Each day Malaysia Airlines flight 370 remains lost, the chances grow higher it was stolen intact and lies hidden near an isolated airstrip in Central Asia, somewhere, waiting to serve a dark purpose in terrorism, crime, or global political intrigue.
Bizarre and unlikely as it seems, that’s one scenario that emerges from confirmed data, the sequence of events, and speculations on what’s possible and what’s not as experts challenge everything we thought we knew about avionics, communications, and commercial air crashes and searches on the Internet and ‘round-the-clock TV news.
MH370 was well on its way to China across the Gulf of Thailand when it reversed course in a long, wide arc that took it west, passing back over the Malay Peninsula. Directing India to search a sector of the southern Indian Ocean earlier in the week, Malaysian authorities were suggesting the Boeing 777-200 headed southwest. After early promise, searchers have found no debris southwest of Australia, in a patch of ocean known to attract flotsam.
But there’s another plausible answer: suppose it continued to the northwest.
After all, that’s where it was headed when Thai military radar found it in the last known sighting. And one aviation enthusiast and pilot has advanced the theory that the plane not only flew that way over the guarded airspace of India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, but did so hiding in the radar shadow of a wholly legitimate commercial flight, using the identical type of aircraft.
“These air corridors are the interstate highways of the skies,” Keith Ledgerwood told Forbes Asia in an exclusive interview. “Yes, the national borders are guarded. But radar operators see dozens of flights a night. A radar signature for a Boeing 777 that contains an unusual blip would look like a minor anomaly in something they’re used to looking at, and would not attract interest.”
At the time MH370 passed westward over the Malay Peninsula, another Boeing 777 was in the same vicinity. Ledgerwood plotted the route MH370 would take across the Straits of Malacca, and found it would begin to intercept Singapore Airlines 68, Singapore to Barcelona, near the navigational waypoint known as ‘gival’. By the time it reached another, ‘igrex’ at 18:15UTC, the two Boeing 777s would be at the same place at the same time.
20/03/14 Donald Frazier/Forbes
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Bizarre and unlikely as it seems, that’s one scenario that emerges from confirmed data, the sequence of events, and speculations on what’s possible and what’s not as experts challenge everything we thought we knew about avionics, communications, and commercial air crashes and searches on the Internet and ‘round-the-clock TV news.
MH370 was well on its way to China across the Gulf of Thailand when it reversed course in a long, wide arc that took it west, passing back over the Malay Peninsula. Directing India to search a sector of the southern Indian Ocean earlier in the week, Malaysian authorities were suggesting the Boeing 777-200 headed southwest. After early promise, searchers have found no debris southwest of Australia, in a patch of ocean known to attract flotsam.
But there’s another plausible answer: suppose it continued to the northwest.
After all, that’s where it was headed when Thai military radar found it in the last known sighting. And one aviation enthusiast and pilot has advanced the theory that the plane not only flew that way over the guarded airspace of India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, but did so hiding in the radar shadow of a wholly legitimate commercial flight, using the identical type of aircraft.
“These air corridors are the interstate highways of the skies,” Keith Ledgerwood told Forbes Asia in an exclusive interview. “Yes, the national borders are guarded. But radar operators see dozens of flights a night. A radar signature for a Boeing 777 that contains an unusual blip would look like a minor anomaly in something they’re used to looking at, and would not attract interest.”
At the time MH370 passed westward over the Malay Peninsula, another Boeing 777 was in the same vicinity. Ledgerwood plotted the route MH370 would take across the Straits of Malacca, and found it would begin to intercept Singapore Airlines 68, Singapore to Barcelona, near the navigational waypoint known as ‘gival’. By the time it reached another, ‘igrex’ at 18:15UTC, the two Boeing 777s would be at the same place at the same time.
20/03/14 Donald Frazier/Forbes
