Scammers are asking truth-seeking conspiracy theorists to ignore the inherent irony and give up some of their private data in order to find out the "truth" about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. Scams circulating on Facebook and Twitter purport to offer video reports of the plane being found, some of which …

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1. 1. Monday 17th March 2014 15:22 GMT GavinC
    
    Re: So what is going on?
    
    It's also desirable to be able to disable the transponder in the event that it malfunctions - you don't want it broadcasting false information to ATC, or worse yet, you don't want it setting itself on fire.
    
    There seems to be a lot of people focusing on why transponders can be turned off, but what benefit would keeping them on at all times actually provide? They are a radio transmitter, which would be next to useless over the oceans anyway, so even if it had been left on, we'd still probably be non the wiser as to the planes location until it made landfall somewhere (assuming it managed to do so).
    
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2. Monday 17th March 2014 16:05 GMT Florida1920
  
  Re: So what is going on?
  
  Why is there a need to have the functionality to allow an identification beacon on a civil aircraft be switched off in flight?
  
  Every electronic component contains a compressed volume of smoke added during manufacturing. Sometimes, for reasons not always apparent, one or more components in a device spontaneously decide to release their smoke. So far, no one's ever been able to get the smoke back inside a component once it's escaped. All you can do is remove the power source and hold your breath while the affected components die a slow, smoldering death.
  
  If you hold your ear close to the device you may hear the components scream. Or else get burned. Don't try this at home.
  
  One with the smoke & BS detector in the pocket.
  
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3. Monday 17th March 2014 17:13 GMT Nigel 11
  
  Re: So what is going on?
  
  Would a 777 crashing into the sea make a noise that could be recorded by submarine listening arrays like SOSUS? If so would the owner of the array consider it to be revealing too much information about their capabilities to mention it?
  
  A good question to which you won't get a reliable answer!
  
  Possibly, the owner of the array will just happen to discover floating debris and won't let on how they just happedned to know where to discover it. Arranging the cover story will take some days.
  
  It would have been a loud bang compared to, say, a submariner dropping a spanner. So maybe they can inform the world through confidential diplomatic channels that "we are 99% certain it did not crash into the Indian ocean. Search on land. No, I cannot say any more". That, without revealing too much about their actual capabilities.
  
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4. Tuesday 18th March 2014 11:36 GMT Richard 126
  
  Re: So what is going on?
  
  It is an arc because the only thing measured was time to get a ping from the satellite to the plane. So the plane is somewhere on the surface of a globe centered on the satellite. From that you have to work out that it is lower than 43,000 feet as that is as high as the plane can fly, it is higher than sea-level as we are looking for a plane not a submarine. The extreme north south limitations are the amount of fuel on board and the break in the middle of the arc is the area where the transponder would have been picked up by two satellites and as it wasn't it isn't there.
  
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5. Tuesday 18th March 2014 17:57 GMT TheVogon
  
  Re: So what is going on?
  
  "Why is there a need to have the functionality to allow an identification beacon on a civil aircraft be switched off in flight?"
  
  To stop the latest Boeing aircraft incinerating their passengers apparently....
  
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6. Wednesday 19th March 2014 08:54 GMT Jagged
  
  Re: So what is going on?
  
  "Why is there a need to have the functionality to allow an identification beacon on a civil aircraft be switched off in flight?"
  
  They did cover this on the BBC News, and the reason is simply that if there is a fire on-board you will probably want to turn them off and they are a potential source.
  
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Monday 17th March 2014 14:06 GMT Terry 6

Blndingly obvious from the first day...

" .....777 had been discovered on the other side of the world in the Bermuda Triangle."

Duh! Where else could it be??

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1. Monday 17th March 2014 14:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: Blndingly obvious from the first day...
  
  " .....777 had been discovered on the other side of the world in the Bermuda Triangle."
  
  Someone must have reversed the polarity then. Things usually disappear from within the Triangle, they don't end up there from elsewhere.
  
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  1. Monday 17th March 2014 14:56 GMT Vladimir Plouzhnikov
    
    Re: Blndingly obvious from the first day...
    
    Nonsense. Everyone in the know knows the plane is hidden on the dark side of the Moon.
    
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Monday 17th March 2014 14:08 GMT Terry 6

Hoax Slayer

Gosh. I thought they'd gone the way of all flesh long ago. I used to love that site.

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Monday 17th March 2014 14:44 GMT Anonymous Coward

hints

If the plane was landed on a remote location ( no navigation equipment i.e. no lighting nor radar) , it must have landed at dawn when there was light available, Also if the hijack was carried out by the pilot, he would have surveyed the landing site in person. Tracking the pilot's past traveling history would give the clue where the plane might have probably landed.

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1. Monday 17th March 2014 15:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: hints
  
  777 needs a fairly hefty runway to land. You cannot land it just anywhere. It is not an IL76 or a Galaxy which you can land on your village field (if it is empty).
  
  There are quite a few suitable runways around the world including some in the area. North of Burma, etc. However, most of them are under constant satellite surveilance too because of drug and weapons trafficking. If the plane is there, it should have been picked up by now.
  
  In any case, 777 with all passengers "dealt with" and some extra fuel tanks to replace them can fly to nearly any place worldwide. Malaisia has had a history of problems with radical religion too... Just a thought... One I woud prefer not to ponder on for too long...
  
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  1. Monday 17th March 2014 16:53 GMT Nigel 11
    
    Re: hints
    
    There are far more runways, if you want only to land or survivably crash-land, with no intention of taking off again.
    
