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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)?

#351

Post by qq66 »

pedalpete wrote: post #113
jdimov wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one in their right mind would attempt to transport 25 tons of gold on a commercial passenger flight.

How do you transport 25 tons of gold across land and sea? My guess is air freight is the safest method, does it matter if it goes on a DHL 777 or a Commercial 777? Either way, the plane could be hijacked. But I suspect you'd have somebody with an insurance claim for $1 billion in gold, and an insurance company going bankrupt as a result.

You'd probably charter a cargo airliner with armed security. And send maybe less than 25 tons of gold per flight.

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

#352

Post by Tuna-Fish »

donutz wrote: post #253
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sold where and how? 2 tons of gold are something that a reasonable person can actually expect to be able to convert into money without undue risk to his person. A stolen airplane isn't. People keep talking about how this needs so much sophistication that it's probably a state action. All I can see is something that one person with good planning could have done. That is, the pilot or the co-pilot waits until the other…

a reasonable person can convert 2 tons of gold to cash without undue risk? Given that 2 tons of stolen gold can't be legally sold, I'd suspect that anyone with that kind of cash on hand might be the kind it would be risky to do business with...

A reasonable person can convert smallish amounts of gold to cash without undue risk, and gold can be easily worked and divided by basically anyone.

If you stole a ton of gold, you could sell it piecemeal for the rest of your life and live like a king.

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

#353

Post by qq66 »

phire wrote: post #173
hyperbovine wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not saying that this is likely, but one explanation is that they want to weaponize the plane first.

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

#354

Post by ajtaylor »

redbad wrote: post #2

This is almost exactly how a plot device in Neal Stephenson's REAMDE plays out. In almost exactly the same part of the world. Bizarre.

Wow, you're absolutely correct. I read REAMDE about 2 months ago so the plot is still pretty fresh in my mind. It's a great, so consider this a recommendation.

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

#355

Post by User8712 »

conformal wrote: post #133
fnsa wrote: post #52

A theory is that the cargo area of the plane contained valuable goods: gold, silver, diamonds, etc and that's what the hijackers were after. From this: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-15/missing-malaysian-f... the 777 can have up to 25 tons worth of cargo payload. 25 tons of gold is worth ~ $1B, that's quite a bit more than the value of the plane itself.

agree, something very valuable was on that flight, whether it was a person/people or the cargo. the 50 blocked-out seats indicate a heavy and/or oddly distributed cargo. let's get real here - this is definitely not the work of hijackers, this is some intelligence service stealing a plane with something _very_ valuable on it. there are far too many what-ifs for even a large criminal or terrorist organization.

1. Do you have any idea how many seats are typically blocked out on this route for Malaysia to China flights? This might happen on dozens of flights every day, so please provide some proof if 50 blocked-out seats is unusual.

2. If it is unusual, the cargo might be more prone to error. Is it possible the cargo shifted back, causing the flight to quickly rise to 45,000ft before stalling and crashing down?

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

#356

Post by mark-r »

fafner wrote: post #209
leoc wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, really. You are looking at it after the fact. Paying off a pilot who is skilled enough to fly the aircraft evading all radar and land it unassisted at night or early dawn on some remote airbase would be a major expense. Paying someone to kill off the rest of the 220 passengers would be a big challenge as well. And everybody involved would know that and the additional risk and thus demand much more money. You wou…

> What if the flight they allegedly used for the radar shadow would have been delayed or they would have been delayed?

A ground contact could easily watch for the shadow plane's takeoff and indicate via radio that the operation was a go. It's quite possible that they had multiple windows of opportunity if all they wanted was the plane. Of course if it had to be that particular flight due to passengers or cargo it would be a different story.

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

#357

Post by User8712 »

mittermayr wrote: post #78

What surprises me the most: In today's world, doesn't someone have access to global, real-time satellite data that goes down to 1-3m resolution? I thought we already accepted this as fact. Wouldn't such data provide visuals?

You have to consider whether or not someone with access to that data would want to reveal it exists. If the US says they located the plane in the ocean, in a location that no one expected, everyone will be wondering how they came to that conclusion. You can't say it was a lucky guess.

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

#358

Post by silentOpen »

thenmar wrote: post #319
madaxe_again wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm looking at Russia, and thinking that it would be very convenient for them for Ukraine to drop off the news... which it largely did when this broke. Now what could cause that - perhaps a good mystery. Everyone likes a good mystery. Baikonur is a pretty f'ing good place to hide something like a 777, and is very proximal to the last possible position. Been there. Middle of nowhere. Airstrip is high security, remote,…

Wait, you don't seriously think that Russia disappeared a Malaysian airliner (and hundreds of international citizens) to distract the world (?) from Crimea. That's just fucking absurd.

It doesn't have to be only a distraction. There could be hostage negotiations happening between governments right now.

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

#360

Post by keypusher »

ccozan wrote: post #85
redbad wrote: post #2

This is almost exactly how a plot device in Neal Stephenson's REAMDE plays out. In almost exactly the same part of the world. Bizarre.

More likely like a modern William Gibson plot. Mystery and modern technology in the same place. Objects that do not want to be tracked. Definitively Gibson style.

No, you misunderstand. Stephenson actually had a hijacked 747 in one of his books shadowing another to avoid radar detection in the same way as described by this article.
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