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 marv335 wrote:
I'm beginning to think it's sitting on a runway somewhere.
If it had crashed, some wreckage would have been found by now.

I'm beginning to think it's crashed somewhere.
If it had landed, it would have been found by now.

There are only so many places an airliner can land safely. Landed there would surely be some communication via mobiles. A landed aircraft could be spotted.
A successful hijack would have seen some communication by the hijackers by now.
An over land crash would probably result in a visible footprint, visible damage to the land it crashes in.

It doesn't make any sense.

Added to the information about the aircraft travelling after critical systems were turned off. It is somewhere between Malaysia and Turkmenistan OR between Malaysia and the Southern Indian Ocean. So, it could be anywhere in-between.

But the above makes things even more hazy.

It is odd that they've found nothing at all.

I wonder, if it was hijacked, could it have made it somewhere way away from where they're looking? Like India or even Africa?

The BBC reported it tonight and it has officially been classed as a terrorist act by the Malaysian goverment. The tracking signal was turned of by someone who knew how to do it but yet the satalite signal was still tracked for 6 hours and it did a 90 degree turn to travel up the globe.

There is further evidence for this as the pilots house was raided by police and they found suspicious diary entries.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It is odd that they've found nothing at all.

I wonder, if it was hijacked, could it have made it somewhere way away from where they're looking? Like India or even Africa?

Highly unlikely. The moment went near anyone's air space it would be picked up and intercepted.

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
It is odd that they've found nothing at all.

I wonder, if it was hijacked, could it have made it somewhere way away from where they're looking? Like India or even Africa?

Highly unlikely. The moment went near anyone's air space it would be picked up and intercepted.

Their search radius extends from Kazahkstan to the southern Indian ocean. It could have gotten to a lot of places.

And not all of them have solid authorities that would pick it up.

There could easily have been a bribe paid to allow the plane to land undetected.

But again, we have a lack of ransom demand or any claim of responsibility that would make sense for a hijack that was aimed at capturing the plane.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I know this is a tragedy, so I'm not trying to soften and insult the situation, but...where is that history channel guy with the crazy hair and the aliens thing. The meme.

He is busy kidnapping a plane and making it mysteriously dissapear, so that he can blame aliens for it


But seriously, this is weird. It is like the entire plane just dissolved into thin air.
Have there been crashes before where they couldn't find any wreckage? Or do we have a new Bermuda Triangle here?
I don't think it has been hijacked, in that case we probably would've heard something by now. After all, a plane has to land somewhere, doesn't it?

Well there were crashes in the past where a plane disappeared, but that was when we didn't have all this ability to track them or get out and search before the debris would have time to sink and oil slicks could dissipate.

I've read one article that says it could have entered Indian air space without them knowing, because in some areas their radar isn't always switched on.

Only in India.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I know this is a tragedy, so I'm not trying to soften and insult the situation, but...where is that history channel guy with the crazy hair and the aliens thing. The meme.

I was surprised this thread made it 5 pages before someone post this meme.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Dammit, never mind!

Someone had a derivative of it on page 2!

If it came down slowly then it might not have broken up so much and sunk whole. If they flew for hours since their last known location they could be over a huge range if sea which would make it extremely hard to find. I find the suggestion that it's parked on a runway somewhere less plausible.

For the interested there will be a press conference 9:30 AM GMT.

The plane flew for hours after someone switched off the transponder.

Whoever switched off the transponder knew what they were doing.

There have been no credible claims of responsibility from terrorist groups.

No wreckage has been found.

The plane has not been found on the ground.

No cell phone calls have been made by the passengers.

No demands have been made by the hijackers.

Nothing about this makes sense, which means the only logical answer is:

Shadowrunners.

Seriously. Some corp Johnson wants the stock of Malaysian Air to drop, so he hires a team to make a plane disappear in mid-flight. But it can't look like a terrorist strike, because that wouldn't be Malaysian Air's fault (and wouldn't affect the stock price as much). So the team can't just blow the thing up... So, they do the next best thing; they steal it in mid-flight. They smuggle narcojet vapor onto the plane and gas the crew and passengers (dosing themselves with stimulants and wearing gas masks to keep themselves unaffected) then their rigger jacks into the plane's systems and shuts down the transponder. The team diverts the plane to a clandestine airstrip (one used by smugglers, or more likely a secret air strip owned by the corporation the team's Johnson works for) and lands. They confiscate cell phones from the passengers while they are unconscious (and bring a portable cell phone jammer, in case they missed any) so no calls get made. The plane lands, and is quickly and quietly cut up chop-shop style so there is nothing for satellites to find if they should happen to photograph the area the plane landed (and since it landed hundreds of miles away from where it should have been, they had time to cut it up before anyone looked in that area). The passengers are given new corporate identities as low-level wage slaves at one of the Johnson's secure facilities.

