Post: #226

It is possible that a piece of the airplane has been found.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/world/....html?_r=0

Quote:PARIS — American investigators have concluded that a large object that washed up Wednesday on the shore of Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean, came from a Boeing 777, making it likely that it was debris from Flight 370, the Malaysia Airlines jetliner that disappeared in March 2014.

A person with knowledge of the inquiry into what happened to the plane said that American government officials and experts from Boeing based their conclusion on photographs and videos. The investigators noted that no other Boeing 777 was known to be missing, suggesting that the piece was part of the missing aircraft. The person added that the Americans were waiting for French aviation experts to examine the object, and determine if it contained a serial number matching that of the Malaysia Airlines jet.

A French official with knowledge of the investigation said that the object appeared to be a wing flap. The official said that the object was about 9 feet long and 3 feet wide, and that it appeared to have been in the water for a very long time.



The French aviation safety bureau, known as BEA, said in a statement on Wednesday that it “is studying the information on the airplane part found in La Réunion, in coordination with our Malaysian and Australian colleagues and with the judicial authorities.” It added that “it is not possible at this hour to ascertain whether the part is from a B-777 and/or from MH370.”

The French official said that the authorities were in the process of designating a laboratory in France where the object would be taken for examination.

Agence France-Presse reported that the object was found by people cleaning a beach, and cited a witness who said it was partly encrusted with shells.

Aviation experts who viewed published photos of the object said it strongly resembled a part of a modern jetliner wing known as a flaperon, one of the control surfaces that pilots use to guide the aircraft in flight.

Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, said it seemed clear from the photos that the object “is a wing flap, and it’s about the right size.”

Noting that investigators should be able to tell quickly whether the object came from a 777, Richard L. Aboulafia, an analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va., said that “if that happens, there is only one possibility.”

Malaysia’s transport minister, Liow Tiong Lai, said on Wednesday afternoon that it was too early to know if the debris was from Flight 370 but that he had sent investigators to Réunion.

“We hope we can identify it as soon as possible,” he told reporters at the United Nations, where he was attending a Security Council meeting on the other Malaysia Airlines disaster last year — the downing of Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine.

Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer specializing in ocean currents who did extensive computer simulations last year of where Flight 370 wreckage might float, said that it was possible that pieces might now be reaching Réunion, more than 3,000 miles from the plane’s last known location.

But the plane would have had to enter the water off northwestern Australia, he said. A series of separate analyses of the satellite “pings” coming from the aircraft’s engines in its last hours of flight have all pointed to its coming down off southwestern Australia, many hundreds of miles farther south — and that is where investigators from Australia, Malaysia and China have concentrated their search efforts.

Currents in the Indian Ocean move fairly quickly from east to west near the Equator, Mr. van Sebille said, but those to the south move more slowly. Debris entering the ocean in the primary search area would be much less likely to have drifted as far as Réunion by now.

Martin Dolan, the chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, said in a telephone interview that “the drift models we have are that it is possible, not probable, that debris would wash ashore at Réunion.”

Mr. van Sebille noted that even if the object found on the shore came from Flight 370, that did not mean that any other parts of the plane would be found nearby. “The way the ocean works is like a huge pinball machine,” and the plane’s wreckage “could be spread across an enormous area,” he said.

Flight 370, with 239 people on board, veered off its planned route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and stopped communicating with ground controllers shortly after midnight on March 8, 2014. It flew westward across the Malay Peninsula and then southward over the Indian Ocean, and it is presumed to have crashed there in very deep water, killing everyone aboard. Months of extensive air and sea search efforts have so far failed to find any trace of the aircraft.

Boeing said in a statement that it remained “committed to supporting the MH370 investigation and the search for the airplane” and would share its technical expertise with safety investigators, but it declined to comment specifically on the Réunion object.

Post: #227

I just saw that. Does it give the Diego Garcia theory more credence since the debris was found all the way at an island in the Western Indian Ocean?

Or does it just mean that the debris had plenty of time (1.5 years) to float among the ocean currents from the south Indian Ocean to that island?

I hope they kept hourly/daily ocean current data in a large database somewhere, so they should be able to trace this piece of debris all the way back to the point of impact. Where this data leads should tell us which is more consistent - the Diego Garcia theory or the Inmarsat data. Should be very interesting.

Post: #228

Cleanslate, it certainly does. Diego Garcia about 47* NE from Reunion. Roughly halfway between Reunion and Sri Lanka.

Definitely something shady with all of this.

Post: #229

The news was saying something about it lends support for the idea that it crashed near Australia. Something about the currents going counter clockwise.

Also, there were sea shells on the debris. So they may try to figure out where it makes sense to have gotten them.

Post: #230

(07-29-2015 08:28 PM)samsamsam Wrote:  The news was saying something about it lends support for the idea that it crashed near Australia. Something about the currents going counter clockwise.

Well, sort of. Here's the most current (ha ha) map of Indian Ocean currents in that area...



And the big map of the major currents of the Earth's oceans:



So while it's consistent with a Diego Garcia impact, it's not inconsistent with a southern Indian Ocean impact either. The West Australian current merges with the South Equatorial current in a counterclockwise direction.

Post: #231

It's been over a year. Shit will float a LONG ways in that time.

Hard to make a claim where the plane was going off of this.

Post: #232

And to think this would have been solved had Malaysian Airlines coughed up the $50 subscription fee to have Rolls Royce activate the GPS trackers in the engines. It's amazing how shit that seems like it should be common sense really isn't.

Post: #233

Breaking news - confirmed that the wreckage found was from MH370.

Post: #234

It's now been over 2 years since this plane went missing on the 8 March 2014 and they still haven't "officially" found it.

I don't think there is another case in the whole history of aviation of a plane this big, with this many passengers (over 200), that is still missing.

Post: #235

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-36863527

Quote:MH370: Search for missing plane to be suspended not shut down

22 July 2016

The search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will be suspended rather than shut down if the plane is not found in the current search area, officials say.

China, Malaysia and Australia had previously agreed to end the search in the southern Indian Ocean if no "credible new information" was found. The plane, with 239 passengers and crew, disappeared in March 2014. Many of their relatives have long pleaded with authorities for the search to continue until the plane is found. The announcement came after a meeting of ministers from the three countries in Malaysia in which they acknowledged that with less than 10,000 square kilometres of the search area remaining "the likelihood of finding the aircraft is fading". Almost 180m Australian dollars ($135m, £101m) has been spent on the search so far, making it the most expensive in aviation history. The search, led by Australia, has been using underwater drones and sonar equipment to scour a 120,000 sq km search zone in the southern Indian Ocean where the plane is presumed to have crashed. Nothing related to MH370 has been found in the area.

However, a few pieces of debris confirmed to be from a Boeing 777 have washed up on various islands thousands of miles from the search zone. MH370 is the only missing Boeing 777 in the world. "In the absence of new credible evidence, Malaysia, Australia and China have collectively agreed to suspend the search upon completion of the 120,000-km search," Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said at a news conference held after the meeting. "I must emphasise that this does not mean we are giving up on the search for MH370," he added. There is little detail about the circumstances under which a search might be resumed. More than 110,000 sq km of the seafloor has already been searched, but poor weather caused delays to the search operation in recent weeks, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said earlier this month. The search was initially expected to be complete by July or August of this year, but the JACC said it could take longer if there is more bad weather or equipment failure.