Per Robert Green:
"As with any logical fallacy, identifying that the reasoning behind an
argument is flawed does not imply that the resulting conclusion is false."

IOW, that knife cuts both ways!

Good point.
--
Pete Cresswell

Per Robert Green:
That said, I have to believe that it's much, much harder to hijack a plane
these days for a number of reasons. Passenger education (people used to be
told to leave the hijackers alone)

IMHO that alone made the 911 scenario a one-trick pony. I don't think
the strategy lasted even an hour because when the people on the plane
over Pennsylvania found out what was up, they rushed the hijackers.

OTOH, one of the possibilities I heard cited for MH370 was that whoever
hijacked the plane ascended to 40,000+ feet for the purpose of killing
the passengers (I guess, by reducing pressure/oxygen in the passenger
area to 40,000+ feet)
--
Pete Cresswell

"(PeteCresswell)" wrote in message
...
Per Robert Green:
That said, I have to believe that it's much, much harder to hijack a
plane
these days for a number of reasons. Passenger education (people used to
be
told to leave the hijackers alone)

IMHO that alone made the 911 scenario a one-trick pony. I don't think
the strategy lasted even an hour because when the people on the plane
over Pennsylvania found out what was up, they rushed the hijackers.

Yes, I've said that before and agree completely. For years the advice was
to cooperate with hijackers to prevent a plane crash. That advice stopped
when it became clear some hijackers were determined to do just that - crash
the plane. The passengers on MH370 were probably mostly asleep and had no
idea they were off course (it was dark) or hijacked, if that was the case.

Ironically, once the hijackers are in the cabin and lock the door, the
reinforcement of the cabin door and frame will make it hard for the
passengers to get into the cabin and do anything about it. There's clearly
evidence that at least one pilot has had people in the cabin before.

OTOH, one of the possibilities I heard cited for MH370 was that whoever
hijacked the plane ascended to 40,000+ feet for the purpose of killing
the passengers (I guess, by reducing pressure/oxygen in the passenger
area to 40,000+ feet)

I'm pretty sure in a 777 the oxygen masks descend automatically when the
pressure drops to a certain point in the cabin. I assume the designers
thought the pilots might be too busy dealing with whatever caused the
depressurization to deal with it manually.

If someone did steal that plane, it would certainly be the crime of the
century. Will it go to a chop shop? I can't imagine some other country
could repaint the plane and begin using it, not if the engines phone home
every hour. I'd certainly be sending people to every landing strip/airport
capable of landing such a plane within its flight range to "look around."
Could be the Uighurs, but since they mostly stab people to death (or so it
seems) I don't see them as having the technical skills to pull off stealing
a modern jetliner. But then again, I didn't think the 9/11 hijackers could
do what they did.

If it crashed in the ocean, enough stuff will float that eventually some of
it will reach shore somewhere. It is one of the greatest *true* mystery
stories I've ever heard of. It's like trying to prove a murder was
committed without the body.

--
Bobby G.

On Sat, 15 Mar 2014 18:10:04 -0400, wrote:

If you can believe the current projections the horn of Africa is in
that circle and they are not strangers to the idea of ransom. The
original diversion seemed to point right at Mogadishu before the
erratic maneuvers began.

At this point I think the bottom of the Indian ocean is probably the
best place to look but it is a big ocean.

"...Diego Garcia is a narrow tropical jungle reef in the Indian Ocean,
about 1,000 miles south of the southern India coast."

We have Navy and Air Forces resources there. I'd guess searches are
being done now?

"The P-3C Orion is a land-based, long range anti-submarine warfare
(ASW) patrol aircraft. The P-3C provides effective undersea warfare,
anti-surface warfare, and Command, Control, Communications, Computers,
and Intelligence..."

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/diego-garcia.htm

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:

If someone did steal that plane, it would certainly be the crime of the
century. Will it go to a chop shop? I can't imagine some other country
could repaint the plane and begin using it, not if the engines phone home
every hour. I'd certainly be sending people to every landing strip/airport
capable of landing such a plane within its flight range to "look around."
Could be the Uighurs, but since they mostly stab people to death (or so it
seems) I don't see them as having the technical skills to pull off stealing
a modern jetliner. But then again, I didn't think the 9/11 hijackers could
do what they did.
Given your chop shop scenario, they would not only have to land, but
probably do so on less modern landing field. That is orders of magnitude
more technical than flying things into a building.


If it crashed in the ocean, enough stuff will float that eventually some of
it will reach shore somewhere. It is one of the greatest *true* mystery
stories I've ever heard of. It's like trying to prove a murder was
committed without the body.

Probably, look at all the tsunami stuff washing up on the west
coast. Although it may take awhile and then it has to wash up on an
inhabited part of the coast. Who knows.
--
³Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.²
‹ Aaron Levenstein

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
m...
In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:

If someone did steal that plane, it would certainly be the crime of the
century. Will it go to a chop shop? I can't imagine some other country
could repaint the plane and begin using it, not if the engines phone
home
every hour. I'd certainly be sending people to every landing
strip/airport
capable of landing such a plane within its flight range to "look
around."
Could be the Uighurs, but since they mostly stab people to death (or so
it
seems) I don't see them as having the technical skills to pull off
stealing
a modern jetliner. But then again, I didn't think the 9/11 hijackers
could
do what they did.

Given your chop shop scenario, they would not only have to land, but
probably do so on less modern landing field. That is orders of magnitude
more technical than flying things into a building.

