Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 vanishes without trace

[campanula]

not sure why it is assumed the plane has landed in the sea - there is an awful lot of jungle where a plane could conceivably land.

 

[spring-peeper]

not sure why it is assumed the plane has landed in the sea - there is an awful lot of jungle where a plane could conceivably land.

It's a really big plane....

 

[Callie]

well, onboard were 20 people who worked for a company who made cloaking technology and other futuristic weapons......

its gonna turn up in Grimsby

 

[Pickman's model]

its gonna turn up in Grimsby

they'll use the cleethorpes donkeys to haul them in

 

[Barking_Mad]

Confusion over claims it turned and flew over the Straits of Malacca.

There’s considerable confusion around the theory that flight MH370 veered back towards Malaysia after it stopped communicating with ground controllers. The Malaysian air force chief, General Rodzali Daud, has been quoted as saying that the flight made a sharp left turn, and headed back across Malaysia and out over the Malacca strait.

The New York Times quotes Tengku Sariffuddin Tengku Ahmad, spokesman for the prime minister’s office, as contradicting that account. He said that senior military officials, with whom he had checked, said there was no no evidence that the plane had crossed back over the Malaysian peninsula, only that it may have attempted to do so.

“As far as they know, except for the air turn-back, there is no new development,” Mr Tengku Sariffuddin is quoted as saying. The Times says he described the earlier remarks by the air force chief as “not true.”

 

[existentialist]

well, onboard were 20 people who worked for a company who made cloaking technology and other futuristic weapons......

Given how often these purveyors/practitioners of the esoteric and conspiratorial seem to turn up on Notable Flights, one might almost think there must be something in their esotericism and conspiratorialism.

Do any of them ever get onto flights which successfully arrive at their destination, I wonder?

 

[TomUS]

Naw, if they did that the news services would have to go to all that hard work finding something else to distract us from our own huge problems.

Yea, bread & circuses.

 

[Dr Jon]

Would the slow decompression theory fit with the sudden disappearance from the radar?

 

[Vintage Paw]

At this point, I hope the decompression theory is true. It's much more comforting to think that the people on board just slowly lost consciousness before anyone knew that anything was wrong.

 

[2hats]

Would the slow decompression theory fit with the sudden disappearance from the radar?

Slow so they never noticed? In that case the aircraft would have stayed in the cruise at 35kft (autopilot selected) till fuel exhaustion somewhere past Beijing. Except they would notice as cockpit klaxons would trigger before they became unconscious. The aircraft would still be generating ACARS messages and squawk in response to secondary radar.

If it was decompression it doesn't look like it was that alone.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Hmmm, website is down at the moment!

It's been working for a while now. I've looked at nearly 400 squares/images/pixels/whatever they are, and only come across clouds so far

 

[2hats]

It's been working for a while now. I've looked at nearly 400 squares/images/pixels/whatever they are, and only come across clouds so far

Someone has gotten excited over a couple of boats:

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1103537

 

[Vintage Paw]

To be fair, if you're not sure what you should be expecting to see it looks a bit plane-shaped. Don't mock. People are trying to help.

 

[2hats]

To be fair, if you're not sure what you should be expecting to see it looks a bit plane-shaped. Don't mock. People are trying to help.

I'm not mocking. I'm making the point about trained and untrained observers (again).

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Someone has gotten excited over a couple of boats:

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1103537

To be fair, if you're not sure what you should be expecting to see it looks a bit plane-shaped. Don't mock. People are trying to help.

Fair point, but someone did put up a picture of an oil rig (with a glaring big H on it) and ask "oil rig?" It really couldn't be mistaken for any part of a plane, so not sure why they put it up

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

To be fair, if you're not sure what you should be expecting to see it looks a bit plane-shaped. Don't mock. People are trying to help.

and it is a very long and tedious job looking at the images, so fair play to them

I reckon I'd get excited at seeing a boat after looking at hundreds of pictures of plain blue or clouds

 

[purves grundy]

its gonna turn up in Grimsby

I'll be there in a couple of weeks, will have a look around

 

[weltweit]

Not very impressed with radar, despite quite a lot of radars looking towards this plane's path, none of them seem to have much idea where it is!

 

[Barking_Mad]

All the more confusing by the day. If the search is as badly conducted as their updates it's no surprise they've not found anything...

The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight was descending into confusion and acrimony on Wednesday as Vietnam called off part of its search pending further information from Malaysia.

As families spent a fifth day waiting for news of flight MH370, which vanished on Friday with 239 people on board, disagreements within the international search operation were surfacing and Malaysian officials failed to clarify the aircraft’s last known movements.

India announced it had joined the search for the missing jetliner on Malaysia’s request, widening the net to an area near the Andaman Sea.

Vietnam said it had halted its air search and scaled back a sea search while it waited for Malaysia to offer more detail.

“We’ve decided to temporarily suspend some search and rescue activities, pending information from Malaysia,” Vietnam’s deputy minister of transport, Pham Quy Tieu, told AFP.

Asked about the claim that the plane had last been detected over the Strait of Malacca – suggesting it had crossed the entire peninsula – he replied: “We’ve asked Malaysian authorities twice but so far they have not replied to us.

“We informed Malaysia on the day we lost contact with the flight that we noticed the flight turned back west but Malaysia did not respond.”

