-air bomb explosions, disappearance into an 'aeronautical black hole' and an attempt at electronic warfare.

The mystery has deepened after reports emerged that relatives have been able to call the mobiles of their missing loved ones.

Professor William Webb, a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, told MailOnline: ‘The phones definitely won't be working. They'll be underwater, out of coverage and by this time out of battery.

‘So there's absolutely no way they could be used for triangulation.

‘As to why they are "ringing" it'll be the same as if they were out of coverage - in some cases it may ring before going to voicemail.’

Some reports claim the phones are just ringing and ringing however.


Telecoms expert Alan Spencer told MailOnline that if the phones are really ringing, they can categorically not be under the sea.


He added that the phones will only be ringing if they are ‘switched on, not in water, the battery is charged, and [they are] near a mobile cell site.’

This means that if the phones are genuinely ringing, the plane needs to have landed on land – not in the sea – and be in a location where there is cell service, rather than in the middle of a jungle, for example.


Meanwhile, the disappearance of the aircraft may be explained by a deliberate cutting of power to the plane’s communication instruments.


Dr Martyn Thomas from the Institution of Engineering and Technology, told MailOnline that he thinks a sudden decompression of the plane may have taken place and effectively knocked out the pilot and passengers – as well as the communication equipment.

In this scenario, the plane could have flown on using its autopilot without any human influence and ‘could be anywhere within about 2,000 miles’.

Another possibility is that the plane fell into an 'aeronautical black hole' in the region, according to Stewart John, an aeronautical expert and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Radar is used to track planes over land in inhabited areas but when planes venture over remote lands, such as the inner part of Russia or over the jungles of Malaysia, the only way of tracking them is the aircraft sending back information at regular intervals, he explained.

If the aircraft remained airborne after the last check-in it could still be hundreds of miles away from where people are searching.

Dr John thinks it is more likely that the aircraft was destroyed by an ‘explosive decompression’ – likely be a bomb on-board the plane.

He said that if a door or window was blown out, a pilot would be able to manage the situation. He explained that the catastrophe ‘had to be explosive [for the aircraft] to fall down from the sky…it would be more than just a panel blowing out’.

He added: ‘If they lost both engines, the pilot would have around 20 minutes - roughly equivalent to 70 to 80miles - to glide down from an altitude of 30,000 feet.’

However, Dr Martyn Thomas from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) believes that a civil or military tracking device must have clocked the aircraft’s location.

Aircraft are mostly tracked by secondary radar over land.


Over large distances planes automatically transmit a four digit ‘squawk’ code showing its identification and altitude.

A system called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) is used for when aircraft are out of normal radar range, such as over remote regions or oceans.

‘Aircraft ping out their location speed, heading and altitude, which are broadcast and logged. You can track any flight,’ Dr Thomas said.

Airplanes also send information to an airline about their performance and emergency warning data. ‘But appears none was received’ for the flight in question, he said.

‘It seems as if it took off, climbed to 30,000ft and maintained a level heading, then in the last few seconds started to turn right,’ Dr Thomas added.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2578197/Is-Boeing-777-hiding-invisibility-cloak-lost-black-hole-Experts-try-unravel-mystery-Malaysia-Airlines-missing-aircraft.html#ixzz2vm8etMkt
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
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WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED?



A mid-air explosion: The lack of debris could be explained by it falling into Malaysian jungle.

A terrorist attack: Director of CIA has said terrorism could not be ruled out

Power failure: Possibly caused by deliberate cutting of power to communication instruments


Electronic warfare: 20 passengers on board were experts in this technology.


Hijacking: Radar data indicates the plane might have made a U-turn.


A pilot error: There is a chance of them in all air mysteries, claim experts


Structural failure: Possibly involving damage sustained by an accident in 2012


Pilot suicide: There were two large jet crashes in the late 1990s caused by this

Aeronautical black hole: Plane is stranded hundreds of miles from current search area.

If the aircraft remained airborne after the last check-in it could still be hundreds of miles away from where people are searching.

Dr John thinks it is more likely that the aircraft was destroyed by an ‘explosive decompression’ – likely be a bomb on-board the plane.

He said that if a door or window was blown out, a pilot would be able to manage the situation. He explained that the catastrophe ‘had to be explosive [for the aircraft] to fall down from the sky…it would be more than just a panel blowing out’.

He added: ‘If they lost both engines, the pilot would have around 20 minutes - roughly equivalent to 70 to 80miles - to glide down from an altitude of 30,000 feet.’

However, Dr Martyn Thomas from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) believes that a civil or military tracking device must have clocked the aircraft’s location.

Aircraft are mostly tracked by secondary radar over land.


Over large distances planes automatically transmit a four digit ‘squawk’ code showing its identification and altitude.

A system called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) is used for when aircraft are out of normal radar range, such as over remote regions or oceans.

‘Aircraft ping out their location speed, heading and altitude, which are broadcast and logged. You can track any flight,’ Dr Thomas said.

Airplanes also send information to an airline about their performance and emergency warning data. ‘But appears none was received’ for the flight in question, he said.

‘It seems as if it took off, climbed to 30,000ft and maintained a level heading, then in the last few seconds started to turn right,’ Dr Thomas added.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2578197/Is-Boeing-777-hiding-invisibility-cloak-lost-black-hole-Experts-try-unravel-mystery-Malaysia-Airlines-missing-aircraft.html#ixzz2vm976KOr
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO THE BLACK BOX?


The black box - which is actually orange - is used to record any instruction sent to the aircraft as well as conversations on radio and between the crew.


When a plane is lost, the black box pings at a certain frequency for between 30 to 70 days and it can be detected within around five or six miles.

The box itself is designed to withstand the high impact of a plane crash, the pressures of the deep sea and the high and low temperatures of fire and ice.

‘But search parties could miss it if they are not close enough or are not detecting the correct frequency’, Dr Stewart John told MailOnline.

There also remains the possibility that a powerful enough force, such as a bomb, could have completely destroy the black box on the Malaysia flight.

The black box may also be too deep in the ocean for the recovery team to find.


Honeywell’s black box units, for instance, emit signals that can be heard from 2.8 miles deep.
.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2578197/Is-Boeing-777-hiding-invisibility-cloak-lost-black-hole-Experts-try-unravel-mystery-Malaysia-Airlines-missing-aircraft.html#ixzz2vm9EyTKB
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

‘It is known where the aircraft was within tens of metres when it lost contact,’ he explained, so it seems that there was ‘either a deliberate cutting of power to communications instruments such as radios and transponders, or a catastrophic event.’


HOW ARE FLIGHTS TRACKED?



On board a plane there are cockpit voice and flight data recorders – the ‘black boxes’ – which each include a ‘pinger’ that sends a transmission up to 30 days after submersion underwater.

In the black box is an ASD-B flight transponder which, unlike the GPS in a car, broadcasts its location by sending information back to air traffic controllers every second.


Crews are also able to speak to their airline through discrete radio channels.


The missing aircraft was comfortably at a stage of flight when the pilot would have had plenty of time to report any mechanical problems to Air Traffic Control.

Black boxes on commercial aircraft also contain cockpit voice recorders which could provide some insight into what went wrong on that plane at 1am on Friday morning.

It remains a mystery why no one can make contact with the box.
.
‘Something stopped communication instruments in the cockpit or there was a catastrophic failure – but it is very hard to understand,’ he added.

In a more radical theory, the possibility of electronic warfare has also been raised following confirmation that there were at least 20 passengers onboard from Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor. Each of these passengers had specialist knowledge of electronic technology for defence applications.


This could include ‘cloaking’ technology that uses a hexagonal array of glasslike panels to bend light around an object, such as plane, according to a report in Beforeitsnews.com.

Other techniques may have been used to jam signals, allowing the plane to vanish from radar detection without its security systems being activated.

‘It is conceivable that the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 plane is “cloaked,” hiding with hi-tech electronic warfare weaponry that exists and is used,’ Beforeitsnews.com wrote.

‘In fact, this type of technology is precisely the expertise of Freescale that has 20 employees on board the missing flight.’

‘These were people with a lot of experience and technical background and they were very important people,’ Mr Mitch Haws, Global communications officer for the tech company, said.

The company recently launched a major initiative dedicated to serving radio frequency power needs of U.S. aerospace and defence sector.

The mystery of why no debris has been found at sea or over land is also leaving experts baffled, but there is a theory that if the plane crashed in the jungle, tall rubber trees, which are common in the region, could cover the crash site easily.


Dr John said: ‘If it came down in a controlled way, it would carve a path through the trees – you would see a kind of runway – so it’s got to be a catastrophe and something out of the normal.’

On Monday, the head of the organisation that monitors the nuclear test ban treaty said he has asked its experts to see if they detected an explosion at the altitude of the missing plane.

Lassina Zerbo, executive director of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) explained to a news conference that experts can use 'infrasound; - or infrasonic sensors - to monitor the planet for atmospheric nuclear explosions.

'There's a possibility, it's not absolute, that the technology like the Infrazone could be able to detect an explosion,' he said in response to a question by CBS News.


Infrasound are acoustic waves with very low frequencies that are inaudible to the human ear are called infrasound.

'Infrasound is produced by a variety of natural and man-made sources: exploding volcanoes, earthquakes, meteors, storms and auroras in the natural world; nuclear, mining and large chemical explosions, as well as aircraft and rocket launches in the man-made arena,' the CTBTO said.

WHY ARE THE PHONES STILL RINGING?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2578197/Is-Boeing-777-hiding-invisibility-cloak-lost-black-hole-Experts-try-unravel-mystery-Malaysia-Airlines-missing-aircraft.html

After three days, wouldn’t the phone batteries be dead by now?

Not necessarily. Smartphones are renowned for their poor battery life and will typically last up to around 24 hours. But the batteries on older, feature phones can last much longer.

For example, the Nokia 100 boasts a standby battery life of a staggering 35 days. Smartphone batteries can also last longer if the handset isn’t being used, and especially if the phone is in Flight Mode.

However, if the phone is in Flight Mode, it switches off all wireless activity meaning calls wouldn’t be able to connect, effectively ruling out this theory.

If the phone batteries are dead, wouldn’t the call go straight to voicemail?

In a word, yes. However, the process of sending the call to voicemail can differ depending on the service provider.

For example, the majority of phones will go straight to voicemail, or callers will get an out of service message if voicemail hasn’t been set up.

This will occur even if the phone is underwater, or not near a cell signal.

However, some service providers will ring once or twice before the phone goes to voicemail, or cut off. This may explain the reports that claimed phones rang before seeming to hang up.

Some reports claim the phones are just ringing and ringing though. How is this possible?

Telecoms expert Alan Spencer told MailOnline that if the phones are really ringing, they can categorically not be under the sea.

Although he added that the phones will only be ringing if they are ‘switched on, not in water, the battery is charged, and [they are] near a mobile cell site.’

This means that if the phones are genuinely ringing, the plane needs to have landed on land – not in the sea – and be in a location where there is cell service, rather than landing in the middle of a jungle, for example.

Why can’t network operators locate the phones?

A number of family members have asked the network operators why they can’t use the phone’s signal to locate the missing people.

Professor William Webb, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, told MailOnline: ‘The phones definitely won't be working. They'll be underwater, out of coverage and by this time out of battery.

‘So there's absolutely no way they could be used for triangulation.

‘As to why they are ‘ringing’ it'll be the same as if they were out of coverage - in some cases it may ring before going to voicemail.’

What about the T3212 timer I’ve read about?

The T3212 is a timer that causes a phone to periodically send a message to the network saying where it is.

But Professor Webb said this only works when the phone is turned on and it is in coverage. It won't work when the battery is dead.

What about reports that passengers are appearing online, on the QQ social network?

When people sign into social networks including QQ, as well as Facebook, they appear online.

This is the case whether they’ve signed in on a phone, tablet, PC, and laptop. If missing passengers are shown as online, they may not be using the service on their phone. Instead they may still be logged in on another device.

If this other device shuts down or goes into standby, however, or there is a long period of inactivity, the social network will log them out, which may explain why some accounts went from online to offline over a period of three days.
Attachments:

WHAT HAPPENED TO FLIGHT 370? SOME MORE POSSIBLE SCENARIOS
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2578197/Is-Boeing-777-hiding-invisibility-cloak-lost-black-hole-Experts-try-unravel-mystery-Malaysia-Airlines-missing-aircraft.html#ixzz2vm9wN82M

THEORY: A bomb
One of the theories surrounding the missing plane is that a terrorist boarded the plane and blew it up in mid-air. The theory was favoured after the discovery of two stolen passports linked to people with tickets for the flight.

Robert Francis, former vice chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Board told Local10.com that if flight 370 was blown up there would have been no signal and the plane could disappear from radar without warning.


There is a theory that the plane could have been blown up over a jungle and that if the pilot was incapacitated or killed, the aircraft or debris could have fallen into or through the canopy, which is why it has yet to be found.

Problem: So far no debris of wreckage has been found that would indicate the aircraft was destroyed by a bomb blast.


Dr Martyn Thomas, of the IET, told MailOnline that if a bomb had destroyed the aircraft over the sea where the search is currently focused, you would expect to see debris as the sea is shallower than the length of the aircraft and plenty of pieces would float, such as fibreglass panels and seat cushions.

It is unlikely that any explosion would have been captured by orbiting satellites as they could have to pass over the exact location at the correct time to record a flash from above. Experts have confirmed that oil slicks and debris found in the South China Sea didn’t originate from flight 370.

THEORY: Mechanical failure
The aircraft could have suffered a massive mechanical failure, which caused it to plummet onto water without breaking up. It could have sunk without leaving any debris behind.

Problem: In the past, pilots have managed to glide a plane more slowly down when engines have failed, giving them time to send an SOS. But no emergency signal was made, which would seem likely if pilots had to make the decision to ditch the aircraft.

THEORY: Hijacking
Radar data has indicated that the plane might have made a U-turn to head back to Kuala Lumur, which some experts think might indicate that the aircraft was hijacked.

Problem: There are no reports of flight crew sending any signals to get help, which would be expected in a hijacking scenario.

Dr Thomas said that the hijacking theory is ‘odd’ because it is likely that a plane continuing a journey would have been detected by military radar somewhere in the region – especially if it made a U-turn and passed over busy areas of land.

THEORY: Pilot error
In all air mysteries, there is a chance that an error of judgement by the pilot was to blame.


Problem: It is impossible to know if this is the case while the plane has yet to be recovered. A handful of aviation experts have compared flight 370 to an Air France disaster in 2009 when flight 447 went missing in a storm on the way to Brazil. After years of searching, the aircraft’s black box was recovered and revealed that pilots failed to attempt any recovery manoeuvres, but aside from the lack of evidence the Malaysia Air pilots acted in a similar way, weather was relatively good along Flight 370’s route.

THEORY: Autopilot kicked in

A decompression of the plane took place and effectively knocked out the pilot and passengers, as well as the communication equipment, according to another theory.

Commenting on the idea, Dr Thomas said that theoretically the plane could have flown on using its autopilot without any human influence and ‘could be anywhere within about 2,000 miles’ until its fuel ran out and it crashed.


Problem: In order for this theory to be proved correct, the plane’s wreckage black box would need to be found and Dr Thomas said that the theory is ‘highly speculative and not at all likely.’

..
The only way to find out is through the flight recorders.

Searchers are listening out for flight MH370's 406 megahertz Emergency Locator Transmitter, a unit that separates from aircraft wreckage and floats when it is immersed in saltwater.

Nine nations have now joined the attempt to find the mission. The operation involves 34 aircraft, 40 ships and a battery of search and rescue technologies.

The U.S. has flown a Lockheed Martin P-3C long-range search aircraft from its base in Okinawa, Japan, to Kuala Lumpur to undertake 10-hour nonstop search missions.

Go here to watch the video:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2578197/Is-Boeing-777-hiding-invisibility-cloak-lost-black-hole-Experts-try-unravel-mystery-Malaysia-Airlines-missing-aircraft.html
Attachments:

Electronic Fog - theory about how aeroplanes have been vanishing since the '30s. Basically a weather condition which attaches to the wings like a cloud that moves with the plane - many pilots have witnessed this around the world.

