China No.1 leading official television CCTV has censored the No.84 record of the boarding list during boardcasting.

The image on twitter shows the name belongs to a muslim chinese who may came from Xinjiang where may have connection to the terrorist attack in Kunming several days ago. He's an artist, joined an artical conference at KL with 23 other artists from China.

A lot depends on the marine search capabilities in the area. Beijing has the resources, but whether the Vietnamese want them in their waters is another question.

An aerial search may turn up debris; then you have to get a boat to pick it up.

Once debris is located, there will be a starting place to search for the pinger, but that equipment has to be brought in to the area.

Local fishermen might turn up something, but do they have radios?

None of the reports coincide geographically with the initially reported lost contact two hours after take-off.

I wonder if the flight was due to make a position report at that time and hence it was the time when ATC reported it lost. i.e., sometime after the last radio transmission from the flight, but well after the time of impact.

Noted the following from Yahoo News Singapore
 

UPDATE [12:37]: Tuoi Tre, a leading daily in Vietnam, reports that the Vietnamese Navy has confirmed the plane crashed into the ocean. According to Navy Admiral Ngo Van Phat, Commander of the Region 5, military radar recorded that the plane crashed into the sea at a location 153 miles South of Phu Quoc island.

UPDATE [11:32am]: VN Express, Vietnam's largest news site, reports that Vietnam Emergency Rescue Center just announced it has found signal of the missing plane at 9.50am 120 miles South West of Ca Mau cape, the Southern-most point of Vietnam.

The signal is believed to be the ELT (Emergency Locator Transmittor) , which can be activated manually by the flight crew or automatically upon impact.

Framer. There was a software fix.

http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/24550/a...503722_001.pdf

That's the report.

It is all a little bit stinky here, unless there was some massive electrical failure I can't see how there was no voice call/CPDLC/ADSC emergency sent - unless it was all rather abrupt..

Very few fishermen have radios. Vietnamese Coast Guard has state of the art, very capable fast oceangoing SAR vessels. Vung Tau, not far from where to a/c reportedly crashed, is the centre of the offshore industry in VN; lots of helicopters there, large anchor handling tugs/supply ships with equipment for salvage etc.

9M-MRO fitted with Rolls Royce engines.

And the point is??

Prior to contact being lost, which is reported as being just over 2 hours into the flight, along a route that typically takes 5½ hours to fly, the aircraft would therein be approaching it's halfway point along the route and that would (if it was following a great-circle track between KUL & PEK), logically, put it somewhere over the Gulf of Tonkin, it being an area of sea which is 300 miles (500 km) long, 150 miles (250 km) wide, and up to 230 feet (70 metres) deep.
That said, having just looked at the airway chart, they might well have been flying on airway M771, which would put them east/south-east of Hainan Island, over the South China Sea.

That might also fit with the report that the Chinese are reported to have launched two search vessels from harbours that are relatively close by to that same area.

http://www.dropbox.com/s/fz7y3r38775ijfs/MH370.PNG

Seems to be a lot of conflicting information, but there are now at least 4 sources (including the Vietnamese navy) putting it in the ocean between Malaysia and Vietnam, barely 40 minutes into its flight.

http://i.imgur.com/uoLG4bp.jpg

not looking good unfortunately...

SHUT UP ABOUT THE LACK OF RADIO CALLS
 

Radio calls to ATC are the LAST thing you consider doing when faced with a major problem of any sort concerning the aircraft. People on the ground cannot usually help quickly.

Professionals adhere to a 3 step sequence....Aviate....Navigate....Communicate.

After all, what is the point of wasting essential time talking to people who are not in a position to help you.

(Sorry, ATC, you are essential in crowded and tricky environments, but not to immediately help with tech/weather/terrorist/passenger issues, mostly tech.)

So in a case like this, the CVR and FDR may give all the info needed to solve the questions. Radio calls may not.

I don't mean to speak for others, but I would have thought from my reading that most of the radio call related comments were speculating that the abscence of comms are indicative of a situation where the tech crew definitely haven't had time to make a call - that is, they probably agree with you that the crew were at the beginning of AVIATE NAVIGATE COMMUNICATE.

That being said, I'm speculating on speculation and I dislike speculation at the best of times. Fingers crossed for good news from the search.

Roy, if you are leaving your assigned altitude either in or out of controlled flight would you not consider a mayday call? Granted there may be many compelling things to do first, like donning O2 masks etc.

However, the absence of data from the transponder, data link, ACARS, Vox etc all point to a sudden catastrophic event.

That is all fair and true, but over the ocean and going down 'aviate' and 'navigate' become somewhat redundant... Logic would suggest a 'come find us' of some sort would cross one of their minds. Unless, like I said, opportunity wasn't presented from FL350 down..

The departure time quoted in the media was most likely pushback time. Airborne time would be 15 to 30 mins later.

On today's flight plan it's about 1:00 flight time from WMKK to the VVTS FIR boundary at DUDIS and another 1:10 to the Sanya FIR at DONDA. So after 2:10 mins flying time they would be in Chinese airspace.

So it must have occurred just before they entered Sanya?

That's assuming they used M771 which they normally do.

@deptrai:


That's probably right. I was unaware of offshore oil exploration in Vietnam until I read about it in last month's Journal of Petroleum Technology. It's quite extensive, which means there are probably a lot of state-of-the-art deep water robots nearby, and hopefully up to date mapping of the sea floor. Maybe even seismic sensors.

John, I fly that route on a regular basis and communication with ATC is good.
VHF is available for most of the time. The 777 would also have been established on CPDLC data link using ADS-C connection with VVTS. ( unless it was u/s )
There is only a small time spent on HF and even then the HF quality with Singapore is excellent most of the time.

If this happened in Vietnam airspace as posted then they would have been on VHF with Hochiminh and identified on radar.

I'm guessing as we all are but something catastrophic must have happened for the crew not to have said something to someone.

Agreed. Especially with HCM control. Spent many nights trying to get them to answer any radio call with little success, especially that time of night, and their CPDLC can be spotty. They very easily could have flown for a while with no radio contact with HCM.

Nitpicker, I will pick the Nit with you here. There are some nights flying along at 0300 along M771 when HCM is darned near impossible to get hold of on either 120.7 or 133.05, and CPDLC can be down. Maybe better during the daylight hours.