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

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

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

apparently the in flight movie was "innocence of a Muslim"

CaptainCrowbar wrote:

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.

This is confusing terms. ACARS is the system which routes data through the uplink/downlink to the ground. The engine (or rather, the Electronic Engine Controller - EEC) generates reports at various points throughout the flight, which is then routed through ACARS to groundstations.

ACARS will also be handling data traffic from other airplane systems and uplinking that data.

Jonman wrote:

This is confusing terms. ACARS is the system which routes data through the uplink/downlink to the ground. The engine (or rather, the Electronic Engine Controller - EEC) generates reports at various points throughout the flight, which is then routed through ACARS to groundstations.

So would that be like someone getting a phonecall from a friend saying "I just bought a pizza." and when you tell someone else that "My friend said he just bought a pizza." someone could then say that was not true. That, in fact, your phone told you that your friend had just bought a pizza?

Kehama, this is ACARS. I worked for ARINC 20 years ago (not as cool as it sounds, as a company, at that time.) For a while I supported systems used to develop ACARS.

Designed to reduce workload and improve data integrity, ACARS is a beacon of operational efficiency for airlines—perpetuating critical, automated, real-time messaging between the flight crew and air traffic control (ATC).

ACARS is also optimized for each airline’s unique needs—featuring custom applications, hardware requirements, formatting and language, and scalable control displays. With such versatility, ACARS performs many crucial functions:

Abnormal flight condition identification
Detailed engine reports
Repair and maintenance plan
Manual email-type messaging between crew and ATC
Weather reports

Note that it provides automated reporting on the engines. It's collecting data, aggregating it, then squirting it to a satellite (compressed, I think) a few times an hour. If it doesn't have data coming in, it won't make stuff up.

A source tells me the Malaysian government is expected to announce an update at 1pm local Malaysia time, possibly an important one.

edit: nothing astounding from the looks of the news leaks, but interesting that they've concluded it must have been a hijacking by someone with piloting expertise. Possibly even of the pilots.

At my work we bandied around a couple theories (aerospace company, and one of the participants was a licensed pilot, but we are nowhere near matching Jonman's credentials here). In our speculation we couldn't come up with a non-hijacking reason for them to have continued flying off course for so long after the initial deviation. On a clear day with good weather we couldn't think of a problem that would be severe enough to divert the plane more than 10 or so degrees off course (even complete instrument loss) and not also severe enough to destroy the plane sooner than the 4 hours the diagnostic stuff was apparently transmitting for.

Yonder wrote:

At my work we bandied around a couple theories (aerospace company, and one of the participants was a licensed pilot, but we are nowhere near matching Jonman's credentials here). In our speculation we couldn't come up with a non-hijacking reason for them to have continued flying off course for so long after the initial deviation. On a clear day with good weather we couldn't think of a problem that would be severe enough to divert the plane more than 10 or so degrees off course (even complete instrument loss) and not also severe enough to destroy the plane sooner than the 4 hours the diagnostic stuff was apparently transmitting for.

Oh yeah?

IMAGE(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8FBuwcoLORI/TjGTiZ7kPYI/AAAAAAAAAPM/GIYt0DYLwHE/s320/pterodactyl_fncar.gif)

kazooka wrote:
Yonder wrote:

At my work we bandied around a couple theories (aerospace company, and one of the participants was a licensed pilot, but we are nowhere near matching Jonman's credentials here). In our speculation we couldn't come up with a non-hijacking reason for them to have continued flying off course for so long after the initial deviation. On a clear day with good weather we couldn't think of a problem that would be severe enough to divert the plane more than 10 or so degrees off course (even complete instrument loss) and not also severe enough to destroy the plane sooner than the 4 hours the diagnostic stuff was apparently transmitting for.

Oh yeah?

IMAGE(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8FBuwcoLORI/TjGTiZ7kPYI/AAAAAAAAAPM/GIYt0DYLwHE/s320/pterodactyl_fncar.gif)

Yeah but that's just a different type of hijacking, more like something you would see in a 007 movie from the 60's-70's.

I'm actually somewhat reassured that the flight data thing proved to be real. That was such a specific assertion that a complete denial seemed exceptionally unlikely to be correct.

If it was hijacked, I know the chances of the hijackers being decent to the passengers aren't high, but I hope it happens anyway. Keeping 200 people alive for any kind of extended duration is very expensive, so they're probably dead, but one can hope.

Actually, it's not that expensive if they're carrying their own meds and you don't care overmuch for hygiene. People can live on just water and stale bread (basic, not the fancy stuff) for a pretty decent chunk of time. For a group of $200, not counting air fuel expenses, I imagine the cost would be something like $2 to $5 per person per day. - $400 to $1000 per day. Expensive for a person, but not for an organization.

At this point, if the plane was hijacked and rerouted, the question seems to be "Why?" If it's to be used as a weapon, it ought to have been crashed almost immediately. Perhaps it's going to be used as a delivery vehicle for a nuclear weapon?

LarryC wrote:

Actually, it's not that expensive if they're carrying their own meds and you don't care overmuch for hygiene. People can live on just water and stale bread (basic, not the fancy stuff) for a pretty decent chunk of time. For a group of $200, not counting air fuel expenses, I imagine the cost would be something like $2 to $5 per person per day. - $400 to $1000 per day. Expensive for a person, but not for an organization.

At this point, if the plane was hijacked and rerouted, the question seems to be "Why?" If it's to be used as a weapon, it ought to have been crashed almost immediately. Perhaps it's going to be used as a delivery vehicle for a nuclear weapon?

Since we have a number of aeronautical experts on this forum, I'd like to ask why a 777 would make a better delivery vehicle for WMDs than say a large cargo plane or surplussed military transport plane, both of which could be obtained far more easily than hijacking a passenger jet. Also, wouldn't a jet appearing out of nowhere be pretty conspicuous once it entered a nation's monitored airspace? From what I'm reading jumbo jets are very hard to fly nap of the earth to avoid detection.

Imagine getting a plane that can carry around 100 tons of stuff nearly 5000 miles, be disguised as a legitimate flight if desired *and* parceling out 239 individual hostages to several groups in a whole lot of different locations...

I just find it exciting that there is a super-villain out there.

Malor wrote:

I'm actually somewhat reassured that the flight data thing proved to be real. That was such a specific assertion that a complete denial seemed exceptionally unlikely to be correct.

If it was hijacked, I know the chances of the hijackers being decent to the passengers aren't high, but I hope it happens anyway. Keeping 200 people alive for any kind of extended duration is very expensive, so they're probably dead, but one can hope.

My expectations for hijacking are that it crashed into a different part of the ocean than we originally thought. Not to be too much of an Eeyore, but I don't think anybody on that flight is alive. edit: hijacker or no.

Imagine getting a plane that can carry around 100 tons of stuff nearly 5000 miles,

I looked it up, and it's a 777-200ER, which appears to have a maximum load capacity of about 175 tons (that's the "max takeoff weight" minus "operating empty weight" from Wikipedia), and a maximum range of about 8,900 miles.

I'm not sure if both those things are true at once: it may not be able to carry 175 tons for 8,900 miles. But it is a beast of an aircraft, and it can fly a long, long way.

I think the most likely hypothesis at this point is that the hijackers intended to land on an island somewhere (or maybe central Asia) and demand $BIGNUM for the hostages, but they screwed up and went down in the ocean.

Evil Genius most likely landed the plane in central asia.

This entire thing is conspiracy theorist Christmas.

Malor wrote:
Imagine getting a plane that can carry around 100 tons of stuff nearly 5000 miles,

I looked it up, and it's a 777-200ER, which appears to have a maximum load capacity of about 175 tons (that's the "max takeoff weight" minus "operating empty weight" from Wikipedia), and a maximum range of about 8,900 miles.

I'm not sure if both those things are true at once: it may not be able to carry 175 tons for 8,900 miles. But it is a beast of an aircraft, and it can fly a long, long way.

Of those 175 tons about 135 will be taken up by fuel if the tanks are full.

kyrieee wrote:
Malor wrote:
Imagine getting a plane that can carry around 100 tons of stuff nearly 5000 miles,

I looked it up, and it's a 777-200ER, which appears to have a maximum load capacity of about 175 tons (that's the "max takeoff weight" minus "operating empty weight" from Wikipedia), and a maximum range of about 8,900 miles.

I'm not sure if both those things are true at once: it may not be able to carry 175 tons for 8,900 miles. But it is a beast of an aircraft, and it can fly a long, long way.

Of those 175 tons about 135 will be taken up by chemtrail agents if the tanks are full.

*dramatic eyes*

It seems pretty unlikely to me that this plane would be used for anything WMD related. The "great" thing about WMDs is packing lots and lots of killing power into a relatively small package. If WMD delivery was the plan I suspect they would be able to use a much smaller plane, the sort of one they would easily be able to straight up buy, rent, or steal from FAR less secure small airports.

If they actually want(ed?) the plane for such a purpose the larger plane would let them stuff it with lots more conventional explosives OR if we stuck along the WMD route, various forms of medical or industrial waste to make a radioactive dirty bomb. The later seems a little far-fetched (my own wishful thinking?), it seems like if you had already collected a bunch of radioactive waste the last thing you'd want to do is risk your current success on a high profile and high risk plane hijacking. Just go buy a used 18-wheeler. The former... I don't know... 9/11 showed that unaltered passenger liners are great for taking out skyscrapers but not very effective on smaller buildings, especially militarily hardened ones. If someone wanted to attack some Asian equivalent of the Pentagon or other military base a passenger liner may be an ok step one.

I really suspect, however, that the plane is down. My wife asked it it could possibly have landed successfully without anyone knowing, and without some country's government helping. I answered that I didn't know the sort of radar coverage any area really had, but I did know that a lot of the time in flight a plane isn't being tracked actively from the ground, but by itself broadcasting its location (this is far less true in the US post 9/11), so in Southeast Asia the answer was a resounding "...Maybe?..."

Possible lead in Vietnam.

Lots of informed and semi-informed speculation going on at airliners.net and pprune.org

Paleocon wrote:

Possible lead in Vietnam.

alright you win

Prederick wrote:

This entire thing is conspiracy theorist Christmas.

Brings em out of the woodworks.

Plus now that there's news the plane may have been in Australian waters my mind is just completely blown by the whole thing. At any minute now I'm expecting there to be news the plane never actually took off and instead turned into a giant robot and is fighting Godzilla in Peru.

garion333 wrote:

At any minute now I'm expecting there to be news the plane never actually took off and instead turned into a giant robot and is fighting Godzilla in Peru.

How awesome would that be?!

I'm looking forward to hearing where the secret supervillain island volcano fortress turns out to be.

Dammit guys, I'm writing a script with such a similar premise. Started in October. Passenger plane hijacked to transport WMDs, shot down, international conflict, mass hysteria.

Dammit, dammit, dammit!

I wonder if it'd be possible to follow the contrail in an infrared satellite image feed, provided that such a satellite were in the right place to track the plane.

kexx wrote:

Dammit guys, I'm writing a script with such a similar premise. Started in October. Passenger plane hijacked to transport WMDs, shot down, international conflict, mass hysteria.

Dammit, dammit, dammit!

Charlie Stross has been voicing much the same sentiment, since this falls squarely in his near-future-tech-and-social-politics bailiwick.