Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

keithledgerwood.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 397 posts

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

#211

Post by smoyer »

etherael wrote: post #202
smoyer wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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!

20 freescale semiconductor employees on board.

Would an embargoed country like Iran consider them worth the risk? It would be a pretty serious international incident if they were found out. And if you hold the passengers too long, you can't claim "some crazy terrorist/spy/actor" was working without authorization and here are your people back.

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

#212

Post by StandardFuture »

smoyer wrote: post #180
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!

Couldn't it maybe have been a piece of cargo that was the target and not a person? Perhaps, something that a passenger was traveling with?

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

#213

Post by rafe33 »

userbinator wrote: post #115
emeidi wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, hijackers would have threatened passengers to give them their mobile phones. If the plane indeed was landed on a remote airport with the passengers alive, the hijackers would have stripped the passengers of their clothes to ensure nobody could bring weapons or devices with them. By now, most mobile phones (even the Nokia developing world ones) would have been out of battery.

I find it a little disturbing that the passengers would be so docile, especially after 9/11.

There is a theory that the rapid ascent to 45,000 feet was done to deprive the passengers of oxygen and incapacitate them.

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

#214

Post by jusben1369 »

smoyer wrote: post #180
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!

Isn't this an awfully complex way to get to one individual? Can't you just nab him at the airport at either end if you're so sure he's on the flight?

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

#215

Post by porsupah »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #82
Shivetya wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

time to figure out who was on that flight, perhaps it was someone so important that taking a plane full of passengers was worth the cost.

A team of freescale chip engineers for one. Also, the answer might well be "what" instead of who. Many people have pointed out that the cargo manifest hasn't been published, and that the airline declared 50 less seats as available for boarding than the plane had. This means it had several tons of cargo on board.

While I believe the full manifest has not been published, we do know that there were a few tons of mangosteens present in the cargo.

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2014/03/17/missing-mh3...

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

#216

Post by smoyer »

StandardFuture wrote: post #212
smoyer wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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!

Couldn't it maybe have been a piece of cargo that was the target and not a person? Perhaps, something that a passenger was traveling with?

Good point ... so someone should be going through the cargo manifests. If it was travelling with a person but as luggage, there's no guarantee the airline would know about it.

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

#217

Post by jfoster »

simias wrote: post #88
leoc wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only one vague point of interest among many, but there were twenty Freescale employees on board flight 370. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/09/malaysia-airlines-...

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.

I also doubt that the employees had anything to do with it, but the most likely scenario I can think of that would involve the engineers is a country with sanctions imposed wanting to fabricate chips. On the other hand, any country capable of this probably could manage to get hold of as many chips as they wanted without kidnapping Freescale employees.

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

#218

Post by corresation »

gadders wrote: post #89

Just a quick question, but I'd have thought the number of airports where a plane the size of MH370 could land would be quite small. Is it not possible to work out the number of airports within it's range, and examine those?

Much as with the maximum altitude ceiling, the numbers the media reports are generally best-practice recommendations that give you a high enough factor of safety.

If you don't plan on taking off again, and don't care much about the landing gear, a skilled pilot could land the plane on a runway shorter than 5000ft.

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

#219

Post by Symmetry »

Interesting, but this would seem to chiefly expand the space of possible explanations for what went wrong by showing how the plain could have gotten into central Asia. It explains some of the bizarre behavior of the plane, but not all of it. So it's eliminated some of the burdensome details about the flight behavior at the cost of introducing burdensome details about complicated, secret, and successful planning. As a result, I'm even less sure about what happened to the plane now, but of course if that reflects my actual state of knowledge it's a good thing.

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

#220

Post by XorNot »

bruceb wrote: post #203
leoc wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's obviously at the bottom of the ocean. That's the default expectation in this kind of situation, but in this case it's actually slightly hard to see how it could have happened. The evidence suggests that when it first "disappeared", and likely for hours afterwards, the plane was under controlled flight by someone with at least some idea of what they were doing. Whoever was flying the plane could easily delibera…

1. Is unlikely as door is very secure now. Passengers can't get in. 4. Seems a possibility.

(2) is the most plausible. Given the amount of computer control and automation in a modern plane, it's likely the whole thing would've been put on autopilot when it was hijacked.

It could've easily kept going for a long time and even been redirected in that mode. Once you run out of fuel of course, game over.

Post reply on HN