Twenty passengers on missing flight 370 worked for Freescale Semiconductors

[RichardK]

It's being reported that at least 20 of the passengers on Malaysia Air flight 370 are employees of Freescale semiconductors...

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20140308-902237.html

[station240]

More detailed story here
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/semiconductor-firms-top-management-onboard-missing-mas-flight

[nuhamind2]

The news say that 2 stolen pasport is used by passenger to onboard.
Oh man,this is really raise some horrible speculation.

[PedroDaGr8]

The news say that 2 stolen pasport is used by passenger to onboard.
Oh man,this is really raise some horrible speculation.

Someone I know from the region said the terrorism speculation is a bit premature. He said stolen/forged passports are easy to get in certain areas and that they are commonly used by drug smugglers to avoid suspicion. So it's possible a couple of drug smugglers got very unlucky on their choice of flight. Though it's equally possible two passengers were terrorists loaded bombs in their luggage and blew up the plane.

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk

[Tinkerer]

20 top management from the same company? I wonder if they were working on something for someone.

As for terrorism, yea I find that idea to be stupid. No one claimed anything like they would normally do. Plus I think its rediculous that it so easy to use a stolen passport. Whats the point of having one if anyone can steal yours and use it?

[Macbeth]

The passports were both stolen from an Austrian and an Italian. The people using them were found on CCTV and not of Asian, but of African appearance.

I will shut up now before Dave labels me a racist.

[CaptnYellowShirt]

Barely got 20mins into the flight. Still climbing at the last ADS-B report.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS370/history/20140307/1635Z/WMKK/ZBAA/tracklog

[nctnico]

Today I read a news article saying they still don't rule out the plane has been hijacked and forced to land somewhere else. I hope they are right even though a technical failure or even a meteorite strike are more likely.

[Sionyn]

The people using them were found on CCTV and not of Asian bbc is using that line too all trhis speculation is silly might as ell conclude a fart from god knocked the plane down.

[Tinkerer]

Today I read a news article saying they still don't rule out the plane has been hijacked and forced to land somewhere else. I hope they are right even though a technical failure or even a meteorite strike are more likely.

No, this isnt possible. Radar would have found them over any land. Or someone trained really hard to be able to fly a plane that large below where radar could detect it which of course is quite doubtful.

[EEVblog]

Oh man,this is really raise some horrible speculation.

The usual hysteria. People flying on stolen passports are very common. Regular criminals are many orders of magnitude more numerous than "terrorists" who want to blow up planes. The fact that no one has taken responsibility for it indicates that's almost certainly not the case.

[EEVblog]

Though it's equally possible two passengers were terrorists loaded bombs in their luggage and blew up the plane.

They aren't equally possible. One is very very much more common than the other.

[Bored@Work]

If we take this one flight then almost 1% of its passengers were traveling with stolen identities. Other media report there are even more suspect passengers, pushing the number to something like 1.6%. If we assume for a moment that that single sample is typical (which is a very bold assumption), but stick with the lower number than it would still mean that maybe 1% of all air travel passengers use stolen IDs.

That would be an enormous amount of people with unknown identities entering aircrafts every day. And that is rather worrying. It would mean that all that anti-terrorist security check stuff  can in no way be designed and intended to keep suspicious people away from aircrafts. It would mean that all this security stuff is indeed what some conspiracy people claim: Means for spreading fear and terrorizing the own population. And it probably also means that the influence of organized crime is enormous, because those are the ones profiting most from improper checks of passenger identities.

[Phaedrus]

It's called Security Theater. It's meant to make people feel safer, even if the actual increase in safety is minimal or non-existent. Or even more dangerous!

I've been through airport security with a 2.5" pocket knife that I forgot I had on me. I went through the X-ray body scanner and everything. They didn't spot shit. I was quite surprised, when I felt it in my pocket while in line to board!

I've also heard that you can sneak a small handgun, like a Glock 26 or 27 through, just by turning it sideways in your pocket. It's almost invisible in the pictures the X-ray scanners take, though obviously it wouldn't make it through a metal detector.

But god forbid if I take my bottle of water through security! We've got to get that shit under control!

[nctnico]

Today I read a news article saying they still don't rule out the plane has been hijacked and forced to land somewhere else. I hope they are right even though a technical failure or even a meteorite strike are more likely.

No, this isnt possible. Radar would have found them over any land. Or someone trained really hard to be able to fly a plane that large below where radar could detect it which of course is quite doubtful.

IMHO radar coverage is highly overrated. Most radar systems need a line of sight with the object. Hills or high buildings could easely prevent a radar system from detecting an airplane.

[EEVblog]

If we take this one flight then almost 1% of its passengers were traveling with stolen identities. Other media report there are even more suspect passengers, pushing the number to something like 1.6%. If we assume for a moment that that single sample is typical (which is a very bold assumption), but stick with the lower number than it would still mean that maybe 1% of all air travel passengers use stolen IDs.

The 1% figure is of course bogus. If you actually look at it the same way as deaths from airline accidents, you almost always get big numbers when an accident occurs. Statistically across all flights the number of death is almost zero, but examine any one incident and the numbers look worse. Same thing with the stolen passports. It's very likely that criminals would be flying together for whatever reason, so if you get one stolen passport on a plane, then there is likely to be two or maybe more. Majority of flights would have zero.

[EEVblog]

But god forbid if I take my bottle of water through security! We've got to get that shit under control!

You can't even take an EMPTY bottle!

