Malaysian military apparently tracked the plane over the straight of Malacca at 2:40am, 70 minutes after they disappeared from commercial radar and way off the flight path. Plane still had a fair amount of fuel left, could have even landed safely somewhere. This is some crazy ****

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26525281

As expected, no terrorist link. RIP.

dude, SPOILERS!..

makes you wonder too how with such incredible real-time satellite stuff things can be so hard to find. must be really tough in the water.

So the plane has some issue, turns around and is attempting to fly back to KL and crashes? That seems like a legit theory but also kind of sketchy.

And who is saying the Iranians are asylum seekers? Seems like great cover especially if it's a state sanctioned op.

That's just results oriented thinking. We don't know what the true crash % is for this B777 operated by MA with this specific crew on this specific flight path (you could add lots of factors here).

If it landed safely somewhere, you'd have to think it involved terrorists. Someone would have been able to get some kind of signal out on their cell phones if not.

I think if it did land somewhere it would've been found by now, but also if it crash wouldn't someone had found pieces by now? Although, I guess the ocean is a pretty big place...

This story is obv very sad but also interesting because a plane this size should just go "missing", things aren't adding up.

BBC reporting that the aircraft's transponders may have been turned off. Is this even possible?

Why would a commercial aircraft even be designed with the feature to allow the transponders to be turned off from within the aircraft?

Pro Tip of the day: Don't use Google Maps to try to locate plane

http://technology.inquirer.net/34788...ne-says-google

That may be what you think he was saying, but here is what he actually said (my bold):

...and that's an absurd statement.

They already have a device that can survive any crash: the black boxes (CVR and FDR). And the plane has an ELT that broadcasts a pinging signal on 121.5 mHz (every airline pilot hears these from time). I'm not sure of the battery life, but I think it will ping for weeks at least. Also, I'm not sure of the efficacy when under water, but I think they narrowed the search area for the Air France crash based on the ELT return.

Pardon my wording, I am aware planes don't fall out of the sky all the time, just that when they do it's often pilot error or mechanical failure or a combination of the two and not terrorism. That's the point I was trying to get across, to argue against the presumption that when a plane crashes, there has to be terrorism involved. "All the time" was an exaggeration.

It's posts like this that make me wish I had a good facepalm pic. So much wrong here.

W0X0F, if you had to guess... what % of you thinks this is terrorism vs other?

I'm going to assume that by "terrorism" you mean that the cause of the disappearance was one or more passenger on board. I make the distinction because there are still run-of-the-mill nut jobs in this world who might not be classified as "terrorists", i.e. acting on behalf of some group.

The honest answer is that I have no idea. But if I'm made to pick a percentage, I would put it low. Maybe 10%.

This is not true, there are plenty of examples of plane crashes where it's obviously mechanical/human error, and no one screams "terrorism". This is not one of those cases.

So they now seem certain that the plane changed course before disappearing. Are there any examples of why this would happen without the pilots issuing a distress signal?

A friend of mine linked this on Facebook. Cliffs are that the author believes information is being withheld by Malaysian Airlines.

This case continues to get weirder.

Well I think there are only a handful of possibilities:

Mechanical problem - plane crashed whole into the ocean. Lack of any found debris (yet) and lack of any distress call from cockpit is odd.

Mechanical problem - plane exploded/ripped apart at altitude. Would almost certainly be wreckage/debris to be found in this case.

Some sort of loss of cabin pressure causing hypoxia which incapacitated the crew. I have no idea how likely this sort of scenario could be or what exactly could cause this sort of thing in a jumbo jet.

Suicide by pilot. Pilot flies plane directly into ocean. Very unlikely but has happened before. Might account for lack of distress call/lack of debris.

Plane goes off radar and lands someplace else. I'd say the odds of this are almost nil.

Terrorist attack of some sort by passengers on the plane, bomb planted on plane, etc. Again a bomb would produce debris/smoke etc. so you'd think that would have been found. I have no idea in the post-911 world if it is possible for terrorists to commandeer a cockpit, but if they did it would explain the lack of distress calls/obvious signs of explosion/etc.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/blo...s-live-updates

Quite bizarre if you ask me. Also that three days need to go by of apparently searching in a completely wrong location until the military reveals this.

to be fair, airlines playing their cards close to their chests during crash investigations is pretty standard. air france did it after AF 447, and there have been cases like silk air 185 and egypt air 990 where even though it was obvious to anyone objective that the cause was pilot suicide, the airlines/national investigative bodies never admitted it, and found some other scapegoat possibility to officially blame. there's a lot at stake.

Yeah, that's kind of the point of Malaysian withholding information though, that they obviously think that deliberate sabotage by the pilots is in play here.

malaysian police published these pics of the men with the stolen passports.
sup with the legs?

If this happened and the plane continued flying (if thats possible) it could be 8+ hours southwest of indonesia, which would imply antarctica. No clue how this might have happened but would be epic if it turns out correct.