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

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241–250 of 397 posts

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

#241
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Tomnod doing this already (although I don't think they've updated their images to the newest area)?

Think of the eyeballs Google could add to the project by making it the doodle though

If Tomnod updates to include the latest areas, couldn't Google just link to Tomnod on their home page? It doesn't make sense to duplicate the effort IMO.

Of course, they'd need to talk to Tomnod first to make sure they're ready for that kind of traffic, as it seems they've already had scaling issues, but hopefully this doesn't pose too many problems.

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

#242
post #174
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 somew…

Hijacking airplanes after 9/11 is much more risky. Until 9/11, there was never a plot that involved intentionally hijacking an airliner with the intent of using it as a weapon and killing everyone on board. The assumption was "Oh, if we just give them what they want they'll let us all live."

Post-9/11, if anyone tries to hijack an airplane they're going to have every able-bodied male between the ages of 18 and 40 come at them with the expectation that they're fighting for their life. I know I personally would take my chances that they don't have a bomb: if I do nothing, I would assume I am definitely going to die. If I do something, the passengers collectively could overpower them and hope were bluffing about the bomb. If they weren't, it's the same outcome as doing nothing.

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

#244

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…

I think the level of sophistication required increasingly points to a much simpler explanation than terrorism.

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

#245
post #203
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.

> 1. Is unlikely as door is very secure now. Passengers can't get in.

The passengers and aircrew would have had seven solid hours to try to break through that door, though, unless the plane landed somewhere first. Alternatively, hijackers (if hijackers there were) might have damaged the door or disabled its locking mechanism on their own way into the cockpit. Some desperate passengers might even deliberately start a fire in the fuselage, I suppose, as dangerous as that would be.

One big problem with 4 is that to believe this you probably have to discount the primary radar reports of the airplane heading west over Malaysia/Thailand and then north up the Malacca Strait and Andaman Sea. It's hard to imagine the plane getting feet-dry on that northern SATCOM arc, at about the end of its fuel endurance, and then then heading far out to sea again. (Unless it landed and refuelled somewhere...)

(EDIT: On second thoughts, I suppose you could turn east after the last radar contact and then go south, past the west of Indonesia, to the southern arc.)

But even if you do that, where would you be headed if you were on that southern Indian Ocean arc after 7 hours in flight? It's not exactly an efficient route to Australia or Indonesia, and everywhere else is either hopelessly far or in the wrong direction.

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

#246
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?

But you'd have to know that cargo was going to be on board beforehand. From the sounds of it, the pilots were well prepared to execute this plan. Assuming of course this is even remotely what really happened.

Passenger lists would be known in advance. My guess is if they wanted some piece of material/cargo enough to pull off an operation like this, they would have just taken the cargo itself. It would presumably be something so valuable/unique that the owner wasn't going to just file a "missing baggage" claim. If it was about cargo, it would also seem that it would be more efficient to steal the cargo, and then blow up the plane. That would make the original owner of the item believe it was permanently lost/destroyed vs. being in this unknown state, and possibly giving the owner time to react or inform other governments.

Provided that the plane was deliberately flown in-tact to an unknown location, my personal guess would be that this was about 1 or more individuals on the plane specifically.

I also doubt it's about the plane itself. This specific plane is now a highly visible piece of equipment, and it would be fairly easy to obtain planes with similar load-bearing capacity in less obvious means.

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

#247
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of the eyeballs Google could add to the project by making it the doodle though

If Tomnod updates to include the latest areas, couldn't Google just link to Tomnod on their home page? It doesn't make sense to duplicate the effort IMO. Of course, they'd need to talk to Tomnod first to make sure they're ready for that kind of traffic, as it seems they've already had scaling issues, but hopefully this doesn't pose too many problems.

yeah, taking into consideration this objection https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7414927

seems like that might be the neatest solution

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here you go: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/03/15/mh370_the_...

Someone already thought of it! Perfect, thank you.

And a friend just showed me this, which has an interactive map:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/where-...

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

#249
post #46

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…

> 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 starting to doubt that we'll ever find out what happened to this plane... Indeed. And not just the "what", but the "why" as well.

Why? Three cases of pilots committing suicide with big jets in the last few years. Silk Air 185, Egypt Air 990, LAM 470.

So either (a) it's an act of war by another country or (b) the far simpler a pilot committed suicide.

However, it if was a state actor, would you as the US tell people that? Wars cost trillions. Perhaps just sweep it under the rug.

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

#250
This notion that mh370 was flying behind the Singapore jet to avoid radar is far fetched. Is the simple explanation much more likely that primary and secondary radar were both tracking the Singapore jet and the data wasn't matched properly? If the two jets were flying in tandem as you suggest, wouldn't you expect two hits on primary radar?
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