Malaysia Airlines Flight Vanishes

[Keith B]

Could this be it?
http://www.voanews.com/content/sobbing- ... 74987.html

Objects seen on satellite are off the coast of Perth. Would put the plane way off course if true.

But would be out in the ocean really close to the new search area that had been established.

[RoyGBiv]

Lost shipping container?

[strider67]

Lost shipping container?

[ Image ]

Isn't debris from the Japanese tsunami still washing up on the California coast?

Just sayin'...

[jmra]

Lost shipping container?

[ Image ]

Trying to figure out what part of the plane would still be afloat that would measure 80 feet. According to the experts about the only part of the structure that would float would be a wing. Any part of the cabin area would have sunk by now. The problem with it being a wing is the total wing span (wing tip to wing tip) is only 119 feet. 20 feet of that total is fuselage which means each wing is a max of 50 feet. Of course the only way a wing could be floating is if the engine detached from the wing.

[Dave2]

Lost shipping container?

[ Image ]

Trying to figure out what part of the plane would still be afloat that would measure 80 feet. According to the experts about the only part of the structure that would float would be a wing. Any part of the cabin area would have sunk by now. The problem with it being a wing is the total wing span (wing tip to wing tip) is only 119 feet. 20 feet of that total is fuselage which means each wing is a max of 50 feet. Of course the only way a wing could be floating is if the engine detached from the wing.

IIRC, the picture was taken on Sunday. Does that change anything?

[Beiruty]

I say keep looking. It in the next 48 hrs those floaters would be checked out.

[jmra]

Lost shipping container?

[ Image ]

Trying to figure out what part of the plane would still be afloat that would measure 80 feet. According to the experts about the only part of the structure that would float would be a wing. Any part of the cabin area would have sunk by now. The problem with it being a wing is the total wing span (wing tip to wing tip) is only 119 feet. 20 feet of that total is fuselage which means each wing is a max of 50 feet. Of course the only way a wing could be floating is if the engine detached from the wing.

IIRC, the picture was taken on Sunday. Does that change anything?

I doubt it. Historically the fuselage sinks quickly. In most floating debris fields what will be found is seat cushions and airtight luggage. Typically a broken off wing will float for a while if it still has fuel in it. That should not be the case if this is a wing from the plane in question as it would have been very low on fuel.

[Jaguar]

I say keep looking. It in the next 48 hrs those floaters would be checked out.

The batteries in the black boxes are dying so they need to look at every lead as quickly as possible. Once the recorders stop pinging the chance of finding anything goes way down, and in this case may drop to zero, that is if the plane is even in the ocean.

[RoyGBiv]

Lost shipping container?

[ Image ]

Trying to figure out what part of the plane would still be afloat that would measure 80 feet. According to the experts about the only part of the structure that would float would be a wing. Any part of the cabin area would have sunk by now. The problem with it being a wing is the total wing span (wing tip to wing tip) is only 119 feet. 20 feet of that total is fuselage which means each wing is a max of 50 feet. Of course the only way a wing could be floating is if the engine detached from the wing.

wing span is 199 feet 11 inches. So it's not inconceivable that the floating debris at 75 feet is a wing. Time will tell.

[jmra]

Lost shipping container?

[ Image ]

Trying to figure out what part of the plane would still be afloat that would measure 80 feet. According to the experts about the only part of the structure that would float would be a wing. Any part of the cabin area would have sunk by now. The problem with it being a wing is the total wing span (wing tip to wing tip) is only 119 feet. 20 feet of that total is fuselage which means each wing is a max of 50 feet. Of course the only way a wing could be floating is if the engine detached from the wing.

wing span is 199 feet 11 inches. So it's not inconceivable that the floating debris at 75 feet is a wing. Time will tell.

You're correct. AP had it incorrectly labeled as 119'11" instead of 199'11". Subtracting the fuselage this would give a maximum length of less than 90' for a detached wing however it would have had to lose the engine which one would expect to result in additional loss of footage on the wing and would still have to have a fair amount of fuel in the wing in order to have buoyancy. We know that the plane was not refueled before it's flight so it didn't start with a full tank and would have been nearly empty if it flew the distance to where the object was observed.
Hopefully time will tell and this doesn't become an unsolved mystery. The families need closure.

