Thanks, Obama.

Nice summary Chris.

ChrisV,

where is the requirement of being a 777 expert coming into it, couldnt a hijacker have forced one of the flight crew to do whatever? Am I overlooking something?

How "confirmed" is it as a hijacking? There was a theory going around that there was some kind of major malfunction, perhaps in combo with human error (similar in concept with Air France 447), with a depressurisation then the plane just autopiloted in a straight line until it burned off the fuel and then ditched - is this kind of theorising old news and hijacking of some kind is the only narrative in play now?

Afaik losing cabin pressure doesn't kill... and the pilots have masks.

They also made a hard turn too.

Oh, and most importantly, they wouldn't have chosen the perfect path to avoid detection and turn off their communication transponders.

Yeah, that is old info. The reasons we know it is a hijacking are:

- The plane's comms systems were turned off separately in time (i.e. the transponder was turned off and then minutes later other systems were turned off).

- We know from radar and satellite data that the plane executed several turns and was following navigational waypoints. Thus it was definitely under controlled flight, but no attempt was made at communication or to return to an airport. The waypoints it was following made no sense as a course that would be followed in an emergency. Rather, the course appeared to be trying to avoid civilian radar.

The 777 expert is because you need to know a lot about the plane to do the stuff that was done. Shutting down the transponders involves removing an overhead panel and pulling a circuit breaker. A commercial jet pilot and editor of Flight magazine that CNN spoke to said that he had had a little training on the 777 and that reprogramming the flight computer to fly between the waypoints would be beyond him, a trained commercial pilot. He said a 777 expert was required.

There's no reason it can't be a hijacker forcing the captain to do this stuff, but Occam's Razor - we have to suppose someone was able to get into the cockpit somehow, that they were able to overpower the two men in there, that the captain wasn't able to deliver any warning to ATC, and that the hijacker knew enough about the 777 to make him shut down the multiple comms and tracking devices, and enough about the surrounding airspace to tell him to follow certain waypoints to avoid radar. The hijacker would need to be a pilot himself to know all this stuff. This is a pretty complicated scenario versus the much simpler one of the captain just doing it all.

Thanks for the summary Chris

I don't think so. Regardless of what her employee claims, it's almost unimaginable that a line worker in a restaurant is an independent contractor. Therefore, she should report her wages on a substitute W-2: here. She should pay the employee side of the payroll tax only.

I find it interesting that there were so many people in the OOT thread pooh-poohing the notion that the Malaysia flight was terrorism. That's some weak Bayes theorem skills there.

Happy Open Borders Day!

ChrisV,

Thanks for all the info. One more Q, what is the latest on the two (three? I heard that somewhere) passengers using the stolen passports? If this is just the pilot going postal, is that a coincidence? It seems a rather large coincidence to me but obv I say this having no idea what a coincidence should look like in these situations.

People use stolen passports a lot more than you probably think.

Yeah it's a coincidence. They got thoroughly checked out by various agencies. It looks like they were just trying to emigrate to Europe illegally. On PPRuNe they were saying there are a ton of people on false passports travelling to China to move drugs as well. I think if it's known that Malaysian don't check passports against the Interpol database, which it would be amongst crooks, then you'd probably have a couple people on most flights travelling on fakes.

Last I heard they had been thoroughly investigated and cleared. They were fleeing migrants seeking asylum or something.

Aah, thanks ppls, I hadnt heard they were thoroughly investigated and they found nothing.

Does anyone know if you can remotely fly a Boeing 777? I mean they have autoland. Do it Drone style

It could be possible to "hack it" and then fly it like a drone to Diego Garcia. I hope they didn't rendition them too bad.

I mean, there were people in there even in the last couple days saying there was no chance of pilot suicide. Idiots will be idiots.

Has their ever been a case of pilot suicide with that many passengers?

This is Kokesh's gf



http://thelibertarianchick.com/2013/...ical-prisoner/


Good for him.

^^^^ wtf girl, everyone knows you break out the Weber grill for protest burnings. That was amateur hour.



Pilot suicide seems phenomenally improbable. Not much point in going to all the trouble of turning off the transponder and changing course if you're just going to fly it into the ground.

Fraction of the passenger count but http://m.ibtimes.com/pilot-suicide-w...-plane-1519756

If confirmed I think it will be the most. Greatest I know of is EgyptAir 990 with 217 on board.

I think for whatever reason he didn't want investigators to know what had happened. Ditching in the deep Indian Ocean, as opposed to the shallow South China Sea, served that goal. Remember, he didn't know we'd have these satellite pings, and he also didn't know what military radar capabilities were. From his point of view, it's unlikely we'd have a clue what happened. In SilkAir 185, which was a pilot suicide, the pilot turned off the FDR and CVR prior to ditching. The explanation was that he wanted a life insurance payout and therefore didn't want proof of suicide.

The problem you have is that any other explanation also seems phenomenally improbable. The plane having flown north and landed implies that it not only flew through, but actually landed in or near, two countries with heavily militarised airspace (India and China).

I should mention that US investigators seem particularly sure it flew south and that the northern route probably passes through undisclosed US radar assets.

Lol I just read that and was about to post it

Were there two pilots? Is the assumption that one incapacitated the other?

She should have burned the rest of her clothes too imo.