Harryw

re your link to US littoral combat ships

Are you aware what "littoral" means?

From what I've seen of the convoluted 'lose face' reasoning of this investigation so far, I can only imagine the pressure on any crew member there to try to remain asymptomatic rather than lose face by seeking help or stepping down whilst taking antidepressant medication.

@Tvasquez
 

@tvasquez

I can see it ! can you put a circle around it and post it here ?

How does that line up with the current search area and predicted paths..possible to overlay the positions ?

Naive question from a non-pilot: assuming a decompression, might the (disoriented) pilot have pulled the transponder/radio CB by mistake thinking he was doing something more appropriate? That is, on the 777 is there any CB located near the radio CB that you might reasonably want to pull following a decompression?

So of the options re aircraft final destination we have:

1. South China Sea - Not likely due to data and intensive search - Cause would be sudden destruction/crash and not found.
2. Northern Sector - Less likely outcome at present: Cause would be Sophisticated Hijacking. Possibly same scenario re pax as per 3 below but hostage option another possibility, i.e. they were alive whilst in the air at least. Either aircraft landed somewhere and dodged radar/satellite, crashed due to running out of fuel, deliberate action by PIC to avoid 9/11 type scenario or some fight happening on board as per United 93.
3. Southern Sector - Most likely outcome at present: Suicide mission to remote place so aircraft hopefully never found to make sure of insurance pay-out for family. Pilot overcomes/shuts out other crew member(s), goes up to incapacitate (..) pax then sneaks away as far as possible and runs out of fuel or crashes.

Hypoxia scenario starting just after 1:20 and before 1:37 less likely due to data, i.e. too many unlikely (and not aimed at alleviating situation) input moments from some agency on board. Only scenario I can remotely consider would be hypoxia scenario after point of last radar contact (02:40) due to fight between PIC and others on west coast of Malaysia and aircraft continues south until fuel runs out.

What else fits the data so far?

It would be of more interest to hear what the ATC said on handoff - if the controller was punchy and professional 'alright goodnight' would be strange, if the controller was flippant and made some comment on handoff then that may have triggered the 'alright goodnight'. Out of context it is not what you would expect, however it may make more sense in context.

Many interesting versions have been addressed and discussed, but the "Occam's razor" principle suggests to first evaluate and elaborate the most obvious options.

IMHO, this means to focus on a "trivial" hijacking. If that was possible in US back in 2001, why similar guys (e.g. islamic extremists) cannot do that now in KL where the security is not very tough (my personal opinion as a passenger that flew to/from that airport several times in the recent years)?

A long and careful (and hidden) work of many security services may (and hopefully will) bring more on the desk than chaotic search involving many planes and vessels. After 9/11 the details of the entire gang were revealed quite quickly. Thus, it was doable.

It appears that in China (because of their known regime) they could screen background of their passengers, but there were people of many nationalities onboard. I wonder if all the countries whose citizens were in the plane are eager to cooperate and have capabilities to dig out all the aspects of their personal life? But again, this now seems to be the only way to crack the puzzle. If the debris were not found in 10 days, the probability of finding them later reduces exponentially.

Not just there....

Are there any countries left searching the South China Sea? Or has it been totally abandoned? I hope not. They should keep there options open.

I agree - give a breaker to disable it - and disabling the device will be treated by all agencies as an emergency squawk - as obviously it would only be turned off if you were being hijacked or you were on fire. So within a short period you would have a fighter escort to the nearest suitable airport for landing as if you had a suspect cargo - be taxied to the most remote part of the airport and have everyone, including you, carefully searched and interviews without tea and biscuits. :=

I believe that the world has now got to this state. IFF it turns out that this was a crew initiated 'hijack' AND the aircraft is subsequently used for some kind of terrorist incident. Expect pilots' views on what they don't like not to be given a whole lot of precedence.

