First topic message reminder :

Malaysia Airlines said it lost contact with a plane carrying 239 people on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
The plane disappeared on March 8, the problem is, with so little directional information to start with (six and a partial seventh ping, transmitted at hourly intervals), are we SURE we are even searching the right ocean? Why have we heard NOTHING from Rolls Royce re the real time engine management monitoring system? If those following the serious clues left available there is only one question to ask. Why does no one mention the Indian Oceans most advanced and secure air base, the stationary Aircraft Carrier located south of the southern tip of India called Diego Garcia? Not a peep. Not even an indication of a US managed military installation that monitors everything in this war region. In fact the best old metaphor regarding the lack of reference to this location is “The Silence Is Deafening.” Only one nation on earth has the technology to remotely block a planes radar and communications if they felt their base was under threat from a terrorist attack. I believe in the coming days or weeks it will be the USA who find evidence that the plane crashed ??? but in fact I believe it was probably shot down.

Wasn't a plane discovered on the moon a number of years ago??? I read it in a newspaper i recall. Mmmm something definately fishy going on here. When a double decker London bus disapears then we know it's an alien abduction or someones beamed it up, my money is on that Spock bloke, he's a shady character, green shady actually, with pointy ears, yep it's him i sense it in my bones! Hang on, Bones, he was shady too, and that Kirk I wouldn't trust him either, all them illegimate kids all over the universe........... Didn't they steal a whale once, so a plane would be easy peasy, or maybe it was THE BORG and they're assimilated, they just surredered, after all they most probably already knew that resistance was futile. OR maybe....... it just crashed into the sea.......

No sure about a plane on the moon?? Evidence that has been disclosed points to an intentional diversion of MH370 rather than a technical malfunction or a bombing. Pilot suicide seems a very low probability. Assuming these ideas are correct, there has to be someone and/or something on board that provides the motivation.

As any air traffic controller will tell you, their radar systems are fully capable of tracking flocks of birds and other airborne objects which are far smaller than a Boeing 777. The explanation that this Boeing 777 "
vanished"
from radar simply doesn't hold water. And if the explanation is that "
the pilot flew the aircraft at very low elevation to evade radar,"
then it makes no sense that the pilot would carry out this complex evasion for 4-7 hours and then plunge the aircraft into the Indian Ocean.

My question is why has the media not said anything at all about Diego Garcia the island that houses the US Naval base located in the flight path of flight 370? It is in range.

Has anybody but the Americans had a look at Diego Garcia air force base for the plane? or is this to far out of the question. Remember the fisherman from the Maldives that claimed to have seen a plane heading to Diego Garcia early on that Saturday morning. That story was quickly dismissed. If this plane was in the water something would have been found by now. I smell a huge cover up in this story and we (the public) will likely never know the truth.

I don't think we will ever know for a very long time, and I am certain the Malaysian government is not telling everything they know, that the plane turned left is not disputed, of the two options of flight path, they have gone for a complete "
U"
turn, which takes the plane over international waters, the other route would have taken the search over territorial waters and land, which the countries involved in that route, have remained very quite, why are they searching by sending planes from land bases, that gives them very little search time, why didn't they use aircraft carriers loaded with helicopters, to make a more thorough search, and why only now send submarines, when they should have been used right at the beginning.

There is another theory, which a BA pilot put forward. He said that if one of the front tyres had burst on take off, and the undercarriage had gone up it could still smoulder, they would get the signal in the cockpit after a period of time. Every pilot knows there nearest airstrip that they can land at in an emergency on any route they are on. Langawi (think thats the right spelling) would have been there nearest when the plane turned. They could have been heading to the airport, but been overcome by fumes, as they dont have that much oxygen in the masks when they come down. The plane would have then carried on flying until it ran out of fuel, which is about were they are looking. Just another theory, and I dont think we will ever know until they find the plane thats if they do.

The most important thing is that we have to remember all the people that have lost loved ones on this plane, and for them I feel there will be no closer for them until they find the plane.

I agree with you Fletch there are all sorts of possibilities but it always comes back to the fact that someone seems to be holding back on the truth. And yes we must all consider the horror the families must be going through at this time.

