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Post by popcorn on Mar 14, 2014 10:31:01 GMT -5
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Post by baydoll on Mar 14, 2014 11:02:22 GMT -5
Oops thanks, Popcorn! I forgot to put on my hat, ha ha!
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 14, 2014 14:16:09 GMT -5
I'm beginning to suspect this 'might' be the case. This whole thing might be a diversion to keep our eyes off of something far more insidious going on now or getting ready to take place. Case in point is that ridiculous photo the Malaysian government 'leaked' to the public and their equally ridiculous explanation of why the photo was 'altered'. Red herrings, anyone? I think we're getting played. Bingo! With that altered photo, why did they have to show a bottom half at all, when all people needed was to see the faces? It's like they're mocking us...and since most people are dumbed down, they don't have a clue. There's a heck of a lot going on right now, with Ukraine, Syria, the peace deal they're trying to force down Israel's throat, all the bankers dying, so many diseases, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, crooked politics, etc. etc. etc. Frankly, I'd be totally astounded if we're still here at the end of the year.
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 14, 2014 14:30:36 GMT -5
Weirder and weirder..... Video: Chinese ridicule Malaysia’s recruitment of ‘witch doctor’ to track missing planePUBLISHED : Wednesday, 12 March, 2014, 5:01pm Ibrahim Mat Zin, also known as the Raja Bomoh Sedunia Nujum VIP, used spiritual methods and prayers at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport to help locate the missing plane. Photo: Reuters Chinese internet users have mocked reports that the Malaysian government invited a witch doctor to help look for the missing plane. Malaysian media reported that Ibrahim Mat Zin, a famous bomoh (shaman) also known as the Raja Bomoh Sedunia Nujum VIP, performed a prayer at Kuala Lumpur's airport on Monday to help locate flight MH370, allegedly at the invitation of one of the country's top leaders. Watch: Malaysia hires ‘witch doctor’ to locate flight MH370, reports said "I think the plane is still in the air or has crashed into the sea," he was quoted by Free Malaysia Today as saying. Cynical weibo users ridiculed the conclusion. "Wow, that is exactly what I think too," one wrote, a sentiment shared by many. One user who claimed to be Malaysian wrote: "I feel so ashamed as a Malaysian for the first time, not because of any wrongdoing on Malaysia's part but for having a brainless prime minister." The message concluded: "Stop losing Malaysia's face!" Many expressed astonishment that spiritual methods were being considered in the hunt for the plane as the operation entered its fifth day. "China deployed 10 satellites, Malaysia deployed a few witch doctors," another weibo user pointed out. Jamil Khir from the Malaysian Prime Minister's Department had earlier said the government welcomed any help in tracing flight MH370, including from bomohs, as long as their methods did not contravene the practices of Islam, Free Malaysia Today reported. Muslims make up more than half of Malaysia's population of 22.7 million people. Bomohs are respected for their spiritual power by many in the country. The Raja Bomoh, who has been practising for 50 years, rose to fame after offering his services in the search for victims in several major disasters in Malaysia, according to the newspaper. These include the 1994 Highland Tower tragedy, in which a housing complex collapsed and killed at least 48 people, and the flooding in the Kuala Dipang region in 2012. The Rajah Bomoh said he employed bamboo binoculars as one of his spiritual tools. He added that he would go back to the airport to perform another prayer in two days. It is not unusual in parts of Malaysia for politicians to turn to shamans. More than 200 people in the country were defrauded of a total of more than 23 million yuan (HK$30 million) in 2012 in cases involving bomohs. Video at link.
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 14, 2014 22:34:01 GMT -5
CNN Exclusive: Analysis shows two possible Indian Ocean paths for airlinerBy Barbara Starr and Chelsea J. Carter, CNN updated 10:01 PM EDT, Fri March 14, 2014 Source: CNN STORY HIGHLIGHTS Report: Investigators suspect communications were manually switched off More investigators learn, "the more difficult to write off" human intervention, official says Malaysian military radar shows drastic altitude changes, an official says A classified analysis calculates the flight crashed into the Indian Ocean, CNN learns Washington (CNN) -- Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 made drastic changes in altitude and direction after disappearing from civilian radar, U.S. officials told CNN on Friday, raising questions for investigators about just who was at the controls of the commercial jetliner that went missing one week ago with 239 people on board. The more the United States learns about the flight's pattern, "the more difficult to write off" the idea that some type of human intervention was involved, one of the officials familiar with the investigation said. The revelation comes as CNN has learned that a classified analysis of electronic and satellite data suggests the flight likely crashed either in the Bay of Bengal or elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. The analysis conducted by the United States and Malaysian governments may have narrowed the search area for the jetliner that vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, leaving little trace of where it went or why. The analysis used radar data and satellite pings to calculate that the plane diverted to the west, across the Malayan peninsula, and then either flew in a northwest direction toward the Bay of Bengal or southwest into the Indian Ocean. Re-creating MH370's altitude change Flight 370 search expands to Indian Ocean WSJ: Plane probe focuses on sabotage The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for up to five hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. Inmarsat, a satellite communications company, confirmed to CNN that automated signals were registered on its network. Taken together, the data point toward speculation of a dark scenario in which someone took control of the plane for some unknown purpose, perhaps terrorism. That theory is buoyed by word from a senior U.S. official familiar with the investigation that the Malaysia Airlines plane made several significant altitude changes and altered its course more than once after losing contact with flight towers. The jetliner was flying "a strange path," the official said on condition of anonymity. The details of the radar readings were first reported by The New York Times on Friday. Malaysian military radar showed the plane climbing to 45,000 feet soon after disappearing from civilian radar screens and then dropping to 23,000 feet before climbing again, the official said. The question of what happened to the jetliner has turned into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history, befuddling industry experts and government officials. Suggestions have ranged from a catastrophic explosion to sabotage to hijacking to pilot suicide. The sabotage theory got a boost Friday from The Wall Street Journal, which reported investigators increasingly suspect the plane's communications systems were manually switched off. Investigators are trying to determine whether the satellite communications system that pinged for hours stopped functioning because "something catastrophic happened or someone switched off" the system, the newspaper reported, citing an unnamed person familiar with the jet's last known position. The pings stopped at a point over the Indian Ocean, while the jetliner was flying at a normal cruising altitude, according to the newspaper. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: What we know and don't know Movie-plot theory Then there's the theory that maybe Flight 370 landed in a remote Indian Ocean island chain. The suggestion -- and it's only that at this point -- is based on analysis of radar data revealed Friday by Reuters suggesting that the plane wasn't just blindly flying northwest from Malaysia. Reuters, citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, reported that whoever was piloting the vanished jet was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands. The radar data don't show the plane over the Andaman Islands, but only on a known route that would take it there, Reuters cited its sources as saying. The movie-plot theory seems more complicated and unlikely than one in which the plane -- its flight crew perhaps incapacitated -- simply flew on until it ran out of fuel or faced some other problem. But it's one that law enforcement has to check out, former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom said. Timeline of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Aviation experts say it's possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have hijacked and landed the giant Boeing 777 undetected. The international airport in Port Blair, the regional capital of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, has a runway that is long enough to accommodate a 777, according to publicly available data. But the region is highly militarized because of its strategic importance to India, Indian officials with knowledge of the operation tell CNN, making it an unlikely target for pirates trying to sneak in an enormous airplane with a wingspan of more than 200 feet. Denis Giles, editor of the Andaman Chronicle newspaper, says there's just nowhere to land such a big plane in his archipelago without attracting notice. "There is no chance, no such chance, that any aircraft of this size can come towards Andaman and Nicobar Islands and land," he said. The Malaysian government said Friday that it can't confirm the report. And a senior U.S. official offered a conflicting account Thursday, telling CNN that "there is probably a significant likelihood" the plane is on the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Among the things being considered is whether lithium batteries in the cargo hold, which have been blamed in previous crashes, played a role in the disappearance, according to U.S. officials briefed on the latest developments in the investigation. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release details to the media. If the batteries being carried on the plane caused a fire, it still doesn't fully explain other anomalies with Flight 370, the officials say. What is a transponder? Details of the search Malaysian officials, who are coordinating the search, said Friday that the hunt for the plane was spreading deeper into both the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. India has deployed assets from its navy, coast guard and air force to the south Andaman Sea to take part in the search, the country's Ministry of Defense said Friday. Indian search teams are combing large areas of the archipelago. Two aircraft are searching land and coastal areas of the island chain from north to south, an Indian military spokesman said Friday, and two coast guard ships have been diverted to search along the islands' east coast. Indian officials are also including part of the Bay of Bengal in their search, officials said. As of Friday, 57 ships and 48 aircraft from 13 countries were involved in the search, Hishammuddin Hussein, the minister in charge of defense and transportation, said at a news briefing. China, which said it would be extending its search, said crews have searched more than 27,000 square miles (about 70,000 square kilometers) of the South China Sea without finding anything. On Friday, the United States sent the destroyer USS Kidd to scout the Indian Ocean as the search expands into that body of water. "I, like most of the world, really have never seen anything like this," Cmdr. William Marks of the U.S. 7th Fleet said of the scale of the search. "It's pretty incredible." "It's a completely new game now," he said. "We went from a chess board to a football field." Malaysia Airlines: The pilots of the missing plane Other developments • "Seafloor event": Chinese researchers say they recorded a "seafloor event" in waters around Malaysia and Vietnam about an hour and a half after the missing plane's last known contact. The event was recorded in a non-seismic region about 116 kilometers (72 miles) northeast of the plane's last confirmed location, the University of Science and Technology of China said. "Judging from the time and location of the two events, the seafloor event may have been caused by MH370 crashing into the sea," said a statement posted on the university's website. However, U.S. Geological Survey earthquake scientist Harley Benz said Friday that the event appeared to be consistent with a naturally occurring 2.7-magnitude earthquake. • Malaysian response: Authorities continued to defend their response to the crash. "A normal investigation becomes narrower with time, I understand, as new information focuses the search," Hussein said. "But this is not a normal investigation. In this case, the information we have forces us to look further and further afield." However, Bob Francis, a former National Transportation Safety Board official, is one of several experts who have questioned how Malaysian authorities have handled the situation. "The Malaysians are not doing a superb job of running this investigation," he said. "And they apparently give you some information, and then they withhold information. How much are they relying on and listening to the Europeans and the NTSB who are there with more expertise? I don't know, but I think you know we've got a mixture of a very strange situation that happens to be in an environment, a regulatory environment, that really isn't capable or isn't running an investigation the way it should be run." Video at link.