Yes....I do know littoral means close to shore. Probably comes from lighters which were used for cargo.
THe point I wass making with these was small ships which normally could operate at 20 knots but could perform for some time at the speed the website quoted.
'
I think the only people who really know what they are are not likely to tell us. I do notice that the tracks of the Pilot Boat Parmelia however are pretty accurate so presumably these tracks are not too inacurate either.

Thailand just released radar confirming the turnaround.

Thai military radar data bolsters belief that Flight 370 changed path - CNN.com

Nothing really new there, but it confirms what was already believed.

This part is interesting though:

That sounds a lot more like an equipment failure than someone deliberately turning off the transponder.

In relation to those vessel tracker and marine traffic websites they work by volunteers feeding in the VHF AIS data frequency exactly like flight radar 24 so if there out of coverage of the nearest feeder it will only show the last position of the vessel when it had coverage.

I believe you can pay $300 a month to marine traffic and get the vessels position by satcom.

How much of this tankered fuel would you burn just to carry it, ie more weight less MPG.

however this extra weight may be the reason why max pax was not available as opposed to some very heavy freight in the hold.

Nope, that sounds like Thai Military Primary Search Radar was painting the MH 370 at the limit of the Radars range hence it was intermittently painting the target.

Golf Mike
 

Have you considered that unfortunately there is no outcome at this stage that can please anyone in the aviation industry?

Two options are especially displeasing - rogue pilot or a cascade of pilot/s errors.

But would it be any better if found to be a catastrophic failure of the aircraft or fire?

The most pleasing option may seem to be a hijack by a person unknown - what would that do for crew security? The question on the safety of the flight deck will then rear its ugly head again.

In the extremely unlikely event of a stowaway, a new round of people including ground crew come under scrutiny and crew are still not secure.

All options are unpleasant but I lean in favour of a rogue captain or possibly the captain under duress heading south to cause a catastrophic embarrassment to the Malaysian Government. The civil unease this incident has caused has the potential to bring down the current Government - especially if the aircraft is not recovered - which may have been the person as yet unknown's intention.

Holes in the story - and radar.
 

I have read this thread from day 1.

Loads of wacky theories out there. Like really out there.

But amongst all the chatter here on pprune there is occasionally some real cutting edge analysis that breaks new ground - often well ahead of news media and especially those god awful 'news' conferences from KL.

I had been firmly of the view after reading all that I have here, that the aircraft most likely ended up in the Indian Ocean at the far end of the southern arc.

I just couldn't conceive that anyone, even after initially engaging in such purposeful and tactical flying, as now seems almost certain, could fly north and avoid detection.

But what has troubled me from day one - why plan this thing thing so carefully, fly so tactically, so dangerously, initially so far north, only then to fly for 6/7/8 hours simply to drop it in the drink.

Many things about this don't make sense. But that to me is the most illogical.

And then I read this post ...

"leanderandhero

Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: sestos
Age: 61
Posts: 4
It is on the ground in western Xinjiang.
I have observed all comments here with interest since Saturday 8 March.
The quality of the technical knowledge on PPRuNe is, for the most part, the best in the world.

The site.....and the 'Mods' deserve great praise.

Tanto nomini nullum par elgoium

I have not posted here for 12 years.

I was a professional pilot. (7000 hours) Before that, a British Army officer. With experience of terrorism.

For the moment I propose this, for discussion:

The aircraft landed safely in western Xinjiang, the homeland of the Uygurs, at about sunrise on Saturday 8 March. On an unpaved desert strip. The passengers are alive. They are hostages. The plane is now in bits and hidden. It is no longer required.

'Echelon' knows this.

The Chinese are looking there.....furiously. For 3 or 4 days.

I will say more tomorrow."

.....

Another crackpot I thought.

Them I googled 'Echelon'

Ok I thought. Interesting. But most likely another red herring.

Then on wading through all today's posts one thing started to jump off the page.

