Missing MH370 thread cont...

[Pennies]

Old thread here

New thread here.

Can't believe it's been a week and the hijacking angle has only just been officially acknowledged.

Tragic situation and I feel so desperately for the families involved. Can only hope for a resolution and some more concrete information soon.

"Goldie/ anyone in the know, have you heard of Flyertalk? They seem to know what they're talking about- nearly 300 pages."

Yes, I know it but they have the same info to debate as the rest of us. they can only speculate. I prefer PPrune which is more for airline pilots but there are a lot of 'armchair experts' with no industry exposure on both.

I'll be back later. Ta-ta for now.

Seems odd to take a plane and hide it to use on a target at a later date, knowing that the worlds military and media etc would be on high alert. Surely simpler to tale the plane and immediatley utilise it for the end result?

Excellent, logged on to see goldie updates :) thank you for the information.

"I believe the Boeing 777 holds the record for the longest flight in the world. It effectively means that if you wanted to use the plane to 'hit' any target in the world you probably could, if you could land it and refuel it. "

One last thing (as usual) - yes but not this version, the 777-200ER. The record is held by the 777-200LR

Only one letter different but a significantly different aeroplane.

Cheers goldie!

shivari There are a number of questions over the cargo and whether it was carrying gold. All reports are unconfirmed.

Which is not surprising if someone has managed to nick a plane load of gold. Security lapse extraordinaire.

I just feel so sorry for the relatives. I can't imagine what they are going through. If we knew it would all be revealed eventually then waiting weeks wouldn't seem so bad.

I think a lot about planes and flying will change as a result of this. How a plane can just not be found can't be allowed to happen again.

It also gives potential hope that if it was a hugely audacious robbery that people's lives might be spared but with crime at that level who knows.

Would they really transport gold on a passenger plane? With an Airline that was known to be a bit lax on security? It seems unlikely.

Oh thanks for doing this for me!

I have no clue and agree it seems unlikely, but all sorts of things are transported by passenger jets.

"The Boeing 777 is also comparatively easy to fly and land in comparison with other commercial jets. It has a very good safety record; in part due to its ability to land of very short runways. I think its possible to land on land aircraft runways. "

It's no more difficult or less difficult to fly then any other airliner - it's certainly not "comparatively easy to fly and land in comparison with other commercial jets".

It does have a good safety record.

It cannot land on "very short runways". It needs 6000 feet of runway.

"I think its possible to land on land aircraft runways"

What does this mean?

"If the Boeing 777 really can be landed on a light aircraft landing strip"

It can't - that's just rubbish. If you really want to go into detail about what kind of pavement is required for a 777-200ER follow this clickable link to the Boeing data.

Sorry but the technical details of the post are just not credible.

Goldie (Aerospace Engineer)

Don't know if this has been mentioned yet but on the news last night it was revealed that one of the passengers was some sort of aviation engineer who was due to be working on a similar plane but not for Malaysia airlines.

So we know there was an engineer on board who would know their stuff...

MyNameIsKenAdams Sat 15-Mar-14 13:38:22
Seems odd to take a plane and hide it to use on a target at a later date, knowing that the worlds military and media etc would be on high alert. Surely simpler to tale the plane and immediatley utilise it for the end result?

Depends on the target and purpose. If you need to refuel, then you might land. You also have hostages then. Plus the idea of having a bomb you can unleash at any time and you have to be on constant alert for, is psychological warfare at its best. The entire cold war was built on the principle. Just because no one has said that someone has claim responsibility, doesn't mean there isn't more going on than we know about too.

Plus if you nick a plane full of chinese passengers and intend to fly it into America, then maybe its a good thing to make sure the authorities know its missing. Anyone fancy the fall out, if the US did decide to shoot the plane out the sky?

I wondered initially if it was known it had been hijacked to fly into something early on and had been brought down rather than reach its destination.

What is the talk of gold??

Surely it's not usual to transport gold on a passenger airline, and as such it would be an emergency or impromptu arrangement ...which then clashes with the highly organised effort of hijacking and relocating a plane

If you google for 'abandoned airfields' you get a lot of hits - including several in Indonesia. As that's under 2 hours flying time from Malaysia, then taking off again, with 3-4 hour fuel still on board, might be possible (or is there some fatal flaw in that assumption?)

On the plane shot down by the military theory, as well as the US (possible?) there are other possibilities in that region - Indian military and signals intelligence bases in the Andaman & Nicobars, & a Chinese base in the Cocos Islands. What did these stations see; they presumably would know if the plane took the possible northern corridor route?

This is a wildly speculative tinfoilhat train of thought but what if, say, China shot down a hijacked plane full of it's own nationals that it surmised was trying to take out a Chinese base? There might be a pretty scramble whilst it got its ducks in a row to cover this up.

OK, I think I need a lie-down now and a break, paranoia is setting in....

I apologise for probably asking something that was asked a week ago - I have read this thread, but not the original one.

Is it possible/plausible that this plane could be in North Korea? It has a land border with China, but whether that makes it within 6 hours flying time of Beijing I really don't know.

I was just wondering this as have been trying to think of a country where a huge great aeroplane could land undetected for a whole week . Surely if it was in a "free" country, it would have been reported on.

It is just so confusing - and actually very scary.

.....and of course it still could be deep under the ocean, although from watching SkyNews today that seems less likely.

www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-14/india-looking-for-malaysian-jet-as-u-s-sees-air-piracy.html

Bloomberg saying might be in the Indian Ocean. I guess that could explain why so difficult to find as it is so deep.

I think one of the most awful things about this whole thing is the idea that we may never find out what happened.