Missing passengers
 

The airline press release at least stated that the now-show passengers' baggage was offloaded.

5 out of 250 doesn't seem an unreasonable number not to board, and their names are known and their passports were scanned, so they can easily be eliminated. Baggage tag scanner records should show whether they did have bags on board.

@Joshannon

You wrote this article in the South China Morning Post?

Sir, may I ask you what led you to remark that Vietnamese and Malaysian MIG fighter pilots are 'trigger happy'? Do you have any examples of late to suggest that they are less than professional than what you allege? I sure hope that your mindset of vietnamese soldiers/pilots are not the 1960s vietnam war era generation. What fighters do Malaysia have in their fleet? Do you know that there are Sukois and F-18s apart from their Mig 29s? So how are the Mig pilots are trigger happy compared to the rest?
This very statement discredits you and brings your credibility as a journalist to that of a sensationalist opportunist.

Heading for KUL? It was heading for PEK! The conspiracy theorists who drummed up the banter regarding the flight making a turn back to KUL is totally and utterly unsubstantiated and and cannot be confirmed due to the integrity of some of the radar data that was logged. There is no credible data thus far that backs that theory up or has been confirmed.

People please, before hitting the send button on your post please ensure you have read the facts surrounding this flight properly.

This flight departed KUL and was heading for PEK.

I am sick of reading people's posts on here who are quoting incorrect information. :ugh:

Can someone point to a credible primary source that in fact there is any search activity in the Malacca Straits ? Just because the aircraft are BASED in Butterworth (on the Malacca coast) does not mean they are searching there. I can imagine the apron at Kota Baharu getting rather cluttered, so a base 200km away might be more suitable for the long-range P-3s.

You seem to be missing this piece of information: BBC News - Missing Malaysia Airlines plane 'may have turned back'

From ABC News

Similarity to Comet 1 disappearnce of Elba
 

The similarity to the Comet 1 accident off Elba is in some ways striking. For all our modern comms and tracking equipment, once a return/downlink has gone, it's gone and what happens to the airframe and all conveyed therein is as clear in 2014 as it was in 1954 until someone like a fisherman comes up with a report of seeing the incident, and that could be days, or genuine wreckage/bodies surface.

May have found something
 

Yes. I've flown over the Straits of Malacca, I know where they are. If one assumes that the airplane had some sort of accidental catastrophe, then true, the straits of Malacca are very improbable. Thing is, we don't know that it *was* an in flight disintegration/uncontrolled descent/etc and we don't know that it *wasn't* a commandeering/ hijacking. If you do not assume those are not possibilities, then the straits of Malacca stop being an impossibility. I've been involved in search and rescue, and you don't only search in places you think are probable, although you give them extra effort. Ideally you search everyplace that is physically possible for the plane to be locate, although that can be a really big area so you try to reduce that as much as possible. But, yeah, you do send assets to search areas with a lower probability, rather than concentrating all assets in the area you think is most probable, given your assumptions. It's pretty obvious that a hijacking scenario hasn't been absolutely ruled out, so the possible ares that it could be are a little more widespread than "directly downwind from the last point of contact".

Besides, it looks like nobody really knows whose P-3s they are or what they're doing.

edit: I see a later posts suggest that they are US P-3s searching for MH370.

[UPDATE] Potential wreckage?
 

TPO - According to air traffic management agency in Hong Kong, one of their aircraft detected several unidentified fragments at position coast from Vung Tau is about 60km to the southeast (how to position the plane missing over Malaysia 500km).

Google Translate

lol and therein lies half the problem. Lose the blip but keep comms: no phase required. Lose comms but can still 'see' the aeroplane: Incerfa appropriate. Lose comms AND lose the blip = an immediate DISTRESFA where I come from.....

I don't know of any airplane 777 or not which has a button when accidentally pushed causes it to break all contact and disappear off the face of the earth. One would expect that such a button would have a big red guard over it. Maybe with a printed warning too.

from BBC News Asia
 

... Commander William Marks from the US Seventh Fleet, which is taking part in the search, says he expects the plane's flight recorders to be floating in the water.
"In calm seas, if there were a soccer ball [football] or a basketball floating in the water, the radar could pick it up. They [flight recorders] typically have a radio beacon and so for example our P3 [radar] - if they are flying within a certain range of that - will pick up that radio beacon. We have not yet picked up anything, but that's typically what those black boxes contain." ...


The sentence in bold letters, is incorrect, as far as my knowledge is concerned.

something is very wrong
 

By now any flight deck, accident investigation, terror prevention or ATC staff will now be very suspicious about the last 24 hours lack of developments. This simply does not happen in todays environment, A/C hit TOC at 35, no conclusive radar signature, no wreckage, conflicting data, relatively shallow seas, someone somewhere is holding back the tragic fate of this 777.

Re: 1) A bomb rigged with an accelerometer/compass trigger (essentially a smartphone would do it, programmed as some sort of inertial navigator) plotting the course of the aircraft - assuming the same flight files the same flight plan day in, day out - and then set to go off at this turn, because the perpetrator knows that at that point of the flight the AC will have reached cruising altitude and be somewhere over the sea?

A timer set to go off at XX o'clock would be a far more simple approach, agreed, if someone was plotting to bomb the AC. So just speculating.

Of course pilots fail. For example, call on the wrong frequency, fail to turn on transponder, but that usually will be rectified.
This case is truly bizarre and baffles many experts. I'm sure by now many experts, beyond this forum, had contributed and brainstormed to figure out what could've happened and based on the probabilities and resources, chased those leads.

Why they are at RMAF Butterworth is because:

"The base is home to:
RAAF 324 Expeditionary Combat Support Squadron (324 ECSS)
RAAF 92 Wing Detachment Alpha"

RMAF Base Butterworth - Royal Australian Air Force

Do you know that they are not?

Old news (yesterday) - Australia offered two of its RAAF Orion PC3s to assist in the search - No Cookies | thetelegraph.com.au

These are probably already based at Butterworth (adjacent the Straits of Malacca) where the RAAF has had a presence since the 1950s.

Sir, I think you're mistaken. IF the flight was somehow commandeered, the origin or destination of the original flight becomes a moot point. They will go wherever they want (fuel permitting). Of course the original flight path would go into disguising the intent but I think you get my point.