Not one, but virtually all of the countries tied up in this human tragedy have been caught out and actually admitted that their radar capabilities and monitoring is not just hopeless but on weekends and other times simply non existent. They don't even bother turn on what they have on.

These failures and gaping holes in radar coverage have been reported/admitted by Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, India and now Australia.

And these admissions have been obtained only now after 9 days of extreme pressure.

If the aircraft managed to get to northern china and if hostages or ransom negotiations are underway (and with most of the passengers being Chinese that could certainly firm up a motive) I can guarantee the Chinese would deny all and everything. Including radar tracks.

They have already issued instructions to local media not to investigate or comment on the disappearance.

And remember that very first red herring about the large plane parts they spotted floating new the last known position.

That was fishy from day one.

I'll post below some of the most intriguing comments/stories that have made me start to question what I had concluded most likely happened.

"17th Mar 2014, 22:50 #5452 (permalink)
ILS27LEFT

Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Europe
Posts: 165
Chinese Terrorism
"Meanwhile, claims that a 35-year-old Uighur man from China’s troubled autonomous Muslim province was on Flight MH370 may be looked at in a new light. The group claimed responsibility earlier this week but were dismissed as opportunistic and not credible, but Malaysian reports now say the passenger had taken flight-simulator training in 2005."
Uighur separatists? claim over missing flight MH370 may be re-examined | News.com.au"


" #5523 (permalink)
xcitation

Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: California
Age: 44
Posts: 141
@simon001
Quote:
Also, there are parts of Malaysia and Indonesia between point 2 and the top of the southern red arc. Was there no military coverage in these areas?

I am expecting there is a good reason for this but it would be nice to see some detail behind the maps. I'd be wondering if I was a family member.
According to the military chief for India on the Andaman islands they only operate when required to. I have heard that this is during normal working hours and they turn off in the evening."


" 18th Mar 2014, 06:20 #5568 (permalink)
Blake777

Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: WA
Posts: 8
From the New Straits Times:


NST also reports that Malaysian investigators are currently favouring the theory that MH370 headed north."

--------------------

"Malaysia Plane May Have Flown Into Radar Black Hole — Indian Military
Mon, March 17, 2014 6:04pm EDT by Andrew Gruttadaro


Was the hijacker of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 able to escape detection by flying into a part of the Indian Ocean that isn’t covered by radar? That’s the question being investigated after a senior official in the Indian military revealed that they only sparingly check the radar systems in that area.
Initially it seemed impossible that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777 carrying 239 people, could have disappeared without anyone noticing, but it turns out this modern age of surveillance isn’t as constant as we thought. On March 17, an Indian official admitted that they rarely monitor the radar systems that Flight 370 likely passed through."


Flight 370: Did Radar Systems Miss It?
One of two proposed flight paths the disappeared plane could have taken extends from Indonesia to the Indian Ocean. If Flight 370 did fly through this area, then there’s a good chance that Indian radar systems didn’t even pick it up, a senior military official told CNN.

The official revealed that the radar systems covering the Andaman and Nicobar Islands aren’t as closely watched by the Indian military as others. That leaves open the possibility that the systems did not notice the plane as it crossed through the area. If Flight 370 flew along that proposed southern corridor, then there’s a good chance that it did so through this “black hole” in the Indian Ocean.

---------------

By Peter Apps and Frank Jack Daniel

LONDON/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Whatever truly happened to missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, its apparently unchallenged wanderings through Asian skies point to major gaps in regional - and perhaps wider - air defenses.

More than a decade after al Qaeda hijackers turned airliners into weapons on September 11, 2001, a large commercial aircraft completely devoid of stealth features appeared to vanish with relative ease.

On Saturday, Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak said authorities now believed the Boeing 777 flew for nearly seven hours after disappearing early on March 8. Either its crew or someone else on the plane disabled the on-board transponder civilian air traffic radar used to track it, investigators believe.

