Malaysian Flight

[LovelyLadyLux]

Another tragedy with lots of questions and no easy answers. I saw this broadcast last night and it pre-empted the regular TV News here. Today there seems to be speculation about 2 passports stolen several months ago. Can't even imagine how the families of the passengers feel. The questions they must have and no available answers.

This is a cut and paste of what the News is saying here:

US. officials told NBC News on Saturday that they are investigating terrorism concerns after revelations that two people apparently boarded the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner with stolen passports.

The officials said that they had found no clear link to terrorism. There are other criminal reasons, for example drug smuggling, that stolen passports might be used to board a plane.

Two names on the passenger manifest of the plane, Malaysia Flight 370, matched passports reported stolen in Thailand, one from an Italian man and the other from an Austrian man, according to foreign governments and NBC News sources.

The news, hours after the jet disappeared over the South China Sea with 239 people on board, significantly changed how U.S. officials looked at the disaster. The officials said they were checking into passenger manifests and going back through intelligence.

“We are aware of the reporting on the two stolen passports,” one senior official said. “We have not determined a nexus to terrorism yet, although it’s still very early, and that’s by no means definitive.”

There was still no sign of wreckage more than 24 hours after air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, a red-eye from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. It vanished in relatively clear weather, without sending a distress signal, at what analysts said would have been cruising altitude. In a possible clue, Vietnamese planes spotted two oil slicks consistent with jet fuel in the water off Vietnam.

On board were 227 passengers and 12 crew. Most of the passengers were Chinese. Three were Americans — one adult and two children, according to the passenger manifest.

Desperate wait for families in Beijing after jet vanishes
TODAY

In Beijing, anguished families gathered at the airport and were taken to a hotel to wait for what little information there was.

Search teams from Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore and China were looking for wreckage, and the United States sent a naval destroyer into the South China Sea to help. The air search was called off during the night but was to resume at daylight Sunday, or early Saturday evening Eastern time.

The airline asked for prayers from the world.

The Italian on the passenger list was Luigi Maraldi, 37. His father, Walter Maraldi, told NBC News on Saturday that Luigi was vacationing in Thailand and had called to check in.

“We didn’t know about the accident,” the father said from Cesena, Italy. “Thank God he heard about it before us.”

Walter Maraldi said his son had his passport stolen a year ago in Thailand.

In Austria, the foreign ministry confirmed to NBC News that police had made contact with a citizen who was also on the passenger list, and who reported his passport stolen two years ago.

“We believe that the name and passport were used by an unidentified person to board the plane,” a spokesman for the ministry said.

It is unusual, but not unheard of, for one person to board a plane with a stolen passport. It is very rare for two people with stolen passports to board the same plane, terrorism analysts say.

Asked earlier whether terrorism was suspected in the disappearance of the jet, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said authorities were “looking at all possibilities,” The Associated Press reported.

Malaysia has not seen significant terrorist activity, and airport security there has tended to be exemplary.

Earlier in the day, U.S. officials told NBC News that “all we know is something quick and catastrophic” happened to the plane.

The investigation will probably take some time, partly because authorities would have to find wreckage and perform forensics tests. In the crash of TWA Flight 800, in 1996, it took more than a year to rule out terrorism.

While flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders, the so-called black boxes, can emit signals from underwater, it can be extremely difficult to find planes that disappear over the sea.

When Air France Flight 447 went down in the Atlantic Ocean in June 2009, with 228 people on board on the way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, bodies and some parts of the plane were found within two weeks, but it took two years to find the main wreckage.

The last fatal crash for Malaysia Airlines was in 1995, when 34 people were killed near the city of Tawau. In 1977, a domestic Malaysia Airlines flight was hijacked and crashed, killing 100 people.

Andy Eckardt, Claudio Lavanga, Erin McClam and Michele Neubert of NBC News contributed to this report. Reuters and The Associated Press also contributed.
First published March 8th 2014, 8:22 am


Pete Williams
Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent based in Washington, D.C.

[Horus]

Pretty well much like the coverage and accounts we are getting in the UK, but obviously something catastrophic happened to the plane.

[Grandad]

I find it strange that so far no debris has been found. And why has the search been extended to the west Malaysia coast in the straits of Malacca? I still have an open mind about this. Could it be that there were terrorists on board and they were able to take over the aircraft switch off its location beacons and take it elsewhere? Or could it have been downed by a missile?
For there not to be a distress 'Mayday' suggests to me that the plane was either hijacked and taken 'Who knows where' or there was a catastrophic failure so sudden that there was no time for the usual Mayday?
It seems most likely that the 239 on board have perished but I always keep an open mind until evidence is found......perpetual optimist I suppose.

[Horus]

I think that had it been hijacked some sort of remote signal would have been triggered during the hijacking and the beacons are all automatic. Possible causes are a bomb on board or some other catastrophic failure that may account for no voice contact to be given, a May Day message is pretty instant to give out even from a ditching or crashing aircraft. They should also have been visible at all times on radar even if they were hijacked, some possible scenarios are as Grandad said being hit by a defence missile of some sort if they were in a restricted area although I can't think of any high risks area that they may have strayed into. Terrorists may have taken over the aircraft, but because of increased security may not have been able to breach the cabin, there seems to be some speculation that the aircraft had made a turn as if heading back again and if that was the pilots refusing to negotiate or allow them into the cockpit, they (the terrorists) may have detonated an explosive device as they knew the game was up if the plane returned to Malasia.

[Grandad]

Yes H but if your last scenario was the case, there would have been time to report the incident. As far as catastrophic failure of the airframe is concerned, the worst I can think of would be the spar fracturing due to metal fatigue. As a result the aircraft would simply fall from the sky.....but I would still expect there to be debris caused on impact.
This one really is becoming a mystery in my opinion, and don't forget there are some ethnic problems within China????

