So the chance of the radio failing, a fire breaking out, gps going down, a lightning strike, and pilot suicide all happening at the same time are just the same as if they happened any other time?

If pilot suicide, maybe he simply wanted to **** with everyone and make it really difficult to find the plane. That's a possible reason for flying it into the middle of the ocean.

If he wanted to go full troll, he could have left some amazing stuff for us to listen to via that black box. He could probably get 80% of the country it was aliens that were to blame if he wanted to.

The point is that if a fire is capable of producing the actions of the plane ( and I have no idea if it is, probably not from the little I have read) the odds of it being a fire is unaffected probabilitywise from the fact that it came during the ATC handover.

fyp

The probability of a fire occurring is the same as any other time, but the probability of a fire being the explanation of a plane disappearing during ATC handoff is sharply lower.

Let's say that on any given flight, there is the same probability P that an aircraft could be either sucked in to a black hole or stolen by aliens. The black hole can happen at any time, however for mysterious alien reasons the aliens only steal planes between :00 and :03 every hour.

The probability of the plane hitting a black hole is the same as it is for any other three minutes, however it is 1/21 the likelihood of the plane having been taken by aliens, because only 1/20th of black hole hits occur between :00 and :03, while 20/20 of alien steals do.

Since any theory involving hijacking necessarily includes in the theory that the pilots are trying to hide the plane (because in this theory ACARS and the transponder were turned off manually, they did not talk to ATC, etc), it's a given that it would occur during ATC handover. So it's a lot like the "aliens" theory detailed above and has to be considered more probable than events which could occur at anytime.

Edit: This is a simplified example and obviously a fire on board has a much higher probability than pilot suicide, all else being equal. I would however put the probability of "fire on board which goes from nothing to knocking out key systems in under three minutes, then somehow fails to cause the plane to crash over the next 6 hours" at substantially lower than pilot suicide, over the course of a flight. We're looking at a low-probability scenario here no matter what.

I know FOX news gets **** on by everyone but honestly,

they ve done a far better job than CNN over the past 5 or so years in reporting actual news. Ever since FOX news started to beat CNN in ratings, CNN took a horrible downswing of ****ty coverage

Agreed, though it could be both foul play and hypoxia.

Maybe pilot suicide by hypoxia and he turns off communications and sets the course for the middle of nowhere to try to avoid blame.

Or maybe pilot uses hypoxia to incapacitate everyone else and then does a last "joyride" before plunging as others speculated earlier itt.

In some actual news, a Chinese plane has spotted some objects (a couple large ones and several small white objects) in the southern Indian ocean and has passed the coordinates on to Australia, there is no indication on how soon a ship can get to the area.

maybe it was hijacked and then something like flight 93 happened

Very simple article explaining what could have happened, would like to share with you guys.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03...ectrical-fire/

thoughts ?

It was shot out of the air by the US Air Force? Seems unlikely, what would the USAF have been doing in the region?

Air Force? the passengers fought back

As has been stated, the single biggest reason human intervention is suspected is because of no distress call. I still haven't heard any plausible scenario for lack of a call. A fire, and in particular an "electrical fire" makes no sense. The "simple fire theory" is totally lacking, including the author's lack of understanding where the circuit breakers/fuses are in a 777, along with his line about "pulling busses to isolate the problem." You have to open a hatch and go down a ladder to access the CBs. There are only switches in the cockpit. And how could smoke possibly fill the cockpit cabin so fast as to render the pilots unable to make a distress call? I don't buy that at all.

Also, what's this new report from Malaysia now saying the alternate flight route was not programmed prior 1:07 am? I don't quite understand what they are saying. Help please.

Probably completely unrelated, but another Malaysia Airlines flight originating out of Kuala Lumpur had to make an emergency landing due to electrical failures (this one was an Airbus, not a Boeing, so not the same type of plane): http://time.com/35129/malaysia-airli...ing-hong-kong/

Like I said, this is most likely unrelated but could it show a lack of maintenance or anything of that nature in their fleet?

Well, he has the NY Times using anonymous sources. What could go wrong?

Wow, he's pretty much nailed it and it's almost a week old. Wish somebody had posted this earlier.

gtfo

Also@sparks

You're saying it requires a lot of coincidences but only name one. I've argued before that coincidents are likely, if not necessary, to have happened for the plane to be lost now.

W0X0F has already stated that contacting ATC has no priority (third and last) so it could have taken up to minutes before everything was destroyed as the pilots would not prioritize contacting ATC. The only coincidence you have left is just the timing of which we know that its not uncommon to not get handed off immediately. The fact it kept 'pinging' has already been explained as the system were most likely seperate from the fysical other comm. systems and doesn't rule out a fire. Personally I think pilot suicide seems most likely but it seems very premature to rule out a combination of mechanical failure and pilots being unable to regain control.

@OodaThunkett
It has been posted before but we're talking tens of pages back.

So it seems that Chinese planes have spotted debris in the ocean, and Australian planes have also spotted some separate debris. Night is falling very soon, but I imagine we'll have something more concrete within the next 24 hours. Would be great if the thread could stay aids-free until then.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-n...rgency-3276797

I don't know whether that story has any relevance to anything as planes divert for minor technical issues all the time, but can you imagine being a passenger on that plane? As if you weren't already freaked out about having to fly with Malaysia atm anyway....

It's not "no priority". It's just after getting immediate control of the plane and pointing it in the right direction. Given that the plane was still flying for hours its hard to believe that the pilots were dealing with an immediate risk of the plane crashing. There's also two of them dealing with the situation. And no one has pointed out a single fire on board a plane where pilots weren't able to contact ATC.

So yes, its a still a big deal that they didn't contact ATC. You can't ignore it completely.


It's still a red flag. Just because sometimes something comes up to delay getting in contact with the next controller, doesn't mean we should ignore it completely.

Sure, that one aspect was explained. There's still the matter of what systems were affected and which weren't. And a fire that burns super fast and causes extensive damage but doesn't bring the plane down. And ...

This is becoming like the Amanda Knox thread. There are a bunch of discrete pieces of evidence and none of them are 100% convincing. But just because there are scenarios for each individual one doesn't mean we should just ignore it completely.

Exactly!! Id be having panic attacks at any slight bump nevermind being told by the pilot that we have to take an emergency landing in Hong Kong!

Hypoxia. Autopilot bro.

Or terrorism, where obviously there's no intention to communicate with ATC.

I am leaning towards the hypoxia theory