Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crash

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In summary: No idea about air explosions. But I do remember explosion on Kursk was registered by some seismographic stations near you (well, in Scandinavia, could be Sweden or Finland).No idea about air explosions. But I do remember explosion on Kursk was registered by some seismographic stations near you (well, in Scandinavia, could be Sweden or Finland).It seems that there may have been a secondary explosion on the plane. The second explosion was equivalent to 2-3 tons of TNT, and was detected as far away as Alaska. It's possible that reports from Scandinavia were just the first that hit the news here.
  • #71
If the plane was hijacked, I don't think the hijackers successfully landed it, even somewhere remote. Someone would have noticed it, and the passengers would have starting calling on their cell phones.
 
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  • #72
Is there any group on Earth who:

1. Is sophisticated enough to pull this off
2. Would want for hostages a hundred Chinese artists, twenty or so electronics experts on western military stuff, and a handfull of Malaysian civilians?
3. Is crazy enough ?
 
  • #73
1) Phones do not need to be turned off with all airlines
2) Phones still ping when turned off, in a similar manner that the airplane still pinged with communication devices turned off
 
  • #74
Sources told the Reuters news agency on Friday, meanwhile, that the path Flight 370 appears to have taken after diverting from its intended route strongly suggests that a trained pilot was still in control of the aircraft.

The news agency said investigators believe the missing jet appeared to follow a known air navigational route, based on the radar blips seen by the Malaysian military.

That would have taken the plane into the Andaman Sea and toward the Indian Ocean, and according to Reuters, "could only have been set deliberately, either by flying the Boeing 777-200ER jet manually or by programming the auto-pilot."
Reuters cited another source as saying the official investigation was increasingly focused on the possibility that someone with training as a pilot deliberately diverted the flight.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysi...still-no-answers-in-search-for-missing-plane/
 
  • #75
Monique said:
1) Phones do not need to be turned off with all airlines
2) Phones still ping when turned off, in a similar manner that the airplane still pinged with communication devices turned off
I can't trace the answer to point 1, and I don't know where I've heard point 2 (probably some crime show on TLC). Anyway, here some support:

from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...3cf4-f0b1-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_story_2.html
By September 2004, a new NSA technique enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off. JSOC troops called this “The Find,” and it gave them thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq, according to members of the unit.
 
  • #76
Apparently, the cellular network is acting as if it can't locate the phones:

27. What about reports that passengers' cell phones continued operating after the flight's disappearance?

The answer to the question about meteors and conspiracy theories applies here, too. When phones are disabled or turned off -- which would presumably happen after a plane crash -- calls to those cell phones go directly to voice mail. Friends and loved ones of the missing passengers, however, reported ringing when they called. Technology industry analyst Jeff Kagan says a call would connect first to a network before trying to find the end user, and the ringing sound callers hear masks the silence they would otherwise hear while waiting for the connection to be made. "If it doesn't find the phone after a few minutes, after a few rings, then typically, it disconnects, and that's what's happening," he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-questions/

Which implies they're out of reach of cell phone towers. I think this could be the case whether the plane is crashed or hijacked.
 
  • #77
Here you go:

Missing Malaysian Jetliner: Could Phone Tracking Help?

Locating the mobile phones of the 239 travelers on the Boeing 777 that vanished Saturday isn't as simple as activating a "Find My iPhone" app, given the speed the plane was traveling, its altitude and the fact it was probably flying over water. Many people assume smartphones to be all-powerful tracking devices. Often police, rescue units and others can use a person's phone to pinpoint the user's precise location. Even so, there are large portions of the planet that don't have the transmission towers that are necessary for mobile communications. In the case of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, smartphones are unlikely to lead investigators to the plane.

http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=0330042BAMG9
 
  • #78
It's pretty clear that someone was deliberately attempting to conceal the flight path and it looks like it was headed toward the Indian Ocean. What if one of the pilots decided to kill himself and didn't want to ever be found. What would be the best way? Could the plane have been soft landed in the middle of nowhere so that it floods quickly with little or no floating debris?
 