[RoyGBiv]

You're correct. AP had it incorrectly labeled as 119'11" instead of 199'11".

I've been watching the news for too long. Something about 199' 11" stuck in my head.
Watching that stat on the news graphics I keep thinking.... "Sooooo close, you'd think they'd have found a way to add another inch"

[cdc101]

You're correct. AP had it incorrectly labeled as 119'11" instead of 199'11".

I've been watching the news for too long. Something about 199' 11" stuck in my head.
Watching that stat on the news graphics I keep thinking.... "Sooooo close, you'd think they'd have found a way to add another inch"

Maybe the 200' mark pushes them into a different insurance coverage bracket. ;)

Serious question...does anyone know how they were able to find the Air France plane's black boxes 2 years after that one crashed off the coast of Brazil (I think it was Brazil?)? I keep hearing that the pings only last for 30 days...did they juist get lucky with the Air France plane to find them after so long? I realize they at least had an idea of where to look for those.

Still seems like a needle in a haystack for that too.

[RoyGBiv]

You're correct. AP had it incorrectly labeled as 119'11" instead of 199'11".

I've been watching the news for too long. Something about 199' 11" stuck in my head.
Watching that stat on the news graphics I keep thinking.... "Sooooo close, you'd think they'd have found a way to add another inch"

Maybe the 200' mark pushes them into a different insurance coverage bracket. ;)

Serious question...does anyone know how they were able to find the Air France plane's black boxes 2 years after that one crashed off the coast of Brazil (I think it was Brazil?)? I keep hearing that the pings only last for 30 days...did they juist get lucky with the Air France plane to find them after so long? I realize they at least had an idea of where to look for those.

Still seems like a needle in a haystack for that too.

Without looking it up, IIRC, they at least had a debris field to use as a starting place. They had only a short time between the last known transponder position and the crash location. So, they knew the location of the AF crash within some reasonable surface area. In the Malaysia case, there's not a shred of debris located so far and the area of possibility is a circle that encompasses a surface area roughly 6 times the size of the USA. Yes, they are doing things to narrow that down, but, it sure seems like educated guessing, rather than any certainty.

[Keith B]

Serious question...does anyone know how they were able to find the Air France plane's black boxes 2 years after that one crashed off the coast of Brazil (I think it was Brazil?)? I keep hearing that the pings only last for 30 days...did they just get lucky with the Air France plane to find them after so long? I realize they at least had an idea of where to look for those.

Still seems like a needle in a haystack for that too.

A life jacket, a seat and a fuel slick was found the next day by search aircraft. This was close enough to the time of the airliner going down they could calculate current flow to track back and get a general point of where the flight would have impacted the water. The longer it goes with this flight any debris they find will be hard to track back the amount of distance and direction it traveled to estimate the impact point.

[Jaguar]

Serious question...does anyone know how they were able to find the Air France plane's black boxes 2 years after that one crashed off the coast of Brazil (I think it was Brazil?)? I keep hearing that the pings only last for 30 days...did they just get lucky with the Air France plane to find them after so long? I realize they at least had an idea of where to look for those.

Still seems like a needle in a haystack for that too.

A life jacket, a seat and a fuel slick was found the next day by search aircraft. This was close enough to the time of the airliner going down they could calculate current flow to track back and get a general point of where the flight would have impacted the water. The longer it goes with this flight any debris they find will be hard to track back the amount of distance and direction it traveled to estimate the impact point.

This, and they got lucky. The black boxes were not found for almost two years even with them knowing where the crash happened. Luckily the plane sat in a relative flat geological region of the Atlantic and they knew where the crash happened early on recovering large components and bodies, so the search using underwater unmanned vehicles was concentrated in a fixed area.

This flight has been gone so long without any evidence of where it is that even if they recover debris the actual resting place on the bottom could be hundreds of miles away with little hope of finding the black boxes.