It appears to have first flown back across the South China Sea - an area of considerable geopolitical tension and military activity - before overflying northern Malaysia and then heading out towards India without any alarm being raised.

The reality, analysts and officials say, is that much of the airspace over water - and in many cases over land - lacks sophisticated or properly monitored radar coverage.

Analysts say the gaps in Southeast Asia's air defenses are likely to be mirrored in other parts of the developing world, and may be much greater in areas with considerably lower geopolitical tensions.

"Several nations will be embarrassed by how easy it is to trespass their airspace," said Air Vice Marshal Michael Harwood, a retired British Royal Air Force pilot and ex-defense attache to Washington DC. "Too many movies and Predator (unmanned military drone) feeds from Afghanistan have suckered people into thinking we know everything and see everything. You get what you pay for. And the world, by and large, does not pay."

"TOO EXPENSIVE"

Air traffic systems rely almost entirely on on-board transponders to detect and monitor aircraft. In this case, those systems appear to have been deactivated around the time the aircraft crossed from Malaysian to Vietnamese responsibility.

At the very least, the incident looks set to spark calls to make it impossible for those on board an aircraft to turn off its transponders and disappear.

Military systems, meanwhile, are often limited in their own coverage or just ignore aircraft they believe are on regular commercial flights. In some cases, they are simply switched off except during training and when a threat is expected.

That, one senior Indian official said, might explain why the Boeing 777 was not detected by installations on India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an archipelago which its planes were searching on Friday and Saturday, or elsewhere.

"We have many radar systems operating in this area, but nothing was picked up," Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai, chief of staff of India's Andamans and Nicobar Command, told Reuters. "It's possible that the military radars were switched off as we operate on an 'as required' basis."

Separately, a defense source said that India did not keep its radar facilities operational at all times because of cost. Asked what the reason was, the source said: "Too expensive."

"SOMEONE ELSE'S PROBLEM"

Worries over revealing defense capabilities, some believe, may have slowed cooperation in the search for flight MH370, particularly between Malaysia and China. Beijing has poured military resources into the search, announcing it was deploying 10 surveillance satellites and multiple ships and aircraft. It has been critical of Malaysia's response.

While Malaysian military radar does appear to have detected the aircraft, there appear to have been no attempts to challenge it - or, indeed, any realization anything was amiss.

That apparent oversight, current and former officials and analysts say, is surprising. But the incident, they say, points to the relatively large gaps in global air surveillance and the limits of some military radar systems.

"It's hard to tell exactly why they did not notice it," says Elizabeth Quintana, senior research fellow for air power at the Royal United Services Institute in London. "It may have been that the aircraft was flying at low level or that the military operators were looking for other threats such as fast jets and felt that airliners were someone else's problem."

Current and former officials say that - hopefully, at least - such an incident would be detected much faster in North American or European airspace. There, military and civilian controllers monitor radar continuously on alert for possible hijacks or intruders.

The sudden failure of a transponder, they say, would itself prove a likely and dramatic cause for concern.

"I can't think of many situations in which one would actually need to switch them off," said one former Western official on condition of anonymity.

U.S. and NATO jets periodically scramble to intercept unidentified aircraft approaching their airspace, including a growing number of Russian long-range bombers.

In some other areas, it is simply not seen as worth maintaining a high level of alert - or radar coverage itself may not even exist.

"NOTHING MUCH HAPPENS AT NIGHT"

Investigators now say they believe MH370 may have turned either towards India and Central Asia or - perhaps more likely, given the lack of detection - taken a southern course towards the Antarctic. That would have been an effectively suicidal flight, the aircraft eventually running out of fuel and crashing.

The waters of the southern Indian Ocean and northern Southern Ocean are among the most remote on the planet, used by few ships and overflown by few aircraft.

Australian civilian radar extends only some 200 km (125 miles) from its coast, an Australian official said on condition of anonymity, although its air defense radar extends much further. Australia's military could not be reached for comment on Saturday and if it did detect a transponder-less aircraft heading south, there is no suggestion any alarm was raised.

