[Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370]

Trace · March 2014

Thread title is bare for a reason. Potentially a very bad situation.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/08/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane-missing/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26496673

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/searchers-scour-south-china-sea-signs-missing-jet-n47516

I don't know much because I've been somewhat busy today but here's a basic timeline.

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2014/03/08/Missing-MAS-flight-Timeline/

I've been hearing weather wasn't an issue and the plane itself

"It doesn't sound very good," retired American Airlines Capt. Jim Tilmon told CNN's "AC360." He noted that the route is mostly overland, which means that there would be plenty of antennae, radar and radios to contact the plane.

"I've been trying to come up with every scenario that I could just to explain this away, but I haven't been very successful."

He said the plane is "about as sophisticated as any commercial airplane could possibly be," with an excellent safety record.

Take from that what you will.

At the moment speculation is basically useless so please refrain from screaming terrorism until it's confirmed.

However lots of you might have more time than me right now and I suspect I'm not the only one with an ear to the ground on this so lets keep up to date on this because holy shit I hope it's just like a mechanical malfunction or something.

Burtletoy · March 2014

At least two of the passengers on the flight were using stolen passports, according to the live blog over at the Mirror.

Trace · March 2014

Burtletoy wrote: »

At least two of the passengers on the flight were using stolen passports, according to the live blog over at the Mirror.

That's a pretty bad sign.

Kagera · March 2014

I don't know how much to read into that I figure people travel under stolen identities everyday I don't think it is real evidence of anything nefarious.

Losing contact after a sudden incident also seems less than rare if my two hour dive into lastwords.com is anything to go by.

Sucks either way.

ronzo · March 2014

Total loss of contact without warning means catastrophic failure of the airframe occurred. There is just simply no other issue that would cause total communication loss with the amount of equipment a modern jetliner has.

The 777 is one of the safest (if not the safest) widebody aircraft, with only the Asiana flight last year causing any deaths, and that was due to pilot error.

Kagera · March 2014

Didn't this particular plane happen to be damaged in an incident before? Could it be a case of improper repair?

Kagera · March 2014

Also apparently they are either reusing the mh370 flight code or google is wrong because googling mh370 gives you a result showing a flight that is on time to arrive in Beijing in four hours...

Yep they use the same designation for the new flight which seems kinda eerie to me but only for irrational reasons.

Trace · March 2014

cnn.com/2014/03/08/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane-missing/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The closest thing to a clue in the search for a missing commercial jetliner is traces of oil found in the ocean in the same area where contact was lost with the Malaysia Airlines flight.

A Vietnamese search plane spotted the oil while flying over the search area. The oil slicks are between 6 and 9 miles long and are suspected to be from the missing plane, the Vietnam government's official news agency reported. The traces of oil were found about 90 miles south of Tho Chu Island, the report said.

Tofystedeth · March 2014

Heard on the BBC this morning on my way in to work they might have some radar tracking information indicating the plane turned around at some point.

ronya · March 2014

Photos of the oil posted thus far look indistinguishable from the algal blooms that are a regular feature of the south china sea

ronya · March 2014

...huh

The BBC has confirmed that a man falsely using an Italian passport and a man falsely using an Austrian passport purchased tickets at the same time, and were both booked on the same onward flight from Beijing to Europe on Saturday.

Both had purchased their tickets from China Southern Airlines, which shared the flight with Malaysia Airlines, and they had consecutive ticket numbers.

The real owners reportedly had their passports stolen in Thailand in recent years.

Trace · March 2014

Okay now that's sort of suspicious.

Rchanen · March 2014

Trace wrote: »

Okay now that's sort of suspicious.

True but could be drug smuggling, intel agents, etc. etc. If they are terrorists planning to do a hijack and crash, why book the flight from Beijing to Europe?

The BBC was speculating illegal immigration.

quovadis13 · March 2014

If this was a terrorist attack, some group would likely have claimed responsibility for it by now. If you are going to do awful things to send a message, you would obviously want to get that message out instead of keeping everyone in the dark about what happened

DasUberEdward · March 2014

quovadis13 wrote: »

If this was a terrorist attack, some group would likely have claimed responsibility for it by now. If you are going to do awful things to send a message, you would obviously want to get that message out instead of keeping everyone in the dark about what happened

Unless they did something wrong or haven't completed their plan.

Trace · March 2014

Or it was just a test run.

DasUberEdward · March 2014

That thought is too scary to seriously consider.

Fencingsax · March 2014

Don't worry, the people's whose jobs it is to consider it are already doing it.

Casual · March 2014

The main suspect here is mechanical failure. What I really hope it isn't is the Chinese enforcing their ludicrous claim to the entire south china sea. I mean its unlikely that the Chinese are mad enough to shoot down a civilian airliner but god things could get ugly if they have.

