Flight MH370 ?? What happened?

[deep]

.

 

[Hewson]

 

[anitram]

What a bizarre (and sad) story.

I'm surprised that in this day and age we don't have the technology to track the location of an airplane at all times. I guess we don't have satellite coverage over open waters, etc but you would think they'd have developed some sort of GPS so that planes can't disappear.

 

[mikal]

I think at this point, they just discovered that the French Woman's distress call has been playing in a loop for the last 15 years.

 

[deep]

It is either foul play or an accident.

both are causes for serious concern.

In the last 20 or so years we have had a few planes go down unexplained. With enough parts collected and analyzed, a most likely cause can be presented. I don't think much of this plane will ever be collected.

 

[prbiker15]

This occurrence is really, really strange - nonetheless unfortunate. Reminds me of Air France Flight #447, but in this case the aircraft is nowhere to be found.

As to what really happened, with all these claims of passports stolen and 'suspicious' identities, I guess we can only speculate. I'm quite surprised they have not found any trace or piece of the aircraft at all. We'll see if this develops any further.

 

[Earnie Shavers]

Really strange that they're searching over in the Malacca Straight.

 

[the iron horse]

CBS NEWS one hour ago:

Interpol: Two Iranians "probably not terrorists."
Flight 370: Search for missing Malaysia Airlines plane widened, intensifies focus on land - CBS News

 

[BoMac]

The mystery deepens:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/missing-jet-made-it-to-malacca-strait-1.1723453

 

[Irvine511]

i can't stop reading about this. i worry about myself sometimes.

morbidity aside, it's always a good geography lesson. i learned a lot about Fernando de Noronha after Air France 447.

 

[Earnie Shavers]

I can't stop reading about it either. There's such a strange mix of potential scenarios.

 

[Axver]

The announcements from the Malaysian authorities of late have been veering from the baffling to the bizarre, and if I knew somebody on the flight I'd probably find them rather distressing or offensive (certainly it seems some of the families are becoming rather angry!). It's as if in the absence of any concrete information, they feel they must say something, anything to placate the feverish public interest, so they blurt out the first thing to come into their heads. The suggestion that the plane was downed by somebody wanting to claim a life insurance policy belongs to outlandish speculation the comments section of a tabloid news website, not an official spokesperson, and mentioning that Italian soccer player who looked nothing like either of the men on fake passports was just all-round strange.

 

[bono_212]

The announcements from the Malaysian authorities of late have been veering from the baffling to the bizarre, and if I knew somebody on the flight I'd probably find them rather distressing or offensive (certainly it seems some of the families are becoming rather angry!). It's as if in the absence of any concrete information, they feel they must say something, anything to placate the feverish public interest, so they blurt out the first thing to come into their heads. The suggestion that the plane was downed by somebody wanting to claim a life insurance policy belongs to outlandish speculation the comments section of a tabloid news website, not an official spokesperson, and mentioning that Italian soccer player who looked nothing like either of the men on fake passports was just all-round strange.

All I saw about that was that it was one of the threads they were perusing in trying to figure out just what the hell was going on. Never did I actually hear that they thought that was what was going on.

 

[corianderstem]

I saw something that had a spokesman basically breaking it down to say it was either:

a) terrorism

b) (I actually forgot what the second thing was; I don't think it was something obvious, like "mechanical failure")

c) a "psychological problem" among the crew or passengers; or

d) a "personal problem" among the crew or passengers.

I can see how they'd land at c (i.e., someone was mentally unstable), but with d, I'm stymied.

 

[bono_212]

I saw something that had a spokesman basically breaking it down to say it was either:

a) terrorism

b) (I actually forgot what the second thing was; I don't think it was something obvious, like "mechanical failure")

c) a "psychological problem" among the crew or passengers; or

d) a "personal problem" among the crew or passengers.

I can see how they'd land at c (i.e., someone was mentally unstable), but with d, I'm stymied.

I saw the same list, we must have read the same article. I think the last one was the one that was basically someone that might have been trying to commit insurance fraud.

 

[corianderstem]

Ahhh, okay.

 

[Irvine511]

I still think it had to be some catastrophic mechanical error, but what kind of error could it have been? With AF447 they just needed to find the wreckage in the deep Atlantic, but they knew basically where it was. Here, they seem as flummoxed as anyone.

I'm "enjoying" (not the right word) the conspiracy theories -- everything from the plane is in North Korea to the plane landing safely in a friendly country and being readied to be used as a bomb.

 

[Axver]

All I saw about that was that it was one of the threads they were perusing in trying to figure out just what the hell was going on. Never did I actually hear that they thought that was what was going on.

Here's the quote:

“Maybe somebody on the flight has bought a huge sum of insurance, who wants family to gain from it or somebody who has owed somebody so much money, you know, we are looking at all possibilities,” Bakar told a news conference.

“We are looking very closely at the video footage taken at the KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport), we are studying the behavioral pattern of all the passengers.”

It's one thing to look up all leads, but this reads rather like any other strange theory posted in news comment sections, especially after other strange or contradictory announcements.

The New Zealand Herald has a good interview that notes Malaysia Airlines were accustomed to dealing with a more compliant local media, not the pressure being applied by overseas journalists. That would explain at least some of the awkward conduct and eagerness to say anything, even if it's contradictory (time and location of last contact with plane), half-baked (Italian footballer comparison), or speculative (life insurance policy theory).

 

[bono_212]

Here's the quote:

It's one thing to look up all leads, but this reads rather like any other strange theory posted in news comment sections, especially after other strange or contradictory announcements.

