Soozzy

Reading this article I notice a comment made at the end:

How about an attempted 9/11 style hit on Diego Garcia? Whether or not they were shot down or hit the target the USA wouldn't be telling.

I wouldn't even put it past them to ship debris somewhere else which could be why the so called crash area was only pinpointed nearly two weeks after the disappearance. And remarkably the area is about the hardest in the world to survey at this time of year and thousands of miles from anywhere.

What do posters think of this as a possibility?

AeroWesty

Some background on the 777 simulator CNN is using in their reports:

Malaysia Airlines: Mississauga flight simulator stars on CNN

bimmerdriver

Subang is the old name of the old klia. The new klia airport where the flight left from is located in Sepang.

84fiero

That makes no sense whatsoever. The military buildings and other structures on Deigo Garcia are small, one-story (maybe two, rarely) facilities. And there aren't many of them. It would be extremely difficult to "dive bomb" anything as a commercial pilot in an airliner. And there wouldn't be any facility of significant publicity or military value to destroy. Just google pics of the island - actually a coral atoll - and it's obvious.

While there could be aircraft or vessels to hit, again the odds of such a pilot and aircraft being successful would be slim, indeed.

9/11 was undertaken for shock value and terror effect. If someone wanted a similar effect with MH370, surely they would pick a more suitable target than a small atoll with limited hard targets.

trailboss99

It looks to me that what the Chinese have come out with bears a striking resemblance to the piece shown on the US sat images.





I don't, why hit a rock in the middle of nowhere when you could just fly on to Beijing or hit Hong Kong or numerous other cities?

Himeno

Also, the KUL-PEK route flies over HKG. They could target something in Hong Kong and no one would even notice anything was wrong before the aircraft was diving towards the city.

MapNerd

The Indonesian government stated publicly last week that their radar has not detected anything to indicate MH370 entered Indonesian airspace, countering Malaysia's suggestion to the contrary.

lewko

I did my thing looking for debris on the Tomnod site. The maps I was given were dated 3/18 and 3/16. Wouldn't it make more sense to concentrate the satellite photo search on the pictures taken at about the time the plane crashed plus a few days. Any debris seen now would have drifted too far away.

The early debris isn't there now but a concentrated search for the black box beacon in the area by ship could locate it while the battery is still working.

It's really a shame that the Inmersat data wasn't taken more seriously earlier. I have not heard that the northern arc is impossible. It's just that no one can believe that radar didn't see the plane. Does Myanmar have 24 hour radar monitoring and recording?

Wickerman

<redacted>

Whether any portion of an iceberg is visible above water depends on its shape.
A largely flat section of drift ice will float just beneath the waves.

As for the latitude, if you compare the latitude of these sightings, at about 44 deg S. with the northern hemisphere, you are just a couple of degrees south of Newfoundland, a place prolific for floating ice.

My immediate thought on seeing the first satellite shots of two floating pieces was that those shaped might be ice, its an option to consider. I'm surprised no-one official has cautioned that this is also a possibility.

I think the concern is that this last image was taken two days later, but the location is west of the previous sightings. The currents generally run west to east in this region so it should have been far to the east not the west.

So, if it is a portion of the plane then it is more likely to be a different section.

EsherFlyer

There was a graphic of prevailing or anticipated sea currents that I saw a few days ago. I thought the flow was more diverse than that. Maybe someone can point us towards it?

EDIT: http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BjVGB1AIgAA1NAQ.jpg:medium

exilencfc

It had occurred to me. In one way it makes sense, if you want to attack Diego Garcia and don't have access to modern missiles then a 9/11 style attack is a reasonably good option. On the other hand, if you have the resources to carry out a 9/11 style attack Diego Garcia wouldn't be the obvious target.

However I don't think that America would be covering it up, I think that it would be more in America's interests to boast about foiling an attack. I also don't think they could have recovered the debris and moved it elsewhere in the time available, and anyway they'd want it destroyed altogether as itis probably pretty obvious when an aircraft has been hit by a missile.

GaryD

My earlier musings about Sri Lanka not being included in the search led me to the wrong conclusion: It was apparently because it was clear the plane had not flown there, not because it had flown there.

But its apparent route past the northern tip of Sumatra, and then far to the south, leads me to this speculation:

-- Pilot decides to commit suicide, and to take steps to make himself and his plane "vanish" (who knows why)

-- waits until co-pilot signs off w KUL, then urges him to take a break

-- locks cockpit door, turns off transponder and ACARS systems

-- directs plane to follow programmed route to the west, and climbs to 45,000 feet, suffocating all others on board

-- then descends and routes plane along the border between Malaysia and Thailand, then along the border between Thailand and Indonesia (Strait of Malacca), then along the border between Indonesia and India (south of Andamans), so as to minimize the chance of being intercepted/noticed in time

-- once past all possible radar beacons, turns south towards the most remote possible spot that can be reached

It has been 14 days. Other possibilities seem even less likely at this point. IMO.

Wickerman

Thankyou for that, as you can see from the image attached to that link, if you see where the 40S intersects with 90E, the currents are easterly to north.

Even less of a reason to think the Chinese flotsam has drifted west from the earlier Australian satellite location.

iquitos

If this debris does not pan out there will be another wave of disappointment. What is happening searchwise on the other end of the ping arc?

Very risky to put all the eggs in this one basket based on a debris sighting. Amazing to me the Australian PM stuck his neck out on this. I guess for bragging rights on their ability to look over the horizon. If they have that capability why didn't they see the plane when it was in the air real time?

Wickerman

The assumed size of this recent piece of flotsam is twice the width of a Boeing 777 wing, plus the wing is triangular and tapered to a point, not rectangular.


If we superimpose a 74ft x 43ft rectangle over a Boeing 777 we can judge that the red rectangle is too large to be part of the plane.



As for it being a part of the fuselage, 43ft is double the width of the passenger compartment.
The piece is far too big.