I’ll apologise nice and early to anybody who had any friends or family on the particular Malaysian airline flight MH370. Clearly, it was a devastating incident to all involved and everybody’s thoughts, including the warped neurological transmissions that occur on Planet Me, should be with those directly involved.
But …
But, I can’t help but raise a few points relating to some of the things that have been reported on the various news items relating to the incident, the aftermath, and what became the ludicrous spectacle that was presented as the serious hunt for a missing plane over a period of a month or more and counting. And probably still counting as you read this, for all I know – maybe one or two years later.
Again, I’m certain some of the following may well be complete and utter crap. Largely because I couldn’t be arsed to root around too much to check up on all the facts. But, this is a minor point that is completely irrelevant to the main point I want to make. Which relates to the apparently accepted expert thinking (OMG!) that in 2014, a full 12 plus years after a few raving nutters, with the usual characteristic features, borrowed a few planes in the US and decided to start driving them into nice tall buildings and major military establishments on the 11th September 2001, that the following scenario was remotely feasible and realistic:
Get one grumpy pissed-off pilot, or a lunatic passenger with some sort of weapon on board. Flick a couple of switches, that people in the know would apparently be able to identify, locate and easily switch off. And bingo. Hey presto. Here they now have one nice, invisible, flying missile.
Invisible for 2 ½ weeks. Oh, okay, maybe not invisible. Maybe sort of visible, AFTER a couple of weeks of satellite interrogation and data decoding; and then identified to be somewhere between a flight path towards Kazakhstan OR deep into the Southern Indian Ocean. OMFG!
So, well done guys. You managed to narrow the spot down to within about 5000 bloody miles! And, only after two to three weeks of incompetent farting around.
Now, call me a sceptic if you like, and I’m sure you will, given my published position in relation to Man Made Climate Change and the rest. But in an age when I know for a fact, that even 15 years ago, commercial differential satellite positioning systems could locate and track objects to comfortably within a metre in real time, I would probably just question the notion that a plane, at 38,000 feet, in full visibility of god knows how many satellites a few feet higher, should be able to become ‘invisible’ at the whim of a deranged pilot or some other nutter in possession of a cut-throat razor.
One report even seriously commented that the plane must have been under the control of somebody who knew how to fly, because, after the plane vanished, they then made sure that they flew at an intermediate height so that other planes wouldn’t crash into them due to their own invisibility (presumably apart from the other planes radar and any other in-range air traffic control radar?).
Now, a full 13 years after 9/11, does that sound credible to you?
Also, bear in mind, that you can be absolutely sure that as you walk along with your new smart phone, the powers that want to will be able to track the position of your arse, constantly, to within a gnat’s whisker of bugger all. And the most you could be carrying is a backpack with a few chemicals and old rusty nails that might be able to knock the window of the local McDonald’s out. Rather than a 747 with 60,000 gallons of aviation fuel on board that could take out MI5 and Parliament in the blink of an eye.
The silence of the military was also interesting. All these commercial satellites being interrogated and coming up with the latest considered positions for the plane, to within the helpful range of around 5000 miles. And from all the military positioning information and surveillance? The stuff that’s infinitely more advanced than some crappy piece of junk operated by We can detect sod all Inc.? The stuff that can detect the change of direction of an Amazonian Mosquito after it farts. Nothing. Zilch. Zero!
For all the above reasons, throughout all of the news bulletins, I could only concentrate on the unmistakeable aroma of the solidified excrement that is known to emanate from the non-front end of a male version of a cow.
I also constantly wondered whether the Ozzie PM (didn’t he just love the spotlight?) would have been so relaxed in searching for the plane debris if it really had been the case that he really needed the culprit’s mobile phone details, in advance, so he could contact them with the urgent message:
“Could you please just hang on a bit and not drive into Sydney opera house for a couple of weeks until we have interrogated the crappy commercial satellite systems and can see you again!” the second the plane complete with the crew and all the passengers went walk about.
If all this is seriously true, all I can say is it’s a good job that Putin is such a nice, kind, considerate and rational bloke who will leave all the positional tracking devices on his nuclear missiles switched on so that they stay visible just as they are on their way and about to take out SW1 together with most of Kent.
None of it makes any sense. I’ve been on flight decks and I have known some pilots. And I know the lengths that the aviation industry goes to in order to make sure things can’t go wrong. Multiple computer systems, from completely different suppliers so that if one fails there are back-ups that won’t. System on top of system to take human error out of the equation.
The “hey Jim don’t fall asleep and accidently knock them two switches so we become invisible and get wiped off the surface of the planet” scenario just isn’t credible.
Or if it is, it demonstrates a level of such incompetence in relation to the aviation risk assessment management process that every single person involved needs dragging off to one of my new interrogation suites in airport security, and treating to the experience of 135 megavolts being gently eased through their genitals.
2 - Candles and stuff