Comment by fafner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fafner | Hacker News Reader

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I think it's highly unrealistic. The plan simply involves too many risks. First of all how could the potential hijackers know that the Malaysian military wasn't properly monitoring the radar? There would have been a huge risk of the Malaysian military discovering it and scrambling jets.

The collision avoidance system only works when the transponder is enabled. So flying in the radar shadow of another aircraft would take some extreme skill. And wouldn't they have to adjust their position according to the position of the several radar antennas? What about potential mobile radar systems, e.g., on military ships? It would have also all depended on perfectly finding SIA68. What if it had a two hour delay? Not unlikely on international flights.

Where would they secretly land the aircraft? It takes a more than 1km straight and wide runway. And it has to be remote enough from any town or military installation. But they would have to bring large amount of supplies like jet fuel. (Which they would secretly get where?) They would have to deal with 240 people on board. Someone who would steal such an aircraft is certainly ruthless but ruthless enough to murder 240 people? They would have to hide the aircraft from satellite surveillance. It would take a ground crew to refuel and maintain the aircraft.

All in all there are so many things which could go wrong. And it's very unlikely that a bunch of amateurs could pull it off.

...it's very unlikely that a bunch of amateurs could pull it off.

The pilot had decades of experience and a flight simulator in his home where he could practice such things. If he was involved, he probably could have pulled it off.

...how could the potential hijackers know that the Malaysian military wasn't properly monitoring the radar?...

We don't know what the contingency plan was, because fighters weren't dispatched. Maybe pulling off this plan was a million to one shot, and they just got lucky.

IMO, the only reason that one would try for stealth in this situation is if their intention was to land the plane somewhere. If their intention was to crash, they didn't need stealth or 7 hours of flying time. They could have pushed forward on the stick for a few seconds and dove the plane into the ocean.

Flying the aircraft isn't the only problem in such a complicated plan. So even if the pilot was exceptional it would still require many other highly skilled people. And there would be huge risks at every step. It would be thousands of details to get right. Maybe they were just lucky. But it's far more likely that they crashed somewhere, maybe as the result of the hijacking.

And maybe we'll never know...

Personally, I find the whole military radar thing to be extremely suspicious. The fact that this plane flew over the whole country without being noticed even though it was tracked on military radar is just too implausible. Yet it happened.

Personally, I think perhaps somebody on duty was involved somehow. Perhaps bribed, perhaps threatened, maybe both, or just a co-conspirator.

It's a crazy idea and pretty unlikely. But to me it seems like the least unlikely scenario, for now.

I don't think it would take too much skill to merge your radar blip with another airliner. Just pull up behind it and slightly above it (to avoid the wake turbulence) and get close. Radar doesn't have superb spatial resolution, so you don't have to pull perfectly in line with the other plane. As long as you're fairly close to it (within a couple of plane-lengths, I would imagine) then the two planes will show up as a single radar contact. Sitting right behind another plane like that while it's cruising would not be too difficult.

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