Beijing-bound MAS plane carrying 239 people missing as of 20 mins ago.

Could the tix purchased on the stolen passports be un-related to the missing jet. Perhaps there is a type of internal or employee theft occurring, a loop hole found and they were being used as an employee theft type of scheme to get "free" tix for friends ?

Or a loop hole - that those who could have control of the Interpol tracking system of stolen passports - were using to secretly jet high priority or sensitive passengers from point A to point B without it being traceable ? Just suggesting that the passport thingy could be totally un-related all together.

"Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in INTERPOL's databases," said Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble in a statement.

The two passengers who used the passports in question appear to have bought their tickets together.

The tickets were bought from China Southern Airlines at identical prices, paid in Thailand's baht currency, according to China's official e-ticket verification system Travelsky. The ticket numbers are contiguous, which indicates the tickets were issued together.

source

leolady

Even with the transponders turned off woundn't they have been picked up by Vietnamese primary radar if they were only 50 miles of the coast.



One would assume so. Even given the most rudimentary radar systems.

reply to post by qd22vcc


They MAY have turned around. The radar data is still being examined and cross checked.

reply to post by andy1972


This I cannot say, I don't know what their systems are even like.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Or they may not have, it seemed to some as if it were a normal course correction then for their flight path...

reply to post by bucks53


Yeah, no way it wound happen (I hope) in States. But they've already admitted they didn't cross reference with the Interpol list. Right from the beginning I was shocked about this, because I thought no way it would happen in the USA. But with all the passport statistics being given (again I was shocked) it looks like it could be common. Then a poster did give me an example of 10 on one plane before traveling on stolen/fake credentials, and I started to really look into it. Then I came to see what again was posted (correctly) that a billion times people flew without passport verification last year.

So to me, this secondary story is huge. It points out a major flaw in airline safety that hopefully gets corrected.

reply to post by Cosmocow


Perhaps this is the point of this exercise... more airline safety...we needed that desperately... being practically strip searched is not enough it seems.

PS. For most countries they could care less who leaves, it is who is coming in that is checked more often...

Terrorism is like hacking. It will find the flaw in the system or a way around it. It's not going to be completely eliminated by anything other than peace among humans.

reply to post by OpinionatedB


That's the irony to me...take my shoes...swab my computer...grope me...but not check my goddam passport?????

reply to post by OpinionatedB


It will be a couple of days to see what the radar shows probably. They are looking at military radar and correlating it with ATC radar, but like everything else with a crash investigation it takes time.

reply to post by Zaphod58


True.

Just out of curiosity and not adding to the what is already muddy waters, but what would happen to a Plane flying at 30,000 feet if a meteor the size of the one in Russia exploded directly overhead..?

reply to post by Soloprotocol


A lot more witnesses

What I don't understand, and please correct me if I'm wrong or are misunderstanding something here, but if this was in fact a terrorist attack, why haven't we seen some terrorist group take ownership of this attack? Typically, that's exactly what happens, so I'm beginning to believe that there wasn't a bomb on board or anything terrorist-related like many want to suggest. Unless there is some new radical group that is doing covert attacks now???

reply to post by MRuss


I have been examining the pictures of what is thought to be a cabin door... its wrong. The window is in the wrong place for a 777... that looks more like a cabin door to a 707...

someone can correct me if I am wrong here... but the pic is wrong for a 777 in my eyes...

Allow me to repost the pictures, and others can see for themselves?

Here we have the floating piece:



Here is a cabin door to a 707:


Page by Daniel Berek - ElAl Boeing 707-458 (4X-ATA) Forward Cabin Door

and at this YouTube link we have @ 27 seconds a scale model of what the forward cabin door to a 777 looks like:



Just seems wrong to be a forward cabin door to a 777, although it could be another plane part...

Unless there is some new radical group that is doing covert attacks now???

Or they have learned that they will get 'droned' to death if they take credit.

reply to post by roadgravel


Terrorists don't care if they get killed... and they know the consequences prior to doing any attack... hasn't stopped them or made them decide to be "covert" in the past... lol...

a terrorist attack simply does no good if you don't know who or what to fear... that would make it a pointless exercise.

reply to post by OpinionatedB

I looked at these prints and the doors didn't seem like a match. But it's not the best research.

I thought they, after further review, decided that stuff wasn't part of the plane.

reply to post by OpinionatedB

That doesn't mean a new group can't change. Or they could be waiting to let the uncertainty build up before making a statement.

a terrorist attack simply does no good if you don't know who or what to fear... that would make it a pointless exercise.

The fear of blown up planes but no one to watch would seem quite fearful to many.