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 14, 2014 22:37:08 GMT -5
Mainstream media fails on flight MH370, mirroring Intellihub report over a day later, narrowing search to the Andaman IslandsMarch 14, 2014 5:50 PM EDT SHARE : Mainstream media fails on flight MH370, mirroring Intellihub report over a day later, narrowing search to the Andaman Islands In a failed attempt at reporting, offering no acknowledgement, mainstream media sources across the globe are now parroting an older Intellihub News report which offers the likely whereabouts to the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 By Staff Writer (INTELLIHUB) — After all of the misleading distractions and B.S. coverage related to the disappearance of flight 370 that the mainstream media has fed the American people, the corporative propaganda machines are now following lockstep with a previously released Intellihub News report which demonstrated that flight 370 is likely in the Andaman Islands region. However, the reports are leaving out key details that the editor-in-chief of Intellihub News, Shepard Ambellas, included in his article entitled “Malaysian airliner may have been commandeered and taken to a secret Coco Island base“. To top it off none of the mainstream media’s reports give credit to Ambellas’ report, which noted the Andaman region specifically. In the his report posted March 13, 2014, 3:18 AM EDT, Ambellas wrote: Intellihub News has information leading us to believe that the aircraft turned-back toward the Sea of Andaman and may have possibly been taken to a secret military facility under communist control in the Coco Islands. Interestingly enough, the Coco Islands were originally leased to the People’s Republic of China and likely remain under China’s control today. Ambellas also concluded that the Coco Island base indeed has a runway suitable for landing a Boeing 777. One mainstream report by Reuters, posted Fri Mar 14, 2014 6:01am EDT, excludes the Coco Island information posted by Ambellas, reading: The last plot on the military radar’s tracking suggested the plane was flying toward India’s Andaman Islands, a chain of isles between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, they said. link
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 14, 2014 23:40:59 GMT -5
So sad...it seems most of the people on that plane (if there really was a plane...) were Muslim. Lost in more ways than one... Pilots who were flying missing Malaysian jet under police investigation amid fears the plane was hijacked by people with aviation training Officers investigating Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27 They will have their psychological background and family life probed Evidence today emerged suggesting plane continued to be flown by people with aviation experience after it disappeared from radar systems Shah is so enthusiastic about flying he built his own simulator at home Photos from 2011 found of Hamid inviting two women into his cockpit However no evidence links the men directly to any wrongdoing Family and neighbours have defended the reputations of the men Hamid was described as a 'good boy, a good Muslim, humble and quiet' Shah meanwhile was described as 'very friendly and safety-conscious' By Kieran Corcoran PUBLISHED: 10:07 EST, 14 March 2014 | UPDATED: 15:43 EST, 14 March 2014 The two pilots at the helm of the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet which vanished a week ago with 239 people on board are being investigated amid fears the plane was hijacked. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, are the subject of a police investigation, airline executives have admitted, and could have their homes searched. Police in Malaysia have said they are looking at the psychological background of the pilots, their family life and connections as one line of inquiry into flight MH370's disappearance. Online, Malaysians have rushed to defend the reputations of the pilots, Zaharie Ahmad Shah (left), 53, and Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27 (right) In the days since the flight, from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, went missing it has emerged that Shah was so passionate about flying he has is own flight simulator at home, and that Hamid once invited two women to spend an entire flight in the cockpit with him. The men may have their homes searched as part of the probe, as new information suggests that the plane's course was diverted by capable pilots. Earlier today two sources familiar with the investigation said radar evidence suggests that the route the plane is thought to have taken after its last known position suggested it was being flown by trained pilots. They believe the flight was moving between fixed waypoints which guide professional pilots along well-trodden routes. It was also pointed out that the first communication system to lose track of the plane - its on-board transponders - can be turned off by the pilots. While there is no evidence linking them to any wrongdoing, airline executives admitted that police were pursuing the line of enquiry. The possibility has also been raised that the pilots were acting 'under duress'. Many have also rushed to defend the pilots' good names in light of the investigation. Details of their backgrounds have emerged from interviews with neighbours, Malaysia Airlines staff, a religious leader and from social networks. A woman walks past the house of missing Malaysia Airlines co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur Muslim men leave a mosque after Friday prayers, just down the road of the home (pictured) of Fariq Abdul Hamid, co-pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner MH370 According to a local mosque leader, Hamid is a 'good boy, a good Muslim, humble and quiet'. Ahmad Sarafi Ali Asrah, who works near Fariq's two-storey home in a middle-class are of Kuala Lumpur, also spoke of the distress his disappearance. He described Hamid's parents as distraught and the community solidly behind them, supporting the family in prayers. 'His father still cries when he talks about Fariq. His mother too,' said Ahmad Sarafi. Hamid, the son of a high-ranking civil servant in Selangor state, joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007. With just 2,763 hours of flight experience he had only recently started co-piloting the sophisticated Boeing 777. He had a short brush with fame when he was filmed recently for a CNN programme. Reporter Richard Quest called it a perfect landing of a Boeing 777-200, the same model as the twin-aisle plane that went missing. An online tribute page to the pilots shows a photo of Fariq in the cockpit with Quest, both smiling. Neighbor Ayop Jantan said he had heard that Hamid was engaged and planning his wedding. The eldest of five children, his professional achievements were a source of pride for his father, said Jantan, a retiree. Jonti Roos (centre) claimed she and her friend were allowed in the cockpit by Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, during a flight three years ago Hamid's superior, Shah, joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981 and has more than 18,000 flight hours. His Facebook profile includes pictures of him flying remote-controlled aircraft, posting pictures of his collection which included a lightweight twin-engine helicopter and an amphibious aircraft. Born in northern Penang state, the bald-headed captain and grandfather is also an enthusiastic handyman and proud home cook. As part of what he called 'community service', he had posted several YouTube videos including how to make air conditioners more efficient to cut electricity bills, how to waterproof window panes and how to repair a refrigerator icemaker. A Malaysian Airline stewardess who had flown with Shah several times said he was 'very nice, very friendly and safety-conscious'. She didn't want to be named because of company policy prohibiting employees from speaking to the media. Neighbours of both men also praised their commitment to the community. Hamid played futsal, a modified form of soccer popular in Southeast Asia, with neighborhood youngsters and paid for their sports shirts. Shah was known for bringing food he cooked himself to community events or making sure his wife and children did when he couldn't attend. A supporter of Malaysia's main opposition parties, he had volunteered to be a poll monitor in recent elections. Yet both Hamid and Shah have quirks that reveal a more colorful side to their pilot personas. Grabbing attention were pictures Shah posted online of the flight simulator he built for his home using three large computer monitors and other accessories. Asked at a news conference whether it was unusual for pilots to have such equipment at home, Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said 'everyone is free to do his own hobby'. Shah is certified by Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation as a flight simulator examiner, according to Malaysia Airlines. Special prayers were held at the KLIA Mosque near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport today for those on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which has now been missing without trace for nearly a week Hamid has drawn greatest scrutiny after the revelation he and another pilot invited two women boarding their aircraft to sit in the cockpit for a flight from Phuket, Thailand, to Kuala Lumpur in 2011. During the flight, the pilots smoked and flirted, one of the women, South African Jonti Roo, said in an interview broadcast by Australia's Nine Network. The claims were backed with numerous photos showing Roos and her friend posing in the cockpit. Though initially thrilled by the experience, Roos also described it as 'possibly a little bit sleazy'. Malaysia Airlines said it was shocked by the claims and is investigating. 'I don't think he is a playboy,' said Ahmad Sarafi, the imam at the mosque Hamid prayed at. 'But I don't know about his personal life.' link
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Post by baydoll on Mar 15, 2014 7:35:22 GMT -5
The latest theory going around is that the plane was hijacked by the two Iranian’s onboard with false passports for terrorist use at a later date. Being as it's a long haul plane it wouldn't be a problem making the trip to wherever.
But I'm on the fence with that one. Actually, I'm on the fence with the whole thing. Like I said previously, the whole incident could be a red herring to distract us from something much bigger going on.
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 15, 2014 13:54:37 GMT -5
I've heard that too....but then again, think about this: they've seen "UFOs" on radar - no way a plane that size would just disappear off the radar screen, unless it went to under 250' or so of altitude, and at that level the fuel wouldn't last very long at all.
I'm starting to think the plane was as real as the Sandy Hook shooting or the Boston Marathon bombing.
