MYSTERY IN THE SKY - WTF? - MH370 & MH17 & QZ8501 & More

[HairOfTheDog]

Da plane. Da plane. Where da hell is da plane, boss?

This is a very odd international mystery.

A Boeing 777 took off from the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, bound for Beijing, China on Saturday morning.

The weather was good. There were 239 people on board the Malaysian Airline flight.

120 nautical miles off and the plane has not been seen since - it's like it disappeared into thin air, despite vast searches of key areas along the intended route. Global media is all over the story.



Air flight controllers say the plane may have turned back after take off; possibly a malfunction occurred and the plane disintegrated at around 35,000 feet.

Another possibility is that the plane was hijacked -- the investigation has uncovered that two Asian men boarded the plane with one using a stolen Italian passport and the other a stolen Austrian passport. None of the airport officials apparently checked the list of stolen documentation before letting the men board (though Interpol confirms one of the stolen passports had been on the list since 2012 and the other since 2013).

Malaysian Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said late Sunday - "I am still perturbed. Can't these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian (passport holders) but with Asian faces". I think he makes a damned good point.

Gotta be hell for the loved ones of the passengers and crew; hoping they get some answers soon. Truly bizarre.

Refs:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/bigg...d=22838958
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/09...30152.html

[Duchess]

I've sorta kinda been following this & cannot believe there has been no word one way or another with all the amazing technology that's available.

There was chatter briefly about an oil slick that was seen in the water. They can't go to it and put some divers in the water or use sonar equipment? C'mon.

[Maggot]

I think a bomb exploded on the plane they were to high for it to be shot down.

[Maggot]

I've sorta kinda been following this & cannot believe there has been no word one way or another with all the amazing technology that's available.

There was chatter briefly about an oil slick that was seen in the water. They can't go to it and put some divers in the water or use sonar equipment? C'mon.

The ocean is very very big and when something lands on the surface it can travel many miles before hitting the bottom especially a plane they are very light. They still have not found Amelia.

[Duchess]

Alright, I'll give you that because I know you know what you're talking about but wouldn't there be a debris field? Wouldn't there be something to indicate a plane fell 35,000 feet out of the sky?

[Maggot]

Unless some chinaman had a bunch of aluminum raining down on him as he was fishing nobody would know or........
Sally has somehow resurected Rod Serling.

[HairOfTheDog]

I blame Putin!

[aussiefriend]

I blame Putin!

Your pretty good at this shit HoTD. Credit where credit is due.

[Midwest Spy]

I've sorta kinda been following this & cannot believe there has been no word one way or another with all the amazing technology that's available.

There was chatter briefly about an oil slick that was seen in the water. They can't go to it and put some divers in the water or use sonar equipment? C'mon.

The ocean is very very big and when something lands on the surface it can travel many miles before hitting the bottom especially a plane they are very light. They still have not found Amelia.

Wasn't it confirmed that Amelia was eaten by cannibals?

[SIXFOOTERsez]

I've sorta kinda been following this & cannot believe there has been no word one way or another with all the amazing technology that's available.

There was chatter briefly about an oil slick that was seen in the water. They can't go to it and put some divers in the water or use sonar equipment? C'mon.

The ocean is very very big and when something lands on the surface it can travel many miles before hitting the bottom especially a plane they are very light. They still have not found Amelia.

Wasn't it confirmed that Amelia was eaten by cannibals?

Last I read a while back they dug up some bones on an island they were pretty sure were her and her co

[ZEROSPHERES]

They still have not found Amelia.

I thought she made a cameo on Gilligan's Island.



Or was it Fantasy Island?

[HairOfTheDog]

Had to have been Gilligan's Island, Zero.

Had it been Fantasy Island, Amelia would have gotten leid.

[ZEROSPHERES]

HotD, Wonder if she got leid on Gilligan's Island? I think she would have fancied Ginger.

[HairOfTheDog]

Maybe Amelia didn't really "disappear". Maybe she was just incognito on a gingerly island-hopping excursion, trying to "find herself" sexually. She was a pioneer, after all.

This newest missing plane is really a head-scratcher.

The tickets for the two men traveling with stolen European passports were reportedly purchased by an Iranian -- but the travel agent doesn't think he was a terrorist because he just asked for a flight to Europe without specifics (the plane was headed to Europe after it stopped in Beijing).

