where's the air liner ?

[MrMorg]

I'm going to suggest aliens were involved, lets cover everything.

[-Ralph-]

which begs the next question....will any country be willing to shoot it down if the 240 people are still on it when/if it reappears......assuming its intentions are grim.....

Yes, 3000 people died on the ground in the 9/11 attacks. America actually scrambled fighter jets to intercept and shoot down the Pentagon plane and the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania after the second plane hit the twin towers and it became clear it was a terrorist attack not an accident, and those planes were carrying mainly American citizens. It's all a numbers game and if sacrificing 240 lives saves thousands on the ground they will do it.

[-Ralph-]

I've got to say I find the jokes and flippant comments a bit distasteful given there are 239 innocent people missing.

[chico]

which begs the next question....will any country be willing to shoot it down if the 240 people are still on it when/if it reappears......assuming its intentions are grim.....

Yes, 3000 people died on the ground in the 9/11 attacks. America actually scrambled fighter jets to intercept and shoot down the Pentagon plane and the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania after the second plane hit the twin towers and it became clear it was a terrorist attack not an accident, and those planes were carrying mainly American citizens. It's all a numbers game and if sacrificing 240 lives saves thousands on the ground they will do it.

I think they would do it also......still a tough decision....bearing in mind at the time they didn't know the death toll at the towers....just thinking, what could be a target that would involve more carnage than shooting it down....unless thay have something nuclear on board

however lets not jump the gun, and hope theres a different scenario

[bull]

I don't know why they don't have a tracking device installed in all big passanger airliners that you cant turn off from inside the plane, a stand alone system that would stay working and tracking the aircraft, even if all the planes electrics failed, or if the plane crashed,

something as strong as the black box recorders and that would stay working even in very deep waters

or a stand alone tracking system that could be turned on, or activated from the ground if the plane went missing and show its location anywhere in the world

that way, they would always know where a plane is, or where it went

you would think, that with all the high tec stuff and fancy technology they have these days, that fitting something like that to an aircraft would be simple

I mean, they can find the location of something as small and simple as a £50 mobile phone, but they cant find the location of a big high tech multi million dollar passenger jumbo jet

[-Ralph-]

Hopefully any shoot down scenario for the UK or the US would be over water using the early warning systems that were developed in the cold war.

Bull, we'll probably find that will become the case after this. The airlines weren't forced to install secure cockpit doors until after 9/11, it's always after the horse is bolted. All aircraft need new navigation systems fitted in the next year or two anyway as before the end of the decade the radar and transponder system is being replaced by ADS-B, a GPS based system whereby GPS Co-ordinates are broadcast to a radio frequency to the ground then receivers on the ground (you can buy one of your own and stick it on the roof of your house) upload the data via an Internet connection to a publicly accessible database on the Internet. If you look at flight radar. Com that is live information and this is how the data on that website is collected. You will notice though planes still disappear off the map over oceans and at the moment over most of Africa, because there are no receiving stations on the ground yet. I can't see that it'd be difficult to have that data sent direct by satellite link instead, but radio is free and satellite links are expensive.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

[Morph]

This is taken from a theorist posting on the net:

My theory is that the Chinese Martyr's Brigade, who did claim responsibility for the missing plane, was able to either fly the plane or force the pilots to fly the plane to Xinjiang Province, the semi-autonomous region in Northwest China and historical homeland to the Uyghur people. Xinjiang Province is littered with abandoned oil fields and decommissioned Chinese Military bases that were all serviced by air due to their remote locations in the Gobi Desert, and could still have serviceable landing strips. A flight path north staying to the east of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, then over east Burma, north east Bangladesh, crossing the Himalayas in Nepal and then a rapid decent for a low flight over the Gobi to an abandoned airfield would avoid the more sophisticated air traffic control systems and air forces of India and China.

Bearing in mind the following report in the Guardian of events in Xinjiang Provence in February:

Chinese authorities have shot dead "several terrorists" in Xinjiang in the latest violent incident in the restive western region which is home to mostly Muslim Uighurs, state media has said.

"Several terrorists were shot dead by police during a terrorist attack on Friday afternoon," said the Xinhua news agency.

The group in Wushi county, Aksu prefecture, attempted to carry out a suicide attack against a group of police officers near a park who were preparing to begin a routine patrol, it said. The would-be bombers rode motorbikes and drove cars carrying gas cylinders, it added.

Xinjiang police and information officers declined to comment, while Wushi government and police officials could not be reached.

Aksu, in the far west of Xinjiang near the border with Kyrgyzstan, was the scene of three explosions in late January that killed at least three people, according to a Xinjiang government website. Police shot dead six people soon afterwards. Xinhua, citing a police investigation, described the blasts as organised and premeditated terrorist attacks.

The region has for years been the location of occasional unrest carried out by Uighurs, which rights groups say is driven by cultural oppression, intrusive security measures and immigration by Han Chinese.

Authorities routinely attribute such incidents to terrorists and argue that China faces a violent separatist movement in the area motivated by religious extremism and linked to foreign terrorist groups.

