“It’s still a puzzle as to how they got past ground radars… but the thinking is that the 777 probably has reached dry land where the salt flats are many and the population density is nil.

This is beyond Alice in Wonderland.”

Yes, it is. The advantage I have is I’m an old hot rodder. Salt presents its own problems. Here’s a link to an article by the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association that contains a bit about the surface at Bonneville.

http://saltflats.com/traction.html

Yeah, it’s flat. Sometimes it seems just like pavement but it’s not. Note how just doing a burnout in a car can dig a trench up to 1/2 in thick. I can’t imagine how far a 304,500 pound airliner will dig into the surface if it were to land on it. And what it will do to the tires. As the article says, it’s a natural surface so it’s hugely variable.

“One more aspect of Bonneville traction needs to be considered here. When the racing surface is abused by high powered vehicles, very heavy vehicles, or simply by too much racing traffic, the hard packed prepared surface begins to break down, and return to its pulverized granular form. This can take the form of holes, sand traps, washboard areas, or large soft areas. If you have ever spent much time driving off road, the feeling a driver experiences when running thru these “loose” areas will be familiar. It feels like running from a good smooth hard packed dirt road into a sand bog. It can really get your attention at 200 MPH.”

When the author talks about the surface being abused by heavy vehicles, I’m sure he never imagined it being abused by something this heavy. The surface will abuse the vehicle right back. I don’t care how many hours the pilot in command of MH370 has, if he’s still the one flying it, good luck landing that thing. If by sheer dumb luck he doesn’t wreck landing on a surface that no one has ever attempted before he’s never getting it out. If it’s the Uighur who just has time in simulators then this plane will not survive the landing.

See my new post above.

Not Alice in Wonderland. Twilight Zone crossed with James Bond.

Slate is now reporting that the Malaysian authorities are estimating that MH370 made it all the way back to western China.

Home of the Uyghurs. (!)

This assertion is based upon data streams that have been picked up by satellite.

The indirect route may have been forced upon them by the flight computer.

It’s still a puzzle as to how they got past ground radars… but the thinking is that the 777 probably has reached dry land where the salt flats are many and the population density is nil.

This is beyond Alice in Wonderland.

” Either they [Malaysian authorities] were completely befuddled, or they were not forthcoming with all of the available information.”

My guess it was a combination of befuddlement compounded by burning desire, conscious or subconscious, on the part of Malaysia’s Muslim government that the cause be “accident” rather than “hijacking/terrorism”. They probably knew early on that the second answer was more likely.

Not at all.

The Crimea is worse in the grand scheme of things. I have written about the Ukraine situation myself, several times, and plenty of people have written about it and are writing about it now. It is hardly being ignored—au contraire.

The reason I haven’t been writing about it in the last few days is actually quite simple: it is playing out in exactly the way we always knew it would. Putin was going to do this, and it was clear from the start that he was going to do this, and what’s more that the Obama administration and NATO and the EU hadn’t the inclination to do a single thing about it other than utter empty words. So it is playing out, and the words are being uttered.

You keep making the same error: that if a topic you think should be written about here at a certain time isn’t written about at that time, it is being ignored or felt not to matter. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I was pondering…

What if this gambit was linked to the massive political turmoil within Thailand?

For those not following it: Bangkok is in a political crisis largely triggered by a jihad initiated from down south — towards Malaysia.

That’s the Muslim aspect.

The Chinese aspect is that ethnic Chinese have been the dominant players in both Malaysian and Thailand — going back centuries.

The Uyghurs of western China have been caught knifing their Han brothers to death — yet again — this last week.

The Kunming (Uighur) gang that murdered 27, injured 109, attempted to cross over and down to Malaysia well before their attack at the train station. This was asserted by Chinese authorities shortly after the atrocity. They had been in contact with Muslims (Internet?) — and intended to hook up for jihad.

The bobbing and weaving in the early moments are consistent with a semi-trained individual discovering that the flight computer won’t allow him to take the jet where he wants to go.

He discovers — only at the last second — that his control adjustments are being rejected. Even before the screwy flying, it’s a pretty good bet he was trying to log in new arrival co-ordinates to the flight computer.

The 777 is a flying computer — as was evidenced when its infamous flight crew was outed by the NTSB intern:

Captain Sum Ting Wong
Wi Tu Lo
Ho Lee Fuk
Bang Ding Ow

I bring this up to remind ourselves how many players will make stuff up and inject it into the public airwaves. In this particular case, we had an idiot squawking tomfoolery far and wide that should not have deceived a two-year old.

It’s with this in mind that we should understand the swirl of bunkum being tossed out by the Malaysian officials and hangers on. It’s a pretty good bet that the Malaysian officials are talking about technical matters entirely outside their keen.

&&&

For Kuala Lumpur the VERY FIRST thing on their minds would be the local and regional implications of airborne jihad — with their immediate neighbor to the north wracked by a total melt-down of civil authority.

While it’s small news here, the upheaval in Bangkok must be front page news — going back many months — for Kuala Lumpur. No official could possibly go to the microphone without being concerned that the jihad might be turning back down to Malaysia.

The Chinese on board the flight were EXACTLY the Chinese that have the local Muslims most upset. They were either distant kin of the power elite inside Malaysia — or represent the global high tech industry — with Malaysia being the hub for hard disk drives and the like.

On the whole, the (local) Chinese dominate the industry. BTW, without a score-card you’d never know who, exactly, counts as Chinese inside Thailand or Malaysia. After centuries of intermarriage, many of the Chinese families are visually indistinguishable from the natives. (!) It’s only by their family names and commercial legacies that this or that clan is considered part of the ‘Chinese community.’

(That races can inter-marry while maintaining ethnic alignments long after there are any visual clues ought to sober up many a Western ‘new era’ zealot.)

I think it’s significant that not a single talking-head has mentioned the dust-up in Bangkok in the context of MH370.

This just shows how provincial our own media still is.

%%%

As for flying a bomb loaded with high tech Chinese executives and engineers into some Thai political structure… wouldn’t that be the very essence of jihad?

Can you imagine the frustration for the jihadi when he discovers that the 777 won’t enter Thai airspace — not even the first little bit?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the flight coding had locked out Thailand entirely. What we’re looking at is a flight profile that went as far north as the programming would allow — once it deviated west of its original flight.

IIRC, the flight scheme is coded to block out forbidden zones. For example, it’s impossible to get a plane to fly into down town New York, London, Paris, etc.

(The VERY first jihadis wanted to fly into the Eiffel Tower!)
(1994)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_8969

This gambit still did not wake up officialdom — anywhere.

Tom Clancy also had a jumbo flying into the Capitol building.
(1994)

On 9-11 the jihadis intended to follow Clancy’s script — only to discover that no-one was in the building at the requisite hour.

It’s an untold story, but someone talked the Muslims into redirecting their attack against the Pentagon — and against the ONLY part of the building that was virtually empty AND up armored against jihadis!

The 757 of Flight 11 had to maneuver all over the sky to make that suicide attack… They flew the long way around!

All other wings of the Pentagon were stuffed with service personnel and civil servants. One would have expected fatalities to have drastically exceeded those suffered in New York. (est 7,000… the building was packed.)

Altogether very frustrating. It just promotes conspiracies as most folks don’t understand why simple basic info isn’t being communicated. Was Bush involved in any of this ????

It seems the more we learn the less we know.