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Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

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Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#171

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

fafner wrote: post #155
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is to say that any ransom demand would have been made publicly? It may well be that one has been made but that we just don't know about it.

The hijackers would probably want to make it public. It's an insurance for their safety right now. A government might simply bomb the parked aircraft and blame it on a crash or the hijackers.

There are ways to cover that - not all the hijackers will be with the plane. All they've got to do is keep some proof of the negotiation for the survivors to publish and that would be easily disprovable.

Besides, if they knew where the plane is to bomb it this would be a hostage situation right now. They might be in a country which wouldn't welcome the incursion but I can't see the Chinese being overly bothered about that given the number of their citizens on-board.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#172

Post by saalweachter »

I really wonder how much of this rampant speculation is just people desperately wanting 300 people not to have died, either at all or just for no reason at all. Secret terrorist masterminds secretly hijacking a plane is more comforting than "sometimes shit happens and people die and there's nothing anyone can do".

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#173

Post by phire »

hyperbovine wrote: post #164
wsc981 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's most likely the plane will be used in a terrorist action. For example in the next week there's a nucleair summit being held in The Hague: http://www.geenstijl.nl/archives/images/EH-eSUP-2014-01-NSS.... It would be a very hard to reach target, though.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, there are literally thousands of disused airframes nestled in various out of the way corners of the globe. If your goal is really to fly an explosive laden jet into something, absconding with a loaded passenger jet is about the least clandestine method imaginable.

And if you decide to go down the route of hijacking a passenger jet, why not hijack one near your intended target?

Chances are there are hundreds of aircraft flying right next to your target everyday, simply hijack one of those on the day and fly it right into your target. 9/11 already proved the viability of this tactic.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#174

Post by leoc »

fafner wrote: post #138
simias wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what the twenty Freescale employees have to do with anything and I keep seeing this fact mentioned in every discussion about MH370. How could they be important/valuable/dangerous enough to justify the hijacking or destruction of a commercial airliner containing hundreds of passengers? That sounds completely insane to me.

It would be much much easier to get to any of the passengers while they were still on the ground. Hijacking the aircraft and stealthily landing it somewhere is such a complex plan that it's just too ridiculous.

Really? I don't see any sign yet that the flight 370 hijacking involved unusual danger, difficulty or expense for the culprits: so far, as best we can see, it looks like stealing candy from a baby. Obviously to get people off it alive you'd need manpower and infrastructure, but either a dusty old Soviet-era airbase in metaphorical or literal Kazakhstan, or a ship to pick people up after a ditching in calm water somewhere, would be sufficient. Many state actors could arrange one or both of those without serious difficulty (some non-state actors too). I can't think of a way to kidnap a handful of Freescale engineers all at once from urban China or urban Malaysia that could be described as much much easier.

That said, I think it's highly improbable that the Freescale guys were targeted like this, but mainly because the political consequences of being caught doing something like this would probably be much too painful for most of the states who might really benefit from debriefing those engineers at length.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#175

Post by snom380 »

pedalpete wrote: post #124
emeidi wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you say the pilot does not have switches in the cockpit to turn equipment on or off? They have to WALK through the whole plane to turn devices on or off?! Bollocks.

The black box is in the tail of the plane, it doesn't make any sense to wire it through the whole plane so the pilot can switch it off from the cockpit. I have no problem with your questioning my logic and my response, as I'm not expert, but keep your bollocks to yourself.

It makes perfect sense when the top priority is being able to isolate electrical systems in case of an electrical fault or an in-flight fire: http://www.askthepilot.com/malaysia-airlines-flight-370/

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#176

Post by joshgel »

saalweachter wrote: post #172

I really wonder how much of this rampant speculation is just people desperately wanting 300 people not to have died, either at all or just for no reason at all. Secret terrorist masterminds secretly hijacking a plane is more comforting than "sometimes shit happens and people die and there's nothing anyone can do".

Great, except where are the dead people? And how did the plane keep flying for 7 hours after they were "dead"? Too many unanswered questions, me thinks.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#178

Post by joshgel »

Implicated wrote: post #143
conformal wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

totally agree. it must be a what/who scenario by merit of the lengths to which they went to get the entire plane. this is surely a state-level intelligence action. the blocking off of passenger seats often indicates an especially heavy or oddly weighted cargo. something else that is notable is that you know several large world governments have continuous satellite tracking of this flight but are not sharing any infor…

> something else that is notable is that you know several large world governments have continuous satellite tracking of this flight They do?

If they did, they would know where the plane is and wouldn't be spending the money on the search and rescue efforts.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#179

Post by Nanzikambe »

mattgibson wrote: post #165
Nanzikambe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to imply I think it's possible, but deniability is an obvious reason not to use your own aircraft.

Deniability would have been a very likely outcome if a convincing crash scenario had been engineered. I suspect that the pilot was supposed to turn off the satcom link at the same time as the transponder. Now that we know that it kept flying for 7 hours and may have been shadowing this other plane, it looks clearly like deliberate theft. If the last contact of any sort had been the 'good night message', then we would…

Totally unnecessary and melodramatic, in this hypothetical situation all you need is a plane that has no attachment to the nation in question.

Imagine I wanted to kill a person, and I've decided to use a car to do so. I can't use my own car for obvious reasons, so any stolen car will do as long as it doesn't connect to me.

Re: Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

#180

Post by smoyer »

jballanc wrote: post #45

The folks over at airliners.net have pointed out that the 777's collision avoidance system only works if both planes' transponders are turned on. That doesn't mean this scenario is impossible, but it does raise the level of sophistication required. Sadly, I feel like whatever happened, the amount of sophistication involved increasingly points toward the involvement of one or more state actors. If that's the case, I'm…

"points toward the involvement of one or more state actors"

I agree ... and so I think it's become useful to identify the skills and knowledge of each of the jet's passengers. You have to assume that, in this case, the plane was hijacked in order to obtain one of the passengers.

Terrorism simply doesn't make sense!

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