FRIDAY UPDATE: SABOTAGE?
YES, THOUGH U S INTELLIGENCE SAYS IT THINKS JET CRASHED IN INDIAN OCEAN
IT'S LOOKING MORE LIKE A SILENT DELIBERATE ACT OF HIJACKING AND COMMANDEERING---IF EVEN BY ITS OWN ROGUE PILOTS--- INSTEAD OF JUST A CRASH. PERHAPS IT'S BOTH.
It makes for a most intriguing and frightening flight of fancy.
Could the well-seasoned pilots have stayed on course during the first hours of the flight, said goodnight to air traffic controllers, then turned off its data signal and transponder devices---except for intermittent pings---before taking nosedive to a much lower altitude, flying under all radars that could pick it up, and drastically changing course and heading to an unknown destination, even a suicide crash into the deeper Indian ocean? Did pilots have enough fuel and prior flight plan knowledge to get it to another location where it landed? It's wild, but starting to look unimpossible.
What an amazing story. Whoever planned and executed this brilliant heist must have taken years to carry it out, if it's true. They precisely calculated the time of day for takeoff and flight for needing to land before or at dawn. And they must have strategically chosen Malaysia because of its unsophisticated government officials and investigative facilities.
I'm sure family members of the lost passengers on board the plane are praying that their loved ones are alive----even if it's in Pakistan or India. All these people need our prayers. They must be stressed beyond the limit.
Meanwhile, back on the ground in Houston....
This is one of those cases where most of the evidence we have is the lack of evidence. The fact that the Malaysian officials are clearly out of their depth, or less likely being deliberately confusing, does not help. I will throw in that the cruising ranges being quoted assume they are close to the expected altitude. If they dropped low enough to get under radar, their range would be significantly less due to increased fuel consumption. There are relatively few military radars in that area, and civilian radars can paint a primary target, but much less efficiently. If it is on the ground, there are relatively few fields where a 200' airliner could land, not be reported, and hidden from overflights. You can bet that everybody is looking down these days. Curiouser and curiouser!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Captain. Please feel free to post any other thoughts as this wild story unfolds.
ReplyDeleteIf this was a well-planned hijacking, wouldn't they have a definite plan and place for landing this behemoth? You know what size landing strip it would take, but it would seem it might have had to land just at the break of dawn....since it went off at about 1 am....
do they need a landing strip or just a paved highway?
ReplyDeleteGood question. It would have to be a straight paved highway, rarely used, with very wide shoulders....and there would have had to be enough light to make a manual landing....
ReplyDeletePossible Treg?