777 down

[VaSteve]

Originally Posted by nostatic

Truth is turning out to be stranger than fiction by the moment. Lots of laptops at Starbucks around LA are typing out "Terror on Flight 318" right now.

Originally Posted by Seahawk

I can't imagine a scenario where the route controllers, after losing flight 318, don't alert everyone.

huh? What???

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by VaSteve

huh? What???

370. My bad.

318 is next

[FLYGEEZER]

Seahawk, could it be..that others are involved like route control folks & the confliction of information given by the government press releases ?

[widgeon13]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

I spent an hour this morning looking at digital aviation maps of the "corridors" the news outlets were talking about the jet could have flown.

There are, when I stopped counting, over a three hundred places for the plane to safely land in a seven hour arc. I am sure folks are en route to them.

The most interesting thing to me is the lack of real world radar tapes of the aircraft. The IFF/Transponder is fine, but tracking a 777 with radar isn't exactly hard especially since the whole air traffic grid would have been alerted as soon as the flight goes silent with the IFF/Transponder.

I can't imagine a scenario where the route controllers, after losing flight 318, don't alert everyone.

Also, the USN: Tracking a 777 with Aegis is like OldE and I exchanging flashlight beams at three feet

Seahawk, certainly respect your opinion. So are you implying that a clandestine rescue or recovery is under way and for whatever reason the public is not being updated. Do you believe the US govt is not sharing all they know? Why wouldn't the Navy be aware of an unidentified aircraft traveling erratically over the Indian Ocean? Seems very strange to me.

[oldE]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

Also, the USN: Tracking a 777 with Aegis is like OldE and I exchanging flashlight beams at three feet

OK, but I get the Maglight!

A lot of folks have been asking questions along the lines of, "Well someone must have been tracking the plane." and they're right. The flight probably showed up on lots of radars, but you have several factors:
One, this is one of the busiest air corridors in the world.
Two, There has not been a recent air threat in the region, so no one is on high alert
Three, Say you are a ship's captain who is advised by radar you have a large target, no IFF, flying on a course not a threat to you. Do you contact your HQ? No, you file it away as one more weird thing and get on with the thousand other details until a couple of days later some Brass Hat sends out a query.
Then your data, if you have it, goes under a magnifying glass.
Then someone has to recognize that data piece for what it is and add it to the greater picture.
I suspect a lot of that sort of thing has been happening, but no one is going to risk a career by blurting out, "Oh yeah, we had those guys on the screen around 4 AM and they were headed North west." Down the road, some PIO will advise the press.

In the mean while, we wait.
We've been spoiled by the 30 second news clip.
Life sometimes takes longer.
Best
Les

[nostatic]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

370. My bad.

318 is next

Yeah, they can't write the screenplay for 370 because they might get the wrong answer (eventually). 318 can end any way they want it to...

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by FLYGEEZER

Seahawk, could it be..that others are involved like route control folks & the confliction of information given by the government press releases ?

I'm a simple guy so I like to start with the basics: No conspiracies, but there are voids.

If I am responsible for either handing off or accepting Flight 370, as soon as it goes silent I am alerting the entire air traffic control system...and they no doubt have a protocol to handle just this situation.

Break out the check list and get busy.

I'd also like to hear the tapes of the controllers after the IFF/Transponder was shut off.

I lost the ability to transmit radio comms (could still hear them) once with a controller on a very innocuous IFR flight, had to squawk the lost comm code and the world lit up: Two popped circuit breakers later and we were back in business.

Trust me, when this flight went dark, the whole system was alerted.

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by widgeon13

Seahawk, certainly respect your opinion. So are you implying that a clandestine rescue or recovery is under way and for whatever reason the public is not being updated. Do you believe the US govt is not sharing all they know? Why wouldn't the Navy be aware of an unidentified aircraft traveling erratically over the Indian Ocean? Seems very strange to me.

No, not at all.

I just did a back of the napkin, "Where could they land" exercise and assume that the folks who do this for a living are as well.

There are, as we all know, established international procedures for handling inflight emergencies on all commercial routes, even the remote ones.