U.S. military satellites monitor much of the globe, including some of the remotest oceans, looking primarily for early warning of any ballistic missile launch from a submarine or other vessel.

After the aircraft's initial disappearance a week ago, U.S. officials said their satellites had detected no signs of a mid-air explosion. It is unclear if such systems would have detected a crash landing in the southern Indian Ocean.

On India's Andaman Islands, a defense official told reporters he saw nothing unusual or out of place in the lack of permanent radar coverage. The threat in the area, he said, was much lower than on India's border with Pakistan where sophisticated radars are manned and online continuously.

At night in particular, he said, "nothing much happens".

"We have our radars, we use them, we train with them, but it's not a place where we have (much) to watch out for," he said. "My take is that this is a pretty peaceful place."

-----------------

MH370 Australian search looks at target 3000 km from Perth | Plane Talking

He wouldn’t be drawn on the possibility that MH370 has come down along the mirror image northern hemisphere arc from which the last known electronic trace from the jet could have come, other than to give the media a lucid explanation as to why both arcs were, signal wise, of equal validity.

BBC: #Thai air force takes 10 days to acknowledge it did track #MH370 turning west
 

11:42: Jonathan Head BBC News, Bangkok tweets: #Thai air force takes 10 days to acknowledge it did track #MH370 turning west - makes Malaysian government look swift. Click here for the report. Thai Air Force radar may have detected Malaysia's MH370: Thai Air Force Chief | MCOT.net | MCOT.net

Sky. News now reporting that times etc provided by Malaysian Transport Minister and Prime minister are not accurate and that what was given by them as fact is now axknowleged by the Authorities to be speculation?

site search function has never worked for me and others have made similar comments.

use google but limited to this site,

take the standard url address ie the address for the thread and prefix with it search terms

<nyt site:http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/535538-malaysian-airlines-mh370-contact-lost>

<> remove them just there to stop text appearing as a link

can't recall who posted the info originally but from me many thanks.

Flight Singapore Airlines SQ068 (SIA068)
 

this although it is weather radar will give an idea of the range it was operating over from Surathani to Butterworth.
Met there quote max range as 240 km. I would expect a lot better from military radar but physically at 415 km they claim to have painted at Butterworth and I think that is physically almost impossible unless the plane was flying very high level.
They did say Surathani radar detected it.

TMD Weather Radar

"Sending out" is surely transponder, not primary radar receiving a reflected signal from a skin paint? The "limits" referred to could as easily be display limitations as anything - the radar display only goes to <insert figure here>.

But then reporting in a second language has dogged pronouncements since Day 1.

Dash for Langkawi ?
 

This analysis that gives fire then a dash for Langkawi,with its 13000 ft runway, is good, but.....

https://plus.google.com/app/basic/st...fyiz3vdhbop04#

This reply is better:-

" Okay, the theory make sense, but you forgot some procedures in case of 'Cargo fire', 'Engine fire' or 'Cabin fire': Everytime you stick to your checklists. In this case the aircraft gives you ECAM actions! You have to work through this! Perfectly you can watch those Crew Resource Management on Sim Training Videos on YouTube. A good one is this: 'A380 Engine Fire - Pilotseye.tv' Link:PilotsEYE.tv - A380 EngineFire - SimulatorPattern Toulouse - Bonus DVD|BDAfter you analysed the problem as a pilot you inform ATC. You're right with: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. Aviate: Autopilot on and work correctly. Check. Navigate: Autopilot still on. Communicate: Inform ATC: Short message, takes only few seconds! Then start ECAM actions. Watch the sim video. And the other ones. The Theory fits not to the outcoming information about disabled ACARS before last radio transmission etc. - They intercept an other airway captured by primary radar: IGARI - VAMPI - GIVAL - IGREX.*


- Inmarsat Satellite still gets requests from aircraft hours after disappearing. - No debris found in street of malacca. If it were on fire, look at other incidents, the crew were not able to fly for hours. they crashed within 1 hour!- They are more alternate and possible airports to land in that area.

