Malaysia Airlines MH370: Confusion over plane last location

BBC News ^ | March 12, 2014

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Search teams are scouring waters off both sides of the Malaysian peninsula, amid confusion over a missing Malaysia Airlines plane's last known location.

Malaysia's air force chief has denied reports that the plane was tracked to the Malacca Strait in the west.

Vietnam has despatched a plane to investigate an eyewitness report of a possible object burning in the sky east of Vietnam. --SNIP--

On Wednesday, Malaysia's air force chief Rodzali Daud denied remarks attributed to him in local media that a missing Malaysia Airlines plane was tracked by military radar to the Malacca Strait, far west of its planned route.

Gen Daud said he "did not make any such statements", but the air force had "not ruled out the possibility of an air turn-back".

Meanwhile, Vietnam said it had deployed aircraft to investigate a possible sighting of the plane.

Doan Huu Gia, deputy general director of Vietnam's air traffic management, said: "We received an email from a New Zealander who works on one of the oil rigs off Vung Tau.

"He said he spotted a burning [object] at that location, some 300 km (200 miles) southeast of Vung Tau."

[xone]

I'm going with a 6000 ft runway Gives a weight of 515-520K. A 7200 mile range. It has to go at altitude to make that range, +30000. It can't make CONUS without a stop. Israel, Europe in range. But it is a lot of fuel trucks.

I still think it is a sub.

[hamboy]

Yes there’s huge hangar but the plane might not be there if it flew at least 4 hours more after last blip on radar.

[snoringbear]

“I still think it is a sub.”

Could be. The search is being expanded to the western portion of the Indian Ocean. But, why would high jackets bother to fly five hours west just to dive it I to the ocean? What hasn’t had much press in the past couple of days are the passengers. Having traveled extensively and lived a couple of years in that part of the world and having made a bunch of those sort of flights I have a pretty good idea of what the profile of those passengers might be. I would guess that the passengers were predominately male, between about mid 20’s to mid 50’s, intelligent and well educated professionals. So, assuming the pilots are the or part of the high jackets there almost certainly were two or more armed co-conspirators in the cabin maintaining control of those passengers. Otherwise, after a short period of time some of the passengers would figure out that there was a high jacking underway and would have probably crashed the cockpit door so to over take the pilots. I’m guessing that if it is indeed a sub it’s because the plane ran out of fuel before it reached its destination. My impression of the Indian military is that it’s pretty good. And, I would assume that includes their defense system. So, it will be interesting to learn if they’ve picked up anything on their radar. I haven’t bothered to research this but I “think” India may even have some satellites.

[xone]

why would high jackets bother to fly five hours west just to dive it I to the ocean?

I don't think they flew it to crash it. I think their fuel planning was inadequate, but it is also possible in their efforts to evade detection, that they caused an unusual attitude that, due to their inexperience, caused them to get vertigo and crash. The big black ocean some scattered lights and then nothing, vertigo city. Vertigo is easy to get, easy to not recognize at first, takes a good bit of experience to overcome once it has you, will crash an aircraft as fast as anything else.

I think it is entirely possible that the mission planning for this on the terrorist's side was a globe and a string. I think they waited too long to start, then wasted time with control measures within the aircraft and trying to avoid detection instead of getting on towards their destination. Their altitude selection probably didn't help. Fuel consumption changes with altitude, as it does when you aren't smooth on the throttle.

[Triple]

Your theory does not account for failed transponders (2).

[GOPJ]

I think it is entirely possible that the mission planning for this on the terrorist's side was a globe and a string. I think they waited too long to start, then wasted time with control measures within the aircraft and trying to avoid detection instead of getting on towards their destination. Their altitude selection probably didn't help. Fuel consumption changes with altitude, as it does when you aren't smooth on the throttle.

OK... so you think it was terrorists - but they screwed up?

[xone]

Of course it was terrorists. The flight crew had over 20k hours. Everybody thinks they can fly. A little sim time here and I'm good to go. In a perfect world maybe. Taking that plane at night was I imagine an effort to avoid being confronted by fighters.

Flying at night has its own set of challenges that can only be mitigated by experience. Once the terrs had control of the plane, if anything went wrong, their training would have been quickly stretched. Trying to evade radar, flying west probably aggravated that problem.

While I feel bad for the passengers who were going to be killed in any event, I would have loved to have looked into the cockpit as the fuel state declined with no hope of landing and see that realization that they had been set up by their masters.