Malaysian Airline loses contact with passenger airline

[Soundy]

Originally Posted by Lord Disick

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.

OR they're not revealing everything because they don't want people they're investigating to know how much THEY know... ya gotta protect your hole card, after all.

[Harvey Specter]

Apologize if it's a repost...

Malaysia Airlines Plane MH370 Latest Conspiracy Theory: Who were Freescale Semiconductor Experts on Board?

Conspiracy theorists have swooped on claims that 20 employees of a semi-conductor manufacturing firm, which develops components for hi-tech weapons systems and aircraft navigation among other things, were on board the missing Malaysian passenger jet.

On board Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 were employees from Freescale Semiconductor, a Texas-based technology firm.

They were based in several manufacturing sites in Kuala Lumpur and Tianjin, China; 12 of the employees were from Malaysia and eight were from China, a spokeswoman for the company confirmed.

Links between the plane's mysterious disappearance and the radar-blocking capabilities of some of the aeronautical hardware technology produced by Freescale have been pushed by citizens news site Beforeitsnews.

"It is conceivable that the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 plane is 'cloaked', hiding with high-tech electronic warfare weaponry that exists and is used," according to the site.

"In fact, this type of technology is precisely the expertise of Freescale, that has 20 employees on board the missing flight," it said.

The anonymous author on the site makes reference to the capabilities of Israel making an attack on Iran. Such an attack would include jamming the electric grid, internet, and cell phone network, using devices such as one that mimics a maintenance cell phone signal that commands the cell network to "sleep".

The report also references a story from Fox News that explained that new stealth technology makes airplanes invisible to radar, and can also make them hard to spot with the naked eye.
Timeline

"The general public might not hear about how far the US has really come, because it is and should remain classified," noted firearms expert Chris Sajnog, a former Navy Seal. "Other countries are still playing catch-up — but they're closing the gap."

Freescale Semiconductor has been developing microprocessors, sensors and other technology for the past 50 years. The technology it creates is commonly referred to as embedded processors, which according to the firm are "standalone semiconductors that perform dedicated computing functions in electronic systems".

The passengers on board were engineers and other experts working to make Freescale Semiconductor chip facilities in Tianjin and Kuala Lumpur more efficient, said Mitch Haws, vice- president, global communications and investor relations.

"These were people with a lot of experience and technical background and they were very important people," Haws said.

"It's definitely a loss for the company."

The company had been streamlining facilities in Tianjin and Kuala Lumpur that for testing and packaging microchips used in automobiles, consumer products, telecommunications infrastructure and industrial equipment.
Transportation and accommodation for the 20 staff members' families was being arranged as well as being given with grief counselling.

One of the chipmaker's long-time competitors, Texas Instruments, tweeted on Saturday:

Texas Instruments ✔ @TXInstruments
Follow

We extend our condolences to the families and coworkers of the @Freescale employees aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Malaysia Airlines Plane MH370 Latest Conspiracy Theory: Who were Freescale Semiconductor Experts on Board?

[Soundy]

Originally Posted by Lord Disick

Apologize if it's a repost...

Several days old.

[underscore]

If the desired cargo in question is the Freescale employees (or at least a few of them), but if they were traveling to help with efficiency as mentioned then I would think they are less likely to have knowledge of secrets important enough to highjack a plane. This is of course assuming that they were actually doing what Freescale says they were doing.

Originally Posted by Soundy

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.

You might be able to spoof the code of another jet, but then of course the only use would be to fly along the flight path of said jet. And as we've learned, there are a hell of a lot of systems on that plane with communications capabilities, down to levels that only certain engineers working on the development of the plane would really be familiar with that you would have to disable. And then even to fly it below radar, apparently a 777 is terribly inefficient at that sort of thing.

[underscore]

I find it interesting that we haven't really heard anything about those Iranians seeking asylum in a while. I can come up with a few interesting theories based around the Iranians on stolen passports, the Freescale employees, the lack of x ray scanning and the allegations that this has been state-backed. Some sound a bit ridiculous, but others not so much.

edit: also, allegedly one crate/container loaded into the plane is unaccounted for as well.

[underscore]

Kevin Sieff ‏@ksieff 10h

Senior Afghan official on whether #MH370 flew over Afghanistan: "We do not have a radar. Go and ask the Americans."

