S'alright, apparently a lot of people are arguing about how good the evidence actually is in the other forum I hang out in.
I really feel sorry for the poor relatives of this disaster. Not having any form of closure must be exceedingly traumatic. But the way information has been released on this crash, is equally disastrous. Maybe it wasn't a crash, maybe they ditched. I doubt they are on land, in pieces or otherwise. I do believe there were windows of opportunity to find the wreckage and they lost those by getting information out too late. Wind and tide will disperse a wreckage site fairly quickly.
The rate the information was released to the public may not have been the same time frame they acted on it. Much of the information came from sources other than the Malaysian government. Not sure what the deal was with the Vietnamese radar information delay. That was an issue. As far as the INMARSAT data, I think that was the fastest they were able to confirm it. Seems to me they did the responsible thing and checked their model with other sources before throwing a hasty conclusion out there. Sending searchers out sooner but to the wrong place could have been just as bad, and the lost credibility if they changed their conclusion later would have been worse. It's my understanding there is a lot of issue with face-saving in the Asian governments* involved. I saw it first hand with the SARS outbreak both with the governments of China and India. A friend of mine from Hong Kong who now lives in Thailand said the information from the Malaysian government was likely not forthcoming. I suspect if there is anything found implicating the pilots, it will not be readily admitted to by the government. I think that was an issue with the Egyptian government years ago with the pilot suicide. *Not that Western governments don't have their own habit of deceit for political motivations, we just have a different set of cultural values in play.
It is a very interesting study in cultural variations. Look at Fukushima for an good example of what happens with the suppression of information and saving face.
latest satellite sighting of a large debris field [100+ objects] is most promising lead yet... finding it on the surface by planes and ships, however, is still going to take time, patience, and good weather conditions...
somebody hit the 'reset' button! search now moved hundreds of miles to the northeast... good news is that it's now out of the 'roaring 40s' and a lot closer to air searchers' departure point, perth...
The news media still hasn't figured out everything floating in the ocean is not called "debris". I thought once the people flying over had eyes on the material they would be able to say yes or no, that is or isn't jet wreckage debris. Instead there was a spotter plane that even had some kind of enhanced imager and about the only difference was they released an image of a small blurry white thing instead of a large blurry white thing.
When AF447 crashed, they found the tail floating in the Atlantic after a few days. If they found the tail of MH370 in the Pacific, they could pretty much say it had crashed there, even if they flew past it, hundreds of feet above sea level. But most debris from a crash is going to be far less obvious and have to be fished out of the water to confirm the source.
the main problem in identifying any items as having come from the plane is the fact that a lot of the trash littering our planet's oceans is exactly the kind of stuff that could be found on a plane and/or that passengers could have had with them... so, being 100% certain this or that bit of flotsam came from the missing plane is going to take the skills of the best real life version of tv's top csi techs... and time...
Yes -- the ocean is so full of garbage that it won't be obvious with just a cursory glance. Eventually, though, there should be some more obvious things, like airline seats.
They found it. No sheep! Still being called a lead but the black box pinger has now been heard for more than an hour twice. http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/06/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/
I'll remain skeptical until they pull up a piece of physical evidence. It's a good sign, but it's not confirmed.
When the Chinese news agency showed images of a can on a stick in the water picking up signals and no recording of the sound, I was calling that finding the same as calling fuzzy images of usual ocean flotsam, 'debris'. I leave open the possibility this lead will be a dead end. But instead of, wake me when they actually find something, I'm awake.
They just said on CNN that so far the U.S. has spent $3.5 million dollars to help find the missing plane and has offered more help and so has Japan, but Australia has told them no. Shame on the U.S., I wonder what they are getting out of this? Maybe they are really looking for sunken treasure instead.