The New Zealand Herald has a good interview that notes Malaysia Airlines were accustomed to dealing with a more compliant local media, not the pressure being applied by overseas journalists. That would explain at least some of the awkward conduct and eagerness to say anything, even if it's contradictory (time and location of last contact with plane), half-baked (Italian footballer comparison), or speculative (life insurance policy theory).

Ah, thanks, that's actually the same quote I read, but in the context of the larger article, I guess I didn't find it so strange the first time.

I found it kinda funny that the two guys with the fake passports ended up being from Iran. The reason being that I found this quote hilariously awkward to begin with:

Malaysia’s home minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has also slammed immigration officials over border control checks.
“I am still perturbed. Can’t these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian but with Asian faces,” he told state news agency Bernama in comments that appear to have been made late on Sunday.

Though I suppose Iran is in Asia, isn't it...

 

[youarenotimmune]

What the fuck...

The mystery surrounding the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has deepened with the Chinese media reporting that several of the passengers' mobile phones were connecting when called by relatives, but the calls were not picked up.
The sister of one of the Chinese passengers among the 239 people on board the vanished flight rang his phone live on TV, the Mirror reports.
"This morning, around 11:40 [am], I called my older brother's number twice, and I got the ringing tone," said Bian Liangwei, sister of one of the passengers. At 2pm, Bian called again and heard it ringing once more.
"If I could get through, the police could locate the position, and there's a chance he could still be alive." She has passed on the number to Malaysia Airlines and the Chinese police.
A man from Beijing also called his missing brother on the plane, and reported to the airlines that the phone connected three times and rang before appearing to hang up, according to Shanghai Daily. Media reports claim that the brother had called the number in the presence of reporters before informing the airline.
The Strait Times reported that many of the family members told MAS commercial director Hugh Dunleavy that the commuters' mobile phones were ringing but they were not picked up.
To this, Dunleavy replied that MAS was calling the mobile phones of the crew members as well, which were ringing, and that he had given the numbers to Chinese investigators.

Yahoo News UK & Ireland - Latest World News & UK News Headlines

 

[bono_212]

That's so creepy.

 

[bono_212]

Technology expert Jeff Kagan joined Blitzer to explain what might be happening and in the process squashed the hopes of those people who see the ringing cell phones as a positive omen. “This is one of the sad parts about the technology,” Kagan said before explaining that just because the calls are not going straight to voicemail does not mean that those phones are still on and active somewhere.
While the person on this end may hear ringing the phone on the other end may not actually be receiving the call. “They are hearing ringing and they are assuming it’s connecting to their loved ones, but it’s not,” he said. “It’s the network sending a signal to the phone letting them know it’s looking for them.”

I'd like more of an explanation for why it would do this in this singular case, rather than going straight to voicemail as it usually would do...

 

[Dfit00]

It must be the terrorists who got every passenger's phone and are hanging up every time calls come in.
I suspect they must be tired of doing the same thing over and over again, unless they turned all of them off.

On a side-note, it looks even creepier that a picture of Edgar Allan Poe is saying it.

 

[U2DMfan]

After reading the wikipedia entry, it seems with Air France 447 they found some wreckage the very next day. This appears to be going into its 4th day.

 

[mama cass]

Vietnam said it had halted its air search and scaled back a sea search while it waited for Malaysia to offer more detail.

“We’ve decided to temporarily suspend some search and rescue activities, pending information from Malaysia,” Vietnam’s deputy minister of transport, Pham Quy Tieu, told AFP.

Asked about the claim that the plane had last been detected over the Strait of Malacca – suggesting it had crossed the entire peninsula – he replied: “We’ve asked Malaysian authorities twice but so far they have not replied to us.

“We informed Malaysia on the day we lost contact with the flight that we noticed the flight turned back west but Malaysia did not respond.”

i find this quote from today's Guardian really weird... if it is something dodgy going on, i wonder if there was an "inside man" in Malaysian air traffic control at the time, hence the conflicting (+lack of) reports?

re. not being able to locate any off-radar wreckage in the ocean though - that does not surprise me in the slightest - the sea is just vast... i mean, the Mexican fisherman who was recently rescued was adrift for a year and a half and saw no-one...

 

[Earnie Shavers]

They’re definitely withholding information, but I guess there can be good reason for that. They’re only now admitting that the military radar picked it up on the west side of Malaysia an hour after it dropped communication, but they’ve had US and Australian P3 planes searching over that area since Day 1. Those are probably the best assets they have (in the air) and they’ve been using them on that side since the very beginning – meaning they’ve had more than a ‘just to be sure’ understanding that it could be over there the whole time, but for whatever reason have been and are still trying to keep that unofficial. Could just be embarrassment (very large unidentified plane flies very low over Malaysia – nothing happens - whoops), could just take that long to be sure it was actually this unidentified plane (not someone else’s air force – even more embarrassing), could be because there is far more known about this then is being communicated, and they don’t want to create more public confusion/pressure by releasing info along those lines piece by piece – get some answers first.

 

[lemonfly]

This is turning into the Mary Celeste of aviation disasters. I'm sure any moment now they'll find some debris, but the exact reason(s) why the plane went down may not be known for years (if ever).

 

[mikal]

I'd like more of an explanation for why it would do this in this singular case, rather than going straight to voicemail as it usually would do...

Yeah when my friend died in a car crash, my wife tried calling her earlier in the day before we found out what happened and the phone went straight to voice-mail. We found out about the crash about a half hour later and we realized that the phone didn't ring because it was demolished.

Sent from my SM-N900P using U2 Interference mobile app

 

[U2DMfan]

i mean, the Mexican fisherman who was recently rescued was adrift for a year and a half and saw no-one...

Wow. I didn't hear about that. A year and a half?

 

[PhilsFan]

China might have found some answers.