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naturalplastic
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15 Mar 2014, 1:13 pm

TEN thousand feet is the rule of thumb, though 18 thousand is not uncommon, for the length of runways of the international airport in your nearest big city (Heathrow, OHare, Dulles, La Guardia, whatever).

Thats how much runway any big jet liner takes. I dont think 777's are unique in needing more. The point is that they need as much as any other liner- which is alot. There are plenty of big airports in the world- but airports rarely invite air pirates to use them.

Its not that the runway size is rare. Its that a runway that size is hard to keep away from prying eyes.

Even third world countries have civilian international airports. And Kirgizstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkomen, have each probably inherited jet-age airforce bases from the old Soviet Union.

The point is that a private criminal group isnt going to be able to accomidate a stolen widebody liner by landing it on some rancher's private dirt runway like its a crop duster.

But if a whole country ( ie its ruling regime) is in cahoots with the hijackers than the hijackers would presumably be able to use a conventional Dulles-type airport (or more likely -a military airbase-to keep it under wraps) in that country to land thier stolen plane.

Also- to get to an Islamic state in central asia from Malaysia via Thailand would mean that you would have to go through over a 1000 miles of Chinese airspace. That would explain why OTHER nations' radar didnt detect it since it was deep inside Tibet for most of the flight. But it raises the question of why DIDNT China's radar detect it? Is China also part of the conspiracy?

The unlikely is starting to seem likely since we seemed to be running out of normal explanations.



collectoritis
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15 Mar 2014, 4:01 pm

-hijackers (most likely but as discussed they'd need to land somewhere.......very sinister to think of the passengers , their fate :(

-suicide by pilot (the captain helped the hijackers , of course co-pilot was helpless)

-cold air like in Helios , where everyone fainted (don't buy it , the transponder would still be on until crash occurs)

-hole in the roof or wear/tear related (like with Southwest Airlines , prolly not the case either)



cyberdad
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15 Mar 2014, 10:43 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
If the cell phones all work then the plane could not be on the bottom of the ocean (where it would most likely be if it crashed).

One of my work colleagues confirmed that her cousin back in China had rung her missing sister's phone on Flight MH 370 and it is indeed still ringing.

naturalplastic wrote:
North WEST of Thailand is probably what they meant. Four thousand mile northwest of Malaysia via Thailand could put it in one of the several Islamic former Soviet republics (now seperate countries).
'

Yes, N/W not not N/E...the latest suspicion is the pilots are involved as whoever took the measures to switch of the plane's communications/tracking is somebody with knowledge of the aircraft.



naturalplastic
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16 Mar 2014, 5:03 am

A friend I was hangin' with tonight said that too. That she heard that they now suspect a pilot was involved.


Thats interesting about what your friend said about the phone.

But what's also interesting is- well- 230 some passengers- 7 billion people in the world- that you KNOW someone with a cousin who is on that plane!

I feel bad for this coworker of yours and his family- send him/her my best wishes.

But dang! Thats only three of my seven. I'm on the other side of the planet, and yet I'm only three degrees of seperation from someone on that plane! And I'm not even Kevin Bacon.

Thats rather mind-blowing.



collectoritis
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16 Mar 2014, 8:35 am

They would gun down people who misbehave upon landing and they could've asked ransom for the rest , makes no difference as they'd earn a ton for the rest anyway.

Pirate airport (Afghanistans airspace is heavily guarded so I don't think they would risk it) would be paid generously for their help and plane would be re-fueled and filled to the rim with explosives. They might not have had enough time/money at the moment to find a war head though but over time you never know.

It's easy to say "they would've fought back on the plane" with them being possibly armed to the teeth and perhaps a bomb threat too on top of things (how would they know they're lying about it , they couldn't know for sure)



Tollorin
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16 Mar 2014, 12:38 pm

collectoritis wrote:
They would gun down people who misbehave upon landing and they could've asked ransom for the rest , makes no difference as they'd earn a ton for the rest anyway.

Pirate airport (Afghanistans airspace is heavily guarded so I don't think they would risk it) would be paid generously for their help and plane would be re-fueled and filled to the rim with explosives. They might not have had enough time/money at the moment to find a war head though but over time you never know.

It's easy to say "they would've fought back on the plane" with them being possibly armed to the teeth and perhaps a bomb threat too on top of things (how would they know they're lying about it , they couldn't know for sure)

Armed with what? A knife, maybe, but not much more. They had to get through custom lines and a gun is hazardous in a plane.



Prof_Pretorius
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16 Mar 2014, 12:57 pm

They're now saying it was a case of pilot suicide. He could have locked the co-pilot out of the cockpit, or killed him. The mental image of passengers banging on the cockpit door, pleading for their lives is chilling indeed.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... omite.html

(Article contains some nice illustrations, if I do say so.)


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16 Mar 2014, 7:01 pm

More likely to be flown out over the Indian Ocean rather than to Central Asia because it would have been picked up on radar now. I'm inclined to say the aircraft was hijacked or it was a pilot suicide followed by a flight on autopilot.

Regardless of what the populist and American media says, Islamic terrorism is very low down on the list of possibilities at the moment unless the intelligence services have a huge gap in their knowledge.

I have wondered if the aircraft has landed in Diego Garcia and governments are keeping quiet about it. Antarctica is probably too far for the fuel it is carrying.



Tollorin
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16 Mar 2014, 7:05 pm

Prof_Pretorius wrote:
They're now saying it was a case of pilot suicide. He could have locked the co-pilot out of the cockpit, or killed him. The mental image of passengers banging on the cockpit door, pleading for their lives is chilling indeed.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... omite.html

(Article contains some nice illustrations, if I do say so.)

