The probably were on their way to Somalia.
Posted on 03/13/2014 11:38:06 AM PDT by mandaladon
U.S. officials have an "indication" the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner may have crashed in the Indian Ocean and is moving the USS Kidd to the area to begin searching.
It will take another 24 hours to move the ship into position, a senior Pentagon official told ABC News. "We have an indication the plane went down in the Indian Ocean," the senior official said. The official said there were indications that the plane flew four or five hours after disappearing from radar and that they believe it went into the water.
Pentagon officials said that the USS Kidd was being moved at the request of Malaysia and is heading towards an area where the Indian Ocean and the Andaman Sea meet. It has helicopters aboard that can scour the area.
The U.S. action came hours after Malaysian officials said they had extended their search into the Andaman Sea and had requested help from India in the search for the missing plane and its 239 passengers.
Investigators also said today that U.S. officials gave them reasons to keep searching the waters west of Malaysia, far from the flight path of the Malaysia Airlines plane.
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that the search’s “main focus has always been in the South China Sea,” which is east of Malaysia and along the plane’s route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
But the search was extended earlier this week to include water far to the west on the other side of Malaysia. “We are working very closely with the FAA and the NTSB on the issue of a possible air turn back,” Hishammuddin said, referring to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board.
(Excerpt) Read more at gma.yahoo.com ...
They can have planes there in no time to at least get pictures.
If it was not a terrorism incident, what possibly could have happened to the aircraft, crew and passengers? Sudden decompression? Poisonous gas in the cabin? It looks like the incident a few years back when that pro-golfer’s jet flew for hours before crashing in the Dakotas(?) because the crew and passengers were all unconscious or dead from sudden decompression..........
Sounds like the aircraft did a Payne Stewart.
USS Kidd is a destroyer. Do we also have a carrier group in the area?
I know next to nothing about aviation, but am wondering if it is possible that an electrical or computer malfunction (or a computer system virus?) could result in shutting down the transponder and the navigation systems and leave the crew confused as to where they were? If this were the case, why wouldn’t communications work? I would think that if they flew for several additional hours (as per the automatic updates communicated from the Rolls Royce engines) they would have tried to contact someone regarding their actual position.
This is dragging out so long, they must be having trouble thinking up a cover story.
Yes, I know its a Destroyer. :-)
Planes can be scrambled from a Base(s) that’s the closest to help verify.
God Bless the Souls.
Diego Garcia
Payne Stewart..I remember that, sad.
His plane flew 1400 miles on autopilot before ran out of fuel & crashed.
Military planes went up to try & help..they reported everyone on plane already dead.
I can’t figure out a scenario that makes sense. If it flew 4 hours with everyone unconscious, it still doesn’t explain how the transponder was shut off manually in the cockpit.
Since the Indian Ocean is now a search area Diego Garcia may be close enough to dispatch aircraft.
Don't they have aircraft at Diego Garcia Island?
yesterday there was a thread on FR with just this idea...can’t find it but evidently in February there was a warning sent out by the FAA about cracks and rust developing in 777’s which could lead to slow, slow decompression of the cabin which would be tough to notice even by pilots and crew...
it reference the Payne Stewart incident...tried to research here but could not find...
The plane was hijacked with the intent of flying west to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, wherever.
The plane couldn't have been on autopilot because it changed altitude and direction.
Because it dropped from 35k+ feet to below civilian radar it used much more fuel.
The hijackers, clever as they were, didn't figure that into what they were doing so the plane ran out of fuel and crashed before it reached the hijacker;s destination.
My guess: I'm assuming the news reports that this plane flew for 4-5 hours are true. So I think it was simply hijacked and was heading for a landing field that was beyond the range of the aircraft. As a result they simply ran out of fuel and crashed into the Indian Ocean. The hijackers were too stupid to know that their target landing place was out of range.
Probably terrorist but not necessarily. Could be simply an aircraft kidnapping for ransom.
Draw a straight from where it was last seen to where it is found and project that line to the target landing field and you will know who the bad guys are.
And no, I don't get paid for this sort of excellent analysis. I just give it away for free. ;)
Indeed Diego Garcia. Land-based, long-range aircraft.
But aircraft cannot recover ‘stuff’ to identify what space-based assets have already ‘seen’ - if anything.
Read up on synthetic aperture recon birds. It’ll amaze you what we can ‘see’ from space.
Too weird.
Too many unanswered questions.
See my post a couple a minutes after yours. Brilliant minds ...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.