分析：马航谜案的几种可能性.

　　分析：马航谜案的几种可能性

　　Malaysian mystery: ‘A series of very unlikely scenarios’

　　In our world of super-surveillance it seems almost unthinkable that a large airliner with 239 people on board could have vanished without trace in one of the most populated regions of the world.

　　在监视手段似乎无所不在的当今世界，一架载有239人的大型客机竟会在世界上人口最多的地区之一消失得无影无踪，简直不可想象。

　　Dozens of aircraft and ships are criss-crossing the South China Sea and Strait of Malacca to search for signs of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early on Saturday morning. And a galaxy of civil and military satellites and high-flying spy planes, capable of distinguishing objects as small as a football, are observing from high in the sky.数十架飞机和船舶正在南中国海和马六甲海峡进行弓字形搜索，搜寻上周六凌晨从吉隆坡飞往北京途中失联的马来西亚航空公司(Malaysia Airlines)波音(Boeing) 777客机的踪迹。此外还有大量民用和军用卫星以及高空侦察机(其分辨率可小至一个足球)正从高空观测。

　　Their failure to find anything, combined with the absence of any distress calls from flight MH370, is puzzling aviation experts. “We are lt with a series of very unlikely scenarios,” said Guy Gratton of the school of engineering and design at Brunel University near London.他们未能找到任何残骸，加上MH370航班没有发出任何求救信号，令航空专家感到费解。“我们只剩下一系列非常不可能的情形，”伦敦附近布鲁内尔大学(Brunel University)工程和设计学院的盖伊?格拉顿(Guy Gratton)表示。

　　The last disappearance of a commercial airliner was in June 2009 when Air France flight 447 crashed in a storm over the tropical Atlantic Ocean. Then some debris from the aircraft was spotted the following day, though it took two years to raise the broken fuselage and flight recorders from the seabed 4,000 metres below the ocean surface. MH370 was flying in good weather over a much less remote part of the world where the chances of detection should be much better.

　　商用客机上一次消失事件发生在2009年6月，当时法航(Air France) 447航班在大西洋热带区域的风暴中坠毁。那架飞机的一些碎片次日就被发现，尽管有关方面花了两年时间才从4000米深的海底打捞起破碎的机身和飞行数据记录器。相比之下，MH370是在良好的天气飞行，飞越的地区也不那么偏僻，探测到这架飞机的几率应当高得多。

　　The only firm information so far is that MH370’s transponder, which transmitted and received radio signals between it and air traffic control and also between it and other aircraft in the vicinity, stopped working as it flew over the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam. All other forms of radio communication, including a satellite tracking system called Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast or ADS-B, ceased at the same time.迄今唯一确凿的信息是，MH370航班的应答机(在飞机和航空交通管制中心之间、以及在这架飞机和附近其它飞机之间收发无线电信号)在马来西亚和越南之间的南中国海上空停止工作。其它所有形式的无线电通信，包括被称为“广播式自动相关监视”(ADS-B)的卫星跟踪系统，在同一时间停止工作。

　　“There are only two ways that could have happened without the crew making a distress call,” says Mr Gratton. “A catastrophic failure of all electrical systems on the aircraft, which is highly unlikely on a modern airliner in level flight in good weather, or someone deliberately turning off the communications system.”“发生这种故障、而机组人员未发出求救信号的只有两种可能性，”格拉顿表示。“要么这架飞机上的所有电气系统发生灾难性故障——对于在良好天气下水平飞行的现代化客机来说，这是相当不可能的;要么就是有人故意关闭通信系统。”

　　A Boeing 777 near the beginning of a long distance flight would have been carrying around 40 tonnes of fuel, which would have produced a large and detectable oil slick if it had crashed into the sea and broken up. Yet the only oil discovered so far on the region’s seas turned out not to be aviation fuel. There have been several reports of solid debris but again, on closer inspection, none has come from the missing airliner.一架执行长途航班的波音777飞机，在升空尚不久的时候会携带大约40吨燃料;如果飞机坠入大海并解体，将留下大片和易于探测的浮油。然而，迄今该海域发现的唯一浮油竟然不是航空燃料。曾有数份报告称发现固体碎片，但同样，经抵近检查后，已排除任何碎片来自失联客机的可能性。

　　When an aircraft crashes into the sea its flight data recorder, which is designed to withstand the most ferocious impact, should give off radio signals if it is floating on the surface or ultrasound signals if it is underwater. These “pings” should be audible from the bed of the relatively shallow seas around Malaysia and Vietnam.

　　当飞机坠入大海时，其飞行数据记录器从设计上确保能够承受最猛烈的冲击。如果记录器浮在水面上，它应该发出无线电信号，如果记录器沉入水下，它应该发出超声波信号。从马来西亚和越南周边相对较浅的海底发出的这些“鸣叫”，应该是听得到的。

　　If flight MH370 strayed far enough from its path to crash onto land, perhaps in the mountains of Vietnam or Malaysia, that impact would almost certainly have caused enough destruction to have been detected by now.如果MH370航班大幅偏离航线，在陆地上坠落(也许在越南或马来西亚的山区)，其冲击几乎肯定会造成相当大的破坏，到了现在完全应该能够探测到。

　　Another possibility is that hijackers with some knowledge of avionics managed to switch off all the communications systems on MH370 and fly through the night to land on a remote runway, which could be as much as 3,500 miles away from Malaysia. Then they would have had to camouflage or conceal the Boeing 777 from surveillance aircraft and satellites which are undoubtedly inspecting possible landing places across south, central and east Asia.另一种可能性是，掌握一些航空电子系统知识的劫机者，关闭了MH370上的所有通信系统，然后在夜间飞行，最终在一个偏远的跑道降落，这个地点距离马来西亚可能有3500英里。然后他们必须把这架波音777飞机伪装或隐匿起来，以躲避目前无疑在侦察南亚、中亚和东亚地区可能着陆地点的监视飞机和卫星。