Strange Plane Disappearance...

[Big RR]

Well since it was a plane, the god may well be a giant bird, like rodan (was rodan a god, demigod, or just a plain old monster?), or maybe Quetzalcoatl.

[Lord Jim]

Several days ago, when the possibility of the plane having been picked up on military radar flying in the opposite direction from the flight route first came out, in a conversation with a friend of mine I came up with a wild Rick Castle-type idea for what might have happened, and what the plan might be:

What gave me the idea was looking at a map of the flight radius of where the plane could possibly be, given where it was picked up on the military radar, and the flying range it had with the amount of fuel it had left...

One place it could reach jumped out at me immediately....

Pakistan...

Even the most remote and lawless areas of Pakistan...

So here's the suspense thriller scenario:

The plane is hijacked by terrorists, they order the transponders turned off, and they force the crew to fly to a secret airfield in Pakistan...

At this point, the passengers may be dead, (having been executed) or they may be imprisoned for some future purpose, but as far as the hijackers are concerned they are just incidental to the overall operation...

Because the objective of the hijacking wasn't the passengers....

It was the plane....a high quality, reliable commercial jumbo jet...

The reason there has been no claim of credit or demand for ransom, is because obtaining the plane was just the first step in a much larger and even more diabolical plan, that has yet to completely unfold...

At this very moment, the captured aircraft is being loaded up with high explosives, (possibly also chemical agents and/or stolen enriched uranium to create a "dirty bomb" terror effect, even beyond the explosive capability...)

The next step is to fly this Doomsday Plane on a suicide mission into the heart of some major Western population center...

Using a plane this size, fueled and loaded with explosives in this way could result in thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of casualties, and create mass panic...

It seemed like a pretty farfetched imaginative yarn when I was spinning it, but at this point there is absolutely nothing about the known facts about this that would rule it out, and the idea that the plane actually might have flown for hours after changing course is gaining some traction:

Officials: Malaysian plane may have flown long after last contact

CNN) -- It's a mystery that authorities still haven't been able to solve: Where is Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?

There were still more questions than answers Thursday as U.S. officials said investigators might start combing the Indian Ocean as they look for the missing aircraft.

Why would authorities expand their search rather than narrowing it?

New information, U.S. officials told CNN, indicates the missing airplane could have flown for several hours beyond the last transponder reading.

Malaysian authorities believe they have several "pings" of engine data from the airliner's service data system, known as ACARS, transmitted to satellites in the four to five hours after the last transponder signal, suggesting the plane is believed to have flown to the Indian Ocean, a senior U.S. official told CNN. That information combined with known radar data and knowledge of fuel range leads officials to believe the plane may have made it to that ocean, which is in the opposite direction of the plane's original route.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/13/world/asi ... index.html

If the plane was either hijacked or taken off course by a rogue pilot, it's a pretty safe bet that they wouldn't have gone on flying it for four or five hours, just so they could then ditch it in a suicide mission...

That wouldn't even make crazy sense; if you commandeer a plane with the intent of crashing it, you're either going to head it into a target or bring it down as quickly as you can, because the longer you wait the more chance there is that something or someone could thwart your plan...

The only way it makes any sense at all to keep flying the plane that long is if you have a plan to land it somewhere....

ETA:

Given the right expertise, a plane of that size packed with the right kind of high yield explosives, could probably create the blast force (though obviously not the radiation fallout) of a small nuke...

[Joe Guy]

You're probably right about all that, Jim. But don't forget that our government is probably planting bombs at the foundation of whatever building is the target in order for the building to drop like the Twin Towers. This is all because we need to have a popular reason to attack Iran.

What better reason is there nowadays than Iranians on a plane with bombs?

Of course we will go to war and take over Iran's oil fields and bring in Big Oil to help the MOTU get even richer than they are now.

It's all part of the plan...

[Gob]

I miss Steve.

[RayThom]

And how far into any given country's airspace will this bomb get before being shot out of the air by a squadron of fighter jets? Turning off the transponder and other avionics doesn't give them stealth capabilities. Then again, maybe your nefarious terrorist group will swap the Malaysia Airlines logos with those of Jet Blue. Man, that would fool everybody.

If there is anything at all possible, my almost fact based theory would indicate that North Korean bad boy, Kim Jong Un, wanted a nice private jet to help him make his prison camp rounds more exciting.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/onlin ... 6851465289

[Guinevere]

They're on a secret mission to save the Crimea from Putin's evil clutches.

[Lord Jim]

Actually I think Putin's behind it...

He had this done to knock his seizure of the Crimea out of the top news spot, and get people to focus on something else..

[Rick]

Turning off the transponder and other avionics doesn't give them stealth capabilities.

Actually it must provide a modicum of stealth or we would know eaxctly where it is now wouldn't we.

