Flight MH370: Where the FUCK is that plane?

[Sammy G]

summat strange is afoot.

The Pistorius thread is that way...

 

[Shambles]

It's plane to see I'd best hop it over there then...

 

[parttime crackhead]

Crash isn't at all feasible under the circumstances. Mind you, the other theories are hardly feasible either but summat strange is afoot.

Aye, the more I look into it a simple crash isn't very likely.

It's just that within a day of it disappearing folk were shouting all sorts of conspiracy theories and how it has "vanished" etc when it's not unusual for them to be looking in the wrong place for wreckage at first. So I dismissed anything too strange happening and hadn't really looked into it since, admittedly it now seems like something mad has happened. I'm going with America did it.

 

[Shambles]

Conspiracy theories are pretty much a kneejerk reaction to everything these days. Probably due to the amount of actual conspiracies that go on. It is all a bit much but must admit I do enjoy all the mad speculation - more ridiculous the better. Not so great for folk with friends/relatives involved but I kinda doubt we have many Chinese members.

Did seem to be especially quick to leap for the tinfoil with this plane thing but there was a fair amount of info pointing to weird shit from the getgo. Well, not a lot initially but enough to suggest that a crash was unlikely which left room for any ol' theory anybody wished to come up with until more info came out.

America being responsible is as likely a reason as any other of the current crop. I'm still drawn to some kinda ET/stargate combo though. If only to see Jeremy Paxman announce it - that would be a minor highlight of life.

 

[parttime crackhead]

This is, in my opinion, quite a good post from some dude on a Guardian story.

The quotes are the original comment the guy was replying to, the other text is the reply. Nothing after this was written by me.

Based on the fact that these systems were shut down systematically, based on the fact that the plane continued flying for up to 7 hours, based on the fact that every agency, NTSB, FAA and the European counter parts, agreed this plane was tracked on military radar after it vanished from civilian radar and made deliberate attempts to avoid it and based on the fact that no hint of wreckage has been found, nor any indication from emergency beacons that would be activated automatically on impact with the water. The facts align with deliberate act, not a catastrophic systems failure. This is one of the most advanced planes in the world. Wake Up.

The evidence you list would certainly lead one to think this was deliberate act. That may well turn out to be true.
But the evidence is troublingly patchy and open to interpretation.

"these systems were shut down systematically"

And yet even today the previously iron-clad evidence that ACARS was deliberately shut down seems to be in question, since the Malaysians cannot confirm when it happened.

"based on the fact that the plane continued flying for up to 7 hours"

For which the only evidence is the satellite pings, and even if the pings are from that aircraft, they prove only that its SATCOM systems were powered up, not that it was flying: unlikely as it may seem, that plane could have been pinging from a parking spot on dry land.

"every agency, NTSB, FAA and the European counter parts, agreed this plane was tracked on military radar"

Well, no: everyone agrees that a radar echo of possibly the right size was occasionally spotted in various places which are consistent with a range of possible locations suggested by the satellite ping data. None of this radar data identifies the echo as MH370 because these military radars are primary radar—they don't interrogate airliner transponders like secondary radar.

"made deliberate attempts to avoid it"

Perhaps. It is certainly highly plausible that the flight path was chosen to avoid primary radars, but there are an awful lot of possible flight paths about which the same inference could be drawn. The stuff about an attempt to fly at 5,000ft remains disputed, and in any case it is often very hard to determine the exact altitude of a target, even with military radar.

"no hint of wreckage has been found"

Quite so, but then the search areas make finding wreckage roughly equivalent to looking for a pea on the pitch at Wembley—a pea, furthermore, which may be nestling under a blade of grass, if you give any credence to the possibility that this airliner made a high-speed vertical descent into shallow, heavily silted water which is known for deep sediment layers and a veritable cornucopia of floating detritus. Look at how long it took to find the remains of the Adam Air flight (Indonesia, 2007).

"nor any indication from emergency beacons that would be activated automatically on impact with the water"

The ELTs are notoriously unreliable and quite easy to damage. They're not as robust or reliable as the "black" boxes. A violent impact frequently renders the ELTs useless.
The "black" boxes themselves (the orange-coloured FDR and CVR) are robust and have been known to survive phenomenal impacts, but their sonar signals are not particularly powerful and the batteries last only for about 30 days—which, as we saw with AF447, can mean they are staggeringly difficult to locate. MH370 may be in shallow water, but it's still the case that if the recorders are underwater, no possible surface visual search will give any hint of their presence.

