Probably the same reason there is (or was) a dial tone so the person dialling doesn't just get "nothing" until they become connected which would make them think that they have been disconnected whilst waiting for the international exchanges to actually find the phone & then make the connection.

Paddy, can you please fill us in on the 777 that was lost to a cockpit fire? I don't recall that happening.

My post above (#733) was possibly too cryptic - does MH lock their MEC access hatch or could someone have gained entry?

On our 777s at least, you can't lock it. That is actually a good thought.

SOPS
 

Cockpit fire details here:

http://aviation-safety.net/database/...?id=20110729-0

i think BA had a 777 damaged on the ground - refuelling fire at Denver? 2001?

Terrorism seeming more and more a possibility.


Air force chief: Malaysia jet may have turned back


Greg Barton, a professor of international politics at Australia's Monash University and a terrorism expert, said if the disaster was the result of terrorism, there is no obvious suspect. If it was terrorism, Barton expected China would be quick to blame separatists from the ethnic Uighur minority, as authorities did recently when 29 people were killed in knife attacks at a train station in the southern city of Kunming.
"If a group like that is behind it, then suddenly they've got a capacity that we didn't know they had before, they've executed it very well — that's very scary," Barton told AP.

Obviously Malaysian Airline is still unwilling to tell what they really know ( or they still don't have a clue what honest and timelycommunication is ). Why did they insist for more than 20 hours that the flight is "just without communication".

These story with the 2 passports is another BIG mystery.
Both PAX ( pretend to be ) are European and the names are European.
So the Pax must look European!
Did MH do a passport check and name verification at check-in /boarding ?

Normally one-way tickets raise questions at security ( SSSS in the US , in Europe they are more discreet ), why not at MH ?
In AMS the pax would have to do the Schengen Area immigration ( where stolen passports would definitely flag up ), did they never intend to continue beyond PEK ?

For China Austrians and Italians do need a Visa for China, so they would not be able to "disappear" in Beijing. Why didn't they take the direct flight from KUL to AMS ?

Too many open questions, zero trust in MH communication

Sorry to add extra noise to the thread and even more if it's a repeat but I haven't seen this mentioned yet. Re: the two e-tickets: price is quoted in Thai Bahts (and it's within a likely price range). This would mean that they've been bought from a thai travel agent. Another connection to Thailand.
Not that I'm buying these unlikely copies as genuine information, though.

Well, it will be getting dark soon, and still no wreckage found. I am really starting to think that perhaps there is no wreckage, or if there is wreckage, it's a long way from where they are looking.

It's most likely faked. The accompanying supposed ticket scan, for the other "stolen passport" passenger, has its stamp in exactly the same place - wouldn't happen.

Also the RED stamp on them is identically positioned....maybe its stamped by a mechanical system or printed rather than by hand, but if by hand, then the conclusion is that they are fake.

Asian culture.

Not necessarily. With thousands of immigrants over the decades hardly anyone looks european anymore. Or are you saying all europeans are white, blond and blue eyed? never been to manchester eh?

In my experience, in most of the world airlines dont check passports and name verify other than a formality. Plus, dont people change a bit from the day their passport pictures are taken?
The real question is why didnt two stolen passports get flagged. This indicates an extremely serious security flaw and perhaps it has been exploited before being blocked. Extremely scary thought.

Outside your little cocoon of the US and EU (where a world also exists), this is a common case. Add the fact that a tourism driven country like Malaysia sees many backpackers/tourists with one way tickets or changing travel plans constantly.


Good question.

As has been mentioned about a dozen times before, you dont need a visa if you are transiting thru China for upto 72 hours. Please stop beating a dead horse now.

Why they didnt take a direct flight? Amazing that you are accusing someone of a malicious act then asking logical questions about their actions? Are you serious?

They arent forcing you to listen to them. In this age of information, the truth will come out, you are free to listen to another source.

Suspicious object floating in the sea, Tho Chu island 100km south southwest
 

Aircraft searching have discovered a suspicious object floating in the sea, Tho Chu island 100km south southwest.

Phát hi?n v?t th? kh? nghi cách ??o Th? Chu 100km - Tuoi Tre Mobile

The e-ticket pictures for the two stolen passport travellers are not from genuine tickets, it is just a printout from some reservation system. BUT IT DOES NOT MATTER.

The e-tickets with those ticket numbers are stored in the global reservation database and can be retrieved by anyone from WWW (yes anyone). The type of printout is not relevant.

The tickets were issued in Pattaya.

Flying on a stolen passport to the EU is very naive. On arrival on a CSZ flight in Amsterdam the passports would have been identified and the holders be retained.

Appears to me the two travellers never intended to get to AMS.

I live in Saigon, but didn't hear about this until late Saturday afternoon, about 15 hours after the loss of contact. It is now Sunday afternoon and I am in my office and was able to look up some facts.

From Ca Mau, the southern most tip of Vietnam, to coast of Malaysia is about 250 nm. Apart from the 12nm territorial waters adjacent to each coast, the remaining distance is International Waters, although still within the Exclusive Economic Zone of either Malaysia or Vietnam. So the navies of both countries actively patrol these waters.

There are many oil and gas production platforms in the area, mostly on the Malaysian side of the EEZ border (about 120 nm from Ca Mau), but they would not be maintaining active lookouts. There are currently no active drilling rigs but there are probably oilfield supply vessels in the area, who might have seen something.

There will be lots of small (~10 m) wooden fishing boats actively fishing for squid at night time. Very few of them have radios and given the extremely bright lights they use, there would have to have been a fireball in the sky, for the crews to have a chance of seeing anything.