That's why I suspect if the place was stolen intact, a state actor was
involved. I read after posting that each major part is serialized and
selling them off would be pretty risky. I don't see the plane as having
landed anywhere but the ocean, but stranger things have happened. New
scenario - the Chinese are trying to start WWIII and they'll eventually
accuse the US or Korea or Japan of masterminding the disappearance.
Stranger things have happened. (-:

If it crashed in the ocean, enough stuff will float that eventually some
of
it will reach shore somewhere. It is one of the greatest *true* mystery
stories I've ever heard of. It's like trying to prove a murder was
committed without the body.

Probably, look at all the tsunami stuff washing up on the west
coast. Although it may take awhile and then it has to wash up on an
inhabited part of the coast. Who knows.

The tsunami "garbage islands" are quite impressive:

Cars, tractors, boats and the occasional entire house have been spotted
floating on the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The largest "island" of
debris stretches 60 nautical miles (69 miles) in length and covers an
expanse of more than 2.2 million square feet, according to the US Navy's 7th
Fleet, which is closely monitoring the floating rubbish.

The length of time that's elapsed since the probable ocean crash of the jet
means that debris has had a lot of time to scatter as well as become
waterlogged and sink. It's conceivable that MH370 stays lost for a very,
very long time like the Titanic.

--
Bobby G.

wrote in message
...
On Sat, 15 Mar 2014 17:33:40 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

"(PeteCresswell)" wrote in message

stuff snipped

I'm pretty sure in a 777 the oxygen masks descend automatically when the
pressure drops to a certain point in the cabin. I assume the designers
thought the pilots might be too busy dealing with whatever caused the
depressurization to deal with it manually.

Yes the masks may have deployed but that does two things for the
hijackers. It gets everyone back to their seats and not banging on the
door. Then when the oxygen runs out (10 minutes or less) they die
quietly in their seats.

I've been on a flight where the masks drop down. "Quietly" had nothing to
do with it. (-: The only thing that muted all the screaming was my ears
popping in and out from the pressure changes. The flight I was on was
already "the screaming baby express" without the scare. Once those baby's
ear drums started popping they began screaming like little banshees. I
can't see 230 people quietly suffocating.

I'd hate to be a relative or loved one of one of the passengers. It has to
be an unbearable emotional roller coaster especially now that some sources
are hinting the plane may have landed somewhere with the passengers alive.
Maybe, but I doubt it.

If you are going with the stolen plane thing, they may have had an
insurrection in the cabin when people's GPS's started showing them
going the wrong way (or maybe they forgot to shut off the seat back
flight tracker) and this is how they put it down.

It's possible they did rise up against their hijackers, but the
circumstances are very different than US flight 93 that crashed in a field
on 9/11. Those people had a pretty good idea what was in store for them.
What's most interesting is that the longer this goes on, the more it
unravels into "what if's" without a whole lot of revelation as to what
really happened.

If someone did steal that plane, it would certainly be the crime of the
century. Will it go to a chop shop? I can't imagine some other country
could repaint the plane and begin using it, not if the engines phone home
every hour. I'd certainly be sending people to every landing
strip/airport
capable of landing such a plane within its flight range to "look around."
Could be the Uighurs, but since they mostly stab people to death (or so
it
seems) I don't see them as having the technical skills to pull off
stealing
a modern jetliner. But then again, I didn't think the 9/11 hijackers
could
do what they did.

The conjecture just runs wild but I doubt they were planning to start
Jihad Air Lines.

My wife will get a kick out of that. (-: Jihad Airways "Fly until you
die!"

It may have been a ransom thing that simply went
wrong when the passengers would not shut up, sit down and wait to be
ransomed.

There's yet another scenario. Will the real story come close to all the
conjecture? Probably not.

It isn't 1968 anymore. People understand this is not going to end well
when someone takes your plane.

If you can believe the current projections the horn of Africa is in
that circle and they are not strangers to the idea of ransom. The
original diversion seemed to point right at Mogadishu before the
erratic maneuvers began.

This is way more sophisticated than storming an oil tanker in rubber boats
armed with AK-47's.

At this point I think the bottom of the Indian ocean is probably the
best place to look but it is a big ocean.

Yes, I suspect you're correct. No one else seems to have picked them up on
radar although a country that helped steal/hijack the plane would probably
sit on such data.

Very, very strange bit of business indeed.

--
Bobby G.

Everyone is speculating about what happened to that plane, and the longer it's fate remains unknown, the wilder and wilder the speculation becomes.

Now, we're talking about pirates highjacking a plane for ransom just as they would an oil tanker. The problem with that theory is that whomever hijacked the airplane would have to have known enough about it to have turned it's transponders off, and that's not the level of technical sophistication you have amongst typical Somali pirates.

We will eventually find out what happened to that plane, but I suspect the truth will be far more mundane that the speculation, and may even be annoyingly anticlimactic.

One thing's for certain. Whomever took that airplane on a joy ride is almost certain to be given a book and movie deal from some Hollywood producer wanting to cash in on the intrigue.

In article ,
nestork wrote:

Everyone is speculating about what happened to that plane, and the
longer it's fate remains unknown, the wilder and wilder the speculation
becomes.