"The facts align with deliberate act, not a catastrophic systems failure. This is one of the most advanced planes in the world."

The only facts which seem to be unchallengeable are the satellite pings, which we are told definitively identify the aircraft, and unmistakably show that it was in one of two possible location arcs. Nothing else, actually, proves anything. From the sat pings everything is stacked up as (perfectly reasonable, logical) circumstantial evidence and supposition.
The aircraft is indeed "one of the most advanced planes in the world"—and so was the 777 that crash-landed at Heathrow a few years back; and the Airbus that crashed in the South Atlantic; and so very many of the airliners that have crashed in the last 20 years. Airliner safety is amazingly good and yet they still sometimes fail—"most advanced" isn't evidence for anything.
This extraordinary mystery may well turn out to be the result of a fiendish plot. But we should be very wary indeed of the risks of confirmation bias, the temptation to see what we want to see and that so-human habit of turning everything into a story.

 

[mydrugbuddy]

Yeah i can quite easily see a panicked and flawed USA over reaction (F1s shooting the plane down into the sea) to a potential terrorist threat that possibly turned out to be non existent and has had to be hushed up for fear of a PR and diplomatic disaster. That definately seems possible, in the absence of any other explanations. If this is the case then the answer may come to the surface in about 50 years time when no one will care very much any more. Tis a nice theory and wild accusation put out by the anti-USA propoganda machine lobby.

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

Alright, who's hacked PTCH's account...

 

[mydrugbuddy]

Has he been taking NZT ? :D

 

[parttime crackhead]

I've hacked my own account. What's NZT? Got any?

 

[mydrugbuddy]

Limitless spoilers

NSFW:

It's that fictitous super-smart drug from the film Limitless where all the smartest/richest/most powerfull people are taking it to enhance their brains massively. I wish I did have some, but as with all drugs there were side effects such as death or complete mental burn out when you stopped taking it. So you had to maintain a stable dose at all costs: - like spending 2 million dollars which he earned by becoming a stock market whizz overnight, and spent that amount each on 4 seperate labs to get working on producing more NZT within 6 months, so that it wouldnt matter when Robert De Niro got one of his labs shut down in an attempt to out-manouvre the guy, not knowing that he had another 3.

 

[Shambles]

PTCH: Yer man doing the replies appears to be mainly working from what is - at least according to most folks I've heard discussing it - out of date info. Most of what he says would be perfectly true if it were a less up-to-date 777. The reason folk are talking about the beacons and stuff is that they're all "next generation" stuff that had just been fitted. As such, comparison with any previous incident doesn't work cos it's different, significantly more effective, technology.

Not that I'd know one way or t'other but I tend to defer to folk with some level of specific knowledge of systems involved in this particular case, not unrelated ones.

 

[parttime crackhead]

Limitless spoilers

NSFW:

It's that fictitous super-smart drug from the film Limitless where all the smartest/richest/most powerfull people are taking it to enhance their brains massively. I wish I did have some, but as with all drugs there were side effects such as death or complete mental burn out when you stopped taking it. So you had to maintain a stable dose at all costs: - like spending 2 million dollars which he earned by becoming a stock market whizz overnight, and spent that amount each on 4 seperate labs to get working on producing more NZT within 6 months, so that it wouldnt matter when Robert De Niro got one of his labs shut down in an attempt to out-manouvre the guy, not knowing that he had another 3.

Oh that stuff, aye I've been hammering it all weekend.

PTCH: Yer man doing the replies appears to be mainly working from what is - at least according to most folks I've heard discussing it - out of date info. Most of what he says would be perfectly true if it were a less up-to-date 777. The reason folk are talking about the beacons and stuff is that they're all "next generation" stuff that had just been fitted. As such, comparison with any previous incident doesn't work cos it's different, significantly more effective, technology.

Not that I'd know one way or t'other but I tend to defer to folk with some level of specific knowledge of systems involved in this particular case, not unrelated ones.

I dunno. Reads like the most sensible/balanced thing so far. Until I see someone doing the same to his post (ie, "this is wrong, here is why, that is wrong, here is why" rather than "it's wrong because of some stuff, some really non-specific stuff, just stuff") as he did to the post he was replying to then I'm trusting his info.

