patrick.net

Boston Globe: "A Malaysia Airlines plane sent signals to a satellite for four hours after the aircraft went missing, an indication that it was still flying for hundreds of miles or more, a U.S. official briefed on the search said Thursday."

At this point, I suspect the most likely scenario might be a pilot or co-pilot suicide crash into the Indian Ocean. After take-off, when the plane got to cruising altitude, the 53yo captain may have left the cockpit to use the bathroom, or sent the 27yo first officer to check on the passengers. Whichever was left inside the cockpit then turned off the communications equipment, depressurized the cabin to induce hypoxia and incapacitate the passengers, and changed course for the Indian Ocean. At the time the communications equipment got shut off, the maximum water depth below was only around 150', but parts of the Indian Ocean are more than 5,000' deep. Setting the auto-pilot for the Indian Ocean ensured the plane would run out of fuel over deep water, and thousands of miles off course, making investigation difficult or even impossible. It is conceivable that someone else might have been able to incapacitate whoever was at the controls before that person could react or send a distress message, but that seems less likely.

Call it Crazy says

That's because the passengers weren't done watching the movie on DirectTV....

I wish. I would love to believe they're all enjoying a tropical island somewhere without extradition, having voted to sell the plane for parts and split the proceeds 239 ways. The reports of satellite signals are not DirectTV though, only Boeing pings as the aircraft tried automatically to "phone home" via a maintenance service to which Malysia Airlines had not subscribed.

CNN: "The search for elusive Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 shifted to waters around India based on suggestions the aircraft may have flown longer and farther than previously thought.

"An additional search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean, and we are consulting with international partners about the appropriate assets to deploy," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Thursday."

Boston Globe: "Investigators are increasingly certain the missing Malaysian Airlines jet turned back across the country after its last radio contact with air traffic controllers, and that someone with aviation skills was responsible for the change in course, a Malaysian government official said Friday.
***
Some experts believe it is possible that one of the pilots, or someone with flying experience, hijacked the plane for some later purpose or committed suicide by plunging the aircraft into the sea.

Glynn said a pilot may have sought to fly the plane into the Indian Ocean to reduce the chances of recovering data recorders, and to conceal the cause of the disaster."

New York Times: "As the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet expanded into the vastness of the Indian Ocean, a satellite communications company confirmed on Friday that it had recorded electronic “keep alive” ping signals from the plane after it disappeared, and said those signals could be analyzed to help estimate its location.

But a series of electronic pings sent by the aircraft could help the search, which is shifting focus from the relative confines of the Gulf of Thailand and nearby waters to include the Indian Ocean on the other, western side of Malaysia."

They seem to be casting it now as a Planejacking...like the cargo ship taken over in "A Hijacking" (2012).

Did it have enough fuel to make it to Somalia?

http://www.magpictures.com/ahijacking/

John Bailo says

Did it have enough fuel to make it to Somalia?

That seems an unlikely scenario, but there might conceivably have been enough fuel. The plane flew more than an hour from KL toward its original destination, Beijing. Somalia would have been a longer flight even if the plane had gone there directly from KL. If the airline or captain ordered more fuel than would have been normal for a flight to Beijing, then the plane's range might have included Somalia, but I doubt that happened.

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

Mongolia.

Call Mongolia.

Ask for the separatist Uighur go-go dancers.

They turned off all recording apparatus because they didn't want the sounds of gurgling and sloshing sloppy seconds, thirds and fourths being recorded.

The ululations of Uighur go-go dancers in orgasmic frenzy have been known to crack bullet proof lexan.

CNN (video auto-plays, sorry): "A classified intelligence analysis of electronic and satellite data suggests Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 likely crashed either in the Bay of Bengal or elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, CNN learned Friday."

If someone can tell me how to make the video not load, I will update the link.

It's a good thing this did not happen in the late 1970s. I can almost hear Leonard Nimoy asking cheesy rhetorical questions to which all answers are "No": "Did an alien craft intercept flight 370?"; "Are the photos of bigfoot being issued a boarding pass evidence of his culpability?"; "Do Mayan carvings indicate the final resting place of flight 370?"

