'Contact lost' with Malaysia Airlines plane
- Thread starter Domo
- Start date
The inmarsat locations are only a vague plot based on signal strength and time elapsed and adding in other factors such as directions they couldn't have continued on for prolonged periods without highly likely being detected and other possible (unconfirmed AFAIK) military tracking suggests that a north west destination is one of the most likely while Iran is an outlier the presence of Iranians with stolen passports tends to lend credibility that its a possible outcome and while some sources (again AFAIK not confirmed as factual) claim it only had enough fuel for approx 2-2.5k subsequent miles that seems low for its flight plan - those 200ERs do the flight from Singapore to Sydney non-stop no hassle so assuming it had a fair amount of fuel its completely within the realm of possible to do Iran without landing mid-way.
Assuming any of this is at all on the money or true the reasons as to why would likely be even more complex - but likely to be more than just an irregular hijacking or someone wanting to steal the plane. Before any other theory would need to know in detail just who was on the plane of any significance.
Process of elimination I assume.
Based on satellite pings, other air traffic, etc, they are fairly confident that the radar track over Malaysia was MH370.
The 'pings' have identifiers - they know that these originated from MH370. The location is not as accurate though.
They know the angle between plane and satellite from the last ping so they can work out the rough distance away from the satellite that the plane was.
They dont know which direction the plane was though, so there is a full circle of possible locations that all lie the specific distance from the satellite.
They can rule out some of the points on the circle (pings were only detected by 1 satellite, so any areas covered by other sats can be ruled out).
This leaves the 2 arcs in the image posted earlier as the possible last detected location of the plane.
(It didnt fly along the arc, just that the last location was somewhere on this arc)
Muslims don't need the US for that, they're already doing a fine job on there own, the last attack, killing 28 people by knifing them at a train station was pretty grim.
But I am surprised at the Chinese lack of response at that
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 37,804
- Location
- block 16, cell 12
It also puts ukraine off the front pages as the west do little to stop Putin and his invasion.
Agreed. The plots are approximations of where the plane could be relative to the satellite.
Agreed, the northern route is the most likely route IMO, however would need a lot of planning to avoid the most covered zones.
Yet there were 160+ Chinese, several westerners and many malaysians. The plane could have flown over China according to the Immarsat plots. If flying to Iran the most direct route would be either over India or south of India, a comparable distance to the northern route but with far less chance of discovery. Why not fly that way if Iran was the destination? It was apparently well planned so would have made more sense IMO. As for the passports if they were part of such a well coordinated plan you'd think they would use passports a little more difficult to track.
Agreed. But it still begs the question of why they chose that particular plane so far away. Possibly cargo or people on board but if it was designed to get them then again why the easy tracing back to Iran, especially now when there is reconciliation between the west and them.
Agreed.
The Chinese, etc. aren't anomalies though - people with stolen passports are. That there were a small number of russians, americans and even a couple of ukrainians onboard also gives other possible reasoning behind it assuming it wasn't an accidental crash.
As for stolen passports that were less of a potential giveaway theres too many possible variables there - as the Israeli's have found out heh.
EDIT: PS I'm not saying it was the Iranians and there is definitely nothing to tie anything Islam wise to it at this point but until more information comes to light if it wasn't an accident its one of the more likely possibilities that Iran was the intended re-routed destination state sponsored or otherwise.
Last edited:
You wouldn't need to pull the breaker to disable the Transponder. You would use the off switch
Those 20 high profile engineers were definitely on the plane. I was just looking it up then..
Soldato
- Joined
- 15 Feb 2012
- Posts
- 3,308
- Location
- 2
You wouldn't need to pull the breaker to disable the Transponder. You would use the off switch
The standby switch
Soldato
- Joined
- 15 Feb 2012
- Posts
- 3,308
- Location
- 2
It's more of a position on a rotary than a switch
Standby position on the twisty knob ?
Caporegime
- Joined
- 1 Dec 2010
- Posts
- 53,766
- Location
- Welling, London
This is the transponder on the 737. I assume the 777 is pretty much identical.
As you can see a mere switch from TA/RA to standby stops the transponder transmitting anything.
As you can see a mere switch from TA/RA to standby stops the transponder transmitting anything.
- Joined
- 9 Apr 2012
- Posts
- 13,172
This is the transponder on the 737. I assume the 777 is pretty much identical.
As you can see a mere switch from TA/RA to standby stops the transponder transmitting anything.
In that case, there is no way the controls were disabled accidentally: no flight attendant would be that stupid.
Flag up when? About a week later. The pilot of our flights tells the re-fuellers how much fuel he wants by a flip card in the FO's window. It's then fuelled to that level. If the pilot reuests for example 1000kgs more than the computed route, the company with want a report from him why the hell it was done. Fuel weight is so critical to costs.
By then it's far too late if this is what happened. Fuel weight/efficiency is looked at more than anything else but not at point of delivery.