Looking over all of the published conjecture, etc., I have a
question of my own. Has this crossed line between pure fiction writing
and fan fiction?
--
³Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.²
‹ Aaron Levenstein

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:


The length of time that's elapsed since the probable ocean crash of the jet
means that debris has had a lot of time to scatter as well as become
waterlogged and sink. It's conceivable that MH370 stays lost for a very,
very long time like the Titanic.


At least with the Titanic, you had a much better fix of where it went
down and that was more a question of when the tech would develop to let
it happen than IF it would happen.
--
³Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.²
‹ Aaron Levenstein

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:


I'd hate to be a relative or loved one of one of the passengers. It has to
be an unbearable emotional roller coaster especially now that some sources
are hinting the plane may have landed somewhere with the passengers alive.
Maybe, but I doubt it.
A lot of it induced by media types who get bored easily and then go
looking for ANYTHING and ANYBODY to fill up air time and put pressure on
the officials to do SOMETHING.
Two things I learned early on as both a reporter and a psych nurse
is (1) you learn a lot by just sitting there quietly until the person
(or the situation) has something to say and (2). silence is
uncomfortable for us to do so we say something and lose number 1.


If you are going with the stolen plane thing, they may have had an
insurrection in the cabin when people's GPS's started showing them
going the wrong way (or maybe they forgot to shut off the seat back
flight tracker) and this is how they put it down.

It's possible they did rise up against their hijackers, but the
circumstances are very different than US flight 93 that crashed in a field
on 9/11. Those people had a pretty good idea what was in store for them.
What's most interesting is that the longer this goes on, the more it
unravels into "what if's" without a whole lot of revelation as to what
really happened.
I wonder too, if the cockpit reinforcements placed after 9/11 also
argue against that happening.
--
³Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.²
‹ Aaron Levenstein

Malaysian Airlines will know whether there were any air marshalls aboard that plane. If so, those air marshalls would have been shown how to open the cockpit door in the event someone gets into the cockpit and takes over control of the plane. They would perhaps have keys to unlock the door from the outside in their possession, or know a procedure that would override the door lock.

I also heard on the TV news that the 54 year old captain of that plane had a flight simulator in his house. That flight simulator was confiscated by the Malaysian authorities; ostensibly to see if there's anything incriminating on it.

But, most, if not all pilots love to fly, and for a commercial airline pilot to have a flight simulator in his own house doesn't seem all that strange to me.
I would expect to find Golfing game software in the home of an avid golfer and auto racing game software in the home of an auto racing enthusiast.

In article ,
nestork wrote:


But, most, if not all pilots love to fly, and for a commercial airline
pilot to have a flight simulator in his own house doesn't seem all that
strange to me.

I agree.Although, I do know people who don't fly but still use the
simulators because they would like. Of course if the simulator has
information so he has been practicing how to land a 777 on an abandoned
WWII airfield in the Middle East, there might be an issue.
--
³Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.²
‹ Aaron Levenstein

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
m...
In article ,
nestork wrote:

Everyone is speculating about what happened to that plane, and the
longer it's fate remains unknown, the wilder and wilder the speculation
becomes.


Looking over all of the published conjecture, etc., I have a
question of my own. Has this crossed line between pure fiction writing
and fan fiction?

My opinion is that it's evidence of the human mind needing to have rational
explanations for everything that happens. It's why early man created Zeus
(to explain thunder and lightning) and probably why we've got civilization.
It's insatiable curiosity coupled with a fear of the unknown. We want to
make things "knowable" so they don't frighten us.

One thing's for sure. A lot of us know a lot more about airplanes than we
did a week ago!

--
Bobby G.

"nestork" wrote in message
stuff snipped

Malaysian Airlines will know whether there were any air marshalls aboard
that plane. If so, those air marshalls would have been shown how to
open the cockpit door in the event someone gets into the cockpit and
takes over control of the plane. They would perhaps have keys to unlock
the door from the outside in their possession, or know a procedure that
would override the door lock.

If there were any air marshals is a big "if." Outside the US it's clear
that people don't take air security as seriously as Americans do. That
makes sense because we've taken some pretty enormous hits, from Lockerbie to
the WTC. I'm just afraid that we'll never know what happened, even if the
voice recorder is found because it overwrites previous recordings every two
hours.

My current thinking (which changes as each new data tidbit dribbles out) is
that terrorists somehow learned that these pilots have had female visitors
in the cabin before and used that knowledge to gain entry. Russian
terrorists have long been equal opportunity employers with the last two
planes that crashed brought down by suicide bombers who were women - one I
believe was the widow of a well-known terrorist. IIRC he was a Muslim and
the Russkies made a point of filming him being buried in a pigskin bag in an
undisclosed location. Clearly that got her worked up enough to take drastic
action (although I may be confusing events).

I also heard on the TV news that the 54 year old captain of that plane
had a flight simulator in his house. That flight simulator was
confiscated by the Malaysian authorities; ostensibly to see if there's
anything incriminating on it.

A week later. They move very slowly in that part of the world, it seems.

But, most, if not all pilots love to fly, and for a commercial airline
pilot to have a flight simulator in his own house doesn't seem all that
strange to me.

Nor to me. He apparently built his own using several PC's running MS's
flight simulator and feeding six different monitors. What do they call
that? A busman's holiday?

I would expect to find Golfing game software in the home of an avid
golfer and auto racing game software in the home of an auto racing
enthusiast.

