Disappearing Aircraft 5647


I had fairly well concluded that the most likely cause was a fire disrupting the electrical and control systems, when CNN now say the sharp left turn was pre-programmed 12 minutes before sign off from Malaysian Air Traffic control, which was followed fairly quickly by that left turn.

CNN claim to have this from an US official, from data sent back before the reporting systems went off.  It is hard to know what to make of it: obviously there are large economic interests that much prefer blame to lie with the pilots rather than the aircraft.  But if it is true then the move was not a response to an emergency.  (CNN went on to say the pilot could have programmed in the course change as a contingency in case of an emergency.  That made no sense to me at all – does it to anyone else?)

I still find it extremely unlikely that the plane landed or crashed on land  I cannot believe it could evade military detection as it flew over a highly militarized region.  Somewhere there is debris on the ocean.  There have been previous pilot suicides that took the plane with them; but the long detour first seems very strange and I do not believe is precedented.  However if the CNN information on pre-programming is correct, and given it was the co-pilot who signed off to air traffic control, it is hard to look beyond the pilots as those responsible for whatever did happen.  In fact, on consideration, the most improbable thing is that information CNN are reporting from the US official.


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5,647 thoughts on “Disappearing Aircraft

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  • bluebird

    Could somebody please measure the length of penang, langkawi and butterworth runways on google earth simply because there are confusing and wrong lengths of langkawi runway given on different websites. My source says 8000 ft.

    Also measuring the length of the Diego Garcia runway on google earth would be appreciated.

    Also the distance between butterworth airfield and langkawi runway would be good to know.
    I remember that sorensen was good at that.

  • Ba'al Zevul (Хождение в народ!)

    Could somebody please measure the length of penang, langkawi and butterworth runways on google earth

    I favour the DIY approach. Lazy sod.

  • Mary

    Katie They didn’t, or wouldn’t, pay out for my recent storm damage claim. Wear and tear – the old saw. I am surprised Act of God did not come into it.

  • Kenneth Sorensen

    I immediately rush to Bluebird‘s defense, who has made invaluabable contributions to the solving of the al Hilli murder case, which many journalists over the months have benefitted from by the method of lurking. Bluebird could be more than three score years old, and as razor sharp he is about….well, almost anything, he typically is completely ignorant about technically trivialities, like YouTube, which he learned about for the first time around 3 months ago.

  • craig Post author

    Ed Davies

    Sorry for the ambiguity – I didn’t mean there was any significance in it being the co-pilot rather than the pilot, I only meant the crew were still apparently in control of the plane

  • bluebird

    Sorensen
    I know how to measure on google earth but i am only on my smart phone right now and this is impossible to do there. 🙂
    I hope that the excuse will be accepted.

    Something else:

    The broker for the insurance for airplane MH370 and passengers was
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Group

    The Sears Tower in chicago is called Willis Tower nowadays.

    Allianz will pay $ 100 million for plane and passenger families if there was an accident, however, in case of terror or hijacking it is Lloyds who’ll have to pay.
    Insurance responsibility for the cargo is still unknown at this time.

  • katie

    Mary….don’t start me on insurance companies, in my experience they put every obstacle in the way before parting with a penny .
    We are all made to feel dishonest when trying to claim… I cannot believe payouts have already been made, meaning, within DAYS money was received.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    Yes, I am sure about it, KingofWelshNoir.

    A NTSB intern passed the official message on to the TV station for which the intern was fired, and the agency apologized, though it had already done the damage, as you demonstrate.

    It was far more than just funny and in poor taste because it scapegoated the pilots for the sabotage beyond their control.

