How can they be so certain the plane actually crashed?

[Chemisse]

I'm probably missing something obvious, but how can they be so sure it crashed at all?

If it had just entered an area where radar could no longer detect it, and it had not yet entered the next radar-active area, couldn't hijackers have simply flown it somewhere while out of view, and landed?

It would have to have been within the area that can't be 'seen', and I can't think of a great motive, (what's the point in taking an aircraft if you can't bring it somewhere that would be useful to you?) but is it feasible?

[ForgoTheConsequence]

1. You can't just hide a 777.

And I think it takes a big airport to have a runway big enough to land one.

[NightWatcher]

28. David Copperfield did. I saw it on tv

Has the FBI interviewed him about this?

[ForgoTheConsequence]

31. Doesn't that creep own his own island?

Very suspicious.

[bigwillq]

2. So, everyone on board wanted to disappear

and not have contact with their worried families?

[Chemisse]

5. I believe I mentioned hijackers, not passengers deciding to go off somewhere.

[bigwillq]

39. Ah....my bad

I did read the whole OP. Guess not well enough. LOL




Why no ransom?


I guess I really don't read well. lol

[Blue Owl]

3. What if it lost sudden cabin pressure on the ascent...

...but somehow kept ascending all the way to the ozone where it would break apart so high up, the debris would scatter over such a huge area as to be almost imperceptible?

Just a theory. Has that ever happened before?

[Travis_0004]

16. They were not climbing

They were already at their desired altitude when they lost contact. They would have been required to have Autopilot on when cruising, unless there was an emergency and they had to take it off.

So if they suddenly lost cabin pressure, the plane would continue on the heading until it ran out of fuel and crashed. Even when climbing, its always done on auto pilot, and you set your desired altitude. So if you are at 1,000 feet after lift off, you tell the autopilot you want to be at 30k feet, and the plane levels itself off after reaching 30k feet. Pilots (and passengers) have oxygen masks as well, so if you loose pressure, the pilot would be able to put the mask on, and descend to a safer height.

I only have experience flying small planes. The plane I fly is rated for 25k feet. At 30k feet the engine will start to overheat (prop plane) due to lack of airflow and if nothing is done, it will eventually stall out. It would never get to high that it would break up due to height. I also wouldn't think a plane would break apart if you climbed to high. You may run out of lift/thrust to climb higher. You may overheat your engines, you may have trouble keeping cabin pressure up, but I wouldn't think it would just explode.

[pangaia]

27. Blue owl,, you're kidding, right? :>)

[Nay]

4. They can't be entirely certain, of course, but the plane had 5-6 hours of fuel left, and

no one has reported the plane landing or crashing anywhere on land. That doesn't mean it couldn't have been hijacked to some out-of-the-way plain in Vietnam or something, but the fact that this part of the world is heavily populated makes this improbable due to the number of witnesses. I think it would be much more "findable" on land, if only from triangulation on one or more passengers' cell phones.

What baffles me is the total silence from all the agencies that theoretically have satellite coverage good enough to see my asshole from 10 miles up -- and they can't follow footage of an airliner? Of course, maybe they can't do that, exactly, and what they can do is not as sophisticated as I think.

[louis-t]

10. I always say "They can read the date on a nickel

laying on the sidewalk from 10 miles up."

[HereSince1628]

13. They can see in great detail things that AREN'T moving.

The changing position of satellite cameras as they orbit can be use to create 'virtual numerical apertures' that facilitate great resolution.

But the time it takes to move from one horizon to another means that things that move may not be resolved.

[jakeXT]

11. The Pentagon has said no flash visible

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11783855

[Travis_0004]

23. Satelites can not see everything at once

They have a somewhat limited field of view. If they wanted to get a picture of my back yard, right this second, its not possible. They would have to wait until a satellite flew over my yard. It would happen quickly, within a few hours, but it would not be instant. The odds of a satellite viewing the area where the plane crashed are close to 0%.

In the cold war, the US and Russians would play hide and seek from spy satellites from the other country. They would know that at 2:30pm a spy satellite would be flying overhead, so they would take a break at 2:15, hide the equipment, wait until the satellite passed to get back to work, knowing they would have a few hours before the next satellite passed. In this sense they are somewhat limited, and its the reason that we created the U2, and SR-71, because satellites are predictable, and they can not stay in one spot forever. I would imagine this is not quite as easy today with more satellites and better satellites. During the cold war, most satellites were launches on a Molniya orbit, which spends the majority of its time viewing the Northern Hemisphere. Even to this day, I would be willing to bet we have better satellite coverage of the northern hemisphere than the southern. (I realize this accident happened in the Northern Hemisphere, but it was relatively close to the Equator where spy satellite coverage may not be as good.)

So to answer your question, yes, a satellite can see your asshole from orbit, but you would have to call NORD and schedule an appointment first.

[Nay]

25. LOL! I think I'll pass on that NORD appointment......

[Travis_0004]

26. Its not optional. . . .

[MrScorpio]

6. I think that the law of gravity still applies here

But then, the insurance company could bring in Banacek (if he's still on the job) to find out how the plane was disappeared and who did it.

[Travis_0004]

7. There are radar dead spots, but none next to large airports

If you fly over the ocean, the only way they really know where you are is because your plane transmits your location. And yes, its possible to turn this off on most planes (because if there was an electrical fire in that location, you would stop providing electoral power to that).

