The likely impact area is relatively shallow water. The causes of this disaster will be far easier to discover than the challenges presented with AF447. Wreckage, victims, as well as the CVR and the FDR should be relatively easy to recover.

All will likely be known soon enough. My bet is that both the CVR and FDR terminate abruptly.

Don't worry. Vietnam doesn't have any of the venerable P-3; but they have several more modern aircraft, and patrol vessels. They're also equipped with Mark 1 eyeball sensors. No need to underestimate them.

An Orion is apparently participating in the search though, just like dozens of other aircraft and vessels, a US one based out of Japan, if that makes you sleep better. Yet, no RCAF aircraft at hand, unfortunately.

Shallow water
 

RobertS975,

Could you be more precise regarding water depth in the Gulf of Thailand ?

Several pages back I mentioned the 1993 WTC bomber who made a trial run using a fake identity.

Here is some more information on this: Philippine Airlines Flight 434 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(For you who don't want to click: Ramzi Yousef checks in, using a fake ID, on a one-stop flight to Japan, A -> B -> Japan. From point A to point B he arranges a bomb to explode the centre fuel tank. He departs at point B. During the flight to Japan the bomb explodes but doesn't penetrate the fuel tank [different model of aircraft]. Philippine police finds out the fake ID is really Mr Bomber and raids his appartment. Damning evidence of foul play, and Mr Bomber ends up in US prison. Plan was to blow up about 12 US airliners simultaneously.)

Now, this has to do with the terrorist angle of this missing mystery as this COULD have been a repeat of the above. Some people questioned why terrorists would choose a Malaysian airline... simple answer is "convenience". IF terrorists did this (AND WE DO NOT KNOW THAT YET) they might just have chosen this flight for plain convenience. Nothing to do with Malaysia or even China for that matter. Just as in the case with the Philippine airline.

But, to debunk my theory so noone believes it too much, remember that it would be plenty foolish to copy a previous trial run. I'm sure intelligence services aren't THAT easily fooled.

WhatsaLizad?

Yes, I would like that too.

But I hope I am informative enough with the terrorist angle. Like, IF (again: IF) this was a terrorist act, noone necessarily needs or wants to claim responsibility. Not if it is a trial run.

I also wish to point out that while secondary radar might show the plane as vanished, primary radar still gives information about its whereabouts. We need to keep attention to what they say about the primary radar. Vietnamese military are quite advanced so may have some information, we just need to wait for it.

I can't see any similarity with EA 990 or LAM 470. Both aircraft were tracked on radar when losing altitude. Not with MAS 370. Apparently the last secondary return available indicated an altitude of 38,000 feet, then nothing. This fact, if confirmed, is certainly disturbing and raises lots of questions, but more or less excludes any similarity with the aforementioned crash cases.

Splinter group operating on their own?? Who knows. Either way, an airliner is missing, seemingly with no trace :(

I would take the last 1 minute of data that everyone is talking about with a pinch of salt, to go from 35,000ft to 0ft in one minute would indicate a power on vertical dive.

I know the only thing that is important is that they find the wreckage and get the FDR and the FVR and establish what went on from there.

Fats

Within a radius of 20NM of 7N 104E the water depth on average is between 40 and 55 meters.

The surface current is weak and generally flowing in a SW direction at between 0.1 to 0.15 m/s.

There may well have been many fishing boat calls, but coordinating the calls and even to make sense of them, would be very difficult. Would many have recognised a disintegrated airliner going into the sea? Establishing reliability of the radio calls will take some while.

Water depth
 

Thanks mm43 for your feedback.

It means that once the crash (I guess that now nobody is doubting anymore about using that dreaded word) site is located, it won't take two years (ref. AF447) to get the recorders if thay have survived the event.

Here is a Nautical chart for the area.

Chart 93010

I've browsed the Vietnamese news sites. Google's translator is far from perfect, but very interesting anyway. The Thanh Nien site has some interesting data of the SAR operation:
- Apparently three MI-171 helicopters have been involved (02, 04 and 431) and temporarily based at Ca Mau at the coast. At 1710, one of them "discovered abnormalities in the oil slick Shoals Ca Mau, at the rig DK1-10 of about 50 km to the southwest." "As noted, the scope of oil slick is about 20 km. This is a very unusual phenomenon."

