This missing plane..

[Gareth]

Lets hear your conspiracy theories?
I'd bet Tut has the answers...factual ones!

http://www.geekwire.com/2013/monicas-ns ... t-tonight/

[robin]

I am not convinced this is a topic that should be discussed with smileys.

In all probability everybody on board is dead.

Robin

[flyingscot68]

The guy sitting next to me in the office is flying on a 777 very soon.
The whole problem of not knowing what happened is stressing him out.
As someone who used to travel on 777's very regularly I can understand where he's coming from.
It's a strange one but seems to have a lot of similarities to the Air France crash of a few years ago.
I feel really sorry for the families, not knowing must be so hard to deal with.
You're right Robin, not really a situation for merriment.

[Gareth]

Really? You think my topic is me making fun of the situation?
My smiley was directed at Tut who always has an opinion of things that fly in the sky!

[tut]

Nothing else fits other than a catastrophic failure, a terrorist explosion would be the likeliest cause, but it does not explain why no debris has been found. It would have been a Lockerbie situation but over the sea, and there the parts were spread around for miles. The engines, fuselage, etc would sink, but the liferafts, cushions, blankets, would all float, as would parts of the wings.

A decompression, engine failures, even a wing detaching would give the pilots time to put out a Mayday, it is a press of the finger and should be built in as an automatic response. The aircraft disappearing off the radar display is a two part anomaly, the transponders would have to have been turned off as this is where the detailed information is transmitted back to Air Traffic, height, airspeed, track, but also they have the radar signal from the aircraft itself which also cut out.

I also thought that the Americans or Russians would have picked it up on Satellite if it had been an explosion, they are programmed to pick up a flash which is what happens when a missile is launched, and also they have the resolution to identify something only a few feet square on the ground. If there were none covering that area then one could easily be given a different flight path.

I have no doubt that they will find the wreckage in time, but at the moment the Alien nutters theories fit better than the logical ones.

tut

ps:- at the moment my own view is that they could be looking in the wrong area, hard to understand why as they knew the flight path and saw the point where they lost it on radar, but it fits better than any other explanation at present.

[hendeg]

It does seem like a bizarre situation that there's still no sign of anything given all the tech that's available.

With regard to Gareth's use of a smiley, I think this just highlights the general detachment we have from catastrophes that are happening all over the world. It's not in our back yard so there's some sort of feeling that it's not so real.

[flyingscot68]

ps:- at the moment my own view is that they could be looking in the wrong area, hard to understand why as they knew the flight path and saw the point where they lost it on radar, but it fits better than any other explanation at present.

If it had exploded at height there would be a wide debris field, surely the search parties would have found something by now. Even if it had gone down somewhere else over the sea someone would have seen something as the seas there are very busy indeed.
I'm thinking it's gone down over land somewhere, and in one piece.
Sounds a bit strange that it wasn't spotted but to me that makes the simplest explanation, and the simplest ones are usually correct.

I'm sure something will turn up soon, if not, there's foul play at hand.

[rossybee]

It is a true mystery and must be tragic for loved ones of the missing passengers, the not knowing.

So much speculation ongoing, but as said before, a sudden explosion mid-air would explain lack of mayday, but would surely have been seen by someone?

[David]

Nothing else fits other than a catastrophic failure, a terrorist explosion would be the likeliest cause, but it does not explain why no debris has been found. It would have been a Lockerbie situation but over the sea, and there the parts were spread around for miles. The engines, fuselage, etc would sink, but the liferafts, cushions, blankets, would all float, as would parts of the wings.

I was wondering if this was more of a controlled ditching - the aircraft remaining essentially intact and sinking in large section if not whole. But you would expect life jackets etc. It is strange that there where no communication - maybe a large scale electrical failure of some sort. Guesses of course. A real tragedy for all those involved, particularly if there's no closure.

[tut]

My other theory is that the aircraft was highjacked, the terrorists knew the cockpit layout even if they could not fly the plane, so they turned the transponders and radio communication channels off and forced the pilots to turn onto a different track.

This then took them to a deserted desert island where their colleagues had laid a temporary runway, and they are now laying low for a few days before they make contact with a massive ransom demand.

Well it is as good an explanation as anything else that has come out so far.

tut

[flyingscot68]

There's a few dodgy theories going round the office.
Aliens
Wormholes
Chinese missiles
American secret laser space based weapon

That's just the more sensible ones.

Must be a nightmare for the families not knowing wtf happened.

[graeme]

It's a strange one... You need a multiplication of tiny probabilities to disappear without a trace.

Flight-recorder beacon not being detected, so intact or not, where the hell are they?
What would make a pilot, who can't communicate with the ground, deviate from a logged plan (essentially giving up all chance of being found)?
What sort of failure could cause total comms failure in the first place, other than a big kaboom-type failure, but then they'd know exactly where to find the wreckage, and it's not there.
The comms failure, if it was caused by a larger systems failure, gives the exact position to start looking, and there are only a few logical options: Either they kept going (best chance of being picked up), turned back (second best chance, but requires power and control), or headed for the nearest land, or the nearest airfield (would have been in the flight plan). They can't be found on those paths, so either they've been overlooked by 70+ search vessels, or something made them head in a totally different direction for at least 20 minutes (to get outside the range of the flight recorder beacon) which requires power and control, but some other factor like interference/duress, which makes no sense either. Who would hijack a plane, turn off comms, fly it to the middle of nowhere and then blow it up? Either you crash it somewhere noticable, or you make a statement before you blow it up over the sea. No statement, no land target... what kind of terrorist act is dissappearing completely? Also, no passengers have been linked to terrorist groups that we know of. I'd assume the press would know by now if they had. I don't buy the terrorist angle.

A real (tragic) puzzle...


EDIT: Malaysian Military just said they tracked the plane hundreds of miles off course, over the Straight of Malacca.

plot_thickness ++;

[BiggestNizzy]

It took them 2 years to find the wreckage of the air france flight in 2009

[ikarl]

My other theory is that the aircraft was highjacked, the terrorists knew the cockpit layout even if they could not fly the plane, so they turned the transponders and radio communication channels off and forced the pilots to turn onto a different track.

This then took them to a deserted desert island where their colleagues had laid a temporary runway, and they are now laying low for a few days before they make contact with a massive ransom demand.

Well it is as good an explanation as anything else that has come out so far.

tut

My 'tin-foil hat' conspiracy is something like tuts, but instead of asking for a ransom, the people have been left on an island somewhere and the new owners of this 777 are putting it to use as part of their 'fleet'

how much does one of these planes cost? what's the 2nd hand market like for these?

[woody]

My other theory is that the aircraft was highjacked, the terrorists knew the cockpit layout even if they could not fly the plane, so they turned the transponders and radio communication channels off and forced the pilots to turn onto a different track.

This then took them to a deserted desert island where their colleagues had laid a temporary runway, and they are now laying low for a few days before they make contact with a massive ransom demand.

Well it is as good an explanation as anything else that has come out so far.

tut

My 'tin-foil hat' conspiracy is something like tuts, but instead of asking for a ransom, the people have been left on an island somewhere and the new owners of this 777 are putting it to use as part of their 'fleet'

how much does one of these planes cost? what's the 2nd hand market like for these?

They cost a lot. But with no paperwork and no registration it's unlikely to fly anywhere for any length of time.

Where's Pete when he's required?