Africa Shocker—Not A Conspiracy Theory. On 29 July 2015, parts likely from missing airliner MH370 washed ashore on Réunion, a French-owned island off the coast of Africa. This was the first sign of the missing airliner since MH370 vanished without a trace on 8 March 2014. I predicted in June 2014 that the airliner could have been hijacked and flown to Africa. Debris discoveries in 2015 raise disquieting new questions that cannot be ignored. Read here and see why, understanding that my novel is not a conspiracy theory but a logical, analytical thought experiment (and a thinking person's suspense thriller).

Mystery Redux. After more than a year of unquiet dormancy, the mystery of MH370 sprang back to life. With the new African connection, so has my thought experiment of June 2014 revived—a novel titled Vanished: Flight 777. To avoid confusion with conspiracy theories, I titled my novel for the Boeing model number (777) rather than the Malaysian flight number. I reasoned at the time that even if the mystery were solved, the urgency of my hijack scenario must continue to demand the civilized world's attention (to avoid a repeat of 9/11 or worse).

MH370: Three Possible Causes. In the greatest aviation mystery of our time, the vanishing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 on 8 March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board, three possible causes or lemmas (Greek or Hellenic word used here in the sense of propositions or legs of an argument; sing. lemma; pl. lemmas or lemmata) present themselves. I list them here in random order without precedence because I duly keep all options open:

Accident         Sabotage         Hijack

Equal Plausibility. In my opinion, and I think in the assessment of a reasonable, objective analyst, one must start by giving all three major classes of causality (lemmas or lemmata) equal weight. Just as importantly, it is important to consider each lemma mutually exclusive from the other two lemmata. By 'classes' I mean that each of these causes has myriad moving parts and possibilities.

No Lemma Disproven. As of 1 August 2015, I do not believe that any of the three can be ruled out. What I find troubling is that the talking heads who keep discussing the tragedy of MH370 on media seem to consistently avoid talking about the hijack possibility. Reports have leaked of a U.S. Government intelligence report prior to the July 2015 appearance of debris off Madagascar suggesting that purposeful (human) agency caused the chain of events ending in the disappearance. This does not explicitly mean hijack, but to me suggests either Lemma 2 or Lemma 3.

In my novel Vanished: Flight 777 (a suspense thriller and thought experiment) I focused on one subset of the third lemma (hijack) since I passionately felt (and still do) that authorities and talking heads seemed to be consistently avoiding the topic, and for all the wrong reasons. Just because the plane went down (we now know) and a putative hijack therefore would have failed does not mean it was not attempted. Worse yet, the next missing aircraft might be a hijack and it might succeed. So we have to pay attention to all three lemmas or possibilities. There are many possible variations on how Lemma 3 might be carried out; I have chosen one sequence of hypothetical steps for my thought experiment.

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