Estimated payout for this run: Y20,000 per runner. A job like this would usually pay more, but the team uses the facilities of their Johnson a lot on this one, so they don't get paid as much as they would, had they not relied so heavily on corp support. If the team doesn't use corp support on this, and uses a smuggler airfield with smugglers cutting up the plane, then the payout could be as high as Y40,000 per runner.

....What? That's at least as plausible as aliens.

Swedish newspapers, citing Sky News, are now reporting that the transponders were turned off in a small window of radio silence which exists due to Malaysian ATCs handing the plane over to their Vietnamese counterparts, which would seem to implicate one of the pilots (or someone with similar experience).

 Grey Templar wrote:

But again, we have a lack of ransom demand or any claim of responsibility that would make sense for a hijack that was aimed at capturing the plane.

I agree, I am almost certain that someone took that plane for a very specific reason.

Hopefully we dont find out the "why" too late as they are committing whatever 2ndary act might be in store for the plane.

Hopefully it's aliens.

I'm still finding it very hard to believe that no government was able to track it.... regardless of the explanations they have given.

squidhills wrote:
The plane flew for hours after someone switched off the transponder.

Whoever switched off the transponder knew what they were doing.

There have been no credible claims of responsibility from terrorist groups.

No wreckage has been found.

The plane has not been found on the ground.

No cell phone calls have been made by the passengers.

No demands have been made by the hijackers.

Nothing about this makes sense, which means the only logical answer is:

Shadowrunners.

Seriously. Some corp Johnson wants the stock of Malaysian Air to drop, so he hires a team to make a plane disappear in mid-flight. But it can't look like a terrorist strike, because that wouldn't be Malaysian Air's fault (and wouldn't affect the stock price as much). So the team can't just blow the thing up... So, they do the next best thing; they steal it in mid-flight. They smuggle narcojet vapor onto the plane and gas the crew and passengers (dosing themselves with stimulants and wearing gas masks to keep themselves unaffected) then their rigger jacks into the plane's systems and shuts down the transponder. The team diverts the plane to a clandestine airstrip (one used by smugglers, or more likely a secret air strip owned by the corporation the team's Johnson works for) and lands. They confiscate cell phones from the passengers while they are unconscious (and bring a portable cell phone jammer, in case they missed any) so no calls get made. The plane lands, and is quickly and quietly cut up chop-shop style so there is nothing for satellites to find if they should happen to photograph the area the plane landed (and since it landed hundreds of miles away from where it should have been, they had time to cut it up before anyone looked in that area). The passengers are given new corporate identities as low-level wage slaves at one of the Johnson's secure facilities.

Estimated payout for this run: Y20,000 per runner. A job like this would usually pay more, but the team uses the facilities of their Johnson a lot on this one, so they don't get paid as much as they would, had they not relied so heavily on corp support. If the team doesn't use corp support on this, and uses a smuggler airfield with smugglers cutting up the plane, then the payout could be as high as Y40,000 per runner.

....What? That's at least as plausible as aliens.

Slow clap!

That's why I know longer play Shadowrun. I can just switch on the news instead.

Mega-corporations? Check
Cyber-decks? Check
Johnsons and Salarimen? Check
The matrix? Check
Bionics? Check
Orks, Trolls, and Dragons? Check.... errr.... okay not that one....... YET!

My thoughts (tin-foil hat time): Terrorist action, either on the part of the cabin crew or other passengers (is the passport situation a red herring or indicative of something else?), whatever organization is responsible for it has considerable resources, plane was flown to remote airfield, landed, refueled, and moved (or hidden in a really big hangar that nobody noticed???) to a corner of the world where nobody would notice. Intent is to use the plane as a delivery system for a dirty bomb (or maybe just smuggle large quantities of drugs).

Alternate theory: Government knows whats up and is being tight-lipped for whatever reason.

Alternate Alternate theory: Putin, because Russia and Ukraine.

Alternate Alternate Alternate theory: aliens

Alternate alternate alternate alternate theory: Copilot, because he said 'good night'.

Alternate alternate alternate alternate alternate theory: It crashed.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Alternate alternate alternate alternate alternate theory: It crashed.