Yes, I just read something about a racecar driver's passion for driving
games. I don't think it's unusual. From what I've read these guys don't
seem like the suicidal type, but you never know. My bet's still on someone
getting into the cabin, probably a woman (because they've apparently
"partied" with women in the cockpit before) and killing them and taking over
the plane.

I still suspect the Uighurs because the plane was Chinese and they have been
cracking down quite hard on them. The problem with that scenario is that
they would probably want to crash the plane into something symbolic in
Beijing and not ditch it in the ocean. It seems more and more likely every
day that we will *never* know what really happened on flight MH370, even if
the black boxes are found.

--
Bobby G.

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
...
In article ,
nestork wrote:


But, most, if not all pilots love to fly, and for a commercial airline
pilot to have a flight simulator in his own house doesn't seem all that
strange to me.

I agree.Although, I do know people who don't fly but still use the
simulators because they would like. Of course if the simulator has
information so he has been practicing how to land a 777 on an abandoned
WWII airfield in the Middle East, there might be an issue.

That's an interesting point. Didn't Yossarian constantly practice ditching
his plane for his eventual escape to Switzerland in Catch-22? Until you
mentioned that, I really didn't think there would be any potentially
incriminating evidence to be found concerning the simulator. The big
question is if he did it, WHY? Family member held hostage? Promise of a
huge payday for delivering a plane that size intact somewhere? A need to be
remembered like D.B. Cooper as the man who "did it first and got away with
it?"

--
Bobby G.

I think you'd have to get an expert's opinion before you could make either of those statements.

Modern radar is sophisticated and might be able to tell the difference between one plane or two located very close together. You'd need an expert, like an air traffic controller, to provide an educated guess here.

If they landed on the water, it's possible the plane would hold together, but a crash into the water would create floating debris. In either case, those US submarine hunting aircraft should be able to find the plane or the debris.

What's the most perplexing aspect of this whole thing is the fact that it appears that the plane's transponders were intentionally turned off, and that leads to all kinds of speculation as to why someone on board would do that. If the pilots were incapacitated, then whoever took over the plane must have had very good knowledge of this kind of aircraft. If the pilots turned the transponders off, what could their motive have been?

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:

My opinion is that it's evidence of the human mind needing to have rational
explanations for everything that happens. It's why early man created Zeus
(to explain thunder and lightning) and probably why we've got civilization.
It's insatiable curiosity coupled with a fear of the unknown. We want to
make things "knowable" so they don't frighten us.
Which brings to about the only interesting quote from the short-lived
8th Doctor:"
"I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there."


One thing's for sure. A lot of us know a lot more about airplanes than we
did a week ago!
I don't know. My cynical suggests in the final analysis we may know
even less....
--
³Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.²
‹ Aaron Levenstein

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:


If there were any air marshals is a big "if." Outside the US it's clear
that people don't take air security as seriously as Americans do. That
makes sense because we've taken some pretty enormous hits, from Lockerbie to
the WTC. I'm just afraid that we'll never know what happened, even if the
voice recorder is found because it overwrites previous recordings every two
hours.

We can still get plenty of evidence. Is there just one voice on the
recorder? Are there extra voices? What is the content of any
conversations? Did the pilot at the end do a culture equivalent of Slim
Pickens riding down the bomb in Dr. Strangelove? All sorts of
interesting things are still possible.


My current thinking (which changes as each new data tidbit dribbles out) is
I haven't seen anything yet that I would consider to be data. Rumors
and conjectures, but little data.
--
³Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.²
‹ Aaron Levenstein

wrote in message
...

stuff snipped

This plane has pretty good short field capability anyway and we have
see plenty of accidental landings on fields theoretically too short
for the plane.

WNYC prepared a map of all airstrips/airports within range that could
accommodate a 777:

http://www.thedailystar.net/600-pote...-to-land-15819

Any halfway decent pilot could set this down on a good sized road if
he had to.

Could they take off again from such a short runway? I haven't found anyone
who could answer that question - yet.

The trick is finding a route to that road that stays out of range of
radar.

I wonder how many countries actually pay close attention to their radar
scans. Malaysia certainly appears not to have done so.

There may be a corridor in western China or Eastern India that
is out of range of radar but I doubt it. That is a politically
volatile area.

Which makes me pretty surprised that the Malaysians didn't scramble any
fighters to check out the blips they saw. I suspect some heads are going to
roll for that.

I suppose it might be possible for them to have set up the transponder
to emulate some benign flight but I am not sure what that would be.

If their target was crashing into something in China their best bet was to
keep flying toward Beijing. This is, as my boss used to say, an RFM - real
fu&ing mystery.

Were they near another flight that they could have "tail gated" into
another area?

That would be similar to what happened with KAL007 and the AF fuel tanker
whose tracks merged as they approached Russia. I still think that was an
attempt to analyze Russia air defense systems and their readiness. That
"test" went terribly bad and was based on the assumption the Sovs would
never shoot down a passenger jet - even one that strayed over highly
sensitive military targets. Bad assumption, obviously.

I am still betting they just flew out to very deep water and went in
vertical. A few floaty things may wash up on a beach somewhere but
nothing that will help much.

Why go all that way to ditch when they could have done it at any time
earlier in the flight? Even the voice recorder, if found, won't be much
assistance with the two hour overwrite "feature" likely obliterating the
important moments just after takeoff. The pieces of the wreckage won't tell
us much since it's obvious this wasn't a bomb. AFM for sure.

--
Bobby G.

