Malaysia Airlines Flight Vanishes

[GlockDude26]

In the back of my mind, I keep wondering if it was shot with a missile and due to the amount of fuel it carries, it just blew into small pieces. Tragic indeed.

I would think (possibly incorrectly) that a missile fired to 35,000 feet would have shown up on somebody's radar.

if that was the case it would depend on who fired it......anytime something tragic happens pay close attention to statements, followed by legislation......

[philip964]

A facebook friend posted what I presume is a tacky post " Kate we have to go back to the island"

I assume this is a Lost reference.

RIP and my condolences to the friends and family, this is everyone's worst news.

As each hour goes on with no news it makes it seem so much like it is terrorism.

They are saying there were 5 no shows. We wonder if their luggage was boarded. The two false id's reservations were made over the phone by a third party and the two men paid in cash naturally.

Everyone pays in cash for intercontinental travel. Don't you.

The 777 has not had a death that was its fault. That's pretty safe.

Pilot had 18,000 hrs and had a flight simulator in his home he liked it so much.

So unless it suffered the fate in Lost, there is wreckage, and not lots of little pieces as the Challenger crew cabin was in large pieces.

They will find it but will we be told it is terrorism? Maybe still upset over the video.

[anygunanywhere]

A facebook friend posted what I presume is a tacky post " Kate we have to go back to the island"

I assume this is a Lost reference.

RIP and my condolences to the friends and family, this is everyone's worst news.

As each hour goes on with no news it makes it seem so much like it is terrorism.

They are saying there were 5 no shows. We wonder if their luggage was boarded. The two false id's reservations were made over the phone by a third party and the two men paid in cash naturally.

Everyone pays in cash for intercontinental travel. Don't you.

The 777 has not had a death that was its fault. That's pretty safe.

Pilot had 18,000 hrs and had a flight simulator in his home he liked it so much.

So unless it suffered the fate in Lost, there is wreckage, and not lots of little pieces as the Challenger crew cabin was in large pieces.

They will find it but will we be told it is terrorism? Maybe still upset over the video.

I read in one of the stories I think on Fox news that the no-show's luggage had been removed prior to departure.

Anygunanywhere

[Dave2]

Definitely had to have a been a catastrophic event. I feed ADS-B received signals to the a couple of the Internet flight tracking services.

Do you know where that data comes from? If it's an actual radar track, then I'm pretty confident that "it" happened where the track ends. But if they're basing that flight path on broadcasts from the plane, well those can be turned off or fail, in which case we might be looking thousands of miles away from where the plane/wreckage actually is.

I can't remember if it's been mentioned in this thread, but those oil slicks -- the only actual evidence of a crash location we had -- turned out not to be from the missing plane.

What a nightmare.

[cb1000rider]

ADS-B is fed via on-board GPS.
ADS-B coverage isn't everywhere (at least in the USA) - I have no idea about the standard or coverage in international areas. EDIT: here's the international coverage: http://flightaware.com/adsb/coverage" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Keith B]

ADS-B is fed via on-board GPS.
ADS-B coverage isn't everywhere (at least in the USA) - I have no idea about the standard or coverage in international areas.

That area has good ADS-B receiver coverage. You can see other planes go across the Gulf of Thailand from Kuala Lumpur into Vietnam with coverage over the route and the flight track has good data points.

All reports are the plane just disappeared off of radar as well as any flight data being reported via other systems. At that location where the ADS-B stopped it might be poor coverage of radar. If it went into several small pieces at 35Kft it is possible that the radar would have lost capability to have anything big enough to reflect off of and it would appear to have just vanished.

One thing that has not been talked about is the possibility of it being shot out of the sky with an air-to-air missile. I am not a conspiracy theorist but what if a country was flying one of their aircraft in that area and someone screwed up and shot it down, but the country is keeping quiet about it?

[cb1000rider]

I agree with that - posted prior people thought that missiles show up on radar... My guess would be air/air or ground/air, they're not going to show up.
It is odd to loose something this large with all the modern technology... In fact, it's odd enough to make me suspicious.

My condolences to the families of those affected.

[mojo84]

One thing that has not been talked about is the possibility of it being shot out of the sky with an air-to-air missile. I am not a conspiracy theorist but what if a country was flying one of their aircraft in that area and someone screwed up and shot it down, but the country is keeping quiet about it?

I'm starting to think this may be it or it was one serious bomb that went of aboard the plane. I just can't imagine a scenario where it would just disappear from the radar like that without some kind of radio traffic.

[Oldgringo]

Read "NIGHT FALL", a fiction by Nelson Demille.....weeooo, weooo.

[WildBill]

I have flown in and out of Kuala Lumpur Malaysia many times. This was prior to 911, so things may have changed.

My impression about security in Malaysia was that they were more concerned about things [drugs and "pornography"] entering the country rather than things leaving the country.

I usually travelled via Hong Kong and they were also concerned about duty free items being brought into the country.

I have only flown on Malaysia Airlines [to Japan] once. The thing I remember most is that they treated the foreign [US and Japanese] passengers better than their own citizens.

Most of the locals were students and young people flying coach and going to Japan to visit Disney Land Tokyo.

If you were flying First or Business Class they waved you through security without checking carry-on luggage.

[philip964]

There saying the men with the fake passports are Iranian. It really would not make any sense for the Iranian govt to be involved. They don't want to make China mad at them.

[txnative1951]

I'm not certain about over in this particular area, but in the US, ATC might not have primary radar coverage of an area. What they rely upon is the aircraft to have a transponder. The transponder receives a signal from some other transmitter and then responds with the squawk code that is set on the transponder. As such, if the transponder stops working, then it would appear that the aircraft just disappeared from the sky to ATC. Now, these days they also have ADS-B, but it is similar in that if it quit transmitting, then the aircraft would appear to just disappear. The military might be more inclined to have primary radar since they are concerned with enemy aircraft that by their very nature are not going to be broadcasting their current position.

It does seem a bit odd that all data from the aircraft just stopped without any sort of distress indication from the aircraft.

[Dave2]

It does seem a bit odd that all data from the aircraft just stopped without any sort of distress indication from the aircraft.

You know, if it were me, I'd at least try to design those transmitters with big enough caps that they could send a final "emergency" transmission if it was suddenly disconnected from everything, independent of the actual distress signal from the computers. I wonder if Boeing felt the same way? Because, if, say, the plane broke in half, I bet that would generate enough error messages that there wouldn't be time to push them all through... there might not even me time for the computer to prioritize them in preparation for transmission. But if there was a kinda "reflexive" transmission that originated within the transmitter itself, it might be practical to have enough reserve power to be able to send it even if it's been suddenly removed from the plane.

[philip964]

Victims families say they still get ring tones on there loved ones smart phones. If the phone is off, usually it goes directly to voice mail. However the phones have gone unanswered.

One of the Iranians was an asylum seeker, his mom was waiting for him at the destination.

[baldeagle]

They said on Channel 5 News last night that radar only has a range of about 120 miles. After that they are dependent upon the plane to communicate with satellites to report its position. They only do this once an hour. So "disappeared" might not be referring to vanishing off the radar screen. It may mean that they didn't report in when they should have.

Since planes are flying about 300mph, they would cover a lot of territory between transmissions, which would make the search area very large even if they stayed on their flight path. If they diverted, then the search could be off by 200 miles or more.