Let's just remind ourselves of some facts:

1. We have only the Inmarsat "
ping"
calculations to suggest that the aircraft flew south into the Indian Ocean. This is a "
balance of probabilities"
assessment which is based not only on time-delay ranging calculations and the Doppler-shifted ping frequencies, but also on the exceedingly scanty and unconfirmed radar echoes which are thought to show some of MH370's progress after losing contact. It's important to note that the Inmarsat data alone does not confirm that the aircraft took a southerly route: the latter is assumed as more likely because it is thought that if the plane had gone north, radar would have spotted it.

2. With the possible exception of the very first primary radar contact (the turn west), not one of the other radar contacts is known with 100% certainty to have been MH370. It is at best merely probable, if one joins the dots.

3. The "
arc of possibility"
derived from the Inmarsat data is not a single narrow line upon which the aircraft is known to have finally come to rest. It is a broad swathe at least several hundred miles across and it doesn't tell us how long the plane flew after the final ping, nor does it tell us whether, if fuel was exhausted, the plane plummeted directly to the surface or glided for a while: the difference, from a height of 35,000ft, is well over a hundred miles. (A civil airliner, for flight certification, has to be able to glide vertically about 15 times its altitude if the engines fail, so from about 7 miles up, the aircraft should have been able to glide at least another 100.)

So even if we knew the plane's final resting place to within a circle of radius 100 miles, that would still leave us with at least 30,000 square miles of sea to investigate.

4. Not a single scrap of wreckage from the plane has been found, anywhere. We have found absolutely nothing to suggest we are looking at or near the correct location.

5. The black box underwater pingers are weak and have short range, and this is now going to get weaker and shorter every day. The range at which they could be detected—already at best a few miles—is getting less all the time. Plus they may be in very deep water, and worse, may be in undersea canyons, crevasses or among submarine mountain ranges, making detection even harder. Despite knowing the crash site quite accurately, the Air France black boxes were not found through their pingers (they were only found because wreckage was eventually spotted on sonar). A ship or sub listening for the pingers would have to travel virtually right over the top of them to have any chance of detection, and in a search area of tens of thousands of square miles this could take years.

6. In summary, then: Using black box pinger locators is likely to be useless unless we already know pretty exactly where the plane cam down, and even then probably would not succeed (cf. AF 447). In any case, we do not know where the plane went, and even our very best information still leaves open the possibility that the aircraft went north—if it failed to be seen on military radar, it could yet be buried in a jungle somewhere on the subcontinent. We have been grasping at the weakest straws for weeks, and it's entirely possible the plane is thousands of miles from the current "
hot"
search area.

Finally, we have gambled much on the Inmarsat data and calculations, and many people have noted the troubling fact that the "
arc of possibility"
neatly includes the exact spot where the plane originally ceased comms and vanished—in the South China Sea. The probability is that lack of debris—and some confidence in Inmarsat's and AAIB's engineers and mathematicians—tells us the plane cannot be there. So the fact that the arc includes MH370's last broadcast location is probably a mere coincidence ... let's hope so, else many people will feel exceedingly foolish if little bits of wreckage begin to wash up on the beaches of Malaysia and Vietnam over the next few weeks.

Either way, the chance of finding MH370's remains through the sonar hunt are vanishingly small.

Here is the latest news I can find.

Friday April 4

Search for MH370 goes 'underwater'. Two ships - HMS Echo and HMAS Ocean Shield - drag a 'ping locator' in the hop receiving a signal from the black box

Race against time: Experts say the black box will stop sending out 'pings' after 30 days, so search teams have just 48 hours to find it.

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim claims the Malaysian government is 'concealing' information about the search

He said he authorised the installation of ‘one of the most sophisticated radar’ systems in the world covering Malaysia’s east and west coastlines when he was finance minister in 1994. Mr Ibrahim claimed it was ‘baffling’ that the country’s air force had remained silent, adding: “It should take three minutes under the standard operating procedure for the air force planes to go."

