Quote:
Originally Posted by seakrait
Depending on where it gets shot down though. If it's over the middle of Malaysia, maybe no one.
For reference, Kuala Lumpur is the heavily populated purple zone on West side of the Malaysian peninsula on the left.
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Wasn't it already west of Malaysia when the military picked it up? Assuming it really was there, and still heading that direction from the last civilian contact, it was going out over what looks to be a very sparsely populated part of Indonesia and then nothing but ocean. If it crashed into that part of Indonesia chances are nobody saw it and it could get sucked up by the jungle like Soundy originally mentioned.
Quote:
Originally Posted by seakrait
Agree. Not to mention that I'm sure the kill authority would have to come from very high up and those higher ups would have to think of the possible ramifications of needlessly killing a couple hundred citizens of your continent's largest and most-well armed country.
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That's assuming they were able to contact the plane. If the plane was highjacked without the pilots contacting anyone, but the military was able to contact them then shooting them down makes little sense. If the systems got screwed up all the military would see is a big plane, nowhere near a designated flight path, that won't respond to attempted contact (it's also the middle of the night).
IMO these are the best scenarios right now:
1) Plane highjacked and rerouted, either shot down OR crashed (highjackers could have been planning to attack Kuala Lumpur from the ocean side to avoid detection, passengers fight back resulting in a crash. Or the highjackers were bad pilots?)
edit: And who is to say one (or both?) of the pilots couldn't have highjacked the plane? That would explain them going silent and knowing which systems to shut off.
2) Electrical systems error, pilots attempt to do a 180 but don't get it right, end up flying off into nowhere and crash/run out of fuel OR military sees it not responding, panics and shoots it down