so i'm still wonderin , what do you think happened to flight 370 ??

[frenchy]

i'll say what i thought from the start , or at least from the point when the stories kept changin and they couldn't find a trace of the plane anywhere they thought it shoulda been .. my first thought was , how far can a 777 fly on a tankfull of fuel ?? how much fuel did flight 370 have ?? i know a lot of the talk is about a hijackin and there are some clues to support that but why hijack a jet and then just crash it into the ocean ?? especially a jet full of chinese people ?? we're all aware of the hatred the islamist jihadists have for the usa and western europe .. they don't really need an excuse to do whatever they can to disrupt our lives in any way possible .. but the chinese ?? why ?? that part don't seem to fit unless i'm missin a piece of the terrorism puzzle somewhere .. terrorism 101 or somethin .. but it seems that their transponders were indeed shutoff .. and shutoff by someone who knew more than the average bear about how they work .. one of the transponders they had to have a special tool to lift up the floor after removin the rug and unscrewin the floor to shut it off .. so i'd think they had to have somebody watchin the passengers and crew while someone else either flew the plane or kept a gun on the pilot .. in either case not a one man job ..2 possibly 3 or more people ... the word is the malaysian pilots know somethin is up and don't wanna fly till they figure out what happened .. from what i could gather this plane could have gone over 5,000 miles or over 9,000 miles .. thats almost halfway around the world .. and if they are indeed islamist terrorists i'm sure they could have landed in pakistan , or afganistan , or yemen , or somalia .. that might fit the 5 to 9 thousand mile range .. i might have to get out my national geographic map tho just to be sure .. i guess the bigger question would be what they hope to gain other than a boing 777 .. would china be willin to negotiate with the terroists ?? i'm not so sure .. they have over a billion chinese as it is so a few more or less probably won't matter to the powers that be all that much . but to have it rubbed in their face in front of the whole world ?? whoa buddy .. that might be a different story all together and that could make things really ugly ..up till now the chinese didn't care about islamist terrorists cause it wasn't happenen to them .. this would change that .. at this point tho i really don't know just like everyone else . but to hijack the plane and then just ditch it in the ocean killin everybody ?? to what end ?? nahh .. i'm thinkin that jet went to somalia or someplace like that .. for all we know they're negotiatin for them passengers as i'm typin this and they already know it never crashed .. what do you guys think ?/ any theories ? 

[ProblemAgain]

i watched a little bit of david letterman last night or the night before. he had that walking sphincter bill o'reilly on and between the two of them they couldn't pack a gnat's ass with brains. letterman was asking him questions about the missing plane as tho o'reilly was a journalist instead of a bloviating television personality and o'reilly was answering as tho he had the facts told to him by jesus. these people are a menace to society because they spread stupidity like it was a contagious disease.

oh and sarah palin??

http://www.stonekettle.com/2014/03/fear-and-respect.html

[ProblemAgain]

[Lifesighs]

I think they want the plane to pull another 9/11 thing. They'll keep the plane hidden and then surprise another tower full of people goes down. 

[crestofwaves]

Oh, JEEEEZ, I hope not, Life.

[uno,dos,3]

As for newscasters, in my opinion, Wolf Blitzer is one of the most clueless.....I listened to him during blizzard reports this winter...he was aghast that States made people pay for the towing of their abandoned cars...he just kept repeating this as if it was the scoop of the century. I get most of my news from the Daily Show...it seems fair and balanced.

Regarding the missing airplane, this is obviously the work of aliens (the 'space' type). A long time ago I learned about their fondness for anal probes on a South Park documentary...I just wish they would have made congress disappear, but they may not be familiar with where to find the biggest assholes on our planet. 

 

[dwalt]

Well I know a few  $ssholes, tell them to come talk to me..I'll point them in the right direction.  It will save me a few

target practices. 

[Shadowman]

Until they find out Ginger has taken the radio batteries for her - - ah, personal use and run them dead.