By the way, a fourth - dimension portal over the Indian Ocean might provide additional gay Chindian buyers from a land beyond space and time; this is exciting news for real estate prices!

Iosef V HydroCabron says

I can almost hear Leonard Nimoy....

I had forgotten about "In Search of..." That's the kind of outside-the-box investigative journalism we need now. Could the Loch Ness Monster have slipped unnoticed into the sea and then leapt out, snatching the plane from midair? Was Godzilla involved? Why do witnesses report never seeing the plane and Mothra at the same time?

They need to get NTSB Babe on this job.

I'd watch Deborah Hersman all damn day long. NTSB doled out FACTS on Asiana 214 as best they could.

This Malaysian 370 though seems few facts and a lot of leakers and wildeyed speculation.

Washington Post: ""Malaysian authorities have concluded that a passenger jet missing since last week was hijacked and deliberately steered off course, a government official involved in the investigation told The Associated Press.

“It’s conclusive,” the official told The AP. "

One theory is a terrorist cell took plane to plan to eventually use it to explode an electromagnetic pulse bomb over the USA.

Or the passengers have been kidnapped and ransomed.

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

curious2 says

They need to get NTSB Babe on this job.

Her and the Uighur go-go dancers would be an interesting take, likely pay per view fodder.

Hey I didn't say anything about NTSB babe, that was Vicente. I only asked whether Nessie might be involved somehow.

Let's not allow this serious and important topic to deteriorate into another depraved sex fantasy involving lesbians and talking heads.

OK, that's long enough, back to the lesbians!

Where is bgamall4?? This must be part of the big Ying Yang Zionist conspiracy-the plane had toilets and drinking water and now yahoo.com is part of the great Zionist conspiracy??

I didn't know that the Yanni Zionists had Ying Yang. That takes it to a whole 'nother level!

"The first turn to the west that diverted the missing Malaysia Airlines plane from its planned flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was carried out through a computer system that was most likely programmed by someone in the plane’s cockpit who was knowledgeable about airplane systems, according to senior American officials.

Instead of manually operating the plane’s controls, whoever altered Flight 370’s path typed seven or eight keystrokes into a computer on a knee-high pedestal between the captain and the first officer, according to officials. The Flight Management System, as the computer is known, directs the plane from point to point specified in the flight plan submitted before a flight. It is not clear whether the plane’s path was reprogrammed before or after it took off. "

NY Times: "According to military radar, the aircraft was flying extremely high shortly after its turn — as much as 45,000 feet, above the certified maximum altitude of 43,100 feet for the Boeing 777-200. It then descended as it crossed Peninsular Malaysia, flying as low as 23,000 feet before moving up to 29,500 feet and cruising there. Vincent Lau, an electronics professor specializing in wireless communications at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said that the altitude might have prevented passengers’ cellphones from connecting to base stations on the ground even if the phones were turned on during the flight or had been left on since departure.
***
If someone deliberately diverted a plane and turned off its transponder and other communications equipment, that person is likely to have disabled the in-flight entertainment system so that passengers could not figure out from the map that they were flying in the wrong direction, said a telecommunications expert who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media.

If the entertainment system was turned off, the air phones also would not work, the expert said.
***
Passengers would have quickly become unconscious if the plane depressurized as it soared to an unusually high altitude right after the turnaround, pilots said. Whoever diverted the plane could have disabled the release of oxygen masks... A table used by pilots for “time of useful consciousness” without an oxygen supplement at various altitudes shows only nine to 15 seconds at 45,000 feet, compared with five to 10 minutes at 22,000 feet."

Also, the upward pitch climbing to maximum altitude would have prevented anyone from rolling a drink cart through the cockpit door.

npr: "Boeing 777 Pilots: It's Not Easy To Disable Onboard Communications."

CNN: The reported facts might still be consistent with an accident.

Wired.com: "A Startlingly Simple [accident] Theory"

...but, there are rebuttals, which may or may not rebut:

"Very concise debunk of Chris Goodfellow's theory"

"It’s Wrong."

"Raw satellite transmission data from the vanished Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, released on Tuesday by the Malaysian government, provided further evidence that the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean after flying south and running out of fuel."

