Malaysia Plane Diverted? Data Shows Plane Flew For Hours

by JASmius

The saga of Flight 370 takes a turn for the worse:

U.S. investigators suspect that the missing Malaysia Airlines flight may have kept flying for four hours after it mysteriously vanished with 239 people aboard, raising fears that the aircraft could have been hijacked.

The Wall Street Journal revealed Thursday that aviation experts and national security officials now believe that the plane flew for a total of five hours based on data automatically downloaded from the Boeing 777 and sent back to the ground as part of a routine monitoring program.

But Malaysian authorities said there was no evidence that the jet flew further after losing contact with air traffic controllers and continued to transmit technical data.

"Those reports are inaccurate," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference. "As far as both Rolls-Royce and Boeing are concerned, those reports are inaccurate. The last (data) transmission from the aircraft was at 01:07 a.m.(local time) which indicated that everything was normal."

Hmmm.  Now please understand that I'm not - yet - about to cast any aspersions or suspicions on a man surnamed Hussein, but I can't help wondering why the public suggestion that perhaps Flight 370 was hijacked would provoke such prompt and evidenceless defensiveness from Malaysia's Transport Minister.  Especially as the aforementioned U.S. investigators have proof bolstering their assertion.

And then there's what's starting to look like the ChiComms' attempt at creating a distraction:

In the latest in a series of false leads in the hunt, search planes were sent Thursday to search an area off the southern tip of Vietnam where Chinese satellite images published on a Chinese government website reportedly showed three suspected floating objects.

They saw only ocean.

"There is nothing. We went there, there is nothing," said Hussein.

Compounding the frustration, he later said the Chinese Embassy had notified the government that the images were released by mistake and did not show any debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Am I arguing that there's a conspiracy afoot in this matter?  No.  No, I'm not.  What I am doing is noticing emerging aspects of this story that don't "feel" right and wondering how - and, yes, if - they might fit together.

By the way, the four additional hours of flight time turns out to be rather....significant in the U.S. hijack theory:

The Journal also reported that U.S. counter-terrorism teams are now investigating the theory that the plane was diverted by the pilot or hijackers to an “undisclosed location” after turning off the transponders to avoid radar detection.

A total flight time of five hours means that the plane could have remained airborne for another 2,200 nautical miles based on the jetliner’s cruising speed, putting the border of Pakistan and the Arabian Sea within reach.

Things that make you go "hmmmmm....."

Oh, there's no evidence that Flight 370 was hijacked, nor what its eventual destination was if it was - yet.  But the turn this incident has taken suggests that such evidence may be emergent in the very near future.