The latest on the Malaysia plane

trev · Post by **trev** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 11:08 pm

Is that it was way off track. No one seems to know what happened at all.

What is your gut feeling? The media doesn't think it's terrorism.

Screw_Michigan · Post by **Screw_Michigan** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 11:30 pm

No doubt it's a Liberal Media Conspiracy (TM) to protect Onogger.

Wolfman · Post by **Wolfman** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 11:38 pm

The Koch Brothers? My guess is a botched hijacking.

War Wagon · Post by **War Wagon** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 11:44 pm

debinitely, the nefarious Koch bros are at the bottom of this.

Diego in Seattle · Post by **Diego in Seattle** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 11:54 pm

Nancy Pelosi's fault. Don't know how, but the Faux News crowd will think of something.

poptart · Post by **poptart** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 2:02 am

trev wrote:No one seems to know what happened at all.

Some people know exactly where the plane is.

A government(s) is involved in this fiasco.

Jmo.

trev · Post by **trev** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 3:42 am

poptart wrote:
trev wrote:No one seems to know what happened at all.
Some people know exactly where the plane is.

A government(s) is involved in this fiasco.

Jmo.

Vietnam or North Korea shot it down??

poptart · Post by **poptart** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 3:54 am

I don't think the plane went down.
Or if it did, not in the area where it was last known to be.

Diego in Seattle · Post by **Diego in Seattle** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 4:10 am

I'd blame the loafing co-pilot.

Left Seater · Post by **Left Seater** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 1:07 pm

While the right seater is a good place to start your investigation, it is a little early to focus too much energy there. However, you still managed to kick your own ass yet again when trying to make a funny. Turns out the right seater was inviting female guests to ride in the jump seat as recently as 2011.

How can you robots ignore the clear facts? Clearly all the evidence points to a middle launched from the secret government drone. This is the same missle that took out TWA 800, the Pentagon, Korean Air, and all the UFO sightings near Area 51.

Wakey Wakey,

LTS

Mikey · Post by **Mikey** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 3:09 pm

Obama should have seen it coming and done something about it in advance.

Screw_Michigan · Post by **Screw_Michigan** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 7:43 pm

Mikey wrote:Obama should have seen it coming and done something about it in advance.

It was Russia.

Derron · Post by **Derron** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 11:02 pm

Left Seater wrote:While the right seater is a good place to start your investigation, it is a little early to focus too much energy there. However, you still managed to kick your own ass yet again when trying to make a funny. Turns out the right seater was inviting female guests to ride in the jump seat as recently as 2011.

LTS

The right seat was 27 years old. He should have still been flying Fed Ex Caravans out of east Buttfuck, Maylasia . He probably had the flight attendants up there doing lines of blow and giving out knob jobs the whole trip.

Mikey · Post by **Mikey** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 11:16 pm

Screw_Michigan wrote:
Mikey wrote:Obama should have seen it coming and done something about it in advance.
It was Russia.

Damn Putin, always a step ahead of Ofailure.

smackaholic · Post by **smackaholic** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 5:48 pm

I realize that the plane was out of range from land based ATC radar, but, you would think there would have been some sort of Naval ship in the neighborhood painting it with their air search radar. And any target of that size with no accompanying IFF signature would definitely raise an eyebrow or two.

Trouble is, that ship would likely be chinese, and they are kind of funny about sharing info with us at times.

Derron · Post by **Derron** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:02 pm

smackaholic wrote:I realize that the plane was out of range from land based ATC radar, but, you would think there would have been some sort of Naval ship in the neighborhood painting it with their air search radar. And any target of that size with no accompanying IFF signature would definitely raise an eyebrow or two.

Trouble is, that ship would likely be chinese, and they are kind of funny about sharing info with us at times.

I am assuming here and Lefty, please set me straight....but an airline flying very expensive planes is going to have a sat track on them, that gives a lot clearer data than what is out there. But maybe the slopes just say fuck it, run dead reckoning after radar is gone.

