It wasn't.
If the B777 were to have some nasty secrets it would have been uncovered by now. It's been in service for a long time.
For any pilot trained om the B777, it takes a bomb to remove it from the map just like that.

The security issues from the AVSEC side
 

As I mentioned in my first comment, I feel well qualified to comment on the security issues, after my years spent as a detective inspector and, subsequently, an AVSEC specialist.

The furore surrounding the confirmed use of at least two stolen passports by PAX on MH370 raises many issues but doesn't strongly indicate terrorism or foul-play in this specific case.

There is a highly variable standard of screening indifferent countries, even different airports in the same country. There is no standardised training, globally. There is no global standard for passport design and security features. There is no global agreement over the use of the Interpol stolen passport database. There is no requirement for countries to notify Interpol about stolen passports. Most countries pay only cursory attention to passports when PAX are leaving a country. Airlines have no access to any stolen passport databases and only check for the appropriate visas at check-in.

By now, you should be getting the picture: there are more holes in the security net than a sieve. However, there are a number of factors that should have set alarm bells ringing. Tickets paid in cash, tickets bought by a third party, a long-way-round itinerary, one-way tickets, etc., are all classic indicators that something dodgy is going on and should be investigated before the two PAX are allowed to board that flight.

However, all these signs were missed. Why? I think the lack of good, old-fashioned paper tickets, which contained all the information needed to join the dots on a single coupon, is partly to blame. That being said, these PAX did have a paper coupon with the info on it and still the warning signs were missed. I suspect that check-in staff, many of whom are now contracted from third party vendors by airlines, do not have the requisite training to spot the warning signs.

As I mentioned above, immigration staff often do not have access to the right information and often pay no attention to other travel documentation aside from the passer, so they miss the warning signs as well. Security staff are concerned only with physical security not documentation. Then, of course, we have to remember that even well-trained humans make mistakes.

But the bottom line is that it is far, far too easy to evade detection when travelling with false or stolen travel documents. Not all those who do it are terrorists, but they certainly are criminals and up to no good.

Does this help us solve the riddle of MH370? No, right now it's a distraction from the main aim, which is to find the aircraft. Only then can the proper investigation begin. It will have to work backwards. Finding out the cause of (almost certain) crash and, if foul play was involved, working backwards to try and find out who was involved.

@Roadster280 @Wire_Mark

To prevent the use of mobiles already aboard held by crew and passengers, a couple of mobile phone jammers could have been taken aboard, they are quite effective and some look like wireless access points so could easily be mistaken for a bit of IT kit by airside security.

All you're missing is a plausible reason why they would keep it a secret. That's a pretty serious hole in the theory. The players who would have the radar track on Air Defense radar, but are keeping it secret would be: Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, tenuously, Thailand, even less plausibly, Indonesia.

Pick any one of those. Assume that they have radar track data which indicates where the airplane went. What *possible* reason would they have for keeping it secret?

Wouldn't Hijackers just confiscate mobile phones? If indeed there was a hijack

Intercept!
 

Surely large, unidentified radar return, flying in controlled airspace, would prompt an interception to evaluate a potential threat? :confused:

Surely a lot easier to just jam them than search several hundred passengers.

I'll offer that it illustrates the lack of a flaming datum. Estimates of where it might have gone down are not the same as more substantive cues regarding where and when it went down.

Granted, organizing and executing a multi-national search effort requires a well run command and control scheme, and a lot of practice.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) issues passport standards which are treated as recommendations to national governments. The size of passports normally comply with ISO/IEC 7810 ID-3 standard, which specifies a size of 125 × 88 mm (4.921 × 3.465 in). This size is the B7 format.

Machine-readable passport standards have been issued by the ICAO, with an area set aside where most of the information written as text is also printed in a manner suitable for optical character recognition.

Biometric passports (or e-Passports) have an embedded contactless smart card chip in order to conform to ICAO standards. The chips contain data about the passport holder, a photograph in digital format and data about the passport itself.

Mabuhay_2000: "Surely large, unidentified radar return, flying in controlled airspace, would prompt an interception to evaluate a potential threat? :confused:"

As in aviation security in many countries, military radar surveillance capability is not equaled by the competence of its practitioners. :ugh:

Not the first time...
 

I recall the Boeing 737-400 Adam Air Flight 574 accident - 1st Jan 2007 - departed cruise altitude of FL350 and disappeared into the Straits of Makassar. Nothing was found until 10 days later when fisherman came across a large fragment of the tail. The black boxes were located by a US Navy Ship, the Mary Sears, 27 days after the disappearance, and took considerably longer to recover them.

Probable cause of the Adam Air accident was loss of control whilst attempting to trouble shoot faulty INS system.

Passports and ICAO
 

The key word there is RECOMMENDATIONS.

Countries do not have to abide by them and many don't. The security features vary from several sophisticated features to hardly any!

And security features are rendered pointless if the operators at immigration desks cannot recognise problems with them! :confused:

My point about RR monitoring the Trent engine is twofold.
Firstly, a live time data stream would provide a definitive timescale and secondly but crucially would indicate flight after the transponder ceased.

@mabuhay_2000
 

If the radars were operable and properly manned. At the point they lost contact, they would have only been read by longer range type radar, which may not see a primary blip at that distance. (would be primary if transponder switched off)

Closer in the radar is a bit better and probably would set off some alerts.

Your mention of a lot of different people not wanting to share info is undoubtedly correct. I perceive a big "turf" war there, and the left hand will not let the right hand have any information.

Food for thought. There are a lot of training scenarios going on in that region where fighters intercept airliners for practice.

A few years ago, an F-4 hit a Spanish DC-9 and everyone but the F-4 RIO died.

Not saying this is the case, but someone there knows more than what is being published.

As the search stretches on without success, I'm inclined to wonder if the loss of Comms might have been separated from the loss of the a/c by some considerable amount of time.

Is there a scenario in which something knocks out all Comms, transponder, etc. but leaves the a/c otherwise operational? Perhaps a fire, and the crew tried to troubleshoot for several minutes (or longer) until the flight control systems were disrupted?

Such a scenario might put the crash site dozens or even hundreds of miles from where Comms were lost.

@OBD
 

Thanks for the radar pointer.

There are a lot of historical tensions between countries in this region. Malaysia-Singapore, Thailand-Cambodia/Laos, Vietnam-China, Philippines-China, Indonesia-Malaysia, etc.

The Chinese are already having a pop at the Malaysians about the perceived lack of effort and information they're providing.

Does anybody know why the US is the only lot searching the Straits of Malacca? And why they are? When the aircraft would have had to have flown all the way back across Malaysia?

Seems odd.

Inadvertent thrust reverser deployment?
 

I recall a Lauda Air Boeing 767 that went down coincidentally in the same theater maybe 20 years ago, due to inadvertent t/r deployment during climb. Twin engine along the centerline like the 777. T/R opening in flight was supposed to be fail-safe, but it occurred nevertheless.

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but I was out playing golf earlier and something occured to me.

ADS bangs out a position report to whatever ATC center the aircraft is logged on to the moment Altitude or heading change, where no ADS reports received?

Isn't that somewhat presumptive? "Nasty secrets" have often remained hidden for many years before they bite.

For comparative purposes only, the Adam Air 574 wreckage took nine days to discover. The CVR and FDR were recovered some eight months later!