I sprung ahead on this story because I left my papers unread and pristine the last few days.
"Debris, oil slicks were not from missing Malaysia jet; Mystery over missing plane deepens with dearth of clues" by Simon Denyer and William Wan | Washington Post, March 11, 2014
BEIJING — Frustration mounted Monday over what has become one of the most perplexing aviation disasters in history....
“This unprecedented missing aircraft mystery — as you can put it — it is mystifying,” Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation, said at a news conference in Kuala Lumpur.
“To confirm what happened that day on this ill-fated aircraft, we need hard evidence,” he said. “We need concrete evidence. We need parts of the aircraft for us to analyze, for us to do forensic studies.”
I've heard all sorts of theories from hijacking for use in a future false flag to chop shop cannibalism to alien abduction.
UPDATE: Even the Globe is seeing conspiracy theories. Take your pick as to what you find most credible. I mean, planes don't simply vanish into the sides of buildings or the ocean, do they?
About 40 ships and 34 aircraft from nine countries are combing a vast area of ocean in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, northeast of Malaysia toward Vietnam. The search grid has expanded into areas well beyond the plane’s intended northeasterly flight path toward China. Authorities are now looking even at areas in the Andaman Sea, on the western side of the Malaysian peninsula.
Two oil slicks, between 6 and 9 miles long, consistent with fuel left by a downed jetliner, were located Saturday in the region where the plane vanished. But tests Monday concluded that they were not connected to the plane.
For the plane to have crashed into the Andaman Sea would imply that it had somehow turned back and crossed the entire Malaysian peninsula without being detected by radar operators.
Malaysian authorities said Sunday that the plane may have turned around before disappearing from radar without a distress call. If true, aviation experts said, this could offer a clue as to why no debris had yet been found.
Possible reasons the plane turned include pilot action, hijacker command, or a structural failure. In a vacuum of hard evidence about what went wrong, speculation also turned to the possibility of pilot suicide, an extraordinarily rare occurrence that has taken down two commercial airliners in recent years.
They are really reaching for some sort of explanation.
Speculation that terrorists could have brought down the plane were fueled by reports that two men boarded using stolen passports, but experts said this could easily have been a coincidence.
On Monday, Azharuddin said closed-circuit television footage showed that the men passed through normal security checks at the airport and were not of Asian appearance. Officials also said they have shared “biometric and visual” information about the men with US intelligence agents.
Authorities on Monday questioned travel agents at a beach resort in Pattaya, Thailand, about the two men, the Associated Press reported. Investigators have not made their names public.
Thailand police Lieutenant Colonel Ratchthapong Tia-sood said the travel agency was contacted by an Iranian man known only as ‘‘Mr. Ali’’ to book the tickets for the two men, the AP said.
They are not trying to lay the groundwork for Iranian terrorism, are they?
If so, the AmeriKan jew$media has completely jumped the shark.
UPDATE:
"Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar, who has been ordered to look at possible criminal aspects in the disappearance of Flight MH370, said hijacking, sabotage and issues related to the pilots’ psychological health were all being considered. Malaysian and international police authorities said two people who boarded Flight MH370 with stolen passports were Iranians who had bought tickets to Europe, where they planning to migrate. Their presence on the flight had raised speculation of a possible terrorist link."
Luigi Maraldi, 37, of Italy and Christian Kozel, 30, of Austria were initially listed among the plane’s passengers, but both were subsequently found to be safe — and to have reported their passports stolen long ago....
Azharuddin said investigators were looking at whether the two men who boarded were linked to a “stolen passports syndicate.”
Then the investigation will lead nowhere because like the Target hackers that led to the Jewish mafia, this road will lead to Israel and Mossad.
Earlier, he said five other passengers checked in for the flight but never boarded. He insisted that their baggage was removed before the plane took off.
The Malaysia Airlines flight reportedly was being tracked by radar when its transponder went dark.
Who turned it off?
There were no radio transmissions to indicate that anything was amiss aboard the plane. Both the transponder signals and radio communication are controlled by the pilot, who can also turn off the voice recorder.
That’s what investigators believe happened aboard SilkAir Flight 185 before it spiraled to the ground in Indonesia in 1997, killing 97 passengers and seven crew members.
EgyptAir Flight 990 also has received renewed attention after the Malaysia Airlines flight went missing. The 1999 Egyptian flight crashed into the Atlantic south of Nantucket, killing 217 people. US investigators concluded that the crash was caused by crew member Gameel Al-Batouti.
That crash is suspected to have been a remote control seizure and possible test for 9/11.
In a phone interview Monday, a spokesman for the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet, Commander William Marks, confirmed that the USS Pinckney has joined the search for the Malaysia Airlines jet. Marks told the BBC that the destroyer and the helicopters it carries have infrared, sonar, and other search capabilities and can also listen for any signal emitted from the plane’s black box.
