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Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 ended in the Southern Indian Ocean

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Rebel Leader

THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
This is sad. I'm worried it will lead to false or inaccurate information aimed at appeasing the families. I don't think they'll ever truly get the closure they need.
Indeed.

"We are convinced that somewhere, someone knows something, and we hope this reward will entice him or her to come forward,"
I understand they want answers but sometimes there are none.

All it will do is make a bunch of wackos come out claiming they were working for India, Filipino, Vietnamese army or whatever and that they got secret info on a wormhole.

and they will or probably already have.
 

Pandemic

Member
Australia and Malaysia will split the cost of the next phase of the search for the missing Malaysia Airways plane, a senior Malaysian official says.

"Costs will be shared 50-50 between Malaysia and Australia," deputy Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Bakri said, adding there were no figures yet for how much the countries would have to spend.

So far, Malaysia has spent a total of 27.6 million ringgit ($9.3 million) on the search for the missing flight MH370, authorities said on Monday, giving a specific cost figure for the first time.

Australia, in contrast, has spent more than $43 million since the search began.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...share-costs-20140609-zs2an.html#ixzz349Mm2CiT

How does that work? We've spent more than the country that is responsible for the plane? Stupid.
 

Yes

*Offer of free balloon only valid in conjuction with submission of new valid co-ordinates of missing flight MH370, subject to confirmation and sighting before gift is given*

u wot m8?

000rqd_keith_david_002.jpg

OH WOW I just realized I did this. That explains why no one was responding in the LEGO thread.

Sorry guys!
 

Pandemic

Member
Perhaps more expensive resources?

Can't imagine the Australian and Malaysian navies are of equal status.

I guess, but that's a large difference.. $30 million.... But I guess it should make country relations very solid, otherwise they should reimburse some of the money.
 

MRORANGE

Member
People are going to hate me for this bump but it's now 100 days since the plane went missing on the March 8 2014.

It's crazy that a plane can just vanish without a trace in the 21st century.
 

Pandemic

Member
It's being reported that the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, is the prime suspect if it is proven human intervention was involved.
The official police investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has reportedly identified the plane's captain as the prime suspect.

Malaysian cops discovered that married dad of three Shah, 53, appeared to have made NO social or work commitments for the future, unlike other members of his crew, the Sunday Times reports.

Their probe also found that he had programmed a flight simulator with drills practising a flight far out into the southern Indian Ocean and landing on a island with a short runway, the paper claims.

The drills were said to have been deleted but later recovered by computer experts.

Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8 while en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China.

There were 239 passengers and crew members on board.

To date, no trace of the Boeing 777 has been found.
Source

Interesting stuff...
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
It's being reported that the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, is the prime suspect if it is proven human intervention was involved.

Source

Interesting stuff...

Short airstrip remote island conspiracy redeemed?

Almost certainly failed if true. I think it's horseshit though because hed have needed help and they'd have claimed responsibility downing it by now. Brave martyr blah blah blah.
 

MattPearce

Neo Member
The other option is that he wasn't practising landing there, he was practising crashing there (I'm guessing the flight simulator only has an option to set a runway as the destination, so he would have set up his route as if he was going to land).

I did hear a theory from a pilot that the MH370 pilot had been part of a sleeper cell and had been told to crash his plane into the US base on Diego Garcia, but had been intercepted and shot down by the US on the way. This was around the time that the first ping was discovered, and he theorised that the US may have placed several fake pingers around to throw off the search. At the time I wrote it off as a crazy conspiracy theory, but after the whole debacle with the pings, and now this, I'm starting to wonder if he was onto something. If the US did find out the plane was off course and likely intending to crash into a target, it would make sense that they would shoot the plane down and try to cover it up.
 
The other option is that he wasn't practising landing there, he was practising crashing there (I'm guessing the flight simulator only has an option to set a runway as the destination, so he would have set up his route as if he was going to land).

I did hear a theory from a pilot that the MH370 pilot had been part of a sleeper cell and had been told to crash his plane into the US base on Diego Garcia, but had been intercepted and shot down by the US on the way. This was around the time that the first ping was discovered, and he theorised that the US may have placed several fake pingers around to throw off the search. At the time I wrote it off as a crazy conspiracy theory, but after the whole debacle with the pings, and now this, I'm starting to wonder if he was onto something. If the US did find out the plane was off course and likely intending to crash into a target, it would make sense that they would shoot the plane down and try to cover it up.