  • #79
Borg said:
It's pretty clear that someone was deliberately attempting to conceal the flight path and it looks like it was headed toward the Indian Ocean. What if one of the pilots decided to kill himself and didn't want to ever be found. What would be the best way? Could the plane have been soft landed in the middle of nowhere so that it floods quickly with little or no floating debris?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...e-paths-for-missing-malaysia-airlines-flight/

If it flew deep into the Indian Ocean and crashed we might not ever find it. I just don't see how it could have flown the Northern track and been missed by paranoid military operators in that part of the world as an incoming 'UFO'. The released map shows the mirror image of possible ping locations (not a flight path) seen with stationary single detector tracking when dealing with just a EM signal time and phase delays/shift wavefront. I'm pretty sure the official positioning is much narrower due to additional data that's being kept private so far.

If the officials have hard evidence that this was something other than a mishap I think they have an obligation to at least say how they know that without giving away details. If it's impossible for this to be an accident then say it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...-11e3-af5f-4c56b834c4bf_story.html?tid=pm_pop

In the most comprehensive account to date of the plane’s fate, Najib drew an ominous picture of what happened aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, saying investigators had determined there was “deliberate action by someone on the plane.”
 
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  • #80
Well, if the plane did go the northern route over India and Pakistan, say, there is no particular reason why we should expect either of these countries to be forthcoming with what they know and, also, what they DON'T know.

To publicize their own military surveillance capacities (or the limitations of it) would be tantamount to disclosing state secrets.
 
  • #81
arildno said:
Well, if the plane did go the northern route over India and Pakistan, say, there is no particular reason why we should expect either of these countries to be forthcoming with what they know and, also, what they DON'T know.

To publicize their own military surveillance capacities (or the limitations of it) would be tantamount to disclosing state secrets.

They don't have to be forthcoming, for obvious reasons the US closely monitors that area for alert activity. We might not directly see what they see but we do see their reactions to events in near real-time and have a very good idea about the limits of their capabilities. An incoming object the size of a 777 simply can't be missed with active air search radar looking for targets. You see all kinds of weird crap on long range air search radar moving in all directions from ducting and random reflections but when it's steady and headed your way you tell someone about it.

Maybe the Aussies can find something on their systems (Jindalee Radar) after a review but the plane looks to have been tracking away from it if it went south.
https://www.airforce.gov.au/Technology/Surveillance44-Command-and-Control/Jindalee-Operational-Radar-Network/?RAAF-dq9yQKwX6WliV2hNVcj38sG4oMWiAMtQ
 
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  • #82
On Polish media (one of the main TV station) there is a rumour that in cargo of that plane there were a few tones of gold. (if it was true then many of already knowns pieces of info would suddenly have logic...)

I'm waiting whether this got confirmed or debunked.
 
  • #83
Right now, I'm beginning to think Ernst Stavro isn't dead, after all.
 
  • #84
Czcibor said:
On Polish media (one of the main TV station) there is a rumour that in cargo of that plane there were a few tones of gold. (if it was true then many of already knowns pieces of info would suddenly have logic...)

I'm waiting whether this got confirmed or debunked.
I saw something like that on the other forum thread that I've been reading. It started with one troll post at 6am today and it's been like candy to the conspiracy nuts on the thread. Not one link to a single source though - just a lot of ifs, ands and maybes about how the crew landed in a secret location to offload the gold. Even if there was any gold, the main problem is that the flight crew wouldn't know about the manifest until right before the flight. That doesn't give them any time to plan or coordinate something out of a Tom Clancey novel.
 
  • #85
Borg said:
I saw something like that on the other forum thread that I've been reading. It started with one troll post at 6am today and it's been like candy to the conspiracy nuts on the thread. Not one link to a single source though - just a lot of ifs, ands and maybes about how the crew landed in a secret location to offload the gold. Even if there was any gold, the main problem is that the flight crew wouldn't know about the manifest until right before the flight. That doesn't give them any time to plan or coordinate something out of a Tom Clancey novel.

Thanks for info.

