If the plane has been binned in the sea, it is possible that what happened will never be known, which seems astonishing in the present day.

Wasn’t there an incident a few months ago involving an aircraft having a near miss with a Chinese missile test?
Any chance they may have scored a hit this time?
And then covered it up?

No chance at all. Do you think the US pay no attention to such missile tests?

Surely the US can’t know about everything that happens in the world?

They know about this thread………..

^ superb!!!!

No, but I should think they know all about any Chinese missile test, and any explosion of a large airliner near military facilities.

I don’t understand that picture… Who’s house is that?

Isn’t it kaesae’s house?

Isn’t it kaesae’s house?

Are you saying that the Parcelforce man programmed him to do it?

Pretty awful to see that woman dragged away in the news tonight and the total evasion of any actual facts by the officials is worrying in the extreme.

Pretty awful to see that woman dragged away in the news tonight and the total evasion of any actual facts by the officials is worrying in the extreme.

But they don’t know anything! I can understand the frustration of the relatives but for them to expect facts when, to put it bluntly no-one has a **** clue, is not really helping the situation…

Part of the problem is that the wild speculation has got mixed in with what very few facts there are and made even more of a mess of it.

BBC and others now picking apart that Chris Goodfellow’s theory…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-26640114

Part of the problem is that the wild speculation has got mixed in with what very few facts there are and made even more of a mess of it.

I completely agree – and it’s making everyone nuts.

The inescapable truth is that the plane to a huge, unscheduled diversion off course, without relaying any sort of message to anyone about it. There was then a later message from the copilot (“Roger that, goodnight”)

This indicates that the pilot was either unaware, under duress or complicit.

The above sounds very much like a hijacking to me.

Aussie PM says

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26659951#TWEET1077208

A 24m piece of something spotted floating in the sea…. the 777 has a wingspan of 61m and the fuselage is about 6m so that would be right for a wing, wouldn’t it?

yeah. Bummer. It might not be, but I was/am hopeful they were all being held up in a wharehouse in Kryswazikistaniland and might come home..

pictures on guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/20/mh370-two-possible-objects-may-have-been-found-in-australian-search-zone

I read that apparently the search planes are getting strong radar returns on their approach to the site.

Pictures are inconclusive innit. I’m still fantasising about the stolen plane and passengers all still living..

Downloaded the images to imgur to stopp hiogging the amsa server..

links to big images here

24m object
5m object

TBh I am underwhelmed, there must be millions of lumps like this floating around the ocean, just becasue they are in the expected crash zone does not mean anything. Could be simple coincidence..

Do plane wings float, then?

Yes, the number of containers alone bobbing about in the ocean is pretty amazing.

I’d have thought that a section of wing wouldn’t float [just under the surface].
Indeed could be many things such as a yacht – 95% of them are white underneath and are quite likely to float just below the surface due to trapped air pockets.
Still clinging on to the hope that they’ll be found on land somewhere 🙁

I assume that sealed, empty fuel tanks have quite a bit of buoyancy?

This bit of the vertical stabiliser tailfin thingy of af447 floated..

Covering all the bases there 😉

sorry I fogot “uppy sideways flappy thing”..

Anyway here’s hoping it isn’t lumps of MH370 and they are safe(ish) hostages somewhere.

I wonder if there is a hostage negotiation going on right now and they are just keeping it quiet as they sometimes do.

Ahhh yes, some fuel stored in the wings. 🙁

I dont think there is any fuel in the “tailfinverticalstabiliseruppyflappysidewaysthing” though?

I reckon it was/is a whale

toys19 – Member

I wonder if there is a hostage negotiation going on right now and they are just keeping it quiet as they sometimes do.

as nice as that might be I think its very unlikely

for one thing it would require a lot of people to keep quiet about it, not least the kidnappers

assuming that the satelite data is accurate I think the bottom of the southern arc is by far most likely ultimate destination of the plane

if it had headed in pretty much any other direction it wouldve been picked up by radar somewhere, especially in the northern arc over some of the most fought over parts of the world

the released satellite images are a bit bollocks, im sure they have satellites that could count the hairs on your head

if it had headed in pretty much any other direction it wouldve been picked up by radar somewhere, especially in the northern arc over some of the most fought over parts of the world

Given all the chat about radar holes and piss poor organisation/transnationalcomms I do not think this assumption is true.

I am certainly no expert but im willing to bet that the chinese pay more attention than the malaysians to what flys overhead
and that the americans and russians keep a keen eye over the ‘Stans
also the last estimated location based on fuel and the satelite ping put it within a 1000km of Bagram airbase

I’m no expert either, but I dunno if it is a total as you think..

the released satellite images are a bit bollocks, im sure they have satellites that could count the hairs on your head

they do, but there isn’t a great deal of point in stationing them over the southern oceans…

No, but it’s still a hollow section with a fair amount of volume, presumably reasonably well sealed as you want the air to flow around it, not through it. Oh and good call on “tailfin” – that is at least a far better and more specific term than “tail”.

Regarding the wing tanks, it’s surprising just how big they are – I had a bit of involvement with conversion of some VC10s to tankers and I remember once one of the workers had to be hauled out of a wing tank as he’d been overcome by fumes – he was working completely inside the tank. Not only that, but on this set of conversions they weren’t bothering to put in fuselage tanks as they didn’t make that much difference to the fuel carrying capacity.

No, but it’s still a hollow section with a fair amount of volume, presumably reasonably well sealed as you want the air to flow around it, not through it.

Yup, I don’t need convincing that these thigns will float.. There are other septics though..

Generally wings themselves don’t float unlike other smaller hollow sections. This is because the “wing spar” runs across each wing into the “cross spar” central section of the fuselage and into and across the other wing. This part is immensely strong, because it carries the whole of the planes mass (static + Dynamic), and if you have an impact big enough to rip the wings from the fuselage, the main spar tends to get “peeled” out of the wing sections, which results in massive internal damage to the fuel tanks, and hence generally a lack of buoyancy.

Of course, an impact at a certain speed and angle could foreseably just perfectly snap one wing off intact, but generally (in planes the size of the 777) doesn’t happen like that. It also needs to be enough of an impact to break the shear pins that hold the engines onto the wings otherwise their mass will sink the wing.

There is also a huge difference in impact profiles between the 3 main possible impact vectors.

1) high speed vertical dive (>6000ft/min) (pilot suicide. loss of control etc) Nose first, doing >400Kts KIAS = unlikely to be any big parts left

2) high speed “pancake” inpact (>4000ft/min) (like AF447, entered from a high altitude upset into a fully developed stall) = again, only really small bits left, bits like Vert Stabiliser survive because they are on the top side of the aircraft)

3) Relatively gentle and controlled ditching into sea (~1000ft/min)(Ethiopian 961) = a few big bits left, but even then the main fuselage breaks up

4) Perfect controlled ditching (MH370 into Hudson) A much smaller plane, into flat calm water, with a high experienced glider pilot at the controls. Proves you can do it, but shows how difficult it is to do without causing massive airframe damage.

Any which way, at this time, this, and pretty much everything we “know” about the loss of this 777 is just speculation……