I feel like if the aircraft made a turn just before transponder signal stopped, had a electrical failure so the radios would not work, they soft landed in the ocean or crashed on land, that is why no floating parts have been found. It is possible they could have landed many miles outside of the search area, and the transponder signals might not be easy to pick up, i think they landed in the ocean, and i think they soft landed then sank. I do hope for the best, thoughts are with all the surviving family members!

I have been following the missing of flight MH370 and I like to think out of the box. With technology tracking our every move, it seems incredible that a plane carrying 239 passengers could vanish into thin air. There are only two possibilities - sea and land. Let Nature take its course and Nature will lead you to the missing aircraft. My suggestion is very simple, (1) Release tagged dolphins and sharks into the sea and monitor them, and it¿s most likely they will lead you to the wreckage. If you suspect that the plane has crashed on land, just use tagged eagles, ventures and other animals. Animals and creatures¿ possess natural abilities beyond our imagination, all they want is food to survive, but the human race is their greatest thread. They know their natural habitat best and there is a lot we humans can learn from them, thank you.

CNN BREAKING NEWS - VIDEO Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The fate of the plane revealed at last...
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I16_8l0yS-g

Too funny, from Giant Shark versus Mega Octopus.
Attachments:

They will be back

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734668/

Portrait of a frightened man: Mr. Robert Wilson, thirty-seven, husband, father, and salesman on sick leave. Mr. Wilson has just been discharged from a sanitarium where he spent the last six months recovering from a nervous breakdown, the onset of which took place on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Wilson is about to be flown home - the difference being that, on that evening half a year ago, Mr. Wilson's flight was terminated by the onslaught of his mental breakdown. Tonight, he's traveling all the way to his appointed destination, which, contrary to Mr. Wilson's plan, happens to be in the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370...
Attachments:

I hope all that Asian fish food doesn't make my tuna sandwich taste funny.

Satellite looking into missing Malaysia flight detects 'suspected crash area'
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- A Chinese satellite looking into the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 "observed a suspected crash area at sea," a Chinese government agency said -- a potentially pivotal lead into what has been a frustrating search for the aircraft.

China's State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense announced the discovery, including images of what it said were "three suspected floating objects and their sizes."

The objects aren't small: 13 by 18 meters (43 by 59 feet), 14 by 19 meters (46 by 62 feet) and 24 by 22 meters (79 feet by 72 feet). For reference, the wingspan of an intact Boeing 777-200ER like the one that disappeared is about 61 meters (200 feet) and its overall length is about 64 meters (210 feet).

The images were captured on March 9 -- which was the day after the plane went missing -- but weren't released until Wednesday.

The Chinese agency gave coordinates of 105.63 east longitude, 6.7 north latitude, which would put it in waters northeast of where it took off in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and south of Vietnam, near where the South China Sea meets the Gulf of Thailand.

"It's where it's supposed to be," Peter Goelz, a former National Transportation Safety Board managing director, told CNN's Jake Tapper, noting the "great skepticism" about reports the plane had turned around to go back over Malaysia. "I think they've got to get vessels and aircraft there as quickly as humanly possible."

This isn't the first time authorities have announced they were looking at objects or oil slicks that might be tied to aircraft. Still, it is the latest and comes on the same day that officials, rather than narrowing the search area, more than doubled it from the day earlier to nearly 27,000 square nautical miles (35,000 square miles).

Bill Palmer -- author of a book on Air France's Flight 447, which also mysteriously went missing before its remnants were found -- said having a search area of that size is immensely challenging. He compared it to trying to find something the size of a car or truck in Pennsylvania, then widening it to look for the same thing in all of North America.

"It's a very, very difficult situation to try to find anything," Palmer told CNN's Brooke Baldwin. "Looking for pieces on the shimmering water doesn't make it any easier."

The Chinese satellite find could help, significantly, in that regard.

"I think the size of the pieces ... everything we've heard... gives good cause to believe that we've now (refocused) the area," former Federal Aviation Administration official Michael Goldfarb told CNN. "And that's a huge relief to everybody ... I think it's a high chance that they're going to confirm that these (are) pieces of the wreckage."

But not every expert was convinced this is it. Clive Irving, a senior editor with Conde Nast Traveler, said that the size of the pieces -- since they are fairly square and big -- "don't conform to anything that's on the plane."

Regardless, time is of the essence -- both for investigators and the loved ones of the plane's 239 passengers and crew, who have waited since Saturday for any breakthrough that would provide closure.

The flight data recorders should "ping," or send out a signal pointing to its location, for about 30 days from the time the aircraft set off, noted Goldfarb. After that, Flight 370 could prove exponentially harder to find.

Vietnamese minister: Info being provided 'insufficient'

The Malaysia Airlines flight set off seemingly without incident Saturday, not long after midnight, en route to Beijing.

Then, around 1:30 a.m., all communication was cut off. Authorities haven't said much, definitively, about what they believe happened next.

That and the fruitless search has frustrated some like Phan Quy Tieu, Vietnam's vice minister of transportation, who characterized the information that Malaysian officials have provided as "insufficient."

"Up until now we only had one meeting with a Malaysian military attache," he said.






Watch this video


Oceanographer: Plane debris will move






Watch this video


Conspiracy theories surround Flight 370

For now, Vietnamese teams will stop searching the sea south of Ca Mau province, the southern tip of Vietnam, and shift the focus to areas east of Ca Mau, said Doan Luu, the director of international affairs at the Vietnamese Civil Aviation Authority.

At a news conference Wednesday, Malaysian transportation minister Hishamuddin Bin Hussein defended his government's approach.

"We have been very consistent in the search," he said.

Timeline of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Confusion over flight path

But even figuring out where authorities believe the plane may have gone down has been a difficult and shifting proposition.

In the immediate aftermath of the plane's disappearance, search and rescue efforts were focused on the Gulf of Thailand, along the expected flight path between Malaysia and Vietnam.

Over the weekend, authorities suddenly expanded their search to the other side of the Malay Peninsula, in the Strait of Malacca, where search efforts now seem to be concentrated.

That location is hundreds of miles off the plane's expected flight path.

An explanation appeared to come Tuesday when a senior Malaysian Air Force official told CNN that the Air Force had tracked the plane to a spot near the small island of Palau Perak off Malaysia's west coast in the Strait of Malacca.

The plane's identifying transponder had stopped sending signals, too, said the official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Malaysia's civilian administration appeared to dispute the report, however.

The New York Times quoted a spokesman for the Malaysian prime minister's office as saying Tuesday that military officials had told him there was no evidence the plane had flown back over the Malay Peninsula to the Strait of Malacca.

The Prime Minister's office didn't immediately return calls from CNN seeking comment.

Then, in another shift, Malaysian authorities said at a news conference Wednesday that radar records reviewed in the wake of the plane's disappearance reveal an unidentified aircraft traveling across the Malay Peninsula and some 200 miles into the Strait of Malacca.

However, it wasn't clear whether that radar signal represented Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Gen. Rodzali Daud, head of the Malaysian Air Force, said at the news conference.

Rodzali said that officials are still "examining and analyzing all possibilities" when it comes to the plane's flight path.

Malaysian officials are asking experts from the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority and National Transportation Safety Board to help them analyze the radar data.

The FAA said Wednesday that it "stands ready to provide any necessary additional support." The agency has already sent two technical experts and another official to Kuala Lumpur as part of a NTSB investigative team.

How you can help find the plane

No trace

The search zones includes huge swaths of ocean on each side of the Malay Peninsula, as well as land.

Forty-two ships and 39 planes from 12 countries have been searching the sea between the northeast coast of Malaysia and southwest Vietnam, the area where the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers.

But they are also looking off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, in the Strait of Malacca, and north into the Andaman Sea.

What happened leading to the plane's disappearance also remains a mystery. Leading theories include hijacking, an explosion or a catastrophic mechanical failure.

Suggestions that the plane had veered off course and that its identifying transponder was not working raise obvious concerns about a hijacking, analysts tell CNN. But a catastrophic power failure or other problem could also explain the anomalies, analysts say.

In a sign authorities are looking at all options, Kuala Lumpur police told CNN they are searching the home of the airliner's Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah.

They were also questioning a man who hosted two Iranians who boarded the flight on stolen passports, the man -- Mohammad Mallaei -- told CNN on Wednesday.

Authorities have previously said they do not believe the men had any connection to terror groups.

Families' frustration

As the vexing search drags on, frustration has grown among friends and family of those who were on board.

"Time is passing by. The priority should be to search for the living," a middle-aged man shouted before breaking into sobs during a meeting with airline officials in Beijing on Tuesday. His son, he said, was one of the passengers aboard the plane.

Other people at the meeting also voiced their frustration at the lack of information.

Most of those on the flight were Chinese, and the Chinese government has urged Malaysia to speed up the pace of its investigation.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Wednesday appealed for patience.

"The families involved have to understand that this is something unexpected," Najib said. "The families must understand more efforts have been made with all our capabilities."


STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~NEW: "It's where it's supposed to be," says a former U.S. travel safety official
~Agency: The satellite found "three suspected floating objects and their sizes"
~They come from waters northeast of Kuala Lumpur, south of Vietnam
~The search zone now encompasses 27,000 square nautical miles

Go here to watch the news story:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Attachments:

Nice editing your cut and paste.

Officials dispute report that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 kept flying for hours
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

CNN) -- [Breaking news update at 5:42 a.m. Thursday ]

Reports suggesting the missing Malaysia Airlines plane kept flying for four hours after its last reported contact are inaccurate, Malaysia's acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Thursday.

The report earlier Thursday from the Wall Street Journal said U.S. aviation investigators and national security officials were basing their belief that the missing plane kept flying on data automatically transmitted to the ground from the passenger jet's engines.

The newspaper attributed the information to two unidentified people who were "familiar with the details."

[Original story, posted at 5:32 a.m. Thursday]

Report: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 kept flying for hours after last contact

(CNN) -- The puzzle over the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 grew even more complex Thursday when a report emerged suggesting the missing plane may have flown on for about four hours after its last reported contact.

The report from the Wall Street Journal said U.S. aviation investigators and national security officials were basing their belief that the missing plane kept flying on data automatically transmitted to the ground from the passenger jet's engines.

The newspaper attributed the information to two unidentified people who were "familiar with the details." CNN was not immediately able to confirm the report.

If the plane did indeed stay in the air for several hours after it lost contact with air traffic controllers early Saturday, the challenge facing investigators and search teams becomes immensely more complicated.

Four more hours in the air could put the plane many hundreds of miles beyond the area currently being searched.

And the new report opens the door to a fresh round of theories about what has become of the plane, which vanished early Saturday while flying over Southeast Asia on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

But one aviation industry observer expressed skepticism about the report.

"I find this very, very difficult to believe," Tom Ballantyne, chief correspondent for the magazine Orient Aviation told CNN. "That this aircraft could have flown on for four hours after it disappeared and not have been picked up by someone's radar and not have been seen by anyone, it's almost unbelievable."

Engine data

The mystery over the fate of the passenger jet, a Boeing 777-200, and the 239 people it was carrying has so far left government officials and aviation experts flummoxed.

Searchers have already been combing a vast area of sea and land for traces of the plane. But so far, with the search well into its sixth day, their efforts have been fruitless.

The Wall Street Journal report said the plane's engines have an onboard monitoring system supplied by their manufacturer, Rolls-Royce PLC. The system "periodically sends bursts of data about engine health, operations and aircraft movements to facilities on the ground," the newspaper said.

Malaysia Airlines sends its engine data live to Rolls-Royce for analysis, the report said, and that data is now being analyzed to figure out the flight path of the missing plane after contact was lost with its transponder, a radio transmitter in the cockpit that communicates with ground radar.

Erin Atan, a spokeswoman for Rolls Royce in Asia, declined to comment on the report Thursday, telling CNN the matter was "an official air accident investigation."

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the director general of Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation, said he was aware of the Wall Street Journal report but couldn't comment further.

Still no trace

As word of the report spread, searchers appeared to draw another blank in the so far frustrating endeavors to find traces of the plane.

Vietnamese and Malaysian planes spotted no sign of debris when they flew over an area of sea that Chinese authorities had flagged as the location of possible remnants of the missing plane, officials said.

China's State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense had said satellite images showed "three suspected floating objects" that it described as "a suspected crash site."

The images were captured around 11 a.m. Sunday, the day after the plane went missing, but final versions of them weren't released until Wednesday.

The Chinese agency gave coordinates of 105.63 east longitude, 6.7 north latitude, which would put the objects in waters between Malaysia and southern of Vietnam, near where the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers.

Meanwhile, India is joining the multinational search, dispatching two of its naval ships off the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a military spokesman told CNN on Thursday.

Navy and coastguard aircraft are also expected to be sent toward the Strait of Malacca once "exact coordinates" are received for the search area, Andaman and Nicobar's joint naval command spokesman Harmeet Singh said.

Last known words

Also on Thursday, a Malaysian aviation official told CNN that the last known words from the flight crew of the missing plane were "Alright, good night."

Malaysian civil aviation officer Zulazri Mohd Ahnuar said he couldn't confirm which member of the flight crew sent the message, which was transmitted from the plane back to Malaysian flight controllers as the aircraft transferred into Vietnamese airspace early Saturday.

For the families of those on board the missing plane, the wait for news is tortuous.

Danica Weeks is trying to keep it together for her two young sons, though the possibility of life without husband Paul, who was on the plane, is sometimes overwhelming. She's clinging to hope even though, as Weeks told CNN's Piers Morgan, it's "not looking good."

"Every day, it just seems like it's an eternity, it's an absolute eternity," Weeks said from Australia. "We can only go minute-by-minute ... and hope something comes soon."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~"I find this very, very difficult to believe," an aviation journalist says of the WSJ report
~The report suggests the plane may have flown on for four hours after last known contact
~The report cites unidentified U.S. investigators drawing on data from engines
~Vietnamese searchers find no debris in the latest area flagged as a possible crash site

Watch the news report here:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Attachments:

I'm in Vietnam, and the officials here are p i s s e d for wasting 4 days on searching the wrong side of the Peninsula!! How did it take the Malaysian military 5 days to release their radar findings??

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, this whole thing has a Lost feel to it. Somebody call J.J. Abrams!
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What I find hard to believe is that the transponder could easily turned off. Clearly, as is the case now, the ability to do so undermines the ability to track aircraft in a situation like hostage takeover or terrorism.

So whatever shit the Chinese spy satellite saw was really just a cloud, yeah?

______________
resident witch

So many discrepancies and changes in the story from officials. Another one - Just as the plane was crossing over from Malaysian airspace to Vietnamese airspace, the transponder is shut down. Strange point to be cut off - almost like it was planned to absolve Malaysia of any suspicion, but then again, we'd have to forget everything else...

Aren't Vietnamese super sketch and super violent?

______________
resident witch

thisisajokeright Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So whatever shit the Chinese spy satellite saw was
> really just a cloud, yeah?

The Malasian authorities seem useless in their search for this missing plane. Seems like they are covering up and jumbling this investigation on purpose.

km9vC Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> thisisajokeright Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > So whatever shit the Chinese spy satellite saw
> was
> > really just a cloud, yeah?
>
> The Malasian authorities seem useless in their
> search for this missing plane. Seems like they are
> covering up and jumbling this investigation on
> purpose.

They're a third world country, no?

______________
resident witch

thisisajokeright Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> km9vC Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > thisisajokeright Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> > > So whatever shit the Chinese spy satellite
> saw
> > was
> > > really just a cloud, yeah?
> >
> > The Malasian authorities seem useless in their
> > search for this missing plane. Seems like they
> are
> > covering up and jumbling this investigation on
> > purpose.
>
> They're a third world country, no?

Everyone thinks that but not quite that bad.

