*shrug*

I've been lurking on this thread a lot.

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5355 ... t-156.html

Missing Plane Was Hijacked, Malaysian Official Says

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/1 ... 68532.html

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Investigators have concluded that one or more people with significant flying experience hijacked the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, switched off communication devices and steered it off-course, a Malaysian government official involved in the investigation said Saturday.

No motive has been established and no demands have been made known, and it is not yet clear where the plane was taken, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media. The official said that hijacking was no longer a theory.

"It is conclusive," he said.

He said evidence that led to the conclusion were signs that the plane's communications were switched off deliberately, data about the flight path and indications the plane was steered in a way to avoid detection by radar.

The Boeing 777's communication with the ground was severed just under one hour into a flight March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian officials previously have said radar data suggest it may have turned back toward and crossed over the Malaysian peninsula after setting out on a northeastern path toward the Chinese capital.

Earlier, an American official told The Associated Press that investigators are examining the possibility of "human intervention" in the plane's disappearance, adding it may have been "an act of piracy."

While other theories are still being examined, the U.S. official said key evidence suggesting human intervention is that contact with the Boeing 777's transponder stopped about a dozen minutes before a messaging system on the jet quit. Such a gap would be unlikely in the case of an in-flight catastrophe.


The Malaysian official said only a skilled aviator could navigate the plane the way it was flown after its last confirmed location over the South China Sea. The official said it had been established with a "more than 50 percent" degree of certainty that military radar had picked up the missing plane after it dropped off civilian radar.

Why anyone would want to do this is unclear. Malaysian authorities and others will be urgently investigating the backgrounds of the two pilots and 10 crew members, as well the 227 passengers on board.

Some experts have said that pilot suicide may be the most likely explanation for the disappearance, as was suspected in a SilkAir crash during a flight from Singapore to Jakarta in 1997 and an EgyptAir flight in 1999.

A massive international search effort began initially in the South China Sea where the plane's transponders stopped transmitting. It has since been expanded onto the other side of the Malay peninsula up into the Andaman Sea and into the Indian Ocean.

The plane had enough fuel to fly for at least five hours after its last know location, meaning a vast swath of South and Southeast Asia would be within its reach. Investigators are analyzing radar and satellite data from around the region to try and pinpoint its final location, something that will be vital to hopes of finding the plane, and answering the mystery of what happened to it.

___

Lowry reported from Washington.

Going to make a great movie some day.

Liam Neeson woulda never allowed this to happen

Honestly though...for the people with family on board this has got to be the worst possible stretch of lived and breathed days.

What do you do with over 200 people after youve stolen the plane?

In place of tasteless joke

Yeah, but Leslie Nielsen would've done it with more class.

Maybe this was worthy of a thread after all.

I initially posted the story when it broke because I thought it was funny when they described the plane as "missing". I just assumed that within 12 hours the story would be "wreckage of Malaysian flight washing up on Gulf of Thailand shores".

Yep.

thanks, 'ckpot. nice work

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If that's the case, why kill so many other people in the process (and also cause pain and grieving for so many others)? I don't get it. Well, unless he's really a terrorist.

Same reason that people open fire in a mall/school before turning the gun on themselves.....?

True. But, in those cases they usually want maximum impact. So I would imagine he'd fly the plane into a high population area, or at least make the crash publicly visual. For him to make the plane completely disappear? Very strange.

I'm still thinking that there's a chance the plane was landed safetly somewhere remote. They've been looking for plane wreckage in the sea all this time. Are they also looking for an intact plane on land?

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I wonder if this guy had aspirations to get to the top of Mt Everest, but couldn't be arsed doing the climb?

There is only so many places it can land though.

saw something via twitter the other day about how man places it could land - there were something like 630 some odd landing strips and some aviation guy said something like : they technically don't even need a paved surface, only hard packed earth would suffice.