Friday, March 14, 2014

MH370: Three guesses from Walt

Walt has been waiting for Agent 17, a.k.a. Sky King, to provide a plausible explanation for the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 last weekend. It appears, though, that SK has no ready answer, making him no worse than the "experts" of half a dozen interested countries. Nobody knows. Everybody's guessing. So Walt will indulge in a little speculation. [He speculates every day! Filthy habit... Ed.] Here are three possibilities.

1. MH370 was hijacked. This has been one of the leading theories since the plane vanished. But hijacked by whom? And why? No-one has claimed responsibility or given a motive. It has been reported that the plane flew for hours after it was last heard from, and the US Navy is going to look around the Andabar Islands. For those who weren't paying attention in geography class, the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago belongs to India. There is a large penal colony there. Nothing else. Why hijack a plane and demand to be taken to jail?

How about a hijacking by pirates, looking for a rajah's ransom for wealthy Chinese passengers? Pirates abound in the South China and Sulu Seas, and the Malacca Straits. But the logistics of seafaring pirates attacking an airliner are daunting. Where would you land the aircraft? How do you prove you've got the hostages without giving away your location? And what happens after you make your ransom demand? But who knows. Maybe pirates did pull it off and now realize they scored a lot more trouble than they bargained for. What do they do? Call up the airline and say "Hey, sorry, it was just a piratical prank?" Noooo...

2. Nobody was flying the plane. Walt is not talking about pilot error, just pilot negligence. Remember Eastern Airlines flight 401? EA401 was a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar -- the best jumbo jet ever made, IMHO -- which crashed into the Florida Everglades on 29 December 1972. 99 people were killed; two more died soon afterward. 75 survived. Turned out the entire flight crew had been preoccupied with a burnt-out landing gear indicator light. While crawling around the cockpit trying to deal with it, someone bumped into the autopilot control, turning it off, and no-one noticed. As a result, the plane descended slowly into the inky darkness of the swamp, where pieces of it remain to this day.

MH370 had the usual two pilots. The captain was by all accounts a "pilot's pilot", very experienced and a real straight arrow. However, a report out of South Africa says the first officer was something of a showboat and womanizer, given to inviting comely ladies to inspect the, errr, cockpit and (perhaps) try out for the Mile-High Club. Suppose the pilots were not alone in the cockpit, and that the contortions required to accommodate a guest or two led to some accidental interference with the controls.

3. MH370 was shot down. This may seem the most far-fetched, but it's Walt's current favourite. Before you laugh loudly, cast your mind back to 1 September 1983. Korean Air Lines flight 007 was en route from New York to Seoul via Anchorage. As it neared the Sakhalin Islands, in the Sea of Japan, it was shot down by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor, killing all 269 pax and crew aboard. The Soviets claimed KE007 had flown through prohibited Soviet airspace on a reconnaissance mission for the USA. They said it was a deliberate provocation to test the Soviet Union's military preparedness, or even to provoke a war.

Now suppose you're a pilot of the Chinese Air Force, or the Vietnamese Air Force (they do have one) or even the USAF. (What?! You don't think the Americans have military planes cruising around up there?) You're looking for other planes which are somewhere they shouldn't be doing, errr, something, when suddenly you see a target -- a plane with no ID. (MH 307's transponder was not working or turned off, remember.) So you shoot at it -- a shot across the bow, so to speak. Only you kind of miss the bow and hit the target bang on, causing it to plummet into the drink.

If you were that pilot -- Chinese, American, whatever -- what would you do? Would you radio "Hey, I think I mighta done a bad thing!"? Well OK, maybe you're humanitarian enough to call 9-1-1 (so to speak). Your call is received and recorded at home base. You tell them the plane -- or whatever it was -- was blown into a billion bits and there are no signs of life, or even debris. What would your military bosses, and the government of your country, do? Would they say, "We know where it is...or what's left of it."? Not bloody likely! A war might ensue! And whether you're China or America, you don't want to start a war you might lose. Better to say nothing.

What to do then? Well, you could publish a satellite image -- possibly doctored -- showing some debris in a location far away from the scene of the crime, and say the plane must be down there somewhere. Or you could send a couple of ships off on a wild goose chase, to throw the others off the trail. You get the picture.

All three scenarios are plausible, in my humble opinion. If anyone wants to shoot them down -- pardon the pun -- that's what the "Comments" section is for.

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