That option is too improbable! My suspsension of disbelief snapped.

crashing is a very possible scenario,

but why would people go through all the steps required to make that crash "invisible" to the local authorities? especially only to crash it mysteriously?

why was the crashing plane taken off its tracker, why did it issue no distress calls, why were there deliberate maneuvers completely unrelated to a crash after losing contact?

so sure, crashing is a probable scenario, but it likely was not the intent of the hijackers to crash the plane (again, IF it crashed)

not much would be gained by crashing it, and stealing a large intercontinental plane has been on lots and lots of terrorist's "to do" lists for quite some time.

since in america, its already been done, security is much higher, so it would make sense for some terror org to try this "out in the boonies" so to speak to steal a plane, only to later spoof its recognition codes or something.

 gossipmeng wrote:
I'm still finding it very hard to believe that no government was able to track it.... regardless of the explanations they have given.

It's not hard to believe that nobody tracked it. The air traffic control system is designed to operate under the assumption that everyone is cooperating and trying to avoid a disaster (or just extra work for the poor controller), which includes communicating properly, having a working transponder to identify yourself as a plane, etc. Similarly, military radars are designed to look for specific kinds of targets in specific areas and wouldn't necessarily care at all about a random airliner with a broken transponder flying nowhere near a likely attack route. Even if the plane is somewhere in the raw radar data it's very likely that nobody was actually paying attention to it and able to tell you where it was without going back to a (possible) recording of the radar data and trying to figure out which random dot is the missing plane.

 easysauce wrote:
since in america, its already been done, security is much higher, so it would make sense for some terror org to try this "out in the boonies" so to speak to steal a plane, only to later spoof its recognition codes or something.

There are no "recognition codes" to spoof. Aircraft have two identification numbers:

1) A FAA database number to identify all of the plane's owners/maintenance records/etc, which is painted on the plane somewhere. Technically you can see it at any time, but it is never used for anything while in flight. If you don't have a flight number (like a scheduled airline flight) assigned to you then you'll use it to identify yourself when talking on the radio, but your identity is never verified, it's just to make sure everyone has a unique radio name and knows who is talking to who. If I call ATC as N3513K nobody cares if I'm actually flying that specific Cessna 172, they just care that nobody else in the area is also using that number and would be confused if they said "N3513K, cleared to land".

2) A transponder which returns a four-digit number when the plane is hit by a radar beam. This number is completely arbitrary and used only so that air traffic control can identify which dot on the radar is which plane, it has nothing to do with the specific plane. Whenever you talk to a new controller they will tell you which number to set your transponder to . And of course to do this the pilots have full control over the transponder, but setting it to a different number would just get an annoyed controller to ask you to fix it. You'd only be confused with another plane if you set it to a number that was already in use at the moment, but then all you'd do is have the radar operator see two planes tagged 1234 on their screen for a few moments until they get one of them to change numbers.

In neither case would there be any kind of "spoofing" to pretend to be a different plane, and there is no plausible scenario in which you have to hijack a plane in advance to mess with them.

So, Aliens?

My money's on them all having been Raptured.

So we know there are four individuals on the flight with stolen passports, yet now the focus is suddenly on the pilots? Yeah sure. The media is surprised that the pilot had a flight simulator in his house? Really?

There has been a major shift in the focus of attention on this story. A lot of smoke is being blown in our faces right now.

If it is terrorists I'm not surprised they haven't said anything yet. Their probably not done yet. Most likely to try and use the plan. "9/11 anyone". Also not surprised if the government's do know and aren't saying since it would tip their hand early.

 wowsmash wrote:
If it is terrorists I'm not surprised they haven't said anything yet. Their probably not done yet. Most likely to try and use the plan. "9/11 anyone". Also not surprised if the government's do know and aren't saying since it would tip their hand early.

If someone were planning to use the plane in a 9/11 style attack, announcing that you took the plane before using it would be a dumb idea, as you say.

I just hope that if it was hijacked that the passengers are OK. But honestly, if it was hyjacked, why wasn't a single text, email, or phone call sent? There is no way you can take 239 people's cell phones without someone getting off a text. I just don't buy it.

They've taken it down, but the plane was up on Craigslist for a couple days.....

Interesting theory:

http://www.businessinsider.com/malaysia-plane-fire-2014-3

 SickSix wrote:
So we know there are four individuals on the flight with stolen passports, yet now the focus is suddenly on the pilots?

Passports are stolen for a lot of reasons that don't involve hijacking airplanes. Drug smuggling, illegal immigration, etc. I'm sure they were investigated, but they probably turned out to be unrelated. For example, there was discussion about one of the passengers using the stolen passport being a pretty clear case of illegal immigration, with the flight chosen simply because it was the cheapest one available.