Israel Matzav

What happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?

It's nearly two weeks since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lampur to Beijing. The flight still has not been found, and while theories of what happened to it abound, no one really knows for sure what happened. Here are some of the theories.

Langley Intelligence Group reports that the plane is in Pakistan in Taliban-controlled territory near the Afghan border.

The Malaysian government reportedly is investigating the possibility that missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 avoided radar detection and landed in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border inside Taliban-controlled territory, according to the UK Independent . . . investigators confiscated a homemade flight simulator from the pilot’s home to see if it reveals any useful information . . . the Malaysian foreign minister told reporters that Malaysia asked several Asian countries for assistance in its investigation, including Pakistan . . . Pakistan dismissed the idea that a Boeing 777 could land undetected inside the country but promised to work with the Malaysian government in its search for the missing plane . . . a LIGNET analyst received information from a source at Boeing that the company believes the plane did land in Pakistan . . . Israel is taking the possibility of a terrorist attack seriously by mobilizing air defenses and scrutinizing approaching civilian aircraft, according to the Times of Israel . . . a Boeing 777 requires a lengthy, 7,500-foot runway, and Pakistan has many of them, meaning Flight 370 could conceivably be hidden in a hangar inside the country . . . U.S. surveillance of the area may be able to shed light on the theory through satellite imagery or signals intelligence.

And how could the plane have gotten to Pakistan undetected? One theory says that it tagged along behind a Singapore Airlines flight that was in the area. 

It became apparent as I inspected SIA68’s flight path history that MH370 had maneuvered itself directly behind SIA68 at approximately 18:00UTC and over the next 15 minutes had been following SIA68.   All the pieces of my theory had been fitting together with the facts that have been publically released and I began to feel a little uneasy.

Singapore Airlines Flight 68 proceeded across the Andaman Sea into the Bay of Bengal and finally into India’s airspace.  From there it appears to have proceeded across India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and finally Turkmenistan before proceeding onward across Europe to its final destination of Barcelona, Spain. 

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So by now, you may have caught on or you may be scratching your head and wondering if I’ve gone insane!  How does SIA68 have anything to do with MH370 disappearing?   Remember the one challenge that is currently making everyone doubt that MH370 actually flew to Turkmenistan, Iran, China, or Kyrgyzstan?  That challenge is the thought that MH370 couldn’t make it through several key airspaces such as India or Afghanistan without being detected by the military.  

It is my belief that MH370 likely flew in the shadow of SIA68 through India and Afghanistan airspace.  As MH370 was flying “dark” without transponder / ADS-B output, SIA68 would have had no knowledge that MH370 was anywhere around and as it entered Indian airspace, it would have shown up as one single blip on the radar with only the transponder information of SIA68 lighting up ATC and military radar screens.

Wouldn’t the SIA68 flight have detected MH370?  NO!  The Boeing 777 utilizes a TCAS system for traffic avoidance; the system would ordinarily provide alerts and visualization to pilots if another airplane was too close.  However that system only operates by receiving the transponder information from other planes and displaying it for the pilot.  If MH370 was flying without the transponder, it would have been invisible to SIA68.  

In addition, the TCAS system onboard MH370 would have enabled the pilot(s) to easily locate and approach SIA68 over the Straits of Malacca as they appeared to have done.  The system would have shown them the flight’s direction of travel and the altitude it was traveling which would have enabled them to perfectly time an intercept right behind the other Boeing 777.

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How does this solve the mystery??? We know MH370 didn’t fly to Spain!  Once MH370 had cleared the volatile airspaces and was safe from being detected by military radar sites in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan it would have been free to break off from the shadow of SIA68 and could have then flown a path to its final landing site.  There are several locations along the flight path of SIA68 where it could have easily broken contact and flown and landed in Xingjian province, Kyrgyzstan, or Turkmenistan. Each of these final locations would match up almost perfectly with the 7.5 hours of total flight time and trailing SIA68.  In addition, these locations are all possibilities that are on the “ARC” and fit with the data provided by Inmarsat from the SATCOM’s last known ping at 01:11UTC.

There are two other theories of how the plane disappeared here and here. 

Finally, a former El Al security chief argues that the focus on the pilots is wrong, and that investigators should be focusing on the two Iranians with false passports who were on the flight.

Isaac Yeffet, who served as head of global security for Israel’s national carrier in the 1980s and now works as an aviation security consultant in New Jersey, said investigators were correct in homing in on the two fake-passport carrying Iranian passengers on the doomed flight, and they have wasted valuable time by exploring other leads.

“What happened to this aircraft, nobody knows. My guess is based upon the stolen passports, and I believe Iran was involved,” he said. “They hijacked the aircraft and they landed it in a place that nobody can see or find it.”

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Labels: hijacking, Malaysia, terrorism

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:59 PM