MH370

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

This is an interesting article; wouldn't it be awful if they didn't find any wreckage because they wouldn't listen to an alternative option of search area and also due to other interested parties actually not wanting anything to be found?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... been-found

[Ex-Ascot]

I think we all know what happened. We just need the boxes to prove it.

Cape, I agree. Probes, maybe not. I predict that sometime in the future there will be technology to detect metal objects on the seabed from satellites.

I will put money on it. You may have to pay my young widow though.

[Rwy in Sight]

Ex-Ascot , if

we all know what happened.

you mean an unlawful act by the crew, I like to point out that if such an act took place (like in MS804) why there was no claim of responsibility by any group in any case?

However I completely agree about new satellite capabilities in the future!

[Pinky the pilot]

However I completely agree about new satellite capabilities in the future!

Wouldn't surprise me if there is such a capability already and it's just that it is 'classified top secret' for now!

Although one would think that something would have leaked out about such a thing by now. The old saying still holds true....."Two People can keep a secret only if one of them is dead!"

And is anyone else more than a little cynical about the sudden offer from the Malaysian Government to offer a reward for anyone finding the aircraft?

I'm firmly convinced that some of the 'authorities' do not want it found. Ever!

[probes]

IF they do NOT - due to financial claims, then?

[Pinky the pilot]

Than would be part of the reason probes, but I suspect that the main reason would be that if the aircraft was found they might be able to accurately determine what exactly happened, and that it would reflect poorly upon the Airline. The 'loss of face' mindset.

And yes, if it was found to be a deliberate act; A Lawyers banquet would be certain!

Just my 2 cents worth.

[probes]

...they might be able to accurately determine what exactly happened, and that it would reflect poorly upon the Airline. The 'loss of face' mindset.

Meaning - they are quite sure the result won't be favorable for them? Willing to take the 'risk' that it might actually show the crew and airline in good light? It could have been something else than a deliberate act by the pilots, however tiny the probablilty, after all?

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

The final report has been published; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... nal-report

Sad that the relatives of those on board will be unable to come to some form of closure. Also very frustrating for those trying to determine what actually happened. Just shows that no matter how advanced technology gets, it's not infallible.

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

Looks like the search is not over yet after all.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41691794

[ian16th]

This must be right. It was in today's Daily Mail

MH370.jpg (25.28 KiB) Viewed 749 times

Malaysia Airlines flight 370 (pictured) vanished en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8 2014 with 239 people on board.

[limeygal]

Well that explains why they couldn't find it-they were looking for a jet. More ace reporting from the Daily Fail

[Capetonian]

Once upon a time I used to add a 'comment' to the Fail article when they made idiotic blunders such as this. I gave up very quickly as they simply get buried under the deluge of idiotic and childish comments from morons.

[Cacophonix]

Time is running out for the Texan team still scouring the seabed for the wreckage of MH370.

From the Daily Beast...

The new search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has reached a critical point, just as the fourth anniversary of the jet’s disappearance on March 8, 2014 is reached.

In what may well be the last chance to solve the mystery the Texas-based deep sea search company Ocean Infinity has so far scoured 8,880 square miles of seabed in an area of the remote southern Indian Ocean selected as the mostly likely site to find the remains of the Boeing 777—without finding anything.

This means that they are very close to having covered the 9,700 square mile primary target area, roughly the size of Vermont, considered the most promising. It includes three specific places identified as “hot spots.”

The search to find an answer to aviation’s greatest mystery that took the lives of 239 people is a race against time: as the Southern Hemisphere winter approaches the sea conditions become steadily worse.
This shows the radical technology deployed by Ocean Infinity’s vessel, Seabed Constructor, in greater detail than any made available before.

The video also discloses for the first time the two data sources on which the new effort is based. The first, already familiar, is derived from the reverse tracking of more than 20 pieces of debris that turned up on beaches in the western Indian Ocean and southern Africa. The second is an amazing chance discovery made in 2017, that The Daily Beast can now reveal in more detail.

Early in 2017 the French military released images retrieved from one of their satellites that was covering the southern Indian Ocean in late March, 2014, two weeks after the jet disappeared. These images showed a field of debris drifting on the surface some distance northwest of where Australian oceanographers had by then projected that the jet hit the water—in fact, precisely where it would have drifted in the time elapsed before caught by cameras on the satellite.

At the time, resolution on the satellite images was not sharp enough to identify the debris as from Flight MH370, but the Daily Beast has examined a later study by the Australians that shows that they were able to pick out 70 objects of which 12 were identified as probably man-made and 28 possibly man-made.

