Plane missing with 236 people on board

[freakiness]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-08/malaysia-airlines-lost-contact-with-plane/5307888

Malaysia Airlines says one of its planes has gone missing on the way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

A statement from the airline says flight MH370 lost contact with air traffic controllers at 2:40am local time, just over two hours into the flight.

The plane, a Boeing 777-200, left Kuala Lumpur at 12:41am on Saturday, and had been due to arrive in Beijing at 6:30am local time.

The company says the plane was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members.

The airline says it is contacting the next-of-kin of all passengers and crew, which includes people of 13 different nationalities.

In a statement on the airline's website, group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said the airline was working with authorities to locate the aircraft.

"Focus of the airline is to work with the emergency responders and authorities and mobilise its full support," the statement said.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members."

The airline says it will provide regular updates on its website.

The ABC understand Malaysia Airlines will hold a press conference on the incident shortly.

[nevynreally]

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Double post

[colic2bullsgirlore]

Possibly the Inmarsat information became more public. I saw an interview on the BBC early this morning (2.30am)

stating that they had definite contact hours and hours after the officialy given one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/world/asia/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-370.html?_r=0

SEPANG, Malaysia — As the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet expanded into the vastness of the Indian Ocean, a satellite communications company confirmed on Friday that it had recorded electronic “keep alive” ping signals from the plane after it disappeared, and said those signals could be analyzed to help estimate its location.

David Coiley, a vice president of Inmarsat, a British satellite telecommunications provider, said the missing plane had been equipped with an Inmarsat signaling system that sends out a “keep-alive message” to establish that the plane’s communications system is still switched on.

The plane sent out a series of such messages after civilian radar lost contact, he said.

Those messages later stopped, but he declined to specify precisely when or how many messages had been received. Mr. Coiley said Inmarsat was sharing the information with the airline and investigators.

http://www.inmarsat.com/

[cherry*135]

Mr Razak confirmed the plane's transponder was switched off.

"Based on new satellite communication, we can say with a high degree of certainty that the aircraft communication addressing and reporting system was disabled just before the aircraft reached the east coast of the peninsula of Malaysia," he said.

"Shortly afterwards, near the border of the Malaysia and Vietnamese air traffic control, the aircraft's transponder was switched off."

P.M of Malaysia. 'said with a high degree of certainty.'

That has been mentioned a lot in earlier reports, that the aircrafts transponder had been switched off.. But by who and why????

[colic2bullsgirlore]

So as far as I can tell the "ping' information that Insarmat provided had no real relevance to MA or any other airline that may use their system it was more an inhouse thing that provided information that was only really relevant to the satallite equipment provider in that their equipment was working and in good order.

It was only when the search area became wider and the information conflicting that some bright spark from Insarmat

worked out the the info may help in the search.

[the_great_she_elephant]

"It may be that the plane landed somewhere and all the people are still alive."

It would be pretty hard to hide or not know of  a 8000 ----10,000 foot  runway

I seem to remember reading somewhere that at the time of the last recognisable signal, satellite ping or whatever, the plane would have had about an hour's fuel left. Where is there inside an hour's flying time of that position that it could feasably have landed.

[cherry*135]

India's Andaman Islands.. they are going to search around that area now.

The runway there is long enough for a jet to land, according to media reports. As I mentioned before though, a plane that size landing there wouldn't go unnoticed. If it was noticed, it would be in the news as having landed there.

If MH370 made it to the Andamans, is there anywhere it could have landed?

The short answer is yes—there are several airports long enough to land a Boeing 777. But doing so covertly would probably require the complicity of the Indian armed forces (or perhaps those of Myanmar), which makes it extremely unlikely.

[colic2bullsgirlore]

pretty hard getting any info out of North Korea... plenty of airfields there although it appears that it is not a favoured

destination/flightpath

[the_great_she_elephant]

If it's last known position was over the Indian Ocean, it would have had to do a complete u turn and fly back over the Thailand and China to get reach North Korea.. Would it have had enough fuel by then?

Could it have made Sri Lanka and landed there without anyone spotting it?

I'm still betting that whatever casued it to change course it eventually ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea.

[colic2bullsgirlore]

Khazakistan .... or the Indian Ocean..... they are not sure

[cherry*135]

I think the Andaman Island theory has a bit going for it. The hijackers could have overtaken the plane and intended to fly to and land on a Andaman Island  but on the way there something went wrong with their plans and the plane crashed before getting there.

If the hjackers did manage to land in the Andaman Islands, they could have taken the passengers hostage and made their demands known.

If the hijackers had planned out the hijacked flight, turning off the transpnder,  avoiding detection etc, then they would have planned how much fuel they needed to get to their hijacked destination.