I had a hidden LoJack unit on my backhoe and it got stolen off a job site. One quick online process and that thing was telling us right where it was at.

We will likely NEVER know what happened.

mvscal · Post by **mvscal** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:06 pm

smackaholic wrote:Trouble is, that ship would likely be chinese, and they are kind of funny about sharing info with us at times.

That far south? Doubtful. The Chinese navy is a glorified coast guard. Besides something like 3/4s of the passengers are Chinese citizens.

smackaholic · Post by **smackaholic** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:59 pm

I would think the chink navy would have a pretty decent presence in that area. Of course the better part of it is likely their submarine force, which they have put a good deal of effort into over the last 20 years. And subs generally don't run radar as it eliminates their advantage of being invisible.

Mikey · Post by **Mikey** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:10 pm

smackaholic wrote:And subs generally don't run radar as it eliminates their advantage of being invisible.

Pretty hard to use it underwater too.

mvscal · Post by **mvscal** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:20 pm

smackaholic wrote:I would think the chink navy would have a pretty decent presence in that area. Of course the better part of it is likely their submarine force, which they have put a good deal of effort into over the last 20 years. And subs generally don't run radar as it eliminates their advantage of being invisible.

Stop trying to think. You'll hurt yourself.

Left Seater · Post by **Left Seater** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 8:10 pm

Derron wrote: I am assuming here and Lefty, please set me straight....but an airline flying very expensive planes is going to have a sat track on them, that gives a lot clearer data than what is out there. But maybe the slopes just say fuck it, run dead reckoning after radar is gone.

We will likely NEVER know what happened.

I don't know of any airline that sat tracks all their birds all the time. The cost is just beyond reasonable.

Ground based radar has a maybe 125 mile reach over water, so it isn't uncommon for planes to fly outside of radar coverage. It is unique that the transponder would be put in standby or the breaker to be pulled.

So outside of this radar coverage the pilots report in at certain predetermined "waypoints." Oceanic control will tell you to be at a certain point at an exact time. The auto pilot will ensure this happens. Upon reaching said point use report using HF radio or if so equipped a sat based communication. This sat based comm just sends quick bursts or packets of data, think a text message.

Further, media reports state that this flight was ACARS equipped. This system sends maintenance info to the airlines HQ during the flight. When the FMC registers errors these are transmitted and this can help the maintenance guys repair the plane faster.

Boeing also has a program called Airplane Health Management that can communicate in real time from plane to HQ with all kinds of info. Malaysia didn't select this option for their 777s so it wasn't operating. Since I don't fly Boeing jets I don't know very much about the system.

It may take awhile, but at some point we will start to find clues. Way to many parts that float to not turn up on a beach somewhere at some point. And all of those parts will have serial numbers.

Derron · Post by **Derron** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 10:36 pm

Interesting. I would have thought in today's electronic age it would be cost effective for a transponder to ping a satellite every 90 seconds. Of course, I suppose Boeing was going to hose them hard on the cost, and we know the slopes won't pay for that shit.

As far as those radar tracking, an Airbus 330 went over my place this morning en route to Hawaii. Got my attention because it was about 9 miles farther west than those headings usually are. I went into the office and looked it up on flightradar24.com, and their track was clearly off by about 30 miles, and probably 4 to 5 degrees to the south of the actual flight path of the aircraft.

Mikey · Post by **Mikey** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 10:44 pm

Left Seater wrote:
It may take awhile, but at some point we will start to find clues. Way to many parts that float to not turn up on a beach somewhere at some point. And all of those parts will have serial numbers.

Maybe find small bits of shoe on the some seat back.

jiminphilly · Post by **jiminphilly** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 1:00 am

The spygames that are at work over this are probably like the final table at a high stakes poker game.. no one wants to show much otherwise they reveal their tell (sources)

Left Seater · Post by **Left Seater** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 2:49 pm

Extremely difficult to kill the pax without also causing yourself some discomfort.