He sounds a bit annoyed with the US of A

[Harvey Specter]

^
There's obvious breaches in the security but yet no one has given clear answers about these breaches and the media don't seem to concern to ask officials. Instead the media is quick to talk about conspiracy theories. And it's starting to look like the investigating is quickly turning into a witch hunt to make the pilots look like the bad guys but yet there's not a single shred of evidence that would indicate the pilots had anything to do with the plane getting hijacked.

[underscore]

Well considering the ACARS system turned off shortly before the ATC handoff, and the transponder shut off ~3 minutes after they left Malaysian ATC, after sounding completely normal to the ATC, then flying along proper flight paths across Malaysia and then northwest, the odds are pretty darn good either the pilot or F/O was in control of the aircraft.

[Harvey Specter]

Originally Posted by underscore

Well considering the ACARS system turned off shortly before the ATC handoff, and the transponder shut off ~3 minutes after they left Malaysian ATC, after sounding completely normal to the ATC, then flying along proper flight paths across Malaysia and then northwest, the odds are pretty darn good either the pilot or F/O was in control of the aircraft.

But does that automatically single them out as the ones that hijacked the plane? Just saying that there's a lot of finger pointing but no concrete facts yet.

[underscore]

It's not concrete, the only 100% solid facts we have so far haven't changed in a while since the plane nor anyone who was onboard has been found or at least sighted. But the odds of it being anyone but the pilots is going to be slim.

Although given that FWF seems confident it was a state-backed event, a passenger or flight attendant highjacker could have been highly trained for this. I haven't heard anything establishing if the voice last heard by the Malaysian ATC was matched to the voice of either the PIC or FO either, so that may not have even been them on the radio. The authorities seem confident is was the PIC or FO tho.

[Soundy]

Originally Posted by underscore

I find it interesting that we haven't really heard anything about those Iranians seeking asylum in a while.

Well if the official story is, in fact, true - that they were merely students looking for a better life - then there'd be no reason to say anything more about them.

If investigators (NOT media, speculators, conspiracy theorists, or anyone else) kept talking about them, THAT would be interesting.

[underscore]

This is true, but if the plane does turn up in Iran (apparently the DHS has a pretty exact total flight distance for the plane, not sure if it could get to Iran with that) though, would you still be inclined to believe they are asylum seekers? They would either be involved or the worlds unluckiest asylum seekers in a long time.

[underscore]

Steven Frischling (FlyingWithFish) still seems quite adamant that the plane landed in Iran and that the northern and southern "arcs" are incorrect, that it will be unlikely that it is in any state to take off again and that the Freescale employees were the desired "cargo"

[skiiipi]

Originally Posted by underscore

If the desired cargo in question is the Freescale employees (or at least a few of them), but if they were traveling to help with efficiency as mentioned then I would think they are less likely to have knowledge of secrets important enough to highjack a plane. This is of course assuming that they were actually doing what Freescale says they were doing.

Thing is, most large companies have risk management policy in place, where they would not allow 20 "important" or high level staff fly on the same flight. So likely these 20 employees wouldn't be high enough in the food chain to possess top secret information, or extremely technical skillset.

[underscore]

Allegedly Freescale doesn't have one, but I find that hard to believe. What I would find believable is if one or two of those 20 may be "important" to the Iranians or someone else.

[strykn]

This is like an episode of 24

[Harvey Specter]

Freescale is owned by Blackstone & the Carlyle Group, wow.

[underscore]

Who are Blackstone & the Carlyle Group?

[Soundy]

Malaysia Airlines Expands Investigation To Include General Scope Of Space, Time | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

[strykn]

Originally Posted by underscore

Who are Blackstone & the Carlyle Group?

One of the biggest Private Equity companies in the world I believe...

JP morgan withdrew their credit facility to Freescale outta the blue http://money.msn.com/business-news/a...28&id=17395474

*tinfoil hat on*

[StylinRed]

Originally Posted by underscore

Who are Blackstone & the Carlyle Group?

a can of worms you're going to fall into a whole other level of conspiracy theory if you look into them (a level even CiC barely touches)

[Harvey Specter]

Originally Posted by underscore

Who are Blackstone & the Carlyle Group?

Both groups have been linked with Bush/Cheney, 9/11, supposed CIA shell companies and have strong links to the council on foreign relations (freemason related) so you get the picture where all of this is going to lead into if this plane isn't found. And from what I remember Blackstone was the one that took over the deed for the WTC one year prior to 9/11 which is why they're linked forever with 9/11 conspiracies.

