Always is... that's why my mantra is "Wait Three...."
--- hours, days, weeks... as information trickles out.

First reports are only good for panic attacks and conspiracy theorists. Most recent report I heard on the radio was that someone on a surface vessel may have witnessed a 'burning object falling from the sky..." and who knows what that may actually have been.

Fortunately, if the plane went down, the seabed in the area may only be something like 300' down. MUCH easier than looking in deep ocean like the one that went down in the Atlantic after the infamous stall in bad weather.

I assume if they have his image that he is not a known terrorist. They may be waiting to release that but this just gets stranger and stranger.

This was just on Yahoo. I like how they seem so shocked in the title that one of the people happened to be black.

http://gma.yahoo.com/stolen-passport-mal...

Anything is possible. I heard someone say that the fact they have not found any wreckage yet indicates the plane did not hit the water. His theory was it exploded in air. Surprised they have not been able to zero in on the black box.

It was suggested to me that the pilots were muslim.
maybe they flew the plane into the ocean the way the Egyptian airliner went down in the atlantic after leaving kennedy airport a few years ago. when they found the black box the pilots were saying ala Akbar.

Mostly bad news so far. They need to find that plane.

Not a great sign. Tickets accompanying those
passports were purchased at the same time by two people. Not a good sign. Now they are saying radar may have shown that the plane was turning around before contact was lost. Pilots don't turn planes around without notify ground control via radio. Another bad sign. Signs pointing to terrorism, but time will tell. Black box, they say, continues to ping for 30 days. Undersea exploration should fine the remains of the aircraft. R. Barca, Jackson, MI.

I heard a quick blurb on that too. Wonder why?

Interesting that an Austin, TX company had something like 23 (?) employees on the plane.

I think they've been updated quite a bit. I've even heard that in many of the new, the plane even sends info to the company's maintenance dept. when problems happen that the pilot wouldn't even notice.

I was just thinking that someone is probably writing the story now. Surprised it is taking so long to find the plane.

I guess we'll find out (what they want us to be fed) soon enough... probably more of a twister than a twist...

pirate, you are just a jack of all trades. I hope I'm nearby you WTSHTF

this is kind of an interesting Objectivist discussion.
there are always other inputs. I like to use the example of mirage in the desert
There is a great Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode on point...

When I trained pilots in the Navy that is one thing that was stressed. Trust your instruments not what you 'feel'. Your senses lie to you.

I don't know. black box technology is OOOOLLLLLDDDDD. 70s. I do know in the France Air tragedy it lasted 4 minutes. That is a short amount of time, and most of it is assessment. Plane behaving erratically due to human causes is pretty quick.

The black box may solve some of this. Would air traffic control had known if they were flying that erratically?

I read another article where they compared this with the French airbus crash in 2009. In that case, some outside sensors malfunctioned which in turn stopped auto-pilot. Two young pilots were flying manual. I posted this once before. I have a business partner,commercial flight instructor, whose job was to certify pilots on instruments for insurance purposes.
He would purposely get them manually flying, cover the instrument panel with sticky notes, except the good old fashioned compass. apparently a pilot can determine almost everything he needs from the gyro- compass, except air speed. apparently your senses lie to you and inexperienced pilots trust their senses over the compass. He says this happens with every inexperienced pilot and what they end up doing is raising the nose of the plane instead of dropping it. It will stall if raised a certain degree level or you start going into circles, they tighten and you're upside down. He would let them do this and then he would calmly tell them to put their hands in in their lap-and then he would take over, fly out of the cloud bank and he'd show them they were upside down. Then he'd take them back up and do it all over again. IT took them several times before they would learn to trust the instrument over their perception.
In the case of losing altitude and pilots panicing-apparently they try to adjust by pulling back and raising the nose of the plane. It then stalls and they lose control. I guess you are supposed to actually lower the nose, which then allows the plane to regain some buoyancy. that's what happened in the french plane's case. The FAA does not like pilots to be trained manually because they worry the pilot will not pay attention to the instrument panel. Most younger pilots have not learned the physics of flying.
I am not a pilot (I thought I should add that ;). But this is how JFK jr lost control of his aircraft. In fog, not instrument rated and did not trust the compass.

May be a while before we have the whole story. Mystery and intrigue.

Reuters is now reporting the plane went down in the ocean south of Vietnam... The passport angle is quite mysterious...

A pilot made the point that catastrophic failure at cruising altitude 2 hours into the flight is strange.

yes, one cannot jump to the conclusion the stolen passports mean terrorism-at least on THIS flight-but the loss of communication is very odd.

You're right Pirate. We need more info. I'm sure some internet loons have already connected the dots.

Terrorists usually want it out in the open, big and splashy, otherwise it doesn't cause terror. Criminal enterprises however may not want that big show. I want more info. Can we make connections with some of the other stuff happening? Follow the money.

What comes next? A twist?