I've given this some thought, and there are some possibilities.

First - one thing we know. There were approximately 50 less seats sold for the flight than max capacity. That might signify a heavy cargo. I would think that someone would have to plan that out ahead of time, otherwise the seats would be sold. If someone knew that regular shipments of something heavy (gold?) were being made, tracking available seats would point to which flight.

Also - this was a high-hour pilot with seniority. Presumably the red eye would not be a particularly desirable flight. It could be that if there was an important cargo or person on board, the airline assigned a senior pilot. If that was SOP, it could have been another indication of cargo.

an update re WSJ
 

Search teams have been withdrawn from the South China Sea, the area from which the plane's transponder, which relays identification signals to ground radar, sent its last signal. "Clearly, the search for MH370 has entered a new phase," he said.

"As of Saturday, 43 ships and 58 aircraft from 14 countries are involved in the search, the prime minister said.

The latest revelations indicate that the search areas will be significantly expanded, while Vietnam announced it would cease search operations following the prime minister's statement.

On Saturday, the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet confirmed that it had spent the day searching the Bay of Bengal far to the northwest of Malaysia. However, it now appears unlikely that Flight 370 could have flown there, given the bay's distance from both corridors highlighted by the prime minister.

A spokesman for the Seventh Fleet said patrol schedules were planned only one day in advance and the U.S. Navy "will not fly to the south" of the Bay of Bengal on Sunday, despite Mr. Najib's statement. "

THIS FOLLOWING THE COMMENT

" Based on the new data, aviation authorities of Malaysia and counterparts in other countries have determined that the plane's last satellite communication came from one of two corridors, Mr. Najib said: a northern one stretching approximately from the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan border to northern Thailand or a southern one stretching approximately from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

If Flight 370 traveled north, it might have been above Thailand, China, Myanmar, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan at 8.11 a.m., according to the satellite data released by Kuala Lumpur. However, it would have needed to fly through the airspace of several countries to have reached that point, and it is unlikely that it could have done so undetected, especially if it passed close to China or India, both of which have air-defense systems.
"


AND THE PLANE WAS FUELED FOR ABOUT 8 HOURS FLIGHT
"The routine messages sent by the aircraft show that Flight 370 was still airborne nearly six hours after it disappeared from Malaysian military radar. The Boeing BA +1.00% 777-200 plane with 239 people on board was carrying enough fuel to fly for eight hours, Malaysia Airlines confirmed on Saturday"

NO. the 40 degree arc is the possible position of the aircraft at the time of the "ping" to the satelite. The Aircraft could have been anywhere on that arc(In the red marked areas).

Right. But the degree of the three other pings has not been shared(yet).

Roger That / Readbacks
 

I'm a pilot too and pretty sure I've used this phrase on occasions but what I haven't seen is what he was responding to. If it was a frequency change to the Vietnamese controller then strictly speaking it is one of those items, like a runway clearance, heading, speed or altitude change where a readback is required and he didn't.

While it doesn't prove anything, other than rather casual phraseology late at night, it might have prompted the Malaysian controller to quickly ask for a readback before MH370 changed frequency to be sure of a clean handover.

Over-Reliance on Inmarsat Ping Data? Other Radio Signals?
 

Reading the Malaysian PM's statement as a whole, the thing that stands out is that it is carefully crafted to address an obvious question about the Malaysian government's handling of the matter:
The implied answer asserted by the PM could be paraphrased as follow:

• Malaysian government did (ultimately) notice that an aircraft had flown across peninsular Malaysia,
• The primary radar track was not connected with MH370 at first due to the absence of transponder data.
• The primary radar track was only connected with MH370 when the relevance of Satcom ping information was appreciated some days later.

Current attempts to pinpoint the location of the aircraft based on extrapolation from Inmarsat ping communications should be seen against this background, and be taken with a large pinch of salt.

It is tempting to overestimate the degree to which Inmarsat data can be relied on, all the more tempting as we have nothing else in the public domain. However, as pointed out by earlier contributors, estimating location from radio signal strength cannot give more than a very rough indication of range. It may be worth the effort and cost to conduct a full-fledged trial to confirm assumptions about signal strength etc. given the actual type of aircraft, antenna, flight attitude, etc.

More sophisticated techniques based on signal transit times etc. are more promising in theory, but the Inmarsat protocols are not primarily designed for this purpose. Transponders on the satellite may not have measured/collected/downlinked timing data except as necessary for link establishment and maintenance. TDMA related data may be most promising to the extent it remains extant.