As previously posted, dozens of pages back, typical acoustic beacons that conform to the spec operate on a frequency of 37.5kHz +/- 1 kHz

Also, as previously noted, and thanks to my Navy experience in ASW, towed array will run into some ambiet noise problems in that area, due to water depth. Not that they shouldn't try anyway, if that is a high probability search area. If you go back through the last fifty pages of this thread, you'll see why it isn't a high probability search area as of this writing.

nitpicker330
Thta was my takeaway as well. Someone noted that crossing language barriers the occasional nuance or context may be lost.

@RTD1

Or that it was at the limits of reception of its output power of 200watts (wow, didn't know that)

Useful information for anyone with transponder or SSR questions (pre mode s)

Transponder Basics - AVweb Features Article

Edit; End piece from the above 1998 article;

Possibly (as others here have suggested) a standalone version of the above will be mandated as a result of MH370

FBW94, answered comprehensively, scroll back.

"China searches own territory for missing Malaysia Airlines jet


7:26 AM, March 18, 2014 | 0 Comments

China is hunting for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 over its own territory, state media reported Tuesday, as the country also said that it has found no terrorism links to the 154 Chinese nationals that were on the missing jetliner.

Chinese Ambassador to Malaysia Huang Huikang said background checks on Chinese nationals didn't uncover any evidence suggesting they were involved in hijacking or an act of terrorism against the plane, according to the state Xinhua News Agency.

The remarks will dampen speculation that Uighur Muslim separatists in far western Xinjiang province might have been involved with the disappearance of the Boeing 777 and its 239 passengers and crew early on March 8."


Question: now if they and everyone else seems so supremely confident that there is no way that the missing aircraft could have avoided radar through Thailand India or China - why are they now confirming they are indeed searching their own territory?

If I remember correctly, didn't 'suicide videos' of the participants start to appear in the public domain fairly soon after the attack?

DAY 11 and still no new ideas?
 

I am not in any way trying to present an explanation of what has happened to MU370. Instead after watching the news shows talk on and on, one thing comes to mind. One of these reports talked about the altitudes that the aircraft was tracked at. From the low 20,000 foot range to 45,000 feet which as I understand it is above the certified altitude of the 777. So in my mind there are 2 reasons that would explain such deviations in altitude. The first being the aircraft was experiencing mechanical difficulties in which the pilots were having a hard time controlling. Or, the cockpit crew was no longer a part of the equation and some one else was in charge.

Not been around here for about 5 days so 'm sorry if this has already been asked.

Has the projected range charts for this flight been calculated at maximum operating heights/speeds? I noticed the press were saying the aircraft could have decended to as low as 5/6000ft to avoid radar but this would have had a drastic effect on fuel consumption surely.

oldoberon - How much of this tankered fuel would you burn just to carry it, ie more weight less MPG.

however this extra weight may be the reason why max pax was not available as opposed to some very heavy freight in the hold.








You burn slightly less than 3% per hour, of any additional weight carried. Simple rule of thumb is 3% for mental math.

It's a shame someone with technical knowledge cannot immediately ask for clarification.

"Unknown aircraft" = Primary
"sending out" = Secondary

Unknown aircraft + Sending = The primary was tracked constantly(unknown) and the SSR was intermittently transmitting garbage data (it's mode s so even without an assigned code you still know who it is)

Perfect example of poor communication.

I have to admit my ignorance:

In the T7, if the FMC is in HDG mode, does that mean it follows course over ground, true course or magnetic course ? And likewise if you are e.g. in Phuket and set e.g. Ushuahia as next waypoint, would it automatically follow a great circle ?

