Malaysia Airlines Flight Goes Missing En Route to China - Flight MH370

[Maxitown]

I hear that among pilots the belief is that a heist of Gold Bullion is behind this mystery.

[Beggarman]

A surveillance aircraft of some description, civilian contractor on behalf of military?

Yes, it's a RAF Sentinel R1 operated by the Royal Air Force. It's basically a standard Bombardier Global Express (GLEX) bizjet, indeed a quite proven airframe, with the addition a rather sophisticated AESA look-down radar mounted in a belly pannier, and a satellite link radome mounted on the upper fuselage. It's main use in Afghanistan is battlefield surveillance and time-sensitive targeting (to identify and engage fleeting ground targets) in support of the NATO ISAF operations.

The Ghazni province (above which the aircraft is seen circling) is currently one of the more volatile areas of Afghanistan, with frequent insurgency activity. Some senior Taliban militants were taken out a few weeks ago, contributing to the unrest among insurgents. The upcoming (April 5) presidential elections is another factor making the atmosphere a wee bit more tense.

[1090 MHz]

This GLEX is actually circling over the same area of Afganistan almost everyday, check it with playback. Not sure why, but it looks somehow strange....

It's just a Pilot having fun doing sky donuts... you can't do that kind of stuff in US airspace LOL!

[1090 MHz]

Can someone please explain to me how this thing called "Radar" works.
If the transponder is turned off, wouldn't they still continue to track the plane ?
If so, then how is it possible for a plane to avoid radar detection.
What is a radars coverage. Can a plane fly too low to avoid detection, or is this
just a myth from the movies ?

Here read this,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_surveillance_radar

Also FlightRadar24 uses ADS-B which is not really a radar but a data-link from the Aircraft's flight management computer sending us once a second the flight's location, altitude, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADS-B

An object in the sky can be tracked by Primary Radar, even without a transponder or ADS-B, however you'll have no idea what it is or who it is. The radar cross-section will tell you the approximate size of the object, you can also determine the approximate speed it's traveling however altitude is hard to determine with just primary radar, and this is why aircraft have transponders, that send this information back to ATC along with an ID known as a squawk code as part of the SSR.

[Sea Petal]

NEW THEORY THAT CORRESPONDS WITH FACTS:

FACTS SO FAR:

1. At around 1:20 AM local time, MH370 disappears from radar, while making a course change in order to follow M765 airway (http://skyvector.com). This was part of the planned flight route. Flightradar 24
The heading of the plane was about 40 degrees.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3554[/ATTACH]

2. CNN reports that MH370 climbed from 35.000 feet to 45.000 feet, well above it maximum altitude (43.100 feet, according to Boeing). After this, the plane descended to 23.000 feet.
Quote: "Malaysian military radar showed the plane climbing to 45,000 feet soon after disappearing from civilian radar screens and then dropping to 23,000 feet before climbing again, the official said" (CNN)

3. A New Zealand oil rig worker at Songa Mercur oil rig spots an burning airplane in the sky and reports this, then after a while the plane stopped burning. Moreover, the worker didn't report that the plane was actually falling from the sky.The Wire - Oil rig worker story. I verified the coordinates of the oil rig, and it is definitely possible that this worker saw the plane. With a formula, you can calculate the maximum distance to horizon: Formula. Using a altitude of 35.000 feet (h= 10 668 meters), the maximum distance to horizon is 369 km. Using the longitude and latitude of the last known location of MH370 and the oil rig, I estimated the distance to be 551 km, which is too far for the plane to be seen from the oil rig. However, the plane was heading towards the oil rig. After MH370 disappeared, the plane climbed to 45.000, which takes some time and MH370 should have moved closer to the oil rig, such it became visible to the oil rig.
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THEORY:

After MH370 disappeared from radar, it kept on flying heading 40 degrees. Something (I have no clue) must have caused the plane to climb until 45.000 feet. At that point, the engines don't get enough oxygen and flame out, which seems like the plane is burning. A flame out occurs when the fuel/air mixture is wrong (Wikipedia Flame out)After that, the plane descended until 23.000 feet, an altitude at which the engines get enough oxygen and the flames go out. This explains why the oil rig worker saw a "burning plane" and then disappear What happened after this is still a puzzle, possibly MH370 turned to the Indian Ocean...

What time that would be in New Zealand? At that altitude I believe it would have to be night time for him to see any kind of flame. I doubt he could distinguish between a jet and a falling star. I don't think he would see anything but the vapour trail during daylight hours.

[Sea Petal]

The Flightradar FAQ says: "Sometimes the pilot types wrong callsign into the transponder". Does that mean that if MH370 was hijacked, they could turn off the ADS-B transponder, type in a false callsign and registration number and then later turn it on again pretending to be another aircraft, and then be allowed to fly into a country's airspace?

