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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

by 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.
- bruceb 13y ago
  1. Is unlikely as door is very secure now. Passengers can't get in. 4. Seems a possibility.
  - XorNot 13y ago
    (2) is the most plausible. Given the amount of computer control and automation in a modern plane, it's likely the whole thing would've been put on autopilot when it was hijacked. It could've easily kept going for a long time and even been redirected in that mode. Once you run out of fuel of course, game over.
  - leoc 13y ago
    > 1. Is unlikely as door is very secure now. Passengers can't get in. The passengers and aircrew would have had seven solid hours to try to break through that door, though, unless the plane landed somewhere first. Alternatively, hijackers (if hijackers there were) might have damaged the door or disabled its locking mechanism on their own way into the cockpit. Some desperate passengers might even deliberately start a fire in the fuselage, I suppose, as dangerous as that would be. One big problem with 4 is that to believe this you probably have to discount the primary radar reports of the airplane heading west over Malaysia/Thailand and then north up the Malacca Strait and Andaman Sea. It's hard to imagine the plane getting feet-dry on that northern SATCOM arc, at about the end of its fuel endurance, and then then heading far out to sea again. (Unless it landed and refuelled somewhere...) (EDIT: On second thoughts, I suppose you could turn east after the last radar contact and then go south, past the west of Indonesia, to the southern arc.) But even if you do that, where would you be headed if you were on that southern Indian Ocean arc after 7 hours in flight? It's not exactly an efficient route to Australia or Indonesia, and everywhere else is either hopelessly far or in the wrong direction.

by 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.

bruceb 13y ago
1. Is unlikely as door is very secure now. Passengers can't get in. 4. Seems a possibility.
- XorNot 13y ago
  (2) is the most plausible. Given the amount of computer control and automation in a modern plane, it's likely the whole thing would've been put on autopilot when it was hijacked. It could've easily kept going for a long time and even been redirected in that mode. Once you run out of fuel of course, game over.
- leoc 13y ago
  > 1. Is unlikely as door is very secure now. Passengers can't get in. The passengers and aircrew would have had seven solid hours to try to break through that door, though, unless the plane landed somewhere first. Alternatively, hijackers (if hijackers there were) might have damaged the door or disabled its locking mechanism on their own way into the cockpit. Some desperate passengers might even deliberately start a fire in the fuselage, I suppose, as dangerous as that would be. One big problem with 4 is that to believe this you probably have to discount the primary radar reports of the airplane heading west over Malaysia/Thailand and then north up the Malacca Strait and Andaman Sea. It's hard to imagine the plane getting feet-dry on that northern SATCOM arc, at about the end of its fuel endurance, and then then heading far out to sea again. (Unless it landed and refuelled somewhere...) (EDIT: On second thoughts, I suppose you could turn east after the last radar contact and then go south, past the west of Indonesia, to the southern arc.) But even if you do that, where would you be headed if you were on that southern Indian Ocean arc after 7 hours in flight? It's not exactly an efficient route to Australia or Indonesia, and everywhere else is either hopelessly far or in the wrong direction.