Malaysian Airlines 777 with 239 Aboard Missing

Nope. Ring doesn't mean anything. It isn't generated by the phone.

Well, I figured it wasn't generated by the phone, but by whether the phone is active and the tower can connect the signal. It's why if my phone's off, people get my voicemail message. Ah well, I was just hoping maybe it had made it over land, and that there could be survivors. With so little knowledge about where it might be, or what happened, there's lots of speculation.

Some cell networks still put a ringback before connecting to voicemail, even if the recipient's phone isn't connected to a tower. And roughly only about 30% of the population in places like China have smartphones, with a majority still having "feature phones" that generally have a battery life which can be measured in days.

Finally, if I were in a plane crash and heard a cellphone ringing, I don't care who it belonged to, I'm going to try and find it and answer it. If that plane went down over land and there's cell service, but nobody's answering a phone, then they're all dead, I'm sorry to say.

I'm sure you and Paladin are right. I guess I don't want to give up on there being survivors just yet.

"They traced the call......and it's coming from inside the plane!"

There are a lot of conspiracy theories going around - some logical, some not so much.

I don't think anybody wants to give up on there being survivors, but the longer we go without hearing from them, the less likely it is that they'll be found.

Barring something truly incredible, there's no scenario where this plane hasn't crashed or, at least, set down in difficult terrain/water. Any intact landing--even one where most of the passengers were injured/killed--should've set off the Emergency Locator beacon in the plane. That we haven't received a signal means the ELT was destroyed on impact (a bad sign) or that it's under water (also bad). Malaysia is hardly unpopulated and it seems almost certain that if the plane were down--intact or not--on land, someone would've seen it or signs of the accident by now. That means the plane is down in the water.

Hope is nice, but anyone holding onto hope for survivors is almost certainly holding onto false hope.

Interesting piece in TPM today: apparently the speculation among some pilots is that this crash could have been caused by total electrical failure. That would kill the transponders and the various communication and telemetry information, but the plane would still be able to fly. The pilot might have turned the plane around to try to get back to the airport he knew best and simply got lost on the way.

Have another cigarette, Louise....

Just heard on the Schnitt show that they've probably been looking in the wrong places. Apparently the plane did a 180 and was heading back.

Also some girl and her friend hung out with the co-pilot two years ago on a flight in the cockpit and they had a grand old time. Smoking and I think drinking. She has pictures to back it up. Of course this doesn't mean that it happened on this flight (oh i spilled my drinks on the console! ) because it was only the co-pilot. The pilot was a different person from two years ago.

Interesting.

Apparently the plane turned west in the Gulf of Thailand, flew to the east coast of the Malay Peninsula (Thailand/Malaysia), then crossed the peninsula which is about 200 miles wide, and was last pinged by radar near Pulau Perak, a tiny island approximately half way across the straits of Malacca and 100 miles west of the peninsular coast at that point.

Also I don't understand how a plane could suffer total electrical failure. That should be impossible, airliners have redundant electrical systems and multiple power sources (one generator in each engine, the APU at the tail, the RAT in case all of the generators fail for some reason, and possibly emergency batteries as well.)

The cell phone calls going through don't mean anything. Pretty common for that to happen even if the phone is underwater or destroyed.

I know one of the contractors that are helping with the S&R. Harder than anyone might think to locate a plane even in such a 'small' area. Also doesn't help that they've been tasked with a different area now so they basically have to start all over having just wasted their time up till now.

Total electrical failure is pretty much impossible and a stupid thing to speculate about at this point.

The guys doing S&R fully believe that it crashed. Just a matter of time before they find out where. The why will take much, much longer though.

This reminds me of something I heard on the radio a week or two ago: "The best proof that intelligent life exists elsewhere in space is that it is impossible to prove that it doesn't."

At this point, it is impossible to prove it wasn't aliens so... It was aliens!

You're joking, but that's a perfectly well accepted theological argument on behalf of the existence of god(s). Perhaps you might take that into consideration sometime.

Not by intelligent people, it isn't.

And I am not responsible for the "follow the crowd" approach to religion. I oppose it at every chance I get.

If the reports of radar contact with the plane over the Straits of Malacca are true, then it's a real puzzle.

Whatever event precipitated things, the plane was airborne for over an hour after that. So, there was not any kind of instantly catastrophic failure (i.e., structural failure, bomb, etc.).

That it altered and held course says that SOMEONE was flying this thing after the inciting event. Or that the auto-pilot was set on that course.

That there was no communication and that the plane did not proceed toward closer possible landing sites indicates to me that either (1) the electronics on the plane weren't working or (2) the person at the controls didn't know how to use them/navigate.

We have assumed that the plane must be down in the Straits of Malacca. But what if it kept right on going? It could be down thousands of miles away in the Indian Ocean.

And, if it did crash in the Straits, why? Did whatever precipitated things finally bring the plane down? Did the person at the controls--perhaps a non-pilot and/or operating without instruments--make some crucial operational mistake?

Is it possible some event took out the communications and the crew had time to turn the plane around but were then overcome somehow? I'm thinking a fire in the avionics bay that spread, overcoming the crew and passengers, and, eventually, upset the control of the aircraft...

Or aliens.

"Volpone was right."TM

If this were a spy novel, it would be the result of someone (India?) testing a small EMP device...

Chinese satellite may have found crash site. Days ago.

Company is crowd sourcing checking satellite images to see if they can find the plane, and an oil rig worker claims to have seen the plane go down.

Apparently the plane crashed in like 3 or 4 different places hundreds of miles apart and on the opposite sides of a 150 mile wide land barrier.

Fascinating.

Yep, the report by the oil rig worker supports the Chinese spy photo.

I plotted the location of the image taken by the Chinese satellite photo and the oil rig. I placed a red dot at the approximate location the oil rig worker reported seeing the plane on fire. I projected a line from there to the Chinese spy photo location. This line goes straight back to Kuala Lumpur. The plane was headed back to KL when it went down.



I think the Chinese spy satellite found the plane.