I just hope they locate the black box before the battery dies. I believe the max is 30 days before that happens.

Latest:

Malaysia's military believes it tracked a missing jetliner by radar over the Strait of Malacca, far from where it last made contact with civilian air traffic control

All airlines have a control rooms that track their planes and have contact with the cockpit, seems like there's been "selective" info coming out about where exactly the plane was. Maybe the attention should turn to what does MH really know about the plane. And are they covering their tracks because they know something was mechanical wrong with the aircraft but hiding info to possibly protect themselves from legal issues.

^ to add onto above:

- Pulau Perak
- 29,500 ft
- This is...1 hr 10mins AFTER the radar "lost track" of the plane

This explains why they started sending the US Navy to search the West of Malaysia yesterday already. They are definitely being selective in what kind of info they are releasing to the public...

Wow, sounds like a hijacking for sure now. Maybe there is some hope that the people are still alive?

The families of the people on those planes must be going through hell. :(

from the bbc:

"Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said the two men had travelled from Qatar's capital Doha on their Iranian passports, and switched to stolen Italian and Austrian passports to board the Malaysia Airlines flight."

can someone explain to me why they needed to swap passports - i appreciate that being European (well, passport at least) and taking a flight to Europe (indirectly) is better, but surely the risk of flying on a stolen passport is way higher than the risk of having a temporary visa denied once you land - especially if they were looking to immigrate to the EU nations - they'd either be going legally (unlikely) or claiming asylum or something in that ilk - either way, i just don't get the need to fly on stolen passports

for the record, i'm not saying they're doing anything related to the plane, and i'm not sure how it works having an iranian passport, i've got an EU and a Cdn passport, and i appreciate having those two passports!

what's the source of this?

but yes, totally was lost as to why tehy were looking that side of malaysia

now, can one explain how one hijacks a plane? the cockpit is locked and security should pick up any weapons (let's assume security does it's job most of the time)

I'm really confused now. it doesn't help that the media uses the terms, radar, ATC, and "tracking" pretty much synonymously

It was already discussed days? ago that radar suggested the plane may have turned around and that's why they were already searching the strait of Malacca
Why did it turn around? There was obviously technical problems with the plane, maybe the captain decided it was closer/better to return to KUL for an emergency landing?

Also the investigators suggested (during the press conference) that there may be psychological issues with certain members of the crew / ''someone may have taken a huge insurance policy out on themselves for their family'' it wasn't certain if he was being oddly hypothetical or amazingly blunt

I know conspiracy theories aren't a welcome thing on this forum and I usually don't bandwagon the US is evil BS. But perhaps those 20 FreeScale Semiconductor employees were working on a secret government project and decided to defect to China. Maybe the 2 Iranians with stolen passports were IRGC agents trying to steal what they can before the plane made it to China or maybe the Freescale employees tried to triple cross China and piss of both China and the US by selling secrets to Iran causing either to shootdown the plane. Either that or Aliens. >_<

^ shut your whore mouth

I know, I was just kind of filling in info :)

WAT?? RS NEVER jumps to conclusions!

wow. someone above was wondering how hijackers could have gotten into the cockpit... :

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Co-Pilot Invited Tourists into Cockpit in 'Crazy' Security Breach

this is creepy:

Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Passengers' Mobile Phones Ring But Not Answered

just to back up what someone else posted above:

Malaysia military tracked missing plane to west coast: source | Reuters

i don't get it. they knew about this and still let search teams waste time searching the wrong area???

Can the next person who posts about the damn phones ringing get points?

This is also ~400 miles from where they said last contact was, going in the wrong direction and not really towards Kuala Lumpur. To top it off, according to this: Crash: Malaysia B772 over Gulf of Thailand on Mar 8th 2014, aircraft missing they originally listed the last contact as 02:40L originally (the time of this location near Pulau Perak), and then corrected it to 01:30L.

So either the military radar isn't very dependable (which could be possible, if the planes radar systems were shut off I assume the military could only see the plane, not know which plane it is) , or some fuckheads have known the whole time that the plane was nowhere near where they said it was. :rukidding:

Disclaimer: Slightly goofy theory/question below
edit: and now I'm wondering, if they had a massive communications issue so planes radar systems are off, they can't talk to anyone (and lets assume nav systems are screwy too, they guesstimated the U turn back towards Kuala Lumpur and were off) and they show up on the military radar as a bigass jet not on a designated flight path, what would the military do? I have a hard time thinking they would just ignore that and not send a jet or something.

People are failing his post but not explaining why in the article that some calls are connecting and being hung up from the other end. Maybe a telecommunication expert on RS can explain further.

Still cannot fathom how a 777 has just disappeared.

Men with Stolen Passport Identified

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

What exactly is considered "hung up", like someone picks up says hello and hangs up or the phone saying connected for 2 seconds and then losing connection? I bet you it's just conspiracy theorist mad that their little "phone going busy" shenanigans was debunked so now they pulling shit out of their ass.

This an excerpt from the website

It's not being "hung up from the other end", it's just not connecting. The ringing in cell phones is faked anyways, it's not like old land line to land line where the ring you heard was the other persons phone ringing, it's just there to let you know it's trying to make the call. Have you never tried calling someones cell after they misplaced it? You get ringing for a second or two before their phone starts going off. Do you really think the plane was landed somewhere within range of cell towers by people who wouldn't bother to take everyone's phones and shut them off/destroy them?

To verify that, I just tried to call my personal cell phone (which is off) from my work cell phone. I'll get ringing despite the other phone definitely not being connected.

Ringing phones mean nothing. The phone on the receiver's end may not be ringing.

Malaysia Airlines Passengers' Phones Ringing? Maybe Not - NBC News

Here's the thing: RADAR doesn't tell anyone what plane it's showing, it just shows an object. They could have picked up a different plane on a similar course and an operator mistook it for the airliner in question.

In fact, there seems to be a little confusion as to exactly how RADAR works: all it does is send out a pulse of radio waves, and IF some are reflected back, it calculates the distance the object is by the time it takes the signal to return. Speed toward or away from the array can be determined by Doppler shift; speed perpendicular to the array can be determined by position change between sweeps.

As has been already noted, civilian RADAR has an effective maximum distance of 120 miles or so - this is because radio waves disperse over distance... same as shining a flashlight on distant trees. The further the object, the weaker the signal, the less reliable it gets. You can get more range with a tighter beam, but at the expense of coverage area and only being able to scan a small area (picture a flashlight you can focus from a wide beam to a narrow spot).

The plane's own RADAR systems have nothing to do with their tracking on the ground; those are there to show the plane's crew what's around it in the sky.

They're failing him because this has already been covered.

I know the basics of how it works, but I could've sworn someone mentioned earlier that the planes systems also send info to the ground IDing the plane and giving more accurate info.

edit: maybe radar isn't the correct term for the system I'm thinking of. Is there one that does what I described?