Big bits of wreckage sink and small bits of wreckage spread over large areas. There's nothing sinister in not finding any bits yet.

Look at AF447, it took two years, but the wreckage was eventually found and the events (if not an explanation for the causes) was found. The experience of searching for that will surely help here, and a good part of the South China Sea is relatively shallow.

The "door" seen floating in pictures yesterday looked nothing like a 777 door. It didn't have a slot "window", it had a square "window".

Heck that's a strong possibility.
 

I wrote the South China Morning Post article.

Its seems from the eye witness report that the plane was heading back to K.L, and if that's the case they are looking in the wrong place for the wreckage.

Surely if the plane was shot down, by Vietnamese or the Malaysian's - both btw have trigger happy MIG fighter pilots, they would come clean.

If the plane was hijacked and they knew it - and was heading back to K.L. someone could have made the decision to shoot it down. It then would have been, a Malaysian Air Force decision backed by the government.

Surely though the government would not have made that decision without contacting a Chinese Premier (else it would be an international incident, and could spark war).

There are over 6000 news sources for the same information. No-one knows very much, but someone knows exactly what happened to this flight.

There is of course another possibility that I hinted at.

It is possible to get below ground radar, and turn off your transponder, and fly VFR. If that was the case the plane could be anywhere now, especially if this had been planned and refuelling stops have been made.

Already if this is Al-Qaeda its the most daring hijacking since 911 but not following the same pattern.

Or is it? Even when the first plane hit the WTC the only reason we knew it was a hijacking was:
1/ we saw it
2/ people made mobile phone calls from the plane

In this case they would have been out of mobile coverage, no one would have been awake, it was dark, so no-one could see what was happening.

It made no sense to ditch the plane. It did/does make sense to fly the plane to an undisclosed location, and make an announcement to the world, release x,y,z or pay us x billion for the plane and the passengers.

As every day goes on with no concrete evidence that a plane ditched, there is a stronger possibility that it didn't ditch, or there is a conspiracy i.e. someone is not telling us the truth.

There are in this region earthquake a network of thousands of monitors under the sea catching the slightest movement. I wonder if anyone has checked that data.

awblain Sorry but that is wrong. It didn't take 2 years to find the wreckage - bits were found within a few days ( including 50 bodies). What you meant to say that the data recorders took 2 years to be found - a very different thing.

From the current BBC story:

Maybe that's why no-one's found anything?
Cmdr Marks has been inadequately briefed.

As each day goes on it becomes more bizarre, where the hell is it? It is not a Cessna for God sake, and on Australian TV tonight we had the head of the American Aviation Accident Bureau, saying it was either a stall, or a bomb. Stall? What a high speed stall, surely this aircraft is not capable of a high speed stall? Is this aircraft capable of getting into coffin corner?

So we have the following factors:

1) Transponder ceased working.
2) Aircraft turned.
3) Garbled radio message with another aircraft.
4) Possible fisherman sighting flying low.
5) Possible businessman sighting flying low.
6) USA P3 Orions searching Malacca Straight.

So something very traumatic was happening in the cockpit, but not enough to stop the plane flying at that time. Obviously at some stage it did stop but the potential search area is immense.

The traumatic cockpit even could be:
1) Cockpit fire or other major mechanical/electronic event.
2) Terrorism.
3) Crew suicide attempt.

awblain is quite correct.

Some bodies and some floating debris were recovered about 5 days after AF447 went down.

The wreckage (i.e. the fuselage on the sea bed) wasn't located until almost two years after the event.

Someone mentioned in an earlier post that maybe it came down on land, in Malaysia. There are mountainous (2000m) and heavily forested areas running north to south right across the peninsula, these areas are sparsely populated in the north near Kota Baru. If it came down somewhere there it will take some finding.

SAR
 

Two items of interest, as local sunset approaches in approx 45 minutes:

- HQ Search and Rescue Aviation Administration reports Hong Kong authorities have notified a "large area of debris" reported by an HK aircraft at approx 60km SE of Vung Tao, some 500 km away from IGARI i.e. the last known position of MH370.

[This is a new area but lies fairly close to planned route of MH370. I looked briefly at the area and it seems there is a stretch of fairly rural coast east of the big Vung Tao city. This may explain why no reports until now, though the report also says there are many fishing boats in the area].

Local authorities have been summoned to take a look.

- Vietnam has moved two modern CASA 212 maritime search aircraft , 8981 and 8982, from the Hai Phong area to the Tan Son Nhat airport of Ho Chi Minh City. These aircraft should have better search capabilities than the AN-26 aircraft used so far for large area searching.

Makes you wonder if the public are being kept out of the loop.

This a/c has 'lost contact', but what exactly was its last contact?


Was it just a radio call, position report or something similar, or was it actually being seen on radar, and then seen to no longer be on radar?


If the latter, and still not found, things are indeed unusual.


If the former, it may have flown for many miles, thus searchers looking in the wrong place- may not even be in the sea.

Oil
 

As suspected the oil found wasn't from the plane.

Missing MH370: Oil slick not from plane, says MMEA - Nation | The Star Online

So what precisely do you find sinister about US P-3's assisting in the search? If we have we have P-3s in the region, it seems an natural and obvious thing to have offered their assistance. You're aware that the purpose of a P-3 is locating things in the water, right? and as such, would have relevant capabilities to offer? I'm at a loss for how you possibly interpret this as indicating a conspiracy.

Not sinister.
Get a map out.
MH370 disappeared on the right hand side of the Malay peninsular.
The USA P3 Orions are searching on the left hand side.

This implies that the searchers know the plane did not break up immediately the transponder stopped working, but that it continued flying.

- not 'sinister', but if you knew where the Malacca Straights are you might raise an eyebrow?

I would consider it to be sinister if P3s were not helping with the search.

I would hope that clandestine agencies whose role it is to take regular radar images of the ocean surface would also help if they could.

A Squared, before you go off half-cocked, have a look where the Straits of Malacca are: miles away from the current search position and on the other side of Peninsula Malaysia. What in effect the authorities think is that it may have ended up there: that means it flew the whole way.

If this hasn't been specifically mentioned by the authorities then yes, one could well wonder that we're being kept out of the loop.

They're RAAF AP-3C Orion's searching Malacca Straits out of Butterworth, not US.

It is absolutely strange if those AC's are looking for something in the Malacca Str. Unless they are on a whole other mission...

If there's a hint of a conspiracy it'd be the mere fact of a search going on in The Malacca Straight. Not who's in fact searching - at least that's my take.

It's not a very logical place to look for a plane gone missing en route from Kuala Lumpur til Beijing - specially considering the last position of the plane as reported by FR24.