The Mystery of the Missing Triple 7

nooshinjohn

Where the hell did it go? An aircraft the size of a Boeing 777 just does NOT evaporate into thin air. This aircraft type is some 230 feet long, 32 feet tall at the tail, and has a wingspan of 200 feet tip to tip. They weigh in fully loaded at up to 700,000 pounds , so this is by no means something that disappears. The given assumptions are that terrorists brought the bird down from cruising altitude of some 37000 feet by detonating an explosive device.

A sudden and violent decompression from that height would have rained debris down over a massive area, some of which would have easily floated and made for easy discovery. Even a high speed water impact would have been relatively easy to find, as was the case with the Air France Airbus A330 that crashed several years ago.

Until they find wreckage from this aircraft, I am more and more inclined to believe that the jet was hijacked and forced to land somewhere else. perhaps the reason nobody has claimed responsibility yet is that more is to come...

kevhed72

I'm sure the people at Boeing would like to know also...not the best publicity for one of its new models.

nooshinjohn

kevhed72 wrote: »

I'm sure the people at Boeing would like to know also...not the best publicity for one of its new models.

The type has been in service for more than 15 years now, so not really new. You might be thinking about the 787 "Dreamliner".

mhardy6647

The 777 isn't exactly new - and it was fatality free for its first 18 years of service until that very unfortunate Asiana brouhahah at SFO last year.

FWIW, I'm thinkin' missle... deliberate or otherwise, a la (?!?) KAL Flight 007...

nooshinjohn

mhardy6647 wrote: »

The 777 isn't exactly new - and it was fatality free for its first 18 years of service until that very unfortunate Asiana brouhahah at SFO last year.

FWIW, I'm thinkin' missle... deliberate or otherwise, a la (?!?) KAL Flight 007...

Such a scenario would produce wreckage of some kind...

steveinaz

I'm guessing something immediate and devastating.

tonyb

Sounds like a "lost" episode, sucked out of thin air into an alternate universe. Certainly are some strange stuff going on with the passports and all. Hijacked ? Radar should have picked it up. Flown under the radar ? That's a big plane to fly low enough to go under the radar and not be heard by scores of people.

I do find it somewhat disturbing that we can track just about any individual all over the planet, yet lose a whole frickin' airplane. I dunno, the whole thing doesn't pass the smell test but we have 250+ lives at stake here so I say continue on to the conclusion no matter how long it takes.

nooshinjohn

There is nothing about this particular case that passes the smell test. Any cataclysmic event should have been seen as a debris field the size of Manhattan by now. the only way this bird vanished over water is if the pilot somehow landed on it ala Sully Sulenburger on the Hudson, and it sank intact with all persons inside. Even then, explosive decompression as it sank would have produced debris of some kind. The other scenario is that it was forced to land elsewhere...

txcoastal1

Living coastal, and seeing the amount of debris that landed on the beaches of Galveston from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, it would lead me to believe that there was no explosion. On a short stretch of beach there must have been 1000+ shoes from New Orleans. If the plane would have nose dived I would suspect that the wings would have separated leaving debris. If it was a belly landing there should have been means of communications.

It a really strange scenaio

tonyb

John,
Even if he did land it like Sully and it sank intact, from 35,000 feet....that's a process with time to radio position. Why did the beacons not go off ? They are designed to go off immediately hitting land or water.

Maybe they hit a zone, like the Bermuda triangle where radio and gauges simply don't work at times. They could have kept going out into open ocean, lost. You would think though they had enough fuel to get them back into radio reception area's if that was the case. If it was hijacked, they did a damn good job of it to go completely unnoticed.

nooshinjohn

And thus the reason for making the thread Tony. Nothing about this makes any sense, and all the knowledge I have about aviation, and aircraft all seem to indicate the plane is intact and on the ground somewhere. According to the latest info I have heard, there was an unrequested heading change that seems to have the plane heading back towards Malaysia before loss of contact. An action such as turning off or otherwise disabling the jet's transponder data would be all that was needed to lose visual from ATC personnel. The distance they were out to sea at the time would have been far enough out that they would have been able to avoid detection and reduce altitude to treetop level.

The 777 also has the ability to fly low and slow, hugging the ground, and yet remain safe until it reached a landing site of some kind.

txcoastal1

If it landed intact the next goal is to find a 1.5 mi landing strip

cnh

Curiouser and curiouser! cried Alice...

I guess we'll hear something eventually?

cnh

dkg999

If you've been on a 777, there are plenty of center bulkheads that prevent most of the passengers from seeing the front of the plane. At that time of night most of the passengers would be asleep. A sudden cockpit breach by a team with lots of knowledge of the airplane and flight skills could of instantly incapacitated the pilots, sudden kill of the transponders, and the last clue is that the plane was caught on military radar making an unauthorized turn back towards the mainland.

The oil slicks turned out to not be from the plane, no debris, an Iranian booked the tickets for those with false passports ............ and we need to call in Banacek to solve the mystery (please google that if you are too young to remember the show!).

txcoastal1

Columbo

tonyb

dkg999 wrote: »

we need to call in Banacek to solve the mystery (please google that if you are too young to remember the show!).

Ya know, I dug that show and yes....unfortunately I'm old enough to remember. Ask me what I had for lunch yesterday though...I'll draw a blank.

