Search on after Malaysia Airlines flight vanishes

[PsychoSerenity]

Surely some of the passengers must have been in mobile phone contact at some point? Even if they suspected nothing amiss, there should have been some outgoing text messages during those hours.

Do mobiles work in flight? Or do they need to connect through the plane's transmitter?

[klr]

Surely some of the passengers must have been in mobile phone contact at some point? Even if they suspected nothing amiss, there should have been some outgoing text messages during those hours.

Do mobiles work in flight? Or do they need to connect through the plane's transmitter?

I was thinking this as well. That there might be some reliance on the aircraft and its systems, and these could have been knocked out or disabled as part of whatever was done.

But I was reading an article on the BBC website earlier today, where the exact same question was asked.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26600361

One final thing: if this aircraft flew low over land, and people on board knew there was a problem, why did no-one try to make a phone call?

[mistermack]

I did ask the phone question days ago, it does seem odd. The passengers might not have noticed anything wrong for quite a while, but the cabin staff would, and you would think they would have made calls. So either the passengers were made to give up their phones, and threatened, or maybe there is just no coverage in the area that they were in, when they realised that something was wrong.

[JimC]

Re the phone thing - relatives who tried to phone them reported that the phones continued to ring for hours after it disappeared; the suggestion was, if it crashed, and the phones were destroyed, they wouldn't ring if called (not sure whether that is true or not). If so, perhaps the hijackers collected everybody's phones...

[FBM]

I saw something a couple of days ago that said the plane wasn't equipped with whatever is needed to allow passengers to use their phones. It also said that family would have gotten a false ring when they tried to call because the automated system does that to indicate that it's trying to connect, not that it has connected. I'm not saying those things are true; it's just what I recall them saying.

[MiM]

o you really think a Soviet era nuclear reactor, or a current Chinese reactor would survive a large plane, packed with explosives or fuel, diving at full throttle straight at the containment dome?

I think there would be a catastrophic breach of the core, and the release of a shitload of radioactive waste...

There are no reactors without containment domes.
People are overly fearful of radioactivity....it's hilarious how stupid they get about it.

We had dozens of air burst hydrogen bombs...something like trying to breach a nuke containment even if it was marginally successful would not even be a blip on the background radiation.

Now packing it full of dirty radioactive waste from hospitals etc and blowing up a downtown - that would be nasty to deal with.

For your amusement read throught this thread where fearmongering OP gets his ass handed to him by people that actually work with nuclear gear including decontamination.
I know Ben Burch IS a nuclear engineer and there are others with real world experience

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=274775

and another gets the same drubbing
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=275144

Our own MiM is a nuclear engineer. I've researched the engineering of nuclear reactors as part of the course I teach on nuclear physics.

Perhaps recent containment domes have been built with defences against such a terrorist attack, but in the past, they were radiation shields, primarily, and designed to contain internal blasts rather than external impacts of the magnitude involved. Not that that helped in either Fukishima or Chernobyl...

Jim is correct on the dome thing. None of the older reactors are designed to withstand a direct hit of a big plane. Asfaik Olkiluoto 3, that is being built in Finland, is the first one to be designed with this criteria in mind.

On the other hand macdoc is right in that targeting a large dam with a populated area downstream would lead to a much worse catastrophe, than hitting a reactor.

[pErvinalia]

Re the phone thing - relatives who tried to phone them reported that the phones continued to ring for hours after it disappeared; the suggestion was, if it crashed, and the phones were destroyed, they wouldn't ring if called (not sure whether that is true or not). If so, perhaps the hijackers collected everybody's phones...

I saw a telecoms "expert" claim that they would ring (from the perspective of the relatives) even if they had been destroyed in a crash.

The ratskep version of this thread had some info about an apparent tip off of sorts from an al qaeda suspect in custody. It alleged that this was organised by Sheik Kaleid whatshisname and there was a shoe bomb involved to access the cockpit.

[macdoc]

Ever try to crush an eggshell?....it's just not going to focus a blast enough.
Designs currently were against missiles - much faster and more pointed.