On Sun, 16 Mar 2014 11:39:16 -0400, wrote:

I am still betting they just flew out to very deep water and went in
vertical. A few floaty things may wash up on a beach somewhere but
nothing that will help much.

Another strange twist:

_Court told of plot by Malaysians to hijack plane_

"...The Telegraph quoted a convicted al-Qaeda member as telling a
court in London last week that four to five Malaysian men had been
planning to take control of a plane, using a bomb hidden in a shoe to
blow open the cockpit door.

It said security experts had said the evidence from Saajid Badat, a
British-born Muslim from Gloucester, was "credible".

[...]

"Giving evidence at the trial in New York of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith,
Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, Saajid said: "I gave one of my shoes to
the Malaysians. I think it was to access the cockpit."

[...]

"The Telegraph said that in other words, Saajid's claims were first
made long before the disappearance of Flight MH370."

http://www.thesundaily.my/news/987389

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
"Robert Green" wrote:

The length of time that's elapsed since the probable ocean crash of the
jet
means that debris has had a lot of time to scatter as well as become
waterlogged and sink. It's conceivable that MH370 stays lost for a
very,
very long time like the Titanic.

At least with the Titanic, you had a much better fix of where it went
down and that was more a question of when the tech would develop to let
it happen than IF it would happen.

It's still a very big ocean out there. It took two years to find just one
of the black boxes from the AirFrance crash and they had a pretty good idea
where to look because they found wreckage shortly after the crash. MH370
may "sleep" for as long as the Titanic did, albeit for slightly different
reasons that all come back to "it's a big ocean with a lot of (very deep)
water to search."

The Titanic was only found because the USN floated the money for the search
and they were looking for the Thresher, not the Titanic. We've had deep
diving submersible technology since the '50's but it's wildly expensive and
time-consuming to search at those depths. Maybe if the India sinks a
submarine in that area, we'll have an excuse to search the depths in depth.
Given the problems India's been having with their subs (they stopped buying
Russian gear and are now building their own (apparently very shoddy) subs.

Reminds me of the John Madden joke about the guy who loses a quarter in the
urinal so he takes out his wallet and throws a $50 bill in after it. He
tells his buddy "you don't think I am going in there for a quarter?"

--
Bobby G.

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
"Robert Green" wrote:

I'm just afraid that we'll never know what happened, even if the
voice recorder is found because it overwrites previous recordings every
two
hours.

We can still get plenty of evidence. Is there just one voice on the
recorder? Are there extra voices? What is the content of any
conversations? Did the pilot at the end do a culture equivalent of Slim
Pickens riding down the bomb in Dr. Strangelove? All sorts of
interesting things are still possible.

But, as they say in the adult film biz, the "money shot" would be missing.
If a lone hijacker killed both pilots I suppose we might hear pounding on
the cabin door five hours later, but if the passengers were asphyxiated, as
some people have suggested, all we might hear is the heavy breathing of the
hijacker. And perhaps "low fuel, low altitude" alerts as the plane crashed.
Just finding wreckage seven flight hours away would have told us that
already.

Maybe if the hijacker was explaining how "peace on earth" equalled "purity
of essence" out loud to him imaginary friend Mandrake we could determine
they were shi+ stomping crazy . . . (-:
(Ironically a lot of Strangelove concerns a rogue plane flying under Russian
radar after the Russians wasted time pursuing decoy targets and got fu&ed -
life imitates art.)

My current thinking (which changes as each new data tidbit dribbles out)
is

I haven't seen anything yet that I would consider to be data. Rumors
and conjectures, but little data.

I think the end of the transponder tracking is trustworthy because it's
mutliply sourced. The Malaysian government and FlightRadar24 both confirm
that and FR24 uses independent listeners connected by the net. I believe
the pilots have had cabin guests before because someone published a picture
of them with a woman in the cockpit. I think it had enough fuel to get to
Beijing and then some. I believe that the transponders were manually
disabled, but indirectly because a) they stopped and b) if the plane broke
up, they'd likely have found the wreck once the adults arrived to help.
Everything beyond that gets sketchier and sketchier, I'll agree.

BTW, I called my buddy in Chicago who's flying home tonight to warn him of
the storm predicted for our area. I'm very familiar with the "ring pattern"
of his phone but this time it rang four rings longer before it went to
voicemail. Just saying - ring patterns don't mean much compared to all the
other non-evidence and innuendo we have.

In the end, both the airline and Boeing will find a way to blame the pilot.
It's a tradition! (Also, the pilots have the shallowest pockets.)

--
Bobby G.

In article ,
nestork wrote:

gfre
Modern radar is sophisticated and might be able to tell the difference
between one plane or two located very close together. You'd need an
expert, like an air traffic controller, to provide an educated guess
here.

From talking with a friend who is an ATC about this in another
context said that would be very dependent on the strength and type of
radar, how close it is, and other obvious factors (not the least of
which is the attentiveness/skill of the ATC). So, especially at the
outer ends of the range, it could happen.
--
³Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.²
‹ Aaron Levenstein

posted for all of us...

And I know how to SNIP


On Thu, 13 Mar 2014 20:10:40 -0400, 0ren 0ren@::1 wrote:


I'd expect the flotation device under each seat to float. ;-)

If there isn't an ass belted on top of it

Depending on how marine life gets to it. Bob may surface...

