So here's my zany conspiracy theory.
Russia hijacked MH370- the missing Malaysian Airlines flight.
Why? To distract the world while it made incursions into Eastern Ukraine. Does it seem drastic? Of course. But it comes with very little cost.
Frederick Leatherman quite clearly suggests that
the plane might have been hijacked and "hidden".
As he says, the circumstantial evidence indicates that more than one person hijacked MH 370. At least one of them would have to have known how to fly the Boeing 777-200, turn off the the plane’s data reporting system at 1:07 am and the transponder at 1:21 am and take advantage of regional radar vulnerabilities.
Other individuals would have to have controlled the passengers or executed them to prevent someone from using their cell phone.
I do not believe the airplane was hijacked just to crash it because there would be no point to continue flying it for four hours. This suggests there was a point to this all.
But who would have the capacity to hide a plane? In this world of ours, it is nigh impossible for a wide-body plane to show up unannounced at an airport and remain incognito.
Unless someone wanted it to remain hidden- and could allow it to remain so. The only actors that could possibly do this would be someone with a private landing strip long enough to accommodate a long-range plane. Not only that, but someone with the wherewithal to allow it to remain hidden.
The only possible entity with such power would have been a state actor. And we already know their motivation.
But what evidence do we have that the plane is anywhere remotely near there?
All the evidence in the world, in fact.
A chart released by the Malaysia government showed the aircraft’s range of possible positions based on the distance traveled by an electromagnetic ping detected by a satellite over the Indian Ocean at 8:11 a.m., at which point, apparently, the plane was still airborne but nearly out of fuel. It consists of two arcs (shown here in red), the northernmost of which goes from the northern border of Vietnam through western China to the eastern portion of Kyrgyzstan and includes the Chinese province of Xinjiang, heartland of the Uyghur ethnic minority.
Jeff Wise, writing for
Slate, is in agreement with the idea the plane landed.
safely, writing that it seems unlikely that a plot as ingeniously planned and carefully executed as this one would not also have included plans for safe arrival at some ultimate destination. As I reported earlier, the 777 is
capable of landing on small airstrips and on relatively unimproved surfaces, such as packed dirt and dry lake beds. In such a scenario, the odds are good that, unless they were murdered, the passengers remain alive. The motives and intentions of whoever took MH370 remain as murky as ever, but possibilities include a hostage scenario, the repurposing of the aircraft as an enormous flying bomb, or some combination of these and other outcomes.
But of course, as I said, I think Russia might have been responsible (I am certainly no where near convinced- 20%, at best- but I think it's worthwhile putting it out there). Following the 40-deg radius would have taken them just shy of the southern Russian Caucasus, where it could be at present. Or perhaps it could have been landed at one of the Russian Air Force bases in Central Asia, such as Kant Air Base in Kyrgizstan, from where it could have been refuelled and taken to a more secure location deep in Russia. Indeed, the base is almost on top of the 40-deg radius (in relative terms).
(kmz file courtesy of Stephen Geens of
OgleEarth)
I do not mean to be frivolous. But I simply wonder.