Shooting it down... sure, makes sense. Cover it up? Why would they do that?
 

asdad123

Member
Shooting it down... sure, makes sense. Cover it up? Why would they do that?

You don't think that shooting down a plane with innocent civilians would cause a little bit of a problem for the government? If that did happen, they sure as hell don't want anybody to know about it.
 
You don't think that shooting down a plane with innocent civilians would cause a little bit of a problem for the government? If that did happen, they sure as hell don't want anybody to know about it.

No, I don't see the problem. The suicidal pilot shouldn't have tried to turn his plane into a missile. After 9/11, people understand that you have to do this in extreme situations.
 

SmokeMaxX

Member
It's being reported that the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, is the prime suspect if it is proven human intervention was involved.

Source
Ha and people said I was crazy when I suggested this. Why would the co-pilot go along with it though? I still think it's likely that the pilot incapacitated the co-pilot. Not sure why he'd want to take them to an island though; that doesn't make much sense.
Interesting stuff...

You don't think that shooting down a plane with innocent civilians would cause a little bit of a problem for the government? If that did happen, they sure as hell don't want anybody to know about it.
Good luck cleaning up all of the debris.
 
This is not a good idea. I can claim the pilots were drunk and the corporate is trying to hide it. Give me $5m.
It's being reported that the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, is the prime suspect if it is proven human intervention was involved.

Source

Interesting stuff...
This is horseshit. They are under unimaginable pressure from everyone yelling at them, and they are forced to stand with dick in their hands because they got nothing. This is them trying to make shit up so they can have at least a freaking story.
 
Short airstrip remote island conspiracy redeemed?

Almost certainly failed if true. I think it's horseshit though because hed have needed help and they'd have claimed responsibility downing it by now. Brave martyr blah blah blah.

I find it super shocking they even found evidence of this conspiracy.

I....I almost want to say they found some of the more credible conspiracies online and pushed a conspiracy of their own. Conspiracyception.
 

FyreWulff

Member
The other option is that he wasn't practising landing there, he was practising crashing there (I'm guessing the flight simulator only has an option to set a runway as the destination, so he would have set up his route as if he was going to land).

I did hear a theory from a pilot that the MH370 pilot had been part of a sleeper cell and had been told to crash his plane into the US base on Diego Garcia, but had been intercepted and shot down by the US on the way. This was around the time that the first ping was discovered, and he theorised that the US may have placed several fake pingers around to throw off the search. At the time I wrote it off as a crazy conspiracy theory, but after the whole debacle with the pings, and now this, I'm starting to wonder if he was onto something. If the US did find out the plane was off course and likely intending to crash into a target, it would make sense that they would shoot the plane down and try to cover it up.

India would have seen the US planes scrambling if so. There's no way India doesn't have constant monitoring on DG
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ately-set-to-autopilot-over-Indian-Ocean.html


MH370 latest: Malaysia Airlines plane 'deliberately set to autopilot' over Indian Ocean
Authorities say MH370 was deliberately set to autopilot “west of Sumatra” and then flew south across the Indian Ocean

Authorities say the missing Malaysia Airlines plane was set to autopilot during its voyage across the Indian Ocean and have announced a new “painstaking” search across an area covering 23,000 square miles.
Warren Truss, Australia’s deputy prime minister, said it was “highly highly likely” that the Boeing 777 was on autopilot as it travelled on a straight path south over the Indian Ocean.

(...)

He said the plane was believed to have been deliberately set to autopilot “somewhere off the western tip of Sumatra” though the exact point at which this occurred is unknown. The assessment was based on the belief that the plane flew on a straight path – a belief that best fitted the various analyses of the aircraft’s possible trajectories.
“Certainly for its path across the Indian Ocean, we are confident that the aircraft was operating on autopilot until it ran out of fuel,” he said.

This development is extremely curious because it confirms that the plane was deliberately to set to fly somewhere without any air fields to hope for. Somebody deliberately programmed the plane to head to nowhere.

So far, I believe there has been three viable theories on the table on what happened to MH370.

The latest development would now seem to take one of them off the table:

1 - Technical failure. The plane encountered an catastrophic event, turned back, but due to loss of pressure the cockpit crew couldn't complete the return. The plane became a ghost plane heading to the last direction until it ran out of fuel.