--
Tekkie

On Monday, March 10, 2014 11:51:20 PM UTC-4, Home Guy wrote:
There was a suprising number of planes in the air around Malaysia at 1

am local time.



-------------

A pilot flying another plane who tried to contact the pilots in the

cockpit of the Malaysia Airlines plane said he heard mumbled voices

before contact was lost.

-------------



So another theory: Something went wrong with the cabin air inside the

plane. Either it lost pressurization (slowly) or recirculation wasn't

working - causing buidup of carbon monoxide.



---------------

On October 25, 1999, a chartered Learjet 35 was scheduled to fly from

Orlando, Florida to Dallas, Texas. Early in the flight the aircraft,

which was cruising at altitude on autopilot, quickly lost cabin

pressure. All on board were incapacitated due to hypoxia — a lack of

oxygen. The aircraft failed to make the westward turn toward Dallas over

north Florida. It continued flying over the southern and midwestern

United States for almost four hours and 1,500 miles (2,400 km). The

plane ran out of fuel and crashed into a field near Aberdeen, South

Dakota after an uncontrolled descent. The four passengers on board were

golf star Payne Stewart, his agents, Van Ardan and Robert Fraley, and

Bruce Borland, a highly regarded golf architect with the Jack Nicklaus

golf course design company.



The NTSB determined that:



The probable cause of this accident was incapacitation of the

flight crew members as a result of their failure to receive

supplemental oxygen following a loss of cabin pressurization,

for undetermined reasons.



A possible explanation for the failure of the pilots to receive

emergency oxygen is that their ability to think and act decisively was

impaired because of hypoxia before they could don their oxygen masks. No

definitive evidence exists that indicates the rate at which the accident

flight lost its cabin pressure; therefore, the Safety Board evaluated

conditions of both rapid and gradual depressurization.



If there had been a breach in the fuselage (even a small one that could

not be visually detected by the in-flight observers) or a seal failure,

the cabin could have depressurized gradually, rapidly, or even

explosively. Research has shown that a period of as little as 8 seconds

without supplemental oxygen following rapid depressurization to about

30,000 feet (9,100 m) may cause a drop in oxygen saturation that can

significantly impair cognitive functioning and increase the amount of

time required to complete complex tasks.

----------------



So either MH370 depressurized quickly - or slowly.



The pilots might have been able to put their masks on - or realize they

needed to put their masks on.



Perhaps they did - but their supplemental oxygen supply didn't work.



Perhaps in their confused state, with or without functional masks, they

started an emergency descent before they blacked out, causing the plane

to smash into the ocean with the pilots incapacitated on the way down.



Note also that in the flight of the Lear Jet in 1999 that the pilots,

even if they did don their masks, made no attempt at radio contact.



-----------

2005 Helios Airways Flight 522 crash



On August 14, 2005, a Helios Airways Boeing 737-300 crashed 40 km (25

mi) from Athens after running out of fuel. An investigation later

concluded that an improper pressurization setting in the cockpit had

caused the cabin pressure to drop, and resulted in the incapacitation of

the passengers and crew. It was later determined that one of the flight

attendants had used the bottled oxygen supply and his pilot's training

to attempt to bring the plane down to a lower altitude. There were no

survivors.

-------------



I think this is looking more and more likely - that the pilots suffered

a slow asphyxia or hypoxia, caused either by a fault in the airframe or

the misapplication or failure of some valve or switch. The plane

descended rapidly, either as the last semi-conscious act of the pilot(s)

or because of a complete lack of pilot input to the controls.



This would be expected during the early phase of the flight, as it

climbs to cruise altitude.

test

On 3/16/2014 1:47 PM, Robert Green wrote:

Any halfway decent pilot could set this down on a good sized road if
he had to.

Could they take off again from such a short runway? I haven't found anyone
who could answer that question - yet.


With a good head wind, maybe.

--
..
Christopher A. Young
Learn about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

bob haller full-quoted:

(...)

test

Was there a reason why you full-quoted my entire post - just to add
"test" to the end?

nestork wrote in :

What's the most perplexing aspect of this whole thing is the fact that
it appears that the plane's transponders were intentionally turned off,
and that leads to all kinds of speculation as to why someone on board
would do that.

It leads *me* to wonder why it's even *possible* to do that. What legitimate reason could there
ever be for turning off the transponder on a passenger airliner while in flight?

Doug Miller wrote:

it appears that the plane's transponders were intentionally turned
off, and ...

It leads *me* to wonder why it's even *possible* to do that. What
legitimate reason could there ever be for turning off the transponder
on a passenger airliner while in flight?

Already been discussed in one of these threads.

When on the ground (in a hanger, at a gate, etc) it adds visual clutter
to ATC screens if all such aircraft are squaking their beacons.

I suggested that the beacons have supplementary power through an
interlock with the landing gear - so that when the gear is up, the
beacons are powered and CAN'T be turned off. Normal circuit breakers or
fuses would provide plenty of safety if the beacons malfunction and need
to have their power cut - with said fuse or circuit breaker for the
supplementary power not accessible to the crew while in flight.

"nestork" wrote in message

stuff snipped

If the pilots turned the transponders off, what could their motive have
been?

To avoid being tracked. If they were going to ditch, so what if the
transponders on or off? But if they wanted to take that plane to one of the
600 plus airstrips within range, turning off the transponder was a necessary
step. The lack of anyone claiming responsibility hints that there's another
shoe waiting to drop here. Perhaps a ransoming of the passengers, a release
of Chinese political prisoners, etc.

