It doesn’t make sense that they’er saying the aircraft “might” have turned back over land. The transponder code would have been picked back up by ATC as would the general radar signal. It should have been a matter of record in addition to what military radar showed. It either few back over land or it didn’t. Both radar systems would have at least recorded a blip at the same time and if the transponder was on they would have a positive indication.
Thanks. I guess that makes sense.
The wife and I have been there multiple times. But now that I think about it, it could have been Mexico and they were just pulling our legs.
The latest thing I hear they’re checking out is back near the original search area. A New Zealander working on an oil rig in the ocean east of Vietnam sent an e-mail reporting he saw something burning in the sky about the time in question. They’re going to check out that report. It would be about 300 miles – or was it kilometers? – east of the southern coast of Vietnam.
It’s kilometers. Three hundred kilometers southeast of Vietnam’s Ba Ria-Vung Tau province:
**"Vietnam’s air traffic management earlier said it had received an email from a New Zealander working in one of the oil rigs off Vung Tau.
“‘He said he spotted a burning [object] at that location, some 300 km (200 miles) southeast of Vung Tau,’ deputy general director Doan Huu Gia said.”**
(Although 300 kilometers is more like 186 miles.)
so now we have a probable cause and maybe a vector from the sighting. Hopefully Vietnam military radar picked up something. between the 2 there is the potential for a triangulated point to focus the search on.
Sure, but the 300 km is just an estimate, so sticking with one significant digit and putting it as 200 miles seems better to me than the degree of precision 186 miles suggests.
Inevitably, the story has attracted its share of nonsense:
Behold the fruits of this amazing spiritual power:
That quote goes very well with your sig, Steve MB.
I swear I’m going come up with a macro to type this out for me:
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A malfunctioning transponder can send out erroneous information that ATC finds distracting. ATC will then request it be turned off to avoid confusion.
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In the event of an electrical short, fire, or other serious problem being able to turn off a device can either resolve the problem or keep it from becoming worse.
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If, for some reason, power is sharply limited being able to choose which devices to switch off can be a good thing.
further quote from Ibrahim Mat Zin: “We use fish trap hook and a bamboo binocular to look and ask for the victims to be found as soon as possible,” he told reporters here today.
Well, yeah, but they don’t paint “This is an illicit runway!” on it in giant letters. It looks like any other road or driveway or flat slab building foundation. Heck, you don’t even need to paint lines on it or run power to it if you don’t to do that. It looks like any other big slab of concrete.
Certain types of flat landscapes don’t even need that - one reason Edwards Airforce Base is used for flight testing is because a significant part of the local desert is hard-packed enough that a big plane can land off-airport without needing to develop a runway.l
Ok, say there is an instant depressurization. The first thing pilots must be trained to do is to get an oxygen mask on before they do anything else. And my understanding is that if there is only one pilot in the cockpit (the other perhaps having stepped out to use the bathroom) it is required that the remaining pilot wear a mask.
I’m reminded of the Payne Stewart ghost plane incident in '99. It’s still apparently not clear as to why the pilots received no supplemental oxygen when the plane lost pressure.
A possible sighting on the Tomnod crowdsourcing site. Looks half-convincing, and scale looks right, but equally could be a boat wake (or two boat wakes?)
The NTSB report is quoted here.
A Learjet is a pretty small plane and would lose its oxygen far more quickly for a given-size leak than a widebody.
So THAT’S what Rush Limbaugh was talking about…flipped over to him when I was in the car getting lunch, and he was making fun of people for looking for the plane on Google Earth. Idiot.
Well, no. Lots of people were searching for MH370 on Google Maps, leading Google to gently point out that its imagery isn’t live.
Tomnod has been getting the latest imagery for people to look at. The site is painfully slow, and a few minutes of looking will convince you that finding a plane out at sea is not quite as easy as all that…
Aw, that makes me sad for humanity 
Now China is saying they have satellite imagery of things that could be parts of airplane wreckage in the original search area. Satellite imagery that was taken Sunday morning.
CNN says the imagery is nearly directly South of the Southern tip of Vietnam.
I just found that and tagged it too.
Makes me sad that some of them can vote.