As another contributor has noted, it is possible that ACARS also sent out pings on VHF which might have been received while MH370 was (again) in the vicinity of land (Malaysia or Indonesia). Space-based SIGINT may also be of assistance, but we will not hear about such efforts.

Obviously, contemporaneous visual satellite imagery would be the the easiest way to spot an aircraft in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

@bbg

I believe that BA38, the 777 that crashed at LHR, had spent a lot of its flight at 40,000ft? That was thought to have contributed to the icing problem.

I have no idea what load-control system you used to work with, but from my days doing weight & balance (4 years ago), I used to work with several different systems, all of them creating a NOTOC and an indication in the loadsheet (in the LDM section) when valuables where onboard (VAL/xxx/hold). It's something pretty usual in Switzerland, to have valuables onboard, so I'm used to print NOTOCs and loadsheets with that code...

Post #4077, Techgeek said "Please disprove this line of reasoning..."

You based your conclusion on hourly data updates. Revisit using updates that are twice as frequent.

Andy Pasztor, WSJ, broke the story about the data transmissions on Thursday. His report indicated that the data was in 30 minute increments. Pasztor initially reported that the plane could have flown up to four hours after the last official reported contact of 01:41. In an interview with NPR, he also said that it was possible that it (the aircraft) had landed.

Behind his report is the implication that data points are missing from a regular 30 minute interval pattern.

Yes. But you'd give the NOTOC to the crew with the load sheet wouldn't you? They wouldn't be informed weeks ahead, in order to plan a heist.

I agree, I was just stating that valuables are considered special load, and for that, pilots get a NOTOC, since it wasn't clear from previous statement.

This post is so outlandishly incorrect, it should be addressed to eliminate confusion
 

Ramjet555 said:

The "alright, good night" AND contact with Japan Bound flight came AFTER it was switched off.

Vietnam found plenty of that "evidence" and none of it was from the plane:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-...1-1193007.aspx

There is no physical way he could have. Distance and circumference of Earth do not cease to exist just because you want him to have seen what he thought maybe he saw

So the plane just hovered there for 7+ hours? And during this 7+ hours, no one was able to spot it while the search was underway?

There are a bunch of the pings, not one

...so it did hover then? And since the search started roughly 6 hours after the plane went missing, about 1.5 hours of the Hovering took place in the middle of the SAR team?

Good thing there wasnt a midair collision between SAR and the hovering MH370 with all that trafic - we must have dodged a major bullet there!

Ghost plane? Something big was picked up, and followed that path. Not only that, but there are at minimum 11 eye witness reports at the Malaysia/Thailand border putting a plane flying from the Gulf of Thailand towards the Straits between 1:30-1:45 (must be coincidence though as this is the same time the plane is hovering, right?)

Except for the evidence you don't want to hear

So all real evidence that all the Governments seem to be agreeing on now is just wrong, and those Governments are wrong, and because of that what all the real evidence indicates is also wrong - therefore, the plane has to be where it absolutely cant be after having a catastrophic event it couldn't have had? Makes sense...

the area is 30-75 Meters deep! if you stood the plane on its nose in the area it went down, odds are its tail would be sticking out above the surface! If 14 countries cant find the black box in that depth...

Do you not know how A) Small the body of water is there B) how many planes, ships and satellites have been combing thh area?

They were there watching everything within 6 hours. The debris would have had to have been seen THEN, and it wouldn't matter where it could have gone much, much, much later

no - Malaysia owes them an apology for lying to everyone for a week before telling them looking in that area was absolutely pointless. What we know
Planes tracking Disabled - THEN pilots talk to ATC and Japan Bound Plane - THEN Eyewitnesses put it over Malaysia/Thailand - THEN radar picks it up ... and they knew all that within hours of the event! That is why one of the first statements Malaysia made included "last contact at 2:40", "indication it turned around" and "eyewitness reports"

Also, there is no "evidence" what so ever, no matter how hard people try to twist things. Nothing AT ALL is there

Again, physically impossible

Get a scuba tank and do it yourself - it is THAT SHALLOW of water!

meanwhile, no one else should be wasting their time in the Gulf Of Thailand, there has never been a shred of evidence it was there and only a thought of "well, it last contacted us from here so it must be here"

And I would just like to point out, in your entire post, you did not even provide one fact other than the nod to Vietnam doing a good job - which they did do a great job trying to look for the needle miles away from anything resembling a haystack. China did a horrific job here though - releasing nonsense like the satellite image (which they later said basically 'oops, we shouldn't have released that, its not the plane', something which should have been pretty obvious since the so-called debris was said to be 3x the size of the plane) and then made the asinine claim of "seismic activity where there never is any" (despite it being IN the Ring Of Fire, at the exact time a 2.7 Earth Quake was taking place not far away) ... China had to have known they were talking straight nonsense, yet still put it out there giving people false hope the plane could have ever been in the Gulf of Thailand when it was known by Malaysia (and I imagine suspected by everyone) that it wasn't there

Why no military radar at night? Too expensive was the reply.
 

