
Malaysian Official Says Missing Plane Hijacked - r0h1n
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_MALAYSIA_PLANE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-03-15-00-22-45
======
dakrisht
First, I can't imagine the US doesn't know the location of this airplane or
exactly what happened during deviation from its original flight path.
Understandably, they cannot reveal the full breadth of their reconnaissance
capabilities to "enemies" and the general public.

If you don't know, there is a highly sophisticated US naval air facility on
the island of Diego Garcia. The Navy does deep space reconnaissance over
there! among other things...

And they didn't detect a massive 777 flying north/south in and around the
Indian Ocean?

That area is saturated in complex radar. Diego Garcia houses complex radar and
satellite communications systems and who knows what else that is still
classified.

Additionally, there are over 1,000 operational satellites in orbit!

IMO, this was a carefully and planned mission.

For all we know (tin-foil hat time) there could be behind the curtain
negotiations with hijackers and/or missions being planned to recover the
aircraft in case of wild extremists theories flying around on the Internet
(0.1% on this) And as we all know today, nothing is that extreme anymore in
the world we live in.

Disabling transponders takes three clicks of a wheel and it was most
definitely done intentionally, the sharp, almost hairpin turn, this jet made
and then strategically avoided radar are all signs of a sophisticated
operation here. The WSJ reports that circuit breakers were accessed in order
to shut down transponders, clearly requiring a high level of skill for
aircraft maintenance opps. Sure, pilot can break a circuit but they will spend
20 minutes reading the flight maintenance manual AND contact ground before
doing anything like this.

Finally - there were a few important people on board, including quite a few
high-tech people involved with government contractions.

Whatever is happening, it might never make complete sense - or at least the
general public might be out the loop and get whatever information THEY want us
to hear. I don't know who THEY are but this whole situation is very strange
and gets crazier by the day.

Edit: this bird was hacked

~~~
lawl
* puts tinfoil hat on *

In two months there are EU elections. Plus the hijacking in switzerland
shortly before this... Sound convinient.

~~~
coob
You'd need something stronger than a tinfoil hat to think that EU elections
are important.

------
Steko
AP is already walking back the headline, now reads "Malaysian official says
missing plane hijacked"

 _" It is not conclusive. I'm heading the investigation and nobody is saying
that. It's not true. We are looking at the possibility, we're looking at all
possibilities. We're doing every profile of the passengers and crew but there
is no firm evidence or leads so far," he told the Telegraph. _

~~~
ubernostrum
At this point the only safe headline to run is "Malaysian officials currently
saying something they're going to deny saying a few hours from now".

~~~
downandout
Or perhaps _" Passenger Jet Missing"_. That seems to be the only confirmed
information.

------
andrewflnr
At this point I'm guessing it was hijacked or otherwise a victim of foul play,
and then the perpetrators screwed up somehow which is why no one now wants to
take credit for the affair. I bet we're going to hear conspiracy theories for
years.

~~~
FatalLogic
>then the perpetrators screwed up somehow which is why no one now wants to
take credit for the affair

There is no hard evidence for it, but a suicidal pilot who wanted to make sure
his insurance paid out would also explain this. Suicidal _and_ psychopathic.

It's horrific, but it has happened twice before.

~~~
yardie
Except psychopaths and suicides are on opposite sides of the spectrum. You do
have edge cases where psychopaths choose suicide over being caught, ie Hitler.
But to commit just suicide there literally thousands of easier ways to do it.
You don't even have to leave home to do it.

~~~
danielha
Got it, so because committing suicide is easier to do at home, you must be
silly to do it in this matter. Crazy, even.

------
FatalLogic
It has to be asked, why did it take so long to get the additional data about
the flight path?

That data includes engine to satellite handshake, and military radar.

A lot of effort and time was wasted searching in the wrong place, even though
the lack of wreckage beneath the last transponder location was an immediate
sign that something might be unusual about this case. Meanwhile, possible
evidence, such as floating wreckage in the Indian Ocean, was being lost.

~~~
allochthon
It's fascinating that you can find your iPhone using a Web site, but we're
having such a hard time finding a plane (with lots of people with smartphones
in their pockets turned off, or not).

