Potential wreckage location
 

With location of potential wreckage spotted in Vietnamese paper it would put MH370 on M765 meaning if they took a right turn at IGARI onto M765 and then kept going, that would be roughly on that path.

Putting it out there, could a 777 could glide about 30 minutes from 35,000 ft as if engines went out at IGARI that would mean just over 200 nm @ ~450 kts which is around that spot?

Length of time to locate wreckage
 

There are conflicting posts in this thread about the length of time to locate wreckage in AF447 - which is (at this stage) the obvious comparable incident.

Some have said it was several days, some the following day.

I have just looked at the BEA accident report, and they seem to say wreckage was found only after 5 days (6-Jun vs accident date of 1-Jun), although it is not clear as they do not make explicit reference to FIRST wreckage sighted.

Can anyone corroborate this?

Malacca straits
 

The straits of Malacca is one of the worlds busiest shipping lane with hundreds of ships transiting daily, not counting local traffic, ferries and fishermen. If a large plane were to crash, there would be many witnesses and debris would be spotted within hours.

"Do you know that they are not?"


If they were they would have reported it. Makes them look like they are covering all the bases.

The aircraft appears to be off course.. Speculate as to why this may be but I fear it can only be an intentional act given the lack of all communication. (Both verbal and digital)

With no apologies to the conspiracy people:

History tells us that the simplest explanation is the most likely.

the Australian P3Cs took off from Darwin this morning to join the search.

something is very wrong
 

We can go around in circles for another 48.hours but this aircraft can not possibly have disappeared. This is relatively busy airspace thouroughly covered by Mil and Civ radar. If the 777 simply fell out of the sky some authority either knows where it happened or if she went off course before the event. Either way we need to simplify and stop speculating. Stop discussing what may have happened and start looking at where the 777 could now be nearly 48.hours into the incident.

I would likely to remind everyone that the last VERIFIED change of heading was from 015 to 040 a minute before transponder signal was lost, corresponding to the intended flight path.

The possibility of a return was hinted by the chief of the Malaysian Air Force early yesterday, but has been downplayed and unconfirmed ever since. Any scenario based on this information is pure speculation at this stage.

MH370 did not break up or crash at the point where the Flightradar24 feed ends.
Otherwise something would have been found by now.
So it kept flying with the transponder off.
But why no mobile phone contact?
1) Too far from any cells.
2) Passengers incapacitated by depressurisation.
The latter theory would fit in with the garbled radio transmission.
It would be interesting to know the cause of such a decompression event.
Bungled Hijack attempt? This might also explain the transponder stopping transmission.
Structural failure from the wing repair?
Small explosion?

So where is the 777 now?
If it had crashed over land the ELT would have activated and been seen by satellites. This is why they are not searching the landmasses.

So it is at the bottom of the sea, where the ELT transmissions can't be seen.
But the reality is that it could be anywhere in a radius of well over 1,000 miles.

philbky comets
 

re The similarity to the Comet 1 YP accident off Elba is in some ways striking. For all our modern comms and tracking equipment, once a return/downlink has gone, it's gone and what happens to the airframe and all conveyed therein is as clear in 2014 as it was in 1954 until someone like a fisherman comes up with a report of seeing the incident, and that could be days, or genuine wreckage/bodies surface.

agreed philbky

also sister ship comet YY also took off from Rome CIA going to JNB some months later and went missing off stromboli and hardly any thing was found

The possibility that they are looking in the wrong place certainly seems plausible. It is also not unheard of for it to take several days to locate wreckage, Adam Air 574 for example.

It took them 73 years to find the Titanic at the bottom of the sea!

I've seen a couple of references to a garbled radio transmission. I apparently missed that in the previous discussion. Anyone know where that was originally posted? Or have a link for information on this?

Well, if they would be at the surface. But the CVR/FDR does not float if they are stuck in the fuese of the plane which sinks to ground.

Underwater the P-3 only would pick up the sound if they would deploy the sonnar buoy.

Thinking on the size of the area - if you actually have no bloody idea of where to deploy the buoy, it would be almost impossible to pickup the signal.

Remember, AF447, the signal was captured by a submarine on its sonnar!

MISSING MH370: Pilot: I established contact with plane


MISSING MH370: Pilot: I established contact with plane - General - New Straits Times

But what is the simplest explanation for what we do know?

All signals immediate cut
No seen explosion (by eyewitness/satellite)
No claim by militant group
No floating debris found after 2 1/2 days
Inconclusive radar track after signal cut

• Hijack, C/Breakers pulled crashed immediately
• Hijack, C/Breakers pulled low altitude crashed some time later
• Cockpit explosion/decompression
• Avionics bay explosion/decompression
• Pilot / First Officer suicide

Even if one of the oil slicks did prove to have come from the aircraft, it still does not mean the aircraft crashed there.

In the event of total engine failure, surely the pilots would have dumped their fuel to reduce weight and improve gliding performance?

On another point, perhaps the various communications antenna on a 777 (or routing of the cables to them) are located in such a way that a single event could knock out all communications, radar transponder etc. together.

Assuming that the same event knocked out the engine controls and the navigation lights, the pilots would attempt to glide to the nearest suitable runway, which would probably be KBR (Sultan Ismail Petra Airport).

Assuming the eyewitness report is accurate then the navigation lights were disabled in the unknown incident but the landing lights were still operable and they were turned on. The position of the sighting is consistent with the aircraft trying to line up seaward of Bachok for a landing at KBR.

If the gliding aircraft ran out of altitude before reaching the airport it could have ditched at low speed resulting in no break up and therefore little or no release of debris. If the fuel had already been dumped there would be no oil slick either.

Damage from either the ditching or the earlier incident could have caused it to sink rapidly. Maybe even some bags containing mobile phones floated free.

Speculation but seems plausible. I'm no expert - any of the experts here think such a scenario is feasible?

re Length of time to locate wreckage
 

2 days
at 2 june 2009
"1230 GMT: Debris is sighted by Brazilian search planes looking for the missing airliner 650km (390 miles) north-east of Brazil's Fernando do Noronha island."

at 31 may 2009
2200 GMT: AF 447 takes off from Rio de Janeiro's Galeao International Airport, heading for Paris Charles de Gaulle.

Deaf, I don't suppose anybody has thought to ask, the TSV refueller?