The aircraft flew for over 7 hours so it was either on autopilot, or it wasn't too "messy".

Fire suppression bottle.
 

[Notice the way it's strapped]
http://aae-ltd.com/wp-content/upload...e-Assembly.jpg

And compare to the marks on these two other photos of the object that washed ashore :
http://vnews-assets.s3-website-us-ea...dium_29222.jpg

http://vnews-assets.s3-website-us-ea...dium_29224.jpg


The article these photos come from :

vnews - An object suspected to be an explosive washes into Baarah

"Maldives Police Services (MPS) reported that reports of such an object were filed with the department yesterday evening around 5.30 pm and that Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) had taken in the object.

MNDF Spokesperson Major Hussain Ali said that the object is an explosive and the MNDF Northern Area team is active in the area."



My only question is : what amount of BS are we willing to eat in the name of "security" ?

As Benjamin Franklin said : "Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
And i'm pretty sure that the right to be told the truth is included in freedom.

Big words put aside, i see 239 other good reasons to demand that officials stop treating us as idiotic children. Shame on the mass media for not even have begun to try that.

Comms
 

Maybe they transmitted but no-one heard ?

Innocent use of a deletion tool.
 

I'm sure there are plenty of people using deletion tools for completely innocent purposes.

A friend of mine who works in the AV world uses one all the time. He has SD cards to record SD and HD video. After each show he archives the material from 6 or 7 cameras to his hard drives. If he uses a brand new 32Gb flash memory card he can record about 31.5Gb of HD video onto it but when he archives it, deletes the files and puts the card back in the camera, he can only record 29.3Gb of HD video onto the card.*

I'm sure we have all at some point tried to write a 7.2 Gb file onto a 8GB USB drive only to be greeted by an 'insufficient space' message. Despite checking that everything has been erased then trying to rewrite the file, it won't have it even though you wrote a 7.9Gb file to the same pen drive two days ago when it was new.

*Data figure are purely for illustrative purposes only. ;)

Search and Rescue
 

Bono good call:D


Search and Rescue
I've done it for 10+ hours in the North Sea North of Scotland looking for a missing yacht. Nothing seen
I've done it looking for downed flight crew in different parts of the world flying from a carrier. Nothing seen.
I've been in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea in post cyclonic seas and even on an aircraft carrier it was less than pleasant

SAR is a monotonous, puke making and potentially thankless task. Add the weather in the southern Indian Ocean, the shortening days as winter approaches and you have a monumentally difficult task.
Don't expect instant results

Tedious as it may be, locating the wreckage through floating debris then backtracking to the crash site is still going to be the quickest way. Anything else is just a guess.

All Inmarsat data can do is take us down 90% of the track south. That final 10% which can't be predicted by hard data represents a hell of a lot of ocean. :(

@ pace

"The most likely for me is still a massive depressurisation caused by a fire with the fire extinguishing with the depressurisation and messed up communication and navigation!"

i thought that the possibility of fire had been debunked on more than one occasion in this thread by those with a pretty authoritative knowledge?

Drone usage in search area.
 

Given the specialised equipment fitted to drones;

Would ship launched or land based controlled long range drones not have a useful part to play in searching for debris, once in the area they could stay on station far longer time than any MPA.

@LFRT

Looks to be evidence of of burning...is this some kind of fake ? Maldives ? I thought we were long past the idea of an area anywhere near the Maldives!?

There has to be a serial number on that thing somehwere....hope it can be rule in/out asap.

Secure deletion
 

I fear the Mahatma's profession may have induced a suspicious default state of mind. For many years, both personally and professionally, I've used a readily available simple utility to periodically securely delete cached data.

I have a couple of reasons, neither of which implies mischief. One, cached data is a great way to introduce malware which can evade AV applications at boot-time - or at least before the OS and utilities are fully up and running - and secondly to free up space, particularly where it's limited by the currently quite small SSDs in general use.

I've also installed this on many other people's PCs where I know their understanding of security issues are very limited and taught them to run it before shutting down. No point in leaving, for example, cached email addresses, passwords etc lurking about. PCs get stolen too. Obviously this procedure isn't bullet-proof however the use of these utilities is, in my experience, far from being automatic evidence of illegal behaviour.