[ProblemAgain]

and ginger just turned 80 on february 11th......(tina louise)

[ProblemAgain]

A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet

• By Chris Goodfellow
• 03.18.14
• 6:30 AM

Image: Pedro Moura Pinheiro/Flickr

There has been a lot of speculation about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Terrorism, hijacking, meteors. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN; it’s almost disturbing. I tend to look for a simpler explanation, and I find it with the 13,000-foot runway at Pulau Langkawi.

We know the story of MH370: A loaded Boeing 777 departs at midnight from Kuala Lampur, headed to Beijing. A hot night. A heavy aircraft. About an hour out, across the gulf toward Vietnam, the plane goes dark, meaning the transponder and secondary radar tracking go off. Two days later we hear reports that Malaysian military radar (which is a primary radar, meaning the plane is tracked by reflection rather than by transponder interrogation response) has tracked the plane on a southwesterly course back across the Malay Peninsula into the Strait of Malacca.

Read more:

How the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet Could Have Been Hijacked

Inside the Nearly Impossible Task of Finding an Airplane in the Ocean

How It's Possible to Lose an Airplane in 2014

The left turn is the key here. Zaharie Ahmad Shah¹ was a very experienced senior captain with 18,000 hours of flight time. We old pilots were drilled to know what is the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us, and airports ahead of us. They’re always in our head. Always. If something happens, you don’t want to be thinking about what are you going to do–you already know what you are going to do. When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The captain did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer.

Take a look at this airport on Google Earth. The pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event onboard that made him make an immediate turn to the closest, safest airport.

The loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire.

When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and searched for airports in proximity to the track toward the southwest.

For me, the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire. And there most likely was an electrical fire. In the case of a fire, the first response is to pull the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses, the plane would go silent. It probably was a serious event and the flight crew was occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such situations.

There are two types of fires. An electrical fire might not be as fast and furious, and there may or may not be incapacitating smoke. However there is the possibility, given the timeline, that there was an overheat on one of the front landing gear tires, it blew on takeoff and started slowly burning. Yes, this happens with underinflated tires. Remember: Heavy plane, hot night, sea level, long-run takeoff. There was a well known accident in Nigeria of a DC8 that had a landing gear fire on takeoff. Once going, a tire fire would produce horrific, incapacitating smoke. Yes, pilots have access to oxygen masks, but this is a no-no with fire. Most have access to a smoke hood with a filter, but this will last only a few minutes depending on the smoke level. (I used to carry one in my flight bag, and I still carry one in my briefcase when I fly.)

What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. You will find it along that route–looking elsewhere is pointless.

Ongoing speculation of a hijacking and/or murder-suicide and that there was a flight engineer on board does not sway me in favor of foul play until I am presented with evidence of foul play.

We know there was a last voice transmission that, from a pilot’s point of view, was entirely normal. “Good night” is customary on a hand-off to a new air traffic control. The “good night” also strongly indicates to me that all was OK on the flight deck. Remember, there are many ways a pilot can communicate distress. A hijack code or even transponder code off by one digit would alert ATC that something was wrong. Every good pilot knows keying an SOS over the mike always is an option. Even three short clicks would raise an alert. So I conclude that at the point of voice transmission all was perceived as well on the flight deck by the pilots.

But things could have been in the process of going wrong, unknown to the pilots.

Evidently the ACARS went inoperative some time before. Disabling the ACARS is not easy, as pointed out. This leads me to believe more in an electrical problem or an electrical fire than a manual shutdown. I suggest the pilots probably were not aware ACARS was not transmitting.

As for the reports of altitude fluctuations, given that this was not transponder-generated data but primary radar at maybe 200 miles, the azimuth readings can be affected by a lot of atmospherics and I would not have high confidence in this being totally reliable. But let’s accept for a minute that the pilot may have ascended to 45,000 feet in a last-ditch effort to quell a fire by seeking the lowest level of oxygen. That is an acceptable scenario. At 45,000 feet, it would be tough to keep this aircraft stable, as the flight envelope is very narrow and loss of control in a stall is entirely possible. The aircraft is at the top of its operational ceiling. The reported rapid rates of descent could have been generated by a stall, followed by a recovery at 25,000 feet. The pilot may even have been diving to extinguish flames.

But going to 45,000 feet in a hijack scenario doesn’t make any good sense to me.