Now the US military is combing the place, huh? Hmmmmm.
On Monday, hopes briefly centered on an object that authorities said might have been a lifejacket. But when a Vietnamese helicopter recovered the piece of flotsam, it was identified as “a moss-covered cap of a cable reel,” the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said.
Related: The Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch
That is all they are finding out there.
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"Airline security: Plugging into Interpol" March 11, 2014
The fact
that two passengers aboard a plane that disappeared in Malaysia last
week held stolen passports may turn out to be just a bizarre
coincidence, but the news has revealed a
widespread problem: Despite the existence of an Interpol database of stolen passports established after 9/11, many nations never check the list as travelers board flights.
The United States should pressure its allies to do so, and American
airlines that maintain partnerships with foreign airlines should urge
them to prevail on their governments to shape up....
Illegal migrants and drug smugglers commonly use
stolen papers, and speculation has centered on a passport-theft ring in
Thailand. But terrorists have used stolen travel documents, too, and
it’s unthinkable that the Interpol checks aren’t routine by now.
Look at them wishing and hoping it was terror-related.
Most of the onus for fixing the problem lies with foreign
governments, but American companies can play a constructive role....
American airlines
should make it clear that if passengers aren’t appropriately screened,
they’ll stop putting their customers at such an unnecessary risk.
Simple solution: don't fly on any AmeriKan airline, ever.
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Or drive the roads:
Driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants backed
Licenses for illegal immigrants would make all drivers safer
Hey, after a while you won't even notice they are there.
Back to the search:
"With jet possibly miles from last known position, search area expands" by Matthew L. Wald | New York Times, March 11, 2014
WASHINGTON — As the hours drag by with no trace of the Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared early Saturday, the world is getting a reminder that if something goes wrong on a jet five miles up, traveling at 10 miles a minute, it can cover a lot of distance before it comes down to earth.
Such ominous-sounding agenda-pushing, isn't it?
There is only speculation about what happened to the missing flight, which was headed over the Gulf of Thailand to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital.
But Arnie Reiner, a retired captain with US Airways and 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 Monday....
Not all planes that go down at sea prove difficult to locate.
When Egyptair Flight 990 crashed 60 miles from Nantucket, Mass., on Oct. 31, 1999, investigators quickly concluded that the aircraft, a Boeing 767, had followed a straight track, and Navy searchers picked up signals from the “pingers” on the aircraft’s black box data recorders the next day.
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.
I think it was the fable of Flight 447 that made me doubt the official mouthpiece when it came to plane crashes, no matter what the story.
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.
How come the government never retrieved them from the 9/11 sites, or never told us if they did?
Another assumption 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.
Although officials have not ruled out terrorism in the Malaysia Airlines case, no evidence of foul play has come to light.
But they are hoping.
No group has claimed responsibility for downing the jet either, though as Reiner noted concerning the 747 that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, “when Khadafy’s guys blew up Pan Am 103, they weren’t talking about it.”
See: Looking Back at Lockerbie
Seeing it in a different light yet?
The mystery will probably not be solved until the wreckage, and especially the black boxes, are recovered.
Another unsolved propaganda pre$$ mystery.
The wreckage alone could yield important clues, including whether the plane broke up in flight, suffered an explosion or had a mechanical failure. In most crashes, definitive findings on these questions take months or even years to establish.
Or the lack of wreckage in the 9/11 cases.
A team of American experts from the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration, and Boeing has been sent to the area and is waiting for something concrete to go on.
Let the covering up begin.
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Did you find it odd that TWA 800 was not mentioned!
Also see:
San Francisco says rescuers didn’t kill air crash victim
Firefighter Absolved in Asiana Accident
US fines Asiana for poor crash reaction
Southwest grounds wrong-way pilots
Southwest to expand beyond US
And the roads in Thailand are not much safer, although it is good to see everything is getting back to normal.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Hint of a change in course adds to missing-jet mystery" by Thomas Fuller | New York Times, March 12, 2014
SEPANG, Malaysia — Malaysian authorities now believe that a jetliner missing since Saturday may have radically changed course around the time that it lost contact with ground controllers, news that added to the air of confusion and disarray surrounding the investigation and search operation. But they gave conflicting accounts of the apparent course change and of what may have happened afterward.
As criticism mounted of the Malaysian authorities’ inability to find any trace of the jet, they have repeatedly insisted that they were doing their best to solve the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, with scarce data and almost no precedent. Yet the government and the airline have also released imprecise, incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate information, with civilian officials sometimes contradicting military leaders....
Most of the aircraft’s 227 passengers were Chinese, and the new account prompted an outpouring of anger on Chinese social media sites....
The rest is literally all confusion.
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