Pvt. Godfrey's sister Dolly mentions a possible rapid climb to 9,000' with con-comitant decrease in ground speed to less than 150 knots......

Strange things can happen in a cu-nimb, but wouldn't it be very unlikely for a jet to linger long enough to be so affected by updrafts?

repariit
 

yes well spotted, Ocean Alert is the one towing the sonar equipment.

Winshear
 

The above CU nim reference must have credibility. Windshear has done for others in the past.

And 9000 feet should be high enough to recover in any case

look at the path of the Ocean Alert
Live Ships Map - AIS - Vessel Traffic and Positions

they narrowed the search and move very slowly, it looks like they have found something.

.

Zooming in they seem to have three sites that they have concentrated on.

Search Update
 

Over the past two days, Ocean Alert has covered about forty square miles, apparently towing sonar equipment. I think that they are mapping a debris field based on their steady slow speed. The western portion of their recent activity is about 33.7846n 035.2819e. By plugging these coordinates into Google Earth, you can see that the water depth there is about 4,200 feet. This appears to be the area that the US Navy and Ocean Alert read the FDR and CVR pingers. Most of the recent activity has been further east, closer to shore near Naame, centered on 33.7587n 035.3938e. The depths here is about 470 feet.

According to the Lebanon's Transportation Minister, Odyssey Explorer, a sister ship to Ocean Alert, will be heading to Beirut soon. It is currently in the UK, maybe Falmouth, about 3,200 miles away. At 8 knots it will be mid February to arrive if it gets underway now. This ship is equipped with two deep diving ROV's capable of doing archeological quality explorations of ancient shipwrecks. It has the ability to extract the boxes from the wreckage if they are still in their aft fuselage mounts.

The width of the apparent debris field indicates that ET409 broke up in the air. The time spent in the eastern portion of the search area indicates that there must be a larger portion of wreckage quite a distances from the CVR & FDR.

It is amazing to be able to witness this search from a laptop computer while in a hotel room on the opposite side of the planet.

If you follow these ships on the web, keep in mind that their tracks only show about a day's data. If you place the cursor on the little triangle symbols on the track, it displays the date, time, and position information.

In flight breakup does not bode well for the anti-terrorist gang. :ouch:

Not sure what that means? Can you expand a little.

it could also disintegrate in the air by excessive speed, this is all just speculations, we have to wait for FDR and CVR, then we can continue our "PPRuNE investigation" :ugh:

Military sources have said that Ocean Alert is not receiving clear signals from the black boxes.

On the other hand there are reports of a robot submarine sent down to take pictures of the wreckage.

There are also reports of Ocean Alert having spotted "geometrical shapes" in a location farther north, 10 km from the coastline W of Beirut.

Sounds like a number of false positives occurring in the search.

For the speculation brigade I recommend the story of Partnair 394 at Partnair Flight 394 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia , or for Norwegian speakers, at 1993/03 | sht .

In short, the Convair broke up due to forged parts, and radar echoes from the first separating inspection hatches were registered several kms from the main part of the wreckage.

But by adjusting the olddate in this format url:
olddate=1/27/2010

you may find previous days :ok:

edit:
even easier:
Daily Vessel's Itineraries - AIS Marine Traffic
gives daily history.

Bear in mind that there will be an awful lot of junk on the bottom in the eastern Mediterranean, dating from WW2 and various conflicts since then, including arms carrying boats from Syria that didn't quite make it to Gaza etc.

Progress Update
 

Odyssey Explorer is now underway from Falmouth, UK. It was briefly in AIS range and appeared here: Live Ships Map - AIS - Vessel Traffic and Positions.

KQ 507 - who is hiding the truth ... does it related to ET109?
 

The UK Telegraph website had an article on it at the weekend about the Families of pax and crew of KQ507 being left in the dark since May 2007 about the accident causes, no Coroners Inquests etc, and links between it and ET 109.

Common features are a 737-800, Night Departure, Weather, no Radio call, and high velocity impact with surface, ADs with the spoiler actuators etc.

Boeing were alleged to be pointing fingers at the KQ crew for mistakenly thinking they had engaged autopilot, but they would say that, wouldn't they?

How long will it take for the truth of ET109 to emerge?

Remnants of the Ethiopian Airlines a/c found
 

BEIRUT: Remnants of the Ethiopian Airlines aircraft which crashed off the coast of Lebanon have been found in Syrian waters, the Transport and Public Works Minister said on Wednesday, even as storms disrupted the ongoing search for wreckage. Ghazi Aridi told reporters at his ministry office in Beirut that the piece of the wrecked Boeing 737-800 would be handed over to Lebanese authorities, after he was alerted by officials in Damascus.

The Daily Star - Politics - Wreckage from crashed plane found in Syrian waters

Remnants of the Ethiopian Airlines a/c found
 

50 miles North of where it is assumed the bulk of the wreckage is?

Is this floating wreckage that has been moved by the currents or evidence that the aircraft came apart at some altitude?

I say floating wreckage, as I would doubt whether anyone would be searching the sea that far away from the 'official' search area.

SoS

Ocean Alert left Beirut Port 7.05am and has gone South back to the same area it was searching before.

Edit:- Searching 1 - 2 miles of the coast.

Odyssey Explorer arrives in Lebanon next week
 

Al-Hayat newspaper reported on Friday that US vessel Odyssey Explorer will not arrive in Lebanon before next week to help in the search operations for last week’s crashed Ethiopian airliner wreckage and black box.

The daily added that the vessel will help the search teams expand their operations in the area between Naameh, south of the Lebanese capital, and Beirut’s port.

Lebanon news - NOW Lebanon -Odyssey Explorer arrives in Lebanon next week, Al-Hayat reports

As mentioned earlier it's a long & slow journey to get here- apparently the gov't are paying upwards of $100,000 a day for each vessel

Plane Victims' Families Accuse US of Spying
 

No comment. :sad:

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