  • Ben

    Abolghassem Mesbahi is probably an alias, but he sure gets around. Iran is responsible for everything from the Chicago fire to Lockerbie to 9/11. ‘Natch!

    http://consortiumnews.com/2011/12/30/muslim-haters-tie-iran-to-911/

    In the one public hearing held on the case, the lawyers revealed the identity of purported former Iranian intelligence official Abolghasem Mesbahi – probably a pseudonym – and described his testimony that he had received a series of “coded messages” from a former colleague in the Iranian government in the late summer and early fall of 2001 warning that a terrorist attack against the United States was being planned, and that it was a plan that had been concocted by Tehran in the late 1980s.

  • Juan Kerr

    “I still find it extremely unlikely that the plane landed or crashed on land”

    Didn’t you hear about the passengers’ cell phones, which were still ringing a day after the plane disappeared? This means the phones were on the ground, still functioning and within the range of a base station. And didn’t you hear about the pings from the ACARS engine maintenance system, showing that the engines were still running (and therefore probably still airborne) some 5-7 hours after the last contact?

    “I cannot believe it could evade military detection as it flew over a highly militarized region”

    No such problem if it was flying over the Indian Ocean.

    On the basis of the current evidence, a landing in Diego Garcia is by some way the best call so far. I do wonder why the NSA hasn’t stepped forward to tell us where those phones were. It does, of course, know.

  • katie

    Ben I wouldn’t know but as ‘communications’ are what they do there;

    “The United States Navy operates Naval Support Facility (NSF) Diego Garcia, a large naval ship and submarine support base, military air base, communications and space-tracking facility, and an anchorage for pre-positioned military supplies for regional operations aboard Military Sealift Command ships in the lagoon.”

    I will not be convinced they saw & know nothing.

    At last the media are now taking DG seriously;

    ‘Today it was also revealed that a remote island in the middle of the Indian Ocean with a runway long enough to land a Boeing 777 was programmed into the home flight simulator of the pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.
    Police are now urgently investigating whether Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had practised landing at Diego Garcia, an island south of the Maldives occupied by the US navy.’

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2584123/Revealed-Malaysian-Airlines-pilot-high-security-US-base-Diego-Garcia-programmed-homemade-flight-simulator-deleted-data-just-taking-control-missing-plane.html#ixzz2wQIXlMeG

  • NR

    @Trowbridge H. Ford 19 Mar, 2014 – 12:20 pm
    A copy of the passenger manifest. The original pdf from Malaysian Airlines is now “404 Not Found”. A deleted file!Verrrry ominous. Alert the hungry media hounds! 😉

    http://www.slideshare.net/BrianClaytonCharles/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh-370-passenger-manifest/RS=%5EADAxXPu0bfFsDIqPsN_yzVnq3j4U6k-

    Has anyone determined where illusionist David Copperfield was at the time? He excelled in making aircraft disappear at night?

  • Tim V

    As requested mine from the Chevaline thread. Hello to new names on here. (Now I have even more to read!!!)

    Tim V
    19 Mar, 2014 – 3:10 pm
    Thanks for that. It’s a chilling insight into how a little incident (a captain popping off for forty winks) can have disastrous consequences for a plane and all its occupants. More than anything else, the disaster appears to be down to an inexperienced pilot in control in adverse conditions, pulling up the nose and thus stalling the plane and loosing control of the plane. He could not understand why despite pulling back on the joystick the plane was loosing altitude. The more experienced co-pilot didn’t take control in time and didn’t realise what his colleague had been doing. The captain returned too late and fatefully didn’t take over. Just reading the transcript is an exercise in empathy and far more heart-stopping than a disaster movie.
    However I think it is pretty clear we have something quite different in the case of MH370 and the situations are not transferable, the simple reason being that we are told the latter was still being detected over seven hours after it was initially said to have crashed into the sea. As with Chevaline we are forced to make the best of what might be disingenuous information and trying to divine what is true and what is not, but no one seems to have questioned that bit of information so we must assume it is reliable. It means that over 7 hours later it was still flying or powered up on the ground SOMEWHERE. It rules out crash or submersion at least up to that point.
    Where the tragic AF447 story is illuminating is the statement that up until the belated retrieval of the black box and consequent flight deck conversation, the only indicative information available was the automatic engine printout sent back to AF HQ. This was enough to determine the plane had crashed and many of the technical parameters but could not divulge the human responses to them.
    So the inference for MH370 is two fold. Rolls Royce Boeing have all the information they require to recreate the flight plan. Probably every variation to engines and cockpit controls has been relayed including crucially take-off and landing. They must know where it has gone and where it set down.
    The other obvious point is that if the plane had crashed they would know beyond doubt it happened. They would surely have said this if it had happened at least. They are hiding behind “commercial confidentiality” which is questionable enough, but surely would not have done so if their technical feedback had confirmed crash?
    Yet again, apros pos Chevaline, we are in the realms of information known to some being with held to all for reasons only known to the “some”. Where so many lives and families are affected the immorality of that is plain to see. (No pun intended) The wider issue with all these things is who has a right to information and who has a right to withhold it for what reason?