I think we can guess that whatever is involved, it concerns the Chinese
because even though it was a Malaysian plane, it was primarily filled with
Chinese. I am wondering if a number of the people on the plane traveling
with supposedly valid passports weren't who they purported to be. I think
it's possible this is a ransom attempt of some kind that may still play out
or ended badly prematurely. That would imply enough associates to control
nearly 200 people.

--
Bobby G.

wrote in message
...
On Sun, 16 Mar 2014 18:18:49 +0100, nestork
wrote:


;3211186 Wrote:

Were they near another flight that they could have "tail gated" into
another area?

I am still betting they just flew out to very deep water and went in
vertical. A few floaty things may wash up on a beach somewhere but
nothing that will help much.

I think you'd have to get an expert's opinion before you could make
either of those statements.

Modern radar is sophisticated and might be able to tell the difference
between one plane or two located very close together. You'd need an
expert, like an air traffic controller, to provide an educated guess
here.


CNN has been trotting out all sorts of experts and they seem fairly
anonymous that 2 planes close together look like one from fairly far
away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_...nes_Flight_007

The Soviets challenged many of the facts presented by the U.S., and for the
first time, mentioned the presence of a USAF RC-135 surveillance aircraft
whose path had crossed that of KAL 007.

As I recall their flight paths crossed and the Sovs thought the jetliner was
a military surveillance jet. The US erased the radar tapes within a day or
two, which I find extraordinarily suspicious considering the gravity of the
event. "We reused the tape" was the line they used.

US submarine hunting aircraft should be able to find
the plane or the debris.

This is a pretty big ocean and they are not even sure where to start
looking

If you read the Wiki piece on KAL007, it becomes obvious that debris is
often hard to find even if you know exactly where to look. The Soviet SAM
appears to have come as close to "completely disintegrating" the 747 as you
can come. MH370 could easily be lost forever. Here's what came out of the
KAL007 passenger cabin:

Of the non-human remains that the Japanese recovered were various items
including dentures, newspapers, seats, books, eight KAL paper cups, shoes,
sandals, and sneakers, a camera case, a "please fasten seat belt" sign, an
oxygen mask, a handbag, a bottle of dish washing fluid, several blouses, an
identity card belonging to 25-year-old passenger Mary Jane Hendrie of Sault
Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, and the business card of passenger Kathy
Brown-Spier.

They found human remains like torsos but those are probably gone after a
week in the drink.

Seat cushions and bits of foam are not really very big targets

And there's always an enormous amount of junk floating in the ocean
everywhere. I wonder what the bottom line $ cost will be for this effort
and how much US taxpayers will spend. It costs a lot of $ per hour to
operate those big Navy ships.

What's the most perplexing aspect of this whole thing is the fact that
it appears that the plane's transponders were intentionally turned off,
and that leads to all kinds of speculation as to why someone on board
would do that. If the pilots were incapacitated, then whoever took over
the plane must have had very good knowledge of this kind of aircraft.
If the pilots turned the transponders off, what could their motive have
been?

Taking the plane.
At that point the only question is whether they really wanted the
plane for ransom or further terror acts or if it was just suicide and
they wanted it to be hard to find.

The first one is understandable, at least. Making the plane wreckage hard
to find is just being a real dick. For the first time since this happened,
I am beginning to think that plane might just pop up somewhere intact.

--
Bobby G.

Robert Green wrote:

I wonder what the bottom line $ cost will be for this effort
and how much US taxpayers will spend.

I've heard nothing about China sending it's navy in there to do the job.

Or am I just not tuned into the right station?

it appears that the plane's transponders were intentionally
turned off, ...

For one thing, do we trust all statements made by authorities - like the
Malaysian gov't and military?

Was the transponder turned off, or was their a failure to detect it?

What is the range of the transponder?

What other facilities would have been in a position to detect it for the
first 40 minutes of the flight?

Did the Malaysians shoot down flight MH370 if they felt (as you would in
the USA) that a passenger plane flying without beacon, unresponsive to
radio contact, is a defacto threat against the country?

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
nestork wrote:

Modern radar is sophisticated and might be able to tell the difference
between one plane or two located very close together. You'd need an
expert, like an air traffic controller, to provide an educated guess
here.

From talking with a friend who is an ATC about this in another
context said that would be very dependent on the strength and type of
radar, how close it is, and other obvious factors (not the least of
which is the attentiveness/skill of the ATC). So, especially at the
outer ends of the range, it could happen.

It used to happen all the time - that's why they went to using transponders
to provide ID info next to the blips on the radar screen. I believe the
hijackers bet on the fact that at 1AM everybody, including the observers in
the military radar stations, is a little bit sleepy. They certainly knew
where to "fall off" the radar screens - at the handoff between Malaysia and
Vietnam.

--
Bobby G.

"(PeteCresswell)" wrote in message
...
Per Robert Green:
"As with any logical fallacy, identifying that the reasoning behind an
argument is flawed does not imply that the resulting conclusion is
false."

IOW, that knife cuts both ways!

Good point.

Prove it beyond a reasonable doubt! (-:

--
Bobby G.

"nestork" wrote in message
...

Everyone is speculating about what happened to that plane, and the
longer it's fate remains unknown, the wilder and wilder the speculation
becomes.