I think it to be most likely either one pilot or both who planned this event. If it was one pilot, they would wait until the other one goes on a break. Here’s how they would do it…. Secure the cockpit door. Second, pull down your oxygen mask and put it on. Third, turn off the transponder so nobody knows where the plane will go. Fourth, decompress the interior of the plane, thus killing everybody else on board. Here is where I’m not sure… Under decompression, does the inside of the cockpit incur ice to the extent that you cannot fly the plane? If not, you are in the clear to take the plane to a lower altitude and in whatever direction you want. If you are low enough in altitude, you won’t be picked up on radar. It is night time and dark. The moon is only at about 1/3 (I believe) though it may not be in your sky, so it will be difficult for anyone to see the plane. As the world rotates, if you are flying westbound, you will remain in the dark. Destinations such as Iran or anywhere in the Middle East are now feasible because this is a long-range jetliner. If you are not crashing the plane, you might be able to arrive somewhere and sell it. Okay, I realize its a wild idea, but do you have a better one?

Wait a minute. I am just watching the range the airplane could have reached with the fuel it had..... And looks like it turned around and headed in the direction of Saudi Arabia.....

Maybe the plane has been hijacked...in a remote place... There was someone in the plane who switched off the network including the flight recorder. Or it has crashed in the Bay of Bengal/Indian Ocean/the Arabian Sea. I think any witness would have informed by now,if it would have crashed on a human habitat. Boeing 777 is pretty big in size.

Is there any chance it could have flew right into the ocean in one piece (ie; no damage whatsoever)?

The last words from missing the Malaysia Airlines plane were “all right, good night,”

These are the same words the Unification Church of the United States in California, Doomsday Cult. They probably boarded the plane and had some type of communicating with their space ship transporter destination.

thisisajokeright Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is there any chance it could have flew right into
> the ocean in one piece (ie; no damage whatsoever)?

Sure, I would think after the NY river landing that is exactly would the pilots would try. Four hours would be at the limit of fuel too.

Yes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> thisisajokeright Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Is there any chance it could have flew right
> into
> > the ocean in one piece (ie; no damage
> whatsoever)?
>
> Sure, I would think after the NY river landing
> that is exactly would the pilots would try. Four
> hours would be at the limit of fuel too.


I meant "Flew into the ocean" like, dive-bombed straight into the ocean like a dolphin and sank right to the bottom. Still possible?

thisisajokeright Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is there any chance it could have flew right into
> the ocean in one piece (ie; no damage whatsoever)?

Yes, that's possible if something went wrong very quickly, causing the plane to fall out of the sky like that Air France plane some years ago.

Radars would have detected the plane in route to its landing place. You can't hide a 777 from radars.

cX6nd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Radars would have detected the plane in route to
> its landing place. You can't hide a 777 from
> radars.

Assuming there are no holes in the radar.

No more mysteries, please. Malaysia: lying through its teeth. Occam's razor: simplest theory, usually the best. Somebody wanted this plane for either a bomb delivery or a WMD. Stop looking in the ocean, it's not there. The passengers are dead, the plane is delivered: N. Korea, Iran? Pilots were complicit -- they were ace, or someone on that flight was. And someone has a great, workable jet. You're welcome.

Doesnt North Korea already own several 777's. Why steal one?

Agree. Unfortunately, I hope this plane is found in the ocean asap, otherwise why would people want to steal a 777? The simplest answer is to use it to deliver an even bigger terrorist attack. I would lean towards an HEMP attack. Can a 777 reach the altitude necessary to achieve maximum impact? Sorry, but the fact that two Iranians were using stolen passports on this flight should be a huge red flag. Iran would have the means to carry out an attack like this. Malay authorities didn't bother to check their passports, did they bother to check their carry on bags? They could have gassed all the passengers, turned off the transponders, turned the plane around and landed safely somewhere remote. Paint the plane, load it with nukes, and be on their way. Like I said, I hope they find it in the ocean asap.

asdfasdfafsddsafasdf Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> thisisajokeright Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Is there any chance it could have flew right
> into
> > the ocean in one piece (ie; no damage
> whatsoever)?
>
> Yes, that's possible if something went wrong very
> quickly, causing the plane to fall out of the sky
> like that Air France plane some years ago.

But even that one broke into pieces upon impact, didn't it?

______________
resident witch

Stabitha Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Doesnt North Korea already own several 777's. Why
> steal one?

Those could be traced back to them based on the seriel and part numbers.

thisisajokeright Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> asdfasdfafsddsafasdf Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > thisisajokeright Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> > > Is there any chance it could have flew right
> > into
> > > the ocean in one piece (ie; no damage
> > whatsoever)?
> >
> > Yes, that's possible if something went wrong
> very
> > quickly, causing the plane to fall out of the
> sky
> > like that Air France plane some years ago.
>
> But even that one broke into pieces upon impact,
> didn't it?

Three big pieces and smaller ones. I don't think there was any floating debris.

According to all the available information, the plane appears to be hijacked. Since it turned around with the disconnected transponder, and was observed above Pulau Perak in the Strait of Malacca, the plane was obviously headed for Myanmar or adjacent countries. It is a huge mistake that the government of Malaysia is not seeking international help to search for the missing airplane. It is probably in Myanmar, in some undisclosed location, and people are held hostage. The countries around the site of plane disappearance must willingly cooperate to survey not only the ocean, but the records of all planes entering their countries or passing in their airspace!

asdfasdfafsddsafasdf Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Three big pieces and smaller ones. I don't think
> there was any floating debris.


Okay yeah I guess that's what I'm wondering. Obviously a debris field would call attention to the crash site, but if the plane had a smooth entrance it could be weeks before they find it..

On that direction they where not going to Myanmar... They where going to Sumatra (Indonesia).

And on Sumatra north there are many runways that can let a plane like that land and without any radar coverage... and that stay out of contact from anything for more than 14h on dirty roads. In 2004 Indonesia lost the 3 radar stations on the north part of the island and they never rebuilded them.
But, Indonesia had a big radar station on Medan... that one should had got the flight on radar. But that´s an old station. Think that it would detect anything over 10000 feet and nothing below that... if it´s still working.

just_an_fyi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> cX6nd Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Radars would have detected the plane in route
> to
> > its landing place. You can't hide a 777 from
> > radars.
>
> Assuming there are no holes in the radar.

Radar can only say if it is a plane, it can't identify whether it was 777.

I can't imagine what the family and relatives of those missing are going through right now. Its very bad to lose someone in your family suddenly in an accident, but its many times worse if someone just disappears without any trace with no clue what happened. I pray to God to provide them strength.

asdfasdfafsddsafasdf Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> thisisajokeright Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > asdfasdfafsddsafasdf Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> > > thisisajokeright Wrote:
> > >
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> >
> > > -----
> > > > Is there any chance it could have flew
> right
> > > into
> > > > the ocean in one piece (ie; no damage
> > > whatsoever)?
> > >
> > > Yes, that's possible if something went wrong
> > very
> > > quickly, causing the plane to fall out of the
> > sky
> > > like that Air France plane some years ago.
> >
> > But even that one broke into pieces upon
> impact,
> > didn't it?
>
> Three big pieces and smaller ones. I don't think
> there was any floating debris.

Debris from that plane was found floating in the ocean 4-5 days after the crash. The main body of the aircraft and the black boxes were found approx 2 years later in 13,000 feet of water.

Honestly, if you've been following, Malaysia authorities does not hold back the search effort, in fact the search has been expanded. But you got a point there that they are completely overwhelmed. But they will not stop finding, Malaysian will not lose hope. We will find the missing jet no matter what. I am not siding my Defense Minister, but as one of the citizen here I have my faith, let us all keep praying for the best.

T7KVe Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So many discrepancies and changes in the story
> from officials. Another one - Just as the plane
> was crossing over from Malaysian airspace to
> Vietnamese airspace, the transponder is shut down.
> Strange point to be cut off - almost like it was
> planned to absolve Malaysia of any suspicion, but
> then again, we'd have to forget everything else...


Or Malasya knows more about where the plane is and don´t want to tell for now.
Strange that my country has less than 20% of the Malasia military and when an uknown airplane enters our airspace, 1 or 2 fighters are dispatched in less than 10 minutes to check what is that contact... In Malaysia, looks like it´s normal a uknown aircraft flying around there country and nobody cares with it.

Stabitha Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Debris from that plane was found floating in the
> ocean 4-5 days after the crash. The main body of
> the aircraft and the black boxes were found approx
> 2 years later in 13,000 feet of water.


Well shit, we should start seeing the first signs of debris now then!

I have a question...

Why can't they triangulate the location of the plane based on the cell phones like we do here in the United States when someone goes missing? The technology is the same just on different platforms. They should be able to ping the network address on the phone. It had been established earlier on that relatives were able to make phone calls to their relative's cell phones on the plane (except they didn't answer, they range and went to voicemail).

For me, there is no "great mystery" as to who may be the culprits in the disappearance of flight MH370; a rouge pilot, or two rouge pilots working in consort.

The only question to be asked is-- why?

A thorough investigation should be launched into the activities, and associations of the captain, and the first officer spanning back at least six months prior the disappearance of the aircraft.

A comprehensive probe into the lives of the pilots will garner all the leads authorities will need to put this so-called mystery to bed....

Artofwar Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For me, there is no "great mystery" as to who may
> be the culprits in the disappearance of flight
> MH370; a rouge pilot, or two rouge pilots working
> in consort.
>
> The only question to be asked is-- why?
>
> A thorough investigation should be launched into
> the activities, and associations of the captain,
> and the first officer spanning back at least six
> months prior the disappearance of the aircraft.
>
> A comprehensive probe into the lives of the pilots
> will garner all the leads authorities will need to
> put this so-called mystery to bed....

What if it simply malfunctioned and went down?

There so many what ifs at this point it could make your head explode.

I like this one. Hijackers somehow took over the plane and re routed it somewhere at low altitude with all tracking turned off. The plane could conceivably fly for about 8-9 hours before running out of fuel (if it had a full load). That would make a possible landing zone anywhere in an almost 3000 mile radius.

Crazy- yes Impossible- no

And I thought I had harrowing experiences!

Stabitha Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There so many what ifs at this point it could make
> your head explode.
>
> I like this one. Hijackers somehow took over the
> plane and re routed it somewhere at low altitude
> with all tracking turned off. The plane could
> conceivably fly for about 8-9 hours before running
> out of fuel (if it had a full load). That would
> make a possible landing zone anywhere in an almost
> 3000 mile radius.
>
> Crazy- yes Impossible- no


Let's theorize what's happening with the 237 on board who didn't participate in said hi-jacking

thisisajokeright Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Stabitha Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > There so many what ifs at this point it could
> make
> > your head explode.
> >
> > I like this one. Hijackers somehow took over
> the
> > plane and re routed it somewhere at low
> altitude
> > with all tracking turned off. The plane could
> > conceivably fly for about 8-9 hours before
> running
> > out of fuel (if it had a full load). That would
> > make a possible landing zone anywhere in an
> almost
> > 3000 mile radius.
> >
> > Crazy- yes Impossible- no
>
>
> Let's theorize what's happening with the 237 on
> board who didn't participate in said hi-jacking

Disposed of. They (whoever they is) want the plane, not the people.

I'm not saying its aliens, but its aliens.

thisisajokeright Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Stabitha Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > There so many what ifs at this point it could
> make
> > your head explode.
> >
> > I like this one. Hijackers somehow took over
> the
> > plane and re routed it somewhere at low
> altitude
> > with all tracking turned off. The plane could
> > conceivably fly for about 8-9 hours before
> running
> > out of fuel (if it had a full load). That would
> > make a possible landing zone anywhere in an
> almost
> > 3000 mile radius.
> >
> > Crazy- yes Impossible- no
>
>
> Let's theorize what's happening with the 237 on
> board who didn't participate in said hi-jacking

He landed the plane in an old dirt airfield in Vietnam once used by the Americans during the war. The pilot grabbed his prepared survival pack knowing he would need to make a 40 mile trek. He abandoned the passengers and crew with no fuel and no communcations.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/2014 02:12PM by Gerrymanderer2.

For good measure he shot out the planes tires with an evil laugh as he disappeared into the forest.

The Chinese passengers all started screaming, Sum ting Wong!

Cant get your thoughts together today Gerrytard?

Stabitha Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Cant get your thoughts together today Gerrytard?


Good to see you Stabitha. If you're here that means your not out committing an

263.30 B Felony facilitating a sexual performance by a child with a controlled substance or alcohol.

Meh, that was yesterday

'Phantom call' theory dismissed by experts
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/mh370-phone-theory-debunked/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

(CNN) -- The mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 appeared to deepen as reports emerged that passengers' cell phones continued to ring long after the flight went missing Saturday.

After the torment of not knowing what has happened to their loved ones, relatives of MH370 passengers had resorted to calling their phones, and were greeted with ringtones.

The aircraft disappeared unexpectedly from tracking early Saturday. No distress call from the pilots was received, and search efforts to date have not yielded any conclusive results, only adding to the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the Beijing-bound flight.

Speculation quickly mounted on social media that these "phantom calls" amounted to evidence that the flight had not crashed, as has been widely assumed.

"Frustrated! ... There are reports from family members that phone calls to their missing loved ones have 'rung through,' indicating the phones aren't on the bottom of the ocean," one Facebook user surmised.

However, technology industry analyst and "E-Commerce Times" columnist, Jeff Kagan told CNN that no conclusions can be reached concerning the ringing phones.

When a cell phone rings, he told "The Situation Room," it first connects with the network and attempts to locate the end-user's phone.

"If it doesn't find the phone after a few minutes, after a few rings, then typically, it disconnects and that's what's happening," he said.

"So, they're hearing ringing and they're assuming it's connecting to their loved ones, but it's not. It's the network sending a signal to the phone letting them know it's looking for them."

Kagan told Wolf Blitzer that the technology meant he couldn't speculate on what ringing phones in this situation could mean.

"Just because you're getting ringing, just because the signs that we see on these cell phones, that's no proof that there's any -- that's just the way the networks work."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~Passengers' ringing cell phones led to speculation that flight MH370 hadn't crashed
~Aircraft's disappearance remains shrouded in mystery
~"Phantom call" theory inconclusive, CNN hears

Watch the news story here:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/mh370-phone-theory-debunked/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
Attachments:

Missing Malaysian plane: Search area goes from 'chessboard to football field'
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- The more time that passes, the wider the search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 becomes.

After starting in the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, the plane's last confirmed location, efforts are now expanding west into the vastness of the Indian Ocean.

"It's a completely new game now," Cmdr. William Marks of the U.S. 7th Fleet, which is helping in the search, told CNN, describing the situation. "We went from a chess board to a football field."

USS Kidd, a destroyer from the U.S. Pacific Fleet, is being moved into the Indian Ocean to begin searching that area at the request of the Malaysian government, Marks said.

Malaysian officials, who are coordinating the search, said Friday that the hunt for the plane was spreading deeper into both the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

"A normal investigation becomes narrower with time, I understand, as new information focuses the search," said Hishammuddin Hussein, the minister in charge of defense and transportation. "But this is not a normal investigation. In this case, the information we have forces us to look further and further afield."

The broadening scale of the search comes amid disclosures of information indicating that the missing airplane could have flown for several hours after the last reading from its transponder, a radio transmitter in the cockpit that communicates with ground radar. That raises the possibility that the plane could have ended up thousands of miles from its last confirmed contact over Southeast Asia.

The disappearance of the jetliner and the 239 people on board nearly a week ago has turned into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history, befuddling industry experts and government officials. Authorities still don't know where the plane is or what caused it to vanish.

"I, like most of the world, really have never seen anything like this," Marks said of the scale of the search, which involves dozens of ships and planes from more than a dozen countries. "It's pretty incredible."

On the seventh day of efforts to locate the missing Boeing 777-200, here are the latest main developments:

-- Was it hijacked?: The plane may have been taken over or hijacked by someone with knowledge of flying planes and was being taken toward the Andaman Islands, according to a report by Reuters. The news agency bases its information on military radar data -- but the article doesn't address key facts such as which nation's military radar information they are basing their deductions on. Also, the story is based on unidentified sources.

