Wreckage sighted?

[Sailor]

Chinese government website says it has images of suspected plane debris

China's official Xinhua News Agency reported late Wednesday a government website has images of suspected debris from the Malaysia Airlines plane missing since last week.

According to the report, the satellite images from the morning of March 9 appear to show "three suspected floating objects" of varying sizesin the sea off the southern tip of Vietnam and east of Malaysia.

However, there was no immediate confirmation of the reported debris from the airline or Malaysian authorities.

Vernon Grose, a seasoned National Transportation Safety Board investigator and consultant, told Fox News his preliminary assessment was that if the plane disintegrated, he would expect to find large pieces of wreckage, including the wings, the horizontal stabilizer in the tail and the vertical fin.

One of the objects reportedly spotted would be consistent with a jet's wing.

If this is the wreckage, Grose said the black boxes should be located in fairly short order.

www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03/12/chinese-government-website-says-it-has-images-suspected-plane-debris/

[Sailor]

Well, obviously the sighting of "debris" by the Chinese satellites wasn't. What it was is anyone's guess but the apparent size of some of the objects made them too large to be pieces of that aircraft. What was sighted was probably a small ship or fishing vessel.

At this point there are still few real facts and more unconfirmed reports than anything. Some of those reports indicate the aircraft was still flying at up to 7.5 hours after takeoff at which point it would probably have exhausted its fuel, assuming the normal load for a flight of the scheduled length plus a margin. The circle the aircraft could be in stretches up to 2,500 miles from the take off point though some are now saying it could stretch as far as Kazakhstan or the middle of the Indian Ocean. It is clear to me that the Malayan authorities had not been forthcoming with everything they knew and the Chinese therefore are really getting pissed off, understandable.

US authorities have dispatched the destroyer USS Kidd with its 2 helicopters from the original search area to an area just outside the Strait of Malacca in the Bay of Bengal, based (I assume) on reports of radar contact by the Malayan military. These reports say the aircraft made a radical port turn after the transponders were shut off, passing back over Malaya and a turn to starboard towards the Bay of Bengal along a heavily traveled "air corridor."

Like everyone else, I have no idea which reports if any are factual and thus where the hell this plane went. There is still the report from the Chinese that their sea bottom sensors detected a small "disturbance" about 90 or so miles short of the Vietnam coast about the same time contact was lost, but so far no one has reported finding anything there.

Like a lot of others I get the feeling that this aircraft was brought down deliberately even though there have been no claims of responsibility, though I am not 100% certain.

[101ABN]

As it stands right now, this is the greatest aviation mystery since the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

I'll be totally surprised if it ISN'T foul play.

[Sailor]

Yeah, me too.

I have thoughts on that and if it's the group/movement I'm thinking of the PRC is going to become an even more hostile place to hang around. They shoot people without benefit of clergy or trial there.