How does a plane just disappear?

[Safferz]

Where the hell is this Malaysian Airlines flight? It's baffling. Even Air France 447 that went into the Atlantic had traces turn up a few days later, though most of the wreckage wasn't found until two years later.

[Nin-Yaaban]

This whole thing doesn't make sense. And some of the family members are saying the cellphones of those on board are ringing. Now, since most cellphones have GPS, couldn't they use that to locate 'em?

 

I think what really happened is, someone on the plane hijacked it and forced it to land somewhere near Malaysia, or the Asian continent. Because if it crashed on the ocean, they would've found the wreckage by now.

[Cadale]

Latest news is that the airplane has been traced and the malaysian military think the airplane landed somewhere in the malaca island.

[DoctorKenney]

Nin-Yaaban, the officials wouldn't be able to triangulate the phone-calls unless there were at least 2 Cell Towers within reach. Since they were flying over the ocean, there are no cell towers anywhere nearby. It'd be very difficult to find out their exact location. The ocean is enormous

 

The whole thing looks like a tragic accident to me. Perhaps a mechanical failure. A lot of people claim that it's terrorism but don't terrorists usually take credit whenever they commit a terrorist act? The terrorists would at least release a statement taking credit for the bombing. That's what they always do

[Safferz]

<cite>

@Cadale

said:</cite>

Latest news is that the airplane has been traced and the malaysian military think the airplane landed somewhere in the malaca island.

 

Where are you getting this info? The last thing I heard is that they believe the airplane turned at some point so it's likely to be hundreds of miles off course, but nothing about the plane being traced or believed to have landed somewhere.

[Nin-Yaaban]

DoctorKenny, maybe thats true sxb. And my knowledge of technology is very limited. But since most cellphones are said to have a GPS, why would a cell tower be necessary? Couldn't that info beamed to some satellite and then onto the phone company?

[Cadale]

<cite>

@Safferz

said:</cite>

Where are you getting this info? The last thing I heard is that they believe the airplane turned at some point so it's likely to be hundreds of miles off course, but nothing about the plane being traced or believed to have landed somewhere.

 

I got it from this swedish news site.

 

http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article18520089.ab

[Safferz]

^ all we know at this point is that traffic controllers lost contact with the plane somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam, and Malaysian military are saying their radar data shows the plane may have turned back. It hasn't been traced and no one knows what happened yet.

 

Interesting image that shows the possible distance the plane could have traveled with the amount of fuel it had...

[Libaax-Sankataabte]

Crowd-source search for the missing plane using satellite images.

 

http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/24146

[Khayr]

Why is something that happened in Malaysia be newsworthy to the BBC and CNN lot?

Unless ofcourse, you are bying this narrative that

a "terrorist" took a plane down.

And what is this madness of "crowd sourcing"?

Is everyone with internet connection and a camera,

a "credible" person?

 

[Alpha Blondy]

this is a hoax.

 

sort of like Lost.

[Holac]

 

One of the millions of people gripped by the mystery of flight MH370 may have tracked down the missing jet... simply by surfing the internet.

 

IT manager Mike Seberger said he may have detected the missing Malaysian Airlines plane on a high-resolution satellite photo taken above the seas where it went missing.

 

The image he spotted shows a plane-shaped object under a bank of white cloud in the Gulf of Thailand, an arm of the South China Sea.

 

42 ships and 39 aircraft from 12 different countries have been drafted in to search for the missing Boeing 777 and the 239 passengers - with no success.

 

FOLLOW ALL THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS ON THIS STORY IN OUR LIVE BLOG

 

But if Mr Seberger’s hunch is correct, he will have solved a mystery that has fascinated the world and baffled experts - all from the comfort of his home.

 

Mr Seberger, 47, from Chicago, United States, found the mystery object after logging on to the Tomnod website, which uploaded the satellite images of 1,000 square miles the day after the plane disappeared.

 

mirror.co.uk

[Holac]

this whole saga is baffling.

 

The two Iranians with the fake passports.

 

[Safferz]

^ Holac, the Iranians with the fake passports turned out to be asylum seekers planning to get into Europe via Beijing. The 19 year old had his mom waiting for him in Europe I believe the satellite images have been checked out and nothing has been found at those sites either.

 

This new piece of information today in the Wall Street Journal is intriguing, the plane could truly be anywhere and it seems whether there was even a crash is still up in the air:

Missing Malaysia jet may have flown on for hours

 

U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.

 

Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. BA -0.99% 777’s engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program.

 

That raises a host of new questions and possibilities about what happened aboard the widebody jet carrying 239 people, which vanished from civilian air-traffic control radar over the weekend, about one hour into a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

 

Six days after the mysterious disappearance prompted a massive international air and water search that so far hasn’t produced any results, the investigation appears to be broadening in scope.

 

U.S. counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner’s transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe.

 

The investigation remains fluid, and it isn’t clear whether investigators have evidence indicating possible terrorism or espionage. So far, U.S. national security officials have said that nothing specifically points toward terrorism, though they haven’t ruled it out.

 

But the huge uncertainty about where the plane was headed, and why it continued flying so long without working transponders, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for a reason that appears unclear to U.S. authorities. Some of those theories have been laid out to national security officials and senior personnel from various U.S. agencies, according to one person familiar with the matter.

 

At one briefing, according to this person, officials were told investigators are actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted “with the intention of using it later for another purpose.”

 

As of Wednesday it remained unclear whether the plane reached an alternate destination or if it ultimately crashed, potentially hundreds of miles from where an international search effort has been focused.

 

In those scenarios, neither mechanical problems, pilot mistakes nor some other type of catastrophic incident caused the 250-ton plane to mysteriously vanish from radar.

 

[Holac]

Saffs, the Wall Street Journal took the engine story back. There is no engine data.

 

Still no sign of the missing plane.