[Harvey Specter]

Mirror UK (tabloid paper) claiming the pilot hijacked the plane for some sort of protest against the government, they also found a picture to back this theory:


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-n...e-live-3248148

Also...

Malaysia Airline MH370: 9/11-style terror allegations resurface in case of lost plane
Possible plot investigated after Al-Qaeda supergrass told court that four or five Malaysian men planned a passenger airliner hijack



Evidence of a plot by Malaysian Islamists to hijack a passenger jet in a 9/11-style attack is being investigated in connection with the disappearance of Flight MH370

An al-Qaeda supergrass told a court last week that four to five Malaysian men had been planning to take control of a plane, using a bomb hidden in a shoe to blow open the cockpit door.

Security experts said the evidence from a convicted British terrorist was “credible”. The supergrass said that he had met the Malaysian jihadists – one of whom was a pilot – in Afghanistan and given them a shoe bomb to use to take control of an aircraft.

A British security source said: “These spectaculars take a long time in the planning.”

The possibility of such a plot, hatched by the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, was bolstered by an admission by Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, that the Boeing 777’s communications systems had been deliberately switched off “by someone on the plane”.

In a series of dramatic developments yesterday, it emerged that:

– Flight MH370 had changed direction and altitude after communications devices had been deliberately disabled;

– The plane flew for up to seven hours after civilian radar lost touch with it;

– An unnamed official briefed that the plane had been hijacked although Mr Najib refused to confirm that was the case;

– The plane flew towards either Indonesia or to Kazakhstan after the transponder and messaging systems were disabled;

– Police searched the homes of both pilots for two hours over concerns one may have switched off the communications systems in a suicide bid;

– Chinese officials accused Malaysia of withholding information in a ratcheting up of diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

In evidence in a court case last Tuesday, Saajid Badat, a British-born Muslim from Gloucester, said that he had been instructed at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan to give a shoe bomb to the Malaysians.

Giving evidence at the trial in New York of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, Badat said: “I gave one of my shoes to the Malaysians. I think it was to access the cockpit.”

Badat, who spoke via video link and is in hiding in the UK, said the Malaysian plot was being masterminded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of 9/11.

According to Badat, Mohammed kept a list of the world’s tallest buildings and crossed out New York’s Twin Towers after the September 11, 2001 attacks with hijacked airliners as “a joke to make us laugh”.

Badat told the court last week that he believed the Malaysians, including the pilot, were “ready to perform an act.”

During the meeting, the possibility was raised that the cockpit door might be locked. Badat told the court: “So I said, 'How about I give you one of my bombs to open a cockpit door?’ ”

The disclosure that Malaysians were plotting a 9/11-style attack raises the prospect that both pilots were overpowered and the plane intended for use as a fuel-filled bomb. One possible target, if the scenario is correct, will have been the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, a symbol of Malaysia’s modernity and the world’s tallest buildings from 1998 until 2004.

Flight MH370 had been heading away from Kuala Lumpur over the South China Sea when it disappeared off civilian radar screens.

Satellites have tracked it returning towards land.

Badat, who was jailed for 13 years in 2005 for his part in a conspiracy with the “shoe bomber” Richard Reid to blow up a transatlantic jet, had given similar evidence in 2012.

In other words, his claims were first made long before the disappearance of Flight MH370.

In the earlier case, during the trial of Adis Medunjanin, an American who was later convicted of conspiring to blow up New York subways, Badat told prosecutors of the Malaysian shoe bomb plot.

Asked what he knew of the Malaysian group, he replied: “I learnt that they had a group, uh, ready to perform a similar hijacking to 9/11.”

Asked if he helped them, he said: “I provided them with one of my shoes because both had been, uh, both had explosives inserted into them.”

Prof Anthony Glees, director of the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said the prospect of an Islamist plot offered one explanation for why the Malaysian authorities “have not been telling us the whole truth”.

Prof Glees said: “I believed this was a hijacking as soon as we were told that the plane had altered its flight path.

“Evidence that it turned back to Malaysia means that this could easily have been a Malaysian Islamist plot to turn the plane into a 9/11-style bomb to fly it into a building in Kuala Lumpur.

“Now we know there is evidence of a Malaysian terror cell with ambitions to carry out such an attack and so this makes it even more credible.”

Prof Glees added: “Islamist terrorists in Malaysia present the country with a really serious political problem. The global repercussions of another 9/11 attack, including grounded aircraft and stock markets crashes, is something no government would want to face.”