Your suggestion about decompression is also going to decompress the cockpit. If this is done rapidly, everyone is going to suffer from blown eardrums. But unless it is some sort of explosive decompression, that isn't immediately fatal. The cabin would be extremely uncomfortable, but it would take hours for every pax to eventually pass out from lack of oxygen. The pilots would have to disable the oxygen masks for the pax, if that is even possible, which I am sure it is via the breaker pannel, but since I haven't flown the 777 I can't say for sure. Plus the waitresses would be all over the flight crew to do something.

An explosive decompression event runs the risk of disabling the plane and even that won't kill all the pax. See the United 747 that lost its cargo door outside of HNL. That sucked a few rows of seats out killing a handful, but not everyone and the plane was a write off. See also the Aloha Air 737 that lost part of its top and became a convertible. A waitress was killed and plenty were injured, but many were unhurt.

I would guess the easiest way to kill all the pax would be with a gas of some sort. Set it off and as long as the flight crew had gas masks they wouldn't feel the effects. But even if that happened, 777s jut don't disappear. They could get down low to the deck and hide from most ground radar, but that would then make them visible to ships if at sea and to people if over land. Plus flying on the deck is going to slow them down and reduce their range by a huge amount.

mvscal · Post by **mvscal** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 3:55 pm

Left Seater wrote:But even if that happened, 777s jut don't disappear.

This one did.

trev · Post by **trev** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 4:10 pm

A waitress? Are you talking about flight attendants? I've never heard them called waitresses.

Jay in Phoenix · Post by **Jay in Phoenix** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 4:51 pm

trev wrote:A waitress? Are you talking about flight attendants? I've never heard them called waitresses.

What is a flight attendant other than a glorified waitress in the sky? (Thank you Paul Westerberg) :wink:

Rooster · Post by **Rooster** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 5:14 pm

My guess is that has been "stolen" ie hijacked so that it can be either chopped for parts or used by some entity for whatever purpose they want it for. A 2008 777 sold for $54M, so a newer model like MA's would go for considerably more. That the airliner disappeared at the precise location where radar coverage in that part of the world is sparse is highly suspicious. The question is what happened to the other crew members and passengers?

The ACARS (the engine reporting system) operates independently of all other commo systems and was reportedly sendingout signals for 4 hours after the plane went black. What surprises me is that the civilian equivalent of the military's Blue Force Tracker wasn't either onboard or had been disabled. Ours in A-stan cannot be disabled, so either there was an avionics savvy person onboard or perhaps they do not have them installed on MA birds.

Goober McTuber · Post by **Goober McTuber** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 5:47 pm

(CNN) -- You -- the person now reading this story -- can help experts solve the mystery of what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared over the open sea.

In fact, thousands of aspiring good Samaritans are volunteering their time to scour part of the plane's search zone using detailed satellite images posted online by DigitalGlobe, a Colorado firm that owns one of the world's most advanced commercial satellite networks.

So many volunteers have joined the effort that the firm's website -- with its pinpoint pictures of everything floating in the ocean -- has crashed.

It is a busy week for "crowdsourcing," the Internet phenomenon where information is gathered from John and Jane Q. Public -- people like you -- and from your social media postings.

DigitalGlobe and tomnod.com offer their satellite photos of ocean in crowdsourcing effort."This is a real needle-in-the-haystack problem, except the haystack is in the middle of the ocean," Luke Barrington of DigitalGlobe told CNN affiliate KMGH. "I will ask you to mark anything that looks interesting, any signs of wreckage or life rafts."

DigitalGlobe's satellite photos taken 400 miles above the Gulf of Thailand can capture a detail as small as a home plate. The challenge is finding the manpower to scour 1,235 square miles of such images on one of DigitalGlobe's websites, Tomnod.com -- with more pictures to be posted this week from satellites above the Strait of Malacca, said Abby Van Uum, an Edelman publicist retained by DigitalGlobe.