In addition the reactor vessel itself housing the rods is exceedingly strong.

This is what happens when Aluminum aircraft hits a concrete wall at 500 mph



Wall 1 Aircraft 0

Nuclear plants are built so robustly that they would seem to present a difficult target for terrorists. Their containment domes have walls three to six feet thick made of concrete reinforced with embedded steel bars and a half-inch steel liner. The reactor itself, tucked way down inside the dome, is protected by another thick slab of reinforced concrete. In one dramatic test years ago, a fighter jet was catapulted into a mock containing wall at nearly 500 miles per hour. The plane disintegrated into a pile of dust; the wall suffered a two-inch scratch.

Nobody knows what would happen if a much bigger jumbo jet loaded with fuel dived into a containment dome. Engineers at Entergy, the company that operates Indian Point, feel confident that their dome could withstand even that level of force. But some experts say a jumbo jet, or at least its engines, might break through the dome and ignite a fire or explosion that could cause enough disruption to start the reactor toward meltdown and release of radioactivity into the atmosphere. Nuclear regulators will need to assess the likelihood of that sequence and find ways to mitigate the consequences.

A far more vulnerable target is presented by the pools where spent fuel rods are stored after they have been used in the reactors. The pools have thick sides to prevent water from leaking even in a large earthquake but little protection overhead. A plane could theoretically plunge into the building and trigger events that could drain the pools and ignite a fire, which could spread radioactivity into the environment. Fortunately, the pool structures are relatively small and so would be hard to target from the air. Even if a leak were triggered, plant employees might have time to replace any water that drained out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/21/opini ... rgets.html

I'll trust the engineers assessement....without being focused the size of the explosion does not have a lot of bearing.....the open storage of the rods certainly poses a risk but there are greater opportunity targets.

Al Qaeda Document Reveals Terrorist Plans For Attacks In The U.S., Europe
The Huffington Post | By Meredith Bennett-Smith
Posted: 03/23/2013 9:04 am EDT

FOLLOW: Al Qaeda, Video, Al Qaeda Document, Al Qaeda Document Reveals Plans, Al Qaeda Terrorist Attacks, Attacks In The U.S., Terrorist Plans Revealed, World News, Terrorist Attacks, WorldPost News
Al Qaeda discussed attacking pipelines, dams, bridges, and other important infrastructure in the U.S. and Europe, according to a document seized from Osama bin Laden's Pakistan compound.

News of the document recently came to light after German newspaper Die Zeit published a story detailing its contents.

The outlet reports that the U.S. Department of Justice gave the letter to the German Federal Office of Justice in April 2012 for the trial of alleged terrorists in Germany, according to a Huffington Post translation of the story.

Johannes Pausch, the lawyer for one of the accused, told the paper he's skeptical about the authenticity of the document.

Written in 2010 by Younis al-Mauritani, a senior al Qaeda operative, the 17-page letter proposes attacks against a variety of targets, including tunnels, bridges, and underwater gas pipelines, the Telegraph notes.

The pipeline idea is explored in some depth, with the operative noting "that the pipelines have safety valves every 6 miles that need to be taken into account when planting mines," according to the news outlet.

Al-Mauritani, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2011, also named a handful of specific targets, including the RAND Corporation research institute in California and the Love Parade, a now-cancelled dance music festival in Germany.

A RAND spokesman told CNN that "as a matter of policy, the RAND Corporation does not comment on specific security issues or potential threats."

The news outlet, who said it received the information from "sources briefed on its contents," reported that al-Mauritani felt operatives should continue to train as pilots and recruits should work for airlines. On the day of the attack, the terrorists could simply drug their co-pilots and fly the plane into the target, CNN reported.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/2 ... 35126.html
that was a year ago

Note no mention of nuclear power stations - it's just too tough and also too limited in its effect.

7,000 miles Pakistan to New York as the crow flies.

.. Boeing 777-200LR in flight (Neg#: K63367-07) ... The airplane carries 365 passengers up to 7,930 nautical miles

how far with no passengers and a full fuel load???