(I have not located the DK1-10 but believe it to be close inshore. This is probably unconnected to MH370).

- Two AN-26 search aircraft took off from Than Son Nat airport at the capital Ho Chi Minh, at 1430 and 1500 local time.
- There is a video taken aboard AN-26 number 261 including also the "oil slick" picture widely discussed here. The flight was apparently a very unusual flight for the air force, judging by the fact it had a Lieutenant Colonel, Vu Duc Long, as captain and two further Lieutenant Colonels aboard.
- At 1610 it reached the search region and descended to 2400m (7800ft). They could not descend lower due to Malaysian aircraft searching at the lower altitude of 1500m. It returned to base at 1820.
- Tomorrow morning there will be two flights in the search area.

Here's a picture of today's defined route:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...trunghieu6.jpg

- 2 ships, HQ954 and HQ637, are also on their way to the search area.

I have tried to make sense of the "oil slick" picture but will not make any speculations. Judging from other oil slick pictures, they look very different depending on sun angle, cloudiness and other factors.

Edit: clarify

There are some 'organizations' that are known to use stolen passports of various nationalities that refuse to 'confirm or deny' knowledge of incidents. Also suddenly realizing that the aircraft was Malaysian and not China Southern would affect the wish for self-publicity.

Somebody mentioned the plane possibly being hijacked. Hijackers could have demanded transponders off and "low" flying. Primary radar can tell more.

If there really is no debris in the water, this could be one of many leads for investigators.

Depending on the wish of the hijackers the plane could have ended up anywhere. A Nigerian (OR was it Ethiopian?) plane was commanded to Australia but of course ran out of fuel and crashed in the ocean.

This does seem far fetched because hijackers usually want to speak to someone, unless they intend to do serious harm like 9/11.

But as many other have posted... the sudden and unannounced disappearance is unsettling....

It may prove interesting on whether the passengers with the stolen passports originated in Kuala Lumpur, or connected from another flight(s), and their seat assignments.

A few people have asked questions about the depth in the likely impact area. The Gulf of Thailand is relatively shallow, and the depths in the area of interest are around 50m. When the debris is located, a full salvage a la TWA 800 is possible.

Specifically, the depth in the area of last radar contact is a fairly even 51m. It is five miles due west of a 1945 wreck on chart 93018 (which after brief googling seems a probable misplacement of the USS Lagarto wreck) for the navigationally challenged. Doubtless someone can be bothered extrapolating a parabolic trajectory from last known position to give a more accurate estimation of debris field position.

Chart 93010

Chart 93018

(edit: someone beat me to it)

Thread Review
 

Lots of interesting speculations. Let's review a few.

1. It appears the plane was lost in a catastrophic occurrence at altitude.
2. If so, did local fishing boats see anything?
(Early posts indicated lots of boats, but with poor communications capabilities)
3. If a catastrophic occurrence was it:
A. A bomb--would have to have been a good one and well placed.
1.Why has no one taken credit for it yet? (I know some speculations here)
B. Airframe failure? Does 777 have a pressure dome?
C. Descend and take me somewhere.
1. I think the reporting sites would show the a/c at 0 feet if transponder/other equipment made inoperative.
2. If this scenario, where is the plane?
D. Inflight collison with a practice radar intercept/drone/meteorite

China Visa
 

China normally requires a visa. These are carefully checked including matching the passport photo to the visa applicant.

There is a special no-visa 72 hour transit arrangement for some cities including Beijing. This requires an onward ticket to even get onto a flight to the city. The visa / onward ticket status of both stolen passports will be known to MAS and will be very interesting whatever it turns out to be

China 72-Hour Visa-free Transit in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenyang and Dalian

Search area
 

SaturnV

It's quite different from AF447 : potential area is maximum 400 km by 400 km in shallow waters (as per Wikipedia : mean depth is 45 meters and max depth is 80 meters Gulf of Thailand - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).