How about Malaysia? The flight in question originated in that country, not China.
An oil slick means the plane fell into the ocean reasonably whole.
If it went from 35,000 ft to “nothing there, boss” in a single radar sweep, it probably went down in pieces too small to generate a radar return.
Then we have reports that US intelligence “did not detect an explosion” - as if the satellite (or whatever other sensors) coverage is to the point of being able to detect a 777 blowing up at 35000’.
Really don’t know which is scarier.
Even in a full-power dive (Egypt Air had one of these) it would take a minute or so to travel 35,000’ - more than enough time for a radar return to note the difference in altitude - xponder on or off, the radar would still catch it.
Since no one else has mentioned it: mercury. It eats aluminum as fast as acids work in spy movies.
If someone managed to get an ounce or so aboard, all kinds of bad things could be made to happen.
Who all were sitting over the spar carry-through?
Or it means a ship leaked oil in the area recently. I used to fly ocean surveillance aircraft, oil slicks or patches of discoloured water that look like oil slicks are fairly common. I’m not putting too much stock in these news reports until we hear of aircraft parts found with serial numbers associated with the aircraft.
It depends. How far away is the radar ground station? The further away it is the higher the aircraft needs to be to generate a return. Also if the transponder has stopped transmitting all the radar will pick up is a primary return and it can’t get an altitude from that, it’s also likely that no one paid any attention to it.
Only if the Al2O3 is scratched off.
Wasn’t it reported to have been within a minute or so of Vietnam’s ATC/airspace?
I’m guessing that Ho Chi Minh City has an airport with credible radar.
The report of a door or part thereof suggests Gulf of Thailand - and Bangkok is sitting on the water with a good view of that Gulf.
How about alodine or zinc oxide primer? Boeing doesn’t put raw Al in many places. Also, most 2024 is Alclad - coated with a thin layer of (commercially) pure Al to inhibit corrosion.
If I can bore a hole in the floor directly over the spar, pulling off a sock and exposing the #60 grit sandpaper on the inside will ensure a nice clean spot on which to start dripping mercury.
The wings detach in an instant (as soon as the spar cap is breached); their momentary drag is replaced by the drag of two large holes into cargo hold at the wing root, causing the fuselage to shred a 580mph.
And the fuselage would have no thrust to worry about at that point.
Well, depends on what type of plane, too.
How much mercury are we talking about? And how does one get it past the metal detectors at check-in?
in
Ho Chi Minh City has an excellent international-class airport, thank you.
So far none of the sightings have panned out. The door was some logs, the raft was a cover from a cable spool, and the oil was from a boat.
Wow, okay…can anyone knowledgable comment on how surprising it is (given the resources being used for the search, the area of that sea, etc.) that nothing has been found yet? I have no idea – maybe it isn’t surprising at all.
This is what I’ve been thinking too. How on earth does a jumbo jet-sized passenger airliner just vanish off the face of the earth like that in this day and age? It’s something you’d expect to happen in the 1930s, not 2014.
It sinks; it’s a big ocean.
All I can think is that they are looking in the wrong place. If the aeroplane has gone into the ocean it was either intact or in pieces. If it was intact then why no beacon up until the point it sank? Why no radio calls? Why no people in life jackets or rafts? If it broke up either before impact or on impact with the water there should be shit floating everywhere. Seat cushions, life jackets, bits of paper, clothes, bags, all sorts of stuff that will float. Where is it?
I’m half thinking the aeroplane was hijacked properly by someone who knows what they’re doing and it’s actually landed somewhere. Or it has crashed on the way but in an area far from where they are looking. If someone got into the cockpit the transponder could be turned off, the aeroplane descended and flown effectively invisibly for thousands of miles.
Or maybe not.
It is a real mystery so far, that’s for sure.
The 777 main cabin door does open outward. The latches and hinges are held closed by pressure too, but only if they’re working properly.
They do open inward first. That’s enough to cause sudden decompression even if the process stops there. The 777 door, like Airbus doors, does not pivot outward after that, like on earlier Boeings, but stays near flush to the fuselage forward of the opening.
The sabotage-by-spar-corrosion hypothesis is interesting, but the plane disappeared only 50 minutes into the flight. Was it even at cruising altitude yet? Could a door have blown out when the necessary delta-P was reached, like in that United 747 off Hawaii? Of course, if what was seen wasn’t an airplane part after all, we’re back to useless guessing.
Radar is line-of-sight, btw. Coverage does not exist far from coastal areas.
All exactly pretty much my thoughts too. Even if the plane was hijacked, my understanding is radar works at quite low altitude (especially military radars, as I understand it). Someone must have noticed an object moving at more than 600km/h with no IFF beacon (or the civilian equivalent thereof) operating.
If they’re looking in the wrong place and the aircraft is actually strewn across miles of Bornean or Vietnamese jungle, you’d think by now some local farmer would have gotten word to someone with a phone that hey, my crops have been ruined because a jet airliner crashed into it.
I see they’re now looking in the Straits of Malacca, which is on the other side of the Malay Peninsular from where the plane went missing. I just can’t see how an aircraft that size could fly for more than two hours including over Malaysia itself without either the Malaysians, Singaporeans or even the Indonesians picking it up.
I mean, Peninsular Malaysia isn’t an uninhabited wilderness (well, OK, not all of it, but there is a lot of jungle there). There’s plenty of people there who would have been able to see a low-flying jet aircraft simply by looking overhead as it flew over, and one would think news that such a jet had mysteriously vanished in that area would be enough to jog a lot of people’s memories and prompt a flurry of calls to the authorities reporting such a sighting.
This whole thing is certainly on its way to becoming a staple of “Great Unsolved Mysteries” coffee table books for the several decades, assuming the plane (or its wreckage) don’t turn up in the next few days.
Living to terrorize another day? IF the terrorist is more interested in maximizing damage instead of a political agenda, it might make sense to keep quiet.
[/QUOTE]
Did anyone ever claim responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing?
Yes, several groups, all of them lying. Gaddafi accepted responsibility 15 years later.
The whole door is held in by pressure. In a plug door the door can’t open outward without moving inward first, and it can’t move inward against the pressure in the cabin. Nothing to do with latches and hinges.