3-4 Tonnes of Mangosteens and Terrorist Hijackers?
Is air freight the best way to ship such a quantity of mangosteens? This seems rather odd. Smells more like smuggling than terror to me
Why should one take the last Malaysian military report so seriously? the heading could easily be exactly 180 degrees wrong, if it even was the right aircraft.
Simple answer for the lack of passenger contacts--they and the cabin crew all were killed--either gassed or died of anoxia when cabin was depressurized and no O2 flowed from masks.
My guess is that the first officer (maybe the captain was also involved) got paid off to deliver something somewhere that was loaded as mangosteens--gold or drugs, for example. Perhaps Malaysian radar post was also paid off. Once delivery was made the airplane was no longer needed.
I seem to remember that the western Sahara has been the site of many "lost" aircraft landings from drug smugglers flying over from South America.
And calling all ships at sea ...
Answer in first paragraph of Airplane Hijacking - Wiki:
Quote:
Aircraft hijacking (also known as aircraft piracy, especially within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, and informally as skyjacking) is the unlawful seizure of an aircraft by an individual or a group. In most cases, the pilot is forced to fly according to the orders of the hijackers. Occasionally, however, the hijackers have flown the aircraft themselves, such as the September 11 attacks of 2001. In at least three cases, the plane was hijacked by the official pilot or co-pilot.[1][2][3][4]
1.
China Airlines Flight 334
2. "
Air China pilot hijacks his own jet to Taiwan". CNN. 1998-10-28. Archived from the original on 2008-03-21. Retrieved 2007-01-25.
3. B. Raman (2000-01-02). "
PLANE HIJACKING: IN PERSPECTIVE". South Asia Analysis Group. Retrieved 2007-01-25.
4.
Ethiopian Airlines ET702 hijacking
Legalisms are in footnote 3.
Regards
Mike