Missing Malaysian plane: Why a 9/11-type India-centric hijacking is not plausible

On Day 10 of the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, there is no clarity about what happened, who did it and why. But one thing can be said with certainty. The plane, most unfortunately, has not just disappeared – but perished. When? Why? How? There are still no clues.

Another highly plausible thing is that a lot of high drama must have taken place in the ill-fated plane’s cockpit, if not the rest of the aircraft, but there are hardly any details. The world can know only if the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) are recovered.

There was an article by Associated Press on 15 March which said hijacking was no longer a theory but a distinct possibility.

But what would a hijacker or bunch of hijackers do with a hijacked plane? Hijackers can plan for themselves but not for 239 people who were on board the Malaysian plane. After hijacking the plane, they would like to land it somewhere and then begin negotiations on their demands.

In this case, the fate of 239 people is not known. It is impossible to feed 239 people and take care of their daily needs even if the plane of this size was forced-landed on a remote island.

If the plane had crashed into the seas more than seven hours of take-off, then how does one explain the fact that mobile phones of several passengers on board were ringing but went unresponded during frantic calls by their relatives? Numerous such accounts of grief-stricken relatives have been reported. In the event of a crash, whether on land or in the seas, the mobile phones of passengers on board cannot be ringing, something which happened for at least 48 hours after the plane disappeared.

Now coming back to the hijacking theory, why would a hijacker keep silent for nine days even after presuming that he and his accomplices have managed to land the plane somewhere and kept it hidden from satellites and tracking systems of the world? Invariably, the first act of a hijacker after completing the hijack is to announce the hijack to the world. Nothing of this sort happened.

This leads one to yet another probability: that the plane was indeed the victim of a hijack plot which eventually went awry. But how can a plane, which lost all communication with the air traffic control authorities just about an hour after take-off, continue to fly for six more hours at least after the ‘hijack’ without making even a single attempt to land anywhere.

Was it so because those who took control of the plane did not want it to land anywhere and their sole motive was to crash it at a pre-determined place far from the plane’s flight path?

This is where a theory suggested by former US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott gains traction. This is what Talbott tweeted on 15 March: “Malaysian plane mystery: Direction, fuel load & range now lead some to suspect hijackers planned a 9/11-type attack on an Indian city.”

On 16 March, Talbott came up with another tweet clarifying his earlier message thus: “Malaysian#370 as hijack: 1 of many theories. Speculation: hijackers headed toward India but crashed like UA#93 on 9/11."

This theory would have been laughed at if it had come from someone else. But coming as it does from none other a former US deputy secretary of state, it should be given due consideration by the Indian security and intelligence agencies and India should come up with a response.

However, this theory does not seem very plausible.

There are no known India-centric terror outfits with a proven track record of even plotting a 9/11 type terror operation and using flying planes as bombs against Indian targets.

There were intelligence reports of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) doing such a thing in the early nineties (almost a decade before the 11 September, 2001 terror attacks on the US mainland) immediately in the wake of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.

I had given elaborate details of the LTTE’s numerous plots in my investigative book “Beyond the Tigers: Tracking Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassination”, in 1998.

The Indian intelligence agencies had repeatedly warned of threat to India from micro light aircraft in the aftermath of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. The LTTE was then the world’s only terror outfit well versed in avionics and boasted of a veritable air force at its command.

Al Qaeda has tried to master avionics but failed to do so. Even the 9/11 operation did not involve much piloting skills as the planes were made to crash into New York’s Twin Towers shortly after they were hijacked. That explains why even the al Qaeda has failed to repeat a 9/11-type incident anywhere in the world.

But the kind of technical expertise shown in the case of MH 370 goes far beyond the known capabilities of any terror outfit on earth.

As noted before, the plane kept flying for about seven hours after it lost contact with ATC authorities. After take-off at 12.41 am on Saturday from Kuala Lumpur, the Beijing-bound flight witnessed at least two highly technical operations which could have been done only by an extremely qualified pilot.

These events were disabling the plane’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) system at an unknown time just before the plane flew over the east coast of the Malaysian Peninsula and then disabling the plane’s transponder, vital equipment which sends electronic messages to radar systems about the plane’s flight number, height, speed and direction.

No terror outfit in the world has a proven capability of dealing with such complex avionics.