MH370, flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, has gone missing.

Malor wrote:

From the BBC:

Mr Hussein also denied a report in the Wall Street Journal that the plane had sent engine data to the ground for more than four hours after it lost contact with air traffic control.

He said that his team had spoken to Malaysian Airlines and Rolls-Royce, the engine's manufacturers, who both said the report was "inaccurate".

"The last transmission from the aircraft was at 01:07 which indicated that everything was normal," Mr Hussein said.

I dunno what's going on here, but something is deeply weird. I'm sure the WSJ had a good source, so why would that suddenly be denied?

This is starting to feel like an active coverup of some kind.

Using Saddam Hussein as a spokesperson is a bad way to cover something up.

Couple days ago I was thinking this plane got shot down accidentally... now I'm fairly certain that is what happened.

garion333 wrote:

Using Saddam Hussein as a spokesperson is a bad way to cover something up.

The Imam Hussein, however, is a much more credible spokesperson.

(But since the world is full of people named Hussein, odds are it was neither one of those.)

nevermind

A few of my coworkers threw out the idea that a non-nuclear EMP, possibly a laptop EMP bomb, was involved. The plane turning around might have been the pilot attempting to fly without instrumentation and return to the main land. Yeah, it was a bunch of wacky conspiracy talk but still... the what-ifs and consequences are kind of crazy to consider.

I've been sitting in my office at Boeing this morning, listening to my colleagues bandy around competing theories.

Suffice to say, there are a lot of plausible theories.

Jonman wrote:

Suffice to say, there are a lot of plausible theories.

And I'm going to assume that professional aircraft engineers are coming up with theories that are a lot more plausible, and a lot less interesting, than terrorist attacks, government cover-ups, and Langoliers.

Here's one of the theories I'd seen a few days ago:
http://mh370lost.tumblr.com/?og=1

Basically stating that some sort of decompression incapacitated everyone on board and also damaged communications equipment. It's a weaker theory now that Boeing has confirmed that the FAA AD did not apply to this aircraft, however.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Suffice to say, there are a lot of plausible theories.

And I'm going to assume that professional aircraft engineers are coming up with theories that are a lot more plausible, and a lot less interesting, than terrorist attacks, government cover-ups, and Langoliers.

Actually, one of the leading contending theories is a hijacking. Hijackers familiar with the operation of the airplane get control of the plane, pull circuit breakers to disable the secondary radar (which is what makes it disappear from ATC's screens), and fly the airplane to somewhere with limited government (e.g. Somalia) by oversea routes (so it wouldn't get pinged by ground-based radar on-route), land it, and attempt to get a ransom.

We've also been speculating about a catastrophic depressurization that disabled the crew-oxygen system. So the flight crew pull on their masks, but they get no oxygen, so they pass out within 30s (and likely subsequently die). The airplane continues flying on autopilot until it runs out of gas, and quietly hits the water and sinks. Doesn't explain the disappearance from ATC, but we could postulate about the exact nature of a decompression event that damages the secondary radar transponders. Seems a long-shot though.

Remember, lot of speculation, no facts.

I dunno, the WSJ report that the engines were reporting wirelessly for four hours, and then the subsequent, "oh that didn't happen" strikes me as extremely strange. That's just too specific a claim.

Something is not right here. I mean, above and beyond the obvious.

Malor wrote:

I dunno, the WSJ report that the engines were reporting wirelessly for four hours, and then the subsequent, "oh that didn't happen" strikes me as extremely strange. That's just too specific a claim.

Something is not right here. I mean, above and beyond the obvious.

I have some comments on this:

1: Sources, and reporters, get things wrong all the time. I see no reason to count this source as incontrovertibly true.

2: It's not "too specific" a claim. Engines on a 777 are squirting data out into the ether regularly during every flight. That's no secret. Anyone knowledgeable postulating about this event would ask "when did the ACARS datafeeds from the engines cease?"

3: Standard operating procedure for the engine company (in this instance Rolls Royce) would be "no comment" for an ongoing investigation. The "oh no they didn't" came from Malaysian Airlines, and that is, by definition, a secondary source that is less trustworthy.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here: the pilot was a flying fanatic. To the point that he had a dedicated flight simulation setup in his house with multiple monitors, flight controls, throttle, the whole nine yards. So what this guy did for fun when he wasn't doing his job was simulating his job. I'm inclined to think that any theory that relies on him screwing up is probably not correct.

kazooka wrote:

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here: the pilot was a flying fanatic. To the point that he had a dedicated flight simulation setup in his house with multiple monitors, flight controls, throttle, the whole nine yards. So what this guy did for fun when he wasn't doing his job was simulating his job. I'm inclined to think that any theory that relies on him screwing up is probably not correct.

Everyone has bad days. Everyone.

More over, if human error was a factor in this instance, it was likely compounded by one, or more likely, many, failure modes and/or off-nominal conditions. It's easy to not screw things up when things are going as they usually do, and you're simply running through the motions of what you do every day. It's much harder to do when you're responding to an unfamiliar situation. To draw an analogy, consider a person who drives 100 miles a day on dry roads, then consider him driving in a whiteout blizzard at night when his headlights aren't working. His hours upon hours of daily practice aren't going to do him a whole lotta good because he wasn't practicing responding to those specific conditions.

I think that what you should be saying is that the pilot's enthusiasm for flying makes him less likely to make errors, but not immune to them.

What about Aliens? How come no one has thought about that.. its entirely possible they just got all anal probed en masse.