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 15, 2014 14:02:16 GMT -5
OK, I'm not buying this latest "theory" either. Planes carry enough fuel to reach their destination and some extra in case of an emergency, or if a plane has to be in a hold pattern for some reason...but not enough extra to keep on flying for another SEVEN hours. Fuel is heavy, and since the heavier a plane is, the more fuel it uses, airline companies keep costs down by limiting how much each flight carries to what is essential. Missing airliner may have flown on for 7 hoursBy Chico Harlan, Ashley Halsey III and Annie Gowen, Updated: Saturday, March 15, 1:40 PM KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday that a missing passenger jet was steered off course after its communications systems were intentionally disabled and could have potentially flown for seven additional hours. In the most comprehensive account to date of the plane’s fate, Najib drew an ominous picture of what happened aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, saying investigators had determined there was “deliberate action by someone on the plane.” Najib said the investigation had “refocused” to look at the crew and passengers. A Malaysia Airlines representative, speaking to relatives of passengers in Beijing, said the Malaysian government had opened a criminal investigation into the plane’s disappearance. (See: New map shows possible search corridors for the Malaysia Airlines flight.) The plane’s whereabouts remain unknown one week after it disappeared from civilian radar shortly after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur. But Najib, citing newly analyzed satellite data, said the plane could have last made contact anywhere along one of two corridors: one stretching from northern Thailand toward the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan border, the other, more southern corridor stretching from Indonesia to the remote Indian Ocean. U.S. officials previously said they believed the plane could have remained in the air for several extra hours, and Najib said Saturday that the flight was still communicating with satellites until 8:11 a.m. — 7 ½ hours after takeoff, and more than 90 minutes after it was due in Beijing. There was no further communication with the plane after that time, Najib said. If the plane was still in the air, it would have been nearing its fuel limit. “Due to the type of satellite data,” Najib said, “we are unable to confirm the precise location of the plane when it last made contact with the satellite.” A U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation on Friday said the only thing the satellite can tell is how much it would need to adjust its antenna to get the strongest signal from the plane. It cannot provide the plane’s exact position or which direction it flew, just how far the plane is, roughly, from the last good data-transmission location when the digital datalink system was actually sending data up to the satellite. The U.S. official said the search area is somewhere along the arc or circumference of a circle with a diameter of thousands of miles. The new leads about the plane’s end point, though ambiguous, have drastically changed a search operation involving more than a dozen nations. Malaysia on Saturday said that efforts would be terminated in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, the spot where the plane first disappeared from civilian radar. Malaysian authorities are now likely to look for help from other countries in Southeast and South Asia, seeking mysterious or unidentified readings that their radar systems might have picked up. The plane, based on one potential end point, could have spent nearly all its flight time over the Indian Ocean as it headed to an area west of Australia. But if the plane traveled in the direction of Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan, it would present a more perplexing scenario in which it would have evaded detection for hours while flying through a volatile region where airspace is heavily monitored: Burma, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan and western China are all in the neighborhood of that path, as is the United States’ Bagram air base, which is in Afghanistan. U.S. officials in Afghanistan would not comment on the possibility that the plane had flown over that country, but that scenario seems unlikely given the tight western control over Afghan airspace. Afghan officials said they rely on Americans on such matters. “We do not know what has happened to the plane or if it has overflown Afghan air space. We do not have a radar. Go and ask the Americans,” said a senior Afghan official. A Pakistani official said his country has not yet been asked by Malaysia to share its radar data, but will provide them if asked. “Given the strong radar system that we have, and also that India and other countries in the region have, it’s very difficult for a plane to fly undetected for so long,” said Abid Qaimkhan, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority. Malaysia has confirmed that a previously unknown radar trail picked up by its military was indeed MH370. That blip suggests the plane had cut west, across the Malaysian peninsula, after severing contact with the ground. Malaysia received help in analyzing that radar data from the United States’ National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration, and the British Air Accident Investigation Branch. Malaysian investigators now believe that the Boeing-777 airliner, bound for Beijing with 227 passengers, deliberately cut a series of communications systems as it headed toward the boundary of Malaysian airspace. U.S. officials and aviation experts say the plane could have been hijacked by somebody with aviation knowledge or sabotaged by a crew member. Investigators have not yet presented a clear scenario of what could have happened on board. Reuters reported that Malaysian police on Saturday searched the home of the plane’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, who had more than three decades of commercial flight experience. A senior Malaysian police official refused to confirm the search. Zaharie had a flight simulator at his home, something that appeared in a YouTube video posted from his unconfirmed YouTube account. Malaysia Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said Friday that “everyone is free to do their own hobby” and that it isn’t unusual for pilots to have home simulators. U.S. officials have said that the plane, shortly after being diverted, reached an altitude of 45,000 feet and “jumped around a lot.” But the airplane otherwise appeared to operate normally. Significantly, the transponder and a satellite-based communication system did not stop at the same time, as they would if the plane had exploded, disintegrated or crashed into the ocean. Najib said Saturday that the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, was disabled just as MH370 reached the eastern coast of Malaysia. The transponder was then switched off, Najib said, as the aircraft neared the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace. According to the Malaysian government, a satellite that tracked the aircraft was located more than 22,000 miles above sea level. Even after the ACARS system was disconnected, the satellite still received some basic signal from the plane — what one U.S. official described as a “handshake.” Though no data was being transmitted, the satellite continued to reach out to the plane on an hourly basis and received confirmation that the plane was still flying. “There’s no circuit breaker that would allow you to shut off the handshake,” the official said. That satellite handshake took place on a system operated by Inmarsat, a British satellite company that provides global mobile telecommunications services. U.S. officials declined to say how closely that handshake allowed them to track the path of the missing plane. But one U.S. official explained that the satellite wasn’t able to read the plane’s exact location or even what direction it flew. Instead, the satellite was able to determine how far the plane had traveled since the last known spot where ACARS was transmitting data. That could explain how Malaysia created two possible arcs where the plane might have traveled. Najib said Saturday that the search for MH370 had entered a “new phase.” The U.S. Navy, already positioned to the west of the Malaysian peninsula, was planning to meet tonight to discuss whether and how to redeploy its assets, spokesman Cmdr. William Marks said. Indian officials said Saturday morning that they were still awaiting new orders in response to the Malaysian prime minister’s statement that the official search focus shift from the South China Sea to the two “corridors” west of Malaysia. “Nothing is certain. These are all probabilities,” said Captain D.K. Sharma, a spokesman for the India Navy. “Let the new orders come. Let’s see how we respond.” India has now expanded its search from the area around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands — where five vessels and four planes have been deployed — to the north and west, by adding four additional aircraft to scour the massive Bay of Bengal — two P-8I anti-submarine and electronic intelligence planes and three other military aircraft, including a C-130J and two Dorniers. Search teams from the Indian military had spent much of the day Friday searching the jungles on remote islands of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, most of which are uninhabited, but so far have come up empty. Other nations along the Bay of Bengal are now the expanding search as well. Gowher Rizvi, an adviser to Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina, said that country had deployed two aircraft and two frigates in the Bay of Bengal. link
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 15, 2014 14:36:51 GMT -5
OK, I've been scanning some pilots' forums, and this post is intriguing. What better way for the AC to ascend to power?
"So what happened to logical thinking and getting this mystery on the right track. I admit that my theory might be far fetched but maybe it isn't.
Control over 9M-MRO/MAS370 was taken over at some point early in the flight, shortly afterwards the transponder was switched off and the aircraft flew for several hours.
So it didn't blow up in mid-air and it didn't return to WMKK. It flew under control so it must be assumed that a pilot was at the controls. Suicide can be ruled out. If the pilot wanted to kill himself he could have jumped off a bridge or end his life with an overdose and fancy hookers in an uptown hotel in KL. Not the case.
The ultimate Al-Qaeda wet dream retaliation act against the west would be to hit on the world’s leaders in one direct clean and ultimate hit. Now getting all of these people together is a whole different story…. Isn't it a rather striking coincidence that 58 world leaders are getting together at the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague (Netherlands) on the 24th and 25th of March !
So here is the theory.
The people that switched off the transponder (whoever they are, crew, passengers, it doesn't make much difference at this point) flew the aircraft west and across the Indian Ocean and maybe even the Arabian Sea to any abandoned strip that has a half decent runway and hangar. Could be in Kazakhstan, Iran or an other country that is within a 777-200ER flying range from WMKK and let’s say EBBR.
Food supplies have been arranged months in advance for the passengers and remaining crew. The airplane is then converted into a flying bomb. Transponder hexcodes are changed for a regular, non-stolen B777 that is used on international services. Let’s say they change the hexcode to 710034 which belongs to Saudia’s B777-268ER HZ-AKB. It’s just a matter of programming."
On the 24th this aircraft takes off from wherever it is kept, an ATC flight plan is filed with destination Brussels and the crew flies it as if it is a regular service into Brussels. On a 10 mile final runway 25L they declare an emergency and tell ATC they need a right turn to sort things out. Now they are only minutes away from The Hague. They drop down to 1000 feet (maybe even simulate a crash) and head for the conference center hot and low…. In a 9/11 style the airplane hits the conference center and 58 world leaders go up in smoke.
Yeah, it is a wild conspiracy theory but I’m sure the guy responsible for NSS security in The Hague doesn't sleep comfortably until 9M-MRO is found."
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 15, 2014 16:34:18 GMT -5
I'm not a Rush fan, but he is a private jet pilot and is quite knowledgeable about aviation. Rush Limbaugh Has a Theory on What Happened to the Missing Malaysian PlaneMar. 14, 2014 5:00pm Jason Howerton Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Friday presented a “theory” on what happened to the missing Malaysian plane that has so far stumped the world. “How about this theory: The jet is flying along and you have a total electronic failure but the engines keep working,” he began. “We’ve been told that the airplane kept sending data somehow, pinging a satellite even after it was lost from radar. There have been so many confusing reports on whether or not the data that was pinging was coming from the engines or not.” Limbaugh continued: “But what happened if, and my guess is as good as any, you’ve got an airplane flying along, you have a total electronics failure but it continues to be airworthy, the engines are working. I don’t know if this is possible, given an electronic ignition and all that, let’s say it is. So then the crew says we’ve got to get back home we have got to get back to Kuala Lumpur, we can’t fly with no electronics-it’s dark, night time, they fly over a bunch of unfriendly countries and they cant identify themselves and they’re not identified, there are no lights on-there has been a total electronics failure.” “What if some hostile country flew up there and shot it down and then discovered their mistake and nobody wants to admit that’s what happened?” he pondered. The theory, as Limbaugh himself admits, is nothing more than a guess. In fact, theories seem to be all there are relating to the missing plane as people itch to know what really happened. link
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 15, 2014 19:26:51 GMT -5
