The Air France disaster comes darn close to this one, although debris was found not long after.
By now, that seems to be pretty well established. Are you suggesting that it continued north to China?
I think we all share that perception but in reality 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. That is inconceivable for most humans who measure distance in two dimensions on land. I can understand the size intellectually but not the reality.
Its as if an aeroplane disappeared somewhere over the continental US and the search required ground penetrating radar as well as looking at the surface.
I guess the unsuccessful search for Steve Fosset in a known area on land gives us some sense of just how difficult this mystery has become.
No wreckage? None at all? Its bizarre until we reflect on just how big the oceans are.
I’m coming around to thinking the same.
However Helios Airways Flight 522 depressurised and became a ghost plane and flew on with a computer at the controls. The 1999 South Dakota Learjet with Payne Stewart on board had the same thing happen.
Quite honestly at this stage I’m not confident the reported flight path of MH370 is accurate. It wasn’t being watched by anyone and the zig-zag path appears to be constructed from radar records which are a best guess. The satellite info is kosher but that only tells us the plane flew south. Not that someone was at the controls.
Call me Pollyanna but such a complex evasion and suicide just seems too extreme for me.
Fossett’s crash site wasn’t in the “known area” at all. Turned out it was in California, not Nevada.
For a more extreme, but real, case, there was a crash of a Learjetin New Hampshire in 1996. Even knowing *almost exactly *where it was, it still took three years to find.
And how much trash there is for wreckage to hide in, and how little of it was buoyant enough to float anyway.
Here’s a good summary of why the pings might and might not be the ones we want.
Helios followed the predetermined and expected flight path without deviation. Path-wise, there was nothing suspicious or unusual.
- passengers all aged by 20 years or so
That piece was for the Chinese signal. Not even the Chinese buy into that.
By now Ocean Shield will have located the wreck to a 3 mile radius by triangulation and soon the submersible will be deployed.
What’s taking SyFy Channel so long? The movie ought to be done by now.
It looks like they plan to keep sweeping with the pinger detector until they are sure the batteries are really dead before they move to the sonar or optical stage, since they can cover more ground (I mean water). Every signal detection counts and will narrow the sonar coverage range.
If the passengers died by hypoxia, I think that’s what they would find (if the plane is relatively intact).
Exactly. Without intending to be overly dramatic, the evidence points at a sinister mass murder plot.
Hence why I’m not surprised there is no debris found yet.
A lot will depend on how the plane came down. If the plane was “ditched” and landed relatively intact, then I’d expect that there wouldn’t be much debris that could float. OTOH, if it smashed down vertically, then it would be in a million pieces, and there should be plenty of floating debris.
Getting closer.
This FoxNews article (yeah, i know what you’re thinking) quotes a supposed expert uninvolved in this search. He seems quite confident that searchers are zeroing in. But more to the point, the article lays out a bit more about the process going forward.
Ships are continuing to crisscross the area in an effort to triangulate a more exact location. that effort is expected to narrow the search grid from 300 square miles (the size of New York City proper) to 50 square miles (roughly twice the size of Manhattan).
Once the area is narrowed then side scan-sonar can be deployed to attempt to map any debris field. That process should help determine the best course of action for an ROV to be dropped down and hopefully recover the black boxes, FDR and CVR.
The quoted expert believes officials directly involved in the search are withholding updates until they have definitive proof, as a measure of respect for the up and down roller coaster of emotions that the families of the passengers have been through.
Submarines don’t emit anything unless the captain wants them to … they even take out the fuses on the active sonar on USN FBM’s so the sonar can’t accidently send out a ping. I know from five patrols in the Mediterranean as sonar supervisor.
I think the cyclone was almost 350 miles away, but it probably did churn up something anyway.
Sooner or later someone, somewhere will be walking on the beach and right on the sand in front of them will be another clue to the mystery disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight 370 
The two known incidents of pilot suicide took the unlucky passengers along for the ride, as far as we know. Even 9/11 could be put in that category. I can’t think of any airline accident where the primary intent was a mass murder.
Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen here, but…
I’m not speculating on intent (yet). I’m saying the passengers were probably long dead before the plane ditched, by premeditated hypoxia. But I’d rather just let the investigation run its course at this point.
I have a question about all of this pinging going on. Assume the plane rests in the area where the “pinging” is currently being picked up by sensors. My question is this. What happens when you take a black box and submit it to the pressure of 14,000 feet below sea level? I would think that the device would be squished out of existence. Ok, maybe the size of the head of a pin, but still.
“The deeper you go under the sea, the greater the pressure of the water pushing down on you. For every 33 feet (10.06 meters) you go down, the pressure increases by 14.5 psi (1 bar). In the deepest ocean, the pressure is equivalent to the weight of an elephant balanced on a postage stamp, or the equivalent of one person trying to support 50 jumbo jets!”
I apologize if this has been discussed on a previous page in this thread but I’m still trying to find out how to search for all occurrences of “a_string” in a_big_thread.
I just checked out the Wikipedia page for Flight Data Recorder, and it says it can withstand depths “up to 6,000 meters (20,000 feet).”. I think all parts of the search area are shallower than that. Although I do wonder if there’s any wiggle room in the “up to…” specification.