The Malaysian government said Friday it can't confirm the report. The possibility that one of the plane's pilots was involved in the disappearance is one of the many possibilities investigators are considering, Hishammuddin said.

-- Another lead: Chinese researchers say they recorded a "seafloor event" in waters around Malaysia and Vietnam about an hour and a half after the missing plane's last known contact. The event was recorded in a non-seismic region situated 116 kilometers (72 miles) northeast of the plane's last confirmed location, the University of Science and Technology of China said.

"Judging from the time and location of the two events, the seafloor event may have been caused by MH370 crashing into the sea," said a statement posted on the university's website.

-- Tracking the pings: Malaysian authorities believe they have several "pings" from the airliner's service data system, known as ACARS, transmitted to satellites in the four to five hours after the last transponder signal, suggesting the plane flew to the Indian Ocean, a senior U.S. official told CNN.

That information combined with known radar data and knowledge of fuel range leads officials to believe the plane may have made as far as the Indian ocean, which is in the opposite direction of the plane's original route, from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

-- Why Indian Ocean?: Analysts from U.S. intelligence, the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board have been scouring satellite feeds and, after ascertaining no other flights' transponder data corresponded to the pings, came to the conclusion that they were likely to have come from the missing Malaysian plane, the senior U.S. official said.

"There is probably a significant likelihood" that the aircraft is now on the bottom of the Indian Ocean, the official said, citing information Malaysia has shared with the United States.

Indian search teams are combing large areas of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a remote archipelago in the northeast Indian Ocean. Two aircraft are searching land and coastal areas of the island chain from north to south, an Indian military spokesman said Friday, and two coastguard ships have been diverted to search along the islands east coast.

-- Malaysian response: In a statement Friday, Malaysia's Ministry of Transport neither confirmed nor denied the latest reports on the plane's possible path, saying that "the investigation team will not publicly release information until it has been properly verified and corroborated." The ministry said it was continuing to "work closely with the U.S. team, whose officials have been on the ground in Kuala Lumpur to help with the investigation since Sunday.

U.S. experts are using satellite systems to try to determine the possible location of the plane, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of the Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation, said at a news conference Friday.

On Thursday, Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said that Rolls-Royce, the maker of the plane's engines, and Boeing had reported that they hadn't received any data transmissions from the plane after 1:07 a.m. Saturday, 14 minutes before the transponder stopped sending information. He was responding to a Wall Street Journal report suggesting the missing plane's engines continued to send data to the ground for hours after contact with the transponder was lost.

The Wall Street Journal subsequently changed its reporting to say that signals from the plane -- giving its location, speed and altitude -- were picked up by communications satellites for at least five hours after it disappeared. The last "ping" came from over water, the newspaper reported, citing unidentified people briefed on the investigation.

Watch the news video here:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Attachments:

'Phantom call' theory Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 'Phantom call' theory dismissed by experts
> http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/mh370-pho
> ne-theory-debunked/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
>
> (CNN) -- The mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight
> 370 appeared to deepen as reports emerged that
> passengers' cell phones continued to ring long
> after the flight went missing Saturday.
>
> After the torment of not knowing what has happened
> to their loved ones, relatives of MH370 passengers
> had resorted to calling their phones, and were
> greeted with ringtones.
>
> The aircraft disappeared unexpectedly from
> tracking early Saturday. No distress call from the
> pilots was received, and search efforts to date
> have not yielded any conclusive results, only
> adding to the uncertainty surrounding the fate of
> the Beijing-bound flight.
>
> Speculation quickly mounted on social media that
> these "phantom calls" amounted to evidence that
> the flight had not crashed, as has been widely
> assumed.
>
> "Frustrated! ... There are reports from family
> members that phone calls to their missing loved
> ones have 'rung through,' indicating the phones
> aren't on the bottom of the ocean," one Facebook
> user surmised.
>
> However, technology industry analyst and
> "E-Commerce Times" columnist, Jeff Kagan told CNN
> that no conclusions can be reached concerning the
> ringing phones.
>
> When a cell phone rings, he told "The Situation
> Room," it first connects with the network and
> attempts to locate the end-user's phone.
>
> "If it doesn't find the phone after a few minutes,
> after a few rings, then typically, it disconnects
> and that's what's happening," he said.
>
> "So, they're hearing ringing and they're assuming
> it's connecting to their loved ones, but it's not.
> It's the network sending a signal to the phone
> letting them know it's looking for them."
>
> Kagan told Wolf Blitzer that the technology meant
> he couldn't speculate on what ringing phones in
> this situation could mean.
>
> "Just because you're getting ringing, just because
> the signs that we see on these cell phones, that's
> no proof that there's any -- that's just the way
> the networks work."
>
> STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> ~Passengers' ringing cell phones led to
> speculation that flight MH370 hadn't crashed
> ~Aircraft's disappearance remains shrouded in
> mystery
> ~"Phantom call" theory inconclusive, CNN hears
>
> Watch the news story here:
> http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/mh370-pho
> ne-theory-debunked/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

Sorry but this is totally unacceptable.

'Ringing' should be really kept as 'ringing', to both ends. There's no such a thing as 'ringing for the person making the call'.

It's called lying.
Phone carriers should adopt a different strategy on how to inform their customers on what they're doing.

Passenger leaves family eerie gift
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2014/03/13/pmt-wife-of-man-missing-on-flight-370.cnn&hpt=hp_t1&from_homepage=yes&video_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F%3Fhpt%3Dsitenav

Danica Weeks, whose husband is among the missing from Flight 370, joins Piers Morgan for an emotional live interview.


Watch the news story here:
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2014/03/13/pmt-wife-of-man-missing-on-flight-370.cnn&hpt=hp_t1&from_homepage=yes&video_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F%3Fhpt%3Dsitenav#/video/bestoftv/2014/03/13/pmt-wife-of-man-missing-on-flight-370.cnn

not drinking the koolaid Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 'Phantom call' theory Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > 'Phantom call' theory dismissed by experts
> >
> http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/mh370-pho
>
> >
> ne-theory-debunked/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
> >
> > (CNN) -- The mystery of Malaysia Airlines
> Flight
> > 370 appeared to deepen as reports emerged that
> > passengers' cell phones continued to ring long
> > after the flight went missing Saturday.
> >
> > After the torment of not knowing what has
> happened
> > to their loved ones, relatives of MH370
> passengers
> > had resorted to calling their phones, and were
> > greeted with ringtones.
> >
> > The aircraft disappeared unexpectedly from
> > tracking early Saturday. No distress call from
> the
> > pilots was received, and search efforts to date
> > have not yielded any conclusive results, only
> > adding to the uncertainty surrounding the fate
> of
> > the Beijing-bound flight.
> >
> > Speculation quickly mounted on social media
> that
> > these "phantom calls" amounted to evidence that
> > the flight had not crashed, as has been widely
> > assumed.
> >
> > "Frustrated! ... There are reports from family
> > members that phone calls to their missing loved
> > ones have 'rung through,' indicating the phones
> > aren't on the bottom of the ocean," one
> Facebook
> > user surmised.
> >
> > However, technology industry analyst and
> > "E-Commerce Times" columnist, Jeff Kagan told
> CNN
> > that no conclusions can be reached concerning
> the
> > ringing phones.
> >
> > When a cell phone rings, he told "The Situation
> > Room," it first connects with the network and
> > attempts to locate the end-user's phone.
> >
> > "If it doesn't find the phone after a few
> minutes,
> > after a few rings, then typically, it
> disconnects
> > and that's what's happening," he said.
> >
> > "So, they're hearing ringing and they're
> assuming
> > it's connecting to their loved ones, but it's
> not.
> > It's the network sending a signal to the phone
> > letting them know it's looking for them."
> >
> > Kagan told Wolf Blitzer that the technology
> meant
> > he couldn't speculate on what ringing phones in
> > this situation could mean.
> >
> > "Just because you're getting ringing, just
> because
> > the signs that we see on these cell phones,
> that's
> > no proof that there's any -- that's just the
> way
> > the networks work."
> >
> > STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> > ~Passengers' ringing cell phones led to
> > speculation that flight MH370 hadn't crashed
> > ~Aircraft's disappearance remains shrouded in
> > mystery
> > ~"Phantom call" theory inconclusive, CNN hears
> >
> > Watch the news story here:
> >
> http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/mh370-pho
>
> >
> ne-theory-debunked/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
>
> Sorry but this is totally unacceptable.
>
> 'Ringing' should be really kept as 'ringing', to
> both ends. There's no such a thing as 'ringing for
> the person making the call'.
>
> It's called lying.
> Phone carriers should adopt a different strategy
> on how to inform their customers on what they're
> doing.

You can call it 'LYING' or 'DECEPTIVE' but the logic behind it is for the customers benefit. When you make many long distant calls, your carrier often has to route to several different networks before the receivers carrier initiates the connection to the end user. The common term "Fake Ringtones" is done by the callers carrier to let them know it is trying to establish a connection. Yes, in reality the call is beginning it's ROUTE; not a established connection to the end user. Otherwise, people would hang up thinking their call didn't go through cause of a 4-7 sec delay.

There is no "operator" (as in a human being) - it's technology. Things don't sync in the phone world like other technologies. So before a call is connected you hear what is called Fake Ringback. When you dial a number, you might hear a ton of weird noises (beeps, pops, fax like tones) - carriers remove that and give you a nice ring tone played back to you (you think it's ringing) but it's audio they send you.) They can even make the ringing be anything they want... a US ring tone, Mexico Ring ton... etc. But because you hear ringing means only you connected to a PBX or Soft pbx like Freeswitch or Asterix. That device gives you a sound to hear while it tries to place the call. If the call can't really get routed, well you'll hear ringing until an error response is returned. In the case of a 408 or time out, I'm not sure if you'd hear anything... the call would just keep ringing and ringing... I know this because I test this. I cut my tests after an expected timeout. But if I didn't, they'd probably just ring and ring.

this was always a hijack... aircraft on long distance flight turns off transponder and disappears? not very mysterious

in 2011 Egyptair had a boeing 777 that had a catastrophic cockpit cabin fire. It melted the controls, destroyed electronics and burnt through to the hull of the plane. This could have happened here.

Missing Malaysian plane: Could it have landed?
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- Yet another theory is taking shape about what might have happened to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Maybe it landed in a remote Indian Ocean island chain.

The suggestion -- and it's only that at this point -- is based on analysis of radar data revealed Friday by Reuters suggesting that the plane wasn't just blindly flying northwest from Malaysia.

Reuters, citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, reported that whoever was piloting the vanished jet was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands.

The radar data doesn't show the plane over the Andaman Islands, but only on a known route that would take it there, Reuters cited its sources as saying.








Andaman Island reporter: 'No plane here'
The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. That makes some investigators think the plane flew on for hours before truly disappearing.

Aviation experts say it's possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have hijacked and landed the giant Boeing 777 undetected.

But Dennis Giles, editor of the Andaman Chronicle newspaper, says there's just nowhere to land such a big plane in his archipelago without attracting notice.

Indian authorities own the only four airstrips in the region, he said.

"There is no chance, no such chance, that any aircraft of this size can come towards Andaman and Nicobel islands and land," he said.

The Malaysian government said Friday it can't confirm the report.

And a senior U.S. official on Thursday offered a conflicting account, telling CNN that "there is probably a significant likelihood" the plane is on the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

Regardless, Indian search teams are combing large areas of the archipelago. Two aircraft are searching land and coastal areas of the island chain from north to south, an Indian military spokesman said Friday, and two coast guard ships have been diverted to search along the islands' east coast.

The jetliner, with 239 people on board, disappeared nearly a week ago as it flew between Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Beijing. The flight has turned into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history, befuddling industry experts and government officials. Authorities still don't know where the plane is or what caused it to vanish.

Suggestions of what happened have ranged from a catastrophic explosion to hijacking to pilot suicide.

Malaysian officials, who are coordinating the search, said Friday that the hunt for the plane was spreading deeper into both the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

"A normal investigation becomes narrower with time, I understand, as new information focuses the search," said Hishammuddin Hussein, the minister in charge of defense and transportation. "But this is not a normal investigation. In this case, the information we have forces us to look further and further afield."

On Friday, the United States sent the destroyer USS Kidd to scout the Indian Ocean as the search expands into that body of water.

"I, like most of the world, really have never seen anything like this," Cmdr. William Marks of the U.S. 7th Fleet told CNN of the scale of the search. "It's pretty incredible."

"It's a completely new game now," he said. "We went from a chess board to a football field."

More on the landing theory

James Kallstrom, a former FBI assistant director, said it's possible the plane could have landed, though he added that more information is needed to reach a definitive conclusion. He referred to the vast search area.

"You draw that arc and you look at countries like Pakistan, you know, and you get into your Superman novels and you see the plane landing somewhere and (people) repurposing it for some dastardly deed down the road," he told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday.

"I mean, that's not beyond the realm of realism. I mean, that could happen."

Even so, he acknowledged the difficulty of reaching firm conclusions with scraps of information that sometimes conflict.

"We're getting so much conflicting data," he said. "You veer one way, then you veer the other way. The investigators need some definitive, correct data."

Other developments

On the seventh day of efforts to find the missing Boeing 777-200, here are the other main developments:

• Another lead: Chinese researchers say they recorded a "seafloor event" in waters around Malaysia and Vietnam about an hour and a half after the missing plane's last known contact. The event was recorded in a nonseismic region about 116 kilometers (72 miles) northeast of the plane's last confirmed location, the University of Science and Technology of China said.

"Judging from the time and location of the two events, the seafloor event may have been caused by MH370 crashing into the sea," said a statement posted on the university's website.

• Tracking the pings: Malaysian authorities believe they have several "pings" from the airliner's service data system, known as ACARS, transmitted to satellites in the four to five hours after the last transponder signal, suggesting the plane flew to the Indian Ocean, a senior U.S. official told CNN.

That information, combined with known radar data and knowledge of fuel range, leads officials to believe the plane may have made it as far as the Indian Ocean, which is in the opposite direction of the plane's original route, from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

• Why the Indian Ocean? Analysts from U.S. intelligence, the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board have been scouring satellite feeds and, after ascertaining no other flights' transponder data corresponded to the pings, came to the conclusion that they were likely to have come from the missing Malaysian plane, the senior U.S. official said.

Indian search teams are combing large areas of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, a remote archipelago in the northeast Indian Ocean.

• Malaysian response: In a statement Friday, Malaysia's Ministry of Transport neither confirmed nor denied the latest reports on the plane's possible path, saying that "the investigation team will not publicly release information until it has been properly verified and corroborated." The ministry said it was continuing to "work closely with the U.S. team, whose officials have been on the ground in Kuala Lumpur to help with the investigation since Sunday.

U.S. experts are using satellite systems to try to determine the possible location of the plane, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of the Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation, said at a news conference Friday.

On Thursday, Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said that Rolls-Royce, the maker of the plane's engines, and Boeing had reported that they hadn't received any data transmissions from the plane after 1:07 a.m. Saturday, 14 minutes before the transponder stopped sending information. He was responding to a Wall Street Journal report suggesting the missing plane's engines continued to send data to the ground for hours after contact with the transponder was lost.

The Wall Street Journal subsequently changed its reporting to say that signals from the plane -- giving its location, speed and altitude -- were picked up by communications satellites for at least five hours after it disappeared. The last "ping" came from over water, the newspaper reported, citing unidentified people briefed on the investigation.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~NEW: Did the the giant Boeing 777 land in the Andaman Islands?
~A report says the plane may have been hijacked or taken over and flown off course
~A U.S. Navy official says he has "never seen anything" like the huge search under way
~Chinese researchers report a "seafloor event" on the day the plane disappeared

Watch the news story here:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Attachments:

Pilot: 777s don't just disappear
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/12/opinion/abend-malaysia-370/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

Editor's note: Les Abend is a 777 captain for a major airline with 29 years of flying experience. He is a senior contributor to Flying magazine, a worldwide publication in print for more than 75 years.