2 - Plane jacking / hostage plot. The pilot or captain diverted the plane into a direction of a remote airfield but something went wrong, and the plane was rendered a ghost plane, heading to the last direction until it ran out of fuel.

3 - Suicide. The pilot or captain diverted the plane into a direction of no recovery in a suicide/mass murder attempt and either waited for fuel to run out, or committed suicide before the plane eventually crashed.

EDIT - updated based on latest info
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
Hmm, it seems the mechanical failure is back in play, and suicide / malicious action out, according to New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight-370.html?_r=0

Missing Malaysian Jet’s Crew Was Likely Unresponsive, Officials Say

ANBERRA, Australia — Malaysia Airlines’ missing Flight 370 appears to have been on autopilot as it flew south across the Indian Ocean until running out of fuel, and the likeliest scenario is that the crew was unresponsive, possibly suffering from the effects of oxygen deprivation, Australian officials said Thursday in announcing a new deep-sea search for the aircraft.

A report issued by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, outlining how the new search zone had been chosen, said that the most likely scenario as the aircraft headed south across the Indian Ocean on March 8 was that the crew was suffering from hypoxia or was otherwise unresponsive.

Hypoxia occurs when a plane loses air pressure and the pilots, lacking adequate oxygen, become confused and incapable of performing even basic manual tasks.

Pilots are trained to put on oxygen masks immediately if an aircraft suffers depressurization; their masks have an hour’s air supply, compared with only a few minutes for the passengers. The plane, which left Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, bound for Beijing, with 239 people aboard, made its turn south toward the Indian Ocean about an hour after it stopped responding to air-traffic controllers.

The crew stopped communicating while the aircraft was over the Gulf of Thailand. The plane then did a U-turn, crossed Peninsular Malaysia and then headed northwest across the Strait of Malacca, before later turning south.

Evidence for an unresponsive crew as the plane flew south includes the loss of radio communications, a long period with no maneuvering of the aircraft, a steadily maintained cruise altitude and eventual fuel exhaustion and descent, the report said.

“Given these observations, the final stages of the unresponsive crew/hypoxia event type appeared to best fit the available evidence for the final period of MH370’s flight when it was heading in a generally southerly direction,” the document said. The report added that this was an operating assumption for the search and that it was not meant to infringe on Malaysia’s authority as the government responsible for conclusively identifying a cause for the loss of the plane.

There is not a consensus among investigators, even within the Australian government, on the hypoxia or unresponsive crew theory. Other officials, who insisted on anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue with Malaysia and China — most of the flight’s passengers were Chinese — said that some investigators still leaned toward the possibility that one of the pilots deliberately flew the plane to the southern Indian Ocean in a suicide that also killed everyone else on the plane.

Advocates of the hypoxia theory argue that pilot suicide cases have tended to involve pilots who crashed their planes suddenly, not after hours of flight. A clinical psychologist advising the investigation has been very skeptical of the suicide theory, saying that it would be highly unusual for a suicidal person to proceed with such a deadly plan over many hours, investigators said.

Continue reading the main story
Depressurization of an aircraft can occur from mechanical failure, an attempted hijacking or many other causes. The Australian report did not speculate on why the crew might have succumbed to hypoxia or otherwise become unresponsive.

At a news conference here Thursday, Martin Dolan, the chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, said that someone on the plane had put it on autopilot, but he declined to speculate on who might have done so and why. “If the autopilot is operational, it’s because it has been switched on,” Mr. Dolan said.

Based on recent analysis of data from electronic “handshakes” between the plane and a satellite operated by the company Inmarsat, the Boeing 777-200 appears to have followed a straight track to the south after making a left turn somewhere west of the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, Mr. Dolan added.

Warren Truss, the deputy prime minister of Australia and also the minister for infrastructure and regional development, said at the news conference with Mr. Dolan that Australia planned to hire a contractor to scour a rectangular area of ocean floor covering 60,000 square kilometers, or 23,000 square miles. Up to three deep-sea submersibles will be used for the yearlong endeavor, starting in August.

By comparison, a fruitless search of ocean floor farther to the northeast by a United States Navy contractor in late April and May, following the detection of acoustic pings initially believed to have been from the aircraft’s so-called black boxes, only covered 860 square kilometers, or 332 square miles.

