Posted on 03/13/2014 11:38:06 AM PDT by mandaladon
U.S. officials have an "indication" the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner may have crashed in the Indian Ocean and is moving the USS Kidd to the area to begin searching.
It will take another 24 hours to move the ship into position, a senior Pentagon official told ABC News. "We have an indication the plane went down in the Indian Ocean," the senior official said. The official said there were indications that the plane flew four or five hours after disappearing from radar and that they believe it went into the water.
Pentagon officials said that the USS Kidd was being moved at the request of Malaysia and is heading towards an area where the Indian Ocean and the Andaman Sea meet. It has helicopters aboard that can scour the area.
The U.S. action came hours after Malaysian officials said they had extended their search into the Andaman Sea and had requested help from India in the search for the missing plane and its 239 passengers.
Investigators also said today that U.S. officials gave them reasons to keep searching the waters west of Malaysia, far from the flight path of the Malaysia Airlines plane.
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that the search’s “main focus has always been in the South China Sea,” which is east of Malaysia and along the plane’s route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
But the search was extended earlier this week to include water far to the west on the other side of Malaysia. “We are working very closely with the FAA and the NTSB on the issue of a possible air turn back,” Hishammuddin said, referring to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board.
(Excerpt) Read more at gma.yahoo.com ...
And if they’re concocting a cover story nearly a week is long enough to plant evidence of a crash. Especially someplace remote.
You can’t tell me they didn’t know within hours of the flight having gone missing that the engines were still transmitting for several more hours.
"The cause of the uncontrolled flight and crash after the Learjet 35 apparently ran out of fuel were not known, but aviation experts speculated that the aircraft may have lost pressurization and that emergency backup systems failed as the plane's autopilot kept it in the air. Loss of pressurization above 30,000 feet would cause occupants of the aircraft to lose consciousness from oxygen deficiency in one to two minutes, the experts said."
Seems like the plane did have some sort of emergency backup. And, that the occupants would have had 60 to 120 seconds before loss of consciousness from lack of O2. Question is, was it the deployement of their O2 masks that failed?
The Learjet 35 is a pressurized aircraft that also is equipped with individual emergency oxygen masks for the passengers and crew if the pressurization system fails above about 12,000 feet.Tom Baum, a Learjet pilot instructor, told CNN that a panel light in the cockpit of the plane goes on if there is a problem with the pressurization and that a backup system should then automatically begin to function. He said Learjet pilots are required to wear oxygen masks around their necks.
If the aircraft had a slow decompression there would still be alarms when the cabin altitude increased above a relatively low altitude, between 10 and 13 thousand feet.
Just maybe Banacek (George Peppard) should be asked to come out of retirement !
No single failure should be able to take out all those systems. There are several means of communication off the aircraft and nothing should be able to take them all out at the same time short of total power loss or something else catastrophic. For someone to have done it deliberately is somewhat easier, but it would require a good working knowledge of the aircraft.
IMHO, the same people who created this incident caused the disappearance of MH370:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/02/world/asia/china-railway-attack/
They say that French plane that went down off of Brazil a few years ago likewise wasn’t discovered until 5 days after.
The 9/11 hijackers turned off the transponders.
American Airlines Flight 11
8:19 Flight attendant notifies AA of hijacking
8:21 Transponder is turned off
United Airlines Flight 175
8:42-8:46 Likely takeover
8:47 Transponder code changes
American Airlines Flight 77
8:54 Flight 77 makes unauthorized turn to south
8:56 Transponder is turned off
United Airlines Flight 93
9:36 Flight attendant notifies UA of hijacking;UA attempts to contact the cockpit
9:41 Transponder is turned off
http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.htm
The French plane went down in abysmally bad weather and was along the projected path it was to have originally taken.
If this plane is in the Andaman Sea, it’s thousands of miles off course and in the opposite direction. Hard to argue anything but deliberate human action put it on that course.
And who turned off the transponders if it suddenly depressurized?
Not a carrier base, and there are usually no assets there. It is used normally for subs, occasionally for transient aircraft deployments. My son deploys there about twice yearly for two weeks, and he has never seen anything other than the transports.
Permit me to offer an edit to my post.
Payne Stewart’s aircraft lacked the safeguards that a 777 has.
;-)
Because it was under 13,000 feet of water.
I was on a United flight from Chicago to Spokane about 25 years ago where we lost cabin pressure at 35m’ and the O2 masks in the plane did not deploy. The pilot put the 737 in a dive and we went downhill for 15 minutes. He leveled out between 5m’-10m’ and then we eventually landed at Billings, MT. The whole fire department was on the runway when we landed. A few of us got flights out to Denver. The rest spent the night in Billings. They flew another plane in the next day. It made the national news.
This 2005 Helios Airways 737-300 crash fits the template even better — but doesn’t explain the abrupt loss of MH370’s transponder signal.
On 9/11, the terrorists turned off the transponders on three of the four hijacked aircraft. With its transponder off, it is possible, though more difficult, to track an aircraft by its primary radar returns. But unlike transponder data, primary radar returns do not show the aircraft’s identity and altitude. Controllers at centers rely so heavily on transponder signals that they usually do not display primary radar returns on their radar scopes. But they can change the configuration of their scopes so they can see primary radar returns. They did this on 9/11 when the transponder signals for three of the aircraft disappeared.94
http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.htm
I know nothing about aviation, so help me out here. Let’s assume there is no foul play involved. That being the case, is there any legitimate reason for the crew to turn off the transponder?
An oil rig worker said he saw a plane on fire.
I wonder if the plane was hijacked and when an attempt was made to overpower the hijacker a bomb was touched off, not enough to blow up the plane but enough to start a fire killing everyone on the plane but the plane kept flying.
9/11 Military Notification and Response.
Because the hijackers had turned off the plane’s transponder, NEADS personnel spent the next minutes searching their radar scopes for the primary radar return.
http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.htm
At NEADS, the report of the hijacking was relayed immediately to Battle Commander Colonel Robert Marr. After ordering the Otis fighters to battle stations, Colonel Marr phoned Major General Larry Arnold, commanding general of the First Air Force and NORAD’s Continental Region. Marr sought authorization to scramble the Otis fighters. General Arnold later recalled instructing Marr to “go ahead and scramble them, and we’ll get authorities later.” General Arnold then called NORAD headquarters to report.118
F-15 fighters were scrambled at 8:46 from Otis Air Force Base. But NEADS did not know where to send the alert fighter aircraft, and the officer directing the fighters pressed for more information: “I don’t know where I’m scrambling these guys to. I need a direction, a destination.” Because the hijackers had turned off the plane’s transponder, NEADS personnel spent the next minutes searching their radar scopes for the primary radar return. American 11 struck the North Tower at 8:46. Shortly after 8:50, while NEADS personnel were still trying to locate the flight, word reached them that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.119
Radar data show the Otis fighters were airborne at 8:53. Lacking a target, they were vectored toward military-controlled airspace off the Long Island coast. To avoid New York area air traffic and uncertain about what to do, the fighters were brought down to military airspace to “hold as needed. “From 9:09 to 9:13, the Otis fighters stayed in this holding pattern.120
Shirley there must be an indicator that shows if the plane is pressurizing as it is supposed to. Once you go past 10K feet, the onset of hypoxia becomes more and more of a threat. Well before the plane had reached cruise altitude oxygen masks should have deployed.
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