In the time I'm been off of here, I've (of course) been thinking about this whole thing:
1. as someone mentioned in last thread, if they wanted a 777 to take somewhere in Pakistan/central asia/middle east area, why wouldn't they just hijack a 777 closer to where they wanted it? IF it is true that the plane took a west-ward track.
- radar over India/Pakistan/Afghanistan, and probably a lot of other countries in that area is going to be heavy and thus flying through there, even with transponder off, would be difficult.
-generally, the security monitoring in that area is higher than that of SouthEast Asia, b/c of ongoing terrorism, etc..
-getting visas? Someone said on last thread there is no visa required to get into Malaysia? But I'm not sure of this. So perhaps it was easier for the hijackers to get into Malaysia and thus easier to carry out their operation from there. Perhaps other countries were harder to get into.
-perhaps radar on the path they might have taken was not very high - they toe-ed the line b/w Malaysian and Vietnam ATC, and then through western edge of China? Isn't the western edge of China very sparsely populated?
Anyone with any other ideas of why they would decide to hijack plane from Kuala Lumpur (if that's what happened)?
****I will also add that pre-911 terrorist meeting was held in Kuala Lumpur - was this because it was easier for all these terrorists to get into Malaysia vs. other coutries?