I don't know. Like a computer you might need a code to reprogram it. But with all those Texas Tech experts onboard or seeing how carefully this was planned. It is very possible. Very worrying. I just hope the hijackers screw up somehow or someone lost their nerve.

[Sea Petal]

This is a link to the list of airfields in Kazakhstan. Spooky.... these are the kinds of questions that were being asked two years ago...

http://www.ourairports.com/countries/KZ/#lat=48.0319,lon=66.79309999999998,zoom=4,type=Map,country=KZ

"Does anyone know if there are NDB's, VOR's, ILS's or communication radio frequencies associated with Krayniy? I would like to compile as much complete information about this airport as possible so that I can create a scenery package for X-Plane. Other information that would be useful: Runway approach lighting type, and runway edge lights. Also, I have seen references to an ICAO code of UAOL for this airport. Can this be verified?"

[longpig_yum]

OK, Now it's starting to make sense. Malaysias military were caught with their pants down.
Now they supposedly have a Primary radar track showing an Unidentified plane heading west
towards the andamans. This data having been retrieved from the logs, and not observed live.
This is what I have been wondering. Surely there had to be 'passive' primary radar operating
at one or more installations that would have tracked the plane. An unidentified plane would surely
have set off some sort of alert, but only if anyone was awake to notice it.

[jrich52804]

Re: Tomnod.com

I think this is a great tool to have people help search. However, we had no idea the areas we are searching... Until now... It now shows on the map the areas that had been given to us to search, and of the tags that I see on this map (screenshot below) These are some areas that are not even close to where the plane would have possibly been even if it had stayed on its scheduled course and not turned west. For example, there were 120 objects tagged just Southwest of Kuala Lumpur where the plane took off. Why would they have us search those maps?

Anyway, with the new evidence, it seem the plane is most likely in the Indian ocean if it crashed. I wonder why they do not have maps of that area to search now. So, at this point, it seems that it won't do much good to look on the tomnod site.

I did search a lot on there early on, when I could get on the site... almost 4000 maps... And even though it was nice to actually see something once in a while, like a ship or oil rig, I know that there would not be debris from the plane in that area because the people on the oil rigs and ships in that area would have spotted it before we have.
If they could have somehow taken into account, known ship, oil rigs, and populated coastal area positions into account at the time the satellite photo was taken, they could have limited the search area for us, by not having us search those areas.

Anyway, I am not against the site and what they do to try to have us help in a case like this. I think it could be a very useful tool with some more work.tomnod.jpg

[Alex Smart]

Hello Cambridge,

No thought as to how the captors would care for the hostages - feed and shelter them after arrival at the so far unnamed destination ?

I hope that if the authorities are planning a hostage rescue that the arrange to take a McDonald's and KFC with them, as the poor passengers would by now be quite hungry and thirsty don't you think ?

However I expect that if they had been taken hostage we would have heard from their captors by now with ransom demands or such ?

Alex

[kiwichris83]

What time that would be in New Zealand? At that altitude I believe it would have to be night time for him to see any kind of flame. I doubt he could distinguish between a jet and a falling star. I don't think he would see anything but the vapour trail during daylight hours.

Not sure what New Zealand time has to do with anything - the oil rig was based out in the sea off the Malaysian Coast - and it was by chance a New Zealand worker who's working there

[jrich52804]

where do we click to see a map of where we can search on tomnod.com ?

On the main website for tomnod.com if you scroll down, it will show you the current search results, with a map and locations that have been searched and tagged. You can zoom in and see what has been tagged so far.

[Exadios]

What your referring to is primary radar, yes it was, but primary radar only shows that there is an object present, it will not tell you who or what it is. Malaysian military primary radar did pick up something they believe to be MH370.

What interests me is that the Malaysian air force where the only ones to pick up the primary track. Across Malaysia there are a number of civil radars that should also have a primary track. That data is usually recorded. Where is it?

[Exadios]

The Flightradar FAQ says: "Sometimes the pilot types wrong callsign into the transponder". Does that mean that if MH370 was hijacked, they could turn off the ADS-B transponder, type in a false callsign and registration number and then later turn it on again pretending to be another aircraft, and then be allowed to fly into a country's airspace?

No. Each ADS-B transmits a unique aircraft 'frame code' which cannot be changed.

[Mac Attack]

If this was a successful hijack and if the authorities were able to determine that the plane did not crash then i'll bet that there will be no useful public announcements (or have even more confusing decoys) in the next few days as authorities plot their rescue mission. I hope if this is the case that it is NOT the Malaysian authorities who is doing the plotting. Please put national pride aside and have EXPERTS do this.