If you've got any links I'd like to have a read at them. I'm looking for specifics though, with examples and evidence. Not some cunt saying the chinese stole it and some cunt saying America stole it because they're bad.

 

[Shambles]

Don't have links really - am basically just repeating what I hear on the radio. Is some air disaster fella - what they called? the ones that put crashed planes back together and decide what happened to 'em. I presume his info is pretty good and he went through precisely what was said in that post a couple nights back. Did the same with what SHM posted recently too. Actually, is almost like he's picking out the most feasible comments from the Grauniad and pointing out the flaws in 'em. Doubt it though cos he's a Yank.

There's no way on Earth I'm gonna remember the serial number of frikkin beacons but what you quoted was exactly what he went through t'other day for a good half hour or so. In really rather too much detail for those who aren't air crash investigators. Was trying to get to sleep, technical details of assorted Boeing (and Aerobus actually - he did a comparison, you know what plane nerds are like 8)) aircraft really should do the trick but somehow didn't

As I say, I really have no idea - just repeating "what I heard" same as everybody else really.

 

[parttime crackhead]

Sound. He may well be debunking Guardian comments, the website is pretty big in 'Merica I think. There's a US specific Guardian site anyway (as well as an Australian one).

 

[Shambles]

Yeah, they do have Grauniad stuff on quite a lot actually. Was quite surprised how popular it is over there considering how relatively lefty it is compared to US papers. They had some investigative journo from there on t'other night talking about vote rigging and dodgy banking practices. Was pretty gobsmacking stuff actually. He's also a Yank but works for the Grauniad cos he can't get his stuff published in the US (presumably cos he names names in high places rather frequently) which is pretty disgusting really.

Dunno the name of airplane fella but he does seem to know his stuff inside out and he refuses to speculate on what might have happened, just sticks to debunking what couldn't have happened. Actually he did say that he thinks it must have landed somewhere cos nothing else really fits but won't speculate further. Makes a change from aliens and stargates anyway.

 

[parttime crackhead]

Dunno the name of airplane fella but he does seem to know his stuff inside out and he refuses to speculate on what might have happened, just sticks to debunking what couldn't have happened. Actually he did say that he thinks it must have landed somewhere cos nothing else really fits but won't speculate further. Makes a change from aliens and stargates anyway.

That's the sort of stuff I'd prefer to read regarding this. Some of the speculation is wild.

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

A week ago, when MH370 “disappeared” it didn’t really, it was still flying and still on radar but, at 01:22 it fell into the seam between Malaysian air traffic control and Vietnamese air traffic control. The Malaysian controller called MH370 and told whomever was in the cockpit that he was handing the flight over to his Vietnamese compatriot; and whomever was in the cockpit told him “All right. Good night”. That ended Malaysian ATC’s responsibility for the aircraft and people on board. Under normal circumstances the person in the cockpit would immediately dial up the correct frequency and contact Vietnamese air traffic control, informing them he was entering their airspace. At that point MH370 becomes the responsibility of Vietnamese ATC and they will while away their night watching its progress across their airspace.

However, on that fair night someone in MH370’s cockpit turned off something called a transponder which each minute sends an aircraft’s identity and course information to the air traffic controller. With the transponder on, the controller sees on his screen the plane’s large blip and data. With the transponder off, a tiny blip remains and no flight data. The someone who turned the transponder off seconds after saying “goodnight” and failed to contact Vietnamese ATC cleverly exploited the air traffic control seam. This is not the fault of either controller. These seams exist throughout the world. We depend on our pilots to fly through, not into them.

What immediately follows is unclear. Did the plane climb to 45,000’, then dive 40,000’ in one minute? Unlikely. That’s 450mph straight down, an unrecoverable dive. Did it do something unplanned? It depends on whose plan you mean. The plane dropped to 29,500’ and turned west-southwest, back toward Malaysia without entering Vietnamese airspace. 29,500’ is important. It’s an abnormal altitude, at which the plane would likely go unnoticed...
As it did, by the Malaysians, flying back across Peninsular Malaysia and out over the Malacca Straits, past Pulau Perak Island, beyond Malaysian military radar range, then turned northwest toward the Andaman Islands.

