Airliner Missing

[Dolan50]

Interpol said Tuesday that the two passengers who used stolen passports to board a Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared early Saturday morning were Iranians seeking asylum in Europe.

Interpol secretary general Ronald K. Noble identified the men as Pouri Nourmohammadi, 19, and Delavar Seyedmohammaderza, 29. Noble said that the two men had traveled to Malaysia from Tehran using Iranian passports, but had secured stolen Italian and Austrian passports in Kuala Lumpur for their planned journey to Beijing and Amsterdam, for which both had tickets and planned to travel together.
Fox News  - ‎2 minutes ago‎

Iranian Aboard Missing Jet 'Not Likely' a Terrorist: Official
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/iranian-aboard-missing-jet-not-likely-terrorist-official-n49591

"Investigators identified the passenger as Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad, 19, and said they believed he was trying to reach to Germany to claim asylum. He was traveling on an Austrian passport.


Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar of the Malaysian police told a news conference on Tuesday that after checking his background it appeared that Mehrdad "was not likely to be a member of any terrorist group."

He added: "We believe he was trying to migrate to Germany. We are in contact with his mother. His mother was expecting him to arrive in Frankfurt. When he doesn't arrive [the mother] contacted us here and that's why we knew he was the one traveling on the stolen passport."

[Airborne Rifles]

Would the Iranians shoot down an airliner to keep someone from defecting? Did these individuals have something to do with their nuclear program maybe? Don't the Iranians still have some F-14s and Phoenix missiles (sorry Star)?

That sort of scenario seems pretty unlikely but Interpol is saying these guys don't seem like terrorists.  I imagine a missile wouldn't show up on civilian radars designed to track airliners.

[JasonPratt]

^^ There is literally no possible way Iranians could have shot down the plane: they don't have stealth submarine carriers large enough to transport and launch their crippled F-14s halfway around the world. ;)

SO FAR AS WE KNOW!  ;D

But an agent could have blown up the plane at super-high altitudes to stop them I guess.

The truth will probably be something much less interesting, like years of substandard maintenance and repair resulting in a chain reaction catastrophic detonation. A terrorist attack would be more likely to leave larger pieces thrown around, unless they took over the plane and plunged it carefully into the sea. But then, why not take credit for it?

It's the lack of a black box signal that's so weird.

[Airborne Rifles]

I imagine a fighter could Cary enough fuel in external tanks to men the trip. Does Iran have a midair refueling capability?

Of course your right, pretty wild speculation on my part. The thought just occurred to me when I heard about the Iranian passengers. I imagine an Iranian F14 is far morel likely to fall out of the sky itself than shoot anything down today  :)

[GDS_Starfury]

No the iranian f14s cant reach that far and no they dont have phoenix missiles.

[bayonetbrant]

http://www.businessinsider.com/malaysia-military-missing-plane-flew-350-miles-with-tracking-off-2014-3

[Dolan50]

This is interesting.
Looking around the internet to see what the conspiracy theorists think since everyone seems to be looking for boogeymen and found this.

Freescale Semiconductor Employees Behind Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane? One of Conspiracy Theories.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/555475-freescale-semiconductor-employees-behind-missing-malaysia-airlines-plane-one-of-conspiracy-theories/

"One of the authors of the theory, elaborating in a post on popular conspiracy website Before It's News, alludes to a U.S. intelligence assessment on capabilities of Israel in regards to an attack on Iran. Any attack would include jamming the electric grid, Internet, and cell phone network, using devices such as one that mimics a maintenance cell phone signal that commands the cell network to "sleep."

The report also references a story from Fox News that explained that new stealth technology makes airplanes invisible to radar, and can also make them hard to spot with the naked eye.

"The general public ... might not hear about how far the U.S. has really come, because it is and should remain classified," firearms expert Chris Sajnog, a former Navy SEAL, said. "Other countries are still playing catch-up — but they're closing the gap."

The story includes references to Chinese media reports that detail making things disappear using types of invisibility cloaks. The missing flight was flying from Malaysia to China.

"It is conceivable that the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 plane is 'cloaked,' hiding with high-tech electronic warfare weaponry that exists and is used," a Before It's News story claims. "In fact, this type of technology is precisely the expertise of Freescale, that has 20 employees on board the missing flight."

Freescale's commercial products can meet the requirements of applications such as avionics, electronic warfare, and battlefield communications, according to the company's website"

Until the plane is found I'm still under the suspicion that it was nothing more than mechanical failure.
But,I do find it interesting what others think.

[MikeGER]

conspiracy conspiracy
...were there any forum admins on the plane then it where the spooky Groginati again ;)

[steve58]

 :o  My wife is going to freak out about the Freescale connection.  She used to work for them.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Vaporization of a whole plane with no radiation bloom clearly points to an antimatter device. Or Cybermen. Delete! Delete! Delete!

[undercovergeek]

Imagine trying to find a dark basketball in the ocean. 

theyre still looking for Wilson?

[endfire79]

lost but found by Tom Hanks, and t'was a white volleyball IIRC

[TheCommandTent]

This is kind of cool and I hope it helps

A digital mapping company that allowed web surfers around the world to hunt the vast ocean waters for the vanished Malaysian jetliner crashed on Tuesday after an overwhelming response.

Colorado-based Digital Globe has trained its five satellites on the Gulf of Thailand region—the last known whereabouts of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. The orbital units transmit photos and data of the vast area which viewers can scan on a website called Tomnod-- Mongolian for "Big Eye." The hope is that millions of sets of eyes, with an assist from above, can help solve the mystery of what happened to the plane and the 239 people on board.

But a day after the initial images were posted online, the site required emergency maintenance to handle the large virtual search party.

"It's a good reason to have our site crash," a spokesperson for DigitalGlobe told FoxNews.com. "We did get an overwhelming amount of people responding. It has been going well. We are getting a lot of tags and will be uploading more images for people to search."

Once the site is back up, any computer user can log onto Tomnod and pore through thousands of high-definition images of a particular region and publicly "geotag" anything that raises suspicion. A computer algorithm is then used to determine whether certain areas are tagged more than others, and in-house experts follow any leads from the consensus tagging.

"Luckily, the imagery had been exhausted with searching before the site went down," Luke Barrington, senior manager of Geospatial Big Data for DigitalGlobe said to FoxNews.com. "We have had six million map views. Half-a-million people have signed up, it's a 100 times the response we've had before."

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03/11/malaysian-plane-virtual-search-party-too-much-for-website/


And here is the site you can go view the images at

http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014

[besilarius]

Just about an hour ago on NPR, there was a report that the Black Box had been turned off sometime before the plane disappeared.  I think it was stated this occurred about one hour prior to disappearance from the radars.
Missed the very beginning of the report, so cannot say who made it.  If this is true, then mechanical failure looks very unlikely.
The Black Box is designed to also give a response when a radar requests information, like IFF.  Most likely this was noticed after they reviewed the tapes of the radar coverage.  The response information would show up on the screen, indicating the boxes worked.  After being turned off, the radar return would still be there, but the responses would not.
It is barely conceivable the Boxes failed, but this is very unlikely.  That's why there are two, and each has a seperate battery tocover such an eventuality.
This leads to the suggestion that something happened within the cockpit.  That is the only place the Black Boxes could be turned off and on.

[Staggerwing]

Are you certain that the Black Boxes can be turned off? I was under the impression that only the voice recorder could be erased and that was after a normal landing. Also, I don't believe they are actually in the cockpit anymore.