Jonman wrote:
kazooka wrote:

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here: the pilot was a flying fanatic. To the point that he had a dedicated flight simulation setup in his house with multiple monitors, flight controls, throttle, the whole nine yards. So what this guy did for fun when he wasn't doing his job was simulating his job. I'm inclined to think that any theory that relies on him screwing up is probably not correct.

Everyone has bad days. Everyone.

More over, if human error was a factor in this instance, it was likely compounded by one, or more likely, many, failure modes and/or off-nominal conditions. It's easy to not screw things up when things are going as they usually do, and you're simply running through the motions of what you do every day. It's much harder to do when you're responding to an unfamiliar situation. To draw an analogy, consider a person who drives 100 miles a day on dry roads, then consider him driving in a whiteout blizzard at night when his headlights aren't working. His hours upon hours of daily practice aren't going to do him a whole lotta good because he wasn't practicing responding to those specific conditions.

I think that what you should be saying is that the pilot's enthusiasm for flying makes him less likely to make errors, but not immune to them.

Yeah, but he was flying in what was by all measures great freakin weather. If anything, it was his co-pilot letting the hotties in that was at fault.

TheGameguru wrote:

What about Aliens? How come no one has thought about that.. its entirely possible they just got all anal probed en masse.

I'm still thinking it's more along the lines of Lost, except for the shocking twist that

Spoiler:

the rest of the world is dead, rather than the passengers.

Or, the Left Behind novels are less fiction than we'd like to believe. It's beginning.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

What about Aliens? How come no one has thought about that.. its entirely possible they just got all anal probed en masse.

I'm still thinking it's more along the lines of Lost, except for the shocking twist that

Spoiler:

the rest of the world is dead, rather than the passengers.

Or, the Left Behind novels are less fiction than we'd like to believe. It's beginning.

One of my coworkers suggested a wormhole or an outbreak of vampirism like in The Strain.

LockAndLoad wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

What about Aliens? How come no one has thought about that.. its entirely possible they just got all anal probed en masse.

I'm still thinking it's more along the lines of Lost, except for the shocking twist that

Spoiler:

the rest of the world is dead, rather than the passengers.

Or, the Left Behind novels are less fiction than we'd like to believe. It's beginning.

One of my coworkers suggested a wormhole or an outbreak of vampirism like in The Strain. :)

I blame the Langoliers.

Two langolier references in one day. New record!

According to the Guardian's liveblog, US officials have confirmed that the four hours of transmissions after the plane's disappearance is genuine, but came from the ACARS unit, not an engine monitor as the WSJ originally claimed. They're expanding the search into the Indian Ocean, apparently on the theory that it continued flying west after changing course.

From the Guardian again, another very interesting development:

The shutdown of two communication systems happened separately, 14 minutes apart, two US officials have told ABC news in the US, indicating a possible deliberate act.

The unnamed investigators believe the data reporting system shut down at 1.07am and the transponder at 1.21am, calling it a “systematic shut down.”

ABC cited a source saying this disputes the theory of a single catastrophic theory.

CaptainCrowbar wrote:

From the Guardian again, another very interesting development:

The shutdown of two communication systems happened separately, 14 minutes apart, two US officials have told ABC news in the US, indicating a possible deliberate act.

The unnamed investigators believe the data reporting system shut down at 1.07am and the transponder at 1.21am, calling it a “systematic shut down.”

ABC cited a source saying this disputes the theory of a single catastrophic theory.

Rules out Langoliers at least.. they would have eaten that plane way faster.

TheGameguru wrote:
CaptainCrowbar wrote:

From the Guardian again, another very interesting development:

The shutdown of two communication systems happened separately, 14 minutes apart, two US officials have told ABC news in the US, indicating a possible deliberate act.

The unnamed investigators believe the data reporting system shut down at 1.07am and the transponder at 1.21am, calling it a “systematic shut down.”

ABC cited a source saying this disputes the theory of a single catastrophic theory.

Rules out Langoliers at least.. they would have eaten that plane way faster.

What if Dean Stockwell was aboard? He might've been able to delay them.

TheGameguru wrote:

What about Aliens? How come no one has thought about that.. its entirely possible they just got all anal probed en masse.

Can you imagine how it would turn our world upside down if suddenly the plane appeared say over Iowa and landed? To vanish and reappear thousands of miles apart where clearly fuel couldn't get it there.

I thin Neil deGrasse Tyson would just scrap the rest of Cosmos with an apology "Apparently we don't know anything right now. This show will resume when we have a clue"

farley3k wrote:

Can you imagine how it would turn our world upside down if suddenly the plane appeared say over Iowa and landed? To vanish and reappear thousands of miles apart where clearly fuel couldn't get it there.

IMAGE(http://www.impdb.org/images/thumb/8/83/Closeencounters3.jpg/500px-Closeencounters3.jpg)

LockAndLoad wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

What about Aliens? How come no one has thought about that.. its entirely possible they just got all anal probed en masse.

I'm still thinking it's more along the lines of Lost, except for the shocking twist that

Spoiler:

the rest of the world is dead, rather than the passengers.

Or, the Left Behind novels are less fiction than we'd like to believe. It's beginning.

One of my coworkers suggested a wormhole or an outbreak of vampirism like in The Strain. :)

Maybe this is advanced press. GdT is wacky.

I think it's becoming increasingly clear that Putin hacked the plane to distract us from Crimea.

I am sure the plane was flying to Beghazi. Suddenly it all just makes sense, right?!!