[RayThom]

... "Secondary" radar. This squawks a four digit code which corresponds to a specific flight.

It's the "Primary" radar that you seem to have a lack of understanding. Primary sees everything no matter if the transponder is functioning or not. However, this radar can't identify the exact object. Is the craft friendly or is it enemy... it can't tell. All aircraft (except some stealth military jets) are detected by "blips" on air traffic controllers screens -- worldwide, civilian or military.

When civilian ATC detect a "bogie" that doesn't respond they instantly transfer the coordinates to the military. However, since 2001 the military usually has them first. Primary radar is the military's first defense, civil air mostly relies on the secondary.

I'm betting that once the transponder on Malaysian Flight 370 stopped transmitting, the aircraft would have remained visible to any military radar systems that were scanning the area at the time. Because it's military data it may be quite some time before it's shared with the public. And so you know, because of the size and speed of a 777 it would be virtually impossible for this aircraft to "fly below the radar" without crashing into something.

Rick, I hope this helps.

[Rick]

Ray my dad was in the ADC for most of his military career. I have a basic understanding of radar and how it works but thanks for the leg up.

Having posted that it appears as though no jets were scrambled and the military was never alerted to a 1 over par.

I would agree that if a blip that large showed up one day and made a predictable track even without transponders i would scramble something.

Now even though this arline did not subscribe to all the whistles and bells that come with the ACARS it would seem as though they would turn it on to at least check for a possible location, many atricles said that it had pinged even after it went missing, of course that dosen't mean it didn't crash.

[Gob]

The communications systems of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 were deliberately disabled, Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak has said.

The new evidence, based on satellite and radar tracking of the plane, is "consistent with the deliberate action of someone on the plane", he said.

The investigation is "now entering a new phase", he said, focusing on the crew and passengers on board.

The plane disappeared a week ago with 239 people on board.

The Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight last made contact with air traffic control over the South China Sea to the east of Malaysia, about one hour after take off.

Mr Razak told a news conference that new satellite evidence shows "with a high degree of certainty" that the aircraft's communications systems were disabled and then it changed course, flying west back over Malaysia.

"These movements are consistent with the deliberate action of someone on the plane," he said.

[RayThom]

A very close relative of mine, a top government official assigned to the Majestic 12 project, and currently working at Nellis AFB, forwarded this image to me earlier today. He said that it was one of only two Instagram images taken from inside flight 730 and beamed up to secret satellites moments before the flight went dark. GPS coordinates: 35°52′57″N 76°30′48″E / 35.88250°N 76.51333°E

Let it be known that I am definitely no conspiracy theorist but this type of proof is essential for keeping the worldwide public informed of the FACTS. Be careful as to how you disseminate this top secret image. Please forward it to only those who you know are mentally sound and without an axe to grind. There are a lot of crazies and supernatural scientists out there who would just love to make this image political fodder to support their sick minded agendas.

If you chose to use this image for valid research please include my science alias, Gort Klaatu, X15. My esteemed colleagues in the sciences will know it's from me, a reputable source. Thank you.



THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.

[Lord Jim]

Please forward it to only those who you know are mentally sound and without an axe to grind.

I'd love to do that Ray, but unfortunately I don't know any mentally sound people without axes to grind...

[Lord Jim]

And how far into any given country's airspace will this bomb get before being shot out of the air by a squadron of fighter jets?

That would depend on the country...

I gave that issue some thought when I was concocting this wild-assed theory...

One target that would be very easy to hit from Pakistan, , though not technically a "Western" target, you would definitely kill a lot of Westerners, and do serious disruption to Western-Arab commerce...

The citadel of Western "Crusader" decadence in the Mideast; the city of Dubai:



You could hit it from Pakistan coming straight across the Arabian Sea, without crossing into the air space of any other country...

But you're right, if they wanted to crash the Doomsday Plane into a genuine Western target, there are some obstacles...

You couldn't hit a city in a NATO country that was well within land; The Doomsday Plane (Which presumably would be repainted with another airline's logo) would be shot down (and still do some damage but not on the scale you'd be looking for) long before it could reach, Paris, or Berlin...(that takes Moscow off the target package list as well)

You'd need to hit a city right along a coast line; where you could come in quickly off of international waters...

To hit a Western high value target like that, you would probably need to re-postion the plane from Pakistan...

Fortunately, (from a fiendish terrorist perspective) there's a pretty good path for doing that:



You fly straight down the Indian Ocean from Pakistan, and then make a right crossing over Ethiopian and Sudanese air space, (two countries with a lot of lawless areas that also don't have Western standard aircraft detection and anti-aircraft capability) and then land at a secret base somewhere in the northern Libyan desert...(90% of the Libyan population lives within 50 miles of the Mediterranean coast; except for the oil operations, most of the rest of the country is a vast desert wasteland; a terrorist base, say 300-400 miles inland...they already have some located there...would be a very tiny needle in a very large haystack...)