Fencingsax · March 2014

Casual wrote: »

The main suspect here is mechanical failure. What I really hope it isn't is the Chinese enforcing their ludicrous claim to the entire south china sea. I mean its unlikely that the Chinese are mad enough to shoot down a civilian airliner but god things could get ugly if they have.

Considering it was a regular scheduled flight from KLM to Beijing, I'm gonna guess no, this isn't what happened, because a whole bunch of reasons, but number one is that the Chinese are in fact human beings, and not monsters.

Rchanen · March 2014

Fencingsax wrote: »

Casual wrote: »

The main suspect here is mechanical failure. What I really hope it isn't is the Chinese enforcing their ludicrous claim to the entire south china sea. I mean its unlikely that the Chinese are mad enough to shoot down a civilian airliner but god things could get ugly if they have.

Considering it was a regular scheduled flight from KLM to Beijing, I'm gonna guess no, this isn't what happened, because a whole bunch of reasons, but number one is that the Chinese are in fact human beings, and not monsters.

True. They are often acting like a bag of dicks right now, but they are not monsters (well Tienanmen square, Tibetan religious repression, jailing of political dissidents and uighur repression aside). Killing a whole bunch of civilians for absolutely no good reason? In a manner that will make them international pariahs and is guaranteed to result in problems from here till Christmas?

No fucking way. Unless it was some dumbass junior officer who is about to be scheduled for the quickest trial and execution ever.

DasUberEdward · March 2014

The lack of wreckage is the unusual bit about all of this right? I'd imagine that given modern technology and flight paths not finding anything at all is pretty uncommon?

I could be totally wrong here. I'm not well versed.

Trace · March 2014

DasUberEdward wrote: »

The lack of wreckage is the unusual bit about all of this right? I'd imagine that given modern technology and flight paths not finding anything at all is pretty uncommon?

I could be totally wrong here. I'm not well versed.

There is a lot of weirdness about this entire thing and it's not just the passports.

I've been hearing reports that the plane had turned around before it vanished. Which is kind of freaky.

Rchanen · March 2014

DasUberEdward wrote: »

The lack of wreckage is the unusual bit about all of this right? I'd imagine that given modern technology and flight paths not finding anything at all is pretty uncommon?

I could be totally wrong here. I'm not well versed.

Eh its a big area.

The lack of radar contact strikes me as weird. Usually planes are very very carefully tracked. If ones goes down, breaks up usually they know where to start searching.

But I also lack knowledge.

Vietnam thinks they found something.

Kagera · March 2014

Apparently if the plane sank quick enough there would be little signal to receive under tons of ocean. Also planes are regularly out of contact over large areas where there is no line of sight of ground antennas. This is what I've gleaned from people who seem to know what they are talking about on reddit.

Kagera · March 2014

Also if china was going to blow up a civilian plane you'd think they'd pick one not full of their own citizens.

mcdermott · March 2014

Kagera wrote: »

Apparently if the plane sank quick enough there would be little signal to receive under tons of ocean. Also planes are regularly out of contact over large areas where there is no line of sight of ground antennas. This is what I've gleaned from people who seem to know what they are talking about on reddit.

Radio signals can't penetrate more than like six or ten feet of salt water. It's why submarines have to surface or float an antenna to the surface to communicate by radio. There's no real workaround, it's a physics thing...there's just no way for the signal to propagate, I forget specifically why (got a solid C in materials, but I do remember some things!).

Kagera wrote: »

Also if china was going to blow up a civilian plane you'd think they'd pick one not full of their own citizens.

There's absolutely no reason to think they'd do something like that to a scheduled flight to Beijing, no.

mcdermott · March 2014

And the passport thing doesn't really concern me. There are plenty of reasons two people would have fake/stolen passports for international travel beyond terrorism. While we certainly pay some people to consider that angle and run it down (better safe than sorry), overall it's not something I'd spend much brain space on. More than likely just plain old criminals.

Kagera · March 2014

I agree completely on both points. Yay!

mcdermott · March 2014

My biggest concern is that such a sudden catastrophic failure (seems to have) occurred on a relatively modern and supposedly safe piece of equipment.

Xix · March 2014

The plane turning around before vanishing would be consistent with a hijack attempt perhaps. If the pilots were killed off and terrorists took over they may have turned the plane around to reach a target... but then maybe fucked up and crashed instead and thus no group is claiming any responsibility for this botched plan.

But what strategic target would they be heading to in that area?

Trace · March 2014

mcdermott wrote: »

And the passport thing doesn't really concern me. There are plenty of reasons two people would have fake/stolen passports for international travel beyond terrorism. While we certainly pay some people to consider that angle and run it down (better safe than sorry), overall it's not something I'd spend much brain space on. More than likely just plain old criminals.

