Missing Malaysian 777 (Page 3)

Everything on a plane that draws power has to be "switchable" for the safety of the plane.  If there's a short circuit in the transponder system the crew needs to be able to turn it off.  There have been other cases where a transponder has caused interference with other aircraft and a pilot is requested to turn it off.  The other scenario was mentioned earlier about a plane on the ground.

so my 30 cents on this discussion.

Pilot/Co-PIlot most likely were responsible for planes diversion.  Post 9/11 it is extremely difficult to breech a cockpit and even more difficult when the other passengers see you trying.  Everyone knows what the likely outcome is if a hijacker gets in the cockpit, so it's 239 vs. 1 or 2.

Dropping in altitude to evade radar interception means the person in control did not want anyone to know where he was going.  This could feed into the "stolen plane" theory, but it could also feed into the suicide theory by making it even worse on the families not knowing where their loved ones are.

As for Satellite  tracking.  Satellites don't track planes in the sense of ground based radar.  They simply take pictures of the area they're focused on.  There's no reason for any satellite to be taking photo's of the indian ocean at that point in time so I doubt there is much usable information to be gleaned.

Landing in another country?  I feel this would be highly unlikely because you would have 200+ people with cellphones and other electronic devices.  I'm not sure of any country (even pakistan and such) that wouldn't have a cellphone ping of some sort from somebodies phone.

My thoughts are simply that the pilot/co-pilot wanted to commit suicide and take as many people as he could with him and make it be as memorable and painful as possible.  There is a slight chance that he had a target in mind to fly into and the passengers were able to overtake the cockpit similar to flight 93 on 9/11.  I'm guessing (and that's all it is) that he flew deep into the remote indian ocean and crashed the plane there.

If the plane does turn up in tact somewhere then I'm calling it now that Hollywood will have a movie out within 1 year to dramatize the event.  

What does everyone think of this guy's theory...  https://plus.google.com/106271056358366282907/posts/GoeVjHJaGBz 

Crash

As a former Navy guy who was in charge of "shooting stuff down" from the skies and protecting the USS Kitty Hawk battlegroup I'll add this.

There is no reason for a carrier battle group to be in the area of the flight path.  There's a slight chance that a carrier group was transiting through the area heading to or from the gulf, but that is probably unlikely.  The US doesn't typically have a Navy presence at all in the Gulf of Thailand for the simple fact that there's no reason to be there.  The action is over in the gulf.

Even if a carrier battlegropu were "in the area" there is a significant limitation to what you can track due to radar horizon.  When I was in the Navy the AN-SPS-48E was the main 3D air search radar in use and I'm pretty sure all the carriers still use them today.  With that radar our max radar range was around 250 nautical miles (in perfect conditions) and a target would have to be flying over 30k feet to even be seen due to the curvature of the earth.  According to reports flight 370 dropped to ~5000 feet.  At that altitude and assuming a radar height on the ship of 50 feet the radar horizon drops to a little over 100 miles in perfect conditions.

So, given the potential places this plane could have gone, it would be next to impossible for any US ship to have seen it on their radar even if they were in the area.  Also, it could certainly be different today, but back in the mid 90's we didn't record any radar data.  It was purely used for real time thread detection and elimination.  We didn't care what happened yesterday.  

As for us shooting it down.  If that were the case, there would most certainly be debris found floating from the missile shot.  The standard navy anti-air missle (SM-2 Block IV) flies very high, very fast (Mach 3.5+), and comes down on top of its target, so the odds of an anti air missile coming from a ship and not being detected by any other radar system is very remote.  Even if it were an air to air missile radar would likely show the other plane or missile in the area.  
When you look at a radar screen there's always a little stick in front of the plane.  That stick indicates the speed of the aircraft.  When there's a missile in the air it has a stick shooting all the way across the screen because it's so fast.  Everyone notices a missile in the air.

I feel a little out of place.  I'm not usually the one shooting down conspiracy theories, but I have to stick up for my Navy brothers.  

What was the vector Victor?

Did they have clearance Clarence?

I just realized after reading this, I have not seen a SECOND of coverage of this.  Pretty much on accident, but also because days and weeks of speculation is just a waste of my time - so I haven't searched it out.  I gave no stock in the "balloon boy" story (it was funny to see everyone's concern of his safety flying around up there in that balloon while I said wait and see, it's probably a hoax).  I tried to avoid the Boston Marathon speculation as well because every time I tried to find NEWS about it, it was some reporter on location just spitting out conjecture and speculation to fill up air space.  Any big event/story like this?  I just realize how angry I get at our sensationalist media... 

His theory seems well thought-out and plausible. Of course, it's just another guess, but probably one of the more believable that I've heard so far.

Her plane only had one passenger.  And she's been holding that guy for a LONG time.

This theory is junk......he thinks the crew was overcome by smoke and then the plane flew on until fire consumed the controls?  What?  Seven hours later?  LOL

Do you like movies about Gladiators????

I only get my information about it from this board.......and apparently it's just as good as CNN, or any other, at speculation.

I'm certainly not going to say they couldn't have tracked it because they could.  I did two tours in the gulf and we spent very little time traversing the straights, so that's mostly what I was basing it on.

I was in during the Clinton years and our SOP during a war was to never shoot anything down unless we were struck first.  They were so paranoid of shooting down the wrong thing that we pretty much knew we were sitting ducks even though we were in a war zone.  It wasn't very comforting.  I had an Iranian jet heading striaght at the carrier group once with white birds on the rail ready to shoot and they wouldn't do it.  The guy repeatedly ignored our challenges and even buzzed over top of us as a mocking gesture.

Our Navy is more than capable of taking out things like this, but the backbone to actually do it didn't exist when I was in.

Another thought is the pure size of the aircraft.  We know via the radar signature how big a plane is and back in the 90's the technology was getting better to even identify the aircraft type based on it's signature.  So, a radar crew would know what type of plane it was heading their way.  Now granted, post 9/11 the rules of engagement may have changed, but I still think it's very remote that we would have shot it down.

But hey, it is a theory, and it's a viable theory.  None of us have a clue what's going on.

Another unique aspect of this whole thing is with the potential crash site being in the ocean there's no way the media can truly know what's going on.  The information we get is all filtered through the government.  So, if something like this were to happen it would be harder for people to find out.  

The Bible does say that Jesus will come back riding on a white horse and the 777 is a white plane... So, it could be that Jesus will be arriving soon.  ;-)

Well hell, I guess I better get the mulch down in my flower beds so the place looks presentable.