The Vietnamese, to their credit, as soon as they were queried/accused about the missing flight said “Why ask us? It turned around and flew back to Malaysia.” And several days later a Malaysian general tentatively let on that perhaps the Vietnamese were right, perhaps the flight had turned around just as they said and perhaps the radar track they had of an unidentified aircraft flying across the peninsula that night might have been MH370.

But, even though there was no radar track showing anything crashing into the sea east of Malaysia, the folks in charge of this party kept all planes and vessels available searching the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea...

While MH370 was on the other side of the country. We know this because of some esoteric kit known to almost nobody outside the world of commercial aviation, the ACARS system. Modern commercial plane have numerous communications devices and antennas scattered about the cockpit and fuselage. ACARS is built into planes to transmit data about the condition and operation of the aircraft to people who care, the airframe and engine manufacturers and the airline... usually. But, this is a subscriber service, for Americans, something like GM’s Onstar. It’s there, but if you don’t subscribe you can’t use it. Malaysian Airways subscribed to ACARS Basic, and so limited data was sent hourly to the airline, and not to Boeing or Rolls Royce. However...ACARS was still there and it still pinged its communications satellite each hour, just like Onstar is still there and GM still knows where your stolen car is, they just won’t tell you because you didn't subscribe.

It took several days for the satellite people to remember this truth and pass it on to... very probably MI5. In the meantime a dozen nations searched east of Malaysia and found...absolutely nothing. Why search where radar said no plane had crashed instead of searching where both Malaysian and Vietnamese radar said the plane had turned? Were we wishing we’d find a crashed plane with 237 dead people because the truth was worse?

Back to the satellite data; it has been interpreted to mean MH370 zigzagged a bit as it flew over the Andaman Sea. It probably did, and it may have changed altitude, causing the angle measured by the satellite to change. Why would whomever was at the controls change course and altitude for no apparent reason, burning up precious fuel? Perhaps we wanted to burn some fuel. You see, Malaysian Airways maintains MH370 took off with a 7 hour fuel supply meaning, by the time the plane reached the Andaman Sea it was down to 2 or 3 hours of fuel, enough to reach any of the countries bordering that sea, but not much farther. But somewhere out over that sea, as the plane’s theoretical fuel supply diminished, the pings stopped, and this was interpreted to mean the plane, perhaps out of fuel, had crashed...

Perhaps, perhaps not. Suppose someone on board MH370 knew ACARS, even though turned off, was still pinging, and knew how to cut power to the ACARS antenna and stop the pinging. Suppose that someone dawdled around over the Andaman Sea and, at a point where one might be lead to believe the aircraft were out of fuel he climbed down into the electronics bay and cut the ACARS power. Suppose additionally the someone who’s been doing all these dastardly deeds were the captain, who, as the captain, is able, while on the ground in Kuala Lumpur, to call Uvair to fill MH370’s tanks full. He doesn’t need a friend on the ground to help, he’s the captain, but this is beginning to look bigger than one man so let’s just say someone might want to audit the jet A suppliers in KL and see if anyone’s missing 20,000 gallons.

So, where are we? What has our clever perpetrator accomplished so far? He’s left most of the world thinking MH370 has crashed east of the Malay Peninsula. He’s recrossed Malaysia and flown out over the Andaman Sea, bypassing several very serviceable airports on the way, and he’s convinced the rest of the world that finally, after a week of looking in the wrong place, MH370 has crashed into the Indian Ocean.

The search party moves on. Well, some of it moves on, some of it is getting damned tired of not knowing what’s going on and is taking its kit and going home. And yet, for all their helicopters and ships and technology the searchers find....

No wreckage and no bodies. Now, about the bodies.,, I hate to be the one to say this but, the easiest way to ensure 235 passengers and crew don’t break into the cockpit is to depressurize the cabin at 29,500’ for an extended period. The little masks would drop down and panicked people would put them on and breath for 10 or 12 minutes, until the air runs out. Meanwhile whomever is in the cockpit doing all the dastardly deeds would be breathing the pilot’s separate, extended air supply. Sure, when the air runs out some of the crew and passengers are probably going to spend their last few minutes of consciousness beating on the cockpit door but, ce la vie. The only problem is if they decide to die right there, in a pile in the galley outside the door, because whomever is in the cockpit has to get that door open and has to access the hatch in the galley floor to get to the electronics bay. Now, back to why MH370 might have been jinking around as it flew over the Andaman Sea...before, for some reason, ACARS went dark...get my drift, we've got to get those bodies out of the way.

