Someone Is Hiding Something by Richard Belzer George Noory David Wayne

Author:Richard Belzer George Noory David Wayne [Wayne, Richard Belzer George Noory David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC
Published: 2014-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

Eleven

Explanation #2—Hijacking

The initial indication from Malaysian authorities as to what happened to Flight 370 was that the flight was hijacked. The fact that the transponder was reportedly turned off was a gigantic red flag that the flight crew may have been compromised and under physical duress by hijackers. Shortly after the flight went missing, Prime Minister Razak of Malaysia made a public announcement that was an important declaration concerning “deliberate action.” On March 15, 2014, seven days after the plane went missing, Razak said investigators believed someone on board had deliberately turned off its communications systems and diverted it well west of its planned flight path. He said the plane’s systems were gradually switched off and it then flew westward over Malaysia before turning to the north-west. He said such actions were “consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane.” New data showed the last communication between the missing plane and satellites at 8:11 A.M. Malaysian time—almost seven hours after it dropped off civilian air traffic control screens.296

It was also determined that the plane’s primary tracking device, the transponder, “was disabled before” the final message received from the flight crew.297 That final message was a calm and normal “Good night, Malaysian Three Seven Zero,” as the flight crew bid goodbye to Kuala Lumpur air traffic control, which had just handed them off to Vietnam air traffic control at precisely 1:19:29 A.M.298 The act of turning off a transponder—if it was turned off—is seen as having some big ramifications. John Goglia, a former US National Transportation Safety Board member, said:

“Given that this airplane has so many redundant electrical systems on it, my first reaction would be that somebody . . . purposely turned it off. A pilot would not do that. Somebody that didn’t want to be seen very well would do that.”299

Other aviation experts concurred with that assessment. John Ransom, a retired commercial pilot and safety consultant, said the situation is suspicious. “This was a fairly modern airplane with a bunch of capability to communicate with the outside world. A lot of data transmissions from the airplane. For them to all stop at the same time would take the work of somebody who has actually studied the systems in some detail to know how to turn off all of the systems at the same time.”300

Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the US National Transportation Safety Board, said turning off a transponder is a “deliberate process. If someone did that in the cockpit,” he said, “they were doing it to disguise the route of the plane. Was someone unauthorized inside the cockpit, ordering the transponders to be turned off and the plane to be turned around? Or did one of the pilots do it themselves?”301

Because it was considered highly plausible that Flight 370 had been hijacked, intense interest was immediately focused on its passengers.

“There was no distress signal or radio contact indicating a problem and, in the absence of any wreckage or flight data, police have been left trawling through passenger and crew lists for potential leads,” reads an article in the National Post.

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