Really??? North Korea? How about Next Of Kin, that would make a bit more sense after an aircraft has gone missing.

Malaysian 777 missing
 

If the aircraft had technical issues it should send as standard fault messages/maintenance messages for each flight via the Boeing Airplane Health Management system (AHM)

Modern aircraft just don't break up in flight without something else first happening. Someone has pointed out that this aircraft has had structural wing damage, and like China #611, I think maybe safe to say that it was also not repaired in accordance with the Boeing SRM.
Previous damage and some CAT.....
Godspeed.

A whole lot of reasons. Fractures could have been expanding and this was the flight that did it in and the airplane broke up in flight, there could have been a suicidal pilot, or there could have even been confusion in the cockpit which led to a loss of situational awareness.

Maybe an instant fire in or around the fuel tank that happened so fast the plane exploded before any message could be sent. Kind of like the challenger crash (no data explained it until it was deeply researched by Richard Feynman)

Something like this :(

China Airlines Flight 611 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edit: Sorry pilotguy - I posted before I read your post.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/wo...ight.html?_r=0

Oil slick spotted. :(

I have a few friends that are captains at Malaysian, for what they tell me their maintenance is as good as ours here in Japan, so I wouldn't be so sure.

I just read a piece that reported an Italian who was on the manifest was not on the plane, but he did have his passport stolen a few months ago.

Pilot suicide, electrical problems, fire, electrical fire, mechanical flight control failure, uncommanded full throw of a control surface, slow cabin press leak, etc etc etc. All things that have happened before.

You guys are speculating based on zero info.

Anyone know water depth here? Tough investigation.....

http://www.reuters.com/article/slide...08&slide=1#a=2

Photo of fuel slick from Vietnamese Air Force.

(It is shown in photo 2 of the slideshow)

Don't see the pic.

Lot's of oil slicks and debris fields in the ocean, especially westpac.

Chill, when you are 80 I am sure you will misapply some call of duty reference in a post.

Between 150 - 300ft. Not terribly deep but still not shallow either.

So about as deep as the water where TWA 800 was lost. Should make debris recovery frustrating, yet possible I would think.

"Foreign Ministry officials in Rome and Vienna later said names of two nationals listed as passengers matched passports reported stolen in Thailand."
As reported on Al Jazeera.

This is what gets my attention.

Multiple sources are now reporting the stolen passport pax. Makes your hair stand up when you know there's a good chance that airplane broke up in flight.

Malaysian 777 missing
 

http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=22831723&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com %2F

Stolen European Passports on Missing Plane
By COLLEEN BARRY Associated Press Mar 8, 2014, 10:05 AM
Foreign ministry officials in Rome and Vienna confirm that names of two nationals listed on the manifest of the missing Malaysian airlines flight match passports reported stolen in Thailand.

Italy's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that an Italian man whose name was listed as being aboard is traveling in Thailand and was not aboard the plane.

A foreign ministry functionary, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed Italian reports that Luigi Maraldi had reported his passport stolen last August.

Italian news agency ANSA says Maraldi called home after hearing reports that an Italian with his name was aboard the plane.

Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Weiss confirmed that a name listed on the manifest matches an Austrian passport reported stolen two years ago in Thailand. Weiss would not confirm the identity.

This scares the crap out of me

In his defense, NoK is the DoD TLA for N. Korea.

In the grand scheme of things, very shallow. Easily within reach of conventional surface-supplied divers using mixed gas.

Most of the worlds oceans are so deep that ROVs would be the only practical way to reach the bottom to do work.

Yes, TWA was in the same depth range, that allowed navy divers to recover most of the wreckage.

Anyone know what the weather was on the route of flight?

It was clear & smooth

I don't really like where my gut leads me on this one...I'll wait to learn more.

it scares the crap out of me too. However, out in the middle of nowhere seems like an odd place for an act like that to happen. Usually evil people want that ******* on display for the world to see....

RIP,

True. But the way things have been going lately, I think they'd take it any way they could get it. But I still don't think any of the obvious suspects have a motive to attack MA. I get the feeling this is going to be a Black Swan.

Some people become deputy NTSB investigators after these incidents. I like to wait a bit for some facts before writing down permanently what I may be thinking.

More often than not in aviation accidents.

Is this not a heavily trafficked route ? No one saw anything up there ? explosions etc ?

With no weather to speak of, and the (pure unconfirmed reports, but...) possible "lost radar contact" while at the FL's, I am not getting a warm fuzzy.

This B777 had a ground collision with another aircraft in 2012 and was subsequently repaired. Hopefully they followed the Boeing Structural Repair Manual to the T and dotted their i's.

It would be very unfortunate if this was another China 611.

http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscm...ux-720-520.jpg

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/mis...on-2012-n47706

You were on this flight to know this?

Reference "no wx, clear skies."

Just thinking out loud here. 8-9 yrs ago, a Polar 747 flight from Singapore to HKG, cruising at FL390 in "no wx, clear skies" conditions suddenly hit extremely bad CAT. Jet flipped 120 degrees inverted and went into a massive high speed dive, almost Mach 1. My buddy got lucky, jet stayed intact, recovered plane at 15,000ft and limped to HKG. Don't know, just opining.

I have a couple of friends that fly for Malaysian, they don't have any reservations about their maintenance program so I'm not really too incline to think that the previous damage had anything to do with this. I also flew that night although from Bangkok to Narita and the weather was clear all over SE Asia.
What's eating away at me is that ATC and the company stated that they lost contact with the A/C 2 hours into the flight, but the suspected area is 400 miles from Kuala Lumpur??? That would be 45 minutes into the flight (specially with the prevailing winds that evening) in a 4:50 planned flight, 2 hours would put them NE of the coast of Vietnam, just about being handover to Hong Kong??????

I've been scratching my head on that one, too.

Malaysian 777 missing
 

Preface everything with "the media is reporting" and you'll be less puzzled.

Flightaware isn't accurate, even if it is on the internets.

And it further enhances the warm fuzzy feeling thinking about the Obama Administration giving the go ahead for the Abu Dhabi pre-clearance facility last month. Using our tax dollars to help it out of course.

Passports
 

About the passports.

So far I think "only" two statements are likely to be factual:

1. There were two passengers flying using stolen passports
2. Both were stolen in Thailand.

Certain other details would be informative and I am sure the investigator will look at those.

1. Time frame between the two thefts (one was reported Aug 2013)
2. Location of the two thefts. IIRC there was an armed robbery of a hotel in Thailand around that time where three passports were stolen (along with cash) from safety deposit boxes at the reception of a hotel. The name of the hotel escapes me, but I think it was either Dynasty Hotel or Lek Hotel, but near top of Soi 13, Beach Road, Pattaya.
3. Did both these passengers have same departure and arrival airports
4. Did the both of these passengers book on or near the same day and/or use the same agency?
5. If a destructive device may be suspected to be on the belly, did any of them originate from an airport with possibly insufficient screening and transfer in KUL.
6. About a potential problems with Chinese immigration. That may be completely irrelevant if destructive was intended on the ship.

Stolen passports might have been sold for illegal immigration purposes. Not sure why anyone would want to enter China illegally though...drug smugglers maybe.