Airliner missing between Malaysia and Cambodia/Vietnam, terrorism possible

[Biggus]

Well... as far as a dry run... wouldn't it be important for the plane to at least be found so that assessments could be made about how difficult it was to penetrate security, seize the aircraft, etc? If this was a dry run, the perpetrators would only know the external search and rescue response.

Unless they had independent comms equipment. Then they'd have feedback, the adequacy of which I can't really say - I haven't thought too hard about it.

Finally somebody gets it. You are absolutely correct!!!!! trying to use logic when dealing with criminals,terrorist,etc. is total foolishness. To try and use logic and reason on a criminal is just totally "rancid"

I disagree that logic an reason aren't relevant, particularly if someone is calculatedly stealing an aircraft and disappearing. It doesn't account for every single possibility, but it's a good place to start.

Wouldn't surprise me at all. This whole thing is about chasing ghosts, nobody seems to know anything for sure. That is why we should stick with the backrounds of all the people involved, the hardware answers just don't seem to be working out.

You sure about that? The hardware answers are incredibly compelling. We now know that the ACARS radio links were not disabled before last voice contact. We've got a radar track that shows the aircraft turning off to the best possible shot at a safe landing at Langkawi and a bunch of stuff that looks like shutting down systems in the cockpit to eliminate a fire, which they may have managed to do, but not before succumbing to asphyxia or hypoxia.

The hardware answers look far less like terrorism.

More news that makes things less clear.

This is what I was saying yesterday. ACARS radio links weren't disabled prior to last voice contact.

I don't think it would be that simple. A radar contact without transponder data or contact with air traffic controllers is an anomaly and would trigger a response almost anywhere, even on a standard route: people do remember 9/11. Biggus would know more about it than I, but I don't think you could fly close enough to another plane to look like an echo without triggering some serious alarm and complaint from the pilots of the plane you were shadowing.

Wouldn't happen. The transponder not only squawks a pre-designated code for the flight based upon the ATC's instruction, but it also has it's own embedded identification that can't be changed. If there's an aircraft on my primary radar without a transponder, I'm going to make contact one way or another. Normally, you'd expect voice and then either compliance or a declared emergency. If declared emergency, I'd be getting the ACARS data.

If we're talking about flying in close formation to hide your blip inside someone else's blip, that's marginally more likely than being abducted by aliens. It's physically possible to formate on another airliner-type airframe (ever seen a KC-135 refuelling an E-3?), but to hold it there for hours would be difficult, and primary radar would show an even bigger return. To use a crude analogy, the return that the radar operators would see wouldn't be like the normal Rosie O'Donnell sized blip, it'd look like Rosie O'Donnell carrying another Rosie O'Donnell on her shoulders. If I were Malaysia or Thailand, I might not be scrambling my interceptors, but if I were Vietnam, China, India and possibly even Pakistan, I'd be doing something about it.