So now, assuming you could move the plane from Pakistan to Northern Libya, (which as the map shows, really wouldn't be that difficult from a geographic and air space standpoint) you'd have an attractive target package:




From that location, within 3 hours, and coming straight in from international waters in The Mediterranean, you have at least four high value Western targets:

Barcelona, Marseille, Athens...

And what I would see as the prime target....

Rome...

Great symbolism there; you could also aim for having the crash in The Vatican City, striking a blow at the very historical heart of "The infidels"...(Probably repaint the plane with the logo for Alitalia)

Now, of course I'm not saying this is likely, (in fact I would go so far as to say that it is extremely unlikely)

But....

There's nothing in this theory that is irrational, or that violates rules of basic logic, or that is contradicted by the known facts...

To me , the thing that puts this theory on the outermost edge of plausibility is the fact that it would require so many participants, and such elaborate planning, that given our technical and intelligence improvements since 9/11 it seems inconceivable that a plot of this scope could go undetected...

But then maybe it hasn't gone undetected...

Maybe our intelligence services know what's a foot, but haven't announced it publicly because they don't want the terrorists to know they're on to them....

[Scooter]

The fact that an unidentified plane is flying over international waters is not going to prevent its detection or the airforces of at least five countries from converging to intercept it if it is heading for Europe. I don't know whether such a plane could legally be shot down while outside of any national airspace, but it sure as hell would be as soon as it passed an inch over that line.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Plus reaching Pakistan would require flying over Indian airspace. They might notice.

[rubato]

Too many implausibilities to list, MGM mentioned one. They would be in Indian airspace for more than
an hour. They would enter Pak. Airspace FROM India with lots of advance warning. Not a good strategy. They need a well engineered runway more then a mile long (minimum, normal is 7,000 to 11,000 ft). I'm guessing that the Pak. In. USA, and 10 other countries can tell you where every one of those places are in 1min or less.

And if your end goal is "crash a big plane" in Europe you would reflect that there are thousands of big planes already there and you have a good chance of hitting everything within a 15 to 30 min radius of all Eu. Airports ( 150 to 300 mi ) if you just steal a plane there (in use or on the ground).



Yrs,
Rubato

[Lord Jim]

And if your end goal is "crash a big plane" in Europe you would reflect that there are thousands of big planes already there and you have a good chance of hitting everything within a 15 to 30 min radius of all Eu.

The goal here would be not just to "crash a big plane"; the goal would be to crash a big plane loaded with explosives in order to cause exponentially more damage then a plane crash alone would cause. Also obviously security is much better at European airports generally than it is at Kuala Lumpur. (On top of that, if the pilot was part of the scheme, you'd have to with a plane he had access too.)

They would be in Indian airspace for more than
an hour. They would enter Pak. Airspace FROM India with lots of advance warning.

I'm not an expert on how good Indian radar tracking is over vast areas of the countries jungles or how good Pakistan radar tracking is over the remote areas of the country that the government doesn't control. Is there anyone here with expertise in these areas?

I'm guessing that the Pak. In. USA, and 10 other countries can tell you where every one of those places are in 1min or less.

I don't think that would be a good guess. If we were able to find every sizable terrorist (or drug or arms smuggling for that matter) facility or airstrip in remote parts of the world, we'd have taken them all out by now.

The one thing we have been learning is that it becomes more and more clear that what happened here was the result of deliberate human action:

Malaysian government officials say plane was hijacked

A Malaysian government official says investigators have concluded that one of the pilots or someone else with flying experience hijacked the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.

The official, who is involved in the investigation, says no motive has been established, and it is not yet clear where the plane was taken. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

The official said that hijacking was no longer a theory. "It is conclusive."

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak told a press conference that the missing passenger jet’s movement was “consistent with deliberate action of somebody on board the plane”.

He also revealed that the Boeing 777 was traced seven hours after it was last in contact with air traffic control and that authorities believed the transponder was disabled.

Salient points from the Malaysian Prime Minister's statement given at the press conference:

- New data shows last confirmed location was Saturday, 8 March at 8.11AM, which indicates how far the plane had flown.
- Based on new satellite communication data, we can say with a high degree of certainty that the aircraft communications, addressing and reporting system or ACARS, was disabled just before the aircraft reached the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia.[And before the pilot's last verbal transmission, suggesting one or both may have been involved]

- Shortly afterwards, near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic controls, the aircraft transponder was switched off.[the transponder and the back up transponder were shut off 15 minutes apart; not something that would happen in a "catastrophic event"]

- From this point onwards, the Royal Malaysian Air Force’s primary radar showed that an aircraft, believed to be (but not confirmed to be) MH370, did indeed turn back.