.I don't see how a flight simulator is a big deal; I used to have one - lots of pilots to, to keep their skills sharp and just for fun. Satellite data shows hijacked MH370 was last seen flying towards Pakistan OR Indian Ocean as investigators search pilots' luxury homes and reveal one had home-made flight simulator Officials confirmed missing plane was hijacked by one or several people Could have turned off communication system and steered it off-course Now believed plane could have flown for another seven hours Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak refused to confirm the reports Investigators working to establish motive and where plane was taken Both captain and co-pilot are now said to be under investigation Police raided the pair's luxury homes in upmarket Kuala Lumpur suburb By Wills Robinson and Richard Shears and Kieran Corcoran PUBLISHED: 23:29 EST, 14 March 2014 | UPDATED: 15:32 EST, 15 March 2014 Investigators say the missing Malaysia Airlines jet was hijacked, steered off-course and could have reached Pakistan. A Malaysian government official said people with significant flying experience could have turned off the flight's communication devices. The representative said that hijacking theory was now 'conclusive', and, as a result, police have raided the luxury homes of both the captain and the co-pilot. The last known position of MH370 was pinpointed as it headed east over Peninsular Malaysia. Radar pings then suggest the plane could have then taken two paths along 'corridors' which are currently being searched, which are a fixed distance from the radar station in the Indian Ocean (left) Full story, video, lots of pictures at link
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 15, 2014 19:38:21 GMT -5
Malaysia’s Prime Minister: ‘Flight 370 turned-back under deliberate action’March 15, 2014 7:44 PM EDT Malaysian officials are now focusing on investigating the crew and passengers of flight 370 as deliberate action has been ruled By Shepard Ambellas KUALA LUMPUR (INTELLIHUB) — It was announced by officials Saturday, how they believe that a deliberate action caused the missing airliner to turn-back toward the west, abruptly diverting from its scheduled course. “Based on new satellite communications, we can say with a high degree of certainty that the aircraft communications addressing and reporting system [...] was disabled” pointing to foul play, the Prime Minister stated in a press conference. Now, according to the new data, Malaysian officials are planning to enter a new search phase in the Indian Ocean. However, despite a key report which details the possible whereabouts of Flight 370, putting it at a remote communist controlled airbase in the Andaman Islands, mainstream news agencies and officials alike have failed to follow-up on Ambellas’ bombshell information. Investigators have already begun to focus on the passengers and crew that were aboard the plane before it went missing, reportedly leaving no stone unturned. However, others have doubts as it has been reported that family members of 239 passengers maintain that the Malaysian officials know a lot more than they are telling them and the general public. It it also important to note just how quickly the stolen passports issue dropped off of the news cycle as this quite possibly may be the missing link to the entire mystery as pointed out in an article titled “The massive clue in the Malaysian airline mystery that isn’t getting enough attention“. CNN has reported how a source said that one or more of the pilots were likely involved in whatever this turns out to be. link
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 15, 2014 21:48:26 GMT -5
If this is the case, I don't think there's much doubt as to which "major city in the Middle East" they would target. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! ‘Pirated’ Boeing 777 may return to skies as stealth nuclear weaponFlight 370 passengers may still be alive Mike Adams Natural News March 15, 2014 Exclusive investigation: The 239 people on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may still be alive. This stunning realization is now supported by considerable emerging evidence detailed in this article. At the same time, the “vanished” Boeing 777 may also be in a hanger in Iran right now, being retrofitted with nuclear weapons and turned into a suicide bomb to be deployed over a major city in the Middle East. This possibility is discussed in detail, below, with supporting evidence. The idea that Flight 370 passengers and crew may still be alive is not a bizarre theory. Even Reuters is now reporting that U.S. authorities have stated, “…it’s also possible the plane may have landed somewhere.” Here’s the evidence in support of this emerging “piracy” theory of what may have happened to Flight 370 and why the people who may have diverted it might also be planning on turning it into a weapon: Five critical pieces of astonishing supporting evidence that Flight 370 passengers may still be alive Please understand that I do not wish to create false hope for all those families who have greatly suffered through this ordeal. My heart goes out to them, and we can only hope these 239 passengers and crew are, indeed, being kept alive somewhere to be used as a bargaining chip for ransom or political purposes. Here’s the substantial evidence in support of this theory: • Fact #1: No crash debris has been located, despite an exhaustive search The search for debris has involved over two dozen nations and is unprecedented in aviation history. If the plane had crashed in the ocean anywhere near its intended flight path, the debris almost certainly would have been located by now. • Fact #2: The plane’s transponder appears to have been manually turned off several minutes before other communication systems stopped transmitting As the Associated Press reports, “…key evidence for ‘human intervention’ in the plane’s disappearance is that contact with its transponder stopped about a dozen minutes before a messaging system quit.” This almost certainly means someone deliberately disabled the transponder (the device which transmits location to air traffic controllers). Why would someone do that? Because they don’t want to be tracked as they change course and take the plane to a new destination. A Reuters article adds more detail: Analysis of the Malaysia data suggests the plane, with 239 people on board, diverted from its intended northeast route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and flew west instead, using airline flight corridors normally employed for routes to the Middle East and Europe. This adds some evidence to the idea that the plane may have been diverted to the Middle East. Together with the suspicion of stolen passports and the identities of those who traveled with them, this starts to paint a more clear picture in support of piracy as the underlying explanation, with possible ties to Iran (see more below). What’s especially fascinating to me in all this is that once the transponder was turned off, this massive aircraft apparently went into “stealth mode” where nobody could track it. Although this seems to defy the laws of physics and radar, we cannot argue with the fact that the plane was apparently untraceable as it flew for four hours after the transponder was turned off. • Smoking Gun Fact #3: The plane’s engines continued to broadcast performance data to satellite for four hours after radar contact was lost This fact is really the smoking gun in all this. The Wall Street Journal has posted an excellent investigative article revealing that Boeing’s own people have confirmed the plane kept flying four hours after disappearing off radar. As the WSJ reports: The investigators believe the plane flew for a total of up to five hours, according to these people, based on analysis of signals sent by the Boeing satellite-communication link designed to automatically transmit the status of certain onboard systems to the ground. Throughout the roughly four hours after the jet dropped from civilian radar screens, these people said, the link operated in a kind of standby mode and sought to establish contact with a satellite or satellites. These transmissions did not include data, they said, but the periodic contacts indicate to investigators that the plane was still intact and believed to be flying. Obviously, this system cannot continue to transmit data if the plane has crashed or exploded. The existence of these signals is very nearly conclusive proof that the aircraft continued flying and did not crash or explode. This eliminates most of the scenarios which would result in the death of passengers, and it strongly supports the piracy / hijacking scenario. • Fact #4: The mobile devices of many passengers continued to stay online for days after the disappearance The Washington Post has reported that phones of Flight 370 passengers were active and online for several days following the disappearance of the plane: …a few relatives said they were able to call the cellphones of their loved ones or find them on a Chinese instant messenger service called QQ that indicated that their phones were still somehow online. A migrant worker in the room said that several other workers from his company were on the plane, including his brother-in-law. Among them, the QQ accounts of three still showed that they were online, he said Sunday afternoon. Adding to the mystery, other relatives in the room said that when they dialed some passengers’ numbers, they seemed to get ringing tones on the other side even though the calls were not picked up. This evidence also fits the piracy theory remarkably well. If the plane was diverted and landed with passengers alive, their mobile devices could have indeed stayed online by automatically connecting to cell towers. The pirates or kidnappers may have overlooked this and failed to confiscate and destroy the mobile devices, allowing them to connect as long as they had battery life remaining. • Fact #5: Black box transponders are not broadcasting homing signals because the plane never crashed Normally, when aircraft crash into the ocean, their black boxes emit homing signal transmissions so they can be located. But no signals were ever detected from Flight 370 black boxes. Now that seems to make sense: if the plane was hijacked / pirated, then it never crashed and the black boxes are still intact, sitting on the aircraft. This may be why they cannot be found (and why there is no wreckage or debris). Could passengers still be alive? If the plane kept flying for four more hours, then it was obviously being piloted with an intent to take it somewhere for some specific purpose. Anyone sophisticated enough to disable the transponder in-flight would have also been sophisticated enough to plan the final destination and landing of the aircraft. As Reuters now reports: Military radar data suggests a Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown hundreds of miles off course, heightening suspicions of foul play among investigators, sources told Reuters on Friday. Anyone pirating a jetliner and diverting it to another location really only has two key assets to work with: The aircraft itself, and the passengers onboard. Obviously, acquiring a large aircraft like a Boeing 777 would be a huge asset for terrorist groups who could turn it into a weapon. If this is the intent, then the passengers on board would most likely be killed, as they would serve no particular purpose to the hijackers. Sadly, this remains one of the possible outcomes of piracy, and I don’t want to publish any false hope that might mislead families who have lost loved ones. Realistically, the odds of the passengers being alive right now are probably no better than 1 in 3, in my estimation. But that’s better than zero chance. A second possibility is that the passengers themselves are going to be used as bargaining chips in an elaborate K&R (kidnap & ransom) scheme. It’s also possible that selected passengers have special value in some way we don’t yet realize, and only they will be kept alive as bargaining chips while the others are killed by the hijackers. Sadly, this is another likely outcome of all this. And yet, despite all the very negative possible outcomes, there does remain a legitimate scenario in which the passengers and crew of Flight 370 remain alive at this very moment, long after their plane was diverted to an unknown location and safely landed. If this is the case, then we would expect to sooner or later hear from the hijackers with their list of demands for the safe return of the passengers. Such demands, if they ever materialize, would no doubt be multinational in nature. On the more pessimistic side, if the hijackers only sought the aircraft and not the passengers, then we will probably never hear from them until the day a Boeing 777 flying without a transponder in “stealth mode” delivers a terrorist weapon of some sort to whatever city is being targeted. Turning a Boeing 777 into a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon A Boeing 777 is a very large aircraft and can obviously be outfitted with a wide variety of weapons systems by anyone with sufficient knowledge and technical skills (not to mention a soul of pure evil). According to the Boeing website, the 777 has a “revenue payload capacity” of 112 tons, or about 102,000 kg. With that sort of enormous carrying capacity, a Boeing 777 could be outfitted with elaborate, high-volume chemical spraying weapons, air-dropped biological weapons or of course a nuclear weapon capable of destroying an entire city. Technology also exists to remotely control large aircraft, and Iran in particular has already demonstrated its technical ability to seize control of U.S. military drones through a process of GPS-spoofing. In support of this feat, Russia just recently “electronically captured” another U.S. drone over Crimea. Shockingly, the next time the world sees this aircraft may be when it deploys itself over a city like Tel Aviv and detonates a large nuclear weapon at altitude. The reason I deliberately choose Tel Aviv in this example is because there appears to be a possible link with Iran in all this, and the Iranian government leadership has reportedly said it wishes to see Israel wiped off the map. The elaborate nature of this aircraft piracy, if indeed this is the true explanation, also smacks of state-sponsored involvement. This is not the kind of operation that can be pulled off by a couple of yahoos trying to score some quick cash. The fact that this aircraft was able to fly undetected for at least four hours after the transponder was turned off means the plane can very effectively be used as a “stealth” weapon of sorts, and it could theoretically be deployed over major cities across Europe, Asia, the Middle East or even North America. Where is Flight 370 now? Pakistan, Iran both potentially in range of the landing According to this Boeing web page, the 777 has a cruising speed of around Mach .84, or around 650 miles per hour. If the aircraft cruised for four hours after the transponder was turned off, it could have flown nearly 2600 miles, putting it just within reach of Pakistan, and possibly even southeast Iran if it flew at a slightly higher speed and had sufficient fuel. The Iran Shahr Airport, located less than 100 miles from the border of Pakistan, is conceivably within range and sits at an altitude of around 2,000 meters. This airport has a runway length of 7,711 feet, and according to page 16 of this document on the Boeing website, the required runway length for landing a Boeing 777 is less than 7,711 feet as long as the runway is not wet. This is true even if the aircraft is fully loaded and flying at maximum weight. The aircraft was actually designed to take advantage of shorter runways. Even Boeing itself says the 777 “uses a new semi-levered gear, which allows it to take off from fields with limited runway length.” Thus, Flight 370 could have conceivably and successfully landed in Iran. Remember, too, that the aircraft was “using airline flight corridors normally employed for routes to the Middle East and Europe,” according to Reuters (link above). This flight path, however, would have put it directly over India, and it is difficult to imagine the Indian government not noticing a Boeing 777 aircraft flying over its airspace without a transponder. Then again, the Malaysian government seems to have no idea where the plane went, either, and so we may be dealing with regional military incompetence on these matters, or possibly some amazing new stealth technology that was somehow deployed on the plane. To help explain where this aircraft could have gone, I put together this flight range map, showing the possible locations where Flight 370 could have flown in the four hours after it disappeared from its intended flight path: Notice that this range encompasses North Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, Afghanistan and even part of Iran. An interesting area of investigation in all this would be to find out how much fuel the aircraft was loaded with, and determining whether that fuel load could allow it to fly four or even five more hours. This article was posted: Saturday, March 15, 2014 at 6:40 am Tags: terrorism link
