Malaysian Airlines 777 with 239 Aboard Missing

Gee, whoever would have thought such a thing were possible?

Yeah, it makes you wonder about how people turn visual observations into their own interpretations.
When I lived in Colorado Springs a jet crashed just short of the runway from a sudden cold air downburst. One witness who lived a block away from the smoking crater of a crash site said this:
I heard a terrible noise. I went outside and saw a jet with a pilot waving a red flag out of the window, warning everyone I guess.

Wow.....so the pilot realized a crash was imminent so he ripped up his seat, fashioned a flag out of the fabric, broke a window then waved a flag. WTF was this pilot MacGyver and shit?

There's a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig difference between spotting the wreckage of the crash a day or two later, and monitoring it in real time.

When did I say anything about it being monitored in real time? I didn't.

You were talking about catching the explosion in mid-air. I don't know how you could do that if you weren't doing it at (or very near) real time.

If you'll recall, I was saying that it seemed to me that they'd be doing automated photography and that it would have been caught by happenstance. I would think that nations would want to keep their own waters under surveillance, as well as those of folks they were interested in. We do, after all, have a habit of flying spy planes close to Chinese territory, and I'm sure that satellite imagery of the area could be useful in smuggling investigations.

Breaking news on FoxNews. No story yet.

But searching the area of the satellite pictures has not turned up any debris. Of course it could have sunk by now.

Malaysia is denying that there is any debris at the location indicated by the Chinese photos.

Well given the size it probably did sink.

The photos were supposedly taken on Sunday the day the plane went missing.

Apparently, this possibility is now being pursued.

I wonder what would happen if a video was posted showing all 239 aboard tied up in a jungle somewhere, with a bunch of Jihad types standing in front of a Jihad flag, ordering "China out of East Turkestan now or we start killing them one by one".

You'd still be a chickenshit and do nothing to fight terrorism?

Seriously though, you're fucked in the head.

It reminds me of that flight some years back with the pro-golfer on the private jet that lost cabin pressure and they all passed out, while the plane kept flying on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed.

Yep, the Payne Stewart crash.

A few co-workers and I were talking about that very scenario. The "ghost plane," where everyone on board is already dead from lack of oxygen/cold, yet the plane--either well trimmed-out or on auto-pilot--continues on its merry way...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

Happened with a 737 back in 2005 as well. Definitely a possibility, although the fact it disapeared so quickly suggests it wasn't this (unless it crashed shortly after they lost consciousness)

I heard on the radio that 26 percent of those polled said the bird was hijacked and landed safely in X country.
BTW they crunched the numbers, and it had enough fuel to land in Africa.

Its a big goddamned plane! How the fuck are you supposed to hide something like that? It needs a runway close to 10K feet long to land! You can expect "Country X" to keep quiet about radar sitings, but that bird is going to show up on a number of different countries radar if it flew all the way to Africa. Its a fecking stupid idea and anyone who embraces it should be nominated for a Darwin Award.

Ah, democracy. Can't find a missing plane? Have a poll. The majority is bound to figure it out, and if they're wrong, hey, they're still the majority.

The hijackers went to flight school and said they specifically needed to learn how to fly at wavetop level and avoid radars. Nobody was suspicious.

It was last picked up heading into the Indian ocean... What if this was an attempted 9/11 style attack on Diego Garcia? The plane perhaps being shot down during its final charge, and now the US military / gov't is stalling for time as they try to figure out how they're going to explain this in a way that doesn't make everyone hate them, China in particular.

A non-squalking bird shows up on radar. By the time the local air traffic control gets through the protocols it's in someone else' airspace. Military interceptors don't scramble at the drop of a hat in well developed nations, let alone the Third World. Obviously the airport security isn't top notch, so what are the odds air traffic control is much better? Does Kenya have an air force capable of intercepting an unidentified bird? It's bordered by Somalia and Tanzania, and their air force/air traffic control isn't among the best, I'm sure. How much time elapsed before the search for the missing bird started? So far nobody is even sure what direction it may have flown. So let's go back a decade or so - if somebody claimed fanatic people with box cutters could hijack a jet right in our own "high speed" country and crash it into a building in NYC everyone would call them idiots. So is hijacking one from Malaysia and landing it in a country cooperating with the hijackers in a part of the world that doesn't have the best and brightest air forces/air traffic control so far-fetched? We already know that Malaysia's airport security doesn't meet the standards of well developed nations. Should we expect the rest of the links in this chain to be any better? Just sayin'

@oldfella1962 The Kenyans have F-5's and an active upgrade program on them. It's a small but well maintained airforce. Easily more than enough to intercept and take down an errant airliner.

It'll show up on somebody's radar sooner or later. You start heading towards a coast, and you're going to show up. Whether or not somebody scrambles their jets is another matter, but they're going to notice you on radar, and after they've been told that there's a jet missing, they'll pull the logs. They can hide the thing over the middle of the ocean, but once they get close to land, they're going to be spotted by lots of folks.

And WTF does somebody like AQ gain by hijacking a Malaysian plane? One with lots of Americans, Europeans, or Israelis, I can see. This flight didn't have too many of those onboard, so its unlikely to be seen as "Striking a blow against the Imperialist Infidels!" and more of screwing over a bunch of hapless folks who don't give two shits about the US or Europe.

Kill the passengers and use the jet as a weapon at a later date. How many jets spotted by folks are even given a second glance these days? Jets are pretty common. And when did terrorists start caring about "hapless folks?" Their deaths can be rationalized away with no problem.

Lots of people in that area will pay attention to jets, now that one's gone missing. As for "hiding it and using it at a later date," again, where you gonna hide that fucker? Its a big plane. It needs a long runway and a big ass hanger. As for when did terrorists start caring about "hapless folks," that's easy: When they made the mistake of beheading the aide worker in Iraq and popular opinion turned against them. They kill the folks on the plane, they lose the PR war and they don't want that.

Why would the US stall for time?

If the plane came in and wouldn't stop and was making a suicide run and was shot down the US would probably come straight out and say it.

Waiting almost a week and wasting a lot of time and money and emotions of all involved would only make the US look even worse in the eyes of the world and China in particular.

Not to mention using US ships to search for something you know you shot down.

And there is nothing on Diego Garcia that a single plane can take out that can't be replaced. It would be retarded to suicide run the island.

Why?

When it's so much easier to get a jet when you need one. There is no need to stockpile them for use at a later date.

Look who you're talking too.

Some interesting things in today's paper: the transponders that indicate the plane's identity to ground radar went silent shortly after take-off. But a second system that pings satellites continued to operate for five hours. That tends to rule out electrical failure. It also makes me think this was almost certainly a hijacking. It's not clear whether the pings can be used to determine location.