The Missing Malaysian plane.

[boston bean]

If, and that is an if, the plane was hijacked and was to land some place wouldn't the passengers start getting a bit concerned as to why they hadn't landed? My rough calculation is that from the last point we know of the flight was officially sighted, it had about 4 hours left in it's journey to Beijing..

If I were on the plane and I hadn't known the plane was hijacked that is when I would begin to worry.

I speculate, that if this is what happened, and I nor anyone else knows, that maybe passengers decided they needed to do something, ie 911 and the Pennsylvania crash... take over the cockpit, confront hijackers... It may be possible that trying to re-take the plane is what caused the plane to crash or the hijackers to commit suicide.

Who knows... but at this point it is looking like human interference cause the plane to disappear and it was not a catastrophic mechanical failure...

I guess we will see. I hope they determine what happened soon. Those poor people and their families.

[Violet_Crumble]

1. I don't know what information to believe or discard about this anymore...

All I can work out is there's a lot of confusion, withheld information and poor communication from the authorities involved. All I do know for sure is that I feel terrible for the families who are waiting to find out what happened to their loved ones. It must be torture for them...

[boston bean]

2. Yes, it is very sad.

I've been thinking this for a while, since we found out it took a turn early on, even though that was later denied. Which now turns out, it is probably actually the case it did.

It seemed so far fetched, but I guess most anything is in the realm of possibilities. This may seem conspiratorial, but with what we know and living in a post 911, these things have got to enter the minds of passengers.

Regardless though, you are right. I hope they find out soon for the families of these persons. It's got to be hell.

[BainsBane]

3. I think it's in the ocean

and they'll be lucky if they find any debris.

[boston bean]

5. I think they will find it.

[kelliekat44]

4. I still don't understand why satellite didn't pick up anything if it were an explosion or any kind

distress signal.

[boston bean]

6. I'm not an aviation expert

But it seems there should be some signal. I can't remember all the different things said, nor can I make sense of them all. But I do believe that the plane had something on board that would have noted a problem to the satellite it was communicating with.

I guess they need to start looking where they know the last contact between the plane and the satellite occurred.

Should have been doing that days ago, though.

[Jenoch]

7. Yes, if I were on a scheduled airline flight and it had not landed after more than 5 days

I would be concerned.

[boston bean]

8. was that necessary?

You know I am talking past the schedule landing time.

[okaawhatever]

9. This is the best info i've seen so far. Now that we kind of know what happened, it better

explains why we didn't know what happened. The biggest issue in determining anything earlier was that the last communication was when the Malaysian air traffic control (ATC) notified the plane that they were handing them off to Vietnamese ATC because the plane was leaving Malaysian airspace. The co-pilot said "roger that" which is okay, I heard you. The plane never entered Vietnamese airspace. That led everyone to believe something had happened right about that time. Of course, had something happened mechanically there still would have been time for the plane to call in a mayday. That led the authorities to believe that, absent a distress call, something catastrophic happened that took out all communication. Also, an airplane pings two signals to ground control unless that is turned off. Since there wasn't a ransom demand or anything else (maybe why they weren't onto a hijacking right away) they weren't thinking in those terms.
I don't know how long it took for them to verify that the plane never went into Vietnamese airspace. But, once they realized that, and realized it wasn't on Malaysia's radar they couldn't just pick up the phone and find out where they were. They had to call all countries and ask for military radar and airport radar. Once they received those they had to filter through every object and identify it before figuring out which one was the missing plane. That is how they figured out the transponders were in fact turned off, which made the picture even clearer. They have tracked the plane it was last plotted heading northwest towards another waypoint called "Igrex", on route P628 that would take it over the Andaman Islands and which carriers use to fly towards Europe.

The time was then 2:15 a.m. That is the same time given by the air force chief on Wednesday, who gave no information on that plane's possible direction.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/14/us-malaysia-airlines-radar-exclusive-idUSBREA2D0DG20140314

One thing I think is significant is that the plane was headed towards Iran. Since the young man with the stolen passport was Iranian seeking asylum in Malaysia he may have been trying to do a 9/11 type attack on Iran.