That's where crowdsourcing comes in.

"In many cases, the areas covered are so large, or the things we're looking for are so hard to find, that without the help of hundreds of thousands of people online, we'd never be able to find them," Barrington said.

One volunteer, Mike Seberger, 43, found a fascinating image in a matter of minutes: the silhouette in the ocean has the scale of a Boeing 777-200, the same model of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

His discovery can be seen on his CNN iReport page, which is also a form of crowdsourcing used by CNN.

"At first, I skipped past it, thinking, 'Nah. No way I would find anything that quickly,' " Seberger told CNN on Tuesday. "But then I kept scrolling back to it and thinking to myself, 'It does resemble a plane....'

"I played with the zoom on my browser a bit, and took a screenshot at 200%, which is what I uploaded" to CNN iReport, said Seberger, a manager of information technology in the Chicago area.

But Seberger does have his doubts: "Looking at it objectively, the shape of 'my' object appears plane-like and the dimensions are consistent with a 777-200. That said, I feel it is more likely to be a boat."

DigitalGlobe and the Tomnod.com website officials have yet to respond to his flagging of the curious image. "Their site is getting slammed, apparently, because about half the time that I try to access it, I get an error page, and sometimes even though I log in, no map loads," Seberger said Tuesday. "The site got slammed like healthcare.gov."

Company officials weren't available to respond to CNN's requests for a comment Tuesday.

In response to the Malaysia Airlines plane's disappearance, DigitalGlobe activated its subscription service to emergency managers, which provides online access to satellite images before and after the incident, the firm said on its website. The photos are used for emergency response, damage assessment and recovery.

The company performed a similar "global crowdsourcing campaign" in November's Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, allowing volunteers to tag online more than 60,000 objects of interest from satellite photos. The information was forwarded to emergency responders, the firm said.

The firm also tracked damage last year in the Moore, Oklahoma, tornado and the Colorado floods. In another case, the satellite imagery also helped locate the remains of two missing hikers in Peru, the affiliate reported.

The firm, based in Longmont, also uses geospatial big data, which is "information and insight taken from imagery and derived from various sources such as social media," the firm said.

The company used the technology in satellite images of the recent Sochi Olympics in Russia and cross-referenced the photos with social media data "to analyze overall activity, linguistic composition and mood for people around Sochi," the firm said.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/us/malays ... pt=bosread

Left Seater · Post by **Left Seater** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 5:50 pm

Trev,

Stewardesses are there to take your drink orders and get you a blanket. The fact they try to sell you that they are there for your safety is a joke. Look back on any recent aviation incident and it is the pax leading the way to safety, not the waitresses.

Rooster,

Why would someone "steal" a 777 to part it out? Each and every part on that plane has a serial number that can be tracked. Further, to sell used parts will require a discount since 777 parts are easy to come by since it is still in production. And which 777 operator is looking to purchase parts on the black market?

I haven't seen the report that says the ACARS was transmitting for an additional 4 hours. Can you link me up to that report? Was it from a credible source? If that is true, the plane is likely still intact somewhere.

jiminphilly · Post by **jiminphilly** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 7:57 pm

The plane's transponder stopped working and the prevailing opinion is that it was done on purpose. If that is one possibility, then one of the first things the Malasian officials should have been doing is searching the homes of the pilots. It's known from youtube videos that the pilot has his own simulator and apparently it's very high tech. Nothing wrong with that except he's the captain of a plane that went missing a week ago. Has his home been searched yet?

Police have been outside his Malaysia home every day since the plane vanished, a source told CNN. But they have not gone inside.

If they did, they might find a flight simulator there. In a YouTube video he apparently posted, Zaharie can be seen sitting in front of one.

And in a German online forum for simulator enthusiasts, X-Sim.de, there is a post from November 2012 in his name that says he built it himself.

"About a month ago I finish assembly of FSX and FS9 with 6 monitors." The message was signed Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah BOEING 777 MALAYSIA AIRLINES.