Malaysia’s air force chief denied telling a local newspaper that on the day it disappeared the aircraft was last detected at 2.40am on the western coast of the Malay peninsula by a military radar – a detail confirmed to news agencies by at least one unnamed military official. That would mean the plane was known to be in the air more than an hour later than previously thought and had not only turned around but flown right across the peninsula – helping to explain why the search had expanded from the area between Malaysia and Vietnam to cover a large zone to the west.

In a statement Rodzali Daud said he had been asked whether the plane had been detected off the west coast and had merely reiterated that the flight might have turned back.
Malaysia’s head of civil aviation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, said he could neither confirm nor deny contact on the west coast, saying that the country was still investigating and looking at the radar readings. Confidence in the Malaysian authorities’ transparency had hardly been helped by an eariler response when asked why crews were searching the Strait of Malacca: “There are some things that I can tell you and some things that I can’t,” Rahman said.

On Tuesday he described the disappearance as “an unprecedented mystery” in aviation.

It is possible that the military radar reading detected an object but that it cannot be identified conclusively as flight MH370.

On Wednesday, pressed by relatives of Chinese passengers on what information the military had given civil officials, the Malaysian government’s envoy to China told them “now is not the time” to reveal it, Singapore’s Straits Times reported.

He did disclose that the last words heard from the flight were “All right, good night.” That was the crew’s response to Malaysian air traffic controllers who had told them the plane was entering Vietnamese air space and air traffic controllers from Ho Chi Minh city would take over.

Deepening the confusion, Colonel Umar Fathur of the Indonesian air force told reporters that Malaysia had informed it the plane was above the South China Sea, about 10 nautical miles off Malaysia’s east coast, when it turned back and then disappeared. That would place its last confirmed position around 110 nautical miles closer to Malaysia than previously thought.

Meanwhile Malaysian authorities have reportedly complained that Vietnamese officials have confused matters by issuing premature reports that they have found possible debris. In all cases the material has turned out to be unrelated.

The Telegraph reported that the United States Federal Aviation Administration had warned four months ago of a potential weak spot in Boeing 777s that could lead to a loss of structural integrity, but experts have maintained the aircraft has a strong safety record.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Another report of debris, this time a possible life raft. Might well be something and nothing... Port Dickson is on the west coast, down from KL airport.

Fishermen have reportedly found a life raft floating in waters off Port Dickson, a southwestern Malaysian port town.

The discovery raised hopes of a breakthrough in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, but authorities could not retrieve the raft.

The fisherman notified the maritime authorities after they found the floating object bearing the word "Boarding" around 10 nautical miles from Port Dickson, the New Strait Times reported.

"We managed to tie it to our boat as we feared it would sink due to the damages," 40-year old fisherman Azman Mohamad told the Malaysian daily. As the raft was very heavy the fishermen could not lift it, and waited for the arrival of authorities.

Port Dickson, south of Kuala Lumpur, is on the Strait of Malacca, on Malaysia's western coast.

Malaysia's air force chief has denied reports that quoted him as saying the military radar had tracked the jetliner over the Strait of Malacca.

The search personnel of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) in Malacca rushed to the area, but the raft is said to have sunk in the sea by the time they arrived.

Attempts are now being made to salvage the craft, according to reports.

Similar findings have been reported on many previous occasions during the four-day-long search, but hopes were dampened each time as the objects were declared unrelated to the missing aircraft.

The Beijing-bound passenger aircraft, which originated in Kuala Lumpur, vanished on Saturday with 239 people on board and remains untraceable.

 

[Barking_Mad]

A press conference by the Malaysian authorities on the latest on the search for the missing plane is due to get underway any moment in Kuala Lumpur. Those expected to appear included Malaysia’s defence and acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, and its civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman. The Chinese ambassador Huang Huikang is sat in the front row.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Have the looked in the fridge? Whenever I lose the remote control or my keys they always turn up in the fridge.

 

[2hats]

If the search is as badly conducted as their updates it's no surprise they've not found anything...

Or their press conferences?

 

[brogdale]

I'm coming to this thread late, so apols if my question(s) are dumb/have already been covered.....but....if, as has been reported this morning, the Malaysian air traffic controllers spoke with the captain at the point of handover to Vietnamese ATC, why don't they (the Vietnamese) appear to have any record of where the plane entered their control and where it was heading?

Also...heard on R5 that an oil/gas (?) platform worker on a rig has emailed his eye-witness account of 'something burning in the sky for about 10 to 15 seconds' that he saw on the night in question.

 

[ffsear]

I see some idiot has used this as an opportunity for self promotion.

2 years ago and she decides to report it now

http://news.sky.com/story/1224215/malaysia-airlines-investigates-missing-co-pilot

 

[Barking_Mad]

Reports of a body being washed ashore off the east coast of Indonesia. This is on the other side of the Malacca Strait from Kuala Lumpur.

 

[frogwoman]

 

[brogdale]

Reports of a body being washed ashore off the east coast of Indonesia. This is on the other side of the Malacca Strait from Kuala Lumpur.

Link?

 

[Dr Jon]

Have the looked in the fridge? Whenever I lose the remote control or my keys they always turn up in the fridge.

Nah. Aliens beamed it up.

 

[Barking_Mad]

China Daily reporting the body is in a life jacket. No confirmation.

I hope this comes out in English...

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://t.co/rpycY5iiId&act=url

Edit: Location in the link suggests body found in Penang up the coast from KL. THis is different to the first post which suggested a body was found on the other side of the Malacca Strait.