If you wanted to hijack a plane, you could probably do circles over the ocean all day and not show up on radar, at least until your fuel ran out. Once you hit land, it would be very difficult to find a spot that radar could not spot you, and impossible to find a runway that is at least 5,000 feet long that does not have radar and air traffic control (and lots of witnesses). (and landing at a 5k runway length would be very dangerous. You better dump the fuel, and hit the runway the first second possible, then full reverse thrusters and hit the brakes as well). You can maybe land on a 5,000 runway, but you are not taking off again. Also, once you drop below a few thousand feet, cells phones have service. I would think at least one person on that plane would be able to text a loved one, and let them know what is happening.

I would have to think the plane blew up. At 30k feet, you could glide a plane without power for at least 20 minutes. That is plenty of time to radio for help, and at least let somebody know you are in distress. Even if terrorist took it over, and the pilot didn't say anything over the radio (because somebody else took over the control), the flight attendants in the back usually have a way to communicate with the airline company would would relay that message to ATC.

[Blue_Tires]

8. Planes don't get simply "hijacked" these days

with locked cockpit doors...

And I don't know how many rural fields in south asia are capable of handling a 777

[geek tragedy]

9. where would they land it? runways that long

aren't a real common thing

[Cleita]

18. North Korea?

It would take about the same amount of fuel as to get to Beijing. Don't know how hijackers would breach the cockpit doors unless one of the cockpit crew was in on it.

[Travis_0004]

29. I don't think you could avoid South Korean and American Radar and get to North Korea

I would imagine that airspace is heavily monitored, and a missing 777 would certainly be noticed.

[Cleita]

30. You are right of course.

I would like to think they are all right and even if held captive somewhere for ransom instead of ....

[Chemisse]

32. So would I.

And if we feel that way, imagine how the families must feel. Without a sign of the crashed plane, it would be hard to stop hoping.

[pscot]

12. Radar coverage in that area is very good

according to an expert on CNN earlier. Radar from Vietnam and Malasia overlap where the plane disappeared.

[Codeine]

14. Takes a pretty big - and high-quality - runway to land a 777.

I've heard about skilled pilots in Third World airports landing on around six thousand feet of runway in a pinch, but one imagines a normal pilot requiring significantly more, and those stories may be just bragging anyway. The odds that a hijacker is going to put one wheels-down on a dirt strip in the Malaysian jungle or some Pacific atoll are somewhat. . . remote, to say the least.

[riverwalker]

15. "was one of the men named Conway?"

from James Hilton's Lost Horizon.
(In the story, the plane is hijacked by Tibetans and taken to utopia of
Shangri-La.)

[FSogol]

22. Awesome book! Plus, Ronald Coleman played Robert Conway in the 1937 Frank Capra film.

It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture.

BTW, you are DU's daily winner of best obscure reference in a post. Keep up the good work!

[warrior1]

17. I think someone would have used their cellphone by now

[Cleita]

19. Even here in the USA, there are still wilderness areas with no cell phone service.

I know. I have broken down in a couple of them.

[Chemisse]

20. Thanks to all of you who gave good, serious responses.

I figured there were good reasons why it was not feasible, and I appreciate hearing them.

[uppityperson]

21. It's possible, but highly unlikely. As far as not finding it yet, it took 5 days to find AF447 which

was on it's flight path. This one may have deviated, meaning much more territory to cover in the search.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/world/asia/malaysia-missing-jet.html

(clip)
So far there is only speculation about what happened to the missing flight, which was headed to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. But Arnie Reiner, a retired captain with US Airways and the former chief accident investigator at Pan Am, noted, “If they somehow got turned around or went off course when the thing was going down, it could be 90 or 100 miles away from where the flight data disappeared.”

It is not yet known whether the Malaysian plane deviated from its planned flight path, or how long the pilots could still fly the aircraft after the last reported contact. Assuming that the plane remained in powered flight or a controlled glide, the potential search area would have to be wide and long, covering thousands of square miles. After more than two days of fruitless search, Malaysian officials expanded the search area on Monday.
(clip)

But extended searches are sometimes needed. When Air France Flight 447 vanished over the Atlantic in June 2009, it took five days to find any wreckage, and almost two years to find the black boxes. Similarly, the cockpit data recorder from a South African Airways Boeing 747 that went down in November 1987 was not located until January 1989. It revealed that the plane crashed because of a fire onboard, not because of an act of terrorism, so no further search was conducted for the flight data recorder, the other black box.

Another rule of thumb for pilots may shed light on why no distress signal was heard from the Malaysia Airlines flight. Pilots have a mantra for setting priorities in an emergency: Aviate, navigate, communicate. The first priority is to fly the airplane. Telling air traffic controllers on the ground what is going on comes third, since doing so is unlikely to instantly yield any help with the crisis in the cockpit, whatever it is....(more)

[FSogol]

24. They flew it inside a bigger CIA plane to hide it from us! James Bond is looking for it right now.

[Chemisse]

34. Good to see you're wearing your tin foil hat.

[Myrina]

33. Aliens.

It must be a mass alien abduction.

[Texasgal]

35. What?

Where in the heck can you hide a jumbo plane?

[Chemisse]

36. I think the investigators are wondering that right now - lol

[Texasgal]

38. It's a weird story that's for sure.

In my mind I have no doubt that the plane crashed and they just haven't found it yet. I feel awful for the families that are awaiting word of their loved ones.

[uppityperson]

37. It took 5 days to find AF447 that crashed on its flight path. MH370 may be off its path.

[undeterred]

40. Kim Jong Un

wanted a new plane so he hijacked it and its in his backyard. He is pretty crazy. So he would brainwash the passengers and crew to be in his army and fly him around.