I don't think stealing a plane for the money, or cash savings is the point. It's having one of the longest range aircraft, with one of the largest cargo capabilities can do for you. Stealing a plane for the money is useless. You couldn't sell it without getting caught.

It has been hinted at that the intended target may have been cargo, not the plane or the passengers. People have been killed for less, and there are people out there who have zero concern over the lives of others, just look at drug cartels. And that's assuming the passengers were killed, is hiding 240 people in the desert that inconceivable? And it doesn't even have to be in the desert anymore, after a week it could have easily been flown just about anywhere so long as there was somebody waiting to refuel it. They could land it, refuel it, more thoroughly disable/remove/jam any kind of comms or pings and take off again.

If it went south, based on the sat pings it would have to be down near the coast of Australia, in which case the Australian radar systems posted earlier should have picked it up, or they should at least be currently picking up the ELT pings. I'm guessing they're currently focusing their efforts up north until Australia has a chance to review all their data, since sending SAR down there would be a huge waste of effort if the Aussie's didn't pick up anything.

plane couldn't make it to Iran, it's too far. unless it stopped somewhere to refuel.
considering iran is trying to get rid of of the sanctions at the moment and collaborate more closely with the west, it wouldn't make any sense for them to pull a hijack like this.
Obviously not everyone is following the news in Iran and middle east.

what has me wondering is, if the plane isn't in the ocean..... some say it landed somewhere, flew over Thailand even Kazakstan, why aren't there any cellular activities being picked up by carriers? passengers would prob try to turn on there cell phones and call out. So I think the plane is underwater :(

if it really is highjacked, first thing the highjackers would do is walk around and take everyone's phone away from them. If they are smart enough to steal a plane, they are smart enough to realize everyone on that plane has a phone

Wow, why didn't I think of that...You're a pretty smart guy.

I don't know anything about plane hijacking, what you say may be plausible.

Cell phones only work if there's a siginal, they could be in the region of the world were there is no cell coverage hence they can't find signals for cell devices.

The other thing I find odd about the Malaysian officials is that there's been no talk whatsoever about the security at KLIA. Did the staff at the airport see anyone suspicious board the plane? What about the baggage handlers, food caterers and cleaners? I read that the x-ray machines for cargo was down, is this true or not?

Like I said a few days, I feel that Malaysian officials are hiding information to protect someone or something that would hurt them. The information coming out is very slow with a lot of holes. Remember, 2 of the hijackers for 9/11 spent time in Kuala Lumpur so they're very sensitive about terrorism.

Doesn't take a masters in plane hijacking to realize that hijackers would do something to prevent passengers from communicating via cellphones if they planned on landing the plane somewhere...............:facepalm:


'Oh, well, what if the passengers are still on the plane and are thus being instructed to keep their phones on airplane mode? I've never hijacked a plane before, so I don't know if this is plausible or not.'

You don't even need to take the phones, a cell phone jammer would stop them all from working. And even if they had working phones, you still need to be in an area with cell towers that work on the right frequencies for the phones. Just because your phone always works in Vancouver doesn't mean it'll work in the bush.

Personally I haven't got a lot of confidence in the security at KLIA at this point, even though they've sorted out two passengers had stolen passports, others could have had fraudulent ones. Or if someone wanted to hijack an aircraft and kidnap 240 people, they probably wouldn't hesitate to kidnap someone and use their passport to board.

Additionally, someone came up with the theory that because this was the F/O's first flight on a 777 (allegedly) that the rest of the flight crew wouldn't have been familiar with him and so someone could have impersonated him to get on the plane. That would be a pretty gutsy move though, as I'm sure other staff at the airport would recognize him.

I don't know how a plane could cross the Indian/Pakistan boarder without them knowing about. It's one of the most heavenly patrolled boarders in the world. I think only one airline has flights between the 2 countries and it only flies 12 times a week between the two. Also after 9/11 I don't think passengers would just let a plane be hijacked.

It makes sense that the pilots did it because that is exactly how I feel about it.


If the pilots just flew the plane off course how would anyone even know?

There's a article about spotty radar coverage over India and Pakistan so the plane could have flown right over India without them knowing. And lets not forget, Mumbai was seized by terrorist from Pakistan which came ashore without the Indian intelligence community having the slightest clue.

And what does this hijack say about the intelligence community as a whole. US intelligence has tons of assets in that region of the world but yet a 777 when undetected and still can't be found? Unless there's information that's been withheld I think there's going to be some serious questions and concerns about US intelligence.

Spotty coverage over India but not the boarder.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/561779/a...tan-territory/

BORDER

But you have to remember this plane had no transponder and was flying below the radar. There's also spy satellites over this region but nothing was detected (that we know of).

:suspicious:
http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/c...e-Olympics.jpg

Now that we have that covered, why do you guys think it had to cross the India-Pakistan border to get near the China-Kyrgyzstan border?

Trying to find source for this..... I overheard someone talking about this during dinner and googled this...



http://i.imgur.com/vo9SK1B.jpg

Why the hell did it take so long for them to go check out the pilots residence? I would have thought they would have done this immediately after the plane went missing.

Twitter user FlyWithFish seems very confident that the plane was highjacked for "cargo", however the value of that cargo to the person(s) behind this may not be monetary. Also according to his sources, these actions have been state-backed (unclear on which state it is though).

Also the plane flew several other loops before this final one, so potentially something could have been stashed onboard anywhere, depending on what they're after.

KUL-DPS-KUL-BOM-KUL-DPS-KUL-DAC-KUL-HKG-KUL - - - - - - - - PEK

Because they thought it had crashed?

What modern country DOESN'T have an interest in this? Until a week ago, nobody thought it realistically possible for a plane to simply vanish like this. Now, everyone on the planet with one or more commercial air fleets has to take a serious look at how things are done and how planes are built and tracked.

Put it this way: what interest does anyone on Revscene have in the search? Well if nothing else, it's one of the biggest puzzles of the last decade or so: how the hell did an airliner simply disappear into thin air... and where is it now.

I think you're overestimating the "black market value" here - it's not like a car where you just swap out the VIN plate and put it back on the road. Assuming someone actually buys this plane for $50M... what are they going to do with it? Certainly not fly it anywhere - you put a jet in the air without a valid transponder, and you can probably expect to get shot down PDQ. You can't make a fake transponder code... you can't re-use one from an old plane... unless you're going to use it to fly below radar over extremely remote areas, it's not going to be of much use to anyone for anything other than scrap value, or reverse engineering.