I thought that at this moment coolheaded people create stories in style of Tom Clancy. This time, to become a conspiracy nut, one would have now write a story in style of Stephen King :D
 
  • #86
Borg said:
I saw something like that on the other forum thread that I've been reading. It started with one troll post at 6am today and it's been like candy to the conspiracy nuts on the thread. Not one link to a single source though - just a lot of ifs, ands and maybes about how the crew landed in a secret location to offload the gold. Even if there was any gold, the main problem is that the flight crew wouldn't know about the manifest until right before the flight. That doesn't give them any time to plan or coordinate something out of a Tom Clancey novel.

Yeah, right. Like no one's ever had their luggage pilfered and things taken from a commercial flight. I'm pretty sure any reputable insurance company covering such a shipment would insist on a wee bit more security than this.
 
  • #87
A new twist:
Someone deliberately diverted Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and shut down communications with the ground, and the jetliner continued flying for six hours, Malaysia's prime minister said Saturday.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11220613
 
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  • #88
Just another data point on why the southern path is more likely. Being hijacked to land in Pakistan or anywhere else north is a real stretch when most of the facts now point to crew interference or a weird set of non-deliberate events that mimic that.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...airspace-Kolkata-ATC/articleshow/32091364.cms

Speaking to TOI, air traffic controllers' guild secretary Sugata Pramanik said that while flight MH370 could have avoided detection on the Secondary Surveillance Radar, the blip by the huge Boeing 777-200 ER aircraft would surely have been spotted by the Air Force that uses Primary Surveillance Radars to detect such intrusions. Any flight that moves in the north-western direction towards Kazakhstan from Malaysia, as suggested by Razak, is bound to pass through Kolkata Flight Information Region. (FIR).

"If an aircraft wants to avoid being seen, they can easily become invisible to a civilian radar by switching off the transponder that relays information about the plane. But it cannot avoid defence systems. The Indian Air Force has radars in multiple installations across the country and it is inconceivable that none of them spotted the odd blip with no flight clearance," he said.
...
There are nine Air Defence Identification zones in the country that are manned 24x7 to prevent an enemy aircraft from violating Indian airspace.

Guild member Sushil Mondal concurred, explaining that all hell would break loose if Air Force detected an aircraft that did not have air defence clearance. Any plane flying through Indian airspace is first required to submit the flight plan and manifest to the air traffic controls in its flight path. This is then relayed to the Air Force for permission.
 
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  • #89
Any idea how many satellite pings there have been?
 
  • #90
m k said:
Any idea how many satellite pings there have been?

Most reports don't have an exact number but once or twice a hour is what I've heard. Unfortunately extra pings captured by one geostationary bird at the edge of it's coverage still generates a huge arc of possible positions (unilateration/near or far) that can't be used to narrow the flight path just from that information. You need extra timing data from separate points to use Multilateration/TDOA with fixed detectors in space.

One thing we might be able to deduce from a single detector at that distance is if the plane seemed stationary (at the same measured distance) over several pings. It could mean the plane is circling at a point, landed or is following the arc path.
 
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  • #91
arildno said:
Right now, I'm beginning to think Ernst Stavro isn't dead, after all.
If only. Ernst would have long ago released a hand-on-the-cat video demanding fat stacks and we'd know what had happened.
 
  • #92
nsaspook said:
An incoming object the size of a 777 simply can't be missed with active air search radar looking for targets.
There's a range limit with every radar. With the aircraft's transponder turned on range is about http://public-action.com/911/transpon/ Turn off the transponder and detection range used by commercial aviation ground radar falls greatly, and of course identification is gone.

US military radar can throw out a lot more power, but it can not be everywhere, or look everywhere, at the same time.
 
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  • #93
mheslep said:
If only. Ernst would have long ago released a hand-on-the-cat video demanding fat stacks and we'd know what had happened.

Eeh, I think the cat is dead??
 
  • #94
arildno said:
Eeh, I think the cat is dead??
Copy cats.
 
  • #95
mheslep said:
Copy cats.
Lol! :smile:
 
  • #96
mheslep said:
There's a range limit with every radar. With the aircraft's transponder turned on range is about http://public-action.com/911/transpon/ Turn off the transponder and detection range used by commercial aviation ground radar falls greatly, and of course identification is gone.

