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Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 ended in the Southern Indian Ocean

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Wanace

Member
Flying from Canada to Thailand in 5 days, and I'm already a super weak flyer. Even though I just did a round the world 3 months ago, this just reset my fearometer :(.

Do yourself a favor and stock up on valium or xanax when you're in Thailand. You can buy it at any pharmacy and it will make your flying life much easier.
 

Yamauchi

Banned
Really sad to hear about this and the likely loss of life.

Malaysia Airlines is an excellent carrier and the 777 is a great plane.
 
Crap. Apparently two of the passengers were travelling on possibly stolen passports, one Austrian and one Italian, One of which was stolen two years ago.

UPDATE (10:53pm): 37-year-old Italian national, Luigi Maraldi, earlier named on the manifest list of missing people, is confirmed alive in Thailand. He called his parents earlier today to say he was alive and well. Maraldi's passport was stolen in August last year and it appears that one of the passengers on board MH370 was using the stolen passport.
UPDATE (11:12pm): A second stolen passport, belonging to a 30-year-old Austrian by the name of Christian Kozel, may have been used by one of the passengers on board MH370. According to Austrian news agency APA, Kozel's passport was reportedly stolen when he was on vacation in Thailand two years ago. Austrian foreign ministry spokesperson Martin Weiss has confirmed that he is alive and well in Austria.


http://shanghaiist.com/2014/03/08/breaking_malaysia_airlines_flight_e.php
 

Mr Swine

Banned
How horrible :( R.I.P to everyone on the flight.

my mom and my sister are going to travel to South America from Sweden on Tuesday so now I'm afraid and paranoid about this :(
 

zeemumu

Member
Sadly pretty slim chances, if they survived the impact and were on the water, by now they already should have been found drifting, but nothing until now...

I was hoping that there was a chance because everyone saying R.I.P. so soon felt like jumping the gun
 

Daria

Member
Two oil slicks have been found but no confirmation of them being connected to the missing 777.


Search and rescue vessels from the Malaysian maritime enforcement agency reached the area where the plane last made contact at about 4:30 p.m. local time (0830 GMT) but saw no sign of wreckage, a Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency told Reuters.

Source
 

Zhengi

Member
That report of the two stolen passports seems suspicious. What are the chances of two completely different people getting their passports stolen and ending up on the same plane? I hope my speculation is wrong though.

RIP and condolences to all the families.
 
That report of the two stolen passports seems suspicious. What are the chances of two completely different people getting their passports stolen and ending up on the same plane? I hope my speculation is wrong though.

RIP and condolences to all the families.

Not sure if it's appropriate to follow this line of thinking, but was there anything happening in the area that would have warranted that kind of action? Otherwise, it could just be coincidence. It's not uncommon for passports to be used this way.


While a car crash might be statistically far more probable, it's probably perceptually less horrifying as a disaster simply due the causality volume (as grim as that sounds). It's one thing to be inundated daily crash reports increasing the yearly road toll, separate events mounting up single digit causalities to a larger number. But it's another to have one commercial airline disappear into the ocean and take with it 200+ lives. The initial and sometimes ongoing mystery and confusion surrounding the event does a number on you too. Road disasters tend to take places on busy stretches, are quickly seen and reported, even if fatal. Airline's disappear, into mountains and oceans, with nobody around to see. The disaster is known not because someone witnessed, but because tracking systems failed to detect the aircraft's projected path. What follows is the terrible and occasionally months long process of investigating what went wrong and who, if anybody, can be recovered. AF447 is particularly horrifying to me: instrument failure fatally worsened by pilot error, 228 people dropped at 280 km/h right into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 1000+km from the shore. Guh.

Tragic :(

I guess once you experience a car crash, that perception is changed. When a drunk driver hit me head on and put me in the hospital clinging for life, I'll never forget the moments after the crash. The smell of burnt tires, metal and pavement. The moments when I accepted I was dying and would likely be dead. It stays with you forever. And when you have friends that get their bodies torn in half because the front car smashes into them, you don't forget that either.

Yeah I'm appealing to emotion here. But my point is, so is thinking about how horrifying a plane crash is. Fact still is, more people die daily from car crashes. You are more likely to know people that die from cars than planes. And you yourself are more likely to die from a car crash. And car crashes are violent and horrifying too. It all sucks, and it often deprives person of any control. :(

These are great posts that put things into perspective. Also would like to retract some of my earlier statements on the matter.
 

7aged

Member
That report of the two stolen passports seems suspicious. What are the chances of two completely different people getting their passports stolen and ending up on the same plane? I hope my speculation is wrong though.

RIP and condolences to all the families.

Higher than you think. There's a big market for fake documents, from criminals to illegal immigrants. Your average international airport will see several cases daily, and those are the ones they catch.

So let's not rush to the terrorism conspiracy angle just yet
 

Pandemic

Member
But with prior planes crashed and so fourth, there haven't been reports of stolen passports have there? I may be wrong.
 

iamvin22

Industry Verified
the thing i don't understand is how this type of plane just went off the radar. this is a 777, one of the most technological planes out there next to the a380/ dream liner. why hasn't Boeing made a statement on this yet? a lot of this just doesn't make sense right especially with no visible sight of wreckage. :(
 
Yeah, there's quite a large black market in SE Asia for stolen passports. Thailand is where a lot of the passports come from, and both the MH370 passports were stolen there.

