(for Philipat and balaton)
In defense of the Malaysian authorities: it may have taken some analysis by the best radar operators and analysts -- who'd not be on the night shift, but on the day shift -- of radar the tapes/data from the night shift to arrive at the conclusion that the radar contact being tracked was indeed the airliner they had been looking for. Such analysis takes time. As they were undertaking this analysis, their request for US and AUS P-3 searches on that side of Malaysia was a prudent coverage of an unknown that had not been eliminated. Good to have friends like AUS and US, eh?
As it was an unknown, the Occam's Razor search of last known posit was going to be a good best guess for a SAR effort.
Having both areas covered allowed Malaysian team trying to coordinate all this to get some eyes in possible search areas while they sorted out the (seemingly contradictory) information they had and got it into a comprehensible form.
Real life isn't Hollywood. As I noted some pages back, a real Search and Rescue operation confronts the organization tasked with conducting the search with a host of unknowns. If you add to that "face saving" bits, their odd disclosure pattern begins to make some sense, even if our own preference for transparency makes us hungry for more.
@ the Shadow: Thanks for that discourse on repairs. Good food for thought. Skyjob, also thanks for that ponit in re 767.
My problem with accepting the repair failure (fatigue) as the root cause of the missing aircraft is that a wing repair failure would not necessarily disable radios, transponders, nor ACARS. Then again, only some of the pieces of this puzzle are on the table. A few more pieces are needed to beging to recognize the picture taking shape. In support of your idea, some of what you present fits some of what is currently known.
As to the "it's breaking up" SIGINT point (2:43 am) from a Chinese source citing an American listening post in Thailand ... would not the US have confirmed or denied that data point in the interest of assisting the search effort? I'd be interested to see if that report is rubbish, or has some substance to it.
@ Trim Stab
Would be ironic if it turns out the Malaysians themselves then shot it down
with a SAM, mistakenly believing it was some sort of North Korean mischief (the North Koreans have been lobbing missiles around unannounced recently). It would explain the lack of statements from the Malaysian military and government.
I think some of our friendly folks with eyes in the sky would have been tracking any North Korean missile that made its way a few thousand miles towards Malaysia. Just sayin'
I think you are reaching on this ... with orangutang arms!