FSX and FS9 are over-the-counter flight simulator games made by Microsoft.

On Friday, the CEO of Malaysia Airlines said that everyone is allowed to pursue their hobbies.

Zaharie, a pilot with 18,365 flight hours under his belt, is reportedly also a flight instructor.

Whatever the fuck happened, the investigating group from Malaysia is either hiding something or have no fucking idea what the fuck they are doing.

mvscal · Post by **mvscal** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 8:13 pm

They could be trying to hide the fact that they don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Goober McTuber · Post by **Goober McTuber** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 8:47 pm

My guess would be a hijacking gone bad. It looks like the plane was in the air for several hours after the transponder got shut down. If the plane had safely touched down anywhere, somebody would have fired off a text or a cell phone call. It crashed, but not anywhere near where it fell off the radar.

Diego in Seattle · Post by **Diego in Seattle** » Fri Mar 14, 2014 11:36 pm

Left Seater wrote:Rooster,

Why would someone "steal" a 777 to part it out? Each and every part on that plane has a serial number that can be tracked. Further, to sell used parts will require a discount since 777 parts are easy to come by since it is still in production. And which 777 operator is looking to purchase parts on the black market?

The markings on each part will tell not only who the manufacturer was who made it (likely not Boeing), but also when it was made (down to the exact work order). I can't see too many airlines (none operating in the US) who would be willing to run the risk of either installing or having found on one of their crashed aircraft parts that were "hot" (not just stolen, but using parts that have not been kept in a chain of possession that assures the parts were kept in conditions mandated through engineering & specifications). No, there's really not a market for stolen commercial airliner parts.

Rooster · Post by **Rooster** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 11:20 am

Right Seater, chopping aircraft parts is nothing new in the gray and black market of aviation. There have been bad actors in that business for years due to the astronomically high cost of OEM parts. For example, a right side pilot door on an AS350 (a Eurocopter product) costs $35,000 new. A wing window on a BH206 costs $6,000. That someone in Asia/Asia Minor could procure a 777 (assuming no pesky difficulties with those frustratingly commonplace passengers who annoyingly tend to show up in airplanes) would be a windfall worth dozens of millions of dollars in parts alone, never mind an intact airframe with low hours. Granted, no one is going to man this bird and begin chartering flights to and from legitimate airports, but for internal cargo or more nefarious purposes, something like this would be a goldmine.

Rooster · Post by **Rooster** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 12:53 pm

I'd also add that at least in the rotary wing side of the house "refurbished" parts is a constant danger. Case in point: Not long ago there were a whole slew of rotor blades put on the market with a fresh coat of paint and new (counterfeit) data plates and sold to operators as slightly used for a hefty sum. No operator has the time or money to go and chase down serial numbers to ensure that what they bought is legitimate, so when a set delaminated and catastrophically failed it was then when it came to light that there was (once again) a market where parts long past their TBO or service life were being sold.

So if a triple 7 were stolen and then broken down to its' respective parts and then sold on the black market, it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

Left Seater · Post by **Left Seater** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 1:05 pm

Rooster,

I have to agree completely with Diego. I understand the black market for aircraft parts for smaller and more common types in operation. Hell, I get it even for Mad Dogs and Guppies which have been going strong for 35 years and have operators the world over. Plenty of Asian and African operators of those types who might buy parts off the black market.

But a 777? I guess there could be a buyer or two, but I just don't see the large market for these parts.

Wolfman · Post by **Wolfman** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 3:30 pm

I'm guessing you can't land one of those at just any air strip. Still think botched hijacking and it went into the drink somewhere.

Rooster · Post by **Rooster** » Sat Mar 15, 2014 5:16 pm

I read somewhere that a 777 can land on a 5000 foot dirt runway in a pinch assuming there aren't any adverse winds. But I'm not a fixed wing guy, much less heavy iron, so I'd defer to LS on that. Personally, I need, oh, just enough space to clear the rotor system on my bird. :bode: