24 ms·

Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)?

• redbad 13y ago
  This is almost exactly how a plot device in Neal Stephenson's REAMDE plays out. In almost exactly the same part of the world. Bizarre.
  • beagle3 13y ago
    I have not read REAMDE, but if that's the case - perhaps REAMDE was the inspiration, which makes it not bizarre at all.
  • sspiff 13y ago
    Indeed, though I was a little suspicious about wether this was really possible. Maybe we'll find out soon.
  • _nedR 13y ago
    Googled "Neal Stephenson README" expecting a thriller involving a government agency plot to inject malicious code into a open-source crypto-library, and the final commmit to the github project made by a hacker found murdered in front of the computer in his basement. Was disappointed.
    • general_failure 13y ago
      Reamde not readme
    • pajop 13y ago
      that's probably CryptoLocker in real life - http://blog.malwarebytes.org/intelligence/2013/10/cryptolocker-ransomware-what-you-need-to-know/ http://blog.malwarebytes.org/intelligence/2013/10/cryptolock...
  • ccozan 13y ago
    More likely like a modern William Gibson plot. Mystery and modern technology in the same place. Objects that do not want to be tracked. Definitively Gibson style.
    • keypusher 13y ago
      No, you misunderstand. Stephenson actually had a hijacked 747 in one of his books shadowing another to avoid radar detection in the same way as described by this article.
      • kps 13y ago
        In REAMDE, not a 747 but a small private jet. The story also had the jet ‘disappear’ on the boundary between ATC zones. This was actually the first thing that came to my mind when I heard the first reports about MH370.
  • viraptor 13y ago
    I had the same reaction. Actually, first it's disk encrypting malware which requests payment in bitcoin, now this, what next is going to come true?
  • dredmorbius 13y ago
    Which I've just finally gotten to reading in the past week or so, not realizing the parallels until I ran across them in the story. Pretty bizarre.
  • lawncheer 13y ago
    One of the first things that went through my head when I heard this update.
  • madaxe_again 13y ago
    Stephenson specialises in seeing the possible and articulating it. The world of Snow Crash and Diamond Age is a very palpable future.
  • ajtaylor 13y ago
    Wow, you're absolutely correct. I read REAMDE about 2 months ago so the plot is still pretty fresh in my mind. It's a great, so consider this a recommendation.
• linksbro 13y ago
  Incredible theory. This entire situation is really a complete mystery.
  • ekianjo 13y ago
    If the plane has flown following most of that 777 trail, then it should at least narrow down a little where it went... but it's very unsure we even find out where it went. If this was planned from the very beginning, it would be well hidden by now. I wonder what happened to the passengers - and if anyone realized what was happening after several hours.
    • HNaTTY 13y ago
      Sadly, I find it hard to believe that passengers wouldn't have tried to use cellphones, and I'm inclined to think that the cabin became depressurized before the last report of contact (a ping off of an inmarsat sattelite) which is reported as 7.5 hours after takeoff.
• akumen 13y ago
  Good theory. Yours is as good as anyone's at this point in time. Incredible, how we think that our tech is so advanced yet a commercial jet can go completely missing. MH370 makes for an incredible setup to 'Lost'.
  • yaeger 13y ago
    I think this whole thing could have been prevented if only the tracking systems could not have been turned off manually. Why is that even possible? An oversight? If you think about just how many liberties we passengers had to give up after 9/11 worldwide, why was this still there? We can't take any liquids on board anymore but if the pilot wants, he can make the plane disappear at will? Yeah, the liquid thing was really the only security risk here... Imho, tracking of planes should never be able to be turned off. Why should it? Could there ever be a situation were it would be vital to have these systems not running?
    • ekianjo 13y ago
      > I think this whole thing could have been prevented if only the tracking systems could not have been turned off manually. This was already answered several days ago. All electrical equipment has to be able to be switched off - there were cases where fires started in planes because electrical circuits could not be cut.
    • caf 13y ago
      In the case of the radar transponder there is the very prosaic reason that ATC doesn't want their screen filled with all the aircraft sitting at gates.
    • gambiting 13y ago
      >>but if the pilot wants, he can make the plane disappear at will? The pilot is the captain of the airship and can take any decision deemed necessary for the safety of the aircraft and its passengers and that decision is final(this is actually defined in the airspace law, would need to look for a quote). That means that the pilot has to have the ability to turn off any and all electrical parts of the aircraft if that would ensure its safety(in case of a fire). That power cannot and should not be taken away from the pilot - you don't want a plane crash due to a fire which couldn't have been put out because the burning thing was always-on due to some regulations.
• Flammy 13y ago
  I'd really like to hear another knowledgeable person's analysis of this theory. At least its different than the endless hijackers/bombing/suicide/aliens run around.
• KaiserPro 13y ago
  Nice idea, however I'd hope that modern radar is able to detect two aircraft of that size flying close together. Unless the perpetrators know the various limitations of each radar installation?
  • ekianjo 13y ago
    It's a matter of radar resolution. Radars can't distinguish flies apart from each other, so obviously there are technology limitations anyway.
    • KaiserPro 13y ago
      It is indeed, in the 40's they had this issue, when planes were a ~mile apart they become a mush on the screen. However thats not the case nowadays. Even if you had a nasty radar from the 80's you see that the trace is twice the size it should be. (We'll I'd hope) I'd assume that military radar ops would be looking for this, as this is a great way to sneak assets about.
      • gnaffle 13y ago
        From what I read elsewhere, synchronization problems between different radar systems and other effects can also cause echoes or "ghosting" to appear, so it's not uncommon to see more than one trace for a particular object. Depending on the sophistication of the radar system, these traces could be ignored either by software or by operators. When they say they put national security second to investigating the flight, what they're saying is that they're now exposing a lot of information about these radar systems with other countries in order to figure out what happened.
  • LordHumungous 13y ago
    Maybe, but would the operators have the imagination to suspect it was something other than a glitch?
    • KaiserPro 13y ago
• rrtwo 13y ago
  Waiting for a crossover of this route with this http://project.wnyc.org/runways/ http://project.wnyc.org/runways/
  • ohadron 13y ago
    This assumes 5000ft of stopping distance and a high density runway, which is far more than really needed. Especially considering that the operators of this flight are willing to take more risks than usual commercial flights. There are probably thousands of additional landing strips, even more if the hijackers don't require keeping the plane in perfect flying condition.
• pogue 13y ago
  All these theories... It's obviously at the bottom of the ocean. If not, it's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlG28B-R8Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlG28B-R8Y
  • pizza 13y ago
    a part of me wants the plane to suddenly re-appear exactly where it went missing with everyone on the plane unaware that it was lost
    • sumedh 13y ago
      The old alien abduction theory.
    • drawkbox 13y ago
      Langoliers, it is there, just slightly behind time.
  • leoc 13y ago
    > It's obviously at the bottom of the ocean. That's the default expectation in this kind of situation, but in this case it's actually slightly hard to see how it could have happened. The evidence suggests that when it first "disappeared", and likely for hours afterwards, the plane was under controlled flight by someone with at least some idea of what they were doing. Whoever was flying the plane could easily deliberately crash it at any time while flying over the ocean, of course, but if their intention was just to crash the plane somewhere non-specific, why not just do it right away or soon afterwards? So they very probably had other intentions. And an airplane in a controlled cruise over the ocean is unlikely to just happen to crash into it by accident. It will obviously run out of fuel at some point, but the people flying the plane almost certainly planned to do something interesting with it before that happened: the likely candidates are a) land it or b) crash it into something notable. They probably had the ability to read the fuel gauge and/or an a priori idea of what the available range was, too. Now there are all sorts of ways their plan could have gone wrong, or could have succeeded by crashing the plane, but they nearly all involve the plane landing and/or crashing on land, or relatively near a coastline on the approach to land instead of the deep ocean. AFAICS it's easier to list ways in which the plane could be lost in the deep ocean: 1) A Flight 93-style battle for the cockpit erupts while 370 is over the ocean 2) The person flying the plane is a terrorist/hijacker/pirate who lacks real airliner flying expertise but has been equipped with a cheat sheet telling him in detail exactly what to do. Everything goes fairly well for a long time until something unexpected happens and/or he messes up one of his scheduled actions. At this point he likely panics and maybe does something rash 3) The people in control attempt a controlled ditch somewhere in the ocean, probably in order to rendezvous with one or more speedboats and transfer themselves and some or all passengers. This could very easily go wrong, but succeed or fail the plane will probably end up sinking either way 4) The people in control attempt to strike out across the ocean for some distant target which they guess is near the limit of their range. But they miscalculate, and by the time they realise it they're trapped over the ocean with no path back near land in time Scenarios 3 and 4 are fairly unlikely if you believe the radar interpretations suggesting that the plane went west across Malaysia and then north, though.
• downandout 13y ago
  There is a realistic possibility that those piloting the plane used this and/or other stealth techniques and landed intact. There are lots of groups around the world that would love to have a working $250M aircraft. Maybe there is a massive airplane chop shop that this went to, or someone wants to load it up with explosives and fly it to some country they disagree with. Unfortunately, whether it landed or not, the odds that the passengers are alive are very small. A ransom demand would have been made by now.
  • nashequilibrium 13y ago
    It doesn't make any sense to kill 240 people, including babies and kids. Especially if this is a terrorist act, they could not religiously justify that, especially since these are mainly Chinese people rather than American.
    • kiiski 13y ago
      What makes you think these hypothetical terrorists are after Americans, not Chinese? And why is religion the only reason they could be doing this?
    • Robadob 13y ago
      The Chinese are victims to terrorism to; http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304709904579413210842876106 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230470990...
    • varjag 13y ago
      Terrorists' rationales are often bizarre to non-indoctrinated: witness Oklahoma city bombing or Utøya. Besides if that was a doing of national separatist group in China, they'd have little problem with that.
    • houseofshards 13y ago
      my guess is that if it was hijacked by terrorists, the act is yet to come. They are after the plane, not the people.
• houseofshards 13y ago
  An aviation noob here. I have a question: If the flight starts another journey from wherever it is, will it be possible to track it via radar ?
  • ohadron 13y ago
    Only if that area is under radar coverage.
  • robmcm 13y ago
    Apparently the rolls royce engines have a remote debugging ability that was not enabled on this flight, however it was still pinging home which is how they first noticed the course change. They had disabled all the other trackers, so if they were watching the news the chances are they have disabled these too. [EDIT] ACARS - http://theaviationist.com/2014/03/16/satcom-acars-explained/ http://theaviationist.com/2014/03/16/satcom-acars-explained/
    • emeidi 13y ago
      If the plane is parked in working condition somewhere on this planet, thanks to the media coverage the hijackers now know that the jet engines will phone home the moment they start them. But then again, this is hypothetical nonsense. The plane most probably crashed into the ocean.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• karterk 13y ago
  Good analysis, but I'm skeptical that this is not already accounted for in the military radars. Given that so many flights fly everyday in almost every route, it becomes really easy for any country to sneak an aircraft anywhere. Such a glaring loop hole should not exist. And we are talking about crossing the borders monitored by multiple countries here.
• confluence 13y ago
  > There are too many oddities in this whole story that don’t make sense if this theory isn’t the answer in my opinion. Confirmation bias? Slow burn fire randomly taking out communications systems and electronics undetected over a long period of time. Pilots freak out and head West for the coast, program way points on autopilot. Fire then cracks the hull, leading to a slow depressurization, incapacitating crew. Plane heads into the Indian ocean with all onboard unconscious or dead, until it runs out of fuel, and crashes into the ocean.
  • tomelders 13y ago
    1. Zig Zaging flight path between legitimate waypoints after transponders were turned off, plus some pronounced altitude changes suggest that Autopilot was not engaged. 2. Pilots turned off transponders before their last communication.
    • confluence 13y ago
      1. Waypoints far west outside of primary are conjecture. Can be explained by autopilot shutdown due to onboard emergency. 2. Not proven. ACARS can fail without pilot intervention. That's confirmation bias.
• jballanc 13y ago
  The folks over at airliners.net have pointed out that the 777's collision avoidance system only works if both planes' transponders are turned on. That doesn't mean this scenario is impossible, but it does raise the level of sophistication required. Sadly, I feel like whatever happened, the amount of sophistication involved increasingly points toward the involvement of one or more state actors. If that's the case, I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever find out what happened to this plane...
  • ekianjo 13y ago
    > Sadly, I feel like whatever happened, the amount of sophistication involved increasingly points toward the involvement of one or more state actors. If that's the case, I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever find out what happened to this plane... Indeed. And not just the "what", but the "why" as well.
    • Fuxy 13y ago
      That's exactly it why would anybody put this much effort into making a plane disappear and why this plane. Given all this effort it is very unlikely any of the passengers will be found alive so what would warrant the murder of all the passengers. Digging should turn up something very interesting.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    • Shivetya 13y ago
      time to figure out who was on that flight, perhaps it was someone so important that taking a plane full of passengers was worth the cost.
      • Tuna-Fish 13y ago
        A team of freescale chip engineers for one. Also, the answer might well be "what" instead of who. Many people have pointed out that the cargo manifest hasn't been published, and that the airline declared 50 less seats as available for boarding than the plane had. This means it had several tons of cargo on board.
• rjbwork 13y ago
  An interesting theory and article, but I can't help but feel like this reads too much like one of the classic conspiracy theory articles about 9-11/lizards/aliens/Area 51, etc.
  • davidw 13y ago
    That's what they want you to think.
• fnsa 13y ago
  A theory is that the cargo area of the plane contained valuable goods: gold, silver, diamonds, etc and that's what the hijackers were after. From this: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-15/missing-malaysian-flight-mystery-deepens-pilot-investigated-foul-play-suspected http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-15/missing-malaysian-f... the 777 can have up to 25 tons worth of cargo payload. 25 tons of gold is worth ~ $1B, that's quite a bit more than the value of the plane itself.
  • jdimov 13y ago
    No one in their right mind would attempt to transport 25 tons of gold on a commercial passenger flight.
    • pedalpete 13y ago
      How do you transport 25 tons of gold across land and sea? My guess is air freight is the safest method, does it matter if it goes on a DHL 777 or a Commercial 777? Either way, the plane could be hijacked. But I suspect you'd have somebody with an insurance claim for $1 billion in gold, and an insurance company going bankrupt as a result.
      • jdimov 13y ago
        Yes, but Malaysia PM said there's only mangosteens in the cargo.
        • pktgen 13y ago
          Tomorrow's headline: no mangosteens in cargo.
          • jdimov 13y ago
            And then we'll have conspiracy theories about what happened to the mangosteens en-route.
      • 13y ago
• jmnicolas 13y ago
  It may be seen as heartless for the victims, but I still find comforting that in this day and age of widespread surveillance technology, one of the most tracked thing on earth can still disappear and leave everybody clueless. It gives me hope that there will be still a chance for a resistance movement when the time will come.
• 72deluxe 13y ago
  "Snuck" is a strange American word, the same as "dove" instead of "dived", eg. "he dove into the pool" instead of "he dived into the pool". I would read "snuck" as "sneaked". Another weird word is "gotten". And another strange and irritating phrase that is sneaking its way into English over here is "for free", but "free" is not a price so instead of "buy 3 eggs for £2.00", you get weird phrases "sign up now and get this egg for free", whereas it should be "sign up now and get this egg free" or "sign up now and get this egg for nothing". Always interesting the difference between the languages over time. With reference to the flight, I truly hope they find it somewhere safe.
  • threedaymonk 13y ago
    You'll find much discussion of the growing popularity of snuck on Language Log: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/index.php?s=snuck http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/index.php?s=snuck Snuck is "orig. and chiefly U.S." according to the OED, but it's definitely growing in British usage, too: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sneaked%2Csnuck&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=18&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sneaked%2Csnuc...
  • gpjt 13y ago
    "gotten" definitely sounds odd to me (I'm from England) but it's worth noting that we do keep that form in "forgotten". Presumably both were acceptable over here at some stage. "I see no reason why gunpowder and treason should ever be forgot."
    • paulannesley 13y ago
      The word “forgot” was chosen to rhyme with “plot”, so may not have been a normal use of the word/form. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes#Quotes_about_Fawkes http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes#Quotes_about_Fawkes (Now you've made me want to watch V for Vendetta again!)
      • dragonwriter 13y ago
        Its worth noting that use of "forgot" instead of "forgotten" is also found in the first line of Auld Lang Syne, where it isn't rhymed with anything.
• sschueller 13y ago
  Isn't it possible that one passenger may have left his cell phone on? Maybe if you get all of the passengers numbers and check if any of the phones connected to a tower you could locate it?
  • emeidi 13y ago
    First of all, hijackers would have threatened passengers to give them their mobile phones. If the plane indeed was landed on a remote airport with the passengers alive, the hijackers would have stripped the passengers of their clothes to ensure nobody could bring weapons or devices with them. By now, most mobile phones (even the Nokia developing world ones) would have been out of battery.
    • userbinator 13y ago
      I find it a little disturbing that the passengers would be so docile, especially after 9/11.
      • bruceb 13y ago
        Well problem is for them the cockpit door is very secure. They can try to open it all day but they will not be able to.
      • rafe33 13y ago
        There is a theory that the rapid ascent to 45,000 feet was done to deprive the passengers of oxygen and incapacitate them.
        • jimktrains2 13y ago
          From what I've read that theory is bullocks because 45k is still in the safety margins the plane was designed for.
          • knowaveragejoe 13y ago
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  I am not enthusiastic about jumping into speculation land, but I would be interested in knowing if the possibility of this being a accident followed by auto pilot is possible or totally disproven My default assumption was they took off, an accident occurred that damaged cockpit and forced a turnaround, the damage was so great that the crew were unable to survive and turned on autopilot to stop an immediate crash, which then flew for seven hours till fuel ended, presumably with passengers pounding on the locked and hardened cockpit door. So whilst I am in wild speculation territory I would like to know if there are some experts who might be able to say "bird strikes cannot disable radios" or "oxygen canisters do not leak" or "stewardesses can open the cockpit door" or some such. I tend towards cockup not conspiracy myself. (I recognise I may have missed discussions covering this and apologise if it is obvious)
  • gassit 13y ago
    Apparently the door can be opened. They enter a code and if the cockpit doesn't reject it within a certain time frame the door opens. See Helios flight 522.
  • Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
    Planes have flown for hours without any human intervention. That part of it is entirely feasible.
  • pedalpete 13y ago
    I'm not familiar with the inner workings of planes, but from what I've gathered, the timing of disabling the two tracking systems, which are on either end of the plane, is just about the same time it takes to get from one end of the plane to the other, and disable the 2nd tracking system (blackbox). Therefore, it would be a great coincidence that both of these tracking systems would be disabled at the same time. It seems therefore that the most logical explanation is foul play. I thought/hoped the same as you, that some sort of failure resulted in the tracking systems failing as well, and then the plane crashed, but it sadly doesn't seem as likely given the timing of events.
    • emeidi 13y ago
• mittermayr 13y ago
  What surprises me the most: In today's world, doesn't someone have access to global, real-time satellite data that goes down to 1-3m resolution? I thought we already accepted this as fact. Wouldn't such data provide visuals?
  • Houshalter 13y ago
    Yes, but it's not like every patch of land is monitored at all times. A satellite can only point it's camera at one place at a time.
    • mittermayr 13y ago
      surely so, but in the odd case that even one single image might have a plane on it, on the path the OP currently discusses here, might be enough to confirm further travel. the full step-by-step transition of the plan wouldn't even be necessary. just one shot with that plane. from somewhere.
      • Piskvorrr 13y ago
        Global? Likely. Realtime? We're not quite that far into the future. Just try and estimate the bandwidth for the biggest security camera of all times: at 1-3 meters resolution per pixel, worldwide, that's a lot of pixels (about 510 072 000 000 000 per frame, give or take - that comes out at about half an exabyte per frame, if I'm not mistaken). Take ten of these, and you've generated as much data as the whole Internet does in a day. Oh, and you also need to store it somewhere, but this is a minor issue (in comparison to the above).
  • Crito 13y ago
    They probably do, but what is the coverage like? They aren't streaming and storing every square meter of the earth all at once, such that they can just roll back several days and start poking around, meter by meter, minute by minute. Real time high resolution satellite streams are undoubtedly something that need to be scheduled in advanced for particular times and places.
  • 13y ago
• mariuolo 13y ago
  After all the revelations of the last few days, is there anything it may not have done?
• gadders 13y ago
  Just a quick question, but I'd have thought the number of airports where a plane the size of MH370 could land would be quite small. Is it not possible to work out the number of airports within it's range, and examine those?
  • mittermayr 13y ago
    here you go: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/03/15/mh370_the_634_runways_where_malaysian_airlines_flight_could_have_landed.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/03/15/mh370_the_...
    • gadders 13y ago
      Someone already thought of it! Perfect, thank you.
      • gadders 13y ago
        And a friend just showed me this, which has an interactive map: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/where-malaysia-370-might-have-landed-an-interactive-map/284445/?google_editors_picks=true http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/where-...
  • koyote 13y ago
    Nothing stopping you doing a rough landing in a vast open area though, is there?
  • ratsbane 13y ago
    You could land on any hard-packed dirt surface, especially if you weren't too concerned about being able to take off again.
  • corresation 13y ago
    Much as with the maximum altitude ceiling, the numbers the media reports are generally best-practice recommendations that give you a high enough factor of safety. If you don't plan on taking off again, and don't care much about the landing gear, a skilled pilot could land the plane on a runway shorter than 5000ft.
• emeidi 13y ago
  Anybody else noticed that "Keith Ledgerwood" has exactly one post on his Tumbler blog? Conspiracy theorist looking for five seconds of Internet fame?
  • confluence 13y ago
    That seems about right.
  • 3cham 13y ago
    Found his Twitter here: https://twitter.com/keithledgerwood https://twitter.com/keithledgerwood he just need some space to write and tumblr was his choice
• mh370 13y ago
  I've got some animations of flight 68's path here: http://findmh370.tumblr.com/ http://findmh370.tumblr.com/
• saalweachter 13y ago
  I really wonder how much of this rampant speculation is just people desperately wanting 300 people not to have died, either at all or just for no reason at all. Secret terrorist masterminds secretly hijacking a plane is more comforting than "sometimes shit happens and people die and there's nothing anyone can do".
  • joshgel 13y ago
    Great, except where are the dead people? And how did the plane keep flying for 7 hours after they were "dead"? Too many unanswered questions, me thinks.
    • ccarpenterg 13y ago
      Perhaps the plane didn't keep flying for 7 hours but it kept floating on the water for those 7 hours (at least that part/device).
      • mediaman 13y ago
        My understanding is that it was the Rolls Royce jet engines that were reporting to satellites for several hours, and that they were reporting some basic maintenance data about themselves (such as whether they were on and functioning). So if the engine had sat in the ocean for five hours and still somehow reported home, it would not have reported that they were still on and functioning.
  • keypusher 13y ago
    Except for the fact that multiple communications systems were deliberately turned off, and the place continued to fly for hours after that fact. I don't think anyone would have been particularly suprised if the place crashed into the ocean off the coast of Malaysia. In fact, that is what most people assumed at first, and that is why all the search and rescue efforts were focused in that area for the first 3 or 4 days. If you have been paying attention to what has come out after then, or read this article, I think you will see that does not appear to be the case.
• thewarrior 13y ago
  I remember reading that when the Israelis mounted their daring rescue mission at Entebbe in Uganda their three aircraft flew in formation so that it would appear as a single airplane on radar.
• pitt1980 13y ago
  Finding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is a problem google could solve by crowdsourcing the search on the google doodle They could use an algorithm to generate different satellite images through the possible search images as the google doodle, they could put a toggle button, 'anything look like a plane or wreckage here?' Yes/no. For every yes, show it to more people, see if they agree I’m sure google has better algorithm experts to figure out what the best images to show are than I can figure out, but google can find that plane I've already submitted this to google via email at proposals@google.com as suggested on http://www.google.com/doodles/about http://www.google.com/doodles/about I suspect there are people on HN who are fewer degrees of seperation from who figures out the google doodle than I am though If you happen to be one of those people, who might be able to send a personal email, or send a text, or make a phone call to someone who could advocate for that being the google doodle, I would appreciate that needless to say, if google was able to help solve this mystery, I would imagine that would be pretty good publicity for the company Thanks for your consideration (sorry for the spam) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7414422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7414422
  • pktgen 13y ago
    Isn't Tomnod doing this already (although I don't think they've updated their images to the newest area)?
    • pitt1980 13y ago
      Think of the eyeballs Google could add to the project by making it the doodle though
      • pktgen 13y ago
        If Tomnod updates to include the latest areas, couldn't Google just link to Tomnod on their home page? It doesn't make sense to duplicate the effort IMO. Of course, they'd need to talk to Tomnod first to make sure they're ready for that kind of traffic, as it seems they've already had scaling issues, but hopefully this doesn't pose too many problems.
• GotAnyMegadeth 13y ago
  Doesn't the NSA have all of the GPS tracking data for all of the smart phones on the plane?
• d0ugie 13y ago
  Why are we still looking for this damn plane? Thirty countries involved? Thirty nation's worth of ships, planes and satellite analysts, flying and sailing around and for what, some debris and a box? To buy the families closure of some sort? Maybe a defect in the 777? To keep hope alive that the passengers might be alive and safe somewhere captured by reasonable terrorists with a lot of food? Doesn't seem worth the fuel. These black boxes from what I heard stop pinging after a month. Can we stop then, and just move on in life until one day some seat cushion washes up in California and have a moment if silence? Without it pinging, just how wide an area can a ship in substantial depth detect a wingtip? I realize you didn't, but if you ask me, they should just frame that copilot, say they found on his flight simulator evidence that he intended to make that "deliberate" turn every night, disabling the transponder with the ctrl+shift+T combination and purposefully crashing hours later each time in a different location, with known Islamic terrorists on his WhatsApp and Skype, or a suicide note, then call off the hunt, pay the families off for failing to screen this guy effectively, bam, there's your closure, problem solved. /insensitivity
  • sergiotapia 13y ago
    I expect this type of comment on Reddit, please take it there.
  • VolatileVoid 13y ago
    Why? I don't know, maybe to make aviation safer so it doesn't happen again, whatever "it" may be. Why should Twitter bother debugging outages? Why should Facebook bother issuing post-mortems when bad things take their systems out? Just chalk it up to solar flares or blame some rogue developer and shrug your shoulders.
• f1nch3r 13y ago
  Doing this is sure cheaper and easier than building a bomber capable of deploying a nuclear weapon or another type of WMD. Definitely cheaper than building an ICBM.
• Symmetry 13y ago
  Interesting, but this would seem to chiefly expand the space of possible explanations for what went wrong by showing how the plain could have gotten into central Asia. It explains some of the bizarre behavior of the plane, but not all of it. So it's eliminated some of the burdensome details about the flight behavior at the cost of introducing burdensome details about complicated, secret, and successful planning. As a result, I'm even less sure about what happened to the plane now, but of course if that reflects my actual state of knowledge it's a good thing.
• danielschonfeld 13y ago
  If they shut off the transponder, which we know they did, how would they get the traffic information on their NDs? It goes away when you turn off the transponder. To the best of my knowledge that applies to both Mode-S interrogations and ADS/B ones.
  • gvb 13y ago
    The flights through that area are scheduled, it would be trivial to figure out which flights go in the direction you want to go and thus can hide behind. After that, you precalculate the intercept to a plane that works timing-wise before you take off. Non-trivial, but simple enough to do - on ground ahead of time you can get a computer to do all the work. Once you go dark, you fly the traditional way with GPS and nav aides (GPS, VORs, etc, are broadcast, so you can use them passively) backed up by manual nav with time, speed, and bearings. Note that handheld (throw it on the dash) pilot grade GPSes are readily available and relatively cheap. Intercepting the target aircraft is do-able via visual contact if your navigation is reasonably good and the target aircraft is on time. If you have help on the ground, they could use FlightAware to update the hijacking crew via something like HF radio, again a passive receive on the hijacked aircraft. This would be very helpful for the hijacking crew to improve their intercept by adjusting their speed so that they sneak up under and behind the target aircraft. Edit: As thekevan points out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416153), the hijackers could use a ADS/B receiver (SDR and laptop or equivalent) to receive the position data from the target aircraft. This would make it pretty easy to form up on them. Again, this is passive (the target aircraft broadcasts its ADS/B information).
• Redlen 13y ago
  If this happened in North America would NORAD have been able to keep track of the plane?
• wil421 13y ago
  I seriously doubt the plane ever reached land. Sadly, we will most likely find the plane at the bottom of the ocean.
• LammyL 13y ago
  This notion that mh370 was flying behind the Singapore jet to avoid radar is far fetched. Is the simple explanation much more likely that primary and secondary radar were both tracking the Singapore jet and the data wasn't matched properly? If the two jets were flying in tandem as you suggest, wouldn't you expect two hits on primary radar?
  • ZoF 13y ago
    In theory if one plane ghosted the other by staying quite literally behind it (in relation to the radar, not behind it front to back) there would only be one blip. Difficult to the point of high improbability? Methinks yes.
• coherentpony 13y ago
  Again, merely wild speculation. I'd be ok with people not upvoting submissions that do nothing more than fear mongering.
  • gvb 13y ago
    It is a very interesting theory and plausible (more plausible than a cockpit fire IMHO).
    • cpncrunch 13y ago
      Not really. Occam's razor says that it's more likely there was just one 777. Assuming this analysis is correct, that would lead me to suspect that the radar just picked up a different plane, and the accident plane is somewhere else completely. Either it flew for hours with the pilots unconscious, or they managed to land somewhere (gently enough so that the power to the satellite transceiver stayed on).