Sure nothing is all powerful, not even OTH radar that can see for thousands of miles but my point about detection was about fixed defense radars (mainly in India and Pakistan) and their early warning aircraft. The released 'ping' map of possible locations shows it could have been over a huge swath of Earth's land and sea out of the range of almost anything but I think the reports of paths near India air space are unlikely.

India has a very advanced early warning system including a modern BMD.
http://zeenews.india.com/news/natio...e-being-used-for-9/11-type-attack_918414.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordfish_Long_Range_Tracking_Radar
 
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  • #97
nsaspook said:
You need extra timing data from separate points to use Multilateration/TDOA with fixed detectors in space.
Can we assume something from it?
Like no major distance changes.

How about a fake ID, like swap with something that never took off?
 
  • #98
nsaspook said:
but I think the reports of paths near India air space are unlikely.
Those types of long range radars are large, usually fixed location, and expensive. I'd expect those that India has are oriented towards Pakistan and not out over the vastness of the Indian ocean.
 
  • #99
mheslep said:
Those types of long range radars are large, usually fixed location, and expensive. I'd expect those that India has are oriented towards Pakistan and not out over the vastness of the Indian ocean.

I agree and that's mainly why I think the plane was lost there (Indian ocean) and never came close (<300 miles) to a large populated land mass that a nation like India would try to protect from a 9/11 hijack type event.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indian-search-for-missing-malaysian-plane-on-hold/2014/03/16/ff3764be-acc8-11e3-b8ca-197ef3568958_story.html

“So far no sighting or detection has been reported by the units deployed for searches in various designated areas,” India’s Defense Ministry said in a statement Sunday.

“The Malaysian authorities have now indicated that based on investigation, the search operations have entered a new phase and a strategy for further searches is being formulated. Accordingly, search operations have been suspended and all Indian assets earmarked for search operations have been placed on standby,” the statement said.
...
Vinod Patney, a retired air force officer, said it was unlikely - but not impossible - for an aircraft to intrude a country’s airspace undetected.

Officials said there was effective radar coverage in the region, with a large number of flights between Europe and Southeast Asian using this route. Also, India has tightened security in the area, which is a strategic shipping lane for oil tankers.
 
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  • #100
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  • #101
m k said:
Can we assume something from it?
Like no major distance changes.

How about a fake ID, like swap with something that never took off?

Good point: From my updated original post.
One thing we might be able to deduce from a single detector at that distance is if the plane seemed stationary (at the same measured distance) over several pings. It could mean the plane is circling at a point , landed or is following the arc path.

The planes actual Satellite transceiver has a unique hardwired (read-only) code ID like a MAC address on a PC Ethernet card but don't use Ethernet type collision protocols because of delays. I assume they matched the ID with the correct plane on the ground and followed it.
http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/cis788-97/ftp/satellite_data/index.html#MAC

Cloning and spoofing the signal on the ground somewhere to simulate the planes flight path while not impossible would require a very high level of expertise.
 
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  • #103
Dotini said:
Focus has shifted to the pilot.

This might be all true but I was reminded on another forum about how sometimes a sequence of currently unknown events could lead to a crash that was complete out of the hands of the pilot.

The movie "Fate is the Hunter" was about just that.
 
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  • #104
nsaspook said:
This might be all true but I was reminded on another forum about how sometimes a sequence of currently unknown events could lead to a crash that was complete out of the hands of the pilot.

The movie "Fate of the Hunter" was about just that.


One ought to read the book too... it's a good bit different from the movie, which Mr. Gann wanted nothing to do with.. Get the 1961 edition if you can for i remember some mystical parts that were not in later edition.
 
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  • #105
jim hardy said:
One ought to read the book too...
I'll see if I can find a copy.

I've learned (and frequently need to relearn) after being completely wrong uncounted times to restrain from thinking someone intentionally caused a problem unless there is iron-clad information that 'Murphy' was innocent.
 

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