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.


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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.


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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.
.

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‘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.
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‘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.
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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.

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

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

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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!
Attachments:

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."
Attachments:

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.