Flight MH 370

Ten days and we are still wondering what happened to a Boeing 777 that disappeared.  My friend Steve Bluestein rightly stated that if they found the plane today, CNN would have nothing to talk about. It does seem like the news is "all Flight 370 all the time" of late.

This is a boon for CNN because they have to fill 24 hours of news. When nothing new is happening it gives them a chance to call in all the minor league pundits. For a missing airplane an anchorman can interview experts on: terrorism, aviation, aerodynamics, air traffic control, military, piloting, radar, international relations, tracking and even Chad Myers, the CNN weather man, who can draw red circles on the map of Malaysia and talk about the direction of the ocean currents.  It is a chance to see all the minor league pundit players in action and keep the story going. Sometimes these auditioning pundits get popular from a lingering story like this and use it to gain a following. It can be a career move.

Most of the fascination for this story is just a love affair the human mind has for mystery. Humans like to KNOW. If we can't know the truth we make up a story that seems like the truth, and go with that.

We are so accustomed to having all mysteries solved in the span of an hour on television or in the time it takes us to read a novel or see a movie. After 11 days we are still waiting for act three so we can solve this plot, but this is after all real life. When there is no hard evidence to help solve a mystery in real life,  and so far we can't seem to find any debris to indicated a crash of MH370, our minds won't let go.  It is the ultimate expression of human ego.  We are the smartest creatures on the planet and aviation is the most monitored form of transportation on earth, as narcissistic humans we can not comprehend the inability to solve this disappearance. This is not the 1930's we have come a long way since Amelia Earhart's plane went missing... or have we. 

Until we have even one physical clue we will continue to speculate and weave plots. Until we know for sure or we can agree on one story as the possible explanation or a version becomes folk lore,  there will be more and more salacious conspiratorial theories submitted.

Another very funny friend Ann Anderson says the only theory that has not been given for the disappearance of the plane is " the rapture". That could be one of my favorite explanations to date. I am surprised that Ken Hamm has not suggested this theory.

Here is a quick list of a few of the things , besides the rapture, that have been considered.

Terrorism,  hijacking, mechanical failure, electrical fire, pilot suicide, co-pilot suicide and lithium batteries exploding.

Terrorism is a tough sell because no terror organization has bragged about it nor claimed credit for it. That doesn't deter a born again conspiracy theorist like myself.  I have always thought there were several "tests" involving airplanes before 9/11. They have never been completely explained.

There was a Boeing 747-100 that exploded over the Atlantic Ocean a few minutes after take off  from JFK New York on July 17,1997. After three years of the most expensive and extensive investigation at the time there was no clear answer. It is "believed" the fuel tank exploded but they have never been able to recreate that scenario exactly. My take? Terrorism. No terrorist group took credit. Why? It was a test to see how much explosive power there was in a fully fueled airliner.  How much damage would it do to a tall building if used as a bomb.

Two years later, Egypt Air Flight 990 a Boeing 767 left JFK Airport on October 31, 1999. A few minutes later it slammed into the Atlantic Ocean at full speed. It is believed the Egyptian pilot committed suicide and took the plane with him.  In Arabic he screamed "God is Good" as the plane slammed into the Atlantic. My busy mind thinks that it was not the pilot, but a terrorist who was able to get into the cockpit take the controls and destroy the plane.  No terrorist organization took credit because it was a test to see how easily someone could enter a cockpit.

Two years after that,  terrorist were able to gain cockpit access and over power the pilots of four different planes (fully fueled) and use them as bombs. We know it as 9/11 and terrorists took credit for that spectacular event.  It required years of planning (and testing) to pull it off.

So "What IF" MH 370 was taken over... by the pilot or someone else who could fly. They make it disappear and quickly ascend to 45,000 feet and depressurize the cabin.  Everyone, except the pilots who are on oxygen, suffocates no cell phone calls this time. They then fly the plane to a covert terrorist air strip.  They repaint it, strip it inside for weight, fill it with nuclear waste and on a future date make it look like any other commercial or private aircraft. It becomes a very discreet nuclear missile. 

Oh, and Amelia Earhart was shot down my the Japanese because she was actually on a military recon mission for Roosevelt.

As Sherlock Holmes said, "When all other logical possibilities have been exhausted even the most improvable possibility, however impossible it might be, must be the truth."

As you were,

Jay