Just curious that they were both on the same flight and it was this flight
 

Daria

Member
the thing i don't understand is how this type of plane just went off the radar. this is a 777, one of the most technological planes out there next to the a380/ dream liner. why hasn't Boeing made a statement on this yet? a lot of this just doesn't make sense right especially with no visible sight of wreckage. :(

What statement could they make that hasn't already been said? There's no report of visual wreckage because they haven't found anything yet. This is a small plane that (maybe) flew into a big ocean and probably ended up in hundreds of pieces. Its going to take a while to find it.



Edit: the right wing of the missing 777 was damaged around '08 and repaired. Airline forums don't really say if that would be enough to take it down if it failed but you never know.



Yeah, there's quite a large black market in SE Asia for stolen passports. Thailand is where a lot of the passports come from, and both the MH370 passports were stolen there.

Just curious that they were both on the same flight and it was this flight

They could be friends/relatives/partners. Both passports were stolen around the same time so they could be connected in one way. Not saying it's a terrorism act but just that these two people could know each other and that's why.
 
the thing i don't understand is how this type of plane just went off the radar. this is a 777, one of the most technological planes out there next to the a380/ dream liner. why hasn't Boeing made a statement on this yet? a lot of this just doesn't make sense right especially with no visible sight of wreckage. :(

I was asking this yesterday. I fear that the only way something like this could happen would be if something catastrophic occured :( Those types of equiptment just don't decide to stop working all of a sudden.
 

Konka

Banned
the thing i don't understand is how this type of plane just went off the radar. this is a 777, one of the most technological planes out there next to the a380/ dream liner. why hasn't Boeing made a statement on this yet? a lot of this just doesn't make sense right especially with no visible sight of wreckage. :(

Because we don't know what happened yet?
 

Nato

Banned
The US had just issued an alert for possible shoe bombings a few weeks ago. It's possible that the intel chatter was legit this time.
 

Daft_Cat

Member
Two stolen passports on one plane...sorry but no way this is a coincidence.

Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about.

People, keep in mind the details of the crash here. All signs point to an immediate and catastrophic failure.

This was not a hijacking.
 

Coins

Banned
Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about.

People, keep in mind the details of the crash here. All signs point to an immediate and catastrophic failure.

This was not a hijacking.

A bomb would be an immediate and catastrophic cause of failure.
 

Daria

Member
This is not a hijacking. Two people taking control of a 777 with 200+ people on it and NOT saying anything about it or being able to hear it over the radio? Unlikely. According to my friend who does this aviation stuff, the chances of getting in the cockpit would also be highly unlikely.
 
Whatever happened to the plane, it happened almost instantaneously, bypassing all the built in backup systems and prevented the pilots and the plane from issuing distress signals.

If there is (and that's a big if) a terrorist angle, you'd have to think the target was China. They're having their annual highest level government meeting right now. Malaysia's not really a target, and we're pretty friendly with most of the world, including Islamic nations.
 

Daft_Cat

Member
A bomb would be an immediate and catastrophic cause of failure.

I suppose there's a chance a bomb blew up, but unless someone can correct me, I don't think a shoe bomb is enough to completely cut off a plane's outgoing communication. The plane would certainly crash, but the explosion would not be all encompassing enough to immediately stop all outgoing comms.

This is more consistent with like an on-board systems failure, which is indicative of a broader catastrophic malfunction.
 

Daria

Member
Whatever happened to the plane, it happened almost instantaneously, bypassing all the built in backup systems and prevented the pilots and the plane from issuing distress signals.

If there is (and that's a big if) a terrorist angle, you'd have to think the target was China. They're having their annual highest level government meeting right now. Malaysia's not really a target, and we're pretty friendly with most of the world, including Islamic nations.

It also doesn't make since to blow it up over open water if China was their target. Look at 9/11, the target was NY and they waited until NY to do anything. They wouldn't just finish it mid hijack and call it a success.
 

Daria

Member
Reports of a SOS signal at 2:43am from Flight MH370 were received at the U.S. Navy airfield in Thailand U-Tapao. The call claimed the cabin was facing disintegration and they were seeking a forced landing.

Source
 

Mononoke

Banned
Reports of a SOS signal at 2:43am from Flight MH370 were received at the U.S. Navy airfield in Thailand U-Tapao. The call claimed the cabin was facing disintegration and they were seeking a forced landing.

Source

Strange, and the US Navy are only reporting this now? Not too sure about that source either. Hmm.
 

toxicgonzo

Taxes?! Isn't this the line for Metallica?
Reports of a SOS signal at 2:43am from Flight MH370 were received at the U.S. Navy airfield in Thailand U-Tapao. The call claimed the cabin was facing disintegration and they were seeking a forced landing.

Source
No way no way no way.

Cabin disintegration? What a way to go.
 

Finaika

Member
Reports of a SOS signal at 2:43am from Flight MH370 were received at the U.S. Navy airfield in Thailand U-Tapao. The call claimed the cabin was facing disintegration and they were seeking a forced landing.

Source

What exactly does cabin disintegration mean?
 
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