SilkAir Flight 185

[Nbadan]

This case just gets weirder and weirder....speculation now is on pilot suicide....but....maybe not...

Massive search for Malaysia plane yields no evidence; experts speculate on pilot suicide
By Chico Harlan and William Wan, Updated: Monday, March 10, 10:08 PM

... In a vacuum of evidence about what went wrong aboard the flight, speculation turned to the possibility of pilot suicide, an extraordinarily rare occurrence.

“You have to ask the question,” said a U.S. aviation official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The Malaysia Airlines flight reportedly was being tracked by radar when its transponder went dark. There were no radio transmissions to indicate that anything was amiss aboard the plane. The transponder signals and radio communication are controlled by the pilot.

There have been two cases in recent years in which a pilot or crew member is believed to have intentionally caused a plane to crash: the disaster involving SilkAir Flight 185, which spiraled into the ground in Indonesia in 1997, killing 97 passengers and seven crew members; and the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990, which plunged into the Atlantic south of Nantucket in 1999, killing 217 people.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...d06_story.html

The Boeing 777-200ER is equipped with a maintenance computer capable of talking to the ground automatically through short messages known as Acars. In the case of the Malaysia Airlines jet, however, investigators have no evidence to help them discover what happened to the passenger plane, the people...

[Nbadan]

Two names listed on the manifest of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight match passports reported stolen in Thailand, foreign ministry officials in Rome and Vienna have confirmed.

...snip...

Italy’s foreign ministry said today that an Italian man whose name was listed as being on board the Boeing 777 is travelling in Thailand and was not on the plane. A foreign ministry official confirmed Italian reports that an Italian national had reported his passport stolen last August.

Italian news agency Ansa said he called home after hearing reports that an Italian with his name was on board the missing aircraft.

Austrian foreign ministry spokesman confirmed that a name listed on the manifest matches an Austrian passport reported stolen two years ago in Thailand but he would not confirm the iden y.

Read more: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world...-jet-1.1717931

The tickets used by the fake passport carrying passengers aboard the missing Air Malaysia Flight 370 bought their tickets through a travel agency in Pattaya, Thailand, according to a report in a British newspaper.

The tickets were booked through an Iranian middleman known as “Mr Ali” a Thai travel agent told the Financial Times newspaper.

The newspaper quoted Benjaporn Krutnait, owner of the Grand Horizon travel agency in Pattaya, as saying the Iranian had asked her to book the two men to travel to Europe on March 1, specifying only that she find them cheap tickets.

She initially booked them on two separate flights -– one on Qatar Airways and another on Etihad airline –- but the tickets expired before she heard again from the Iranian, she said.

[Nbadan]

According to this news report, the last contact with the plane was "within 2 hours" after takeoff. It should have taken only about a little more than an hour or so for the plane to reach Vietnamese airspace, assuming it was flying at 500mph. However, the last contact with air traffic control was only "120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu." It should have been well past that point after nearly 2 hours of flying at cruising al ude. Also, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) confirmed the jetliner never checked into the airspace between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/missing-mal...erious-1439613

[Nbadan]

..The possible debris area is 60 kilometers (37 miles) southeast of the Vietnamese coastal city of Vung Tau, said Lai Xuan Thanh, chief of the country’s civil aviation agency. Vietnam is also sending ships to investigate what appears to be metal pieces.

A plane alerted Hong Kong air traffic controllers about the discovery, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said in a statement on its website. Malaysian officials said they were directing ships toward the Hong Kong region, and Vietnam said the multinational search flotilla totaled 40 vessels, backed by 34 aircraft...

[boutons_deux]

the biggest mystery is lack of crash evidence.