James Healy-Pratt, head of aviation at Stuarts Law solicitors, said the lack of information from Malaysian authorities was in stark contrast to the reaction of French officials when an Air France plane – whose black box was not recovered for two years – crashed in the Atlantic in 2009. The lack of information suggested Malaysian authorities may have something to hide.

Mr Healy-Pratt, who represented 50 families in the Air France crash, said: “Compared to Air France there has been very little information given out. Serious questions need to be asked about how this has taken a week to get so little information. If it is terrorism that will have an effect on the Malaysian stock market and local economy.”

Last May, two Malaysian men were arrested for links to al-Qaeda and charged with joining the Tanzim al-Qaeda Malaysia group. In a separate incident two other men from Malaysia were held in Lebanon as they allegedly tried to cross into Syria to join Islamist extremists fighting the Assad regime.

In 2001 Yazid Sufaat, a biochemist and former army captain, was imprisoned for seven years under internal security laws on suspicion of being part of the Jemaah Islamiah network, the terrorist organisation behind a series of bombings in south east Asia including the Bali nightclub massacre in which 202 people were killed in 2002.

Yazid, who was released in 2008, was also suspected of providing lodging for two of the 9/11 hijackers. Malaysian sources, however, insisted Islamic terrorism carried out by Malaysian jihadists is unlikely since the country has only a tiny number of Muslim fundamentalists.

But after a week of wildly fluctuating theories, the admission by Malaysia’s prime minister yesterday that the plane had been deliberately re-routed and flown for hours with communication systems switched off to disguise its flight path provided the most significant clues yet as to what might have happened. Mr Najib stopped short of confirming Flight MH370 had been hijacked.

Mr Najib said in a press conference: “Based on new satellite information, we can say with a high degree of certainty that the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System was disabled just before the aircraft reached the east coast of Peninsular Malaysiapeninsular Malaysia. Shortly afterwards, near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control, the aircraft’s transponder was switched off. From this point onwards, the Royal Malaysian Air Force primary radar showed that an aircraft which was believed – but not confirmed – to be MH370 did indeed turn back. It then flew in a westerly direction back over Peninsular Malaysia before turning northwest.”

The new information appears to rule out previous theories that the plane suffered a sudden mid-air explosion, catastrophic equipment or structural failure, or a crash into the South China Sea.

As a result, the search in the South China Sea was called off and operations concentrated instead on two huge corridors –- one to the north of Malaysia and stretching as far as Kazakhstan and the other to the west across the Indian ocean to Indonesia.

Prior to the press conference, a senior Malaysian military official told one news agency that investigators now believed the plane was commandeered by a “skilled, competent and current pilot” who knew how to avoid radar.

Terrorism was originally suspected as a possible motive when it emerged that two Iranian men, travelling on stolen European passports, had managed to board the aircraft. They were ruled out as refugees trying to reach Europe via China.

All passengers will now be scrutinised again while the focus was also thrown on the plane’s two pilots – Capt Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and his First Officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27. Mr Fariq broke post 9/11 security rules by allowing two female passengers into the cockpit on a previous flight.

Witnesses said the two men’s houses were visited by police for two hours yesterday in the hunt for clues. Foreign intelligence agencies are now expected to assist in sifting through the passenger lists to identify suspects.

The pilot and co-pilot because are regarded as the most likely to have the specialist aviation expertise to locate and switch off radar, satellite and other transponders to remove the aircraft from the 'grid’ before changing its direction.

But investigators said there was no evidence against members of the crew and it was possible that some of its passengers also had the knowledge required.

On Saturday, James Wood, the brother of one of the three Americans aboard MH370, said that the Malaysian prime minister's announcement "gives us a little hope, as ironic as that might sound".

"If they're wanting to hurt people they would do it right then and there. But if they're wanting to do something later then at least it gives us hope that there's still life and that we're going to have an opportunity to see our family again," he said.

Malaysia Airline MH370: 9/11-style terror allegations resurface in case of lost plane - Telegraph

[Soundy]

Originally Posted by xpl0sive

You'd think if someone is willing to do all that work they would do it for something a little bit more valuable. I don't know how much a plane costs nowadays... price list from Boeing suggests they are $300mil? What's it worth on the black market... $50mil?

Hmmm, maybe you were on to something here...

[tiger_handheld]

Originally Posted by Soundy

Hmmm, maybe you were on to something here...

The english in that ad excellent.