There is only one plausible reason for the transponder to disappear. The crew was suddenly surprised and forced to
standby while the hijacker(s) turned it off.
Obviously access to the cockpit was possible. This also suggests the possibility of an
insider working with the hijackers who would have actual access. Certainly one such hijacker was knowledgible.
From that moment on, everything went wrong. 9/11 ensures that the passengers become
suicide warriors in their own right.
This already just happened on a Chinese plane. In this case once the struggle began, control
of the plane was lost and it did a powered dive into the ocean. This would leave scant debris. It may also be enough to destroy the
transponder.
False passports suggest a planned operation as well. This may well be linked to the other failed
hijacking in China.
I also think that both operations were meant to land the plane and run a
hostage exchange game while publicizing the plight of Muslims in western China.
Why Malaysia Airlines Jet Might Have Disappeared
NEW YORK March 9, 2014
(AP)
By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ AP Airlines Writer
The most dangerous parts of a flight are
takeoff and landing. Rarely do incidents happen when a plane is cruising seven
miles above the earth.
So the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines
jet well into its flight Saturday morning over the South China Sea has led
aviation experts to assume that whatever happened was quick and left the pilots
no time to place a distress call.
It could take investigators months, if not
years, to determine what happened to the Boeing 777 flying from Malaysia's
largest city of Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
"At this early stage, we're focusing on
the facts that we don't know," said Todd Curtis, a former safety engineer
with Boeing who worked on its 777 wide-body jets and is now director of the
Airsafe.com Foundation.
Military radar indicates that the missing
Boeing 777 jet may have turned back before vanishing, Malaysia's air force
chief said Sunday as authorities were investigating up to four passengers with
suspicious identifications. The revelations add to the mystery surrounding the
final minutes of the flight. Air force chief Rodzali Daud didn't say which
direction the plane veered when it apparently went off course, or how long it
flew in that direction, Some of the information it had was also corroborated by
civilian radar, he said.
If the information about the U-turn is
accurate, that lessens the probability that the plane suffered a catastrophic
explosion but raises further questions about why the pilots didn't signal for
help. If there was a minor mechanical failure — or even something more serious
like the shutdown of both of the plane's engines — the pilots likely would have
had time to radio for help. The lack of a call "suggests something very
sudden and very violent happened," said William Waldock, who teaches
accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott,
Ariz.
It's possible that there was either an abrupt
breakup of the plane or something that led it into a quick, steep dive. Some
experts even suggested an act of terrorism or a pilot purposely crashing the
jet.
"Either you had a catastrophic event that
tore the airplane apart, or you had a criminal act," said Scott Hamilton,
managing director of aviation consultancy Leeham Co. "It was so quick and
they didn't radio."
No matter how unlikely a scenario, it's too
early to rule out any possibilities, experts warn. The best clues will come
with the recovery of the flight data and voice recorders and an examination of
the wreckage. U.S. investigators from the FBI, the National Transportation
Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration and experts from Boeing
are heading to Asia to assist in the investigation.
Airplane crashes typically occur during
takeoff and the climb away from an airport, or while coming in for a landing,
as in last year's fatal crash of an Asiana Airlines jet in San Francisco. Just
9 percent of fatal accidents happen when a plane is at cruising altitude,
according to a statistical summary of commercial jet airplane accidents done by
Boeing.
Capt. John M. Cox, who spent 25 years flying
for US Airways and is now CEO of Safety Operating Systems, said that whatever
happened to the Malaysia Airlines jet, it occurred quickly. The problem had to
be big enough, he said, to stop the plane's transponder from broadcasting its
location, although the transponder can be purposely shut off from the cockpit.
One of the first indicators of what happened
will be the size of the debris field. If it is large and spread out over tens
of miles, then the plane likely broke apart at a high elevation. That could
signal a bomb or a massive airframe failure. If it is a smaller field, the
plane probably fell from 35,000 feet intact, breaking up upon contact with the
water.
"We know the airplane is down. Beyond
that, we don't know a whole lot," Cox said.