[LovelyLadyLux]

Still lots of talk on all the News networks here and speculation all over as to the 'whys' and 'causes.'

That this happened so fast is mystifying to me and I can only think that a bomb going off would have caused something so immediate that precluded the pilots having any time to react to even report it. I'd think if it was some sort of mechanical failure with a crash being imminent surely one of the pilots would have been able to signal something and get some sort of signal out there. I thought about the possibility of North Korea shooting them out of the air - not sure why I singled out N. Korea but I did. I did hear that the US is using some sort of 'heat seeking' technology to determine if the plane was shot out of the air.

I've heard the theory that they were turning around too however most of the talk and theories I heard this morning were focusing on the 2 stolen passports.

Definitely a mystery and such a tragic ending for so many people and their families. Absolutely awful.

[Horus]

I think that the passport thing may be just another piece in the puzzle that may have little significance, as on the news this morning it was giving out that a large number of passengers each year were travelling on false documents and passports and it was a huge figure, something like a billion! This initially seems very alarming until you consider that just so long as the security of what can be carried aboard an aircraft is maintained then the false travel documents are really an immigration issue that does (or should not in itself) be affecting aircraft security. To me the biggest mystery is that they did not have a pretty good location prior to it going off radar, even a crashing plane would be visible until the point of impact or the actual explosion took place, so why the search area is so large is strange.

[LovelyLadyLux]

The plane seems to have evaporated. There was something yellow bobbing in the water but that turned out to be nothing and the oil slick they thought they had turned out to be not pertinent to the plane. Quite a mystery with no real 'leads' forthcoming.

[LovelyLadyLux]

Just watching evening TV News and one of the theories advanced on this topic was that of Pilot suicide. Hadn't thought about that at all but I guess that aspect has to be considered as well. One of the other Talking Heads said that this could have been a 'dry run' by a terrorist group who wanted to see how doing what it was they did would work when they did it "for real" with "many more planes" involved..........

Hadn't thought about that one either

Think I'm giving up on the evening news!

[Horus]

The more this continues the more it seems that something strange has happened and the pilot suicide theory does look like a possible scenario and would explain the lack of radio contact, a similar thing has happened before.

[Kiya]

But surely there would have been some wreckage shown by now...............all very sad .

The next we'll here the plane was taken over by aliens ..........sorry folks but I bet there's more than me thinking it.

[Grandad]

The pair travelling on stolen passports have now been identified and someone who sounds like a reliable witness who knew them has confirmed that they were (are) Iranians seeking asylum in Europe.
It has also been suggested that ALL tracking beacons may have been disabled and the aircraft then took a different route. There is a precedent for this. Could it have come down or been brought down in the Malaysian jungle hence no debris found, so far, at sea??? The black box flight recorder has automatic beacons but these have a limited range.
More questions than answers I'm afraid.

[DJKeefy]

It's all so weird, the below video adds more to the conspiracy list.

phpBB [video]

[Horus]

That one looks like someone cooking up a conspiracy theory Keefy, but whatever the answer it is certainly very strange.

[LovelyLadyLux]

@ Kiya - you're not the only one who had the 'abducted by aliens' theory cross their mind.

@ Grandad - IF they did end up over jungle the plane could be hard to find

@ Keefy - hmmmm ???

Definitely more questions than answers. I'm not sure I fully understand why this black box isn't beeping, binging, pinging or whatever it is supposed to do.

Bottom line - something as big as a plane can't just blip off the map. It HAS to be somewhere! Can't wrap my mind why it got so far out and then disappeared without anybody being able to get some sort of SOS out (as in why the pilots couldn't signal there was a problem)

As the plane just took off it had to full of fuel OR full enough that a spark would definitely catch. They do force fuel into the wings so I can understand if that went Kaboom the middle part of the plane might suddenly erupt but it would still leave nose and tail end parts.

Seems the terrorist aspect has been taken out of the equation so that leaves?????

[LovelyLadyLux]

Just talking to a friend about this. Seems everybody loves a mystery. Their theory is that the plane was taken over, apparently caught by Philippene military radar as flying low, was carrying senior level engineers who had specific talents possibly to be used by some Power who needs their expertise and actually landed in a pre-designated spot and is now being repainted or otherwise covered up and hidden from view.

As I said - everybody loves a mystery and this one definitely has me scratching my head.

(**am not trying to minimize that many families are suffering terribly, just caught in the mystery of an entire plane disappearing without a trace)

[Horus]

The latest theory is of a slow depressurisation taking place that the pilots may or may not have been aware of and the pilots trying to make a return. As the depressurisation is happening slowly they are unaware of what is happening and that they are slipping into unconsciousness. Then at some point they go fully unconscious and the plane carries on flying in whatever direction it may take until it runs out of fuel or crashes, more of a plausible explanation I think.
Also the air traffic control is a bit vague in that area, so the Vietnamese may not have accepted it into their airspace and the Malaysian control think that they have handed it over to them especially if the aircraft made a turn.

[LovelyLadyLux]

All quite a mystery and theories are endless. Am sure we'll all know in due time. I'd like to think that the plane has crash landed safely on a tropical island where everybody is ok and is busy writing SOS in the sane with stones while dining on coconuts.

The decompression theory sounds like a keeper or at least a plausible explanation however so does getting shot out of the sky, pilot suicide and abduction by space aliens!

Time will tell.

[LovelyLadyLux]

What do you think of the Chinese radar images? Is that the Malaysian plane?

[Horus]

It's the best lead yet and in the same area as the last radar contact and now with this report saying that cracking could occur, one has to start thinking 'Comet' which as we know had a faultless record until they just started falling out of the skies with metal fatigue