New York magazine has published a fascinating article by private pilot and science writer Jeff Wise, who researched and developed his theory while running a forum that sounds at times like PatNet or Wikipedia:

Having financed his own research while reading a wide range of ideas, Wise concluded that the plane flew north and landed at an air base leased by Russia in Kazakhstan:

curious2 says

New York magazine has published a fascinating article by private pilot and science writer Jeff Wise, who researched and developed his theory while running a forum that sounds at times like PatNet or Wikipedia:

THis guy is not crazy. However he spent WAY too much time trying to turn very little data into a comprehensive answer.

And you just can't. Thus his results end up in CrazyTown.

INMARSAT has no reason to lie about the data. None.

The terrible thing? That a year later we hadn't made changes to airline fleets so they
REPORT THEIR POSITION FREQUENTLY.

Vicente says

INMARSAT has no reason to lie about the data.

Did Wise accuse INMARSAT of lying?

01:25 (approx) - transponder shut down
Between 1:07 and 1:37 - ACARS shut down

If not due to electrical failure, the ACARS shutdown requires climbing through a trapdoor in full view of cabin crew, and is not an amateur move. Most pilots wouldn't know how to do it, from everything I have read.

All this, plus the sharp turn to the northeast towards the Andaman Sea, occurs at the point of handoff between Malaysian and Vietnamese ATC: the perfect place to disappear a plane without immediately raising an alarm. This is why AirFrance 477 raised so few initial alarms when it went down.

So this looks deliberate, and not an equipment failure. This is what the authorities publicly state, anyway.

The flight continued until at least 8:10, when the Beijing arrival was scheduled for 6:30. Passengers would have noticed, and acted, unless they were dead or otherwise subdued. The sun rising in the "west" would have been another clue.

The pilot was losing his family, due to an affair, and probably going to lose the woman in the affair as well. Makes more sense than Putin stealing the plane for burial at Baikonur, especially since he can buy/steal all the 777s he needs at short notice from airports within Russia.

I have little idea what happened. But, again, I can't imagine they flew for 1:40 longer than the flight time without a passenger revolt, unless the passengers were already dead from depressurization.

curious2 says

Did Wise accuse INMARSAT of lying?

Misstated.

His theory hinges on faked BFO data.

So you have to assume either INMARSAT faked the data, or some clever and well-prepared persons on the plane did.

If you wanted to mislead people into thinking the plane had crashed into the ocean, you could do that with some taped radio chatter. Make sure the world knows exactly where the plane crashed so within hours they are onsite to find fake wreckage floating just where you want.

There's no sane conspiracy that needs a plane hijacked to where he wants it. No foreign power with the resources to do that sort of thing, needs to.

One thing is certain: the Indian Ocean is fricken' vast.

I think of the Atlantic and Pacific as each being two oceans, a North Atlantic/Pacific and a south one.

But the Indian Ocean is just one big puddle of nothing. If you're looking for the Indian Ocean's wallet in a trash bag full of wallets, it's the one that says "Bad Motherfucker" on it.

Vicente says

no sane conspiracy....

You and I seem to disagree about a number of topics (e.g. Obamneycare), and I wonder if this mostly non-sectarian story might shed light on why.

First, as I stated in the OP, I presumed innocence, but then as more facts came in, the "accident" began to appear deliberate, so I have tried to present fairly a variety of theories in this thread. In contrast, you seem to have leapt hastily to false conclusions in both of your comments above: first, you "misstated" Wise's theory; then, you deny the sanity of anyone who disagrees with your apparent position. I presented Wise's theory by quoting what he actually said, while you mischaracterized it with a "misstated" attack and then called it insane.

Second, I can think of several reasons why a conspiracy along the lines of Wise's theory might seem rational. Notice the timing with regard to Ukraine: Russia began moving secret military personnel into Ukraine in February, the Crimea voted to secede March 6, MH370 disappeared March 8, and Russia annexed Crimea in April. If you are planning to annex part of a neighboring country, and you want a distraction, MH370 provides an opportunity. Everybody knows the western commercial media chase any plane crash as obsessively as the dog in "Up" chased squirrels: make a plane disappear, and almost every western "investigative" journalist will be in Malaysia instead of Ukraine. Moving the lead story to Malaysia is very useful if you want to roll heavy artillery across a border without reporters on the ground asking questions; whatever you do, the lead story will continue to be the missing plane, and the pressure on politicians (and from politicians) will be to focus surveillance equipment and military resources on the Indian Ocean, not Ukraine. As an added bonus, you get a $100 million plane for less than $10 million, and you can use that plane with deniability in a future attack against a remote target: as long as nobody knows where the plane went, nobody can say definitively where the attack came from.

