Beijing-bound MAS plane carrying 239 people missing as of 20 mins ago.

auroraaus
reply to post by drwill

 

I'm not sure about a hiding place. It just seems bizarre (to me) that several tonnes of fruit are being transported to another country on a passenger plane. What of quarantine and customs upon entering China? I wouldn't know, I haven't flown there before. Here in Australia, there's absolutely no fruit and vegies, no organic material etc allowed through customs.

Now, I want a mangosteen. Where can I buy mangosteens?!

ha-ha maybe they export to china during the northen winter?

sy.gunson
I just had an inspiration. The Australians have an over the horizon radar array in Western Australia known as the Jindalee network. It works by bouncing radio waves off the undersides of the ionosphere with a 1,800nm range. It is designed to look towards the Indian Ocean and Sumatra. It is constantly monitored for unidentified aircraft for hostile aircraft and smuggling.

The Australians would already know if it flew into the southern Indian Ocean, but they're searching to pretend they don't know. They are remaining secretive to conceal the capabilities of their Jindalee network:

Jindalee

Or they're really helping with the search because the plane did not register on their radar as it wasn't really there at all. Why waste money and resources IF they already knew just to pretend when they could just remain silent and do nothing?

sy.gunson

If it had a transponder switched on then it could be tracked. If Malaysian Airlines paid INMARSAT for satellite bandwidth then ACARS could track the flight, but it did not have ACARS enabled.
Nobody is debating that it went missing after flying through the Straits of Malacca.

(my bolded above)

This yesterdays article about planning makes several references to transponders
Planning could hold key to disappearance of flight MH370 March 17, 2014

I dont really understand how they can all make these statements when we have found evidence that the ACARS was turned off. Now, I guess that some of these dont refer to the ACARS system, but some do as well.

Is it possible to explain how we can have both the ACARS turned off and the authorities receiving ACARS signals early in their flight. It also says that the pilot turned off the ACARS system before the last transmissions.

The pro pilots forum are still continuing with the idea that ACARS was up and running until it was switched off manually. They should know if MAS did not use ACARS and no data was available.

AUSTRALIAN maritime officials have identified a search area off Western Australia, after the Taliban denied involvement in Malaysia Airlines flight MH370’s disappearance.
Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports in Malaysian media say investigators probing the homemade flight simulator of the MH370 captain have found five runways from Indian Ocean airports programmed into it.
The Berita Harian Malay language paper quotes unnamed sources close to the investigation as saying that the airport runways were Male International Airport in the Maldives,Diego GarciaDiego Garcia and three runways in India and Sri Lanka.
The source is quoted as saying that all the runways programmed into the simulator are 10,000 metres long.

reply to post by sy.gunson


www.news.com.au... 6857475351

Let me get this straight,
Are we looking for this thing on land or in the sea.

The Australians and others are looking in the sea as if the plane has crashed. The Israelis are getting twitchy in case the plane has been hijacked and they are the ones in the firing line and China is looking over land in its western provinces. The USA has sent the USS Kidd away and going to use planes to search the whole area.

Either they are looking on land or in the sea. Which is it?
It seems they still dont know.

reply to post by qmantoo

Either they are looking on land or in the sea. Which is it?

Yes. There are both land and sea searches underway.

reply to post by qmantoo


and the price of Mangosteens have gone up. Don't forget that.

Edit to add: No matter the outcome, the past 10 days have provided much for academics to pick through in media/communications, sociology, political science/foreign affairs and global studies... yep.

Is it possible that someone was hiding inside the plane ? (someone who would not show up on the passengers list or among crew) Since some many seats where 'empty' according to the passenger manifest, it could be possible.

reply to post by HolySchit


Possible. I would bet my last bacon sandwich that if bin Laden was still with us today, it would be speculated by many that he was/is hiding in the plane.

Although not sure how anyone in the cargo hold would survive, don't think it's pressurized or has adequate heating for being up so high.

reply to post by auroraaus


If you could read what else was in that cargo such as a animal or animals, then it would be heated

reply to post by auroraaus


And it has exposed a terrible fact that we have major league weaknesses in being able to track things like a huge jet airliner, which then opens a whole lotta doors to a whack of other problems we face and will, no doubt, in the future fork over a bunch more of our civil liberties to accommodate 'their' fix.

reply to post by GoalPoster


www.news.com.au... -1226857475351

MALAYSIA’S Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim has admitted he has a family connection to the MH370 pilot, who may have hijacked the plane in a political protest.
Mr Ibrahim said Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah is related to his son’s in-laws, according to The Straits Times.
“I am not denying that he (Zaharie) is related to one of my in-laws and that I have met him on several occasions,” he said.
“In fact, he is a close friend of (PKR supreme council member and Subang MP) R. Sivarasa, as we said before,” Mr Anwar told reporters at the Parliament lobby in Kuala Lumpur today.
Mr Anwar had earlier denied close links to Mr Zaharie.
“I don’t recollect the name (Zaharie), but when the photographs were shown, I remembered I had seen him at party meetings,” he was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post.
He also said they had had no personal contact, but Mr Zaharie was a follower of his Twitter account.
Mr Anwar’s party Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) has dismissed reports that Mr Zaharie is a “political fanatic”, as previously reported by UK media.
The pilot was also protrayed as an “obsessive” supporter of Mr Ibrahim.
PKR communications director told Fahmi Fadzil said the reports in the Daily Mail were “wild allegations” and the paper “is a sensationalist tabloid known for cooking up stories”.
This comes after speculation that Captain Zaharie Shah may have hijacked his own aircraft in a political protest.
Pilot related to Anwar Ibrahim
Missing pilot under investigation ... Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. Source: Supplied
Hours before Flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur, the pilot is said to have attended a controversial trial in which Ibrahim - who has been harassed and jailed on successive charges of homosexuality and sodomy - was jailed for five years.

qmantoo
Let me get this straight,
Are we looking for this thing on land or in the sea.