I agree - read the report on the Egypt Air MS667 772 cockpit fire, which happened on the ground in 2011. The fire was so sudden and spread so fast that the co-pilot had to immediately vacate his seat, and captain could not extinguish the fire with the cockpit fire-extinguisher(s). The cockpit was immediately filled with smoke, and the fuselage was badly holed.

http://wfol.tv/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Egyptair.jpg

If all that happened in flight, the captain might just have had time to disconnect the AP and turn the aircraft to a haven before being overcome by fire & smoke. If the aircraft then flew on completely unguided it might have developed large phugoid oscillations which would account for the large changes in altitude reported from some sources.

After MS667 Boeing mandated modifications to the co-pilot oxygen system which had probably caused this fire. Does anybody know if the MH370 aircraft had received this modification?

Fire suppression bottle.
 

LFRT
The appearance of the fire suppression bottle is superficially similar, but their are differences. The Maldive item is a mine, not a fire suppression bottle.
I'll bet that the dimensions are different as well. The mine has a circumferential weld that is not visible on the fire bottle. The angle of the "ports" (fuses) is wrong for a fire bottle. There appears to be the remains of an anchor cable attached to the mine.

I'd suggest that if the modification was "mandated", the answer might be yes......

I don't really buy this theory. A fire which on one hand is so severe and fast spreading that it incapacitates the pilots and compromises the structural integrity of the aircraft, yet on the other allows the aircraft to be a) maneuvered and b) continue flying, straight and level, for several hours seems quite implausible.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17...a.jpg~originalhttp://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17...1.jpg~original


How large is it? It looks a lot like part of a Biomarine Re-breather.


http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17...a.jpg~original

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17...2.jpg~original

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17...3.jpg~original

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17...4.jpg~original

Garage man -How do you know the plane is not largely intact?The ocean is full of debris and none has yet been identified as mh370.Even on fuel starvation the fly by wire system on the 777 would not allow a stall and the plane could have impacted at low vertical speed and 200kts airspeed or lower assuming cmd engagement and no pilot input.Waves may have broken off bits but the fuselage could be largely intact?

Lost,
Good find! That second photo really looks like what they found. Hard to tell the size of it. Yours looks like about the size of a soccer ball...?

@LFRT

Those "spheres" are very different in construction.

The mark around the one that washed up is a welded join.

I think the one that washed up is more likely a mine than anything off an aircraft

Its not a mine. I reckon its a fire bottle; it certainly looks like the ones I have flown. From a 777 not sure. Fire bottles are an absolute nightmare to transport, due to their IATA classification. I believe they are classed as both toxic/non flam gasses as well as UN Class 1.2.

Having flown a couple, I can testify to the large amount of DG paperwork required to fly them. the UN class 1.2 is due to the explosive squib which pierces the burst disk to initiate the release of agent.

http://quick.aero/sterling/blog/how-...on-explosives/

http://aircraftengineering.wordpress...ag/wheel-well/

Sizing wise, could be the poo fire bottle? No reason to suspect its from the 777 though, as its such a long way from the primary search site! If the serials match MH370, there are going to be big headaches as to where the jet went in.

http://www.b737.org.uk/images/firebottles.jpg

Turbulence
 

>Indeed, despite the revelations from the DFDR and CVR when they were recovered that turbulence was not involved, there were still posts claiming that the crash was due to severe turbulence.

But no one suggested that given the storm line turbulence was not present, or that flying attitude without instruments, or intermittent or conflicting instruments, at night without a horizon, would not be more difficult than smooth air. Turbulence probably contributed to confusion in an already confused situation. And my bet is that turbulence would be about the last thing pilots would mention. "Gee its turbulent."

Where is Debris
 

Let me use your intuitive assumption in this case, if it is not possible for a big aircraft to stay intact after ditching in waves, coupled with the fact that Inmarsat is pointing in the right direction, we should have found atleast some debris by now. You have to keep in mind that search effort is also going on using satellite imagery by multiple nations and TomNod,not counting ships that arrived into aearch area from different directions.
1. Big plane loaded with passengers, luggage and cargo
2. Thousands or more floatable plastic parts

If the aircraft did not stay intact (a highly logical assumption), atleast some debris should have been spotted by now. However, lack of any debris discovery anywhere (Aircraft,Satellites, Ships) argues that in this case the plane possibly did not break apart.