Third, scattering fake wreckage would probably have been detected: there wouldn't be enough to account for the whole plane, and something might not match. It would be rather difficult to make a convincing fake wreckage scene of a 777 without using most of the parts from an actual 777, and making them look like they crashed, which would be extremely difficult. Even buying those parts would cost a lot more, and might raise suspicions because those parts aren't typically cash purchases at the local hardware store.

I don't know whether Wise is correct or not, but his theory is plausible and supported by evidence. All other theories have failed to find the plane. It must have gone somewhere. I don't know where it went, but apparently it did not go to any of the places that have been searched. I don't know what happened, but I think you leap to conclusions and those tend to be wrong, and then you amplify your error by denying the honesty or sanity of anyone who disagrees.

BTW, I have my own question about Wise's theory, which is why would the hijackers wait until after takeoff before going into the E/E bay? It seems to me they would more likely have an accomplice in the hangar sneak into the bay prior to takeoff. After all, if a kid can jump the fence at SJC, climb into the landing gear of a plane, and stowaway to Maui, then surely a trained professional can get into the E/E bay. Once inside, he waits for takeoff, listens to the communications, waits for the pilot to say goodnight, then takes over the plane. His accomplices in the cabin don't need to get into the E/E bay themselves; to the contrary, their job is only to make sure no one else gets in there.

curious2 says

after all, if a kid can jump the fence at SJC, climb into the landing gear of a plane, and stowaway to Maui

Totally off topic, but I cannot believe the kid survived such a long plane flight being unconscious for the majority of the flight...wow.

curious2 says

make a plane disappear, and almost every western "investigative" journalist will be in Malaysia instead of Ukraine.

Too complicated.

If you want a "Wag the Dog" distraction, it's easy and cheap to manufacture a scandal every week. Honeypot operations, have them spill on a Secret Service Agent or other well-placed official. Hell one Russian agent could wreak all kinds of havoc on US soil, and doubtless pin it TERRORISTS! Or import some of the weaponized virus they worked so hard on back in the 1980's.

Wankers like large and Byzantine plots.

We don't have a lot of reporters on the ground in Ukraine, because MH370 or not, most people just don't give a shit about it.

Their biggest mistake was listening to the Internet and the US, especially when both were acting in an armchair quarterback capacity throughout the whole episode.

They lost precious time searching plausible possible locations with in the actual flight path. But they caved to internet social media pressure forces, and were sending search fleets depending on the latest Tweet with the word "Science" anywhere in the Tweet. Malaysia should have searched the actual path and let the international know it all community conduct their own fools errand.

If it were anything other than just another horrible air disaster from mechanical error or pilot error. The world would have heard about it with in an hour of the plane going missing.
I don't think there's any extreme terrorist groups that are shy about claiming responsibility for their handy work. Even if the original plan was to hijack then fly them into a landmark, but the plane crashed. The terrorist groups would have still seen that as a win.

Where was Corzine?

Vicente says

Too complicated.

None of the simpler theories have found the plane. “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

CaptainShuddup says

Malaysia should have searched the actual path....

As Wise and others reported, part of the problem was the government of Malaysia misled everyone by withholding information about the actual path. Malaysian authorities showed little interest in actually finding the plane, and seem more interested now in blaming Boeing - without finding the actual evidence that might explain what happened, i.e the plane.

MMR says

Totally off topic....

but a fascinating digression. Only around 20% of stowaways survive attempts like his, and "the Santa Clara case stands out because other survivors chronicled by the FAA suffered maladies like hypothermia and frostbite upon landing; the teenager, in contrast, appears to be fine."