Knowing the answers to these question and knowing all of the "ping arcs" may give some clues as to how the AP was set on that last journey.

Quite simply, crash or hijack?


Malaysia Airline MH370: 9/11-style terror allegations resurface in case of lost plane - Telegraph

China again.
 

There sure do seem to be a lot of stories popping up tonight about China.

As has been the pattern since day one it is investigative journalism that is providing all the new legitimate leads and leaving the authorities in KL to play catch up.

RT News.

Connecting the dots: Missing Malaysia Airlines plane a terror attack aimed at China?
Get short URL Published time: March 18, 2014 09:28

Students walk past a giant mural featuring missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 displayed on the grounds of their school in Manila's financial district of Makati on March 18, 2014 (AFP Photo / Ted Aljibe)
Tags
Accident, Asia, Intelligence, Planes
While the terror angle behind the missing Malaysia Airline Boeing 777 plane is being probed, there are several questions which, though unanswered yet, can help in piecing together this jigsaw puzzle.

CIA Director John Brennan made a significant remark on March 12 that his agency has “not at all” ruled out terrorism as possibly having played a part in the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. He also said that there have not been any credible claims of responsibility from terrorist groups for the plane’s disappearance.

Obviously Brennan couldn’t have been unaware of claim of responsibility for the plane’s disappearance by the Chinese Martyrs’ Brigade – unheard of before now. This outfit had released a statement through an impossible-to-trace encrypted Hushmail anonymous service on March 9 saying: "You kill one of our clan, we will kill 100 of you as payback." According to the statement it was a response to the Chinese government for its persecution of the Uyghur ethnic minority.

This implies that the CIA chief attaches no importance to the claim, something which Malaysia's acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein has debunked in an on-record statement.

The needle of suspicion over the mysterious disappearance of MH 370 would inevitably point to the Chinese Uighurs if investigators conclude that the Malaysian plane was indeed a victim of terrorism.

The Muslim Uighur community is one of China’s 56 ethnic minorities which is in majority in the restive Xinjiang Autonomous Region. They have had a brief taste of independence as East Turkestan at least twice (in 1933 and 1950) but this independence proved to be short-lived. The Uighurs still harbor ambitions of becoming an independent state, a red rag for Beijing.

However, no such conclusive evidence has emerged yet. The Uighurs have come under the scanner because of ‘circumstantial evidence’. The MH 370 episode has come close on the heels of the March 1 terror incident in which knife-wielding assailants had killed at least 29 innocent people at a train station in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming.

Also, of the 227 passengers on board MH 370 (apart from 12 crew members) at least 153 were Chinese nationals, a fact that must have been known to the perpetrators.

Besides, Uighurs continue to have links with Al-Qaeda-affiliated group, Jemaah Islamiyah, which has a presence in Malaysia, as well as the Philippines and Indonesia.

Nevertheless, there may be several reasons why the shadowy group’s claim is bogus and is just trying to make hay while the sun shines. First, the outfit has not given any details of the plane which is being searched by 12 countries’ navies. Six days after its disappearance, nobody knows what has happened to the ill-fated plane. Second, it may just be an attempt to whip up ethnic tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese in China.

Third, hardcore terrorists seldom claim responsibility for their acts, as shown by the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database according to which the perpetrators claimed responsibility for their acts in only 14 percent of the more than 45,000 terrorist acts that have occurred since 1998.


Some 20 activists demonstrate in front of the Chinese embassy in Vienna to protest against the repression of China's Uyghur minority in the northwestern region of Xinjiang (AFP Photo / Dieter Nagl)

Was China the prime target of the terrorists, if indeed it was a terror attack? Which terror group could be behind the suspected plane crash? It might be the Chinese Uighurs, but the actual perpetrator might still claim responsibility for this outrage which is too dastardly and too brutal a crime for any terror outfit to take responsibility without alienating the people. Besides, isn’t it possible that the real perpetrators would like to keep the waters muddied and lie low so that more attacks could be launched in the near future.

