Dark
 

Just for reference, it is now dark over the search area:

Day and Night World Map

the garbled radio exchange seems to have disappeared a bit, i am sure if it was more important or genuine, we would have heard a lot more about it

As someone said it took a long time to find Adam Air 574 because of the uncertainty of the last location, rest assured it will be found

Unfortunately the 777 is in the sea, it hasn't landed anywhere at some secret location for all the to be well

Debris of the Air France aircraft were found only after FIVE days.
Initially it was stated that at June 2 (the next day) debris were found. As can be found on numberous websites.

However, this proved to be wrong. This article is dated June 6:
Brazilian officials retract statements that items pulled from the Atlantic were remains of Flight 447. Likelihood of discovering the cause of the crash appears to be fading.

Debris found not from Air France flight after all, Brazil says - Los Angeles Times

They will find something sooner or later.

I think you would most likely be hard pressed to find one flight anywhere in the world where someone wasn't travelling on a fraudulent/stolen passport

only the issuing countries computers would flag up the discrepancies, and the handful of other countries that have invested to resources to to access interpols data on the ground.

as to the 5 no shows... airlines try to overbook every flight by 15-20% because statistics show that about that number of pax will not board for whatever reason, stuck in traffic, slept in, denied boarding, forgot passport.

sonar?
 

i am amazed they have not got subs in there yet with sonar or ships with sonar buoys listening out already or have they?

not really been reported as ?

FWIW, aircraft do occasionally vanish without trace.

G-AGWH was found after 50 years.
A russian built freigter was recently discovered in the Congo jungle +/- 20 years after going missing.
A 737 is believed to have sunk into a swamp.

There are several other similar mysteries, it does happen but hopefully this one will be found soon, until wreckage is found the circumstances and causes will remain a mystery.

We don't actually know that it did 'crash into the South China Sea'. Might have severed comms 'deliberately' descended at Vne until a few hundred feet, using RA and GPS proceeded to a pre-planned landing place. I'm not ready in my own mind to give up those souls as lost.

Do Rolls Royce monitor the performance of its Trent's in live time? If so, wouldn't this data at least give an indication of when they stopped in live time?

"as to the 5 no shows... airlines try to overbook every flight by 15-20% because statistics show that about that number of pax will not board for whatever reason, stuck in traffic, slept in, denied boarding, forgot passport"


I think you are missing the point. Their bags were already checked and on board but removed by MH before the aircraft departed. So it is highly relevant to ask who were they? Did they ever show to collect the bags? What was in the bags?

They had a press conference just now,

Latest is:

1) Oil traces in the ocean are from a ship, not an aircraft


2) Stolen passport users are not of 'asian appearance' as previously reported. He says they look like (I'm not joking) "Mario Balotelli"


3)Debris of some sort spotted east of Ho Chi Minh (formerly Saigon). Surveillance vehicles en route and should arrive there tomorrow (aka a few hours from now)

@philipat, it's not especially unusual for passengers to fail to make it to the gate and be offloaded. It happens all the time.

Port Vale - those co-ordinates are only just over 100 km from Ho Chi Minh City and 50 km offshore, in what I would imagine would be very busy shipping waters. Also would suspect radar coverage there, and this would be appx an hr further into the flight than the last reported contact? EDited to add PortVale has added a map to his post which I was unable to do.

Misinformation
 

All over the place sites are reporting things like this: "Aviation sources in China report that radar data suggest a steep and sudden descent of the aircraft, during which the track of the aircraft changed from 024 degrees to 333 degrees. The aircraft was estimated to contact Ho Chi Minh Control Center (Vietnam) at 01:20L, but contact was never established." (Crash: Malaysia B772 over Gulf of Thailand on Mar 8th 2014, aircraft missing) ..

However, I think they are just misreading the track log which STARTS with 333 degrees ... Flight Track Log ? MAS370 ? 08-Mar-2014 ? WMKK / KUL - ZBAA / PEK ? FlightAware

Unless time goes backwards?

With so many countries, aircraft and ships involved can someone tell me who coordinates the search, decides how long to carry on looking (an earlier post made reference to the Air France wreckage took two years to find), and who pays for the costs incurred? Or does each individual governments pick up their own costs?

"@philipat, it's not especially unusual for passengers to fail to make it to the gate and be offloaded. It happens all the time."


In my experience in Asia, that is a lot for a single flight. It may be nothing but it is important to know who they are, did they later collect their bags or just disappear etc. My point was that this was not, as the other poster suggested, just a case of "Check-in" no shows because their bags were checked and on board, but of course offloaded prior to departure. I also note that KUL is a great airport for making very short connections (As is SIN) which is why I use it a lot as the connex times to Europe are very good in both directions and I have never had a problem with bags not making the transit.

@PortVale - found NOT to be a debris trail from MH370 - just ullage from a ship.

I assure you, it's normal for people to check in and no show at the gate. They get lost in the airport, too much time in Duty Free, what ever, it happens all the time.

@yssy-myelin this is a new report as of today, not linked to yesterday's reported oil slick. You can see in the above photo small debris maybe?

Hell. Have you seen how far this is from the actual (supposed) position of the aircraft.

And see how close to the coast.

How can an airliner of that size enter into Ho-Chi Min controlled area without being seen? If the airliner was going down in this area, Ho-Chi Min would have had this on the PSR for sure. And I would assume that if the aircraft would not repsond to controller atempts to contacts, they would scramble at least two Jets two intercept. No one penetrates controlled area, not answering, no transponder. This would certainly lead to an intercept.

Surface water currents in the Gulf of Thailand
http://www.fao.org/docrep/field/003/ab751e/AB751E06.gif

The debris drift would not go in this direction ;-)

This is just rubbish of some freighter ...