MH370 missing

[Euan Uzami]

Another possibility, probably fairly far fetched, but still, is that everyone on board, including the pilots, was poisoned, by the same thing?
What if there was carbon monoxide or something?

[TimC]

Carbon monoxide isn't known for turning off electronics.

[Regulator]

Someone using an EMP device? 

[Euan Uzami]

Carbon monoxide isn't known for turning off electronics.

Maybe they weren't turned off?
The plane was perhaps assumed to be flying normally until it hit the sea?

Edit: possibly easy to eliminate but if the pilot had slumped forward onto the joystick could it have descended faster than otherwise?

[TimC]

The aeroplane has apparently been tracked crossing the Malaysian peninsula from east to west following the point at which all transmissions - manual and automatic - ceased. It's conceivable that, for instance, the aircraft collided with another unrecorded aircraft, causing the death of the pilots and the loss of all electronic communications yet the aeroplane remained sufficiently structurally intact to glide uncontrolled to a crash site far from the point of collision. Conceivable, but very unlikely. EMP, as discussed earlier, is also conceivable but unlikely. Aircraft are protected against stuff like lightning strikes; a larger EMP event than that would likely have been detected remotely.

All that said, the field of the unlikely is looking more and more likely to contain the answer!

[Cudzoziemiec]

The bit about passports is a little close to home...

Mr R got back a a week in Lanzarote on Sunday.  He'd been out there with his sister and a friend, Kim.  Mr R and Kim were flying back to Manchester - his sister was flying back to Bristol.

His sister's flight left earlier than his.  It wasn't until he tried to check in about half an hour after she had that he realised she had his passport and he had hers.  Somehow, despite the very obvious differences and the fact they don't look alike, she'd managed to check in with his passport and get through security.

He had to phone her to come and meet him at security to swap passports.

But they were both valid passports. Security would have swiped them and been told they were genuine, not reported missing or stolen, holder not a wanted list, etc. Completely different from using a passport reported stolen a couple of years ago. Having said that, I don't think the stolen passports are anything to do with it. There are a hundred and one reasons for using a stolen Western passport and being an Iranian desperate to settle in Europe seems a likely one.

[Cudzoziemiec]

OTOH if we're looking for mysterious explanations, how come no one's suggested calling in Scooby Doo and the gang?

[Regulator]

The aeroplane has apparently been tracked crossing the Malaysian peninsula from east to west following the point at which all transmissions - manual and automatic - ceased. It's conceivable that, for instance, the aircraft collided with another unrecorded aircraft, causing the death of the pilots and the loss of all electronic communications yet the aeroplane remained sufficiently structurally intact to glide uncontrolled to a crash site far from the point of collision. Conceivable, but very unlikely. EMP, as discussed earlier, is also conceivable but unlikely. Aircraft are protected against stuff like lightning strikes; a larger EMP event than that would likely have been detected remotely.

All that said, the field of the unlikely is looking more and more likely to contain the answer!

What about an EMP device on the plane?  We know that stuff carried in the hold is subject to less than rigorous inspection - and if someone wanted to test a device, somewhere like Malaysia would be the place to load it.

[Regulator]

The bit about passports is a little close to home...

Mr R got back a a week in Lanzarote on Sunday.  He'd been out there with his sister and a friend, Kim.  Mr R and Kim were flying back to Manchester - his sister was flying back to Bristol.

His sister's flight left earlier than his.  It wasn't until he tried to check in about half an hour after she had that he realised she had his passport and he had hers.  Somehow, despite the very obvious differences and the fact they don't look alike, she'd managed to check in with his passport and get through security.

He had to phone her to come and meet him at security to swap passports.

But they were both valid passports. Security would have swiped them and been told they were genuine, not reported missing or stolen, holder not a wanted list, etc. Completely different from using a passport reported stolen a couple of years ago. Having said that, I don't think the stolen passports are anything to do with it. There are a hundred and one reasons for using a stolen Western passport and being an Iranian desperate to settle in Europe seems a likely one.

Mr R's sister is a lithesome, somewhat busty, very pretty blonde young lady.  Mr R is not.

I would expect anyone checking a passport to at least check the person presenting it was the right sex and looked something like the photo inside...

[Cudzoziemiec]

I presume they're supposed to but they often don't seem to - which obviously doesn't mean they can't do it quickly and discreetly through practice and training. Unfortunately we don't know what would have happened if Mr R had tried to use his sister's passport. My impression is the rigour of passport security varies enormously from place to place and probably operative to operative within each place - you can leave the UK without any checks at all (though probably not from an airport).

[Panoramix]

The aeroplane has apparently been tracked crossing the Malaysian peninsula from east to west following the point at which all transmissions - manual and automatic - ceased. !

What's the glide ratio of an airliner? I don't know, let say 10.

Starting from 10km altitude, without power the plane would glide for 100km and the plane has been spotted by radar a long way off course. Presumably the plane was either being "flown" or at least the engines were still providing some thrust for some time after the first "incident".