See the passport thing actually raises my suspicions.

One passport, maybe a coincidence.

Two on the same flight with the passports from separate nations (granted I believe they share a border) raises some red flags in my mind.

Kagera · March 2014

I mean nothing is 100% safe. Think of all the 777s that fly each day for the length of its service history and eventually the percentages play out. It sucks but that's not unusual just thankfully rare.

Of course as previously posted I heard this plane had lost part of its right wing while taxiing when it clipped the tail of another aircraft. That seems to best the likeliest reason for the catastrophe so far barring more evidence.

Also according to the economist during an emergency crews are taught to aviate, navigate, then communicate. So if they never got past the first two steps it's not as unusual they never got to communicate what had happened before they crashed.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2014/03/flight-mh370

mcdermott · March 2014

Trace wrote: »

mcdermott wrote: »

And the passport thing doesn't really concern me. There are plenty of reasons two people would have fake/stolen passports for international travel beyond terrorism. While we certainly pay some people to consider that angle and run it down (better safe than sorry), overall it's not something I'd spend much brain space on. More than likely just plain old criminals.

See the passport thing actually raises my suspicions.

One passport, maybe a coincidence.

Two on the same flight with the passports from separate nations (granted I believe they share a border) raises some red flags in my mind.

I see absolutely no reason not to assume it was simply two criminals, of the non-terrorist variety, traveling together.

Shivahn · March 2014

Trace wrote: »

mcdermott wrote: »

And the passport thing doesn't really concern me. There are plenty of reasons two people would have fake/stolen passports for international travel beyond terrorism. While we certainly pay some people to consider that angle and run it down (better safe than sorry), overall it's not something I'd spend much brain space on. More than likely just plain old criminals.

See the passport thing actually raises my suspicions.

One passport, maybe a coincidence.

Two on the same flight with the passports from separate nations (granted I believe they share a border) raises some red flags in my mind.

The passports were stolen from tourists in Thailand. The country of origin is completely irrelevent, they were probably sold to the guys from some dude on a truck who looked through until he found pictures that looked good or something.

Kagera · March 2014

Also terrorists tend to announce their attacks after they succeed else they don't get the recognition for their cause they are terrorizing for.

mcdermott · March 2014

Of course as previously posted I heard this plane had lost part of its right wing while taxiing when it clipped the tail of another aircraft.

Ah, I missed that. That worries me a little less then, it at least provides some reasonable vector for a sudden and catastrophic failure not inherent to the 777 design. Sure, you'd expect the repair to have been thoroughly inspected, but I can still see it leading to a failure eventually.

thatassemblyguy · March 2014

Trace wrote: »

mcdermott wrote: »

And the passport thing doesn't really concern me. There are plenty of reasons two people would have fake/stolen passports for international travel beyond terrorism. While we certainly pay some people to consider that angle and run it down (better safe than sorry), overall it's not something I'd spend much brain space on. More than likely just plain old criminals.

See the passport thing actually raises my suspicions.

One passport, maybe a coincidence.

Two on the same flight with the passports from separate nations (granted I believe they share a border) raises some red flags in my mind.

Nah, that whole area is rife with trafficking of all sorts. It's likely something to do with plain ole criminal activities, as @mcdermott‌ (e: stated).

Kagera · March 2014

mcdermott wrote: »

Of course as previously posted I heard this plane had lost part of its right wing while taxiing when it clipped the tail of another aircraft.

Ah, I missed that. That worries me a little less then, it at least provides some reasonable vector for a sudden and catastrophic failure not inherent to the 777 design. Sure, you'd expect the repair to have been thoroughly inspected, but I can still see it leading to a failure eventually.

It might have been. But human error happens hell there was a plane that crashed because a whole bunch of people failed to notice that the maintenance crew forgot to remove adhesive tape that covered the sensors for critical instruments like the altimeter and autopilot. There was a plane that crashed because the pilot failed to taxi to the right runway and used one too short for his craft.

Of course at this point it could be a collision with a meteor.

Quid · March 2014

mcdermott wrote: »

Radio signals can't penetrate more than like six or ten feet of salt water.

I know it's not really relevant but it's going to bug me until I correct it. It's possible for radio signals to penetrate a few dozen feet under water depending on signal frequency, power, and proximity and significantly further within the VLF range.

But yeah most plane airbands normally occupy the VHF range which normally isn't going to go more than a few feet.

GreasyKidsStuff · March 2014

I read that this particular plane had gone through inspection ahead of regular scheduled maintenance and was ruled in tip-top shape, so I'm not sure where the "it clipped its wing on a previous flight" thing came from.

It's still utterly baffling and concerning that something could go wrong if that was the case, though. This whole thing is so weird.

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