Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

(17-03-2014 11:47 )southlondonphil Wrote:  If you want to fly a plane into a target you hijack it and do the job immediately before anyone has a chance to comprehend what's happening. You don't land and wait because then everyone is on the look out for you.

It's possible that the plane is being given a remote control refit. That would inevitably take time.

(17-03-2014 19:50 )HannahsPet Wrote:  would love to know if its possible to clone another aircrafts transponder data for one thats already in the air

The way to do it is to shadow another aircraft. In this case another Boeing 777 was immediately in front of MH370 as it reached the Andaman Sea. This was flight SIA86 en-route from Singapore flying across the Andaman Sea into the Bay of Bengal and then across India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan before heading across Europe to its destination of Barcelona. MH370 likely flew in the shadow of SIA68 through India and Afghanistan airspace. As MH370 was flying “dark” without transponder it would have shown up as one single blip on radar with only the transponder information of SIA68 showing up on the Indian and Afghan radar screens.

I see some good points being made, but it still looks to me as though a pilot gone crazy is the simplest theory.

(17-03-2014 16:33 )Lord Rockingham Wrote:  Is it definite that they even had enough fuel to reach Iran?

It's not definite, but it's theoretically possible that MH370 could have reached eastern Iran.

(17-03-2014 20:44 )marlowe Wrote:  a pilot gone crazy is the simplest theory.

Is it so simple though? A pilot gone crazy means suicide, but then why head to the Indian Ocean to do it? Why fly around for 8 hours or so? Even if it is the simplest theory, I'm not sure that it makes any real sense. It would have to be the most elaborate suicide in history.

(17-03-2014 21:19 )tony confederate Wrote:  why head to the Indian Ocean

Yes why go to the Indian Ocean just to commit suicide, that's the part I don't get at all. If that's where the plane finished up.

(17-03-2014 15:10 )babelover48 Wrote:  If the Taliban were behind the hijack as reported

That theory is certainly being taken seriously, as Malaysia has formally asked Afghanistan and Pakistan for permission to fly over Taliban bases in their countries.

(17-03-2014 21:30 )kevin symons Wrote:  Yes why go to the Indian Ocean

The plane flying to the Indian Ocean and ditching there when its fuel ran out may not have been the plan. Perhaps one of the pilots or whoever the hijacker was had the intention of crashing into a landmark in Kuala Lumpur in a 9/11 style attack. The Petronas Twin Towers springs to mind. Reading some of the earlier posts in this thread suggests possible reasons as to why the pilot may have wanted to do this. Hence the turn back to overfly Malaysia with the intention of approaching Kuala Lumpur below radar level via the low level countryside from the Malacca Strait side of Malaysia. That route would leave little chance of the plane being stopped from reaching its target and it could have been one of the scenarios that the pilot had been practicing on his simulator. Why on earth otherwise would the pilot have turned the flight back to overfly Malaysia again if the motive was nothing more than to commit suicide in the Indian Ocean? Think about it for a moment. If the pilot did want to commit an act of terrorism what is the first target that comes to mind? Definitely the Petronas Twin Towers because of the smilarity to 9/11! The point I am getting at is that the plan may have been thwarted over the Malacca Strait. We could speculate on how that happened, crew and/or passengers fighting back somehow and resulting in a forced entry to the cockpit for example, but whatever happened it resulted in the plane being left unmanned with nobody alive to fly it. The plane would then have continued to fly out into the Indian Ocean, running as a ghost plane until it ran out of fuel.

(17-03-2014 21:46 )Glenn Miller Wrote:  

(17-03-2014 15:10 )babelover48 Wrote:  If the Taliban were behind the hijack as reported

That theory is certainly being taken seriously, as Malaysia has formally asked Afghanistan and Pakistan for permission to fly over Taliban bases in their countries.

I can't see why Malaysia would need to ask. The Americans are involved in the search and I would expect they have suitable toys for that job.

The plane is either at the bottom of the sea or crashed in a remote area, probably the former rather than the latter.

What caused it to end up there is another matter.

It seems a serious design flaw that the tracking device can be switched off in the cockpit.
Surely it should only be accessible to engineers when the plane is being serviced