"Terrorist attacks" totalled 190 in 2012, "increasing by a significant margin from 2011", Xinhua said, citing regional authorities. But experts question the strength of any resistance movement and information in the area is hard to independently verify. The most serious recent incident took place in Turpan last June, leaving at least 35 people dead.

In October, three family members from Xinjiang died when they drove a car into crowds of tourists on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the symbolic heart of the Chinese state, killing two, before the vehicle burst into flames, according to authorities.

China's top security official, Meng Jianzhu, said the attackers had "behind the scenes supporters" from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) based outside the country.

The United States and the United Nations categorised ETIM as a terrorist organisation in 2002, during a period of increased US-Chinese co-operation after the 9/11 attacks. But the group's strength and links to global terrorism are unclear and some experts say China exaggerates its threat to justify tough security measures in Xinjiang.

Last month police detained the Uighur academic Ilham Tohti, a rare outspoken critic of the government's policies toward the ethnic group, accusing him of being involved in separatist activities.

So, a retalitory Hijacking by the Xinjiang Separatists with the Chinese passengers being held hostage for concessions from Bejing?

[Redmurty]

which begs the next question....will any country be willing to shoot it down if the 240 people are still on it when/if it reappears......assuming its intentions are grim.....maybe they wanted the passengers for a purpose....a shield

Oh yeah shoot it down no problem, collateral damage for the greater good

cheers Spud

[chico]

Hopefully any shoot down scenario for the UK or the US would be over water using the early warning systems that were developed in the cold war.

Bull, we'll probably find that will become the case after this. The airlines weren't forced to install secure cockpit doors until after 9/11, it's always after the horse is bolted. All aircraft need new navigation systems fitted in the next year or two anyway as before the end of the decade the radar and transponder system is being replaced by ADS-B, a GPS based system whereby GPS Co-ordinates are broadcast to a radio frequency to the ground then receivers on the ground (you can buy one of your own and stick it on the roof of your house) upload the data via an Internet connection to a publicly accessible database on the Internet. If you look at flight radar. Com that is live information and this is how the data on that website is collected. You will notice though planes still disappear off the map over oceans and at the moment over most of Africa, because there are no receiving stations on the ground yet. I can't see that it'd be difficult to have that data sent direct by satellite link instead, but radio is free and satellite links are expensive.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

I suspect some kind of "fly from the ground system" wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility.....or at least some kind of override.....but yes, some kind of bulletproof tracker is now essential


regards the shooting down...surely there would be some attempts to make it deviate from its course by fighter planes 1st....even risking near collision or warning shots wouldn't make matters any worse.....still wouldn't like to be the pilot or missile operator delivering the goods

[bull]

Hopefully any shoot down scenario for the UK or the US would be over water using the early warning systems that were developed in the cold war.

Bull, we'll probably find that will become the case after this. The airlines weren't forced to install secure cockpit doors until after 9/11, it's always after the horse is bolted. All aircraft need new navigation systems fitted in the next year or two anyway as before the end of the decade the radar and transponder system is being replaced by ADS-B, a GPS based system whereby GPS Co-ordinates are broadcast to a radio frequency to the ground then receivers on the ground (you can buy one of your own and stick it on the roof of your house) upload the data via an Internet connection to a publicly accessible database on the Internet. If you look at flight radar. Com that is live information and this is how the data on that website is collected. You will notice though planes still disappear off the map over oceans and at the moment over most of Africa, because there are no receiving stations on the ground yet. I can't see that it'd be difficult to have that data sent direct by satellite link instead, but radio is free and satellite links are expensive.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

yep, long gone are the days when a passenger could go up into cockpit and talk to the pilots, we will never see those days again

aviation has changed a lot sense my time, so it has, its nearly all GPS navigation these days, and aircraft are becoming more technically advanced every day, the old NDB has become a thing of the past, and VOR navigation will probably be gone in the next 20 to 30 years,

but It amazes me, that with all the new technical advancements in aviation over the years, that nobody ever thought to install a tracking device worked off a satellite, that could track the location of an aircraft anywhere in the world if it went missing, even if it crashed in deep waters,

something like a microchip that's installed in the aircraft when its being built, by airbus or boeing etc, and that cant be tampered with, then if the plane goes missing, they just call up boeing or airbus and ask them to activate the tracker system for that aircraft,

I mean, if someone stole a new car today, the police would be able activate a tracker system in the car and find its location, but for some reason they didn't take this simple technical advancement of the automobile industry and use it in the aviation industry,

something like that would of helped find the air France plane crash in a few hours and also saved millions of pound in the search for the Air France plane , and would also find this aircraft

I read in todays papers, that the plane had enough fuel on board for a 7 hour flight, so it could of gone anywhere,

and I also read that their are now trying to trace the location of the passengers mobile phones in the hope of the finding the location of a multi million dollar jumbo jet, you would think that with all the highly technically advanced systems on the aircraft, that it should be able to find itself

it just beggars belief in todays world, that a passenger jumbo jet can disappear and nobody knows where it went,

its just unbelievably stupid