[Tinkerer]

Today I read a news article saying they still don't rule out the plane has been hijacked and forced to land somewhere else. I hope they are right even though a technical failure or even a meteorite strike are more likely.

No, this isnt possible. Radar would have found them over any land. Or someone trained really hard to be able to fly a plane that large below where radar could detect it which of course is quite doubtful.

IMHO radar coverage is highly overrated. Most radar systems need a line of sight with the object. Hills or high buildings could easely prevent a radar system from detecting an airplane.

Hence why I said flying low enough. It aint easy to fly a plane like that close to the ground.

[SeanB]

Having sat with the guys running ATC, you have a pretty good picture of whatever is in range. While most ATC radar units are old ( in many cases older than the operators by decades) they are pretty good at tracking and assigning numbers to flights from the IFF transponders on the planes. Even if you turn off the plane transponder no plane can move far in the time it takes the beam to rotate, so you will still have the track but with a block where it was and a warning of a non transponder aircraft. Only way they could have had it not show is if it was set to not display non transponder aircraft, which strips all but aircraft movement, and overlays a generated map of borders and boundaries. You do not do that as there are plenty of non transponder light aircraft around, and plenty of older planes with poor transponders as well. That also removes birds, which are a problem, as Scully found out.

At the altitude the plane was at over water there is little ground clutter, so they stand out, and for the plane to disappear it would have had to dive nearly 10km in under 30 seconds. 777 might be able to do the dive but will not do the pull out at the bottom in one piece, the control surfaces are both not big enough and the wings would tear off from the loading.

[Wytnucls]

Most radars used by civilian radar control centers these days, are secondary radars. Targets without transponders can only be detected by primary radars, which are mostly used by the military.
There should be plenty old Russian sets left in Vietnam and it is probably one of those air defense radars that tracked the B-777 before it disappeared completely.

http://www.timawa.net/forum/index.php?topic=34788.0

[JoeyP]

I've been flying for more than twenty years, and have spent a lot of that time talking to ATC as they tracked me on radar. Here are my observations, combined with some technical background learned during training:

Within or near any large city (which will typically have multiple controlled airports) there's virtually no place that is below/outside radar's range. You are typically being interrogated by multiple radar units, and at any given moment at least one can track you unless the city is in very mountainous terrain and you're in just the right spot.

Outside of populated areas (or  more accurately, in areas without large controlled airports), it is quite easy to be out of range of radar, either by flying low (which BTW is no challenge at all for a 777, it's simply slower and uses more fuel), or more likely, by not following established routes. Keep in mind, in addition to having distance limits, radar units tend to be tilted upward a few degrees because they're optimized for maximum range in the area they're needed - and that's at altitude, along established routes. Any coverage off those routes is mostly by accident. There can also be dead spots directly over the top of a radar dish in some cases. I've flown distances of up to about 50 miles while talking to ATC as they had no radar contact at all - and it usually happened by accident, while flying at least several thousand feet above the ground. I'm pretty sure I could fly across an entire state without coverage it it were a goal.

That said, a terrorist or any other hijacker is unlikely to know how to avoid radar with complete success. They'd have to  know the quirks of radar coverage in the specific area, and be in absolute control of the plane because any airline pilot would be smart enough to stay in range even under duress  in a hijack situation.

I feel sure this plane was not hijacked. It disintegrated in flight, whether due to an explosion on board, or because of a mechanical issue which caused it to endure unusual flight attitudes which the airframe couldn't survive. It could have been sudden full travel of a control surface which ripped part of the tail or wings off. It could have been hit by a military rocket either by accident or on purpose. It could have had a fuel tank or something in the cargo area explode by accident. And yes it could have been a terrorist on board, but I think that least likely because they usually can't wait to take credit for such events.

[Stonent]

This is what Freescale posted the other day:



I thought this was a really nice gesture from TI. They didn't have to say anything but the fact that they did I think was really classy.

[Stonent]

I feel sure this plane was not hijacked. It disintegrated in flight, whether due to an explosion on board, or because of a mechanical issue which caused it to endure unusual flight attitudes which the airframe couldn't survive. It could have been sudden full travel of a control surface which ripped part of the tail or wings off. It could have been hit by a military rocket either by accident or on purpose. It could have had a fuel tank or something in the cargo area explode by accident. And yes it could have been a terrorist on board, but I think that least likely because they usually can't wait to take credit for such events.

I read that they are considering the possibility of a very small nuclear device that went off, one just enough to take out a plane and remove most of the traces of it.

[JoeyP]

I read that they are considering the possibility of a very small nuclear device that went off, one just enough to take out a plane and remove most of the traces of it.

I thought about that too, because virtually no conventional explosive would be strong enough to fracture every bit of the plane into small enough pieces that nothing would float. However, seems there shouldn't be oil slicks in that case. Surely the fuel would have been consumed in the blast.

[Stonent]

I read that they are considering the possibility of a very small nuclear device that went off, one just enough to take out a plane and remove most of the traces of it.

I thought about that too, because virtually no conventional explosive would be strong enough to fracture every bit of the plane into small enough pieces that nothing would float. However, seems there shouldn't be oil slicks in that case. Surely the fuel would have been consumed in the blast.

Well from what I read a few hours ago they determined those oil slicks weren't related.

Now how about this?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2578020/Why-cellphones-missing-Malaysian-Airlines-passengers-ringing-Family-members-claim-loved-ones-smartphones-active.html