That area was chosen based on the supposition that the plane might have been limping along at reduced speed, had burned a great deal of fuel in extreme altitude changes or had been zigzagging somewhere along its course. But the new conclusion, that the aircraft traveled on a straight course under full control of the autopilot, does little to erase the mystery of why the plane ever departed from what was supposed to have been a routine red-eye flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Angus Houston, the retired head of the Australian military who is overseeing the country’s search, said in an interview earlier this month that he assumed the flight would have been on autopilot even if a conscious pilot had been at the controls. That is because a Boeing 777 is a very difficult plane to fly manually.

Two deep-sea survey vessels, one contracted by Australia and the other sent by China, have already begun mapping the ocean floor in the new search area, looking for undersea mountains and hills that could wreck a submersible if it is towed into one. Mr. Dolan said that the three-month mapping project was not designed to detect aircraft debris, and that there was a less than 5 percent chance that it would do so.

The midpoint of the new search area is located 1,800 kilometers, or 1,100 miles, west-northwest of Perth, Australia. The Fugro Equator, the vessel under contract by Australia, is already mapping at the near end of the new search area, about 1,000 miles northwest of Perth.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story
The new search area runs 400 miles along the so-called seventh arc of possible locations for the aircraft, based on the seventh and last electronic handshake that it had with the satellite. The area has a width of only 58 miles on the assumption that the plane was on autopilot and quickly stalled and crashed when it ran out of fuel.

If a conscious pilot were at the controls, the aircraft might have glided up to 100 miles. At the news conference Thursday, held in the Blue Room of Australia’s Parliament House, Mr. Truss and Mr. Dolan said that a much wider area of the ocean floor had a low-probability chance of being the final resting place of Flight 370, but that there were no immediate plans to search that wider area.

Aircraft and ships searched the new search area for floating debris on the 21st through 26th days after the plane disappeared, and found nothing.

Tim Farrar, a satellite communications consultant in Menlo Park, Calif., one of a group of satellite experts who have been independently analyzing clues to Flight 370’s disappearance, said in a telephone interview that assuming the plane was on autopilot simplified the search and reduced the range of places along the seventh arc where the plane might have come to rest. But he cautioned that a conscious pilot still might have been at the controls while leaving the flight on autopilot.

The report showed many computer simulations, a few of them including flights far to the east or west of the new search zone. Mr. Dolan declined to say what percentage of the computer simulation results showed the aircraft ending up within the new search area.

Mr. Farrar was cautious about whether the new search would find the plane. “It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a reasonable probability it’s outside the defined search area,” he said. “It’s going to be a difficult search.”
 

KHarvey16

Member
Hmm, it seems the mechanical failure is back in play, and suicide / malicious action out, according to New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight-370.html?_r=0

That just looks like a working assumption based on pretty much the same data we've known about. I wonder if the plane flying south on autopilot is based on additional evidence or is also an assumption based on probability.

I don't understand the line about the 777 being extremely difficult to fly manually. That really doesn't make sense.

Edit - I see above it's based on the fact it appears to have travelled in a straight line for hours. That's a reasonable conclusion, but you also have to keep in mind it doesn't mean there was no one conscious.
 

SmokeMaxX

Member
If the plane was on autopilot, why would it take them to where it took them? I assume autopilot also uses with GPS so pilots don't have to take manual turns?
 

railGUN

Banned
This story is so bizarre. What ever caused the pings that had everyone so convinced the plane had crashed in a particular spot... I mean, I try not to entertain crazy conspirisy theories, but what the fuck.
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
If the plane was on autopilot, why would it take them to where it took them? I assume autopilot also uses with GPS so pilots don't have to take manual turns?

You can set an autopilot to go anywhere.


What happened to that bullshit sounding theory (news story, actually) about the pilot deleting his crazy LOST navigation schemes in his simulator?
 

SmokeMaxX

Member
You can set an autopilot to go anywhere.

Yeah but what I"m saying is, if the plane was set for near Australia, why are there assumptions being made of no mal-intent? Even if the pilot/co-pilot were incapacitated, wouldn't they still have set their auto-pilot to either the departing or arriving airport? And is it just supposed to seem coincidental that the plane flew in a path that skirted air defenses?
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
I have been thinking of the seemingly random flight path of the flight post turnaround. If they indeed suffered from hypoxia, they might have made all kinds of erratic decisions, including turning on autopilot to nowhere. I came across this amazing recording of a captain suffering from hypoxia:

http://youtu.be/_IqWal_EmBg

If the crew is in that state they could do whatever insane.

the question is, would the state of hypoxia last long enough to explain all the weird maneuvers?
 