Once a flight is lost, or anomalies occur, there are established routines. I'd love to hear the tapes of the other controllers trying to deal with a lost aircraft that may be in their airspace, threatening other aircraft.

[mreid]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

Also, the USN: Tracking a 777 with Aegis is like OldE and I exchanging flashlight beams at three feet

Unless it is out of range.

Of course this whole thing could be a distraction, a diversion, sleight of hand so we don't notice something else happening right in front of us.

[widgeon13]

What I find interesting is that when the WSJ initially commented on the ping signals, the information was denied now the entire story seems to revolve around the pings.

[Heel n Toe]

Perhaps we (and our allies... especially Israel) already know exactly where the plane is if it is sitting on the ground somewhere and what the hijackers' intentions are and are watching it closely... and either putting plans together to take it out once it gets back in the air, or even send a special ops team to semi-permanently disable it where it sits...

...while letting the cable news outlets drone out the 24/7 speculation/disinformation as a smokescreen.

[widgeon13]

More from the WSJ, today

By JOANNA SUGDEN And SANTANU CHOUDHURY
Updated March 14, 2014 11:16 p.m. ET
NEW DELHI—The international search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 widened and moved drastically farther west into the Indian Ocean as new information showed the plane likely remained airborne for hours after it blinked off radar screens last weekend.

Indian aircraft and ships began fanning out a day ago around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a distant Indian territory toward the coast of Myanmar, and across more than 13,000 square miles of open sea.

Cmdr. William Marks, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet, confirmed the U.S. has begun searching the Indian Ocean at the request of the Malaysian government, flying a night mission out 1,000 miles west of the Malaysian capital. That was much farther west than the multinational search effort has reached previously. He said all U.S. search efforts would concentrate on the Indian Ocean.

Flight 370 was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and went missing with 239 people aboard, and has defied efforts of a dozen nations to find it despite nearly a week of intensifying searching. Its disappearance ranks among modern aviation's most bewildering mysteries.

The missing jet transmitted its location repeatedly to satellites over the course of five hours after it disappeared from radar, people briefed on the matter said. The final ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a normal cruising altitude. They added that it was unclear why the pings stopped.

If the plane remained airborne for the entire five hours, it could have flown more than 2,200 nautical miles from its last confirmed position over the Gulf of Thailand, the people said

The Indian naval search would continue into Friday night, said Col. Harmit Singh, spokesman for India's tri-services command. The 572 islands of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago stretch nearly 450 miles north-to-south. Only 37 islands are inhabited. "The rest are dense tropical jungle," Col. Singh said. The archipelago is so remote that it remains home to a tiny community of people barely touched by modernity.

Indian forces began searching in the area after Malaysian authorities provided a set of coordinates and asked India to look for debris. The Indian Navy said it has sent two warships to search to the southeast of the islands in the direction of the Strait of Malacca. The Indian Coast Guard deployed aircraft and patrol boats in the area.

"We're looking everywhere; on the western and eastern coast of Andaman," said V.S.R. Murthy, inspector general of the coast guard on the islands. "Right now, it's just a blind hunt."

India's Defense ministry said late on Friday that, at Malaysia's request, it will search 3,500 square miles off India's eastern coast. It cited the fact that there was "no headway so far" in searches elsewhere.

India was preparing to use its most advanced surveillance aircraft, the P-8 Poseidon, a state-of-the-art plane built by Boeing. The U.S. Navy has also sent a P-8, which it said would start searching on Saturday.

The U.S., Australia, and New Zealand have sent aircraft, and Japan said on Wednesday that it would send a further two planes. Bangladesh is also joining the search, with two light patrol aircraft and two frigates that will scour the coastal waters of the Bay of Bengal on Saturday.

The search over land in the archipelago was made difficult because so much of it is uninhabited, said Col. Singh: If there were a crash, there is nobody to report it. He noted that the uninhabited areas don't include any airstrips.

C. Uday Bhaskar, a retired Indian Navy commodore and former director of the National Maritime Foundation, said that although India's navy and coast guard have considerable maritime surveillance capabilities, "they are not specifically designed for this type of operation." He described the process as akin to "searching for a needle in a haystack, but 1,000 times larger and the haystack is moving."