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Post by PurplePuppy on Mar 15, 2014 23:41:30 GMT -5
U.S. officials lean toward 'those in the cockpit' behind missing flightBy Barbara Starr, Chelsea J. Carter and Jim Clancy, CNN updated 11:04 PM EDT, Sat March 15, 2014 Source: CNN STORY HIGHLIGHTS NEW: Area between Malaysia and Vietnam "perfect place to start to disappear," official says Investigators have renewed their focus on the pilots, a law enforcement official says Malaysia's government wanted a reason to search the pilots' homes, the official says Police search homes of pilot and co-pilot Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) -- U.S. intelligence officials are leaning toward the theory that "those in the cockpit" -- the pilots of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 -- were responsible for the mysterious disappearance of the commercial jetliner, a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the latest thinking told CNN on Saturday. The revelation followed news that Malaysian authorities searched the home of the lead pilot, a move that came the same day that Prime Minister Najib Razak told reporters the plane veered off course due to apparent deliberate action taken by somebody on board. The Malaysian government had been looking for a reason to search the home of the pilot and the co-pilot for several days. But it was only in the last 24 to 36 hours, when radar and satellite data came to light, that authorities believed they had sufficient reason to go through the residences, according to the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The Malaysians don't do this lightly," the official said. It's not clear whether the Malaysian government believes one or both the men could be responsible for what happened when the Boeing 777-200 ER disappeared March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. What we know about the cockpit crew The official emphasized no final conclusions have been drawn and all the internal intelligence discussions are based on preliminary assessments of what is known to date. Other scenarios could still emerge. The notion of a hijacking has not been ruled out, the official said. A source close to the investigation told CNN that Malaysian police had searched the home of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53. Shah lives in an upscale gated community in Shah Alam, outside Malaysia's capital of Kuala Lumpur. Two vans were loaded with small bags, similar to shopping bags, at the home of the co-pilot, 27-year-old Farq Ab Hamid, according to a CNN crew who observed activities at the residence. It was unclear whether the bags were taken from the home, and police made no comment about their activities there. Najib made clear in a press conference that in light of the latest developments, authorities have refocused their investigation to the crew and passengers on board. Undoubtedly, they will scour through the flight manifest and look further to see whether any of the passengers on board had flight training or connections to terror groups. A senior U.S. law enforcement official told CNN that investigators are carefully reviewing the information so far collected on the pilots to determine whether there is something to indicate a plan or a motive. That would seem supported by preliminary U.S. intelligence reports, which the U.S. official said show the jetliner was in some form of controlled flight at a relatively stable altitude and path when it changed course and flew toward the Indian Ocean. It is presumed by U.S. officials to have crashed, perhaps after running out of fuel. 'Someone acting deliberately' The first clue that perhaps one or both of the pilots were involved stem from when the plane made a sharp, deliberate turn from where it last communicated with Kuala Lumpur air traffic controllers, and before it would have to communicate with Vietnamese controllers, according to the U.S. official with knowledge of the latest intelligence thinking. "This is the perfect place to start to disappear," the official said. Military radar showed the jetliner flew in a westerly direction back over the Malaysian peninsula, Najib said. It is then believed to have either turned northwest toward the Bay of Bengal or southwest elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, he said. "Evidence is consistent with someone acting deliberately from inside the plane," the Prime Minister said, officially confirming the plane's disappearance was not caused by an accident. "....Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, we are investigating all major possibilities on what caused MH370 to deviate." The focus of the search is now in the southern Indian Ocean. "The southern scenario seems more plausible," the official said. Meanwhile, according to Najib, new satellite information leads authorities to be fairly certain that someone disabled the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, just before the aircraft reached the east coast of peninsular Malaysia. "Shortly afterward, near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control," Najib said, "the aircraft's transponder was switched off." ACARS is the system that routinely transmits information like turbulence and fuel load back to the airline. A transponder is a system controlled from the cockpit that transmits data about the plane via radio signals to air traffic controllers. It combines with ground radar to provide air traffic controllers with details about the plane, including its identification, speed, position and altitude. The last voice communication from the cockpit a week ago were these words: "All right, good night." They were uttered at the Vietnam air traffic control border at about the same time the transponder was shut off, Najib said. That suggests the incident on the plane began sooner than initially thought. But some have questioned the Prime Minister's account, given the dearth of information available. Malaysia investigation criticized In the days since the flight disappeared, the Malaysian government has been under intense scrutiny for its handling of the investigation. The government has been criticized by some U.S. officials for not sharing information or accepting more offers of help. Shortly after Najib delivered his remarks, China demanded Malaysia provide more information on the investigation. Of the 239 people aboard Flight 370, 154 were Chinese. "Today is the 8th day of the missing MH370, and the plane is still yet to be found," said a statement from the foreign ministry. "Time is life." The criticism was more pointed in an editorial published by China's state-run news agency Xinhua. "And due to the absence -- or at least lack -- of timely authoritative information, massive efforts have been squandered, and numerous rumors have been spawned, repeatedly racking the nerves of the awaiting families," the editorial said. Malaysian authorities have been highly sensitive to any suggestion they can't handle the investigation, said the U.S. law enforcement official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. It took several days last week to calm their anger over inaccurate reports that the FBI had dispatched a team to investigate, the official said. Malaysia Airlines defended its actions, saying there has never been a case where information gleaned from satellite signals alone could potentially be used to find the location of a missing airliner. "Given the nature of the situation and its extreme sensitivity, it was critical that the raw satellite signals were verified and analyzed by the relevant authorities so that their significance could be properly understood," the airline said in a statement. "This naturally took some time, during which we were unable to publicly confirm their existence." Transcript: Malaysian Prime Minister's statement on Flight 370 Kazakhstan to Indian Ocean As the focus of the investigation shifted, so, too, has the focus of the search. Information from international and Malaysian officials indicate that the jet may have flown for more than seven hours after the last contact with the pilots. Focus on 'two corridors' in plane search Flight 370 search expands to Indian Ocean WSJ: Plane probe focuses on sabotage Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12:41 a.m. on March 8. The last satellite communication from the plane occurred at 8:11 a.m., Najib said, well past the scheduled arrival time in Beijing. That last communication, Najib said, was in one of two possible traffic corridors shown on a map released to the press. A northern arc stretches from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, and a southern arc spans from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean. "Due to the type of satellite data, we are unable to confirm the precise location of the plane when it last made contact with the satellite," Najib said. Because the northern parts of the traffic corridor include some tightly guarded airspace over India, Pakistan, and even some U.S. installations in Afghanistan, U.S. authorities believe it more likely the aircraft crashed into waters outside of the reach of radar south of India, a U.S. official told CNN. If it had flown farther north, it's likely it would have been detected by radar. Nonetheless for the last 36 hours, the U.S. military and intelligence community has been reviewing all satellite imagery and electronic data it collects from the region for any sign of an explosion or crash, according to another U.S. official directly familiar with that effort. Najib said authorities were ending search operations in the South China Sea and reassessing the deployment of assets. "This new satellite information has a significant impact on the nature and scope of the search operation," he said. Investigators, he said, have confirmed by looking at the raw satellite data that the plane in question was the Malaysia Airlines jet. The same conclusion was reached by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch and the Malaysian authorities, all of whom were working separately with the same data, he said. Families hold onto hope For the families and loved ones of those aboard Flight 370, Saturday was Day 8 of anguish. Some found comfort that there is no evidence the plane made impact. The father of one passenger watched Najib's news conference at a Beijing hotel. He said he hoped the plane was hijacked because that gave him reason to think his son was alive. "I hope they are alive, no matter how small the chance is," he said. The search that began last weekend now involves 14 countries, 43 ships and 58 aircraft, Najib said, and that the relevant foreign embassies have been given access to the new information. China is sending technical experts to join the investigation, and two Chinese search vessels headed for the Strait of Malacca, according to Xinhua. Plane was taking 'strange path' Hours before Najib's announcement, U.S. officials told CNN the flight had made drastic changes in altitude and direction after disappearing from civilian radar. Malaysian military radar showed the plane climbing to 45,000 feet -- which is above its approved altitude limit -- soon after disappearing from civilian radar screens and then dropping to 23,000 feet before climbing again, a U.S. official familiar with the investigation said. The jetliner was flying "a strange path," the official said on condition of anonymity. The details of the radar readings were first reported by The New York Times on Friday. Video at the link.
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Post by baydoll on Mar 16, 2014 8:18:02 GMT -5
Well it's certainly looking more and more like all the rest of the recent media sensations such as Sandy Hook and Boston Marathon. It's got it's many twists and turns and rabbit holes just like they did. Bread and circuses, anyone?
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 16, 2014 12:08:36 GMT -5
Gee, and the pilot is not only a political fanatic, he's a Muslim...what a surprise! 'Democracy is dead': 'Fanatical' missing airliner pilot pictured wearing political slogan T-shirt as officials reveal flight MH370 could have been on the GROUND when the last satellite signal was sent Police investigate data from home flight simulator of captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53 Investigators speak of his 'obsessive' support for opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim Police officers fear Ibrahim being jailed could have left Shah profoundly upset Flight MH370 disappeared more than a week ago with 239 people on board Despite a huge multinational search effort, no signs of the plane or a crash have been found Malaysian Prime Minister said yesterday that the plane was deliberately steered off course FBI experts say disappearance could be ‘act of piracy’, suggesting passengers are being held Officials revealed the plane could have transmitted a radar 'ping' from the ground if it was still intact By Simon Parry and Amanda Williams and Wills Robinson PUBLISHED: 17:08 EST, 15 March 2014 | UPDATED: 11:56 EST, 16 March 2014 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. It comes as FBI investigators say the disappearance of MH370 may have been ‘an act of piracy’ and the possibility that hundreds of passengers are being held at an unknown location has not been ruled out. Officials also revealed that it is possible the aircraft could have landed and transmitted a satellite signal from the ground. If the plane was intact and had enough electrical power in reserve, it would be able to send out a radar 'ping'. Full story, video, and lots of pictures at link.
