MH370 - Missing

[Montague S]

I'll be sure to be asleep come 1030 tomorrow night...like CH7 would have a clue about what happened to MH370.

[Stuart Trevena]

Hi a All,

I have one question - why aren't they using side scanning sonar to locate it, in the main search area?

There has been no mention of this as yet, only 40 ships which could be running over it with the speed and the number of ships in area, so they won't Be hearing the pinging of the black boxes.

There has been too much speculation on radar, as to last position, and nothing about on sonar searches.

Start using sonar and you will find it somewhere along the flight path!!

Are other aircraft actually listening as well, as they overfly the area??

Soo many questions, but no answers!

Stuart

[Greg Hyde]

Side-scan sonar has it's limitations over a large area. Unless you have a target area then it is near useless. It will pick up anything on the ocean floor including shipwrecks, shipping containers etc.

Have a look at the "Search for HMAS Sydney".

Also, no aircraft ditching and/or hitting the water won't leave floating debris. (Yes bits fell off, including an engine when the A320 ditched into the Hudson)

The pinners from the black boxes only have a limited range and are only designed to assist investigators to find the boxes within a wreckage field.

When AF407 went down it's position was found by analysing tidal movements and the location of floating debris. The investigators got lucky when the tail broken off when the aircraft hit the water.

[Adrian B]

So based on the coordinates in that letter, be it genuine or not, that places the rig about 100-125 kms east of Con Son Island off Vietnam, which has a sealed strip albeit about 1 km in length.

Plausible?

[JamesL]

I would be pretty sure that the RAAF P3s would be using the MADboom on the aircraft to conduct similar duties.

[Philip Argy]

The lack of a rational approach, the unco-ordinated media appearances of separate authorities, the refusal to answer seemingly innocuous but relevant questions about ACARS etc all create a truly sickening situation for anyone who imagines that the global aviation community can get its act together in a time of crisis.

A logical early step given the lack of wreckage anywhere near the last contact point would have been to go to where the a/c would have run out of fuel had it continued on autopilot as programmed. That would assume an hypoxia event or other crew incapacitation the cause of which may have also caused a comms or power failure, but that's more plausible than some of the many theories coming out of Malaysia now, with the military's disavowal of any radar tracking just the icing on a very poorly baked cake.

[Tamara S]

not going to post the news link im sure you can check the sites.

There is breaking news coming out of China that a Chinease satellite has found three debris fields and the largest floating object is about 24X22 meters and there located at the same location as the transponder was lost.

The bit that is interesting is these sat images were taken the day after it went missing? Why has it taken 5 days to check them?

Only reason im posting this is because its close to where tracking was lost and the size of the object.

[Ian Garton]

I think this release by China is the most likely site. They wouldn't release this unless they were sure.
This has been a political minefield for the countries in the region, and it looks like Malaysia has been caught out of their depth, and are very embarrassed.

[Tamara S]

6°42'00.0"N 105°37'48.0"E

[Tamara S]

Things are starting to leak....

appears acars was still sending engine data as NTSB/FAA investigators suspect the aircraft remained in the air for over five hours after dissapearing.