Malaysian Jet

While the irresponsible speculation continues, and will continue, unabated, let's pause to remember Socrates and what he established, informally, as the pricnicple of all wisdom: If I be the wisest man in Athens, it is because I alone know that I know nothing.

Carry on.

Help me guys. A 'ping detector' boat has found a signal in the middle of the Indian ocean. It matches the frequency that the Malaysian jet would emit. But they are saying things like.... "We can't be sure it's from the downed plane". What else could it possibly be from? Some shark emitting a 35kh ping? WHAT ELSE COULD BE PINGING IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE?????

Someone with a very bad sense of humor and the ability to send a ping?

Actually, so much faulty info has come out since the start, I'm hesitant to believe anything until it's at least been in the news a couple days and not been dismissed as an error.

Quote: SOOPOO

Help me guys. A 'ping detector' boat has found a signal in the middle of the Indian ocean. It matches the frequency that the Malaysian jet would emit. But they are saying things like.... "We can't be sure it's from the downed plane". What else could it possibly be from? Some shark emitting a 35kh ping? WHAT ELSE COULD BE PINGING IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE?????

I think you are under the impression that someone hears this ping. In reality they are probably looking at a visual clue from a matched filter processor. It could be a mistake.

In reviewing the first 50 minutes of the timeline of 9-11, it seems shocking that we still can't track a plane regardless of what is happening in the cockpit. I forgot that the first plane was hijacked in only 15 minutes, and in perfect hindsight much of the tragedy of the day could have been prevented by pilots simply locking their cockpit doors


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7:59: American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 carrying 81 passengers and 11 crew members, departs 14 minutes late from Logan International Airport in Boston, its destination being Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in Los Angeles, California.

8:14: Flight 11 is hijacked when hijackers Waleed and Wail al-Shehri rise from seats 2A and 2B and stab two female flight attendants. Atta rises from seat 8D and approaches the cockpit. Within minutes, he is at the controls.

8:14: United Airlines Flight 175, another fully fueled Boeing 767, carrying 56 passengers and nine crew members, also departs from Logan International Airport in Boston; its destination was also Los Angeles International Airport. Five hijackers are aboard. One of them communicated with Mohammed Atta shortly before Flight 11's takeoff.

8:19: Betty Ong, a flight attendant on Flight 11 alerts American Airlines via an airphone, “The cockpit is not answering, somebody’s stabbed in business class—and I think there’s Mace—that we can’t breathe—I don’t know, I think we’re getting hijacked.” She then tells of the stabbings of two flight attendants.

8:20: American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 with 58 passengers and six crew members, departs from Washington Dulles International Airport in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties, Virginia, for Los Angeles International Airport. Five hijackers are aboard.
8:21:Flight 11's transponder signal is turned off, but can still be tracked via primary radar by Boston Center. (Prior to the 9/11 Commission's report, news organizations reported this time as 8:13 or immediately thereafter.)

8:26:30: Flight 11 makes a 100-degree turn to the south heading toward New York City.

8:34: A third transmission from : "Nobody move please. We are going back to the airport. Don't try to make any stupid moves."

8:34: Dan Bueno from Boston Center notifies the tower controller at Otis Air National Guard Base at Cape Cod of the hijacking of Flight 11. The controller directs Bueno to contact Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), the northeast sector of NORAD. The controller then notifies Otis Operations Center that a call from NEADS might be coming. Two F-15 pilots begin to suit up.

8:37: Flight 175 confirms sighting of hijacked to flight controllers, 10 miles (16 km) to its south.

8:42: United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757, takes off with 37 passengers and seven crew members from Newark International Airport (now Newark Liberty International Airport), bound for San Francisco International Airport, following a 40-minute delay due to congested runways.

8:42 to 8:46 (approx.): Flight 175 is hijacked.

8:44: Flight attendant Amy Sweeney, aboard Flight 11, reports by telephone to Michael Woodward at the American Airlines Flight Services Office in Dallas, "Something is wrong. We are in a rapid descent... we are all over the place." A minute later, Woodward asks her to "describe what she sees out the window". She responds, "I see the water. I see the buildings. I see buildings..." After a short pause, she reports, "We are flying low. We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low." Seconds later she says, "Oh my God, we are way too low.” The call ends with a burst of very loud, sustained static.

8:46:30 Flight 11 crashes at roughly 466 mph (790 km/h or 219m/s or 425 knots) into the north face of the North Tower (1 WTC) of the World Trade Center, between floors 93 and 99.

I was trying to make a prop bet on any survivors. At first I offered 100 to 1 on at least one living survivor being found. This offered was scoffed at as being way too low, so I asked to get 200 to 1 from him and said "no" that that as well, perhaps for lack of ability to pay.

What do you think the fair line should be on at least one living survivor ever being found?

Quote: Wizard

I was trying to make a prop bet on any survivors. At first I offered 100 to 1 on at least one living survivor being found. This offered was scoffed at as being way too low, so I asked to get 200 to 1 from him and said "no" that that as well, perhaps for lack of ability to pay.

What do you think the fair line should be on at least one living survivor ever being found?

Honestly 10,000-1 if not more. Unless a plane crashes right at takeoff or landing survival is next to impossible. If, and a big if, it landed in the ocean and anyone found something that would float they would not last much more than 3 days.

Quote: AZDuffman

Honestly 10,000-1 if not more. Unless a plane crashes right at takeoff or landing survival is next to impossible. If, and a big if, it landed in the ocean and anyone found something that would float they would not last much more than 3 days.

By odds in the 100 to 200 range were based on a possible land crash/landing.

Quote: Wizard

I was trying to make a prop bet on any survivors. At first I offered 100 to 1 on at least one living survivor being found.

Given the latest evidence that the plane was deliberately flown around Indonesian airspace allows for the possibility that the plane was hijacked and landed in the ocean long enough to evacuate the hijackers onto a boat.

Those "survivors" may exist, but might never be found. I am not sure who would win your bet, if they find evidence to that effect, but never find the persons responsible.

Quote: Wizard

By odds in the 100 to 200 range were based on a possible land crash/landing.

Sorry, didn't know that detail.

Quote: Pacomartin

Given the latest evidence that the plane was deliberately flown around Indonesian airspace allows for the possibility that the plane was hijacked and landed in the ocean long enough to evacuate the hijackers onto a boat.

I can't imagine the desperation of an intelligent hijacker to opt for an open water landing. An ignorant one perhaps, but not anyone with aviation knowledge.

Also, the maneuvering is being described as evasive, but it is in fact a perfectly proper and correct response of any well trained pilot who has just detected an onboard fire. Turn to the nearest emergency airport and get on the ground but fast Getting on the radio and saying burning electrical wiring and hot metal is dripping onto my nylon uniform and making things uncomfortable for my manliness doesn't help the passengers and it doesn't seem to make ATC able to do anything about it anyway.

If instead of a hot electrical fire in the cockpit there was merely a fire warning, the procedures are usually the same. Make the turn, set up the heading and start pulling all circuit breakers and electrical busses until you isolate the alarm signals and know which circuit breakers you can now reset.

Oxygen systems may have failed. Smoke hoods may have failed. There may well have been no hijacking at all.