May be a borked attempt to divert the plane?

Marine traffic in the Malacca straits is more important than in the English channel, so presumably somebody would have spotted an airliner going down?

http://www.marinetraffic.com/fr/ais/home

[ian]

It's getting to the point where we'll have to start putting posters up on lamp posts asking people to check their sheds and garages. Possibly the world is bigger than the internet had led us to believe. Damnit, those cryptozoologists might be right. I was once chased by a Jersey Devil. Or I might have been drunk and it could have been a raccoon.

Years ago, my identity was stolen by svelte guy who continued to travel under my name and with my passport. That chap was rightly and regularly apprehended and forced to wait with the irregularly documented foreigners in the white room of shame. I figure I'm going to get the same shit when I check in for the afterlife. Is this you? Are you sure? I'm very sure. Hurry up with the damnation and hellfire, I have marshmallows to toast.

I eventually had to get a new passport.

Anyway, it was a good test of who did and didn't check the picture:

Americans: usually yes, line-up for the Git-mo express over there, sir
French: they never get past my name, which isn't Harry
Germans: long suspicious looks as they tried to imagine what a man would look like if he wasn't mostly bratwurst
Brits: usually ended up with three people looking at passport, then me, then passport, then me.
Africa, Middle-East, Far-East: no, no, no, probably because us whiteys all look the same to them (actually, psychologically, that's probably true)
Israel: surprisingly not, probably too busy doing background checks on my grandparents and surveilling my cats
Canada: they thought I had cancer, then was Michael Stipe. Or possibly Moby. All very sensitively dealt with.

The great thing about the internet is that lots of people who ordinarily would struggle to build a paper plane are suddenly experts on the real thing. I know absolutely nothing about airplanes. I think magic keeps them in the air.

[pcolbeck]

Marine traffic in the Malacca straits is more important than in the English channel, so presumably somebody would have spotted an airliner going down?

http://www.marinetraffic.com/fr/ais/home

The straights are between 100 and 400 miles wide though so that still a huge area.

[Panoramix]

Marine traffic in the Malacca straits is more important than in the English channel, so presumably somebody would have spotted an airliner going down?

http://www.marinetraffic.com/fr/ais/home

The straights are between 100 and 400 miles wide though so that still a huge area.

Yes, but there are lots of fishermen, it is still hard to imagine aircraft bits scattered all over the place without a single mariner finding something within four days. I imagine may be they would not report it.

[Tewdric]

Marine traffic in the Malacca straits is more important than in the English channel, so presumably somebody would have spotted an airliner going down?

http://www.marinetraffic.com/fr/ais/home

The straights are between 100 and 400 miles wide though so that still a huge area.

Yes, but there are lots of fishermen, it is still hard to imagine aircraft bits scattered all over the place without a single mariner finding something within four days. I imagine may be they would not report it.

Finding things at sea is like looking for a needle in a haystack in Wales, when they won't tell you where in Wales the haystack is. 

[Bledlow]

Another possibility, probably fairly far fetched, but still, is that everyone on board, including the pilots, was poisoned, by the same thing?
What if there was carbon monoxide or something?

There's been a case of the pilots on an airliner losing being asphyxiated. As TimC says, it doesn't turn off the electronics.

That one flew on autopilot until it ran out of fuel, watched by Greek AF fighters which had been sent up to see why it was ignoring ATC. Saw through windows, the co-pilot slumped in his seat, pilot's seat empty, oxygen masks hanging down. A flight attendant (with a commercial licence, but not qualified on that type) tried to take the controls (seen by the fighter crews), but failed to achieve anything before it was too late.

[Jurek]

<snip> Or possibly Moby. <snip>

Having met you, I can see why that might be 
Back o/t now, please.

[Panoramix]

Marine traffic in the Malacca straits is more important than in the English channel, so presumably somebody would have spotted an airliner going down?

http://www.marinetraffic.com/fr/ais/home

The straights are between 100 and 400 miles wide though so that still a huge area.

Yes, but there are lots of fishermen, it is still hard to imagine aircraft bits scattered all over the place without a single mariner finding something within four days. I imagine may be they would not report it.

Finding things at sea is like looking for a needle in a haystack in Wales, when they won't tell you where in Wales the haystack is.

I might be wrong but the Malacca strait isn't proper sea and there are a lot of people there.

[Bledlow]

Its the hand off between cell towers that gets confused. It wasn't designed for something travelling that fast. Plus from height the signal is received almost simultaneously at several towers at once so the cell phone network doesn't know which cell to use for the call.

Which makes it hard to distinguish between a phone overhead, & multiple identical (i.e. fraudulent) phones. Two or more identical phones trying to connect to the network at the same time triggers the fraud catchers.