(CNN) -- The lack of definitive information about the fate of Malaysia Flight 370 has baffled and riveted expert and average person alike. Even the promise of Chinese satellite images capturing the location of crash debris turned out to be false, as Malaysian authorities said a search of the area found nothing.

Amid the muddle of speculation, possibilities and blind alleys, are there logical explanations in this mysterious disappearance? The short answer is yes. But what, of what we know so far, makes sense exactly?

First, the focus on the airplane's transponders, the device that transmits a discreet signal to Air Traffic Control (ATC) radars, might be misguided. The 777 has two transponders. A failure of one would send a caution message visible to the crew. They would then select the alternate transponder with barely a second thought.

A double failure? Not likely, unless there was a serious electronic systems failure (more on that later).

The only other plausible explanation would have been that the crew moved the knob to the off position. No professional flight crew would knowingly turn off a transponder in flight.

It is also possible the airplane flew out of ATC radar range by navigational error. Or as part of its assigned route, Malaysia 370 might have participated in a well-defined procedure for nonradar environments.

The North Atlantic track system between North America and Europe is a good example of an area where such a procedure would be used. Airplanes entering the tracks are required to fly at assigned altitudes and air speeds, separated laterally and vertically. Pilots verbally report set latitude and longitude positions on their cleared flight plans to a ground-based service called AIRINC.

The nonradar traffic picture is calculated by a computer, based on these position reports. In an airplane as sophisticated as a 777, the on-board computer can generate these reports automatically without verbal communication from the pilots. It is possible that on a portion of Malaysia 370's route, this procedure may have been utilized. If the airplane deviated from its assigned route because of an emergency, no problem would be indicated until the next reporting point because of the lack of ATC radar coverage. The crew would have to communicate the problem to the ground-based facility.

The 777 is one of the most advanced electronic airplanes built. Data is constantly being processed and transmitted to regulate internal systems, from flight controls to fuel systems and hundreds more. Much of this data is being transmitted automatically to the airline. This data is used for dispatch computations and maintenance, among other uses.

Only a very rare major electrical and electronic failure would prevent this information from being transmitted. Information regarding altitude, airspeed and heading is always available. Any irregularities in just these parameters alone would indicate a problem.

Was the airplane descending rapidly? Did the heading change indicate a course reversal? Did the airspeed increase indicate a dive? It's possible Malaysia Airlines experienced a malfunction in the receiving system -- doubtful, but it would help if the airline made that information available.

For argument's sake, let's say a major mechanical failure occurred. The crew might have been preoccupied with a serious problem as they progressed through the appropriate electronic checklist. A mayday call might not have been first on their agenda. All pilots are taught to "aviate, navigate and communicate," in that order. Could the mechanical problem have been serious enough for the crew to have lost control of the airplane before a distress signal was sent?

Although remote, consider the possibility of a fuel tank explosion.

For the flight time to Beijing, the center tank would most likely have been empty except for residual fuel as a matter of 777 procedure. The main wing tanks would have sufficient fuel for the trip. Could a short that caused a spark within a fuel boost pump have ignited the trapped vapor within the center tank?

The National Transportation Safety Board attributes the explosion of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in 1996 to this cause. That accident involved a 747 and not a 777. Boeing recommended both a mechanical and procedural modification for the potential, but not totally verified, problem for many Boeing airplanes. Airlines began the modifications within two years after the investigation was complete. Did Malaysia Airlines comply with the modification?

Now that the Chinese satellite image led nowhere, perhaps the rather chaotic search should be conducted over land. A different route may have been chosen if the crew had actually made the decision to return or divert elsewhere.

Regardless, a debris field will be found. And if the airplane just fell out of the sky, it didn't happen as a result of only one factor. All accidents involve multiple factors.

Let's keep the speculation in perspective. The accident investigation process can be tedious, if not arduous. But the process is well-organized, especially in the United States; the NTSB's participation will be of tremendous assistance.

Airplanes don't just disappear.
Attachments:

Shit I didn't know Tim Allen was a pilot now!

9 crazy conspiracy theories about Malaysia Airlines flight 370
http://www.boston.com/news/source/2014/03/9_crazy_conspiracy_theories_about_malaysian_airlines_flight.html

While investigators are stumped over the fate of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, the lack of evidence as to what happened hasn’t stopped wild – and I mean WILD – speculation as to the fate of the missing jet and its 239 passengers and crew members.

It’s not unusual for mysterious or dramatic aviation accidents to catch the imaginations of the conspiratorially inclined - the Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Pan Am Flight 103, and TWA Flight 800 tragedies spurred all kinds of claims of conspiracy, and last week’s apparent tragedy in the Gulf of Thailand is no different.

Conspiracy theorists took to social media this week to contribute their own ideas as to why Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared.

1. Aliens are involved: Alexandra Bruce at ForbiddenKnowledgeTV points to records on the flight mapping website Flightradar24 as evidence of extra-terrestrial meddling. She goes so far as to say the “captured signals” could “only be termed a UFO.”

Her source? YouTube user DAHBOO77, who posted a video that attempts to recreate the plane’s last moments. The clip shows a quick-moving plane and other strange anomalies around the time of the MH370’s disappearance from radar.

Loading the logs directly on the site allows readers to easily click and identify the so-called “UFO,” which is clearly marked as Korean Airlines Flight 672. Its apparent supersonic speed is likely related to a glitch in the system, not alien intervention, according to the site’s CEO Mikael Robertsson.

“[Some] receivers do not provide the same data quality, so sometimes parts of the data can be corrupt [and] generate errors like the one you see on the video,” he explained. “For example if Longitude received is 120 instead of 110, that would generate such error.”

2. The passengers are still alive: Families awaiting news about lost loved ones have told reporters they are able to call the cell phones of their missing relatives, and have said they can also see their instant messaging service accounts remain active online.

The news has fueled all kinds of speculation, but phones that are turned off do not always necessarily go straight to voicemail. Factors such as location, the phone’s network type and its proximity to a cell phone tower can all affect whether a dead phone will still ring on the caller’s end.

You can test this for yourself: turn off your cell phone, remove the battery and call your number on another line - most kinds of phones will still ring before you reach voicemail.

3. There's a Snowden connection: Reddit user Dark_Spectre posted an unusual theory on the website’s conspiracy boards, related to 20 employees of the Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor who were reportedly on the flight:

“So we have the American IBM Technical Storage Executive for Malaysia, a man working in mass storage aggregation for the company implicated by the Snowden papers for providing their services to assist the National Security Agency in surveilling the Chinese.. And now this bunch of US chip guys working for a global leader in embedded processing solutions (embedded smart phone tech and defense contracting) all together..on a plane..And disappeared.. Coincidence??”

Dark_Spectre goes as far as to suggest those chip experts may have been kidnapped by Chinese or American authorities:


"Perhaps a little fast and furious dive under the radar to a flat water landing to rendezvous with a Chinese ship or sub for transport to a black-site for advanced interrogation, scuttling the plane along with the remaining passengers.(any oceanic trenches in fuel capacity distance?) What would 200 lives be to the Chinese intelligence community for the chance to find out ‘exactly’ the depth and scope of our intrusion.”


Yeah, because that would definitely be the easiest way of doing that.

“US intelligence got late wind that their flying brain-trust of 21 were going to be arrested/detained and interrogated upon landing in China and the US intelligence community deemed the risk too great to their Asian based espionage programs and took appropriate action to "sanitize" the plane in flight.”

So far, there is no evidence of an explosion.

4. Iranians kidnapped engineers: UFO Digest’s Tony Elliott points to revelations that an Iranian national was responsible for buying plane tickets for two passengers with stolen passports as evidence that the country was involved, possibly to extract technological intelligence from Freescale Semiconductor employees.

“If the plane is not found in the next few days, or ever, we must assume the plane was hijacked and taken to a nearby country where that government wants to keep the disappearance a secret,” he wrote. “If this is the case, the two passengers with stolen passports must be the hijackers.”

Elliott concludes that the plane is in East Timor, due to an apparent u-turn made by the plane in its final moments on radar.

“If the Iranian government wanted to hijack the plane, it would have had its hijackers make an abrupt turn and head to the nearest friendly Muslim country,” he wrote. “In this case, it would be East Timor, the most likely country, located in the opposite direction from the flight path.”

The theory doesn’t address why the plane suddenly disappeared from radar entirely - no passenger plane could drop from 36,000 feet to below radar horizon in mere seconds.

5. Passengers were taken to Pyongyang: This map is slightly deceptive - while the trip to both Beijing and Pyongyang appear equidistant, this theory would require the plane fly at extremely low altitudes to avoid radar detection, which - due to greater air density at lower altitudes - would require more fuel to travel the same distance.

6. The Illuminati is involved: “Was looking at the Wikipedia page for the missing Malaysia Airlines, and noticed that it's was [sic] the 404th 777 Boeing produced,” Redditor i-am-SHER-locked wrote.

“An HTTP 404 error mean [sic] not found, which in this case is oddly approiate [sic] for the status of the aircraft, or just a concidence [sic]. Coincidence, i think not!”

I think, probably.

7. There's a new Bermuda triangle: Though the Bermuda Triangle’s status as one of the sea’s most mysteriously treacherous zones has been debunked for decades, it doesn’t stop some from seeing triangles in the Gulf of Thailand.

8. The plane is in Vietnam, where it is waiting to be used as a weapon: “Conspiracy and prophecy in the news” blogger ShantiUniverse said she has three possible theories about what happened to Flight MH370: A major mechanical error (OK), a terrorist attack (reasonable) or it was whisked away to a secret Vientamese airport to be used in a later 9/11 style attack (...).

“Flight 370 was last contacted by another unnamed pilot 10 minutes after losing initial contact,” she writes. “He claims the plane was deep into Vietnam airspace. Its [sic] possible it was hijacked and forced to land at another airport, where passengers are being held hostage. There is a long list of former airports and proposed airports in Vietnam. Its also possible since the plane had no contact, it could of [sic] managed to get to Cambodia to a former or proposed airport...Why would terrorist want a plane intact? Though this is highly unlikely, but not impossible, the only reason I can think of is they would want the plane to use as a weapon of mass destruction like on the September 11 attacks.”

Right.

9: There was some kind of miniature hydrogen bomb controlled by an iPhone app and it created a miniature black hole: It’s hard to tell whether @Angela_Stalcup’s account is the work of a completely unhinged lunatic or a genius, masterful troll. Wading through claims that Donald Trump runs a prostitution ring through Trump University or that Russian President Vladimir Putin is one of 92 clones of Adolf Hitler, you may stumble upon this gem of a theory about Flight MH370:

So what really happened?: The truth is, no one really knows. The AP now cites a senior Malaysian military official who reports the country has radar data detecting the plane in the Malacca Strait - hundreds of miles from the last position recorded by civilian authorities.

*Armchair conspiracy theorists have also speculated (on Twitter, of course) that the passengers on flight 370 have landed on a remote, impossible-to-find island a la "Lost."

NPR offers some more level-headed theories about the plane’s fate here. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=287856039
Attachments:

Nobody's mentioned the Dharma Initiative?




Dharma Initiative Orientation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JZItP_xrA8
Attachments:

I refuse to dig through the 40 threads dedicated to this, but, one of you was saying "why not triangulate the cellphones?!" .... well, here's your answer:

"Q: What about flying over the ocean?

A: Flying over oceans reduces the odds of a connection even more, since there just aren't cell towers there. Charles McColgan, chief technology officer for the mobile identity firm TeleSign says that while investigators might be able to determine the last cell tower that cellphones had contact with before the plane started flying over water, if the plane was flying above 10,000 feet at the time, the phones on it wouldn't be able to make a connection with a tower.

"Anyone leading the investigation should check, but it is unlikely that pinging a passenger's phone is going to find them," McColgan says."

http://wtop.com/256/3580044/Cellphones-offer-no-clues-in-plane-search

thisisajokeright Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I refuse to dig through the 40 threads dedicated
> to this, but, one of you was saying "why not
> triangulate the cellphones?!" .... well, here's
> your answer:
>
> "Q: What about flying over the ocean?
>
> A: Flying over oceans reduces the odds of a
> connection even more, since there just aren't cell
> towers there. Charles McColgan, chief technology
> officer for the mobile identity firm TeleSign says
> that while investigators might be able to
> determine the last cell tower that cellphones had
> contact with before the plane started flying over
> water, if the plane was flying above 10,000 feet
> at the time, the phones on it wouldn't be able to
> make a connection with a tower.
>
> "Anyone leading the investigation should check,
> but it is unlikely that pinging a passenger's
> phone is going to find them," McColgan says."
>
> http://wtop.com/256/3580044/Cellphones-offer-no-cl
> ues-in-plane-search

That's for cell phone reception, what about satellites GPS triangulation?

I'm very suspicious of the Malaysian authorities. Malaysia is not a third world country and all the incorrect information that came out of the airline and that government is very disconcerting.

Skeptical? Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> thisisajokeright Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I refuse to dig through the 40 threads
> dedicated
> > to this, but, one of you was saying "why not
> > triangulate the cellphones?!" .... well, here's
> > your answer:
> >
> > "Q: What about flying over the ocean?
> >
> > A: Flying over oceans reduces the odds of a
> > connection even more, since there just aren't
> cell
> > towers there. Charles McColgan, chief
> technology
> > officer for the mobile identity firm TeleSign
> says
> > that while investigators might be able to
> > determine the last cell tower that cellphones
> had
> > contact with before the plane started flying
> over
> > water, if the plane was flying above 10,000
> feet
> > at the time, the phones on it wouldn't be able
> to
> > make a connection with a tower.
> >
> > "Anyone leading the investigation should check,
> > but it is unlikely that pinging a passenger's
> > phone is going to find them," McColgan says."
> >
> >
> http://wtop.com/256/3580044/Cellphones-offer-no-cl
>
> > ues-in-plane-search
>
> That's for cell phone reception, what about
> satellites GPS triangulation?


TBH it was TL;DR. Sry. :/

______________
resident witch

Meanwhile tension mounts on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370...

Stewardess: Can I get you something?
Second Jive Dude: ‘S’mofo butter layin’ me to da’ BONE! Jackin’ me up… tight me!
Stewardess: I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
First Jive Dude: Cutty say ‘e can’t HANG!
June Cleaver: Oh stewardess! I speak jive.
Stewardess: Oh, good.
June Cleaver: He said that he’s in great pain and he wants to know if you can help him.
Stewardess: All right. Would you tell him to just relax and I’ll be back as soon as I can with some medicine?
June Cleaver: [to the Second Jive Dude] Jus’ hang loose, blood. She gonna catch ya up on da’ rebound on da’ med side.
Second Jive Dude: What it is, big mama? My mama no raise no dummies. I dug her rap!
June Cleaver: Cut me some slack, Jack! Chump don’ want no help, chump don’t GET da’ help!
First Jive Dude: Say ‘e can’t hang, say seven up!
June Cleaver: Jive ass dude don’t got no brains anyhow! Shiiiiit.
Attachments:

vMKKF Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Slant eyed liars Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > They are up to something. Anybody else find it
> odd
> > that they were searching with boats and planes
> in
> > an area that they knew was nowhere near where
> the
> > last known position of the plane was?
>
> I completely agree, something is definitely afoot.


Dude, that's a fucking cow. Get your (Bull)shit together.

Official: Investigators conclude Malaysian airliner was hijackedThe Malaysian government official said there is evidence that the Boeing 777's communications were switched off deliberately & it was steered to avoid detection by radar.
http://news.msn.com/world/malaysian-leader-planes-disappearance-deliberate

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — A Malaysian passenger jet missing for more than a week had its communications deliberately disabled and its last signal came about seven and a half hours after takeoff, meaning it could have ended up as far as Kazakhstan or deep in the southern Indian Ocean, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday

Najib's statement Saturday confirmed days of mounting speculation that the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 with 239 people on board was not accidental, and underlines the massive task for searchers who already been scouring vast areas of ocean.

"In view of this latest development, the Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation into the crew and passengers on board," Najib said, stressing they are still investigating all possibilities as to why the plane deviated so drastically from its original flight path.

