Speculation Awards

[CFR]

I'm not trying to make light of the current tragic situation with regards to the missing Malaysian aircraft. But over the years I have read hundreds of speculations (even posted a few myself) that range from logical to right of far fetched. Perhaps once a year we should nominate some of them in specific categories for awards such as:

Best Guess
Worst Guess
Tinfoil Hat Award
Most Obtuse Rationale
and the prestigious WTF!!!

any others

[PilotDAR]

... The " I know that was the cause of the accident, 'cause I've done it myself, but am too embarrassed to admit it!" speculation award

[iflyforpie]

pdw should have his own category....

[Illya Kuryakin]

Problem is: until we find the missing airplane, we can't call any speculation, far fetched. Even Alien abduction has yet to be disproven.
Illya

[CFR]

Problem is: until we find the missing airplane, we can't call any speculation, far fetched. Even Alien abduction has yet to be disproven.
Illya

There is far more speculation over the course of a year than this single event.

[Pavese]

Problem is: until we find the missing airplane, we can't call any speculation, far fetched. Even Alien abduction has yet to be disproven.
Illya

Quoting Spock (quoting the famous Sherlock...) "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

We need to work on paring down the "impossible" list.....

D

[burhead1]

pdw should have his own category....

http://ggweather.com/winds.html

[pdw]

(If there's a type of wind we've been discussing over time that isn't in there for lack of a label ... perhaps giving it a definition IS in order.)

About the speculation, it's true, some of them are worthy of a medal.

For example, when it comes to speculating the lost airliner, aside from suicide scenarios, a depressurization followed by unmanned flight IMO for some reason keeps coming back ...

Sifting through the speculations serves to expose the ideas that don't go away (the one's that aren't so easily disproven)

[Airmanship Police]

I was looking at the winds website and saw nothing about Variable tailwinds?

Have I been lied to all my life?

[pdw]

Please explain and feel free to begin a separate thread to ensure against thread drift.

[swordfish]

Problem is: until we find the missing airplane, we can't call any speculation, far fetched. Even Alien abduction has yet to be disproven.
Illya

Actually, I'm with you on that one!

[Krimson]

Haha, I haven't been following the Malaysian thread, but I can just imaging what kind of crazy wind scenario has been made up for this one from pdw.

[pdw]

That's OK, much as constructive speculation can sometimes discern something useful, it still needs more than imagination and it needs at least some experience/insight into the subject.

(Having suggested "wind": ever consider what that ocean surface would have been like for a 777-landing in the early daylight on March 8 in the region of the last ping ? I could not thoroughly check, simply because there are so few weather stations out there to interpolate, but also just couldn't imagine that it went there on purpose.)

[CFR]

Problem is: until we find the missing airplane, we can't call any speculation, far fetched. Even Alien abduction has yet to be disproven.
Illya

Actually, I'm with you on that one!

Actually you can grade speculations in terms of likelihood based on experience and available information/evidence. Since there has never been a case of documented alien abduction that stands the test of scrutiny, I would grade alien abduction as very low probability, admittedly not zero, but close enough for me to feel comfortable as rejecting that as an avenue of investigation to pursue. Unfortunately what many folks are doing is to a) create a pet "theory" b) examine available evidence, c) embrace "evidence" which supports their theory (even if it means modifying the interpretation of the evidence or using evidence from other cases that is irrelevant, so that it fits the theory) and d) reject evidence, no matter how strong, which doesn't fit with the theory.
What should be done is a) gather available evidence, b) create an interim theory c) examine all evidence carefully to see if it supports or refutes the theory d) test any conclusions reached to see if other explanations exist, e) modify the theory and begin the analysis again or f) reject the theory and start again.

[swordfish]

...I would grade alien abduction as very low probability, admittedly not zero, but close enough for me to feel comfortable as rejecting that as an avenue of investigation to pursue.

So would I. That's why I didn't pose it as a possibility, only that it can't be disproven.

Science fiction in movies ("Independence Day") has a way of becoming reality as the years progress into decades....

[Colonel Sanders]

The funny thing is that 99% of the people on
AvCan would put "variable tailwinds" (stop
laughing) right up there with alien abduction,
but then there were these guys that tried to
land a bizjet at Aspen ...

The pilots reported a tailwind of 33 knots on the first landing attempt, while the crew of another airplane reported strong wind shear

[pdw]

Aliens are "foreigners" , and a highjacking could be seen as sort-of an abduction.

I'll laugh along as best I can (l o l).