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Malaysian airliner feared lost..

If we or another navy had any submarines transiting the Indian Ocean, they may have picked up a transient on sonar, yet would probably still be unaware that people on the surface are all madly searching for an airliner.
 
J.T.B. said:
How difficult would it be to repaint a jetliner in flight? Is that a serious question?
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Not really. It's more of a "Could even the cleverest person here think of an absurd but even remotely actually possible way this could be done?" sort of question. Because I'm thinking that if even if they had done something as far-fetched as I was suggesting in that post in the first place, that they would probably have needed the assistance of a friendly airfield that wouldn't report their presence and where they could have changed the markings and such.

Which really kinda brings the whole problem of how they could have landed anywhere without someone spilling the beans full circle. And, makes me wonder what the heck would be the point. So, nevermind.
 
I love the theories here, they are all nuts!

I like the repainting a plane in mid air one. ;)

I never thought about the cell phones, that's a very good point.

What I do not understand, why is there a button to shut of the tracking of the radar? Why would you even need to shut it off?
 
^From what i understand, there's not a single button but a whole set of protocol to do so which is why some suspect a deliberate act.

As why to turn it off, perhaps for when they are on the ground?
 
But what they showed all they had to do was turn a thing and it goes off. I guess when landing it would make sense to shut it off, but radar doesn't work on the ground anyways.
 
bigdaddy said:
But what they showed all they had to do was turn a thing and it goes off. I guess when landing it would make sense to shut it off, but radar doesn't work on the ground anyways.
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That's not correct. There is ground control radar that tracks all movements on an airport so everyone else knows roughly where everyone else is.

So it's most likely that the transponder isn't turned off until the aircraft is parked at the gate (at which time the code is free to be allocated to another aircraft - the code is made of four digits which limits the number available)
 
Usually a plane isn't given the transponder code until it's given clearance to head for the runway/taxiway. Even then the code can be inputed without actually turning the transponder on. There's any number of reasons to keep the transponder off during ground operations if only to keep the radio "noise" on the ground as low as possible to facilitate better communications between aircraft and the tower.
 
“A lot of stock cannot be put in the altitude data” sent from the engines, one official said. “A lot of this doesn’t make sense.”

The smartest thing ever said about this whole thing.
 
EmoBorg said:
As long they have not found the wreckage, there is still hope for the passengers.
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No there isn't. It's been a week, where are you hiding a plane and 240 people for a week?

It would have been better if the plane crashed in the ocean within a minute and killed everyone. God know what horrors the people on the plane went through.

Still weird no one called / texted anyone when the plane (most likely) flew back over land.
 
bigdaddy said:
EmoBorg said:
As long they have not found the wreckage, there is still hope for the passengers.
Click to expand...

No there isn't. It's been a week, where are you hiding a plane and 240 people for a week?

It would have been better if the plane crashed in the ocean within a minute and killed everyone. God know what horrors the people on the plane went through.

Still weird no one called / texted anyone when the plane (most likely) flew back over land.
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If it was flying toward China... where would it have gone in China?
 
If it was flying toward China... where would it have gone in China?
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Hmm..I find it very unlikely that a rogue plane would manage to avoid all Chinese radar and air defense without being seen.
I am pretty sure though that Chinese officials are going trough their radar records as we speak.
It still could be somewhere in the Indian Ocean, if if took the southern air corridor mentioned.

Some people speculate that it was a pilot suicide..but why then go all the trouble of hiding and all that? does not make sense to me really( though not much of this does anymore).
 
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