MH 370: Missing Malaysian Airliner

[Steve Franklin]

A confusion on my part I think.

When you said a "major international airport" my mind thought, a major international airport, rather than a small one runway airport bearing the title of international. Even if it is the main air terminal in Kazakstan, it's still a small airport.

I suppose I was also thinking major airport in a fairly developed nation. Mea culpa.

But despite this confusion, I still doubt Almaty works. I might be wrong, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of hiding place at Almaty (click on the below pics for a larger view)? There are also several Youtube clips showing aircraft landing etc., and the aircraft are parked on the apron for all to see.

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There is an aircraft spotters club at Almaty, so it's possible an aircraft could've been spotted - which for me hinders the prospect of it being used to hide the aircraft. Would anyone take the chance? I doubt it.

Likewise, what about aircraft taking off and landing? From the air you can see the whole airport and everything parked there.

Added to that would be the airport staff, crews etc. How could you keep them quiet?

For me it doesn't play.

However, an out of the way "black" military airport would be a possibility.

But then the question would be what do you do with the passengers and crew?

There's no way they're going back to their families this late in the day, not after weeks and weeks of front page news and multiple changes in the story etc.

I'm not claiming this is proven in any sense; just throwing it out as a more sensible explanation than the "went crazy and flew into the Indian Ocean" scenario.

I went to Google Earth (Google Maps has an ancient satellite image with propeller planes) where there are on-the-ground photographs, and there do appear to be some fairly large hangers that could house a 777. And keep in mind that the Central Asian states aren't exactly bastions of freedom. Turkmenistan, for example, has the 2nd worst freedom of the press rating right behind North Korea, so I'm not sure anyone would have the gall to blab about a suspicious airplane. Would you? ;-)

And yes, you are absolutely right, this isn't Heathrow or O'Hare. It does, however, have 26 airlines flying in and out of there and connecting with such cities as Beijing, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Moscow, Kiev, Frankfurt, Tehran, London, and Istanbul, at least according to Wikiganda. It even has a FedEx connection with Orly.

I find it interesting that most of these Central Asian airlines have direct flights to Beijing, or Peking as some of them still call it, at least in Cyrillic. My suspicion is that they probably have better relations with China than their former overlords in Moscow. That's just wild speculation, but it does tend to set the tone for who may have been calling the shots.

As for your suggestion that they could have used a military airport, that's certainly a possibility. But keep in mind that military airports are almost certainly watched by the satellites of many countries. How many of them keep track of commercial aircraft landing at commercial airports and cross reference the landings with flight schedules? As always, the best place to hide something is right out in the open.