- It then flew back over Peninsular Malaysia, before turning north-west into the Straits of Malacca, up until the point at which it left military primary radar coverage.

- The PM also said that plane movement was consistent with "deliberate action" by someone on the plane.

- There will be refocused investigation into the crew and passengers on board.[they finally just yesterday got around to searching the pilot's home.]
- Despite reports that investigators concluded it was a hijacking, PM Najib said "I wish to be very clear we are still investigating all possibilities as to what caused MH370 to deviate from its original flight path."
- Based on the direction in which the plane flew, the plane could have headed in one of two possible corridors:
Northern corridor: border of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan to Northern Thailand.
Southern corridor: From Indonesia to Southern Indian Ocean.

- Operations in the South China Sea will be ended and deployment of assets will be reassessed.

- Malaysia Airlines is informing families of the passengers of the new developments: "The search has entered a new phase... We hope this new information will bring us one step closer to finding the plane."

The Boeing 777's communication with the ground was severed under one hour into a flight March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian officials have said radar data suggest it may have turned back and crossed back over the Malaysian peninsula westward, after setting out toward the Chinese capital.

New type of satellite data

A US official told Associated Press that investigators looking for the plane have run out of clues except for a type of satellite data that has never been used before to find a missing plane, and is very inexact.

The data consists of attempts by an Inmarsat satellite to identify a broad area where the plane might be in case a messaging system aboard the plane should need to connect with the satellite, said the official. The official compared the location attempts, called a "handshake," to someone driving around with their cellphone not in use. As the phone from passes from the range of one cellphone tower to another, the towers note that the phone is in range in case messages need to be sent.

Engine data shows missing flight was airborne for five hours: WSJ sources


In the case of the Malaysian plane, there were successful attempts by the satellite to roughly locate the Boeing 777 about once an hour over four to five hours, the official said. "This is all brand new to us," the official said. "We've never had to use satellite handshaking as the best possible source of information."

The handshake does not transmit any data on the plane's altitude, airspeed or other information that might help in locating it, the official said. Instead, searchers are trying to use the handshakes to triangulate the general area of where the plane last was known to have been at the last satellite check, the official said.

"It is telling us the airplane was continuing to operate," the official said, plus enough information on location so that the satellite will know how many degrees to turn to adjust its antenna to pick up any messages from the plane.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/219954 ... -hijacked/

The one scenario that makes the absolute least sense, and is the absolute least likely, (even less likely than my Doomsday Plane theory) is the idea that either the pilot or the passenger/hijackers, diverted the plane for the purpose of flying out over the Indian Ocean for five hours, until they ran out of fuel.

No matter how you look at it, that makes zero sense. If the pilot went crazy and wanted to commit suicide, he'd crash the plane as soon as possible. Hijackers on a suicide mission would do the same. If you take over a plane and fly it for five hours it is certainly your intent to take it somewhere. And that somewhere isn't going to be the middle of the Indian Ocean to run out of fuel.

Now, it is certainly possible that even though they were trying to get somewhere, they didn't make it. They could have gotten lost, or not been able to find the landing place they were going to, and ran out of fuel trying.

But if that didn't happen, then the plane landed somewhere.

As we have learned more about what happened, (like the plane flying for five hours; though I've read it could have been less, the pings could have been transmitted from the ground...but only if the plane had landed and was intact; and they' wouldn't have been transmitted from underwater. This means it's conceivable they could have landed the plane closer than it's outer range) and the most common explanations for planes disappearing have been eliminated, (like catastrophic mechanical failure, or a bomb exploding) The odds (which were initially infinitesimal) that this plane landed somewhere intact have gone way up.

Even if it did of course, that doesn't automatically mean the passengers are still alive (guarding and feeding over 200 people for this long is a big task.) but I think you have to say that the chances that they may still be alive certainly look better than they did in the first few days, before an immediate crash had been eliminated.

[RayThom]

However, I'm sticking with copilot suicide. I don't think the senior pilot was involved. By all accounts he appeared to be a good person and solid pilot. I'm guessing he was either killed at the controls or locked out of the cockpit when he took a break. I have a gut feeling the copilot wasn't as mentally sound as friends and family say he is/was.

I feel the jet was kept flying until it ran out of fuel and then crashed using airspeed alone. Crazy, maybe. But who can truly analyze what goes on in a mind bent on self-destruction? Satellite imaging is bound to come up with something sooner than later. If it's found intact on the ground rather than crashed into the sea I feel that will be the worst of the two scenarios.

In the meantime, and just in case, if I worked in a skyscraper office tower any where in the East I think I'd ask for home assignments until '370' is located.

[Big RR]

I have a gut feeling the copilot wasn't as mentally sound as friends and family say he is/was.

What makes you say that; I haven't seen anything that remotely suggests any kind of mental instability (have you heard any such reports?).