The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety
records in aviation history. It first carried passengers in June 1995 and went
18 years without a fatal accident. That streak came to an end with the July
2013 Asiana crash. Three of the 307 people aboard that flight died. Saturday's
Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 239 passengers and crew would only be the
second fatal incident for the aircraft type.
"It's one of the most reliable airplanes
ever built," said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National
Transportation Safety Board.
Some of the possible causes for the plane
disappearing include:
— A CATASTROPHIC STRUCTURAL FAILURE. Most
aircraft are made of aluminum which is susceptible to corrosion over time,
especially in areas of high humidity. But given the plane's long history and
impressive safety record, experts suggest that a failure of the airframe, or
the plane's Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engines, is unlikely.
More of a threat to the plane's integrity is
the constant pressurization and depressurization of the cabin for takeoff and
landing. In April 2011, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 made an emergency
landing shortly after takeoff from Phoenix after the plane's fuselage ruptured,
causing a 5-foot tear. The plane, with 118 people on board, landed safely. But
such a rupture is less likely in this case. Airlines fly the 777 on longer
distances, with many fewer takeoffs and landings, putting less stress on the
airframe.
"It's not like this was Southwest
Airlines doing 10 flights a day," Hamilton said. "There's nothing to
suggest there would be any fatigue issues."
— BAD WEATHER. Planes are designed to fly
through most severe storms. However, in June 2009, an Air France flight from
Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed during a bad storm over the Atlantic Ocean. Ice
built up on the Airbus A330's airspeed indicators, giving false readings. That,
and bad decisions by the pilots, led the plane into a stall causing it to
plummet into the sea. All 228 passengers and crew aboard died. The pilots never
radioed for help.
In the case of Saturday's Malaysia Airlines
flight, all indications show that there were clear skies.
— PILOT DISORIENTATION. Curtis said that the
pilots could have taken the plane off autopilot and somehow went off course and
didn't realize it until it was too late. The plane could have flown for another
five or six hours from its point of last contact, putting it up to 3,000 miles
away. This is unlikely given that the plane probably would have been picked up
by radar somewhere. But it's too early to eliminate it as a possibility.
— FAILURE OF BOTH ENGINES. In January 2008, a
British Airways 777 crashed about 1,000 feet short of the runway at London's
Heathrow Airport. As the plane was coming in to land, the engines lost thrust
because of ice buildup in the fuel system. There were no fatalities.
Loss of both engines is possible in this case,
but Hamilton said the plane could glide for up to 20 minutes, giving pilots
plenty of time to make an emergency call. When a US Airways A320 lost both of
its engines in January 2009 after taking off from LaGuardia Airport in New York
it was at a much lower elevation. But Capt. Chesley B. "Sully"
Sullenberger still had plenty of communications with air traffic controllers
before ending the six-minute flight in the Hudson River.
— A BOMB. Several planes have been brought
down including Pan Am Flight 103 between London and New York in December 1988.
There was also an Air India flight in June 1985 between Montreal and London and
a plane in September 1989 flown by French airline Union des Transports AĆ©riens
which blew up over the Sahara.
— HIJACKING. A traditional hijacking seems
unlikely given that a plane's captors typically land at an airport and have
some type of demand. But a 9/11-like hijacking is possible, with terrorists
forcing the plane into the ocean.
— PILOT SUICIDE. There were two large jet
crashes in the late 1990s — a SilkAir flight and an EgyptAir flight— that are
believed to have been caused by pilots deliberately crashing the planes.
Government crash investigators never formally declared the crashes suicides but
both are widely acknowledged by crash experts to have been caused by deliberate
pilot actions.
— ACCIDENTAL SHOOT-DOWN. There have been
incidents when a country's military unintentionally shot down civilian
aircraft. In July 1988, the United States Navy missile cruiser USS Vincennes
accidently shot down an Iran Air flight, killing all 290 passengers and crew.
In September 1983, a Korean Air Lines flight was shot down by a Russian fighter
jet.
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