The Czar admits he is more than a bit puzzled about Flight MH370, the missing Malaysian Airlines 777 that vanished off radar over the weekend. Nothing makes sense in this story.

The plane simply vanished off radar. That only happens when a plane either crashes into land or water or explodes in the air. In either case, there would be wreckage. And despite swarms of multinational teams scouring the area, nothing has been found. Some oil slicks were about the right size and shape, but proved to be from watercraft. Bits of wreckage found have, so far, proven to be from other things.

Sure, a plane can fly lower than radar can track it, but there are two things wrong with this: the plane’s transponder continues to work, announcing the flight number and status to anyone with the right radio, and more importantly, the plane still needs to fly to somewhere below radar. In case you did not know, a 777 is a big plane. A big plane.

Thus, for a plane this size to vanish this completely, it needs to have crashed. But there is no sign of wreckage which is usually scattered over a huge area. This is not always the case, of course: a plane could belly land slowly in the ocean and sink. But if it does, the emergency apparatus aboard continues to work and as we saw in the Hudson River a ways back, the plane stays afloat for quite a while, allowing alarms to broadcast. When the Air France plane disappeared for days with little evidence, the cause was bad weather and high waves. Weather for MH370’s flight was just about perfect.

A plane could also disintegrate or explode due to terrorism; again, this leave chunks of stuff bobbing in the waves everywhere. And we have found nothing. Yes, there two passengers aboard the plane are traveling on forged documents. Briefly, we got excited that these two individuals could be terrorists—but local authorities say this sort of thing happens all the time. Lots of people enter and exit China with fake identification. And again, terrorists are very good at leaving evidence behind.

One theory we heard is that the plane was hijacked and forced to land in a remote area. Nice, but in these situations the plane still appears on radar and its transponder continues to function. Indeed, a pilot can easily and surreptitiously nudge the transponder to a call sign of 7500, which is universally understood as “I have been hijacked and am under duress.” Nothing like that happened here.

Ghettoputer, the Czar assumes, is blaming alien capture. Mandarin, for his part, is checking to see if he made something dimensional happen and the plane is now happily flying over prehistoric Long Island.

Believe it or not, those two explanations due a better job at lining up with the evidence thant due pilot error, plane crash, or terrorism.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.