Read the comments associated with this article, especially the one from David___. He disputes Goodwins theory. Goodwins theory is not compelling at all, in my view, because it ignores several known facts which undermine it: 1. The timing of the event cannot be ignored. The fact that the airplane completely disappeared without any mayday communication or any other indicator is already a fantastically rare event in and of itself in modern aviation. Couple that with the timing of how this all went down and its beyond possibility. This planes transponder went dark and it disappeared from civilian radar at the absolute PERFECT moment if one was trying to buy more time before arousing suspicion during a hijack... in the no mans land between two countries air traffic control. They had just said goodnight to Malaysian ATC and were due to report in to Vietnamese ATC. They were, at the moment, being handled by neither. This is when the transponder shut off and they made their left turn. Doing it in this window ensured they wouldnt just drop off an active ATC radar and would thus have crucial extra minutes, maybe up to half an hour, before everybody realized what was up and the alarm really sounded in full. No way this timing was just a coincidence in support of another enormous rarity. 2. The plane did not only fly to Penang, but once it got there started heading NORTHWEST, turning along three navigational waypoints as it made its way to a corridor that would take it to the Middle East. Most people seem to forget this now, acting like the trail just goes cold in a straight line near Penang, but that is not true. For many days now the path was described as heading Northwest after Penang, again on a known route. why on earth would pilots program THAT into the auto-pilot if they were just trying to get to Penang? If the pilots were overcome then their jet would have presumably passed Penang. Instead it turned another way after it got there. If they were overcome at that point they would have continued on their current northwestern flight path, along the known corridor taking it to the Middle East and crashed somewhere. Why didnt it? There is no indication at all that the plane turned south - it was heading northwest when it disappeared, toward the Middle East, and navigating waypoints to do it. It was going somewhere. 3. The two comments above are enough to squash this theory, but there is much more that space doesnt allow. For instance, we now know that ACARS data indicates the new flight plan was entered into the computer sometime before 1:07 AM - 12 minutes BEFORE the co-pilot calmly signed off goodnight without a hint of problem. Also, witness reports that came out the third day after the incident, well before talk of the plane turning around was even thought about, reported from Kota Bahru that they saw a large plane flying very low the opposite direction of where planes are usually flying around 1:30 AM. Fishermen said it was so low the lights looked like coconuts - and again, this was all before we knew the plane had turned around and was possibly hijacked, but it matches very well with reports now that the plan was flying very low, possibly below 5,000 feet, to use terrain masking to avoid radar. This is no doubt, how it got across the Malaysian peninsula without arousing the military, and only ascended to its Middle East route when they were close to out of Malaysian airspace. These actions do not fit the fire theory at all, but they support why Thai and evidentially Malay radar found the signal from this plane spotty over the peninsula. People seem to have forgotten in the last several days that once the flight passed Penang, it turned NORTHWEST and made turns along that trajectory at three known navigational waypoints, taking it on a known air corridor toward the Middle East. That is the point at which it left Malaysian radar and disappeared. In the past several days, I see people draw this line from the point of disappearance straight toward Penang, west southwest, and then just stop, as if that is where the plane disappeared, meaning it could have turned north or south after that, we just dont know. But we do know where it went from that point. It actually turned at Penang and continued northwest for over a hundred miles before disappearing off the limits of that radar. The plane was taking a route, it was obviously heading somewhere. There is no indication at all that it later turned south. The actual data and route it was traveling shows north on a corridor toward the Middle East. The only reason people have put the southern corridor into their heads is because they dont know how the plane couldve gotten through the radars of those countries up north. This objection seems strong until you think for half a second and realize that it had just gotten over Malaysian radar without incident that very night, overlying the entire peninsula and even a major city at lower-than-normal altitude. And this was picked up on radar but not noticed - it took them seven days to put together that this was the missing flight. The Indian Navy later admitted that their radar system is used on an as needed basis, and is often off at night. If India and Malaysias radar system is so pathetic you can bet Bangladesh and Myanmars are worse. So the northern radar objection just doesnt hold, and again, that is the way the plane was actually going, and there is no reason other than the radar objection to speculate at all that the plane later turned south. This is the problem - I highly doubt that many countries will be likely to admit that their radars tracked a large passenger plane without a transponder but they didnt do anything about it. This is hugely embarrassing - heads would likely be called for and its enemies would be emboldened. Malaysia finally admitted it because they had to considering this huge international search effort and getting everybody on the right side of the peninsula, but I suspect their disclosure took so long because it was just too embarrassing and damaging to admit a large plane overflew their entire peninsula and a major city and nothing was done about it. These other countries dont have to admit that if they dont want to - so I suspect they would be inclined not to. There are other reasons to doubt the southern hypothesis than that we have no evidence that the plane went that way, and indeed, was going the opposite direction when it disappeared. The southern corridor would essentially mean pilot suicide, and that just doesnt make any sense for a whole host of reasons, considering the facts of this disappearance. Passenger plane suicides in the past have had pilots simply ditch in the ocean - doing something more elaborate risks something going wrong and the possibility of getting overcome by passengers or crew and ending up in prison. Even if the person wanted to risk this in order to run out the fuel for some reason, the easiest way to do this would be to wait and then turn right instead of left and head for the Pacific. That way you could just disappear without tipping any radars at all. Instead, they took the huge risk of overflying Malaysia in order to get to this Middle East route. Overlying Malaysia could have easily resulted in being escorted or shot down by a fighter - not something youd want if you were trying to disappear. So the Pacific would be the option there. So pilot suicide doesnt work, either. The plane was hijacked.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 21:40:29 +0000