Low temperatures can be protective and can be induced deliberately for surgery:

"Body Temperature May Matter After Cardiac Arrest"

"BioTime deals in ultra-profound hypothermia, the body's last stop before freezing... helping doctors chill their patients during heart, brain, and vascular surgery, where lower temperature translates into more available time on the operating table, less potential for blood loss, and fewer post-op complications."

BioTime is a Bay Area tech company, so I will start a new thread about them.

curious2 says

None of the simpler theories have found the plane. “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

We haven't effectively eliminated even the obvious.

Because even searching the "priority" search zone is hugely expensive. They're only up to 40% of that and already rumblings about scaling back or even ending it.

We knew after Air France 447 that we needed to make regular position reporting mandatory. But governments kowtowed to airlines who didn't want to pay for the service. It should absolutely be mandatory, and YESTERDAY, not something we are still dithering about a year later. Why do we even have a fairly vague area for MH370? Because a few engineers thought MAYBE they should start archiving some log data instead of tossing it as before. No customer requested that. Ultimately the blame for this falls on the AIRLINES, which are so fucking cheap. Who is paying the bills for this search? Not the airline!

Vicente says

blame....

You keep focusing on blame, and calling other people venal, dishonest and/or insane. As your anger grows, you lurch into profanity, which doesn't lead you any closer to the topic. Where is the plane?

curious2 says

Where is the plane?

It seems likely we will never know.

If as some conspiracists think, it's in been landed in Khazakstan well obviously they decided to bury the whole matter. The Lone Gunmen are never going to get to the bottom of that, unless Putin ordered his best assassin to kill all the conspirators, then himself killed the assassin. Large super-secret operations leak eventually.

If as most of the searchers think, it's in the Indian Ocean, it's a deep and nasty place to search. And before long people won't want to pay the search bills because they've moved on to paying for the next disaster.

No other passenger airliner the size of MH370 has ever disappeared without trace. (Though I don't usually cite Wikipedia, they do have a handy list.) There have been other examples of disappearing planes, though hardly any in recent decades.

Vicente, I understand you want governments to require airlines (and thus passengers) to pay for satellite tracking. You have not articulated what size plane you want that requirement to apply to. I don't know one way or the other whether your demand is a good idea or not, but you seem to get very angry about it, and accuse people of bad motives for not doing what you want when in fact it's an extremely rare situation. As with Obamneycare, you seem to skip the whole analysis of costs and benefits, and jump to your preferred conclusion, and impugn the motives or sanity of anyone who doesn't agree with you. Spending more money on whatever occupies the attention of Vicente is not always the best solution in terms of public policy. If you want sound public policy, you have to analyze the costs, benefits, alternatives, etc.

Also, even if you could travel back in time and make yourself global dictator and impose the regulation that you demand, it might not have solved the problem. MH370's communications appear to have been disabled for hours while the plane continued flying. If somebody did that deliberately, e.g. if they had accomplices in the ground crew to get into the E/E bay, then they could also disable your sacred satellite communications. If you want a clue how to prevent whatever happened to MH370 from happening again, you have to find out what happened to MH370.

Call it Crazy says

and after a year, not a single piece of debris has been found floating anywhere.... odd....

Odd, but nothing more than that.

Durable metal elements sunk. So what's left that tends to float? Foam, plastics, other materials chosen for for lightness not durability.

It's a forbidding and remote area. Let's say there's a Malaysia AIrlines coffee cup. If you didn't find that almost immediately, it's gone. Styrofoam breaks apart fast.

Now Imagine something more durable say a seat cushion helpfully stamped Malaysia Airlines floating on the surface. I believe they are blue in color, not helpfully bright orange. Let's say that miraculously it DOESN'T become waterlogged, then get pushed deep enough underwater by roaring waves to where the remaining air bubbles are compressed out and it sinks. Let's just say that. After a year or so in the salt water, bad weather & waves degrade the materials and it falls apart. Fabric unravels, foam gets out and breaks into tiny pieces. What was once a useful piece of evidence, just becomes more tiny bits of flotsam in the ocean. According to studies, plastic-based items break down pretty thoroughly after about a year in the elements.

Some helpful piece of luggage could wash up on a beach in Indonesia next year. But I wouldn't count on it.