The mechanical failure theory doesn't make sense to me, because you'd have to have a mechanical failure that causes hypoxia, and another mechanical failure that shuts off the plane's transponder. That's a lot of coincidences.
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
The mechanical failure theory doesn't make sense to me, because you'd have to have a mechanical failure that causes hypoxia, and another mechanical failure that shuts off the plane's transponder. That's a lot of coincidences.

It could be that the first failure, maybe a fire of some kind, had them disconnecting everything, and setting a new course for emergency landing, then this was followed up by loss of oxygen, leading to erratic maneuvers, unconsciousness, death and 7 hours of zombie plane.

It would be an extraordinarily unlucky chain of events. Which miraculously wouldn't have escalated since the loss of oxygen. A big question mark is the bizarre accent to 43000ft.
 
The mechanical failure theory doesn't make sense to me, because you'd have to have a mechanical failure that causes hypoxia, and another mechanical failure that shuts off the plane's transponder. That's a lot of coincidences.
You probably need just as many coincidences for there to be insufficient evidence to prove it was deliberate.
 

SmokeMaxX

Member
You probably need just as many coincidences for there to be insufficient evidence to prove it was deliberate.
Well you can't really prove anything either way until we find the thing, but this isn't true at all. A guy wants to go rogue and stops communication, flies at awkward altitudes (some say to skirt defense systems), turns off transponders, and flies towards some remote part of the ocean. You really only need one variable for that (a pilot who goes rogue). Mechanical failure -> hypoxia requires several different variables that COULD happen, but are less likely as a group. Plane randomly turned around with zero radio contact.
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
Well, this is pretty interesting. A power outage in the early parts of the flight, experts suggest it's likely to be deliberate because otherwise the plane could not have flied for hours

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...vestigation-into-missing-plane-continues.html

Windsor Star said:
Inmarsat, the satellite company, has confirmed the assessment, but says it does not know why the aircraft experienced a power failure.

Mr Gleave said: “There are credible mechanical failures that could cause it. But you would not then fly along for hundreds of miles and disappear in the Indian Ocean.”

So, how's this for a theory

1. Someone plans to highjack plane and fly it to Cocos Islands or Australia for an unknown reason

2 . To ensure plane goes undetected hijacker does a number of things - flies on a route avoiding radars, causes power outage to disable communications equipments and then brings plane back online, plots autopilot route to the southern destination

3. For some reason tampering with the plane causes gradual loss of cabin pressure, which leads to hypoxia which is undetected by the hijacker and rest of plane, leading all to become unconscious and die

4. Ghost plane continues on plotted direction until it runs out of fuel and spirals to sea
 
It could be that the first failure, maybe a fire of some kind, had them disconnecting everything, and setting a new course for emergency landing, then this was followed up by loss of oxygen, leading to erratic maneuvers, unconsciousness, death and 7 hours of zombie plane.

It would be an extraordinarily unlucky chain of events. Which miraculously wouldn't have escalated since the loss of oxygen. A big question mark is the bizarre accent to 43000ft.

Didn't they say the flight didn't actually ascend to 43000 feet?
 

willow ve

Member
It could be that the first failure, maybe a fire of some kind, had them disconnecting everything, and setting a new course for emergency landing, then this was followed up by loss of oxygen, leading to erratic maneuvers, unconsciousness, death and 7 hours of zombie plane.

It would be an extraordinarily unlucky chain of events. Which miraculously wouldn't have escalated since the loss of oxygen. A big question mark is the bizarre accent to 43000ft.

I find it FAR more plausible that Pilot (or co-pilot) convinces the other to leave the cabin. Locks them out. They they disconnect all systems and divert the plane. Once those outside the cabin realize what's going on they try to smash down the door. Person controlling the plane ascends to 43,000 ft to eliminate attackers and avoid confrontation with them.

The ascent takes too much fuel and the hijacker can't complete their flight plan and/or feels remorse and/or is knocked unconscious themselves. This causes zombie plane to some unknown destination where it crashed in the ocean hundreds of miles in the middle of nothing.

There is no reason to think any of this could or would be true other than I generally enjoy creating conspiracy theories and goading coworkers into sharing theirs over lunch
 

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
Times were much simpler when we only were worrying about a missing plane.

Now we have

Ebola, a shot down plane, Russia, Ukraine, Isis, Syria, etc etc.
 
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