EDIT: just to clarify -- I'm thinking of how tracking the precise location of
a plane at all times is a problem that it seems like we should have a handle
on by now, although not necessarily using cell phone technology. (I wasn't
thinking clearly about the cell phone signals in this context, though, as
people have been correct to point out.)

~~~
FatalLogic
It's fascinating, but it leads one toward the unpleasant conclusion that the
passengers could have already have been dead or unconscious before the plane
flew back across Malaysia.

Cellphone tower records should provide more evidence, because there are sure
to be some phones that were not in airplane mode.

Cellphones won't have enough power to connect more than about 50 km from the
coast.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Do you still get cell signal seven miles up? I remember one time accidentally
leaving my phone not in airplane mode and I had no signal. YMMV.

~~~
FatalLogic
The quality of service may not be good, but text messaging will work, at
least.

------
cwilson
I'm convinced this is one of three things after watching this for 7 days:

1\. Hijacking gone wrong and the plane is in the ocean.

2\. Pilot suicide and the plane is in the ocean.

3\. Hijacking gone right and the plane is parked somewhere and all the
passengers are dead and/or being held captive (least likely option).

That's it. Nothing else could have happened.

~~~
afatc
What about a portal to another dimension?

~~~
kenrikm
That's what I'm talking about!
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112040/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112040/)
good theory.

~~~
nunodonato
man I loved this when it came on TV for the first time. gotta watch it again
someday

------
fasteddie31003
A modern day Earhart. I wonder if this incident will be the result of
unintended blowback from making the cockpit too secure. Can we trust pilots?
Should we be able to over-ride the controls of a plane mid-flight? EgyptAir
Flight 990? All 9/11 flights? Ethiopian Airlines flight ET-702?

~~~
MichaelGG
"making the cockpit too secure"

How so? If you don't trust the pilots to the point where you want, who, the
FAs? taking over the plane, you've got far bigger issues. An override system
should be a remote-control thing requiring keys from multiple people.

------
yeukhon
I think hijacked is a high possibility, though the only question remains is
why hasn't anyone actually claim the responsibility? This is so unlike
terrorist group out there.

From what I understand, no terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the
recent Kuming massacre in China the week before the missing plane.

Uighurs separatists/terrorists are not that shy; they did claim responsbility
are few times.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China))

If this were a hijack, it's either targeting at the Chinese (most likely
Uighurs separatists) or an upgraded terrorist attack. Maybe I've watched too
much _24_ and Sherlock Holmes.

------
csense
Hmm. I wonder what the motivation is. I don't think it's terrorism or ransom,
since nobody's claimed responsibility yet.

Maybe it was a hijacking gone wrong, and the plane went down?

Then again, the time gap between the disabling of systems suggests the
hijackers ended up with enough control of the aircraft to send someone to see
to it (presumably if they were engaged in a desperate battle with the crew and
passengers, or if they lost control of the aircraft and the plane was going
down, all of the hijackers would be busy dealing with the crisis).

The fact of "significant flying experience" and the disabling of the
transponder suggests a professional operation -- maybe some country's
intelligence agency wants one of the passengers badly enough they're willing
to interfere with a couple hundred other innocent passengers? The outcome
doesn't bode well for the missing, since they are now Witness Who Have Seen
Too Much.

Or maybe the hijackers _want_ all the passengers because they have a use for a
couple hundred humans. Slave trading? Weapons testing? Wouldn't it be simpler
(and bring a less thorough investigation) to just kidnap people off the street
in some country with poor law enforcement?

The more I think about this, the less sense it makes.

~~~
arrrg
There can’t be _that_ many places within reach of that plane where such a
plane can land, right? The time window and range are both known, so can’t all
those places be checked somehow?