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 16, 2014 12:17:19 GMT -5
All smoke & mirrors... Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Q&A by Simon Calder: How far could it have travelled? Who was responsible and what would their plans be? And how can a plane just vanish?One week on Simon Calder runs through what we do – and what we do not – know about the disappearance of the Boeing 777 Simon Calder Author Biography Travel Correspondent Saturday 15 March 2014 What are we now sure of? That a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, flight number MH370, departed Kuala Lumpur airport at 12.41am local time on Saturday 8 March. There were 227 passengers and 12 crew on board. It flew north-north-east towards its intended destination, Beijing. But before it reached the east coast of Malaysia, the ACARS data-transmission system was disabled, Shortly afterwards the transponder, which provides identification data to ground radar and also handles the aircraft’s “hi-jack alarm,” was switched off. The last voice communication was when Malaysian air-traffic controllers handed over the flight to their Vietnamese counterparts. All normal channels of contact had ended by 2.40am. However, it has now emerged that flight MH370 was deliberately diverted – and the jet was still flying seven-and-a-half-hours after take-off. How do we know it was still airborne? One communication channel remained open. Inmarsat operates communications satellites for navigation by shipping and aviation. A satellite over the Indian Ocean sent hourly interrogations to the aircraft. Electronic responses were sent automatically, confirming the aircraft was still in flight. The final satellite contact was at 8.11am, five-and-a-half hours after the jet’s last known position. During that time, the aircraft could have flown 3,000 miles at its normal cruising speed. Latest: Communications were 'deliberately disabled' A map has been issued using data from the satellite. Does it show the flight path the aircraft may have followed? No, far from it. It shows only that the extent of possible locations of the aircraft when it sent the last “ping”. Map constructed using satellite data showing extent of possible locations Why 'two corridors'? The calculation has been made from the distance of the plane from a geo-stationary satellite 22,250 miles above the Indian Ocean, which produces a circle with a radius of about 5,000 miles. Using other data, the possible locations have been narrowed down to a northern arc and a southern arc of this circle. The northern arc runs from northern Thailand via south-west China to southern Kazakhstan. The southern arc extends south from western Java into Indian Ocean, passing about 1,000 miles from the coast of Western Australia. Does that mean the aircraft is somewhere along those lines? Not necessarily. The last “ping” was at 8.11am, Malaysian time. Another signal was sent out by satellite one hour later, and no response was received. But in that time, the jet could have travelled up to 500 miles in any direction – subject to having sufficient fuel. The search for missing Malaysia Airlines plane How far could it have travelled? The maximum range of the Boeing 777ER aircraft type is over 8,000 miles, but the flight will have been carrying only enough fuel for the planned 2,700-mile flight to Beijing plus a contingency for holding and diversions. The “block time” for the scheduled flight is just under six hours. It would be standard practice to add enough fuel for up to two more hours. What runway length would a 777 need to land? Given that it would have been almost empty of fuel, a mile or so would suffice – less than half the length of Heathrow’s shorter runway. What was the plan of whoever was directing the aircraft? That is one of the many baffling aspects of the disappearance. If the person or people responsible wanted to destroy the aircraft, it could simply have been downed at once – or indeed flown into a target such as the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, formerly the world’s tallest building. So presumably there was a more audacious plan. How can a plane vanish - are there radar blackspots? Many travellers have been astonished to learn that there is no global system tracking all aircraft at all times. Over oceans, coverage is very patchy – and over populated areas, if a pilot chooses to disable communications equipment, even a 250-ton aircraft can be elusive. Who could have been responsible? One or more of the passengers; one or more of the crew; or even, as the aviation security expert Philip Baum has speculated, one or more stowaways. There are reports that the pilots’ homes are being searched. Is this unusual? No. The surprise is that it has not happened sooner. Given that one of the many possibilities was pilot involvement, it would appear routine to check their homes for anything untoward, if only to eliminate a line of enquiry. What are the key questions the investigators need to address? If the pilots were acting under duress, why did they not activate an emergency distress signal on the flight deck when events began? Why were the crew not challenged about the disabled ACARS system? And, as events unfolded, were any mobile phone calls made or SMS messages sent by passengers? If the answer to the last question is “no”, then one conclusion may be that the aircraft was well out to sea. Photo gallery at link.
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 16, 2014 18:15:13 GMT -5
They're rehashing the same story over and over pretty much. I have information overload as there's so much going on these days, but there was an article about the Muslims wanting to take out a "major Mideast city." Well, I don't think there's much question as to what city they have in mind; I can't help but think this plane might be used to try to accomplish that... Authorities Examine Key Item From Pilot’s Home; Malaysia Officials Deciding ‘Next Course of Action’Mar. 16, 2014 7:42am Oliver Darcy Story by the Associated Press; curated by Oliver Darcy. — KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysian police on Sunday were examining a flight simulator belonging to one of the pilots of the missing jetliner and investigating engineers who worked on the plane, sharpening the probe into the jet’s disappearance after authorities revealed it was a deliberate act. The government said police searched the homes of both of the plane’s pilots on Saturday, but did not say whether it was the first time officers had done so since the flight went missing more than a week ago with 239 people aboard en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Authorities were trying to narrow down the search for the plane, which satellite data shows could have kept flying as far north as Central Asia or far into the southern Indian Ocean, posing awesome challenges for efforts to recover the aircraft and flight data recorders vital to solving the mystery of what happened on board. People write messages on a 60-meter long banner, with the Malaysia Airlines logo, filled with signatures and well wishes for all involved with the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner MH370 at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Sunday, March 16, 2014 in Sepang, Malaysia. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E) People write messages on a 60-meter long banner, with the Malaysia Airlines logo, filled with signatures and well wishes for all involved with the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner MH370 at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Sunday, March 16, 2014 in Sepang, Malaysia. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E) Given that the northern route would take the plane over countries with busy airspace, most experts say the person in control of the plane would more likely have chosen the southern route. The southern Indian Ocean is the world’s third-deepest and one of the most remote stretches of water in the world, with little radar coverage. The wreckage might take months — or longer — to find, or might never be located. Malaysia has asked for help from countries in South, Central and Southeast Asia for assistance in tracing the jet by providing satellite and radar data, the government said in a statement. It said that for now, both the northern and southern routes that the plane may have taken were being treated with “equal importance.” There appeared to be some confusion over where to search as India, one of 12 countries contributing planes and vessels to the hunt, said it had stopped looking while waiting for confirmation from Malaysia on where to search. Australia, which looks onto the southern Indian Ocean from its west coast, said it had not been asked to begin searching there. Malaysia’s acting transport minister tweeted that he was in meetings to decide the “next course of action.” In the first detailed account of what happened to the plane, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday that someone severed communications with the ground and deliberately diverted Flight 370 back over the Malay Peninsula early on March 8. The revelations raised questions over possible lapses by Malaysian authorities, including why the air force wasn’t aware that a jetliner was flying over the country. It also triggered speculation over who on the plane was involved — and what motive they might have for flying away with an aircraft carrying a 12-person crew and 227 passengers. A man writes a message for passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane, at a shopping mall in Petaling Jaya, near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sunday, March 16, 2014. (AP Photo/Lai Seng Sin) A man writes a message for passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane, at a shopping mall in Petaling Jaya, near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sunday, March 16, 2014. (AP Photo/Lai Seng Sin) If the pilots were involved in the disappearance, were they working together or alone, or with one or more of the passengers or crew? Did they fly the plane under duress or of their own volition? Did one or more of the passengers manage to break into the cockpit, or use the threat of violence to gain entry and then pilot the plane? Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possibilities, and to establish what happened with any degree of certainty investigators will likely need to examine information, including cockpit voice recordings, from the plane’s flight data recorders should the jet be located. The government’s statement on Sunday gave few details on the police investigation into the pilots. It said police searched the homes of both the pilot and the co-pilot and were examining an elaborate flight simulator belonging to Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the 59-year-old pilot. A woman writes a message on a 60-meter long banner with the Malaysia Airlines logo, filled with signatures and well wishes for all involved with the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner MH370 at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Sunday, March 16, 2014 in Sepang, Malaysia.(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E) A woman writes a message on a 60-meter long banner with the Malaysia Airlines logo, filled with signatures and well wishes for all involved with the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner MH370 at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Sunday, March 16, 2014 in Sepang, Malaysia.(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E) Zaharie, who has children, had previously posted photos online of the flight simulator he built for his home using three large computer monitors and other accessories. Earlier this week, the head of Malaysia Airlines said this was not in itself cause for any suspicion. Saying this was per normal procedure, the statement also said police were investigating engineers who may have had contact with the plane before it took off. Najib said Saturday that investigators had a “high degree of certainty” that one of the plane’s communications systems — the Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS — was partially disabled before the plane reached the east coast of Malaysia. Shortly afterward, someone on board switched off the aircraft’s transponder, which communicates with civilian air traffic controllers. Malaysian officials and aviation experts said that whoever disabled the plane’s communication systems and then flew the jet must have had a high degree of technical knowledge and flying experience, putting the pilots at the top of the list of possible suspects. Najib confirmed that Malaysian air force defense radar picked up traces of the plane turning back westward, crossing over Peninsular Malaysia into the northern stretches of the Strait of Malacca. Authorities previously had said this radar data could not be verified. The air force has yet to explain why it did not spot the plane flying over the country and respond. The search was initially focused on the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, where the plane severed its communication links. That search has now ended. “One thing that does bother me greatly is the fact that unidentified aircraft could navigate back over Malaysia and out to sea without a physical or material response to that fact,” said Britain-based aviation security consultant Chris Yates. “They were not watching.” Ground staff work on a Malaysia Airlines plane at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia, Wednesday, March 12, 2014. The missing Malaysian jetliner may have attempted to turn back before it vanished from radar, but there is no evidence it reached the Strait of Malacca, Malaysia's air force chief said Wednesday, denying reported remarks he said otherwise. The statement suggested continued confusion over where the Boeing 777 might have ended up, more than four days after it disappeared en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board. (AP Photo/Lai Seng Sin) Ground staff work on a Malaysia Airlines plane at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia, Wednesday, March 12, 2014. (AP Photo/Lai Seng Sin) Not much is known publicly about the two pilots. Zaharie, who joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981, had more than 18,000 hours of flying experience. Co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, was contemplating marriage after having just graduated to the cockpit of a Boeing 777. He has drawn scrutiny after the revelation that he and another pilot invited two female passengers to sit in the cockpit during a flight in 2011. Neighbors and friends interviewed this week said Fariq played futsal, a modified form of soccer popular in Southeast Asia, with neighborhood youngsters, and that he paid for their sports shirts. Zaharie was known for cooking food for community events. — link
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Post by PurplePuppy on Mar 16, 2014 23:39:40 GMT -5
