Just tell me what you think about the flight and what you think happened!!
Just tell me what you think about the flight and what you think happened!!
I think they were abducted by aliens. Not to make light of the situation, but without any factual content whatsoever to date, it's as good a speculation as any.
They should have found something if it went down in the water. I believe this is a hijacking. They should have found something by now. An airplane just does not disappear, not today with all the tech stuff we have and every other country. IMHO...
Tony
It's all speculation at this point! It is fairly clear that this bird is underwater somewhere and the transponder was off line early in the flight. If they do recover the black boxes then we'll have real data to support some kind of explanation regarding what happened. I'm sure we'll get all kinds of speculation like hijackers, crazy pilots, bombs on-board, or a total airframe failure. I'll take a wait and see on this one, too little information coming very slowly to the general public. If they can't recover whatever "key" evidence is out there we may never know what actually happened.
Joe
I think they will find it fairly soon. In due time all will be known, flight recorders paramount.
It seems it flew on for a ways after comms ended. The auto-pilot would allow that, once programmed or pointed in the right direction. With the transponder off, it was most likely 'turned off'. If so, whoever was in the cockpit knew about flying planes. That may include an intruder or one/both of the assigned pilots.
I think they did get away from last contact, or they would of found debris. I hope the U.S. Navy can uncover some 'pings' in the ocean somewhere. I'm still about open to all possibilities.
Im with the alien theory on this one. Not the ones we see on TV running across the border in droves everyday, but the outer space kind.
The problem with the "Hijackers took the airplane" theory is that the 777 is the world's largest twin-engine airliner. You're NOT going to fly it into a secret jungle airstrip carved out by a couple of bulldozers. At least if you intend to fly it again.
That 777 is going to need a 5,000-foot paved runway. Most are pretty busy. The putative hijackers had all night to fly to one, true, but seems like the sudden appearance of a Malaysian 777, coupled with the reported disappearance of one, would likely attract some attention.
My guess? Gas bomb. Something that affects the lungs, first, so the pilots can't transmit what's happening. Sarin, maybe...there's precedence for it, in terrorist attacks.
Bomb goes off, pilots stop breathing. Captain makes the pilot's instinctive reaction of trying to turn back for home; when he realizes he's going under, he activates the autopilot as his last act (the desperate hope that he'll wake up). Co-Pilot tries to call for help in non-verbal way...change the transponder to 7700. But he's convulsing from the gas, and accidentally turns it off, instead.
Gas bomb would have minimal explosives, less likely to be detected at airport security. Any "elderly" passengers with oxygen tanks?
No announcement of credit by any terrorist group, because THEY don't know what happened either. They probably expected the plane to crash immediately.
Ron Wanttaja
Ron you could be right.
But what if this has been planned for years the taking of a heavy such as this and an airstrip built somewhere out of site, cover it with some soil to cover it up and just land her on the topsoil. Put her in an underground hangar.
A gas bomb would would not shut down system one after the other with a time delay of mins like they are reporting. But it would decompress the airplane. Is there systems in place where the automatic pilot will descend if a decompression happens? If not this could be the cause, The pilots turned the plane and something was not working in the oxygen system and everyone went to sleep and the plane just kept flying kinda like what happened to the Golfer.
That's a huge construction project. You aren't going to do it with a couple guys and a backhoe. There are probably going to be hundreds of folks involved, most of them just ordinary contractors. Most of the governments in that region will want their kick-backs for all that money.Originally Posted by 1600vw
There can be semi-abandoned airports our there you might be able to use, so you don't have to construct a runway. Maybe some have hangars large enough for a 777. But if you want an *underground* hangar, you're going to have just as massive of a construction process. IIRC, the tail of a 777 is like, 70 feet high (I was on a VIP tour of the factory just this week). How *long* of a ramp will you need to get the plane into that massive underground hangar and be able to drag that 500,000-pound mass back up.... thousand feet? Again, not something you're going to do with just a couple of guys.
(Oh, look...they dug up a bunch of Spitfires in the process! :-)
In any case, that's a huge effort you're going to have to try and hide from civilian and national satellite imagery systems. And folks just walking by.
If you're going to fly it anywhere afterwards, you're also going to need thousands of gallons of Jet-A. There are probably people scanning records right now, looking for odd deliveries.
IIRC, the the engine-reporting system transmitted at 0110, and the last transponder contact was 0131.
However, my understanding is that the engine reporting system is NOT continuous! It was supposed to send an update every half-hour. From what I understand, that's exactly what it did for the next several hours.
The Payne Stewart case does come to mind, but airliners have warning system and the pilots have their own oxygen masks that they're trained to don when necessary. It's certainly a possibility though... there was a Greek 737 that was lost nine years ago in what they think was exactly this scenario.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522
Ron Wanttaja
Last edited by rwanttaja; 03-14-2014 at 01:41 PM. Reason: Clarification re: engine-reporting system
Like I said b/4, "lots of speculation" some great Hollywood plots but no real world facts. If it's under deep water we may never find it or be unable to recover the boxes that tell the tale.
Joe
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