Kinda wondering if this isn't a slight of hand trick. Half that part of the world is out looking in the ocean for this plane, it may very well have landed somewhere else. For what purpose though ? You don't go threw this much trouble to hijack a plane and then stfu. You would think with satellite surveillance of practically the whole planet, you'd know where it went. Time will tell, I only hope those people are ok.

rpf65

Not taking sides here, but what you may be forgetting is the plane was lost in "blue" water. It would be nothing short of sheer luck to spot a plane +300 feet deep from a moving airplane. Forget those spy movies, satellites would have to be brought into position for a good look. Not very many countries, and virtually no companies has resolution that good.

Nothing unusual about loosing radar contact. Those civilian's tracking planes don't really use what would be called radar. There is a transponder, in a plane that basically tells air traffic where they are. Some type of electronics disruption could have taken that out, not necessarily human induced.

The search grid will be lucky to be less than 500 square miles, and depending on wind, current, and water temp, will make finding debris a little tough. Not trying to predict the future either, but finding the general vicinity of the wreckage will take a few weeks at least. Shouldn't surprise anybody that nobody has any clue where it went down at. Needle in a hat stack isn't even close to this one.

Hermitism

I've been preparing for this since I was a kid with an Atari. The objective is to gather specimens from different planets aboard a cosmic ark.

Wake up sheeple, we're not alone.

F1nut

The given assumptions are that terrorists brought the bird down from cruising altitude of some 37000 feet by detonating an explosive device.

Our "spy" satellites have ruled out any explosion.

FTGV

It's in the water,they will find a debris field eventually.If it was on the ground it would have been spotted.

Tornado Red

David Copperfield

F1nut

FTGV wrote: »

If it was on the ground it would have been spotted.

I heard one of the experts state that the hundred foot high jungle canopy in the area could easily hide a plane on the ground.

dkg999

I cannot find the link for the story, however one of the big freight companies had a 747 cargo plane stolen and it took several years for them to find it. A little quick paint and a new set of numbers, and it was hidden in plane site (pun intended!).

And if it didn't explode, or break up in the air, then the pilots, the flight crew, all had access to emergency signals to activate. The plane flying outside the parameters of its operating envelope also will trigger a warning signal. Why no warning signals or distress calls?

brgman

Aliens.

brgman

Be patient,it takes a while to probe 239 people.

nooshinjohn

Tornado Red wrote: »

David Copperfield

Can't be him... he was working in Vegas at the time of the disappearance. Not so certain as to where Chris Angel or Steve Grey were however.

I just can't help but think that bird landed somewhere safely and is being prepped for something far worse. Hopefully the coming days will bring some real answers.

FTGV

F1nut wrote: »

I heard one of the experts state that the hundred foot high jungle canopy in the area could easily hide a plane on the ground.

Sure in pieces,I meant it was not in tact on the ground.Not many hidden runways that can handle a 777.

tonyb

F1nut wrote: »

I heard one of the experts state that the hundred foot high jungle canopy in the area could easily hide a plane on the ground.

Hmmm...but how do you park a plane 200 ft. across in a jungle....much less land it there.....and then possibly take off again. Unless it wasn't the plane someone was after, maybe a person or persons on that plane....and the rest hostages. But again, for what ? No demands, no terrorist laying claim....yet anyway, limited flying miles with the given fuel supply.

The plane is one of the most dependable, so the odds of something mechanical going wrong and the plane just disintegrating are highly unlikely. Foul play...a bomb, at that altitude debris and floating bodies would be all over. Sitting on the bottom of the ocean intact, .....find that one hard to swallow too. Hijacked...is more plausible and would explain the lack of alarms, radio transmissions, and plane changing course. If so, somebody knew what they were doing but we have yet to know for what ends.

Needle in a haystack is more like it if it went down, lots of open ocean to cover. Still, if it did go down on it's own, some people are going to have to answer some tuff questions. After 9/11 certain procedures and processes were put in place to avoid hijack situations and it appears most of them were thrown out the window in this case. I still think the possibility of this plane being on the ground somewhere is more likely than it sitting at the bottom of the ocean.

BTW our surveillance tech is pretty damn good, even simple Google Earth and I can count the people in my driveway and make out the model cars. I'm pretty sure the powers at be can do much better than Google Earth. We don't call them "Spy satellites" for nothing. I'm starting to think someone already knows what happened, and is simply buying time to figure out how to spin it or cover some asses.

codyc1ark

I found this interesting...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-11/malaysia-airlines-tragedy-highlights-challenges-of-24-hour-news/5312324

dkg999

The Iranian connection is interesting, even though they are down playing it. At this point the alien theory might be a good one.

tonyb

Looks like a case for X-files.

Another thing, given it was a hostile take over, a hijacking.....nobody got off a text with all those cell phones ? If it did go down, it had to be quick. Even just a hole in the plane would cause it to dive and decompress where nobody could use a cell phone much less hold on to one. 2 hours into the flight seat belts are off, people sleeping.....boom, a side of the plane blows out and people are getting sucked out. Your holding on for dear life as the plane goes down, may even have split in two. That would explain the lack of radio communications, they simply would not have had time. Doesn't explain why the beacons didn't go off....or the lack of scattered debris from that height.