The Australians and others are looking in the sea as if the plane has crashed. The Israelis are getting twitchy in case the plane has been hijacked and they are the ones in the firing line and China is looking over land in its western provinces. The USA has sent the USS Kidd away and going to use planes to search the whole area.

Either they are looking on land or in the sea. Which is it?
It seems they still dont know.

Yes they still don't know. The malaysian PM said he wanted to be clear that it was the media that is saying it's a hijack.
All they have is the transponder going off, the plane turning and then the Sat pings that have allowed them to calculate the huge North to South Arc.

They know it either went North and ended up on land, or south which means it ended up in the sea.

Australia is searching where the plane may have ended up in the sea.

Australian authorities have an enormous task ahead in their search of a 600,000 square kilometre area for the missing plane. As weather and tidal patterns change, they search area may well also need to be updated. An ABC news report outlines just how difficult that task can be: “This is not just a needle in a haystack, it’s a haystack that gets bigger and shifts under us due to the [ocean’s] drift,” said captain Fareq Hassan, the flight’s navigator.

While data from high-tech radars, transponders, and satellites has been brought to bear in the hunt for the missing plane that has gripped the world, the low-tech reality aboard search planes is a mind-numbing, naked-eye affair. After a 90-minute flight from Kuala Lumpur to the south-eastern Andaman Sea far off the coast of Thailand, the crew began looking. Descending to about 152 metres over the water, the plane settled into a three-hour back-and-forth tracking pattern reminiscent of a lawn being mowed. “You get dizzy and nauseous trying to track as the sea moves so quickly under you. By the time the flight is over you’re close to hallucinating,” sergeant Nor Sarifah Ahmad said over the deafening roar of propellers as turbulence jostled the plane.

www.theguardian.com...

They have said the search of this area may take weeks!

May this guy had something to do with it from wiki source

The Valentich disappearance refers to the disappearance of 20-year-old Frederick Valentich while on a 125-mile (235 km) training flight in a Cessna 182L light aircraft over Bass Strait in Australia on 21 October 1978.
Described as a "flying saucer enthusiast", Valentich radioed Melbourne air traffic control that he was being accompanied by an aircraft about 1,000 feet (300 m) above him, that his engine had begun running roughly, and finally reported, "It's not an aircraft."[1]

Valentich radioed Melbourne Flight Service at 7:06 PM to report an unidentified aircraft was following him at 4,500 feet and was told there was no known traffic at that level. Valentich said he could see a large unknown aircraft which appeared to be illuminated by four bright landing lights. He was unable to confirm its type, but said it had passed about 1,000 feet (300 m) overhead and was moving at high speed. Valentich then reported that the aircraft was approaching him from the east and said the other pilot might be purposely toying with him. Valentich said the aircraft was "orbiting" above him and that it had a shiny metal surface and a green light on it. Valentich reported that he was experiencing engine problems. Asked to identify the aircraft, Valentich radioed, "It isn't an aircraft" when his transmission was interrupted by unidentified noise described as being "metallic, scraping sounds" before all contact was lost

I believe the cargo hold in a plane IS pressurised, otherwise animals and all those lovely mangosteens wouldn't survive.

Various sources are now speculating as to whether a bomb could have been amongst the cargo.

There was laughter at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur when officials revealed that the only cargo on the Boeing 777 jet was a four-ton consignment of mangosteens, a purple-skin tangy fruit with white segments inside that's popular in Asian countries.
But we've now learned that police are trying to establish whether there was a deadly link to the seemingly harmless cargo ordered by companies in China.

I don't trust the Daily Mail and it's sources but there you have it...

reply to post by DrHammondStoat


I stand corrected.

Although curiosity gets the better of me.... what happens to mangosteens if they aren't pressurized? Projectile?

To the Google-mobile!

reply to post by auroraaus


I dunno, I suppose they would go a bit mushy or something

reply to post by DrHammondStoat


All I can find thus far is a research paper on the effects of low-pressure on cucumbers, 6-hr flight simulation as a variable and shows there is some water loss thus shortening shelf-life.

Ewww.

auroraaus
reply to post by DrHammondStoat

 

All I can find thus far is a research paper on the effects of low-pressure on cucumbers, 6-hr flight simulation as a variable and shows there is some water loss thus shortening shelf-life.

Ewww.

Lol! You have impeccable research skills, keep up the good work

Press conference going on, looks like the search is now going to continue for a long, long time.

1m ago
Hishammuddin tries to clarify when the plane’s Acars system was switched off. He repeats that the switch off occurred between 1.07am and 1.37am. The exact timing of the switch off does not effect the search effort, he said.

4m ago
Hishammuddin said the search area now covers a “vast” area of 2.24 million square nautical miles.

5m ago
The northern and southern search corridors have both been divided into seven quadrants, Hishammuddin said.

7m ago
Malaysia’s acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein begins the press conference by stating that Malaysia’s international partners are taking a bigger role in the search.

“We have contacted every relevant country that has satellite data,” he said.

11m ago
The Malaysian authorities are about to give another press briefing. No breakthroughs in the search the plane are expected.