It appears as though there may be more information on the possible location of the plane since they are deploying the pinger locater and they had earlier said that it wuld only be used when the location of the plane was narrowed down (presumably from finding wreckage but perhaps other information might also be used). They have been burned too many times releasing information and then having expectations raised too high. Hopefully, the locator will pick up a signal in the next week before the batteries run out.

TUCSON, AZ News

Scammers are again using tragedy to gain access to your personal information stored on your computer.

The Better Business Bureau warns that checking fake online news alerts about the search for the missing Malaysian airliner could open you up to identity theft.

When one of these fake alerts is clicked, a pop-up screen asks you to update your video player. Clicking "
OK"
to begin the update actually allows a virus to be downloaded to your computer.

Other versions might ask you to fill out a survey with personal information before you can view the video.

The BBB offers these tips:

If it sounds too sensational, don't believe it.

Hover your cursor over the link before clicking to even see if it will take you to a well-known website.

Even if you see the video posted by a friend, don't trust it because they might be victims of a virus that reaches out to their contacts.

This "
Click Bait"
scam is happening mostly on Facebook, but it can pop up on any type of social media.

Is this good news.

Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Chinese patrol ship discovers pulse signal in southern Indian Ocean

Chinese search crews have in the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have discovered a pulse signal matching that for a black box recorder, as well as a number of white floating objects in the search area, state media has reported.

A Chinese patrol ship detected the signal with a frequency of 37.5 kHz - the standard frequency for a black box recorder, while a Chinese air force plane spotted the debris in the search area.

However, there is no indication that either is from flight MH370.

"
That is the standard beacon frequency for both so-called black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder,"
said Anish Patel, president of pinger manufacturer Dukane Seacom told CNN.

The announcement came as international crews scoured the Indian Ocean for the flight's lost black boxes before the devices stop emitting locator ‘pings’. Mayalsia’s Defence Minister stressed the search had maintained its “vigour and intensity” a month after the aircraft vanished.

Both the Australian navy's Ocean Shield and the British HMS Echo were carrying sophisticated equipment that can hear the ‘pings’ on Saturday.

Up to 13 military and civilian planes and nine other ships were also taking part in the search, the agency coordinating the search said.
Finding floating wreckage is vital to narrowing the search area, as officials can harness data on currents to try to map where the plane hit the water, and where the flight recorders may be.

In turn, the recorders contain vital data, including clues as to why Flight MH370, along with the 239 people on board, veered off the usual course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. But the black box batteries only last a month – presenting search crews with a looming deadline.

If the signal beacons fall silent, the search will become more complicated.

During a press conference in Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein gave a statement outlining his government’s determination to locate missing MH370 and slammed critics spouting conspiracy theories.

“We will continue to focus, with all our efforts, on finding the aircraft,” he told reporters, adding: “We are resolute to find a conclusion to this tragic chapter in aviation history.”

He said there are no more new satellite images or data that can provide new leads, and the focus now is fully on searching the ocean, rather than land.

Meanwhile, Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, head of the joint agency coordinating the operation, acknowledged the search area was essentially a best guess, and noted the time when the plane's locator beacons would shut down was "
getting pretty close."


The overall search area is a 217,000-square-kilometer (84,000-square-mile) zone in the southern Indian Ocean, about 1,700 kilometres (1,100 miles) northwest of the western Australian city of Perth.

The search area has shifted each day as investigators continue to analyse what little radar and satellite data is available while factoring in where any debris may have drifted.

Australia is coordinating the ocean search, and the investigation into the plane's disappearance is Malaysia's responsibility. Australia, the US, Britain and China have all agreed to be "
accredited representatives"
of the investigation.

A union that represents 30,000 pilots in North America, the Air Line Pilots Association, said in a statement that the Malaysia Airlines tragedy should lead to higher standards of plane tracking technology being adopted by the airline industry.

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Good news Gimp lets keep our fingers crossed.

If this is from the aircraft at least it will give the relatives some closure.

Seems that a British ship is there now who is going to confirm what the sound is. Looking at the map where the signal has been found its quite possible that the plane was heading for the US base which makes me think that the 2 men with fake passports could have been terrorists.