[cashflyer]

I hear that Lindsey Lohan's hookup list has been leaked out and many actors are afraid that they will be exposed to their wives as cheaters. Coincidence?? I think not!

[mreid]

What concerns me the most is the orchestration of different bits of information in what appears to be a pattern, each new piece shifting focus and introducing instability. I'm not by nature a conspiracy theorist, but all these new bits of info that redeploy resources and create friction between nations has me concerned. The oil slick, the turn, the Chinese satellite images, the cellphones ringing, the altitude changes, the methodical shutdown of communications, the engine status pings, and now the tactical evasive maneuvers. I hate to say this, but I hope it crashed into the ocean.

[Scott Douglas]

This has got to be Tom Clancy at his best.

[afterburn 549]

I remember when The news paper - US Today -when it first hit the stands had a article that stated" today's satellites could read the headlines on a news paper in the Red square!."
That i believe was in 1975 (about)
In todays world its heat signature could have been traced.
I have a hard time believing that unidentified article as large as a 777 would not set off alarms bells everywhere in most any military armed nation.
What good is radar?
I do not know if it is /was a conspiracy, But it sure looks like a cover up.
Now for what reason?

[Neilk]

Originally Posted by mreid

What concerns me the most is the orchestration of different bits of information in what appears to be a pattern, each new piece shifting focus and introducing instability. I'm not by nature a conspiracy theorist, but all these new bits of info that redeploy resources and create friction between nations has me concerned. The oil slick, the turn, the Chinese satellite images, the cellphones ringing, the altitude changes, the methodical shutdown of communications, the engine status pings, and now the tactical evasive maneuvers. I hate to say this, but I hope it crashed into the ocean.

I think I have to agree with you. It seems as if there might be a bit of misdirection going on to counter all the leaks. Perhaps the plane was taken over, landed somewhere, and now various rescue teams are training to try to salvage the situation.

One things for sure, I bet various governments know exactly where the plane is, whether in the water or on land, but do not want to give up any information that may reveal too much info about their surveillance activities.

Sounds crazy, I know...

[oldE]

Originally Posted by afterburn 549

In todays world its heat signature could have been traced.
I have a hard time believing that unidentified article as large as a 777 would not set off alarms bells everywhere in most any military armed nation.
What good is radar?

Quite possible the heat plume of the aircraft's engines was recorded, but it may have just been filtered out as one more airborne people-hauler. Most of the world had no idea of the significance until the flight was over, however it ended.

Same thing with radar. If you are not at alert, do you react in a big way to a civillian airliner that is passing by?
Also there is a strong possibility that warships at sea might not be operating their radar, as that gives everyone capable of picking up the radiating beam an idea of their location. (Back to the idea of sighting someone else's flashlight from far away.)

If you have the capability of observing everything happening in the world, do you also have the resources to view the whole picture in real time?
I really don't think so. Things go un-noticed and when we realize they were significant, then we take some time and review the data. I believe that has been happening but not released to the press. Yet.

Best
Les

[Chocaholic]

Originally Posted by oldE

Quite possible the heat plume of the aircraft's engines was recorded, but it may have just been filtered out as one more airborne people-hauler. Most of the world had no idea of the significance until the flight was over, however it ended.

If you have the capability of observing everything happening in the world, do you also have the resources to view the whole picture in real time?
I really don't think so. Things go un-noticed and when we realize they were significant, then we take some time and review the data.

That might be true except for the 5-ish hours it remained in flight after communications went dark. At that moment, it became very significant with plenty of time to react. Certainly doesn't add up.

[kiwiokie]

Originally Posted by intakexhaust

We already know the majority of what radical terrorist are about. They create more FEAR into others by not giving an explanation, especially in this particular case. Its the element of surprise, and again if in fact terrorist, the probability of this happening again is good.

I guess I am not feeling much of this FEAR from folks I know or seeing it in the media. A lot of curiosity and intrigue but as a terrorist act the punchline seems to have been missed. More likely to me the pilots were paid an obscene amount of money to deliver a 777 to someone. As a pilot suicide, maybe, but seems like they could have done this without disabling the transponder etc.