    • coherentpony 13y ago
      I didn't say it wasn't either a) interesting; or b) plausible. "Interesting" also doesn't really do anybody any favours here; 'plausible' is the only really relevant qualifier at play here. In fact, I'm well aware there are many plausible (that are simultaneously interesting) theories. But they're just that: theories. Crowd-sourcing theories may be helpful. Crowd-sourcing actual data is probably a lot more helpful.
• lesterbuck 13y ago
  If currently deployed military radars cannot distinguish between one and two 777s, we have a lot more to worry about than what happened to MH370.
• wil421 13y ago
  If it was really hijacked then where are all of the calls from frantic passengers calling family members like on 9/11. I am calling BS on the hijack landing scenario. Do we really live in a word where our first thoughts are always terrorism. I guess the government propaganda machine is really working when our only conclusion to things is it must be terrorism. More funding for the spooks!
  • ceejayoz 13y ago
    Not many cell towers in the middle of the ocean.
    • wil421 13y ago
      Who uses a cellphone on a plane anyway? I am talking about satellite phones they put behind some seats in commercial airplanes. http://www.usairways.com/en-US/traveltools/intheair/businesstools/phones.html http://www.usairways.com/en-US/traveltools/intheair/business...
• tn13 13y ago
  This is not an hijack terrorism. Terrorism is all about showing off, theatrics, fear. No one would make a plane disappear for the sake of terrorism. I have only two theories 1. China or some other country shot it down by mistake and trying to cover up. 2. Something of immense importance was present on that plane or may be a person. In either cases substantial involvement of some state needs to be there.
  • keypusher 13y ago
    That is not necessarily true. If it is terrorism, it's possible this isn't over, and that the plane will be used in a future high-profile attack. And if the target was passengers, cargo, or something else entirely I don't think that logically leads to it being state-sponsored.
    • tn13 13y ago
      If the plane is stolen for a future attack they have unnecessarily taken too much of trouble - First plan a theft which is incredibly difficult that hijacking and then ramming it somewhere - Then actually keep it hidden while half the world is searching for it. - Get rid of those passengers - Hiding a Boeing 777 is not same as hiding a cookie jar. The plane will need a runway, fuel etc. which needs to be provided for and can be easily tracked. - Terrorism is all about surprise. There is no surprise involved here. All the countries will now be much more cautious with any object that appears on their radar.
• codr 13y ago
  Much conspiracy.
• cylinder 13y ago
  FYI CNN just discussed this theory on-air, of course didn't discuss any technical details, just called it "outlandish" and didn't give any credit to OP.
• headgasket 13y ago
  who is is john galt
• aaron695 13y ago
  I understand there will always be crackpot theories but why are they getting up-voted. State sponsored? WTF. This would be an act of war. If you want to go to war why wouldn't you just attack the other countries. Why screw around stealing 300 international citizens first? Pretty simple stuff, most likely an accident. Or possibly a political/mental act by a very small group/one person that got lucky.
• philip1209 13y ago
  Would hydrophones be able to pick up the sound of an aircraft crashing into the ocean?
• fishyninja 13y ago
  How secure is the 777s flight management system? Could you hijack the controls (remotely or with temporary physical access) and prevent manual overrides when the change is noticed?
• limnothrissa 13y ago
  I think Keith is on the right track (excuse the pun). 1. The weather. Check on that. On a clear night it is possible to sneak up behind and tail an aircraft. Night Fighters did it all the time in WW2. And they had to get close enough and hang on and to check "friend or foe"! 2. Not sure where the FIR boundary was, but if it was close to their westward track (last radio call was a handover) more doubt on the ground. 3. They could have listened in to the radio calls of SIA68 with their radio. That would have given them height and position info too. So long as they did not transmit, nobody could have picked up anything from that. 4. If they had also switched off all the navigation lights nobody on the ground, or in SIA would be likely to have seen anything - rear view from a commercial aircraft is nil! Two aircraft at 35000 feet sound the same as one. 5. Timing on one other score was perfect. Night flight when radar operators are dozy, landing just before dawn - time to camouflage the plane from satellites, and a diversion of a China sea crash to confuse everyone. Good thinking, keep it up. Looking forward to more insights!