    Tim V
    19 Mar, 2014 – 3:34 pm
    …. and on a related point, the reason underwater sonar detection has not been deployed, or at least trumpeted is easy to deduce. Because they know the aircraft is NOT as the American spokesman wanted us to believe, that it was at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. That statement by the way would infer a terrorist event, for why else would it crash?
    The problem with that is that no rational explanation has been forwarded for it. No terrorist organisation has come forward (again similar to Chevaline) We would for causation be back in “lone maniac” territory or state organised event. Was the US spokesman suggesting either of these?
    As I see it, there are a few alternatives. Maybe you can think of more.
    * If valuable cargo was on board it might be convenient to PRETEND it had crashed as cover for theft.
    * Alternatively if valuable cargo was stolen beforehand, it may be useful to crash the plane and pretend the cargo was lost as may have happened with that UN fight off Newfoundland (possibly)
    * Alternatively if it was necessary to prevent expertise of valuable cargo getting to China, detour or crash might have been considered worthwhile.
    * Alternatively as per the Sorensen/Bollyn theory, the operation was just to obtain an aeroplane that could be used in a terror event and blamed on an opponent.
    Whatever the reason (and there always must be one) given the fact that it didn’t crash as initially suggested, rather rules out 2 and 3 and points to either 1 or 4.

  • Ben

    Katie; As I understand it the pilot was not a jihadist, but he was political. X posted from the other thread in case you missed.

    It’s the Daily Mail…so…..photoshpped?

    “An image has emerged of the pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet wearing a T-shirt with a ‘Democracy is Dead’ slogan as it has been revealed he could have hijacked the plane in an anti-government protest.

    Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a father-of-three, was said to be a ‘fanatical’ supporter of the country’s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim – jailed for homosexuality just hours before the jet disappeared.

    It has also been revealed that the pilot’s wife and three children moved out of the family home the day before the plane went missing.

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2581817/Doomed-airliner-pilot-political-fanatic-Hours-taking-control-flight-MH370-attended-trial-jailed-opposition-leader-sodomite.html#ixzz2wKZxhury
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

  • James

    Blue

    Penang (WMKP) is 10997 and Butterworth (WMKB) is 8000

    MAS has had terrible trouble over recent years, mainly competition from “budget airlines” operating in that area.

    Depending on MAS “check lists” a fire onboard (due to the amount of fuel onboard and its max landing weight) would require a “fuel dump” to take place.

  • NR

    @Katie – re Diego Garcia. My comment from the other thread. (Would not wish to deprive newcomers of my wit.)

    NR 18 Mar, 2014 – 9:15 pm
    The WH was asked directly if the aircraft was at Diego Garcia. Presidential spokesperson Jay Carney said it was not. Which, translated into common English, means it is.

    For a totally gratuitous dig at the president, “If you like your plane, you can keep your plane.” (For non-US readers, it’s a take off on a slogan for which he’s famous regarding health care.)

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