~~~
timr
More importantly, there aren't that many places a 777 can land _without being
picked up by a radar_. Probably zero places.

~~~
Zancarius
I'd imagine that most airports that could handle a 777 would be suspicious if
it wasn't a scheduled flight, wasn't an emergency _per se_ , and later learned
that an aircraft of that type went missing.

And if it was still the case up to the point of disappearance, its latest
livery was a bit... flamboyant [1]. Not exactly the sort of thing I'd want to
try hiding.

[1]
[http://flightaware.com/photos/view/1342999-1276f63c75e647f6d...](http://flightaware.com/photos/view/1342999-1276f63c75e647f6d73bb3dc004b0dfad70ae7ea/aircrafttype/B772)

------
driznar
Officials now believe most likely location for MH370 is on land near
Chinese/Kyrgyz border.[1]

If this holds true, then the most likely perpetrators are Uyghur separatists.
But this begs the question, how did they manage to evade being detected by the
numerous radars?

[1]
[https://twitter.com/JonahFisher/status/444754310677553153](https://twitter.com/JonahFisher/status/444754310677553153)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
They probably were detected by radar, but geopolitics means few countries will
admit they were able to detect it to avoid revealing military capabilities.

------
Oculus
_" Radar signals recorded by the Malaysian military appear to show the
airliner climbing to 45,000 feet (about 13,700 meters), higher than a Boeing
777's approved limit, soon after it disappeared from civilian radar, and
making a sharp turn to the west. The radar track then shows the plane
descending unevenly to an altitude of 23,000 feet (7,000 meters), below normal
cruising levels, before rising again"_

Sounds to me like a possible fight/commotion in the cockpit was the cause of
the plane to fly in such a weird pattern.

Potential Scenario:

\- Fight in cockpit results in the plane flying unexpectedly high ( _" above
approved limit"_)

\- Hijackers obtain control, turn off transponder and turn to their target
location

\- Unexperienced pilot (possibly learned how to only fly smaller planes) makes
an _" unevenly"_ descent to lower altitudes as he knows the plane is above its
approved limit

\- Rise again could be a second fight in the cockpit? Not sure on how to
explain this one.

The rising and falling in altitudes makes me suspect this wasn't pilot
suicide.

~~~
sebcat
Why would a plane ascend because of a struggle in the cockpit? You don't just
climb 15000 ft at that altitude because someone fell over the controls.
Someone had control at that point. Had there been a struggle, a descent would
be the most likely outcome. All the explanations I've heard so far contains
way too many assumptions. Ockham's razor.

Here's another scenario: hypoxia. Makes you retarded and euphoric. Like being
drunk but with less disassociation. Suddently, it's a great idea to climb! Oh
wait, nope. Better descend. Are we on course? Better turn.

Hypoxia and/or stress. Look at AF447. All pilots know what a stall is. But
when you're flying at night in bad weather with S:t Elmo's fire all around you
and the airspeed indicator stops working and you believe you need to climb,
you might react without thinking. Oh, we're losing altitude? Better pull up!

------
nnx
Malaysian PM just concluded a Press Conference.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRUf4NlwDc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRUf4NlwDc)

He himself confirmed that satellite data (alledgedly cross-checked with US and
other countries) shows the plane was still up in the air until at least 8:30AM
Malaysian Time (~4-5 hours after the disappearance iirc).

Search and Rescue operations in the South China Sea (east of Malaysia) have
been cancelled - the search now focuses west of Malaysia.

I quote (emphasis mine) : "the last satellite communication occurred in one of
two possible corridors, a northern corridor, stretching _approximately_ from
the border of Kazakshtan and Turkemistan to northern Thailand, and a southern
corridor, stretching _approximately_ from Indonesia to southern Indian Ocean."

PM exited the press conference right after ending his speech, not answering
questions.

------
final_approach
This story gets more interesting and interesting with every day. I really hope
it was hijacked and landed safely somewhere.

~~~
mjs7231
If true, it means 230 peoples lives are in the fate of a group crazy enough
and smart enough to hijack a plane undetected. I don't even want to think
about that too much. The situation they are in must be hell.

~~~
maaku
> The situation they are in must be hell.

Better than being dead.

~~~
kaoD
Are you sure?

~~~
maaku
Yes. Being alive is better than being dead. I will stand by that statement no
matter the circumstances.

------
TenJack
One plausible scenario is that the plane was hijacked by terrorists so that it
could later be used to deliver a payload (or be the payload itself a la 9-11).
Since the plane has such a huge range, it could be used in an attack on
American soil. This could also explain flying at a high altitude as a way to
kill the passengers.

~~~
LordHumungous
You can't just fly an unidentified plane into American airspace without
getting shot down... I think

------
beagle3
Motorola/Freescale is apparently a dangerous place to work:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Airlines_Flight_006](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Airlines_Flight_006)

~~~
dm2
It happens a lot more than people think.

If your company has 20,000 employees and it's routine for many of them to fly,
then the odds are that something bad will happen eventually.

[http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/02/tesla-employees-
identif...](http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/02/tesla-employees-identified/)

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/10/connecticut-
pla...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/10/connecticut-plane-crash-
six-feared-dead)

Below are some unusual airplane incidents, I'm sure there are many more than
are on this list. The point is that everyone would say the below things would
NEVER happen on an airplane, yet, they happened.