(Yes, people have survived Everest without oxygen, but they spend months acclimatizing their bodies to the lower pressure and lack of oxygen. The people on MH370 had minutes and, since the last real ACARS data was sent 15 minutes before the transponder was turned off it’s quite possible depressurizing the cabin was the first of all the dastardly acts, at 35,000’, an altitude at which no one had a chance.)

If you’ve read this far and haven’t asked “why?” you’re either in on this game or you simply can’t get past the murder of so many people. Let’s do why anyway.

It’s not suicide. Whomever was flying the plane had lots of chances to fly it into the sea, killing himself. It’s not murder. What do the 235 people in the cabin have in common? They’re on the same plane, that’s it. There are easier ways to kill someone than stealing a plane and killing 234 other people. It could be greed, but probably not ransom, with 235 witnesses and a giant airplane to hide the odds of success aren’t good. If there were something extremely valuable in the hold there are people who wouldn’t flinch at killing 235 people to steal it. What’s in the hold? Who knows? Nobody’s released the cargo manifest, just made the irrelevant announcement that there were some lithium ion batteries on board. Who cares? They didn’t start on fire and they’re not valuable enough to kill for. Not to say there isn’t something very valuable in the hold, just saying for whatever reason none of our superintelligent folks in the press have demanded Malaysian Airways release the manifest.

But, suppose there’s nothing extremely valuable in the hold, then why is this very involved hijacking taking place? The plane and its parts will have no commercial value. It is stolen property. If found it will be returned to its owner. Aircraft parts are all serialized and tracked and their provenance known. They cannot be sold. No, if you’re stealing a Boeing 777-200ER you’re only going to be able to use it for one thing; hauling something heavy a long distance and, you’ll probably only get to do it once because as soon as the world cottons to where the plane is the world will take it away. Suppose, since you’ve read this far, we take another step...

If the tanks were full MH370 could have made it to one of several Middle Eastern countries, say, Pakistan, say a week ago. Suppose it’s today, about 02:20 in Mumbai and BA138, a Boeing 777-200ER is loaded and ready to leave the gate but 5 passengers have failed to board. That’s 5 sets of bags that must be found and removed. Suppose the plane then taxis toward the runway and an unruly passenger refuses to turn off his cell phone or worse, assaults a flight attendant. It’s back to the gate. We’re now looking at taking off 2 hours late. Or, suppose someone driving a service truck nicks the wing. Now we’re looking at an even longer delay, maybe even a cancellation.

Suppose meanwhile another Boeing 777-200ER has taken off from a remote runway in, say, Pakistan, and climbed to cruising altitude and set its course for London and – set its transponder code to the one given to BA138. Who’s going to know? The plane flies through Europe’s night skies, from one air traffic controller to another, greeting each one with “BA138 heavy en route to LHR”, and the controllers all say “Roger 138, maintain FL35, good night”. And that’s how it will go, in and out, through all the seams of Europe, until the Boeing 777-200ER that was MH370 gets very close to London, when it will be too late for anyone at The Guardian to do anything, as the pilot aims for King’s Place.

...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...irliner-goes-on-live-updates#comment-33156501

 

[parttime crackhead]

Shit. That one does make a lot of sense. Gets a bit wild at the end.

That guy's other comments being deleted is pretty worrying. Why? There are plenty other comments speculating wildly about what could happen. Why delete his? Unless, like you said before - they're too close to the truth. The truth that The Guardian won't/can't report.

Of course, if that is actually the truth then the games a bogey. If Random Guardian Commenter #7 has figured it out then I'm sure he's not he only one and the plane will either eventually be recovered/found or steps will be taken to ensure it can't be used in that way. You'd like to think so at least.


Before reading that I was coming here to post this by the same person, Milton, that I'd quoted earlier. A lot of it agrees with the other guys post, other than the eventual motive - Milton goes for suicide.

We've learned some interesting things over the last few days.

1. It is now said that the loss of ACARS was due to a specific action in the cockpit, because the sign-off protocol was detected. This is important because until we knew that, it was arguable that ACARS data had stopped simply because the plane had crashed.

2. The "ping" data received by satellite apparently does include a code which specifically identifies the sending aircraft. Until we knew that, it was possible that the pings were coincidentally received from elsewhere, and therefore a red herring.