"Clearly the search for MH370 has entered a new phase," Najib told a televised news conference.

The Malaysian Airlines flight 370 was carrying 239 people when it departed for an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing at 12:40 a.m. March 8. The plane's communications with civilian air controllers were severed about 1:20 and the plane went missing in one of the most puzzling mysteries in modern aviation history.

Najib said investigators now have a high degree of certainly that one of the planes communications, the Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System, was disabled before the aircraft reached the east coast of Malaysia. Shortly afterward someone on board then switched off the aircraft's transponder, which communicates with civilian air traffic controllers.

The prime minister then confirmed that Malaysian air force defense radar picked up traces of the plane turning back westward, crossing over peninsular Malaysia into the northern stretches of the Strait of Malacca. Authorities previously had said this radar data could not be verified.

He then said the last confirmed signal between the plane and a satellite came at 8:11 a.m. Malaysian time — 7 hours and 31 minutes after take-off. Airline officials have said the plane had enough fuel to fly for up to about eight hours.

"The investigations team is making further calculations which will indicate how far the aircraft may have flown after this last point of contact," he said.

Najib said authorities had determined that the plane's last communication with a satellite was in one of two possible "corridors" — a northern one from northern Thailand through to the border of Kazakstan and Turkmenistan, and a southern one from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

Najib said that searching in the South China Sea, where the plane first lost contact with air traffic controllers, would be ended.

The current search involved 14 countries, 43 ships and 58 aircraft.
Attachments:

Things take a turn for the worst, when the 239 passengers find out...That the plane is out of coffee...
Attachments:

They need to find this plane, because the constant media speculation, is getting to the point of absurd. As are some of the conspiracies.

WAS IT THE PILOTS?
U.S. intelligence points to 'those in the cockpit'

The revelation follows news that Malaysian authorities searched the home of the lead pilot

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

U.S. officials lean toward 'those in the cockpit' behind missing flight
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/15/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) -- U.S. intelligence officials are leaning toward the theory that "those in the cockpit" -- the pilots of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 -- were responsible for the mysterious disappearance of the commercial jetliner, a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the latest thinking told CNN on Saturday.

The revelation followed news that Malaysian authorities searched the home of the lead pilot, a move that came the same day that Prime Minister Najib Razak told reporters the plane veered off course due to apparent deliberate action taken by somebody on board.

The Malaysian government had been looking for a reason to search the home of the pilot and the co-pilot for several days. But it was only in the last 24 to 36 hours, when radar and satellite data came to light, that authorities believed they had sufficient reason to go through the residences, according to the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"The Malaysians don't do this lightly," the official said. It's not clear whether the Malaysian government believes one or both the men could have been responsible for whatever happened to the plane when the Boeing 777-200 ER disappeared March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The official emphasized no final conclusions have been drawn and all the internal intelligence discussions are based on preliminary assessments of what is known to date.

Other scenarios could still emerge.

A source close to the investigation told CNN that Malaysian police had searched the home of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53. Shah lives in an upscale gated community in Shah Alam, outside Malaysia's capital of Kuala Lumpur.

Two vans were loaded with small bags, similar to shopping bags, at the home of the co-pilot, 27-year-old Farq Ab Hamid. It was unclear whether the bags were taken from the home, and police made no comment about their activities at the residence.

Najib made clear in a press conference that in light of the latest developments, authorities have refocused their investigation into the crew and passengers on board.

Undoubtedly, they will scour through the flight manifest and look further to see whether anyone on board had flight training or connections to terror groups.

A senior U.S. law enforcement official told CNN that investigators are carefully reviewing the information so far collected on the pilots to determine whether there is something to indicate a motivation or indication of what may have happened.

That would seem supported by preliminary U.S. intelligence reports, which the U.S. official said show the jetliner was in some form of controlled flight at a relatively stable altitude and path when it changed course and flew toward the Indian Ocean. It is presumed by U.S. officials to have crashed, perhaps after running out of fuel.

'Someone acting deliberately'

Military radar showed the jetliner flew in a westerly direction back over the Malaysian peninsula, Najib said. It is then believed to have either turned northwest toward the Bay of Bengal or southwest elsewhere into the Indian Ocean, he said.

"Evidence is consistent with someone acting deliberately from inside the plane," the Prime Minister said, officially confirming the plane's disappearance was not caused by an accident. "....Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, we are investigating all major possibilities on what caused MH370 to deviate."

The focus now is searching for the missing flight in the southern Indian Ocean, according to the U.S. official with knowledge of the latest intelligence thinking.

"The southern scenario seems more plausible," the official said.

Meanwhile, according to Najib, new satellite information leads authorities to be fairly certain that someone disabled the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, just before the aircraft reached the east coast of peninsular Malaysia.

"Shortly afterward, near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control," Najib said, "the aircraft's transponder was switched off."

ACARS is the system that routinely transmits information like turbulence and fuel load back to the airline. A transponder is a system controlled from the cockpit that transmits data about the plane via radio signals to air traffic controllers. It combines with ground radar to provide air traffic controllers with details about the plane, including its identification, speed, position and altitude.

The last voice communication from the cockpit a week ago were these words: "All right, good night."

They were uttered at the Vietnam air traffic control border at about the same time the transponder was shut off, Najib said. That suggests the incident on the plane began sooner than initially thought.

But some have questioned the Prime Minister's account, given the dearth of information available.

Malaysia investigation criticized

In the days since the flight disappeared, the Malaysian government has been under intense scrutiny for its handling of the investigation. The government has been criticized by some U.S. officials for not sharing information or accepting more offers of help.

Shortly after Najib delivered his remarks, China demanded Malaysia provide more information on the investigation. Of the 239 people aboard Flight 370, 154 were Chinese.

"Today is the 8th day of the missing MH370, and the plane is still yet to be found," said a statement from the foreign ministry. "Time is life."

The criticism was more pointed in an editorial published by China's state-run news agency Xinhua.

"And due to the absence -- or at least lack -- of timely authoritative information, massive efforts have been squandered, and numerous rumors have been spawned, repeatedly racking the nerves of the awaiting families," the editorial said.

Malaysian authorities have been highly sensitive to any suggestion they can't handle the investigation, the law enforcement official said. It took several days last week to calm their anger over inaccurate reports that the FBI had dispatched a team to investigate, the official said.

Malaysia Airlines defended its actions, saying there has never been a case where information gleaned from satellite signals alone could potentially be used to find the location of a missing airliner.

"Given the nature of the situation and its extreme sensitivity, it was critical that the raw satellite signals were verified and analyzed by the relevant authorities so that their significance could be properly understood," the airline said in a statement. "This naturally took some time, during which we were unable to publicly confirm their existence."

Kazakhstan to Indian Ocean

As the focus of the investigation shifted, so, too, has the focus of the search.

Information from international and Malaysian officials indicate that the jet may have flown for more than seven hours after the last contact with the pilots.

Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12:41 a.m. on March 8. The last satellite communication from the plane occurred at 8:11 a.m., Najib said, well past the scheduled arrival time in Beijing.

That last communication, Najib said, was in one of two possible traffic corridors shown on a map released to the press. A northern arc stretches from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, and a southern arc spans from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

"Due to the type of satellite data, we are unable to confirm the precise location of the plane when it last made contact with the satellite," Najib said.

Because the northern parts of the traffic corridor include some tightly guarded airspace over India, Pakistan, and even some U.S. installations in Afghanistan, U.S. authorities believe it more likely the aircraft crashed into waters outside of the reach of radar south of India, one U.S. official told CNN. If it had flown farther north, it's likely it would have been detected by radar.

Nonetheless for the last 36 hours, the U.S. military and intelligence community has been reviewing all satellite imagery and electronic data it collects from the region for any sign of an explosion or crash, according to a U.S. official directly familiar with that effort.

Najib said authorities were ending search operations in the South China Sea and reassessing the deployment of assets.

"This new satellite information has a significant impact on the nature and scope of the search operation," he said.

Investigators, he said, have confirmed by looking at the raw satellite data that the plane in question was the Malaysia Airlines jet.

The same conclusion was reached by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch and the Malaysian authorities, all of whom were working separately with the same data, he said.

Families hold onto hope

For the families and loved ones of those aboard Flight 370, Saturday was Day 8 of anguish. Some found comfort that there is no evidence the plane made impact.

The father of one passenger watched Najib's news conference at a Beijing hotel. He said he hoped the plane was hijacked because that gave him reason to think his son was alive.

"I hope they are alive, no matter how small the chance is," he said.

The search that began last weekend now involves 14 countries, 43 ships and 58 aircraft, Najib said, and that the relevant foreign embassies have been given access to the new information.

China is sending technical experts to join the investigation, and two Chinese search vessels headed for the Strait of Malacca, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

After wrapping a search that lasted close to three days in the Gulf of Thailand, the Haikou missile destroyer is due to reach the Strait of Malacca late Saturday. Another vessel, the Yongxingdao, equipped with underwater robots and rescue boats, is set to join the search in the Strait of Malacca after concluding its search in the eastern part of the Gulf of Thailand.

Plane was taking 'strange path'

Hours before Najib's announcement, U.S. officials told CNN the flight had made drastic changes in altitude and direction after disappearing from civilian radar.

The more U.S. officials learn about the flight, "the more difficult to write off" the idea that some type of human intervention was involved, an official familiar with the investigation said.

The jetliner was flying "a strange path," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. The details of the radar readings were first reported by The New York Times on Friday.

Malaysian military radar showed the plane climbing to 45,000 feet -- which is above its approved altitude limit -- soon after disappearing from civilian radar screens and then dropping to 23,000 feet before climbing again, the official said.

Najib noted that theories and conspiracy theories on what happened abound.

"There has been intense speculation," Najib said. "We understand the desperate need for information on behalf of the families and those watching around the world. But we have a responsibility to the investigation and the families to only release information that has been corroborated."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~Investigators have renewed their focus on the pilots, a law enforcement official says
~Malaysia's government wanted a reason to search the pilots' homes, the official says
~The search now spans two corridors -- from Kazakhstan in the north to Indian Ocean
~Police search homes of pilot and co-pilot
Attachments:

Lives, not numbers: Snapshots of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 passengers
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/15/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-passenger-vignettes/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

CNN) -- Amid the void of information on their fates, it seems at times the passengers and crew of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have been reduced to a number.

Two hundred and thirty-nine.

Yet, as their families and others who love and miss them can attest through their anguish, they are so much more. Hailing from at least a dozen nations, they represent a vast gamut of humanity.

The youngest is 2, the oldest 76. Five passengers haven't seen their fifth birthdays.

They are engineers, an artist and a stunt man, along with Buddhist pilgrims, vacationers and commuters. To those who wait for them, they are fathers, mothers, children, soulmates and the dearest of friends.



The anguish of waiting

Families wait for news on Flight 370

Remembering the missing on Flight 370 Days pass: No word of loved ones

As could be said of any large, random group, they are many things, individuals with 239 unique backgrounds, idiosyncrasies and lives.

Here are a few of their stories:

Ju Kun

Ju's social media account has been flooded with well-wishers praying for his safe return. Many know the 35-year-old martial arts expert from his stand-ins as a stunt man in films like "The Grandmaster" and "The Forbidden Kingdom." The latter starred genre luminaries Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Ju was slated to begin filming on the Netflix series, "Marco Polo" in coming weeks.

Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi wrote on Weibo that Ju "is a sincere, kind and hardworking man," while Netflix said he is "an integral part of our production team and a tremendous talent."

Chandrika Sharma

K.S. Narendran considered going to Kuala Lampur for more information on his wife, but ultimately he didn't see the point. No information in Chennai, India, is the same as no information in Kuala Lampur, so he'd prefer to be "surrounded by family and friends."

Sharma, the executive secretary of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, was en route to Mongolia for a U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization conference. Narendran says he's received little information from authorities and, like most of the world, has relied on news reports, which "thus far amounted to nothing," he said.

Paul Weeks

Weeks left his wedding ring and watch at home when he took a mining job in Mongolia. The New Zealander instructed his wife, Danica, to pass them on to his two sons "should anything happen."

Danica clutched her husband's wedding ring and fought back tears as she explained to CNN that her husband was aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, en route to Mongolia. She describes him as "the most amazing husband and the most amazing father," who always spends time with his boys. She says the hardest part is the cruel mystery: not knowing what happened to the plane.

"He had strength, character. He's just so much. He's my best friend and my soulmate, and I just can't wait for him to come back. I hope. I hope."

Gu Naijun and Li Yuan

Gu, 31, uses her Weibo account to keep her oft-traveling husband, Li, 32, apprised of the goings-on of their two "princesses," whether the daughters are swimming, playing on the slide, dressing in frilly costumes or just enjoying a lunch outing, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The Chinese couple fell in love in Sydney, Australia, and moved to its suburbs. They had recently sold their Sylvania home and were spending most of their time in China, the paper reported. Li, who went by Carlos, is a partner with Beijing Landysoft Technology, where one longtime employee said he and his coworkers were shocked. "He's a good boss, kind, and extremely hard-working,'' the employee said.

Muktesh Mukherjee and Xiaomo Bai

Mukherjee, 42, is vice president of China operations for Xcoal Energy & Resources. He and his wife, Xiaomo Bai, 37, who broadcaster CTV identified as Canadians who once lived in Montreal, left their two young boys with Bai's mom in Beijing while they went on vacation in Vietnam, according to Bai's Facebook page.

Matthew McConkey, a friend of the couple's, said Mukherjee "was very much in love with" Bai, and "as parents nothing was more important to them than those kids."

Mao Tugui

Hu Xianquan last spoke to her husband, Mao, a painter, March 2, as he was boarding a plane to attend an exhibition for his work. Like Danica Weeks, she finds the dearth of information frustrating, and her grief has morphed to agonizing frustration.

Mohd Sofuan Ibrahim and Ch'ng Mei Ling

Hasif Nazri, 33, was doubly sad upon learning of the plane's disappearance. Not only did he live in the same dorm as the 33-year-old Ibrahim during their school days in Malaysia, but Mei Ling, also 33, is another former classmate.

While Nazri acknowledges losing hope as the days drag on, he has fond memories of his old friends. Ibrahim, who posted a Facebook photo before boarding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, was traveling to Beijing to begin work for Malaysia's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A good student and speaker, Ibrahim is also "a good, kind-hearted friend, very helpful, cheerful and definitely no wallflower," Nazri said.

Nazri remembers Mei Ling, meanwhile, as a funny woman with an infectious laugh. She's a "very cheerful girl." Mei Ling works for Flexsys America LP, an Ohio-based manufacturer of chemicals for the rubber industry, and has lived in Pennsylvania since 2010. She "was very adaptable," Nazri recalled from his days doing course work with her.

Huang Yi

Huang Lu, an elementary school teacher in China's Guizhou province, hopes for "miracle" news of her friend, Huang Yi, 30, who works for the Texas-based technology firm Freescale Semiconductor, and was aboard the flight with 19 colleagues when the plane disappeared.

Huang Lu and Huang Yi have been friends since they were teens and have kept in touch online. Huang Lu often spoke to her friend's daughter, Yuanyuan, 5, about family and raising kids. "She's kind, lively and a good person to talk with," Huang Lu said of her pal. "Yi, please come back. Yuanyuan needs you."

Swawand Kolekar

In Mumbai, India, Archit Joshi, 23, desperately sought information on his classmate, Kolekar, whose family in Beijing was also desperate for any information on his whereabouts.

Joshi described Kolekar as "very reserved but very, very intelligent ... a bit of a techno-freak and he made a lot of circuits and projects at engineering college."

"He didn't have many friends -- he was a bit of a loner -- but he had all the attributes a good friend should have."

Li Yan

Li's aunt, Zhang Guizhi, traveled from central China to Beijing and was hoping to obtain a passport to travel to wherever the plane is found. She wasn't sure how to go about the process and began weeping when she explained Li, 31, had traveled with her husband and four friends to Malaysia for vacation.