[http://www.planecrashinfo.com/unusual.htm](http://www.planecrashinfo.com/unusual.htm)

Some highlights:

"A passenger brought aboard a crocodile hidden in a sports bag. The crocodile
escaped, causing a panic among passengers who all rushed to one end of the
plane. This caused an imbalance in the aircraft which led to loss of control
and a crash."

"A stray bullet from training soldiers struck the landing plane, hitting an
oxygen cylinder. A fire broke out and control of the plane was lost and it
crashed."

"The aircraft was hijacked shortly after taking off from Ethiopia by three
drunken escaped prisoners. They demanded to be flown to Australia, but
wouldn't let the pilot stop to refuel. The plane eventually ran out of fuel
and ditched 500 feet offshore killing 127 of 157 aboard."

"A passenger's cigarette caused a fire in the cabin which led to an oxygen
tank exploding. The plane crashed killing 25 of 69 aboard."

"Two passengers were sucked out of the plane after a tire exploded in the
wheel well causing damage to the fuselage."

"Out of boredom, the captain and flight engineer decided to experiment and see
what would happen to the autothrottle system if the circuit breakers which
supplied power to the instruments which measured the rotational speed of each
engine's low pressure compressor were tripped. This led to engine overspeeding
and destruction of the engine. Pieces struck the fuselage, breaking a window,
causing rapid explosive decompression and a passenger was sucked out of the
plane. The plane landed safely."

"An unrestrained German Shepard interfered with flight controls and caused the
plane to crash."

"Without authorization, the pilot taxied half-way down the runway to try and
clear fog. Braking done during the fog clearing overheated the brakes. Soon
after takeoff, the overheated brakes caused a tire to burst which damaged a
fuel line and started a fire. The plane crashed shortly after killing all 80
people aboard."

These below happened like 50+ years ago.

"A U.S. Army Air Force B-25 crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State
Building in fog, killing 3 aboard and 11 on the ground."

"Carbon dioxide extinguishers were discharged in response to a fire warning in
the cargo hold. The plane's nose was lowered for an emergency descent and due
to a design flaw, carbon dioxide entered the cockpit and rendered the crew
unconscious after which the plane crashed killing all 43 aboard. "

"The DC-3 disintegrated in flight outside of Quebec killing all 23 aboard.. A
dynamite bomb was planted in the forward baggage compartment by Albert Guay, a
jeweler, in a plot to kill his wife who was a passenger on the plane. Guay,
who assembled the bomb, had his accomplice, Marguerite Pitre air expressed the
bomb on the aircraft. Ms. Pitre's brother, a clockmaker, helped make the
timing mechanism. The insurance policy was for 10,000 dollars. All three were
hanged for their crimes. "

"The plane landed in Pacific Ocean, 2.5 mile short of the runway in the
shallow waters of San Francisco Bay. All 107 people aboard were safely
evacuated off the plane. The aircraft was recovered from the San Francisco Bay
55 hours after the accident, repaired and eventually flew back home to Japan
and was in service for many decades."

"The aircraft crashed killing 61 of 82 aboard after colliding with a balloon."

~~~
dag11
> "Out of boredom, the captain and flight engineer decided to experiment..."

Wow, that starts out like something out of The Onion:
[http://www.theonion.com/articles/pilot-tells-passengers-
hes-...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/pilot-tells-passengers-hes-about-to-
try-something,34934/)

~~~
gaius
A similar story is how Chernobyl happened.

------
taspeotis
Like every other piece of information that's denied in the daily press
conference...

> the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not
> authorized to brief the media.

------
kbar13
didn't google news have a hosted page for AP stories that was formatted a bit
better for reading? I can't seem to find it anymore...

------
notastartup
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/1069...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10699933/Missing-
Malaysia-Airlines-flight-MH370-investigator-denies-claim-plane-was-
hijacked.html)

I don't know who to believe.

~~~
Cookingboy
They've been publicizing information and shortly denying them afterwards
themselves this entire week, it almost seems like there is a faction within
the government that has conflicting motives with the rest.

Next they are gonna deny that MH370 existed at all.

~~~
notastartup
It almost seems like they are trying to avoid looking bad in front of the
world. It's really hard to believe that a large flying object like that is
undetectable or the idea that it's sitting on an island with trees covering
it.