3. Radar data seems to suggest that the plane flew as low as 5,000' at times. Now I am still not sure that the radar traces can be said with 100% certainty to belong to MH370, but I accept that it is at least a likelihood, and if correct, it does strongly imply a deliberate attempt to fly undetected. (Note, the stuff about 5,000' altitude subjecting the 777 airframe to excessive stress is hogwash. It's the kind of manoeuvering, not the altitude, that's the issue with airframe stress. If the pilot was attempting a serious up-and-down terrain-following profile, that's one thing, and quite harsh on the plane; but if he simply dropped to 5,000' and pootled, it's quite another—airliners are in holding patterns at low altitudes over southern England all the time, it's perfectly normal.)

So what plausible options remain?

Now, I have been an advocate of looking at simple solutions rather than elaborate conspiracies, and for a while I was strongly inclined to think that the plane had experienced an abrupt catastrophe and nosedived into the S.China Sea. I could argue that this was consistent with a general comms failure and might even explain lack of much visible debris (shallow seas, thickly sedimented and cluttered already with lots of trash; steep fast impact). But those numbered points above seem to rule that out, especially 1 and 2. Even if the ping data is flawed (e.g. the IDs have been misread and the pings were from a different plane now in a hanger in Kuala Lumpur), the ACARS deliberate switch-off is very compelling evidence of malice aforethought.

What's left? Based on the current evidence, I'm sorry to say that pilot suicide seems to fit many of the facts we (think we) know—

It's been talked about a lot. Various newspapers including the trash Mail have gleefully smeared the crew's names. Personally I hope they had nothing to do with it and are vindicated as heroes, but it is a possibility that has to be considered because it could fit the facts IF ...

* A pilot desired to end it all
* For some reason (acute emotional distress?) he didn't care about the fate of 200+ passengers
* He wished the event to be interpreted as an accident, or perhaps merely insoluble mystery

If that were the case, then the following actions might make sense ...

* Lock other pilot out during toilet break
* Wait for hand-off from one traffic zone to another, where it so happens radar coverage is poor
* Disable all comms—voice, transponder, ADS, ACARS etc.
* Switch off packs and bleed cabin air, i.e. gradually depressurise aircraft
* Don own oxygen supply
* Wait for passenger oxygen (masks would auto deploy) to be exhausted—passenger oxy usually lasts about 20 mins, long enough for an emergency descent to breathable air; pilot oxy is supplied from tanks and lasts much longer, especially if used by only one individual
* Attempt to reach greatest possible altitude to ensure passengers become unconscious (this would explain radar estimate that plane reached 45,000' at one point, though a 777 could not have sustained that altitude with a heavy fuel load; possibly it was a speed-driven ("storm") climb followed by a stall and recovery)
* Programme and follow way points to nearest large body of deep water (Indian Ocean), avoiding known military radar
* Fly far, far into least travelled and observed waters, then bring plane down.

This means we don't have to explain why terrorists haven't made a plausible claim of responsibility, or why various countries' radar didn't detect the plane and scramble interceptors, or how a 777 could be landed and hidden somewhere.

But it still isn't a perfect explanation.

* Cabin crew would have bottled oxygen available, lasting much longer than passenger oxygen: would they have done nothing?
* Even if passengers were all dead/unconscious from oxygen deprivation, why wasn't a single mobile device accidentally left on, and why didn't even one get noticed by a mast while transiting the Malaysian pensinsula?

That said—is there a better theory that fits the facts, if we rule out the really crazy Bond-style plots?

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

Shit. That one does make a lot of sense. Gets a bit wild at the end.

.

I have to explain the very end for those who aren't following. This guy put this theory up the day before and had it deleted by the Guardian. His theory ended with the plane crashing onto London, generally. He's changed this to aim at 'Kings Place' - this is a joke at the Guardians expense. Kings Place are the Guardian offices. Amazingly they haven't redacted his comments this time. Probably tl;dr for them.

 

[felix]

This plane is in North Korea. There were some nuclear weapon experts on board and Kim Jong Jing's secret police disappeared them to Pyongyang. After they've forced the engineers to rig up the plane as a nuclear bomb, they'll send it back on a course to Beijing and blame it on America. This is because they don't know how to make a nuclear weapon or a missile and they want to stir things up for a laugh.