The Baseless Rush to Blame the Pilots of Flight 370Malaysian leaders have turned the airmen into scapegoats without a single persuasive fact. Meanwhile, the government’s culpability in the loss of 239 people grows. Commercial aviation has never faced a crisis as grave as the one presented by Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370. At a time when flying has never been safer airplanes just don’t go missing without trace. And yet one has, taking 239 people with it. Vanished. Public confidence in the governance of international air travel is shaken. The reputation of two world-esteemed companies, Boeing and Rolls Royce, is at stake. Not only that, but the whole technical hubris of the age of super-connectivity has been rendered hollow by the discovery that, in fact, we are not being watched all of the time wherever we are on the planet. There are, it turns out, vast voids as little watched over as the moon. This sad drama has been compounded by an engulfing fog of speculation, frequently reaching a tone of hysteria. People are spooked. They want information that nobody is able to provide. We have come to expect quick enlightenment. That isn’t possible. We demand transparency and coherence. They’re not happening. What little evidence there is has been contaminated by the performance of the Malaysian authorities. They resemble a bunch of dumb cops blundering over a crime scene, arguing over what it reveals and what it does not and competing for attention. In a sadly familiar ploy of the pursued, the prime minister himself was put up to float a theory so far lacking in any persuasive facts: the pilots did it. Dead men have no defense. In a sadly familiar ploy of the pursued, the prime minister himself was put up to float a theory so far lacking in any persuasive facts: the pilots did it. So, after nine days, what can really be understood about the forensics of this tragedy? There are two apparently solid facts that condition everything else: After their last routine exchange with controllers the pilots never sent any Mayday or distress message. The captain’s last reported words were calm and normal: “All right, good night.” The transponders – the airplane’s continual link with the outside world, receiving and sending information about its position, were turned off. Essentially, these two triggers ensured that the Boeing 777 would disappear. That could be either by design, by deliberate human intervention, or as a result of a technical failure. There were two other ways for the airplane to automatically report its progress. All modern jets have computers constantly monitoring their systems and, in a limited way, able to send status reports to flight control centers on the ground. The 777 was equipped with Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS). In the case of Flight 370, no messages sent to Boeing and engine-maker Rolls Royce indicated a problem. After a whole week went by, it emerged that the 777 was also linked to a satellite system operated from London by Inmarsat. For some hours after all other communications stopped, the airplane was sending a “ping” recording its presence to a satellite. (The Financial Times reported that Malaysian Airlines had not paid for the service, and the pinging was “an empty signal” – the minimum remaining after a deactivated automatic data link.) What is interesting about this ability of the airplane to monitor and report its health, or otherwise, is that if Flight 370 had been an Airbus, and not a Boeing, the volume and quality of the information would have been different. The cockpits of Boeing and Airbus airliners reflect a fundamental difference in the philosophy of how an airplane is commanded. Boeing, in designing the 777, held to its traditional idea that a pilot should always have the ultimate authority over the machine. Airbus, on the other hand, believes that more authority should be placed in the computerized flight management system because it is less likely to make mistakes than a human. There is nothing in the safety record of either company to claim that one is better than the other. However, when Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the South Atlantic in 2009, investigators had telling clues to its condition within hours. This was because the Airbus A330 had sent 24 so-called fault messages via satellite to a maintenance base in Paris. These were as a result of its Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitoring system (ECAM), which itself reflects the precedence given by Airbus to automated flight controls. It turned out that these messages described an incremental shutdown of the airplane’s flight control computers, requiring the pilots to take over. The computers were being fed anomalous data because of a failed air speed gauge. The pilots, poorly trained, bungled the hand over, and lost control. Had the Malaysian 777 been able to transmit such a detailed record of its behavior before disappearing, we would have been more able to discount or pursue possible and imminent mechanical failure – like, for example, any gradual loss of cabin pressure because of a leak in the fuselage structure or a problem in the cargo hold. What was happening in the cockpit of Flight 370? Turning off the transponders was a simple step for the crew, just a matter of a few twists to the left of a dial placed between the two pilots—not accessing some circuit breaker above. That would be a very strange thing for them to do. It would, however, be the first thing a hijacker who got access to the cockpit would want to do. Yet why would any hijacker direct an airplane out into the great void beyond surveillance and without making demands for the safe release of the passengers? A suicide pact by the crew has been raised, but in the two most recent suicidal crashes the pilots pushed down the nose and dived to the water instantly. This was the case with an Egypt Air Boeing 767 soon after leaving JFK airport in 1999 and a Silk Air Boeing 737 flying from Jakarta to Singapore in 1997. A suicidal pilot does not prolong the agony. When it comes the psychological behavior of pilots, the Malaysians are doing the reverse of what the Egyptian and Indonesian authorities did in those two crashes. In each case the idea of suicide was anathema to the national cultures. The authorities contested the verdicts of the crash investigators and, instead, asserted (without credibility) that the crashes were caused by mechanical failure. The Malaysian authorities are doing the opposite: impugning the aircrew without any tangible evidence. First with the prime minister’s assertions of deliberate actions, and then by staging police raids on the captain’s home. One TV so-called analyst extrapolated from the fact that the captain had a self-built flight simulator in his home that he might have been practicing left turns. Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was one of the airline’s longest serving pilots, logging 18,000 hours in the cockpit. He didn’t need to rehearse any turns; he had made many thousands of them. The simulator was probably used to keep him current with software updates to the 777’s systems. Pilots often use simulators to keep their airmanship sharp – in these days of automated flight decks there is a danger of losing some of the old “seat of the pants” reflexes that can be crucial in an emergency. 140316-flight370-embedYouTube Some sources have reported with a straight face that the Boeing 777 soared to a height of 45,000 feet as whoever was in control deliberately sought to disable passengers. First, at that height the airplane would be way beyond its operational ceiling and uncontrollable. Second, at this early stage in its flight it was loaded with fuel that would have made it a struggle to reach even 38,000 feet. How safe is the 777? There was a brief flurry of alarm when it emerged that the Federal Aviation Administration had issued an Airworthiness Directive after inspectors found corrosion in one model of the 777 that could have led to a structural failure and loss of cabin pressure. It turned out that the Malaysian 777 was of a model not affected. In any case, Airworthiness Directives are issued all the time – they are the direct result of experience with the daily operations of airplanes, and they are the front line that ensures that prospective problems are detected early. The 777’s safety record is exceptional. One way of illustrating this is to compare it to the much smaller 737. Since it first entered airline service in 1968 more than 4,200 people have been killed in 737 crashes. Until last summer the 777, which entered service in 1995, had not killed a single passenger. (Last year’s crash in San Francisco was caused by pilot error.) For fairness and clarity, this comparison must be qualified. The 737 is a world-wide daily workhorse on domestic routes, sometimes making as many as seven flights a day. Ten thousand 737s have been either delivered or ordered, and the accident statistics are influenced by the fact that many older 737s fly in regions like Africa with lax safety oversight and where crashes are too frequent. More than 1,170 777s have been delivered and they fly long routes with far fewer flights being made per day, a less punishing regime. Nonetheless, the 777 is of a far later generation in its technology than the 737 and consequently benefits from advances made in its structure. In the case of the Malaysian 777, was there a problem in the cargo hold? Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board discovered that there was an unusually large consignment of lithium-ion batteries on the cargo manifest. This technology is more recently known as the cause of fires that led to the grounding of the Boeing 787 fleet, but lithium-ion batteries for personal electronic devices have been a frequent cause of emergencies in cargo holds and baggage handling. They are prone to overheating and combustion. The FAA’s Office of Security and Hazardous Materials Safety records many of these incidents in the U.S., including a fire caused by a battery on a self-propelled surf board on a FedEx airplane. If there had been a battery-induced fire in the cargo hold of Flight 370, automatic smoke warnings would have alerted the pilots and they surely would have had time to report an emergency. There is, however, a relevant example of a large airplane being lost over the Indian Ocean after a cargo fire. In 1987, a South African Airways 747 with a 159 people aboard suffered an uncontrollable cargo fire that began with computers packed in polystyrene. The airplane fell into a deep part of the ocean east of Mauritius. Although the searchers had what they regard as the single most important aid to an undersea mission—a starting point based off the airplane’s last known position—it took two years to recover the flight recorder from depths as great as 15,000 feet. To be sure, the technology of submersibles and of deep water searches, driven largely by trophy and treasure hunters, has improved immensely since the 1980s, as the successful locating and recovery of the wreck of Flight 447, also after two years, shows. The search now being conducted for Flight 370 includes the far reaches of the Indian Ocean where the depth can reach 20,000 feet. In that case the challenge of finding it will be unprecedented. It will probably take years before the investigation reaches an outcome. Right now it requires a skillful combination of dedicated people working with many different disciplines, scientific, forensic, managerial, informational, humanitarian, military, legal, and political. It will involve different languages and cultures. Commercial interests have to be reconciled with the public need for clarity and integrity. So far the way this task has been handled is not encouraging. The Malaysians have asked for the help of 25 countries in the expanded search. Now nations are being asked to check their radar records, which is strange since if anything as large as a 777 had been flying rogue through busy international air corridors and over militarily sensitive sites would have triggered alarms instantly. link
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Post by popcorn on Mar 17, 2014 11:37:37 GMT -5
Israel Prepares for Possible Attack by Hijacked Malaysian Plane As the possibility--however remote--grows that Malaysia Airlines flight 370 may have been hijacked and taken to a hidden location, Israeli authorities are preparing for the possibility that the hijackers might attempt to use the Boeing 777 to mount an attack. According to the Times of Israel, Israel's Channel 2 has revealed that Israeli air defenses have been boosted, and approaching civilian aircraft will be asked to identify themselves far earlier. read more: www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/03/16/Israel-Prepares-for-Attack-by-Hijacked-Malaysian-Plane
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 17, 2014 16:44:11 GMT -5
Wall Street Journal Examines How Possible Sabotage to Missing Jet Would Have Been ConductedMar. 16, 2014 10:44am Oliver Darcy A new video produced by the Wall Street Journal explains how possible sabotage to the missing Malaysia Airlines jet would have likely been conducted. According to the Journal, the first thing likely disabled was the plane’s transponder. This would have likely required unplugging circuits in the cockpit. Next, the Journal says it’s likely the flight management system — called ACARS — was disabled. To shut this off, an individual would have had to issue a set of keystrokes on one of the two flight management computers, according to the Journal. Finally, to keep flying undetected, two individuals would have had to work together to disable the satellite communication, the Journal reported. This would have required an individual entering the plane’s lower deck where the electronics bay is located, while another continued to fly the aircraft, the video said. link
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 17, 2014 23:31:42 GMT -5