Philip Wood

The 51-year-old father of two graduated from Oklahoma Christian University in 1985 with a Bachelor of Science in math and computer science, said school spokeswoman Risa Forrester. On the school's Facebook page, a man wrote that Wood, an IBM executive, is "gentle, kind, had great taste in music and was a wonderful artist."

"His word was gold," his family said in a statement. "Incredibly generous, creative and intelligent, Phil cared about people, his family, and above all, Christ."

Mary and Rodney Burrows

Neighbors Mandy Watt and Don Stoke say the Burrowses are the hard-working parents of three "successful, all happy" adult children -- two daughters and a son. Rodney Burrows had planned his trip to China after being laid off last year, the Australian Associated Press reported.

Watt further said of the Middle Park, Australia, couple, "I hate to use the cliche, but they were soulmates."

Catherine and Robert Lawton

The Lawtons, a Springfield Lakes, Australia, couple, in their mid-50s, are passionate travelers, parents to three daughters and doting grandparents, according to the Australian Associated Press.

Robert's brother, David, described him as a "very good father, such a good person." Robert's sister-in-law said the Lawtons had planned their trip with their good friends, the Burrowses. Cathy's last Facebook post before leaving was, "Off to China."
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Beautiful people with such seemingly beautiful lives. Prayers and thoughts are with them and their families. There is still a sliver of hope they are out there..

it seems likely that either one of the pilots or both of them were involved in this incident. Either they or the Iranians with stolen passports probably hijacked it. Since they let some Australian women into cockpit in the past, they could also let the Iranians into cockpit who could neutralize the pilots and take over the airplane's controls, like the 9/11.....

They could have flown somewhere to sell the aircraft or crashed it in the ocean.

my theory Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> it seems likely that either one of the pilots or
> both of them were involved in this incident.
> Either they or the Iranians with stolen passports
> probably hijacked it. Since they let some
> Australian women into cockpit in the past, they
> could also let the Iranians into cockpit who could
> neutralize the pilots and take over the airplane's
> controls, like the 9/11.....
>
> They could have flown somewhere to sell the
> aircraft or crashed it in the ocean.

Not likely terrorism or someone would have claimed responsibility by now. Seems more like piracy or something like that.

NEVER, EVER get on a plane with muslims, whether they're passengers or pilots, as there's a 78% chance on any given day that they'll want to kill lots of innocent people.

What really happened...

Watch the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=skYRZ_-RXtk
Attachments:

Officials: Missing jet saga exposes major air-defense gaps As the Malaysian airliner search continues, analysts say the mystery has brought system vulnerabilities to light.

http://news.msn.com/world/malaysian-plane-saga-highlights-air-defense-gaps

LONDON/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Whatever truly happened to missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, its apparently unchallenged wanderings through Asian skies point to major gaps in regional - and perhaps wider - air defenses.

More than a decade after al Qaeda hijackers turned airliners into weapons on September 11, 2001, a large commercial aircraft completely devoid of stealth features appeared to vanish with relative ease.

On Saturday, Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak said authorities now believed the Boeing 777 flew for nearly seven hours after disappearing early on March 8. Either its crew or someone else on the plane disabled the on-board transponder civilian air traffic radar used to track it, investigators believe.

It appears to have first flown back across the South China Sea - an area of considerable geopolitical tension and military activity - before overflying northern Malaysia and then heading out towards India without any alarm being raised.

The reality, analysts and officials say, is that much of the airspace over water - and in many cases over land - lacks sophisticated or properly monitored radar coverage.

Analysts say the gaps in Southeast Asia's air defenses are likely to be mirrored in other parts of the developing world, and may be much greater in areas with considerably lower geopolitical tensions.

"Several nations will be embarrassed by how easy it is to trespass their airspace," said Air Vice Marshal Michael Harwood, a retired British Royal Air Force pilot and ex-defense attache to Washington DC. "Too many movies and Predator (unmanned military drone) feeds from Afghanistan have suckered people into thinking we know everything and see everything. You get what you pay for. And the world, by and large, does not pay."

"TOO EXPENSIVE"

Air traffic systems rely almost entirely on on-board transponders to detect and monitor aircraft. In this case, those systems appear to have been deactivated around the time the aircraft crossed from Malaysian to Vietnamese responsibility.

At the very least, the incident looks set to spark calls to make it impossible for those on board an aircraft to turn off its transponders and disappear.

Military systems, meanwhile, are often limited in their own coverage or just ignore aircraft they believe are on regular commercial flights. In some cases, they are simply switched off except during training and when a threat is expected.

That, one senior Indian official said, might explain why the Boeing 777 was not detected by installations on India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an archipelago which its planes were searching on Friday and Saturday, or elsewhere.

"We have many radar systems operating in this area, but nothing was picked up," Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai, chief of staff of India's Andamans and Nicobar Command, told Reuters. "It's possible that the military radars were switched off as we operate on an 'as required' basis."

Separately, a defense source said that India did not keep its radar facilities operational at all times because of cost. Asked what the reason was, the source said: "Too expensive."

"SOMEONE ELSE'S PROBLEM"

Worries over revealing defense capabilities, some believe, may have slowed cooperation in the search for flight MH370, particularly between Malaysia and China. Beijing has poured military resources into the search, announcing it was deploying 10 surveillance satellites and multiple ships and aircraft. It has been critical of Malaysia's response.

While Malaysian military radar does appear to have detected the aircraft, there appear to have been no attempts to challenge it - or, indeed, any realization anything was amiss.

That apparent oversight, current and former officials and analysts say, is surprising. But the incident, they say, points to the relatively large gaps in global air surveillance and the limits of some military radar systems.

"It's hard to tell exactly why they did not notice it," says Elizabeth Quintana, senior research fellow for air power at the Royal United Services Institute in London. "It may have been that the aircraft was flying at low level or that the military operators were looking for other threats such as fast jets and felt that airliners were someone else's problem."

Current and former officials say that - hopefully, at least - such an incident would be detected much faster in North American or European airspace. There, military and civilian controllers monitor radar continuously on alert for possible hijacks or intruders.

The sudden failure of a transponder, they say, would itself prove a likely and dramatic cause for concern.

"I can't think of many situations in which one would actually need to switch them off," said one former Western official on condition of anonymity.

U.S. and NATO jets periodically scramble to intercept unidentified aircraft approaching their airspace, including a growing number of Russian long-range bombers.

In some other areas, it is simply not seen as worth maintaining a high level of alert - or radar coverage itself may not even exist.

"NOTHING MUCH HAPPENS AT NIGHT"

Investigators now say they believe MH370 may have turned either towards India and Central Asia or - perhaps more likely, given the lack of detection - taken a southern course towards the Antarctic. That would have been an effectively suicidal flight, the aircraft eventually running out of fuel and crashing.

The waters of the southern Indian Ocean and northern Southern Ocean are among the most remote on the planet, used by few ships and overflown by few aircraft.

Australian civilian radar extends only some 200 km (125 miles) from its coast, an Australian official said on condition of anonymity, although its air defense radar extends much further. Australia's military could not be reached for comment on Saturday and if it did detect a transponder-less aircraft heading south, there is no suggestion any alarm was raised.

U.S. military satellites monitor much of the globe, including some of the remotest oceans, looking primarily for early warning of any ballistic missile launch from a submarine or other vessel.

After the aircraft's initial disappearance a week ago, U.S. officials said their satellites had detected no signs of a mid-air explosion. It is unclear if such systems would have detected a crash landing in the southern Indian Ocean.

On India's Andaman Islands, a defense official told reporters he saw nothing unusual or out of place in the lack of permanent radar coverage. The threat in the area, he said, was much lower than on India's border with Pakistan where sophisticated radars are manned and online continuously.

At night in particular, he said, "nothing much happens".

"We have our radars, we use them, we train with them, but it's not a place where we have (much) to watch out for," he said. "My take is that this is a pretty peaceful place."

Their ascent to 40K some odd feet, has me wondering. How high would a plane have to go in order for cell phones not to work. Can they work above a certain altitude? If not, maybe they ascended above that altitude, collected cell phones and wireless devices, and once that was done, descended to normal or in this case, below normal cruising altitude. Just a thought. It would be a welcome miracle for these people to have landed somewhere remote, but then what is the use of the stolen jet? That would be the next worry. Prayers for everyone involved.

It is not 'Lost'. Photos have already been published that the plane went down, in the ocean. Trust me, I would love to be wrong, but hate I know I am not.

EbTyP Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Their ascent to 40K some odd feet, has me
> wondering. How high would a plane have to go in
> order for cell phones not to work. Can they work
> above a certain altitude? If not, maybe they
> ascended above that altitude, collected cell
> phones and wireless devices, and once that was
> done, descended to normal or in this case, below
> normal cruising altitude. Just a thought. It would
> be a welcome miracle for these people to have
> landed somewhere remote, but then what is the use
> of the stolen jet? That would be the next worry.
> Prayers for everyone involved.

A reason for ascending to above 40,000 feet would be to incapacitate the passengers by depriving them of oxygen. After the passengers are out of the way the plane could be taken to lower altitudes to avoid detection. The deployment system for the oxygen masks can be turned off.

You are correct they released images of what appears to be three massive pieces of debris on the Indian Ocean about 1000 kilometres from the Australian Coast. It has been on the news.
Attachments:

Phantomer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> EbTyP Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Their ascent to 40K some odd feet, has me
> > wondering. How high would a plane have to go in
> > order for cell phones not to work. Can they
> work
> > above a certain altitude? If not, maybe they
> > ascended above that altitude, collected cell
> > phones and wireless devices, and once that was
> > done, descended to normal or in this case,
> below
> > normal cruising altitude. Just a thought. It
> would
> > be a welcome miracle for these people to have
> > landed somewhere remote, but then what is the
> use
> > of the stolen jet? That would be the next
> worry.
> > Prayers for everyone involved.
>
> A reason for ascending to above 40,000 feet would
> be to incapacitate the passengers by depriving
> them of oxygen. After the passengers are out of
> the way the plane could be taken to lower
> altitudes to avoid detection. The deployment
> system for the oxygen masks can be turned off.

Thanks Phantomer, good to know, but chilling all the same. If it was hijacked and this was the case, I wonder how they managed to maintain the O2 levels themselves. Carrying a portable spare air tank in your carryon would cause suspicion, but then again, they let people with stolen passports on board, so I guess anything is possible. I never thought I'd appreciate the TSA as much as I do now.

The altitude would have killed the passengers as the person said, and if done purposely in the cock pit they have more air supply than the passengers 15 minutes i believe, its a known terrorist tactic or something.... but the hopefully alternative and unlikely option is that the passengers had no idea they were hijacked until the plane landed safely and one by one as they got off they were taken hostage.

As more and more information comes out, I'm really starting to to believe this was a terrorist attack gone wrong.

What I mean is that hijackers (or the pilot, if he was involved) may have taken over the plane and flown it for those 4+ hours. Something happened and the plane went down. Maybe it was an error on the perpetrator(s)'s part, maybe it was a Flight 93-type situation where the passengers figured out what was going on and fought back. Whatever it was, the plane went down and now its remains are on land or - more likely - in the ocean.

It would explain the transponder cutting off, the lack of communication from the pilots, the plane flying for an additional 4 or 5 hours, the fact that no terrorist group has taken credit for it, why the plane began acting erratically (going from 45,000 feet altitude to 23,000 in a very short amount of time), and - most importantly - why the plane disappeared.

I hope I'm wrong and that this is a hostage situation and that the authorities aren't releasing that information so they don't jeopardize the investigation and the 227 lives involved. But I don't have much faith in that possibility.

My thoughts go out to the friends and family of everyone on board. I hope you get to learn what happened to your loved one, whatever it may have been.

do you really think that debris in the Indian Ocean or Gulf of Thailand is that easy to find?

Typically there is some debris floating on the surface SOMEWHERE near a crash site, napkins, baggage, seat cushions. I can't imagine a plane hitting the ocean and staying in one piece.

Mico Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As more and more information comes out, I'm really
> starting to to believe this was a terrorist attack
> gone wrong.
>
> What I mean is that hijackers (or the pilot, if he
> was involved) may have taken over the plane and
> flown it for those 4+ hours. Something happened
> and the plane went down. Maybe it was an error on
> the perpetrator(s)'s part, maybe it was a Flight
> 93-type situation where the passengers figured out
> what was going on and fought back. Whatever it
> was, the plane went down and now its remains are
> on land or - more likely - in the ocean.
>
> It would explain the transponder cutting off, the
> lack of communication from the pilots, the plane
> flying for an additional 4 or 5 hours, the fact
> that no terrorist group has taken credit for it,
> why the plane began acting erratically (going from
> 45,000 feet altitude to 23,000 in a very short
> amount of time), and - most importantly - why the
> plane disappeared.
>
> I hope I'm wrong and that this is a hostage
> situation and that the authorities aren't
> releasing that information so they don't
> jeopardize the investigation and the 227 lives
> involved. But I don't have much faith in that
> possibility.
>
> My thoughts go out to the friends and family of
> everyone on board. I hope you get to learn what
> happened to your loved one, whatever it may have
> been.

gone wrong? they've gotten away scot free so far.. i think the plane is landed somewhere, debris would have been found by now otherwise.. you must remember ships aren't actually required to search the ocean, people have been pouring over the satellite images for a week now and turned up nothing.. there are many airstrips both north and south where this could have landed, much of this region is undeveloped.. there's hundreds of islands in the Andaman chain alone.. and then there's always the possibility the hijackers parachuted, possibly with any passenger targets they were after (there are several high-profile on this flight), in which case they may never be discovered.. this is a very bad situation

I don't buy Barbara Starr's hypothesis that passengers did not know the plane was hijacked. As I understand, the plane was flow up to 45,000 feet and dropped to 5,000 feet in a minute. That's a nosedive! If this was before a depressurization by someone in the cockpit, followed by a nosedive...it is quite obvious that the idea was to disable any passengers who would have revolted.

could there be a time when muslims have to fly certain airlines only ?

Let's assume, for sake of argument, that the pilots were involved and acted because of their faith ?

It really would mean that no-one is safe and the only choice for safety would be segregation.

the bermuda triangle is the only answer

evkM6 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't buy Barbara Starr's hypothesis that
> passengers did not know the plane was hijacked. As
> I understand, the plane was flow up to 45,000 feet
> and dropped to 5,000 feet in a minute. That's a
> nosedive! If this was before a depressurization by
> someone in the cockpit, followed by a
> nosedive...it is quite obvious that the idea was
> to disable any passengers who would have revolted.

I want to clear something up - a passenger jet pressurizes the cabin so the people inside feel like they are at 8,000 feet.

It does not matter if the plane is at 20,000 feet or 45,000 feet. It's still going to feel like 8,000 feet inside.