Authorities are now saying that criminals often travel under false documentation and it may have nothing to do with the fate of the missing plane. It's also not clear now whether or not the men were Asian.

Also, turns out that there were five passengers who checked in for Flight MH370 didn't board the plane, and their luggage was removed from it, Malaysian authorities said. Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said this also was being investigated, but he didn't say whether this was suspicious.

It's looking like a process of elimination is how this mystery might get solved.

Possible causes of the apparent crash include an explosion, catastrophic engine failure, terrorist attack, extreme turbulence, pilot error or even suicide, according to experts, many of whom cautioned against speculation because so little is known.

On Sunday, a Vietnamese plane spotted a rectangular object that was thought to be one of the plane's doors, but ships could not locate it.

On Monday, a Singaporean search plane spotted a yellow object 140 kilometers (87 miles) southwest of Tho Chu island, but it turned out to be sea trash. Malaysian maritime officials found oil slicks in the South China Sea, but lab tests found that samples of it were not from an aircraft.

The search effort is now expanding to include 34 aircraft and 40 ships from several countries and the search area has been widened to a 100-nautical mile (115-mile, 185-kilometer) radius from the point the plane vanished from radar screens between Malaysia and Vietnam early Saturday with no distress signal.

[aussiefriend]

I have my people on it, out looking right now as we speak

[HairOfTheDog]

^ Those are the two passengers who had the stolen passports. Turns out, they are Iranian, not Asian.

Snip:
Interpol secretary general Ronald K. Noble said Tuesday the two men traveled to Malaysia on their Iranian passports, then apparently switched to the stolen Austrian and Italian documents.

Noble said the recent information about the men made terrorism a less likely cause of the plane's disappearance, but that did not allay concerns about the ease of travel involving stolen passports.

He identified the men as Pouri Nourmohammadi, 19, and Delavar Seyedmohammaderza, 29. The 19-year-old is believed to have planned to seek asylum in Germany.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/11...39881.html

[HairOfTheDog]

The ocean is very very big and when something lands on the surface it can travel many miles before hitting the bottom especially a plane they are very light.

From the AP:

In an age when people assume that any bit of information is just a click away, the thought that a jetliner could simply disappear over the ocean for more than two days is staggering. But Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is hardly the first reminder of how big the seas are, and of how agonizing it can be to try to find something lost in them.

It took two years to find the main wreckage of an Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009. Closer to the area between Malaysia and Vietnam where Saturday's flight vanished, it took a week for debris from an Indonesian jet to be spotted in 2007. Today, the mostly intact fuselage still sits on the bottom of the ocean.

"The world is a big place," said Michael Smart, professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Queensland in Australia. "If it happens to come down in the middle of the ocean and it's not near a shipping lane or something, who knows how long it could take them to find?"
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I sure hope the families of the missing don't have to wait years for answers, but it could happen.

[Duchess]

I didn't know it could happen like that. I assumed it would be like every crash I had seen when the plane went into the ocean. I thought there would be a debris field.

I read something earlier about loved ones calling the cell phones of those missing and the phones were ringing. It was very sad.

[Midwest Spy]

I've been reading about this since Saturday morning, and I'm having a hard time pinning down exactly what I think happened. However, I'll list them in order of probabability:

1. Pilot suicide.

2. Hijacking, and plane is still intact somewhere (or crashed during struggle in cockpit).

3. Bomb explodes and plane disintegrates.

The fact that the Malaysian military is now saying they tracked this airliner WEST, for another hour after its transponder disappeared, leads me to believe either the pilot or co-pilot intentionally sabotaged the plane.

However, it could also indicate a hijacking. The whole thing is just hard to believe. The Iranians traveling with stolen passports certainly lend credence to the hijacking possibility.

The U. S. has been searching the Strait of Malacca since Day 1, so to me it would seem people behind the scenes know more than they're letting on.

[QueenBee]

Yesterday they said that the black box should be pinging, even underwater. But maybe it is too deep. A guy formerly with the NTSB was also saying that if there was a sudden hull breach, like in a window or door, the sudden inrush of cold air (they speculate -6 degrees) would have rendered the passengers and crew immediately kind of dopey and senseless. That is why they could have disappeared without any word from pilots.