[Euan Uzami]

It's getting to the point where we'll have to start putting posters up on lamp posts asking people to check their sheds and garages. Possibly the world is bigger than the internet had led us to believe. Damnit, those cryptozoologists might be right. I was once chased by a Jersey Devil. Or I might have been drunk and it could have been a raccoon.

Years ago, my identity was stolen by svelte guy who continued to travel under my name and with my passport. That chap was rightly and regularly apprehended and forced to wait with the irregularly documented foreigners in the white room of shame. I figure I'm going to get the same shit when I check in for the afterlife. Is this you? Are you sure? I'm very sure. Hurry up with the damnation and hellfire, I have marshmallows to toast.

I eventually had to get a new passport.

Anyway, it was a good test of who did and didn't check the picture:

Americans: usually yes, line-up for the Git-mo express over there, sir
French: they never get past my name, which isn't Harry
Germans: long suspicious looks as they tried to imagine what a man would look like if he wasn't mostly bratwurst
Brits: usually ended up with three people looking at passport, then me, then passport, then me.
Africa, Middle-East, Far-East: no, no, no, probably because us whiteys all look the same to them (actually, psychologically, that's probably true)
Israel: surprisingly not, probably too busy doing background checks on my grandparents and surveilling my cats
Canada: they thought I had cancer, then was Michael Stipe. Or possibly Moby. All very sensitively dealt with.

The great thing about the internet is that lots of people who ordinarily would struggle to build a paper plane are suddenly experts on the real thing. I know absolutely nothing about airplanes. I think magic keeps them in the air.

the funniest one was when I was driving to France once, the French guards asked for my passport but didn't take it from me or look in it - just checked that I had one. Any one will do, as long as you've got something that looks a bit like one.

[TimC]

The chief of the Malaysian Air Force is now pouring cold water on the idea that the aircraft was tracked across to the Straits of Malacca. The search operation is being scaled down somewhat, and there seems to be confusion all around about what to do next. They are investigating a sighting from three hundred kilometres away from where the aircraft was last seen on radar; a NZ oil rig worker reports seeing some kind of burning in the sky at about the right time.

[Morrisette]

It's getting to the point where we'll have to start putting posters up on lamp posts asking people to check their sheds and garages. Possibly the world is bigger than the internet had led us to believe. Damnit, those cryptozoologists might be right. I was once chased by a Jersey Devil. Or I might have been drunk and it could have been a raccoon.

Years ago, my identity was stolen by svelte guy who continued to travel under my name and with my passport. That chap was rightly and regularly apprehended and forced to wait with the irregularly documented foreigners in the white room of shame. I figure I'm going to get the same shit when I check in for the afterlife. Is this you? Are you sure? I'm very sure. Hurry up with the damnation and hellfire, I have marshmallows to toast.

I eventually had to get a new passport.

Anyway, it was a good test of who did and didn't check the picture:

Americans: usually yes, line-up for the Git-mo express over there, sir
French: they never get past my name, which isn't Harry
Germans: long suspicious looks as they tried to imagine what a man would look like if he wasn't mostly bratwurst
Brits: usually ended up with three people looking at passport, then me, then passport, then me.
Africa, Middle-East, Far-East: no, no, no, probably because us whiteys all look the same to them (actually, psychologically, that's probably true)
Israel: surprisingly not, probably too busy doing background checks on my grandparents and surveilling my cats
Canada: they thought I had cancer, then was Michael Stipe. Or possibly Moby. All very sensitively dealt with.

The great thing about the internet is that lots of people who ordinarily would struggle to build a paper plane are suddenly experts on the real thing. I know absolutely nothing about airplanes. I think magic keeps them in the air.

the funniest one was when I was driving to France once, the French guards asked for my passport but didn't take it from me or look in it - just checked that I had one. Any one will do, as long as you've got something that looks a bit like one.

Spain (Madrid): Too busy looking at my arse. Surprising really as I was transferring from a flight from South America, looked rough as ten, and it was about 6 months after their major terrorist incident on the subway.

[T42]

Back in Baader-Meinhof days I crossed the border at Saarbrücken with customs plates on the car: the German border guards decided to do a thorough check and had me turn out onto an apron to the side of the main road.  While they were checking, a couple of French guards with submachine guns moved down to cover me & the car from the far side, whereupon the most colossal barney erupted between them and the Germans. The French eventually moved off to one side a bit, rather sheepishly.

Turned out that the German guards didn't appreciate being in a straight line with a couple of French submachine guns.

[Rhys W]

Dunno what to make of this, but it does not show them in a flattering light:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/11/malaysian-flight-mh370-copilot-teenagers-fariq-abdul-hamid

[Euan Uzami]

Is it possible that the pilots wanted to claim asylum in Britain or some other western country, so simply decided to fly the plane there? Maybe they intended to make a secret landing in a field and escape.
That would explain why the electronics were turned off and why no traces have been found -they're all looking in the wrong place.
Didn't something say it had started to head west?