Why would someone change course and fly and aircraft for 8 hours for no reason? There was a reason. They were headed towards a destination, and not to crash-Kazakhstan or one of the old soviet republics or even North Western China, which is home to muslims fighting the Chinese. Easy to see how local air forces' never picked it up. 100% believe they are all alive and safely landed. Their cell phones keep ringing.
Attachments:

The thuth is; the chineses government doesnt care his own people,
they are not trying hard enough to findthe airplane, not like the US,
when it citizens have a issue or in danger outside the country will
always send rescue team and will do all they can.

now, the other thing is, ( Im not a racist, just precaution) if the
pilot is muslin or even a good muslim i wouldnt flight in that plane,
because you never know, I just dont trust their unstable religion, little crazy

I constantly hear about how the malaysian government is this and that, one thing that stuck out was your media sources stating how loosely the malaysian government and airline treat air travel safety by letting people into the cockpit. However we must not forget roughly 13 years ago that 4 American jets were brought down because of the American airline incompetence, so what right does your American government have to criticize the Malaysians and their security protocols. And just another FYI, all these reports about it was pilot suicide and the pilots crashed this plane intention is a crock of crap. Truth is no one has any idea where this plane is and how it got there. Until they recover the black boxes only then will we know the truth, it completely unfair to pin this on two pilots for all we know tried to save these passengers. Let's wait before we jump to conclusions, cnn has reported many different outcomes, just because they have a hundred experts in the field guessing what they think happened doesn't make it any closer to the truth than what I predict over the dinner table. First it was technical difficulty, than it was terrorism or hijacking, pilot suicide, lithium batteries and now pilot hijacking? These are all therioes cnn has produced and at one point they had an article stating there is a likely hood this plane could have landed in the Indian islands, a terrible thing to guess when families are praying for this kind of outcome when you truly have no idea where this plane is and that's proven by coming out and saying two hours later that this plane is probably at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, shut up until we find it.

usa needs to shut its mouth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I constantly hear about how the malaysian
> government is this and that, one thing that stuck
> out was your media sources stating how loosely the
> malaysian government and airline treat air travel
> safety by letting people into the cockpit. However
> we must not forget roughly 13 years ago that 4
> American jets were brought down because of the
> American airline incompetence, so what right does
> your American government have to criticize the
> Malaysians and their security protocols. And just
> another FYI, all these reports about it was pilot
> suicide and the pilots crashed this plane
> intention is a crock of crap. Truth is no one has
> any idea where this plane is and how it got there.
> Until they recover the black boxes only then will
> we know the truth, it completely unfair to pin
> this on two pilots for all we know tried to save
> these passengers. Let's wait before we jump to
> conclusions, cnn has reported many different
> outcomes, just because they have a hundred experts
> in the field guessing what they think happened
> doesn't make it any closer to the truth than what
> I predict over the dinner table. First it was
> technical difficulty, than it was terrorism or
> hijacking, pilot suicide, lithium batteries and
> now pilot hijacking? These are all therioes cnn
> has produced and at one point they had an article
> stating there is a likely hood this plane could
> have landed in the Indian islands, a terrible
> thing to guess when families are praying for this
> kind of outcome when you truly have no idea where
> this plane is and that's proven by coming out and
> saying two hours later that this plane is probably
> at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, shut up until
> we find it.


Malaysia's government makes our look competent.

Except for the fact that they just imprisoned the leading political opposition leader accusing him of homosexuality.

That is one thing our Conservative friends would see as a more advanced social norm.

Why doesn't anyone suspect Zoolander

Gerrymanderer2 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Except for the fact that they just imprisoned the
> leading political opposition leader accusing him
> of homosexuality.
>
> That is one thing our Conservative friends would
> see as a more advanced social norm.


Please go away you racist. Thanks.

--Everyone on the board.

Keep quiet. Raid on Entebbe II.

Plane Search Now Spans 11 Countries, 25 Nations Involved
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/plane-search-now-spans-11-countries-25-nations-involved-n53981

The number of countries involved in the search effort for the missing Malaysian Airlines jet has jumped from 14 to 25, Malaysian transport officials said Sunday.

The search area also expanded to include the territory of 11 countries, "which brings a new challenge and calibration and diplomatic effort," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said during a news conference Sunday.

"From focusing mainly on shallow seas, we are now looking at large tracts of land, crossing 11 countries, as well as deep and remote oceans," Hussein said.

Malaysian officials leading the search are focusing on two "corridors" stretching north across most of South Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India and south through Indonesia, Australia and the Indian Ocean, after officials revealed Saturday the plane sent communication "pings" for over six hours after veering off course.

Malaysian officials have requested countries in South, Central and Southeast Asia provide assistance with satellite and radar data analysis, ground-searching and maritime and air surveillance, the Malaysian Ministry of Transport said in a statement.

"Countries with satellite assets such as U.S., China and France are asked to help," Hussein added.

"Both the northern and southern corridors are being treated with equal importance," according to the statement, but Hussein said, "surveillance is needed specially for southern corridor."

Malaysian authorities are also waiting on some countries to provide background checks on passengers who were on the missing plane.

"There are still a few countries yet to respond to our requests," Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar said Sunday. "The investigation covers everybody on board," he added.
Attachments:

Malaysia Jet Crew Made Contact After Data System Shut Down
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/malaysia-jet-crew-made-contact-after-data-system-shut-down-n53881

The flight crew of the missing Malaysian jet made its last radio contact with air traffic controllers after the aircraft's automatic signaling system was disabled, a Malaysian transport official said Sunday.

"The ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) communications system was disabled before last radio contact between plane and air traffic," said Malaysian Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak said early Saturday that the aircraft’s ACAR system was disabled first, and then the aircraft’s transponder was shut off before the flight veered off course.

The ACARS is located on a lower-level of the plane, while the transponder is housed in the cockpit, Tom Casey, a retired pilot who used to fly the giant Boeing 777 told NBC News on Saturday. In order to disconnect the ACAR system, a person would have to pull a series of circuit breakers, but also know where to find them, Casey noted.

Razak also said Saturday that the plane was diverted because of a "deliberate action by someone on the plane.” He said the investigation would focus on the passengers and crew.

Malaysia's acting minister of transport Hishamuddin Hussein, second from right, speaks during a press conference as director general of the Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, second from left, and Malaysia Airlines Group CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, left, and Malaysia Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar, right, looks on at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sunday, March 16, 2014.
Attachments:

Please resize that gigantic pic.

Six Important Facts You’re Not Being Told About Lost Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
http://www.realfarmacy.com/six-important-facts-youre-not-being-told-about-lost-malaysia-airlines-flight-370/

There are some astonishing things you’re not being told about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the flight that simply vanished over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 people on board.

The mystery of the flight’s sudden and complete disappearance has even the world’s top air safety authorities baffled. “Air-safety and antiterror authorities on two continents appeared equally stumped about what direction the probe should take,” reports the Wall Street Journal.



WSJ goes on to report:

“For now, it seems simply inexplicable,” said Paul Hayes, director of safety and insurance at Ascend Worldwide, a British advisory and aviation data firm.



While investigators are baffled, the mainstream media isn’t telling you the whole story, either. So I’ve assembled this collection of facts that should raise serious questions in the minds of anyone following this situation.



• Fact #1: All Boeing 777 commercial jets are equipped with black box recorders that can survive any on-board explosion

No explosion from the plane itself can destroy the black box recorders. They are bomb-proof structures that hold digital recordings of cockpit conversations as well as detailed flight data and control surface data.



• Fact #2: All black box recorders transmit locator signals for at least 30 days after falling into the ocean

Yet the black box from this particular incident hasn’t been detected at all. That’s why investigators are having such trouble finding it. Normally, they only need to “home in” on the black box transmitter signal. But in this case, the absence of a signal means the black box itself — an object designed to survive powerful explosions — has either vanished, malfunctioned or been obliterated by some powerful force beyond the worst fears of aircraft design engineers.



• Fact #3: Many parts of destroyed aircraft are naturally bouyant and will float in water

In past cases of aircraft destroyed over the ocean or crashing into the ocean, debris has always been spotted floating on the surface of the water. That’s because — as you may recall from the safety briefing you’ve learned to ignore — “your seat cushion may be used as a flotation device.”

Yes, seat cushions float. So do many other non-metallic aircraft parts. If Flight 370 was brought down by an explosion of some sort, there would be massive debris floating on the ocean, and that debris would not be difficult to spot. The fact that it has not yet been spotted only adds to the mystery of how Flight 370 appears to have literally vanished from the face of the Earth.



• Fact #4: If a missile destroyed Flight 370, the missile would have left a radar signature

One theory currently circulating on the ‘net is that a missile brought down the airliner, somehow blasting the aircraft and all its contents to “smithereens” — which means very tiny pieces of matter that are undetectable as debris.

The problem with this theory is that there exists no known ground-to-air or air-to-air missile with such a capability. All known missiles generate tremendous debris when they explode on target. Both the missile and the debris produce very large radar signatures which would be easily visible to both military vessels and air traffic authorities.



• Fact #5: The location of the aircraft when it vanished is not a mystery

Air traffic controllers have full details of almost exactly where the aircraft was at the moment it vanished. They know the location, elevation and airspeed — three pieces of information which can readily be used to estimate the likely location of debris.

Remember: air safety investigators are not stupid people. They’ve seen mid-air explosions before, and they know how debris falls. There is already a substantial data set of airline explosions and crashes from which investigators can make well-educated guesses about where debris should be found. And yet, even armed with all this experience and information, they remain totally baffled on what happened to Flight 370.

• Fact #6: If Flight 370 was hijacked, it would not have vanished from radar

Hijacking an airplane does not cause it to simply vanish from radar. Even if transponders are disabled on the aircraft, ground radar can still readily track the location of the aircraft using so-called “passive” radar (classic ground-based radar systems that emit a signal and monitor its reflection).

Thus, the theory that the flight was hijacked makes no sense whatsoever. When planes are hijacked, they do not magically vanish from radar.
Attachments:

This is clearly going to be Muslim terrorist activity. TWO confirmed persons used false identities, traveled TOGETHER on false passports, stolen in Thailand, and bought sequential tickets. At least TWO MORE false passports have been identified. Indonesia is predominantly Muslim. Finally, does anyone believe for even a moment that there are no military or civilian satellites that show exactly what happened? The information simply isn't being released to the public, because it is more Muslim terrorism, and the powers that be seem to love them, for some unGodly reason..

My hunch was this was a planned detour and they were able to enlist inside help to disappear from radar. There is probably something on that flight who means a lot to someone somewhere.

I watched the first press conf on the missing plane and the speaker was referring to everyone in the past tense. The pilot WAS a good pilot, the air crew WERE experienced. Something very fishy going on. They knew there were no survivors on the first day.

Seems like horseshit to me. Maybe it's a hoax, Like huvr tech. Maybe its a diversion tactic by the Powers that be to avoid publicity of crimea referendum. They almost sold us a hover board. And they paid tony hawks to lie to us. These people can stoop to any level. And who knows even we would stoop, we've never seen that lot of money. billions!

www.designbill.com

Six Important Facts Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Six Important Facts You’re Not Being Told About
> Lost Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
> http://www.realfarmacy.com/six-important-facts-you
> re-not-being-told-about-lost-malaysia-airlines-fli
> ght-370/
>
> There are some astonishing things you’re not
> being told about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the
> flight that simply vanished over the Gulf of
> Thailand with 239 people on board.
>
> The mystery of the flight’s sudden and complete
> disappearance has even the world’s top air
> safety authorities baffled. “Air-safety and
> antiterror authorities on two continents appeared
> equally stumped about what direction the probe
> should take,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
>
>
>
> WSJ goes on to report:
>
> “For now, it seems simply inexplicable,” said
> Paul Hayes, director of safety and insurance at
> Ascend Worldwide, a British advisory and aviation
> data firm.
>
>
>
> While investigators are baffled, the mainstream
> media isn’t telling you the whole story, either.
> So I’ve assembled this collection of facts that
> should raise serious questions in the minds of
> anyone following this situation.
>
>
>
> • Fact #1: All Boeing 777 commercial jets are
> equipped with black box recorders that can survive
> any on-board explosion
>
> No explosion from the plane itself can destroy the
> black box recorders. They are bomb-proof
> structures that hold digital recordings of cockpit
> conversations as well as detailed flight data and
> control surface data.
>
>
>
> • Fact #2: All black box recorders transmit
> locator signals for at least 30 days after falling
> into the ocean
>
> Yet the black box from this particular incident
> hasn’t been detected at all. That’s why
> investigators are having such trouble finding it.
> Normally, they only need to “home in” on the
> black box transmitter signal. But in this case,
> the absence of a signal means the black box itself
> — an object designed to survive powerful
> explosions — has either vanished, malfunctioned
> or been obliterated by some powerful force beyond
> the worst fears of aircraft design engineers.
>
>
>
> • Fact #3: Many parts of destroyed aircraft are
> naturally bouyant and will float in water
>
> In past cases of aircraft destroyed over the ocean
> or crashing into the ocean, debris has always been
> spotted floating on the surface of the water.
> That’s because — as you may recall from the
> safety briefing you’ve learned to ignore —
> “your seat cushion may be used as a flotation
> device.”
>
> Yes, seat cushions float. So do many other
> non-metallic aircraft parts. If Flight 370 was
> brought down by an explosion of some sort, there
> would be massive debris floating on the ocean, and
> that debris would not be difficult to spot. The
> fact that it has not yet been spotted only adds to
> the mystery of how Flight 370 appears to have
> literally vanished from the face of the Earth.
>
>
>
> • Fact #4: If a missile destroyed Flight 370,
> the missile would have left a radar signature
>
> One theory currently circulating on the ‘net is
> that a missile brought down the airliner, somehow
> blasting the aircraft and all its contents to
> “smithereens” — which means very tiny pieces
> of matter that are undetectable as debris.
>
> The problem with this theory is that there exists
> no known ground-to-air or air-to-air missile with
> such a capability. All known missiles generate
> tremendous debris when they explode on target.
> Both the missile and the debris produce very large
> radar signatures which would be easily visible to
> both military vessels and air traffic
> authorities.
>
>
>
> • Fact #5: The location of the aircraft when it
> vanished is not a mystery
>
> Air traffic controllers have full details of
> almost exactly where the aircraft was at the
> moment it vanished. They know the location,
> elevation and airspeed — three pieces of
> information which can readily be used to estimate
> the likely location of debris.
>
> Remember: air safety investigators are not stupid
> people. They’ve seen mid-air explosions before,
> and they know how debris falls. There is already a
> substantial data set of airline explosions and
> crashes from which investigators can make
> well-educated guesses about where debris should be
> found. And yet, even armed with all this
> experience and information, they remain totally
> baffled on what happened to Flight 370.
>
> • Fact #6: If Flight 370 was hijacked, it would
> not have vanished from radar
>
> Hijacking an airplane does not cause it to simply
> vanish from radar. Even if transponders are
> disabled on the aircraft, ground radar can still
> readily track the location of the aircraft using
> so-called “passive” radar (classic
> ground-based radar systems that emit a signal and
> monitor its reflection).
>
> Thus, the theory that the flight was hijacked
> makes no sense whatsoever. When planes are
> hijacked, they do not magically vanish from radar.


A few realities for a few of the items:

#2 - the ocean is deep, very deep in many places. There could be a LOT of water between the box and a receiver.

#3 - the ocean is very big. Little plane, big ocean. The same sort of 'principal' is used to partially explain why planes don't crash into each other much - little plane, big sky. The sky simply is not as crowded as the highways.)

#5 - the "air safety investigator" SYSTEM has seen mid-air explosion. They really don't happen very often - so very, very, very few "air safety investigators" will have 'experience' with mid-air explosions. Indeed, so few have occurred that even the modeling can't be that great. Ball park, sure. But - the ocean is very big.

I kinda thought EVERYBODY knew facts 1 & 2. Hardly astonishing.

Fact #3 - well, yes and no. Remember Air France 447? It took TWO years to find the black boxes and the MAJORITY of the wreckage. Admittedly, it crashed in much deeper water than MalaysiaAirways 370 probably did.

Same with Fact #5 - yes & no. I'm speaking of the possibility that the plane had "turned back"/changed course - it could have gone hundreds of miles east or west in just a few minutes.

This article is a flaming turd of sensationalistic crap :) Yes, I'm sure the 'mainstream media' is hiding the facts. Lol.

As sad as it is, especially for the relatives...what if....it was a fake OR with the technology we have today, it was made to 'disappear'. Are we being distracted from something bigger and dodgier that the powers that be are trying to hide from us?

So was it Aliens? act of God? a time portal? wonder where are they now??? like that series 'Lost'!

Walter Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This article is a flaming turd of sensationalistic
> crap :) Yes, I'm sure the 'mainstream media' is
> hiding the facts. Lol.

Thank you Walter! All of these facts have been addressed in the media. There is no new information here. Apparently, Mike Adams doesn't seem to comprehend the vastness of the area they are searching. For reference, the wreckage of the Air France flight that crashed on the way from Rio to Paris over the Atlantic, took 2 years to locate and recover.

I'm so glad you posted this!! I couldn't agree more! I mean it's 2014... How could NO country have the technology to locate a plane that big?!