March 15, 2014

Well, THAT Narrows Things Down.

The likely location of the missing Malaysian 777 as estimated by satellite triangulation.



It looks like it was a skyjacking, but some information seems contradictory.
Turning off both the transponders does seem like a deliberate act.
On the other hand why have we not gotten a ransom demand, or had the plane flown into a building on the night of the highjacking?
A couple of possibilities come to mind.
*Whatever caused the mishap, the plane depressurized and was a flying coffin for its last hours.
*This was a heist: Something in the cargo hold was what the hijackers were after, diamonds, rubies, plutonium, Fogbank, or Episode 12 of Ultra7,  In this case the plane either crashed somewhere or was landed and the passengers likely liquidated.
* They are looking at using the plane for a mass casualty attack, either with a nuke (perhaps acquired from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan) or simply slamming it into a target 9-11 style. There are considerable logistical hurdles to this beyond putting a 777 down for refueling in an out of the way place. An airliner with no transponder is going to elicit considerable attention and this planes transponder will  likely be a missile magnet at this point. I Imagine that using it in this fashion would require (somehow) mimicking a known aircraftts transponder, destroying said aircraft and taking its place in the flight pattern with the identity of the exploded plane not established until the target had been hit. Likely targets would seem to be Tel-Aviv, Moscow, Beijing, and Vatican City, with hits on New York, Washington DC or Hampton Roads  even harder to pull off given the distance one would have to fly without raising concern.

Obviously, as I'm neither a pilot nor a Sky Ninja this is random speculation from publicly available sources. Thus those readers who are pilots or help to build these planes are particularly encouraged to comment and give this post less of a Dunning -Krugger flavor.

UPDATE: Fixed the graphic so it actually means something.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:40 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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1 Reportedly they now have some indication the course was programmed on the autopilot, which increases suspicion on one of the pilots.  Both Pilot's homes were searched today.  They plane also ascended to 45,000 feet, which is a lot higher than typical, but which can increase range.

Posted by: Mauser at Sat Mar 15 22:55:01 2014 (TJ7ih)

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