This editorial nuance that.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/03/pilot_zaharie_ahmad_shah_supported_anwar_ibrahim_was_he_a_terrorist.html
There is most likely some political motivation behind this accusation.



cyberdad
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17 Mar 2014, 12:31 am

To the suicide pilot theory, the latest news suggests the signals were received from the ground!!
A new theory emerges that at least one of them landed the plane in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-up ... 6856429922



ruveyn
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17 Mar 2014, 9:17 am

What about the Alaskan Hexagon?

ruveyn



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17 Mar 2014, 11:16 am

Were there one scintilla of credible evidence of hijacking, you can bet that Malaysia would be pushing that line--findings of suicide by pilot are invariably something that airlines, and countries resist tooth and nail.

Hijacking appears unlikely for many reasons:

First, who were they? Have identified the two stolen passport holders as asylum seekers, who are our next candidates for hijackers?

Next, what was their motivation? Whoever was flying that plane knew what they were doing (ACARS and the transponder were both switched off, the aircraft appears to have descended to perhaps as low as 5,000 feet to avoid radar. If their intention was to hijack the aircraft and make a political demand, where were they headed, and why didn't they arrive? If their intention was to create a terrorist incident, why didn't they just fly back to KL, or the Singapore and enact another 9/11?

How did hijackers get into the cockpit (and while we're on the subject, what were they armed with, and how did those get aboard)? That is a difficult feat with today's armored cockpits. Even if they waited for a pilot to emerge to use the lav, that would have given enough time in a struggle for the pilot at the controls to tune the transponder to 7500.

Why was ACARS turned off? A hijacker would conceivably want to silence the transponder and avoid radar, if seeking to move the aircraft to a remote location, but why turn off ACARS? A hijacker *wants* you to know that the aircraft has been stole; a terrorist *wants* the demise of the aircraft to be as destructive as possible. Silencing ACARS speaks to two things: a deep knowledge of aircraft systems, and a deep intention of secrecy.

If hijacked, why was the last communication from the aircraft the first officer's, "all right, good night" when leaving Malaysian airspace?

Why didn't the aircraft arrive anywhere? Whoever turned the aircraft off course knew what they were doing. They should have been readily able to fly the aircraft to their intended destination. If the pilots recaptured control of the aircraft, why did they not turn communications back on?

Suicide is a much simpler explanation.

One pilot, with suicidal intent, operates the flight normally through take off and ascent to cruise, all the way to the end of Malaysian airspace. He then waits for his colleague to go to the lav, locks him out, pulls the circuit breakers for communications, transponder, ACARS, and possibly the CVR and FDR. He manouevers through Malaysian and Indonesian airspace to avoid detection, and then If he's merciful he then vents the cabin and lets the aircraft fly until fuel exhaustion.

It's consistent with the observed fact pattern, it relies on no extraordinary circumstances (beyond the pilot's suicidal intent), and it has precedent.


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Prof_Pretorius
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17 Mar 2014, 11:58 am

Finally, an article with a graphic that narrows down the possible runway sites to 634 ! !!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ction.html

Also the 'experts' ask where do you land a 200 foot long airliner ??

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missin ... ded-n54896


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18 Mar 2014, 12:54 am

Dead men do not fly below radar. If it was a political suicide, nose down after takeoff, slam into the sea, or a government building.

Screw You! I took it and there is nothing you can do but shoot down the passengers. The shoot down did not happen, the plane flew on.

The 777 is not made for flying below radar, the air is thicker, it uses more fuel, but it can be done.

I remember huge bombers over New Mexico, very low, hugging the ground, following the terrain through the mountains. They were also flying slow, which concerves fuel.

Their goal was to evade Russian or Chinese ground radar during a war. So it can be done.

Now as for claims from our trillion dollar defense contractors, "If it is as large as a basketball, and this side of the moon, we are tracking it..." The ability to read license plates from space, follow one man through a city, now seem like, can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

9/11, we cannot find the planes we know were hyjacked, because the Transponders were turned off.

The same people claim they can stop a wave of sub launched atomic warheads, coming from a hundred miles off shore. It would only take a few to generate an electromagnetic pulse that would fry every electronic device, and have sparks shooting out of bed springs.

The thing that stands out, someone has shown it can be done.

The 777 does pack some cargo, and one coming from Japan could be shot down and replaced by another with the same Transponder signal, and fly over America without question. Japan is known for sneak attacks.

North Korea published a plan to drop atomic warheads from freighters off the American east and west coast.

The resulting tsunami would take out most of the population. Bomb them, they all go off, try to remove them, they all go off, and proving who put them there would be impossible.

Russia is our strong enemy, thousands of nukes. China only has 200, North Korea maybe ten.

The strong enemy can overpower your defenses, the weak enemy must find a way through them.

My guess is it went north, landed on time, but in western China, and vanished into a military hanger, cave, to be studied, and for future use.

China is confronting US power in the East Asia Region.



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18 Mar 2014, 7:00 am

Every system powered by electricity on an aircraft has a circuit breaker that can be disabled in the event of an electrical short which leads to fire. For fire safety, you do not want to take away circuit breakers. There are many other ways that pilots can cause harm if they have nefarious intent. Do we trust these guys to fly million dollar airplanes over an ocean to the far side of the planet, but not touch the radios? Fixed GPS transceivers should be installed on the wingtips for aircraft tracking.

Inventor wrote:
China is confronting US power in the East Asia Region.


MARCH 5, 2014 - China Announces 12.2% Increase in Military Budget. Oh my.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/world ... udget.html



Last edited by Shrapnel on 18 Mar 2014, 7:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ann2011
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18 Mar 2014, 7:00 am