Then you have never been to that part of the world or understand the geopoltiical landscape there. You have a plane that is mostly filled with Chinese and some Malaysians with less than 3 dozen westerners. The plane was going to China, not the U.S. or Australia. And finally, there is no motive, as of yet, as to why the plane disappeared. Foul play is definitely involved, but to say it is terrorosm or Iran just does not make sense. For one, PRC has friendly relations to IRan. Second, Iran does not want to get involved in internal poltiics of Asia. Thrids, Nonmuslim Asians are not seen as infidels or the devil, just misguided. Only some westerners are seen as the devil or evil. Finally, there is none of the usual chatter on the internet before or after about the plane, that we know of.
Oh good, Chinese officials have ruled out their own citizens, and now we're taking their word for it that they are searching for the plane within their own borders. No reason to suspect the Chinese of masking the truth, right? Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that plane is sitting on a Xinjiang Tarmac while (predominantly Muslim) Uygher separatists and Chinese officials negotiate over the hostages. Read up on the Xinjiang conflict. What do you think?
Until the motive is mde clear, you really don't know. The stealing of a plane might make a good movie. Kind of think of it, maybe Liam Nelson had a role in this for an upcoming movie project. But anyway, I think this has more to do with Malaysian internal politics than with international terrorism. If it was terrorism, some group would be exclaiming it on the intenet near and far by now.
Uyghers have been fighting China since the Tang Dyanasty. But Uyghers usually keep their iinvolvement within the Chinese borders and only try to incldue Kurzakistan if they can.
the flight passed back over Malaysia at low level and there have been reports of family calling passengers and the phones still ringing...not going straight to voicemail like cell phones do when out of range or turned off.
Is it that easy to get a flight plan? Do you think that they can just call in and say that they are travelling in on an unidentified, private 777 and would like to file a flight plan and get landing orders?
And have the wrath of every nation on Earth on them? Nah, something like this has to be done covertly, even by Iranians.
No need to travel to a place to understand what's going on...and I've been around. Facts are, the tracking devices were disabled---almost certainly by the pilots themselves. Had the plane been hijacked, the pilots would have certainly flipped a switch to notify someone while they were trying to get into the cabin. Islamics beleive they face no moral consquences for their actions...and money first, then terrorism second are the motives. The lives of the passengers are of no importance to the criminals---whatever their race or ethnicity. The prime suspects are the Islamic Malaysian pilots.
Satellite detection? Satellites have been looking in the wrong places for the wrong things for the last 11 days.
Whether the plot was complete or not, there still would have been internet chatter in the background. The question is was or has there been chatter. And sedond, if so, have any of our intelligence services break the encryption code to make that determination. Yet, there is nothing that we know of and that is a strong sign that this is not a terrorist plot at this time. It still remains possible, but there would need to be a motive for me to change my mind.
I caught a short section of a conversation on the radio about a similar event that happened. It mentioned that something happened to the guidance system of a plane causing the pilot to head in one direction believing he was heading 180 degrees in the opposite direction. I don't know any other details than that nor has it come up again
What is known is that the IFF transmitters were disabled. The question still remains, whom? ANd the pilots were not the only ones on board who were capable of disarming the devices. 20 plus engineers were on board and any number of them could have disabled the transponders. That being said, nothing in your scenario makes sense and you have shown your lack of understanding, history, and culture on places, people, and countries outsife of your myopic point of view. As I have said, there has been foul play. The quetion is why. So far, this is not a typical terrorist scenario. Stealing a plane simply does not make sense. It is far easier and more effective to hijack a plane and fly it directly to a point of interest within two hours of the hijacking. But that did not happen. Once the motive has been discovered, thin it won't be long before we find the wreckage. But I doubt Iran or the usual suspects in terrorist activities are involved. - - - Updated - - - But there is always a reason or motive for a terrorist to do something exteme. And it's moot whther one agrees with the reasoning or not.
Right, and I'm saying whatever motivated them to butcher a bunch of innocent people in the Kunming Railway Station could have motivated them to divert this plane for leverage. By way of their shared religion, they may have been able to coerce the copilot to aid in the plot.
What was the title of that silver screen, where a captain wakes up with a hangover and realizes he lost his battleship and then can't find it?
It's a definite possibility. But WHY would the Chinese go along with it to the extent of hiding the whole thing from the rest of the world. OTOH, there's huge flat and hard areas out in the Takla Makan where they still have lost cities even satellites can't find, and some big ground camouflage tarpaulins would be all you'd need, and even a satellite can't see into a hanger. The problem there is that while the transponders can be turned off I don't think the Black Box signals can, at least not easily and not without triggering some sort of alarm saying they were being turned off, and where. OTOH, who knows? (Does anyone here?) A major question I have is, if the plane was taken over by anyone but the pilots, how did they get into the cockpit? Aren't they all locked nowadays? I have ALWAYS been told that hearing a phone ringing noise in my phone does NOT mean there is an actual phone ringing somewhere. However, that only applies to regular land lines, it may be different for cell phones, I don't know.
All they would need is either an uncontrolled airfield to take off from, or "friendly" controllers. File an international flight plan as a Citation-X (large private jet with a similar performance profile). Controllers, aside from the tower at the originating airfield, never see the aircraft, only radar information.
I also listened to this guy and he made more sense than the others. As I said b/f, there were a lot of brains involved in this and I think the 2 w/stolen passports played a part in it......
The only realistic explanation I have heard was that the there was likely a fire on board, the plane turned toward the best airport to receive them as they were popping fuses trying to isolate the circuits, the smoke took out the crew and passengers, and the plane crashed when it ran out of fuel.
That would be one instance where nuke will render carrier plane forever untraceable. But what if plane is shot down and the nuke becomes a dud? Would you take this chance? Neither would Iranians - better steal a plane so it is not pointing right back at highjakers - - - Updated - - - Flew on its own for seven hours? Reaching...
Payne Stewart's plane flew on its own after rapid depressurization killed all occupants until it ran out of gas.
Wish I could take credit. I lost the link, but some pilot at The Wire discussed it. His belief that it was likely a fire in the nose gear from an exploding tire. The plane was turned in the direction of the best alternate airport with a very long runway and no obstructions (they took off from one with a 5K shorter runway with lots of obstructions in the area.) His theory is the crew used smoke hoods which gave them about two minutes to work the problem which would have, as a matter of procedure, involved pulling the main fuses and then trying to bring everything back online one panel at a time hoping to isolate the area of what would have been worked as an electrical fire.