Nothing much happens they said, so the radar is switched off :ouch:

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I'd like to help y'all understand the arcs because I think there is a misunderstanding of what they represent. IMHO they are not possible flight paths.

The arcs line up exactly with the range information from one single satellite, not two. This indicates that they are primarily getting their information from only one satellite (the only one in range).

Funny thing about these satellites (assuming the pic a few pages back is correct) is that they are all in a line so even if three or more were in range no "triangulation" would be possible because the satellites are not arranged in a triangle. GPS satellites are not arranged in a straight line for this exact reason.

All the arcs indicate is that at a few specific times the plane was roughly at a few points (or possibly only one point) along the arc, not that the plane flew exactly along the arc.

One satellite is going to give you a circle (in 2 dimensions, really a sphere but we can safely assume the plane is not in space or anywhere out of flight range to the west). Two satellites would give you duplicate points of intersection north and south. It would take a 3rd satellite that was not in line with the first 2 to triangulate and determine which of the north or south points was the correct one.

Since we are being shown arcs of a circle the information is only coming from one satellite.

Id like to know answers to OBD's 2 questions on fuel quantity at push back and cargo manifest.

In addition if a pilot is wearing a flight deck oxygen mask would that make his RT voice sound mumbled or muffled? And what is the approx duration of the flight deck 02 supply? Are we talking a few minutes or longer?

Communicator said

That is not correct. The Malaysia Government instantly recognized it as the plane, hence "last contact was 2:40" and "evidence to suggest the plane turned around" being relayed to the media on day 1 (remember, the initial thought by absolutely everyone everywhere was the plane was lost after 2 hours, not 1)

Only later, for God only knows what reason, did they start saying there must have been a catastrophic event taking place between 1:20-1:30 at the last known location - that despite their knowing the plane made verbal communication twice in that time frame, their hard evidence said it took a turn and eye witness accounts said it took a turn

@Communicator,The Inmarsat aperture angles have been determined by reference to the node establishment 'pings' tx/rx timings, meaning that the accuracy of the arcs shown is reasonable, though could be subject to some small errors associated with the internal pass-through time of the aircraft SatCom equipment.

EDIT: I made the following comment in Post #3819 over 12 hours ago;

Well, I would imagine that there is no way that information on the fuel and the cargo is going to be released to the public.
So while many would like it - they ain't going to get it.

Cargo
 

Can we stop all these nonsense theories about cargo theft?

If anyone had enough advance knowledge of the cargo and the flight it was carried on to plan to hijack the plane, they would have saved themselves a hell of a lot of money, risk and trouble by hijacking the truck that took it to or from the airport.

The only part the cargo has to play in the solving of this mystery is if it was in some way responsible for causing an explosion, fire or other incident in flight.

Oh and on the subject of the 'roger that' reply, do we know that the pilot making that comment was speaking English? If he was talking to Malaysian ATC he may have been speaking Malay and the above may simply be a poor translation into English.

HF / VHF comms
 

The key things here are 'if it stands out' and 'if it was heard'. Short HF transmissions in the middle of an Amateur Radio or Maritime frequency block are, I suggest, highly unlikely to draw attention to themselves unless there is something spectacularly unusual about them, even assuming that the signal is received loud and clear at a monitoring station. And even if someone spotted them immediately and identified the transmissions as unusual, unless the messages contained clear intent and identifiable place names, there is going to be very little that can be done about it. Something like "Alfa this is Bravo, all according to plan, ETA position Charlie four hours" isn't going to give much away unless you can recognise the speaker's voice or instantly triangulate it (good luck with that) to a location of high interest.

The radio bands are cluttered with all manner of transmissions from any number of sources, most of which are going to be unidentifiable unless they choose to identify themselves. Ships, aircraft, expeditions, taxis, radio hams, smugglers, take your pick ...

Full face Oxy masks usually are clear but a bit hollow and nasal in tone, not muffled. In a hijack situation the interloper is listening in and that should involve a non standard speaker or mic set up that could muffle things somewhat.

I agree with D.S.'s critique of the Ramjet555 theory.

The pilots are reasonable suspects, no matter how harsh, just as when someone is murdered in a home the spouse is normally on the suspect list.