We have a missing plane...again
On March 8, three days ago, Flight 370 disappeared presumably somewhere over the Gulf of Thailand with 227 passengers on board. This is the latest incident of a large passenger jet just disappearing without a trace. Others have vanished like this before to later be found to have crashed, were recovered, or have simply never been seen again. There is a long list of airplanes such as this (including possibly the most famous one piloted by Amelia Earhart that vanished almost 77 years ago).
As recently as 11 years ago a large jet airliner was reportedly stolen while at the Quatro de Feveiro Airport in Luanda, Angola, apparently by an aircraft mechanic named Ben Charles Padilla, as told to authorities by his sister Benita Padilla-Kirkland. Her family suspects the plane to have crashed somewhere in Africa or is being held against his will.
So, this is certainly not the first time an airplane has disappeared. Yet, this plane, if stolen like the one in 2003, is unique in having a great number of passengers on board at the time. The odds are, if history is any judge, the flight encountered something and/or malfunctioned in some way which caused it thereafter to crash killing everyone on board. Looking at the statistics it is hard to avoid this as a probable outcome. And even though the possibility exists that the plane and passengers are safe somewhere, the evidence doesn't seem to back that up very well.
For instance: communications and transponder signals were lost abruptly & no signals have been received from the plane since. No phone calls have been made by any of the passengers that anything was wrong (although not too strange considering there probably was no phone service over the ocean). Radar saw the plane turning west & altering its course for an unknown reason-this may or may not be true.
A search for the plane or wreckage has been underway since without finding anything as yet.
To me the abruptness of signals is likely evidence of some kind of catastrophic malfunction, possibly with the electrical systems, which doomed the plane. Perhaps the pilots managed to turn the aircraft west to try and head towards land instead of continuing out over sea. Who knows? At this point we can only speculate until either the plane or its wreckage turn up somewhere.
As recently as 11 years ago a large jet airliner was reportedly stolen while at the Quatro de Feveiro Airport in Luanda, Angola, apparently by an aircraft mechanic named Ben Charles Padilla, as told to authorities by his sister Benita Padilla-Kirkland. Her family suspects the plane to have crashed somewhere in Africa or is being held against his will.
So, this is certainly not the first time an airplane has disappeared. Yet, this plane, if stolen like the one in 2003, is unique in having a great number of passengers on board at the time. The odds are, if history is any judge, the flight encountered something and/or malfunctioned in some way which caused it thereafter to crash killing everyone on board. Looking at the statistics it is hard to avoid this as a probable outcome. And even though the possibility exists that the plane and passengers are safe somewhere, the evidence doesn't seem to back that up very well.
For instance: communications and transponder signals were lost abruptly & no signals have been received from the plane since. No phone calls have been made by any of the passengers that anything was wrong (although not too strange considering there probably was no phone service over the ocean). Radar saw the plane turning west & altering its course for an unknown reason-this may or may not be true.
A search for the plane or wreckage has been underway since without finding anything as yet.
To me the abruptness of signals is likely evidence of some kind of catastrophic malfunction, possibly with the electrical systems, which doomed the plane. Perhaps the pilots managed to turn the aircraft west to try and head towards land instead of continuing out over sea. Who knows? At this point we can only speculate until either the plane or its wreckage turn up somewhere.
A great search for the plane is ongoing, but also, in an effort to help find the plane on the website digitalglobe.com is running a "crowdsourcing campaign" to get people involved in the search by examining live satellite imagery. I attempted to join in on this myself but couldn't get the web page to load up--possibly there are too many people doing this already and the website is either crashed or overloaded. At any rate hopefully their help will be of at least some assistance in this endeavour.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_incidents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_MH370
http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/how-to-lose-an-airplane-in-a-technological-world/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aerial_disappearances
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N844AA
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_incidents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_MH370
http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/how-to-lose-an-airplane-in-a-technological-world/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aerial_disappearances
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N844AA
The plane, its intended route and believed change of direction:
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