Regarding the additional flying time: On departing Kuala Lampur, Flight 370 would have had fuel for Beijing and an alternate destination, probably Shanghai, plus 45 minutes–say, 8 hours. Maybe more. He burned 20-25 percent in the first hour with takeoff and the climb to cruise. So when the turn was made toward Langkawi, he would have had six hours or more hours worth of fuel. This correlates nicely with the Inmarsat data pings being received until fuel exhaustion.

Fire in an aircraft demands one thing: Get the machine on the ground as soon as possible.

The now known continued flight until time to fuel exhaustion only confirms to me that the crew was incapacitated and the flight continued on deep into the south Indian ocean.

There is no point speculating further until more evidence surfaces, but in the meantime it serves no purpose to malign pilots who well may have been in a struggle to save this aircraft from a fire or other serious mechanical issue. Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah was a hero struggling with an impossible situation trying to get that plane to Langkawi. There is no doubt in my mind. That’s the reason for the turn and direct route. A hijacking would not have made that deliberate left turn with a direct heading for Langkawi. It probably would have weaved around a bit until the hijackers decided where they were taking it.

Surprisingly, none of the reporters, officials, or other pilots interviewed have looked at this from the pilot’s viewpoint: If something went wrong, where would he go? Thanks to Google Earth I spotted Langkawi in about 30 seconds, zoomed in and saw how long the runway was and I just instinctively knew this pilot knew this airport. He had probably flown there many times.

Fire in an aircraft demands one thing: Get the machine on the ground as soon as possible. There are two well-remembered experiences in my memory. The AirCanada DC9 which landed, I believe, in Columbus, Ohio in the 1980s. That pilot delayed descent and bypassed several airports. He didn’t instinctively know the closest airports. He got it on the ground eventually, but lost 30-odd souls. The 1998 crash of Swissair DC-10 off Nova Scotia was another example of heroic pilots. They were 15 minutes out of Halifax but the fire overcame them and they had to ditch in the ocean. They simply ran out of time. That fire incidentally started when the aircraft was about an hour out of Kennedy. Guess what? The transponders and communications were shut off as they pulled the busses.

Get on Google Earth and type in Pulau Langkawi and then look at it in relation to the radar track heading. Two plus two equals four. For me, that is the simple explanation why it turned and headed in that direction. Smart pilot. He just didn’t have the time.

Chris Goodfellow has 20 years experience as a Canadian Class-1 instrumented-rated pilot for multi-engine planes. His theory on what happened to MH370 first appeared on Google+. We’ve copyedited it with his permission.

[frenchy]

that sounds like a reasonable explanation .. i'm just curious tho .. why haven't they also assumed this and at least looked in the direction they think the plane was headed before the pilot may have lost control .. i'm sure they have quite a few pilots who fly all the time who might have come up with this same scenario.. they had some guys on this mornin on the today show and all of em said it was impossible for it to be a fire of that magnatude .. but nobody mentioned a burnin tire .. they simply mentioned the wires in the plane are made specificly not to burn .. i had to laugh when uno said it was aliens who stole the plane but i laughed cause it was also a thought that went thru my mind too .. i mean where else could a boeing 777 go ?? ehh.. the mothership got her ..  

[Snagg]

Stealing an entire airliner so that the world notices it, planning to use it as another 9/11-style flying bomb, doesn't make sense; Even if they pack it with a nuke or something, the world's air defenses are on the lookout for this damn plane, and having it suddenly pop up on radar somewhere, asking for clearance to land while it nears it's target, ain't going to fly - So to speak. It'll be shot down first.

There are MUCH easier, more efficient ways of sneaking a nuke into a target city. This plane isn't one of them.

Something IS up, there's no doubt about that. Even if the pilot successfully used a clever method of disabling his transponder while shadowing another plane to escape detection, that means he probably landed safely somewhere over a week ago - And no nation has come forth claiming to have them. No reputable government would keep something like that secret, so yeah, something's up - But what, we have no idea.

.

[frenchy]

so now that that guys theory has gone viral there are some pilots who say no they don't think so .. see what you think of this .. 

http://www.businessinsider.com/did-missing-plane-fly-for-hours-afte...