•••

My post at Ratskep

stay out of tall buildings

Malaysia Airline MH370: 9/11-style terror allegations resurface in case of lost plane
Possible plot investigated after Al-Qaeda supergrass told court that four or five Malaysian men planned a passenger airliner hijac

Evidence of a plot by Malaysian Islamists to hijack a passenger jet in a 9/11-style attack is being investigated in connection with the disappearance of Flight MH370

An al-Qaeda supergrass told a court last week that four to five Malaysian men had been planning to take control of a plane, using a bomb hidden in a shoe to blow open the cockpit door.
Security experts said the evidence from a convicted British terrorist was “credible”.
The supergrass said that he had met the Malaysian jihadists – one of whom was a pilot – in Afghanistan and given them a shoe bomb to use to take control of an aircraft.

A British security source said: “These spectaculars take a long time in the planning.”

The possibility of such a plot, hatched by the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, was bolstered by an admission by Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, that the Boeing 777’s communications systems had been deliberately switched off “by someone on the plane”.

more and good corroboration from different directions
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... plane.html

snip

Giving evidence at the trial in New York of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, Badat said: “I gave one of my shoes to the Malaysians. I think it was to access the cockpit.”

Badat, who spoke via video link and is in hiding in the UK, said the Malaysian plot was being masterminded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of 9/11.

According to Badat, Mohammed kept a list of the world’s tallest buildings and crossed out New York’s Twin Towers after the September 11, 2001 attacks with hijacked airliners as “a joke to make us laugh”.

Badat told the court last week that he believed the Malaysians, including the pilot, were “ready to perform an act.”

During the meeting, the possibility was raised that the cockpit door might be locked. Badat told the court: “So I said, 'How about I give you one of my bombs to open a cockpit door?’ ”

and latest from the Telegraph

Missing Malaysia plane flew at 5,000ft and used 'terrain masking' to avoid radar detection

For almost eight hours after plane was apparently hijacked it flew as low as 5,000ft to avoid commercial radars
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 with 239 people on board went missing early on 08 March 2014, while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing
The missing Malaysian Airlines plane reportedly flew as low as 5,000ft and used “terrain masking” to avoid radar detection for almost eight hours after it was apparently hijacked.

more
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ction.html

[cronus]

That's a sophisticated feat.

[cronus]

That's a sophisticated feat. A airline pilot with no military background would find it less than easy to pull off. What military experience did the pilots possess? Also the drag co-efficient of the air at low altitude would have limited the range of flight by a large amount?

[macdoc]

Recall he has a very sophisticated flight simulator at home.

He could have set the entire course up and done it dozens of times.

All he had to do is deal with his co-pilot and bob's your uncle.

Yes it would limit the range but he could also fly at very fuel efficient rate of speed to offset that.

Take a look at what is on the same latitude as Beijing.

[mistermack]

Just because it's needs sophisticated feet, that doesn't mean it can't be done :

[cronus]

Someone should crowdsource the grand sum of human internet intelligence and put a site up with a map of that part of the globe, and pin the tail on the donkey type thing for each visitor. Where most tails are must be where the plane is.

[mistermack]

Someone should crowdsource the grand sum of human internet intelligence and put a site up with a map of that part of the globe, and pin the tail on the donkey type thing for each visitor. Where most tails are must be where the plane is.

If it's landed somewhere, you would think it would be impossible to hide that fact from people under the flight-path. Or people local to where it landed.
Surely someone would pick up the phone? What seems to be lacking at the moment, is any kind of reward being offered for information. A million dollars would be chicken feed, to solve this mystery.

As for it being used as a flying bomb, I can't see much chance of that succeeding.
It would just get shot down. They will be on the look-out now, for a plane of that size, night or day.
And if they want to navigate to a target, you would think that they would need to turn on the systems that would give it away.

[pErvinalia]

I hope no other planes get accidentally shot down because of this.

I reckon it's probably crashed in the Indian Ocean somewhere. As you say, it would be bloody hard to hide this. Unless it did manage to sneak into one of the Stans in an area where there might not actually be telephones.