Missing MH370 thread cont...

[Pennies]

Old thread here

New thread here.

Here's a couple of quotes from the Pprune thread:

"Given the possibility of a flight to the North towards Khazakstan, I note there are 86 functional airports in Kyrgyzstan and considerably more abandoned ones.

Kyrgyzstan borders Xinjiang in China. An alternative would be in Tajikistan which also borders Xinjiang.

Flights to either State can be made without crossing Chinese airspace, especially if the inwards vector is from around the Andaman Islands."

and:

"Outside of China, significant diasporic communities of Uyghurs exist in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. "

I want to go along with the speculation that the aircraft has landed somewhere in those areas, solely because I think that's the only way anyone on the aircraft could have survived.

But there's one big problem with that: If it's an abandoned, or little used, airport, it would have to be a visual, not an instrumental, landing, and I'm not sure that would be possible with such a large aircraft.

jelly i'm not saying it's true but reality is it is western powers like america who gain the most by this kind of event. no doubt if i went googling conspiracy world i'd find people are already saying this was US engineered in order to reignite the 'terror' climate in order to force through more change.

"What I was wondering was whether an empty (of fuel) plane is more likely to be able to do a controlled landing on the sea without breaking up (like the one that landed on the Hudson) and if landed relatively intact could it just sink without much trace or would it just float? I thought a plane with a full load of fuel would be smashed up on impact as it's heavier"

Ah - ok I see. It's very. very difficult to land an aeroplane (with engines under the wings) in a controlled way on water. The USAirways A320 on the Hudson was the exception that proves the rule but the pilot was absolutely exceptional (a glider pilot, check pilot and I think NTSB advisor). He also landed on a river - without waves - rather than the sea. Most aeroplanes that try this break up on impact or cartwheel as one wing touches first or somesuch. It wouldn't float though. It'd just sink if it did make it down intact. But with empty fuel tanks it would likely float for longer than if the were full - the tanks are (mostly) in the wings so they'd end up working a bit like waterwings - filled with air. It would sink eventually as water leaked in, though.

Hi there coming into this a bit late so this question may have been answered already. In a lot of these scenarios the plane is flying around for hours. Why did no one use their phone or the planes phone (if it had one) to make contact, request help, say goodbye to loved ones ? This is what has happened in previous cases.

Those planes would have been flying at low altitude. This plane wasn't, the phones would not have worked.

Goldie breathe

That's been answered up thread.

You don't get phone signal that far up

And in a hijack situation you can be pretty sure that one of the priorities would be to remove all phones from all crew and passengers. By whatever means.

That crossed my mind too jellylove

Very interesting alcibiades, thank you very much

BlackStiltonBoots "Family wouldn't receive life insurance money if it was proved to be pilot suicide"

Is that the case? I know that insurance co's don't pay out if you yourself have committed suicide, but it's a bit different if you're the victim of someone else doing it.

Just read on Pprune that there is some rumour of a Greek vessel investigating some debris somewhere, apparently it looks like it could be suitcases...

No idea if that's true but surely after 8 days suitcases would not still be floating

I read an interesting theory on another forum (reddit for anyone interested) that followed the hijacking scenario.

The speculation that after the plane went of radar and showed erratic changes in altitude could have been an attempt to throw any revolting passengers off their feet and to the back of the plane and then return to flying under radar detection.

I have no idea whether the info that the plane may have left data to show the altitude changes is even credible, but it certainly caught my interest.

Reddit also seems to be leaning in the direction that it was something in the cargo that was the target if the hijacking scenario is valid.

This thread is very interesting.

Personally I like thinking about the far fetched scenarios where there is a possibility that some/all of the passengers survived.

Sure beats the alternative.

@Goldie

How often does the ACARS system send out data? It's not a continous stream is it? I thought it was every 30 mins.

According to reports, the last known ACARS transmission was at 1.07 and the last transponder time was 1.21 across the Gulf of Thailand.

If the ACARS wasn't due to 'ping' again for another half hour, does that mean the ACARS and transponder were disabled in the same time period, so both about 14 mins after the last ACARS ping... NOT separately as is being reported. I think whatever happened in the cockpit happened v. quickly. The hijackers would surely want to take over control and render the plane into stealth immediately, not fanny about. Unless, as it's being speculated one of them had to access the avionics panel down the hatch for part of the operation?

Thanks for your detailed and informative input in this thread

For those of you who think it was about the gold This Wall Street journal article confirms that the airline stated there was no valuable cargo. I would trust the WSJ as it's the source of leaks from the American investigation that forced the Malaysians to release the information it went deliberately off course yesterday.

shushmonster, please read through the thread. We're now 1500 posts in. Your question has only been answered about 20 times!

Someone mentioned on the last thread about the potential of one of the pilots being in a psychotic mindeset which is entirely possible if there is a history of mental illness - but then again one would hope this was picked up at regular checks.

Suicide can be very meticulously planned, with great thought going into the how and the when it will happen.

But I just don't think so, the flight pattern seems to specific, and too calculated for suicide to be the main motive.

I am absolutely fascinated by te whole affair. Have read both threads. And am glued to sky news. How can it have happened. Someone somewhere must know something. Surely?

clam, I think she was referring to the pilot's family not receiving life insurance money.

Clam I'm not sure, I read it on the Pprune thread- it said if there was a life insurance policy taken out for the pilot, but he then killed himself it would render the policy invalid. Maybe there's someone familiar with this who can clarify?

I don't really buy it being a suicide anyway.

Goldie thank you for taking time to answer, and being patient with my cluelessness! I hadn't thought about the waves at all . Do you think it's likely to be at the bottom of the ocean somewhere?

I keep coming back to the thought that it's landed somewhere, but where and why?

goldie, off topic but earlier you mentioned that the passengers in the Air France flight probably weren't aware of dropping, something that, like others, really disturbed me and disturbs me now when flying. Is that because the pitch of the plane wasn't pointing down because they were trying to climb but stalled or because the sudden deceleration would have rendered them unconscious or something else? Thank you for all your very helpful comments here!

I'm not convinced you could get a 777 all the way from Malaysia to a 'stan' country without someone's military noticing. Unless they've changed its signal and it flew past pretending to be something else (nothing to see here I'm a FedEx cargo plane whistles ) ? If 'they' can switch off the satellite signal then I suppose anything is possible.

I think the Kazakhstan hints are a red herring - you need a modern runway and an abandoned one won't be up to the job.

I'm also totally baffled why if it was a hijacking why no one has claimed it.

Jelly love - your theory sound quite plausible. Or at least as plausible as anything else does now. Distract everyone and then do something elsewhere.

Just to be clear, life insurance policies DO payout if you commit suicide. You have to have held the policy for a certain period of time, but it is covered.

Hijacking just makes no sense. To have taken them somewhere, to feed them all and keep them alive for over a week without even attempting to make any demands seems pointless. It won't achieve anything surely? Perhaps they intended to take them somewhere and then make demands etc but if that's the case that plan must have failed. Without sounding negative there can't be any realistic scenario in which they are alive?