Here's the latest speculation. Cyber hijackers seized control of the plane
remotely.

https://plus.google.com/+ChristianBa...ts/SZQGsbvTS5D

--
Bobby G.

wrote in message
...

stuff snipped

That's an interesting point. Didn't Yossarian constantly practice
ditching
his plane for his eventual escape to Switzerland in Catch-22? Until you
mentioned that, I really didn't think there would be any potentially
incriminating evidence to be found concerning the simulator. The big
question is if he did it, WHY? Family member held hostage? Promise of a
huge payday for delivering a plane that size intact somewhere? A need to
be
remembered like D.B. Cooper as the man who "did it first and got away
with
it?"

He may have been using his simulator to practice flying low, through
the mountains to get under ther radar and take this plane to Tibet or
one of the Stans.

Once he got out of the immediate search area, it is possible a random
blip popping up, might not attract that much attention.

This plane could be under a tarp somewhere in the Taklimakan Desert
... or just wadded up on the side of a mountain.

This incident has some pretty high-tech planning according to some reports
since the circuits that were disabled required knowledge that most pilots
wouldn't have. If you believe the reports, that is. Someone wanted to
conceal where that plane was going. That would be much more important to a
thief or someone wanting to hold the plane for ransom that it would be to a
suicidal pilot. But then again, it's probably a mistake to expect a
suicidal person to behave rationally.

While the level of expertise seems too much for the Chinese Muslim
separatists to execute, there are helpful intelligence services all over the
world that would train them just to make the Chinese go through hell.
Russians, Syrians, Iranians, etc.

--
Bobby G.

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
"Robert Green" wrote:

My opinion is that it's evidence of the human mind needing to have
rational
explanations for everything that happens. It's why early man created
Zeus
(to explain thunder and lightning) and probably why we've got
civilization.
It's insatiable curiosity coupled with a fear of the unknown. We want
to
make things "knowable" so they don't frighten us.

Which brings to about the only interesting quote from the short-lived
8th Doctor:"
"I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there."

There are some who study intelligence that believe that almost all of our
intellect arises from our ability to detect patterns. Some say it was the
ability of early humans to read tracks left by animals that catapulted us to
the top of the food chain. I personally believe it was figuring out
eclipses and the motions of the sun and stars that gave us our edge.
Sometimes I wonder if intelligent life will be found only on worlds where
there are things like full eclipses.

Speaking of Dr. Who and SciFi I started playing the Bab5 DVDs on the big
screen TV instead of the computer monitor and it seems they converted a 4x3
aspect ration to 16x9. The image gets incredibly grainy at times. Also,
it's painfully obvious how much special effects have improved in 20 years.
The FX really suffer because they are blown up to the wider aspect ratio.
However, if they didn't do it during production of the DVDs, I probably
would have done it with the remote's zoom button. I hate watching 4x3
programs on the wide screen TV.

One thing's for sure. A lot of us know a lot more about airplanes than
we
did a week ago!

I don't know. My cynical suggests in the final analysis we may know
even less....

How did you get a cynical to survive in captivity? I heard they're hard as
hell to keep alive. (-:

--
Bobby G.

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:


Seat cushions and bits of foam are not really very big targets

And there's always an enormous amount of junk floating in the ocean
everywhere. I wonder what the bottom line $ cost will be for this effort
and how much US taxpayers will spend. It costs a lot of $ per hour to
operate those big Navy ships.
I wonder how much is sunk costs and how much is marginal. Some of this
could also be used as training for some of the specialties.


--
³Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.²
‹ Aaron Levenstein

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:


Merely parroting it. So instead of actually trying to find out what
is happening they are just grabbing onto whatever flotsam and jetsam
wonders by as if it was actually news?

And this is news to you? (-: My J-prof said that news comes from person A
trying to harm person B through a journalist. It turned out for things like
Watergate, he was right. Mark Felt disliked Nixon for getting passed over
to head the FBI, hence he became Deep Throat.
At least Mark Felt had actual information and W&B took sometime
to look for backup material to corroborate. This seems to be just
putting stuff for the same of putting stuff out. There is no apparent
vetting of most of this which leads to all these whackadoodle theories.



The law of unintended consequences is quite a powerful one.

I am not sure that this really rises to that level.

In regards to a locked cabin door preventing the passengers from
overwhelming the hijackers instead of keeping the hijackers out?
No. At least to my mind you can't invoke law of unintendened
consequences without a line of similar occurrence (my fave discussion of
tax policy for instance). In this case it appears to be a one off that
is specific to this happenstance (of course assuming it actually
happened this way of which there is little or no real evidence just
bloviation on an international scale.


In the long run, I don't see much good coming out of the passengers taking
over the cockpit. It would probably cause the plane to crash sooner.
Don't have to be scared as long...


I still think
that is much more related to what is orders of magnitude more likely to
happen. This is a random occurance.

I think this is anything but random. Latest working theory: China wants to
"pacify" their Muslim extremists and what better way than to whip up a fury
about a suicidal Muslim pilot killing a plane load of innocent Chinese
people. This is the kind of operation spooks love. Very few but highly
trained people are involved, little chance of compromise, plausible
deniability and if push comes to shove, the bosses can always assassinate
the actors. How do you say "Jack Ruby" in Mandarin?

How do you say more unsubstantiated BS. Geez Louise we can't leave
any fanciful theory unturned? This is just getting sadder.
--
³Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive,
but what they conceal is vital.²
‹ Aaron Levenstein