A suicide hijack ? Otherwise where did they land and why haven't they made any demands ?
Perhaps they flew around for a while and just ran out of fuel and crashed, but you would think that hijackers would make some sort of demands over the radio.
From the above link:
Plus indications - now from London - that signals showing the plane was still in the air up to five hours after last contact. So maybe not entirely fanciful to consider hijack after all.
Kuala Lumpur: The latest evidence emerging from the United States suggests that missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was set on a deliberate navigational route in the opposite direction to its scheduled flight path, swinging the focus of police investigations back to the pilots, crew and passengers.
Evidence suggests that somebody with flying experience set the Boeing plane's route manually or programmed its auto-pilot so that it flew hundreds of kilometres off course into the vast expanses of the Indian Ocean.
Key evidence also indicates a gap of some minutes between the time the plane's transponder stopped and a messaging system cut out, lessening the likelihood of a catastrophic mid-air explosion.
Not if they had landed the plane somewhere with the intention of eg filling it with massive amount of explosives and then at some later time using it in a suicide mission like those of September 11.A suicide hijack ? Otherwise where did they land and why haven't they made any demands ?
Perhaps they flew around for a while and just ran out of fuel and crashed, but you would think that hijackers would make some sort of demands over the radio.
Not if they had landed the plane somewhere with the intention of eg filling it with massive amount of explosives and then at some later time using it in a suicide mission like those of September 11.
Before that awful event any suggestion that it could happen would equally have been dismissed as entirely fanciful.
A Malaysian government official says investigators have concluded the missing Malaysia Airlines plane was hijacked, according press agency Associated Press.
Sky News reports the official said no motive has been established and it is not yet clear where the plane was taken, but he said hijacking was "conclusive".
The Canadian media outlet Global News is reporting the official is involved in the investigation into the crash, but spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief the press.
The Malaysian Prime Minister is expected to hold a press conference at 4pm AEDT.
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 this afternoon.
It would seem the Malaysian government is about to confirm the aircraft was hijacked.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/missing...tors-say-jet-was-hijacked-20140315-34tll.html
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/...370-was-hijacked/story-fni6um3i-1226855315871
More detail from the latest ABC news:It would seem the Malaysian government is about to confirm the aircraft was hijacked.
Someone on board the missing Malaysia Airlines plane deliberately shut off its communications and tracking systems and flew it off course for nearly seven hours after it vanished, Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak said today.
Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, Mr Najib confirmed the plane's systems were gradually switched off and the plane was flown far to the west of its flight path before disappearing.
Shortly after the prime minister finished speaking police arrived at the home of the missing aircraft's pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, to search for evidence, a senior police official told Reuters.
Mr Najib said data from the plane's last known satellite contact meant it could have headed along flight corridors stretching as far north as Kazakhstan or as far south as the southern Indian Ocean.
"These movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane," he said.
The Boeing 777-200ER disappeared a week ago with 239 people onboard, including six Australians, during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Mr Najib said satellite data showed "with a high degree of certainty" that the communication and reporting system on MH370, known as the ACARS, was turned off before the plane reached the Malaysian peninsula.
While the prime minister stopped short of saying the flight was hijacked... it's hard to see what else talk of deliberate tampering of the communications equipment could be leading towards.
ABC correspondent Stephen McDonell in Kuala Lumpur
A short time later the aircraft's transponder was also switched off.
"It then flew in a westerly direction back over Peninsular Malaysia before turning north-west," the PM said.
"Up until the point at which it left military primary radar coverage these movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane."
But Mr Najib said: "Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, I wish to be very clear, we are still investigating all possibilities as to what caused MH370 to deviate from its original flight path."
Earlier today an unnamed Malaysian official told Associated Press that hijacking was no longer just a theory, but "conclusive".
The official said no motive had been established and it was not known where the plane had been taken.
More detail from the latest ABC news:
I believe the plane was never meant to land. I am theorising that this will reveal itself as a suicide "test" flight for future ill-good. The "pilots" of the commandeered plane were testing its mechanics and abilities and sending this data back to some ground base....hence taking advantage of the full fuel range before finally crashing.
I can reduce that search area slightly. It's not in my back yard.Saw someone post this on Flyertalk (massive airline forum)
Anyways, where the plan could be;
Anyways, where the plan could be;
I can reduce that search area slightly. It's not in my back yard.
Within the circle, there are apparently two flight path options. One northwest from Malaysia towards Turkey and the other southwest over the Indian Ocean.
Just speculation on my behalf, but the intention may have been to land the plane intact and then refuel.
How to steal a 777
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2014/03/an_mit_expert_o.html
This morning I spoke by telephone with John Hansman, professor of aeronautics at MIT and director of MIT's International Center for Air Transportation.
“The probability that an airplane could be hidden in a random airport is pretty low,” he said, adding that he thinks it's far more likely the plane crashed into the ocean. Then he talked me through how you might try to do it.
To land a 777 you need a runway at least 5,000 feet long. The airplane seems to have diverted 40 minutes north of Kuala Lumpur, with enough fuel to travel 2,500 more miles. Hansman estimates there are around 500 runways within that range long enough to accommodate a plane that size.
Getting to one of those runways without being detected is hard, but not impossible. “We don’t have radar surveillance over most of the central parts of the ocean,” Hansman says, so, with on-board transponders turned off (as seems to be the case here), the plane would have had an easy ride for awhile.
The pilot of the commandeered 777 would have needed to find a long runway close to the coast, in an out-of-the-way place with minimal radar systems. The plan would have had to come in low, to avoid radar, and flying a big plane at low-altitude burns fuel faster. Hansman thinks a small island is the best bet.
“Could you get into an island in Indonesia that might have a 5,000-foot runway? Probably,” Hansman says. Runways in the Malaysian archipelago would also be possible, though the last radar tracks on the Malaysian Airlines flight show the plane diverting in the other direction, west toward India.
If the plane did manage to land secretly, the next challenge would be hiding it from overhead satellites. You’d need a big hangar, and those aren’t easy to come by either, in the kinds of places you can get to without being detected by radar.
“The more I sort of think about it," Hansman says, "the likelihood that an airport would have a hangar that would keep the airplane and not have good enough radar capabilities to detect the airplane, the set of those is probably pretty small, or zero.”
He adds that if you have a cooperating government on your side, “it’s a totally different story.”
45,220 U.S. gal (171,170 L)
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