There is also a possibility that no organized terror outfit per se was involved in the act and instead it may have been a lone wolf (two wolves in the current context as the needle of suspicion is pointing to two men with "Asian features" who boarded the plane on stolen passports). Who will take responsibility for the terror attack if the perpetrators, on suicide mission, themselves perished?

Of course the ground staff of Malaysia Airlines and several Malaysian agencies are guilty of gross dereliction of duty. First they allowed two Asian-looking men who were traveling as European citizens to pass unchallenged. Second, they failed to run a check of the men’s stolen passports against Interpol's vast database of more than 40 million lost and stolen travel documents. Just these two preliminary precautions would have prevented the tragedy.

The dice seem to be heavily loaded in favor of China as prime target of the terror attack theory. There are several circumstantial reasons for this and China has repeatedly figured in the entire narrative thrown up so far.

The two prime suspects with "Asian features", who boarded the plane on stolen passports of two Europeans Christian Kozel (Austria) and Luigi Maraldi (Italy), had purchased their one-way tickets together from Pattaya (Thailand) and were due to fly on to Europe from Beijing. This eliminated the need for the duo to apply for a Chinese visa and undergo further checks.

Thailand has had a festering problem for years with Islamist terror outfits like Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia, and China has suspected some of its restive Uyghur population to be in touch with terror modules in Southeast Asia.

Malaysia itself has figured prominently in the Uighur saga in recent years and Uighurs do have a reason to hate Malaysia, a country which deported several Uighurs to China in 2011 and 2012 for abortive bids to travel on false passports.

Uighurs are a Turkic ethnic group living primarily in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in China, where they are officially recognized as one of the ethnic minorities. In 2009 violent riots broke out in the region’s capital Ürümqi that mainly targeted Han (ethnic Chinese) people. Over 1,000 Uighurs were arrested and detained during the riots, over 400 individuals faced criminal charges. Nine were executed in November 2009.
However, the most important question is whether there is any linkage between the Malaysia Airlines plane episode and the March 1, 2014, weird attack in the south-western Chinese city of Kunming, in which knife-wielding assailants killed at least 29 innocent people at a train station? The two episodes are too close for comfort for the Chinese. If an inter-connection is established, it would be really very bad news for Beijing.

There may not be any answers to the questions yet but these are leading questions which hopefully should be answered in the next few weeks. Hopefully it would not take very long before the wreckage of the missing plane is spotted and recovered and the Black Box, containing the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), is recovered now that every major navy in the region is employed and satellites are being used to track the missing flight.

The discovery of the wreckage itself would proffer a clue to whether the plane had a sudden mid-air explosion or whether it nose-dived into the sea because of mechanical failure. A violent bombing would inevitably throw the wreckage to great distances – scores of kilometers at least – while in the latter scenario the wreckage would be confined to a much smaller area.

Evanelpus
 

In your absence, 'projected range charts' have been replaced by 'ping arcs' which allegedly show the last received 'pings' returned to the Inmarsat system.

As these were timed at 08.11 the aircraft would have been at the outer limit of it's range anyway however it was being flown, therefore close to if not already at fuel exhaustion.

surely these devices tell the holder where they are not possible searchers.

WEhat I would like to see ( and I don't care about pilots or bean counters just pax)

A gps receiver and dedicated satcom transponder

Both electrically and physically isolated from all other aircraft systems.

It should be in a rear fuselage location outside the pressure cabin but in it's own enclosed cavity. the power supply should be a separate bus with an inline monitoring device. If system demands too much power of severe fluctuations occur it is disconnected. Disconnection triggers the cavity being filled with nitrogen and loss of signal on the satellite triggers a preset ground plan and notifies crew. All do able in my opinion but one problem I see is polar routes as they must lose sat communication.

They're in the database I use, too.

That's the way the database comes.