Questions Over Absence of Cellphone Calls From Missing Flight’s PassengersBy KEITH BRADSHER MARCH 17, 2014 SEPANG, Malaysia — When hijackers took control of four airplanes on Sept. 11, 2001, and sent them hurtling low across the countryside toward New York and Washington, frantic passengers and flight attendants turned on cellphones and air phones and began making calls to loved ones, airline managers and the authorities. But when Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 did a wide U-turn in the middle of the night over the Gulf of Thailand and then spent nearly half an hour swooping over two large Malaysian cities and various towns and villages, there was apparently silence. As far as investigators have been able to determine, there have been no phone calls, Twitter or Weibo postings, Instagram photos or any other communication from anyone aboard the aircraft since it was diverted. There has been no evidence “of any number they’re trying to contact, but anyway they are still checking and there are millions of records for them to process,” said Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, the chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, at a news conference on Monday. Reconstructing the Plane’s Path The main communications systems of the Malaysia Airlines plane were turned off about 40 minutes into the flight, forcing investigators to try to piece together the plane’s location from other systems. Transponder Secondary Radar and Text Updates Air traffic controllers typically know a plane’s location based on what is called secondary radar, which requests information from the plane’s transponder. A plane also uses radio or satellite signals to send regular updates through Acars, the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System. Both of those systems were turned off. Primary Radar Two Malaysian military radar stations tracked a plane using primary radar, which sends out radio signals and listens for echoes that bounce off objects in the sky. Primary radar does not require a plane to have a working transponder. SATELLITE Satellite Communications If Acars updates are turned off, the plane still sends a “keep-alive” signal, that can be received by satellites. The signal does not indicate location, but it can help to narrow down the plane’s position. A satellite picked up four or five signals from the airliner, about one per hour, after it left the range of military radar. By JOSH KELLER, SERGIO PEÇANHA, MATTHEW L. WALD Sources: R. John Hansman Jr., Massachusetts Institute of Technology; American officials The apparent absence of any word from the aircraft in an era of nearly ubiquitous mobile communications has prompted considerable debate among pilots, telecommunications specialists and others. Most of the people aboard the plane were from Malaysia or China, two countries where mobile phone use is extremely prevalent, especially among affluent citizens who take international flights. Some theorize the silence signifies that the plane was flying too high for personal electronic devices to be used. Others wonder whether people aboard the flight even tried to make calls or send messages. According to military radar, the aircraft was flying extremely high shortly after its turn — as much as 45,000 feet, above the certified maximum altitude of 43,100 feet for the Boeing 777-200. It then descended as it crossed Peninsular Malaysia, flying as low as 23,000 feet before moving up to 29,500 feet and cruising there. Vincent Lau, an electronics professor specializing in wireless communications at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said that the altitude might have prevented passengers’ cellphones from connecting to base stations on the ground even if the phones were turned on during the flight or had been left on since departure. The hijacked planes on Sept. 11 were flying very low toward urban targets when passengers and flight attendants made calls from those aircraft, he said. Base station signals spread out considerably over distance. So cellphones in a plane a few miles up, like Flight 370, would receive little if any signal, he said. Base station design has improved since the Sept. 11 attacks to provide better, more focused coverage of specific areas on the ground. But that also means somewhat less signal intensity is wasted in directions where callers are unlikely to be located, such as directly overhead, Mr. Lau added. Lam Wong-hing, a wireless communications specialist at the University of Hong Kong, said that cellphones transmit at one watt or less, while base stations typically transmit at 20 watts and sometimes much more. So even if a cellphone showed that it was receiving a signal while aloft, it might not be able to transmit a signal that was strong enough to make a connection, he said. The metal in an aircraft reduces cellphone signals somewhat. If a passenger had pressed a cellphone against a plastic window with a line of sight to a cellphone tower then it is possible a connection might have been made even at a fairly high altitude, because plastic barely blocks a cellphone signal at all, Dr. Lam said. Estimated range of plane with its remaining fuel if it was flying at the plane’s maximum speed: Kazakhstan Mongolia Uzbek. Kyrg. Tajik. 60 min. of fuel 20 min. Afghan. Approx. area within the top and bottom 20-min. ranges: 2 million square miles Pakistan China Nepal Bangladesh India Myanmar Laos Approx. time after takeoff Thailand Vietnam +40 min. Last contact with civilian radar. First week search area Malaysia Kuala Lumpur airport +1 hour 34 min. Last contact with military radar. Indonesia Position of satellite that received last known signal from plane. +7.5 hours Red arcs represent possible positions of plane when it transmitted last signal to satellite. INDIAN OCEAN Plane may have flown up to another hour after its last satellite transmission. Australia By SERGIO PEÇANHA, ARCHIE TSE and TIM WALLACE Source: Malaysian government Many aircraft carry air phones using radio or satellite technology, and the Malaysia Airlines jet was equipped with them in business class. The plane continued to send satellite pings for nearly seven hours after it was apparently diverted. But air phones these days tend to be part of an aircraft’s in-flight entertainment system. If someone deliberately diverted a plane and turned off its transponder and other communications equipment, that person is likely to have disabled the in-flight entertainment system so that passengers could not figure out from the map that they were flying in the wrong direction, said a telecommunications expert who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media. If the entertainment system was turned off, the air phones also would not work, the expert said. The Chinese news media have reported that there have been some instances of people calling cellphones of passengers of the missing flight and hearing ring tones, sometimes days after the plane disappeared. Telecom experts have dismissed that as evidence that the cellphones are still in use, saying that a ring tone may be heard while the international phone system is searching for a phone and trying to connect a call. There have been no reports of anyone answering calls to the cellphones of passengers or flight attendants aboard the plane. Investigators do not know if anyone aboard the plane even tried to make a call. Passengers would have quickly become unconscious if the plane depressurized as it soared to an unusually high altitude right after the turnaround, pilots said. Whoever diverted the plane could have disabled the release of oxygen masks. Dr. James Ho, an associate professor of medicine at Hong Kong University, said that death could come within minutes if someone were the equivalent of outdoors at 45,000 feet. But without information on the speed of depressurization, it is hard to predict the medical consequences, he said. A table used by pilots for “time of useful consciousness” without an oxygen supplement at various altitudes shows only nine to 15 seconds at 45,000 feet, compared with five to 10 minutes at 22,000 feet. Mobile phone service is widely available in sizable areas of western China and eastern Kazakhstan, raising the question of why nobody from the plane has tried to make a call if it did fly north and land safely, instead of flying out into the Indian Ocean until it ran out of fuel. If the flight did land safely with the passengers and flight crew still healthy, whoever was in charge of the aircraft would also face a formidable task in any attempt to provide food, water and shelter for more than 200 people. link
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 18, 2014 0:02:27 GMT -5
Missing Malaysia flight's path reportedly diverted through computer systemPublished March 17, 2014 FoxNews.com The mysterious turn that diverted the missing Malaysia Airlines flight off of its scheduled route to Beijing was programmed into a computer system on board, the New York Times reported Monday, meaning it was not executed manually by one of the pilots at the controls. The revelation lends more credence to a theory by investigators searching for the jet that the Boeing 777 was deliberately diverted. The Times reports it is unclear if the change in course was reprogrammed before or after the plane took off, but the change was likely made by someone in the cockpit with knowledge of airplane systems. The search for Flight 370, which vanished early March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, has now been expanded deep into the northern and southern hemispheres. Australian vessels scoured the southern Indian Ocean and China offered 21 of its satellites to help Malaysia in the unprecedented hunt, but no trace of the plane has been found. Investigators say the jet flew off-course for hours. They haven't ruled out hijacking, sabotage, or pilot suicide, and are checking the backgrounds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members -- as well as the ground crew -- for personal problems, psychological issues or links to terrorists. China's state news agency reported Tuesday that background checks on all its nationals on board the missing Malaysian jetliner uncovered no links to terrorism. Xinhua said the Chinese ambassador to Malaysia made the announcement to media in Kuala Lumpur. There has been some speculation that Uighur separatists in far western Xinjiang province might have been involved with the flight's disappearance. The statement will lessen that speculation. Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said finding the plane was still the main focus, and he did not rule out that it might be discovered intact. "The fact that there was no distress signal, no ransom notes, no parties claiming responsibility, there is always hope," Hishammuddin said at a news conference. Malaysian Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said an initial investigation indicated that the last words ground controllers heard from the plane -- "All right, good night" -- were spoken by the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid. A voice other than that of Fariq or the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, it would have been clearest indication yet of something amiss in the cockpit before the flight went off-course. Malaysian officials said earlier that those words came after one of the jetliner's data communications systems -- the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System -- had been switched off, suggesting the voice from the cockpit may have been trying to deceive ground controllers. However, Ahmad said that while the last data transmission from ACARS -- which gives plane performance and maintenance information -- came before that, it was still unclear at what point the system was switched off, making any implications of the timing murkier. The new information opened the possibility that both ACARS and the plane's transponders, which make the plane visible to civilian air traffic controllers, were turned off at about the same time. It also suggests that the message delivered from the cockpit could have preceded any of the severed communications. Turning off a transponder is easy and, in rare instances, there may be good reason to do so in flight -- for example, if it were reporting incorrect data. Authorities have pointed to the shutdown of the transponders and the ACARS as evidence that someone with a detailed knowledge of the plane was involved. However, Bob Coffman, an airline captain and former 777 pilot, told the Associated Press that kind of information is not hard to find in the digital age. Authorities confiscated a flight simulator from the pilot's home Saturday and also visited the home of the co-pilot in what Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar initially said were the first police visits to those homes. But the government, which has come under criticism abroad for missteps and foot-dragging in releasing information, issued a statement Monday contradicting that account, saying police first visited the pilots' homes as early as March 9, the day after the flight disappeared. Coffman said the flight simulator could signify nothing more than the pilot's zeal for his job. "There are people for whom flying is all consuming," he said, noting some pilots like to spend their off-duty hours on simulators at home, commenting on pilot blogs or playing fighter-pilot video games. Although Malaysian authorities requested that all nations with citizens aboard the flight conduct background checks on them, it wasn't clear how thoroughly the checks were done in Malaysia. The father of a Malaysian aviation engineer aboard the plane said police had not approached anyone in the family about his 29-year-old son, Mohamad Khairul Amri Selamat, though he added that there was no reason to suspect him. "It is impossible for him to be involved in something like this," said Selamat Omar, 60. "We are keeping our hopes high. I am praying hard that the plane didn't crash and that he will be back soon." French investigators arriving in Kuala Lumpur to lend expertise from the two-year search for an Air France jet that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 said they were able to rely on distress signals. But that vital tool is missing in the Malaysia Airlines mystery because the flight's communications were deliberately silenced ahead of its disappearance, investigators say. "It's very different from the Air France case. The Malaysian situation is much more difficult," said Jean Paul Troadec, a special adviser to France's aviation accident investigation bureau. Malaysia's government sent diplomatic cables to all countries in the search area, seeking more planes and ships and asking for any radar data that might help. The search involves 26 countries and initially focused on seas on either side of Peninsular Malaysia, in the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca. Xinhua, China's state news agency, reported Tuesday that authorities have begun searching for the plane on Chinese territory. There were 154 Chinese among the 227 passengers aboard Flight 370. The vast scope of the search was underlined when a U.S. destroyer that already has helped cover 15,000 square miles of water dropped out. The Navy concluded that long-range aircraft were more efficient in looking for the plane or its debris than the USS Kidd and its helicopters, so effective Tuesday the ship was leaving the Indian Ocean search area, said Navy Cmdr. William Marks, spokesman for the 7th Fleet. Navy P-3 and P-8 surveillance aircraft remain available, and can cover 15,000 square miles in a nine-hour flight. Over the weekend, Prime Minister Najib Razak said investigators determined that a satellite picked up a faint signal from the aircraft about 7 1/2 hours after takeoff. The signal indicated the plane would have been somewhere on a vast arc stretching from Kazakhstan in Central Asia to the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean. The southern Indian Ocean is the world's third-deepest and one of the most remote stretches of water, with little radar coverage. Hishammuddin said Monday that searches in both the northern and southern stretches of the arc had begun, and that countries from Australia in the south, China in the north and Kazakhstan in the west had joined the hunt. Had the plane gone northwest to Central Asia, it would have crossed over countries with busy airspace. Some experts believe it more likely would have gone south, although Malaysian authorities are not ruling out the northern corridor and are eager for radar data that might confirm or rule out that route. The northern corridor crosses through countries including China, India and Pakistan -- all of which have said they have no sign of the plane. China, where two-thirds of the passengers were from, is providing several planes and 21 satellites for the search, Premier Li Keqiang said in a statement. "Factors involved in the incident continue to multiply, the area of search-and-rescue continues to broaden, and the level of difficulty increases, but as long as there is one thread of hope, we will continue an all-out effort," Li said. Indonesia focused on Indian Ocean waters west of Sumatra, air force spokesman Rear Marshall Hadi Tjahjanto said. Australia agreed to Malaysia's request to take the lead in searching the southern Indian Ocean with four Orion maritime planes that would be joined by New Zealand and U.S. aircraft, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said. link
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