The convergence of this data, showing where and how that debris would have drifted over the two weeks, with the data derived earlier from modeling the path of recovered debris was so striking that it reinforced the confidence of Dr. David Griffin, leader of the Australian oceanographers, that they had identified the most promising area to search “with unprecedented precision and accuracy.”
It is concerning that with most of this area now searched nothing of significance has been found.

Seabed Constructor uses a swarm of eight highly advanced robots—autonomous underwater vehicles, AUVs. These can sweep the fearsome seabed terrain (including hundreds of volcanoes) at depths of up 3.5 miles for missions lasting as long as 60 hours and cover the area far faster than any undersea technology previously used, and that has been vividly demonstrated by the area covered since early January . However, this search would not be taking place at all had not Ocean Infinity taken the gamble of committing to it on the basis of “no find, no fee” in a contract with the Malaysian government.

The three nations who undertook the original 27-month search, Malaysia, China (more than half of the 239 people on the jet were Chinese) and Australia, bailed in January, 2017. The Australian government said there would be no new search “in the absence of any credible new evidence leading to a specific location of the aircraft.”

Yet the truth was that Dr. Griffin’s team had at that moment already produced much of the data pointing to the sites now being searched by Ocean Infinity.

The search is by far the most challenging ever faced in seeking the solution to an unexplained air disaster. The new Ocean Infinity video, produced by them to demonstrate the scale of their effort to relatives of the victims, glosses over the harsh reality of the conditions now being faced by the crew and technicians onboard Seabed Constructor. It shows experts in the ship’s command center analyzing detailed images of the seabed as it comes in from the robots. The scene is calm and stable, as though taking place on shore.

But already, at this time of the year, the seas can be seriously emetic in their effects, to say the least. One vessel in the previous search recorded a wave height in the middle of a storm of 70 feet, with only eight to nine seconds between the peak and the trough.

To endure conditions as extreme as these the crew had to be strapped to their bunks and had to frequently take anti-sea sickness medication. Some were injured in falls. In one 28-day mission the conditions were so bad that no searching could be carried out at all.

Ocean Infinity’s deal with the Malaysians promises an award to them of between $20 million and $70 million depending on the extent of the wreckage that is discovered. Finding and recovering the most crucial piece of evidence, the jet’s flight data recorder, is the highest priority.

The Malaysian government has said that the black box and all the debris that is retrievable will be delivered to them and that their officials will be responsible for seeing whether the data in the recorder has survived four years or more at such extreme depths.

But the Malaysians have a poor record of being transparent in dealing with the investigation and the search. The reports they release on the current search are notably perfunctory. In contrast, the reports released on the previous search by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau were more frequent and far more detailed.

Ocean Infinity is committed to a 90-day search, which will be complete, according to their schedule, by the end of April, when the weather window closes in. Once the primary search area is covered the vessel will move further north and cover as much of this unexplored seabed as possible in the time left.

On Saturday Malaysia’s head of civil aviation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, attended a remembrance ceremony for the 239 victims held, somewhat bizarrely, at a shopping mall near Kuala Lumpur. He told a group of next-of-kin “The whole world has new hope to find the plane for closure. We want to know exactly what happened to the plane.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/fo ... spartandhp

Caco

[ian16th]

Maybe they should give the job to the that guy from Micro$oft!

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

Yet another ''theory'' as to the location of the aircraft. This one requires your tin foil hat.

From the DM; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... Earth.html

[OFSO]

It's probably on the moon, parked alongside that B-52 that I saw in an Absolutely Genuine photograph on the front page of some newspaper when I was in the US years ago...

OK here it is, but photo shows it's not a B-52. Phew ! For the moment there I thought it was a hoax.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/62440303@N04/5683785190

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

This is a good roundup of the leading theories as to what happened; at the end of the article the latest theory is literally shot down in flames.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... -the-plane

[probes]

Well, at least we know for sure "Hypoxia is a deficiency of oxygen."

The Earth IS a vast planet, after all?

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

They still haven't found it and time is running out.

From the Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... earch-zone

[Slasher]

Here are some of the hairbrained theories I've heard over the years...

"The 777 was taken by a UFO. The flaperon broke off when it by accident hit the spaceship's lower entry doors."

"The aircraft was carrying something very valuable in its cargo hold. At a certain point the captain depressurised the plane and steered it to the Indian Ocean. A foreign operative, posing as a passenger, took a crew oxygen bottle and broke into the cargo hold where he took the valuable cargo. Together with the captain they parachuted from the aeroplane and picked up by a foreign power at a preplanned position and time."

"The Americans had tested a new weapon on MH370 leaving no traces and the flaperon was simply a bone thrown out there to take everyone off the scent."

"The aircraft was remotely controlled by the Chinese through VLF and turned it away because the scientists on board knew too much about China's plans for the SC Sea."