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 ...
This sound like a Tom Clancy Novel =)
Nope.
Commercial aircraft auto-deploy for loss of pressure. The ‘rubber jungle’ air masks in the cockpits CAN be put on by choice, but DO auto deploy.
A loss of pressure just wouldn’t sneak up on a commercial flight crew.
The private jet that Payne Stewart died on lacked automated safeguards.
Now we are back to the possible Malacca Strait contact that happened then didn’t happen. Makes you wonder about the Chinese satellite picture which drew them back the other direction. What is going on?
I come up with a new theory every day. I’ve had this one for a few days:
Terrorists get into cockpit and turn off transponder. They turn west, headed to Somalia or some other mid-east hell hole.
And run out of fuel, because the plane was only fueled for a 5 hour flight to China.
And, for unfortunately not the first time, terrorists inadvertently ditch an airliner into the Indian Ocean.
Waypoint Sri Lanka ... then to ... where?
Somalia? Yemen?
There are so many things that have been said to have happened, I won’t believe one theory or another until there is something reasonable to back it up.
thats it...
I can buy into that theory...
:-)
~Q
Winning thread comment.
Shhhh, you’ll spoil the cover story!
The distance to Beijing plus an additional 45 minutes which is the normal fuel loading would preclude making it to Somalia. However if more fuel were added than usual it could be done.
They went to help because the transponder was still functioning on the Payne Stewart plane.
Not quite. Sudden decompression is quite unlikely, it simply never pressurized to start with.
“My theory du jur...”
I like your theory. A few years back I was on a BA 747 from LAX to Heathrow and about 20 minutes after take-off a problem developed in the #3 engine. The engine was shut down, the plane dropped altitude to 24,000 ft, and turned toward JFK. The reduced altitude was to burn off excess fuel so as to minimize fuel load when landing.
Your theory makes more sense out of what we know at this point than any other I have seen expressed. So, did the hi-jackers want the plane, or was there a VIP passenger on board that they wanted...maybe for ransom or for some sort of a ‘prisoner’ exchange...
It’s basically what Jack Cashill, the TWA 800 researcher, said on Coast-to-Coast a couple of nights ago.
Possibly, but what accounts for the transponder and other comm equipment being turned off?......
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