This area is geographically part of the South China Sea (although the Vietnamese never use that term - here it is the Eastern Sea), but it is more often referred to as the Gulf of Thailand, certainly in the oil industry.

There is a very naive statement on the BBC website:
What is happening here is that China is taking advantage of the situation to remind home audiences that the government considers the South China Sea to be "their" sea, even though in this case, the search area is well to the west of the famous "nine-dash line" that the Chinese use to base their claim (China?s infamous ?9 dash line? map |). They are probably also hoping for a wonderful PR coup if one of their vessels finds the wreckage or participates in the recovery operations.

The Chinese say they have "dispatched" some vessels to the scene. It is highly unlikely that they are being sent from the mainland, which is nearly a 1000 miles away. It is more likely that they have diverted these vessels from routine patrol in the South China Sea, where they often harass non-Chinese fishing and oil exploration vessels.

I have participated in Emergency Response Team drills and am very familiar with the concept of an On Scene Commander. I wonder who will assume that role in this situation? A vessel from the country in whose EEC the scene is located or the one with the biggest guns?

From AP
 

— A catastrophic structural failure of the airframe or its Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engines. Most aircraft are made of aluminium which is susceptible to corrosion over time, especially in areas of high humidity. But given the plane’s long history and impressive safety record, experts suggest this is unlikely.

More of a threat to the plane’s integrity is the constant pressurisation and depressurisation of the cabin for takeoff and landing. In April 2011, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 made an emergency landing shortly after takeoff from Phoenix after the plane’s fuselage ruptured, causing a 5-foot tear. The plane, with 118 people on board, landed safely. But such a rupture is less likely in this case. Airlines fly the 777 on longer distances, with many fewer takeoffs and landings, putting less stress on the airframe.

“It’s not like this was Southwest Airlines doing 10 flights a day,” Hamilton said. “There’s nothing to suggest there would be any fatigue issues.”



— Bad weather. Planes are designed to fly through most severe storms. However, in June 2009, an Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed during a bad storm over the Atlantic Ocean. Ice built up on the Airbus A330’s airspeed indicators, giving false readings. That, and bad decisions by the pilots, led the plane into a stall causing it to plummet into the sea. All 228 passengers and crew aboard died. The pilots never radioed for help.

In the case of yesterday’s Malaysia Airlines flight, all indications show that there were clear skies.



— Pilot disorientation. Mr Curtis said that the pilots could have taken the plane off autopilot and somehow went off course and didn’t realise it until it was too late. The plane could have flown for another five or six hours from its point of last contact, putting it up to 3,000 miles away. This is unlikely given that the plane probably would have been picked up by radar somewhere. But it’s too early to eliminate it as a possibility.



— Failure of both engines. In January 2008, a British Airways 777 crashed about 1,000 feet short of the runway at London’s Heathrow Airport. As the plane was coming in to land, the engines lost thrust because of ice buildup in the fuel system. There were no fatalities.

Loss of both engines is possible in this case, but Hamilton said the plane could glide for up to 20 minutes, giving pilots plenty of time to make an emergency call. When a US Airways A320 lost both of its engines in January 2009 after taking off from LaGuardia Airport in New York it was at a much lower elevation. But Capt. Chesley B “Sully” Sullenberger still had plenty of communications with air traffic controllers before ending the six-minute flight in the Hudson River.



— A bomb. Several planes have been brought down including Pan Am Flight 103 between London and New York in December 1988. There was also an Air India flight in June 1985 between Montreal and London and a plane in September 1989 flown by French airline Union des Transports Ariens which blew up over the Sahara.



— Hijacking. A traditional hijacking seems unlikely given that a plane’s captors typically land at an airport and have some type of demand. But a 9/11-like hijacking is possible, with terrorists forcing the plane into the ocean.



— Pilot suicide. There were two large jet crashes in the late 1990s — a SilkAir flight and an EgyptAir flight— that are believed to have been caused by pilots deliberately crashing the planes. Government crash investigators never formally declared the crashes suicides but both are widely acknowledged by crash experts to have been caused by deliberate pilot actions.



— Accidental shoot-down by some country’s military. In July 1988, the United States Navy missile cruiser USS Vincennes accidently shot down an Iran Air flight, killing all 290 passengers and crew. In September 1983, a Korean Air Lines flight was shot down by a Russian fighter jet.

Update of Vietnam SAR effort
 

The two AN-26 planes have landed after their morning flight. At 1440 local time, they reported "suspicious items floating in the sea" at N083621 E1031330. An Mi-171 helicopter and surface ships have been directed there for a closer look, estimated to reach there at 1900 local (UTC+7).

[This is approx 105 NM in direction 348 degrees from MH370's last known position near waypoint IGARI, as reported by FR24. It's approx 41 NM SSW from the Tho Chu island. The observation is approx 70 NM due north from the oil slick and smoke reported yesterday].

Since these sightings are in Vietnamese FIR, the authorities are preparing for the additional responsibilities that follow if MH370 is found in that area.

Other planes including a Singaporean C150 (?) plane have also identified traces or slicks on the sea but "nothing special". Many fishing vessels are said to operate in the area.

Disclaimer: From a Google translation.


EDIT: Corrections to the coordinates and the Singaporean info in post #736 further below.

Exactly. Presumably the onward ticket was required to board and fly visa-free on the Beijing leg using a european passport. But oh dear something has gone dreadfully wrong here, whatever that may be.

Fake passports carried by passengers are used for various illegal activities including drug smuggling. There are various reasons why those two never wanted to go to Amsterdam.