    This may be a theft or a theft-gone-wrong(*), rather than terrorism. Notably absent from the news reporting, any discussion of the cargo manifest or cargo screening. This may not be mere cluelessness.
    
    (*) gone wrong: the passengers assumed terrorism, and the flight ended the same way as the fourth 9/11 jet. Or not gone wrong, just psycopathically ruthless thieves committing mass murder.
    
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    1. Tuesday 18th March 2014 06:25 GMT JCitizen
      
      Re: hints
      
      Exactly Nigel 11! Just like flight 93 during 911, the passengers probably figured correctly that they were pawns in a terrorist game, and there was no risk in going all out to retake the flight. How have the terrorists convinced us other wise? Terrorism is truly stupid. It is scary, but if I'd been that stupid 'Bin Stupid Ladin, I would have backed off to lull the world into some kind of Lemming mode! But evil is ALWAYS stupid, so I might as well digress and let others comment away! HA!
      
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Monday 17th March 2014 14:49 GMT Alistair

Where are they now type things

Oh look -- Theres a new shiny on Mars!

(lets see how **that** flies on faceblat)

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Monday 17th March 2014 15:01 GMT Anonymous Coward

Case closed...

It was a giant UFO who took them away.

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Monday 17th March 2014 16:40 GMT Rolf Howarth

Phone signals

On any passenger flight there must always be a handful of passengers who have left their cellphone in a jacket pocket and forgotten to turn it off. These would automatically search for a roaming network to connect to, so if the plane flew over land at any point (eg. Vietnam or Indonesia) that should have been logged, even if no-one on board tried to make a phone call.

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1. Monday 17th March 2014 16:58 GMT Nigel 11
  
  Re: Phone signals
  
  I believe not, with the plane at cruising altitude. Not until the plane got down to (a guess) 10,000ft. Question: are there large tracts of central Asia with no cellphone infrastructure? Especially the same, with one or more abandoned Soviet airstrips and no mobile coverage?
  
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  1. Monday 17th March 2014 17:12 GMT Rolf Howarth
    
    Re: Phone signals
    
    The largest GSM cell radius is 22 miles and the plane is flying at less than 6 miles up. Obviously base stations are designed to transmit horizontally rather than up into the sky but I think a phone at that altitude would certainly make intermittent contact. Remember we're not talking about whether you can make a reliable phone call, just whether the phone communicates with a base station long enough to register, and for the base station to check with the phone's home network whether it's allowed to roam.
    
    I thought that remote areas in developing countries often have pretty good cellphone coverage, because that's a much cheaper way to provide telephone service over a large area than having to lay lots of cable.
    
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    1. Monday 17th March 2014 17:19 GMT Nigel 11
      
      Re: Phone signals
      
      I was thinking about Scotland and Kazakhstan. I believe that there are large expanses of uninhabited Scottish highlands where you can't get a mobile signal (*). Same in Kazakhstan?
      
      Don't forget a plane is a metal tube. It's not a perfect Faraday cage because of the windows, but they'll attenuate the phone signal considerably, and the windows point sideways not downwards.
      
      BTW cruising altitude can be 40,000ft: that's 8 miles.Higher is possible though not used in normal civil aviation.
      
      (*) I *know* there are small expanses of rural Dorset with the same problem.
      
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      1. Tuesday 18th March 2014 06:39 GMT JCitizen
        
        Re: Phone signals
        
        Exactly Nigel 11! Out in the hinterlands of the desert - no one would reach the "ground' in such a plane! Yes they prolly went lower than usual, but we are talking the VAST expanse of the world's oceans! Ever see the movie Cast Away? No matter it is a movie of the pure imagination - the fiction was closer to truth than ever before! Remember Flight 93!! (Y)
        
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Monday 17th March 2014 17:58 GMT flokie

Why follow random links...

When there's the David Icke forum if you're after all sorts of "theories"?

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Monday 17th March 2014 19:32 GMT Anonymous Coward

transponder standby or off

When I learnt to fly, if I didn't want or was required to use the transponder, I switched it to 'off' or 'standby' with the big turny knob on the front panel - disabling any broadcasts from the box. Set it to 'on' or 'alt' (or mode-c or mode-s) when you want it to do its thing. No need to pull panel fuses.

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1. Tuesday 18th March 2014 07:00 GMT JCitizen
  
  Re: transponder standby or off
  
  Well I have to admit, that I saw a demo on CNN or something like that, that showed anyone with an ounce of knowledge would be able to disable that - at least the engine data burst was more difficult; but just because it ended 30 minutes before the hext burst is reaching for straws!
  
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Tuesday 18th March 2014 04:54 GMT Anonymous Coward

Hmmmm

Has anyone checked Facebook?

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1. Tuesday 18th March 2014 07:01 GMT JCitizen
  
  Re: Hmmmm
  
  HA!
  
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Tuesday 18th March 2014 08:44 GMT caffeine addict

Every day, this feels a little more like the beginning of an 80s Bond movie.

I'll give it a week before someone suggests a supervillain with an Airbus Beluga super transporter is plucking planes from the sky.

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Tuesday 18th March 2014 09:05 GMT Roj Blake

Irony

So Facebook is removing a scam designed to trick people into handing over their personal information?

My irony meter just exploded.

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Tuesday 18th March 2014 12:29 GMT Tubage

24

Has anyone got contact details for Jack Bauer, pretty confident he can sort out this little pickle in less than a day!!

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