Tag: airplanes

I’ve been fascinated by the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and the fact that there has been absolutely no evidence found from the aircraft. I mean, there are even crowdsourcing efforts to examine satellite photography! Malaysians are praying for a solution, and the Malaysian government “welcomes all help to trace the missing flight, including from “bomohs,” or shamans, as long as their methods conform to Islamic teachings”. Me? I’ve been just waiting for the conspiracy theories to pop up, and Time Magazine kindly obliged me. Their theories are:

1. Ghosts. Relatives and friends of the plane’s passengers said they were able to find their loved ones on a Chinese instant messenger service called QQ, reports the Washington Post. Others tried calling the vanished passengers’ phones and heard ringtones even though the calls were not picked up. Many thought the phones might still be on, and more than 100 of them signed a petition to the Malaysian government to hurriedly investigate. That led more suspicious observers to fire off rounds of irrational theories. Did the mysterious ringing indicate the passengers had been kidnapped and are still alive somewhere? Or was it the supernatural at work?
2. Aliens.“If we never find the debris, it means some entirely new, mysterious and powerful force is at work on our planet which can pluck airplanes out of the sky without leaving behind even a shred of evidence,” said one blogger. Was it an alien abduction? others ask.
3. Predestined. Reddit is rife with commenters fixated on the numerical coincidences of the flight’s disappearance. “Interesting numerology,” said one Reddit user, RedditB. “Flight 370 disappears on 3/7 while reportedly traveling 3,700 km. Flight 370 flew at an altitude of 37,000 feet when it was last reported using flight tracking software. Luigi Maraldi, age 37, was one of the individuals whose passport was stolen. Malaysia Airlines is one of Asia’s largest, flying nearly 37,000 passengers daily. As of today, we are beginning the 37th month since the Fukushima tragedy, which is located on the 37th degree and initially caused 37 injuries at the plant.”
4. North Koreans. Others have argued the jet was hijacked by North Koreans and flown to Pyongyang. One Reddit user, Nickryane, claims the plane had enough fuel to fly to North Korea and remain within cell phone range. The dictatorship hijacked a jet in 1969, so Kim Jong-un would be pulling an old card out of the deck.
5. Illuminati. One guess points to the supposed vortex energy points on the earth’s surface that Illuminati “and/or ancient aliens” who can control the energy grid. Commenters and bloggers emerged to point to occultists and nefarious shadowy figures who helped down the plane.

You gotta love any theory that includes the Illuminati.

In reality, though, I’m surprised there hasn’t been any evidence. I would think that even with a mid-flight explosion, there would be some larger pieces that would survive and splash down, and there would be some components that would float. Even with a mid-flight explosion, the black box should survive. If they landed the plane whole in the ocean, there would be something that would be floating and visible. I just think they aren’t looking in the right places.

Then again, perhaps Amelia Earhart needed a new plane.

Today has been a travel day for me: LA to Charlotte to Baltimore. In fact, I saw the aircraft in my userpic (i.e., the US Airways A319 in PSA livery) on the ground in Charlotte, and I flew on the US Airways Piedmont legacy A319 from CLT to BWI. I really hope that the “new” American Airlines preserves the US Airways legacy fleet, adds an AA eagle craft to the fleet, and reaches back to add Air Cal, Reno Air, and TWA to the legacy fleet. But I digress…

As today was a travel day, I figured an article about airplanes was appropriate… and so, here’s an article about Yak Hunting. Specifically, an article about hunting down the remains of a Yakovlev Yak-40 in Liberia and conducting an urban exploration of the aircraft. Cool.

But I can’t do a single link to an article — I need to do things in threes. So I did some more searching. I found a really interesting article on a aircraft boneyards, focusing on what is done with both old military and commercial aircraft. I also found this article focusing more on the military boneyard near Tucson. Even more interesting is this article I found on how they recycle the parts of an aircraft. Alas, I couldn’t find the article I wanted to find: an article from Airliners Magazine from quite a few years ago about dismantling an old 737 and how they did it.

I also found  an interesting article on the death of Evergreen International Airlines. More aircraft for the chopping block, so it seems.