Boeing 777 Asia 2014 Mar 08

It is a tragedy. A plane is lost at sea, and no one can tell the families of the victims anything meaningful. It is a mystery. The plane was on several radar screens, then it loses its transponder. Air Traffic Control gets another plane nearby to contact them on the radio, but all that’s heard is static and mumbling. Many nations rush search aircraft and ships to the area, they find clues, but no definitive identification of where the plane is now. Here’s what we know so far. As I see more info, I will update my notes & periodically upload revised editions. As usual, after any disaster without good explanations, there is a chorus of voices denying various possibilities. • “A plane cannot disappear” some say. Untrue, an Air France disappeared over the Atlantic in 2009, was not found for 2 years. • “The transponder signal was lost, and it disappeared from radar, so it must have crashed”, say others. Not necessarily. Remember 9-11? Hijackers turned off transponders, and Air Traffic Control lost track of where some planes now located. • “Malaysia Airlines gave out false information, so they must be trying to cover something up”, say others. That’s pure speculation. It is not unusual in the aftermath of any disaster, for authorities to not know what the heck is going on, and in their desire to tell the public about the situation, they include what they personally think they know, but have not yet verified, because they have no competence in verifying rumors. Remember 9/11? Immediately afterwards many US leaders said that the notion of a plane hijacked to fly into some building, was unthinkable. They said no one could ever have imagined that possibility, and thus no one could ever organize any defense against it. Well they were ignorant. I knew about the incident where an Air France was hijacked and the crew ordered to fly it into the Eiffel Tower, but even with guns to the heads of pilot, co-pilot, and other crew, they refused to do so. An obvious lesson from this was that terrorists would be learning how to fly planes, so that they could fly hijacked planes into national monuments. Somehow US authorities did not get that memo. The 9/11 commission found 12 instances of this happening, before 9/11. US authorities failed to get 12 memos. Most searchers think it has crashed.