Malaysia Airlines MH370

Our PM Najib Razak will be holding a last minute press conference at 10 pm (a little less than an hour from now).

Actual news, I hope. Can't imagine him announcing something this late unless it's important.

PM Najib: New satellite data concludes that MH370's journey ended in the southern Indian Ocean, west of Perth, away from any landing points. Assumed to be no survivors.

Of course we knew this already, but I'm still incredibly sad right now.

sorry roz. :/

I still kind of can't believe this entire horrible story.

Fucking hell

does the now-presumed crash area tie in with the previous evidence of deliberate course change? i've lost track

Yes.

damn

sorry

They seriously broke this to the families by text message?

Classy

brutal :(

yeah, I have no idea what the fuck is wrong with MAS' communications team. I know some of the families wanted to be informed of any developments by text, but for this, you would think they'd have been better prepared. like how difficult would it have been to assemble their caregivers and given them a quick script to call families with? jfc

well then, the Internet strikes again.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BjgMmFBCAAAewmb.jpg

What are the chances of finding the blackbox/data recorder? Should still be pinging.

How far away can floating debris drift in 2 weeks?

A long long LONG way

What are the chances of finding the blackbox/data recorder? Should still be pinging.

― Jeff, Monday, March 24, 2014 11:34 AM (17 minutes ago)

I believe the black box has a powersource to ping for 30 days after losing power after an "event", #underwater.

wikipedia appears to indicate that current speeds in the hundreds of km/day are reasonable. so Tom D. otm.

So, not trying to detract or anything but in a way:

http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/we_aint_found_shit.gif ?

I'm still so confused as to how the aircraft could have ended up that far south west of Perth.

if you look at the flight path that they're now speculating, the thing made a U turn, flew over loads of actual land, straight into the ocean and crashed. it's fucking bizarre.

My paper's frontpage today got me a little choked up:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/t1.0-9/1480593_10152335611023466_1629762008_n.jpg

:(

Aviation experts: is it possible for the pilots or anyone else onboard to disable the voice or flight-data recorders as the transponders were?

on silkair 185 the the pilot disabled the voice recorder

roz that cover is ;_;

fitting tribute

damn this whole thing is so sad and weird

i couldn't stop crying after the press conference yesterday. It wasn't just the families - a lot of reporters, some who have covered much bigger disasters, broke down. Part of it was the exhaustion, but mostly I think everyone had held on to that tiny bit of hope that there might be survivors. even though we knew there couldn't have been any. :(

it IS weird... so many unanswered questions still. How the fuck did the plane end up so far away from where it was going, for one.

Did they actually find pieces of the the plane or are they just sick of speculation? It seems they don't have any real evidence that it went down, unless i've missed something.

It's what you'd call an informed assumption, I guess.

Calculate the distance between the plane and the satellite, and using the strength of the pings received, trace its trajectory all the way to its last known point - a remote location where there's no place to land, and no land in between where they could have stopped and refueled. combine it with the satellite sightings of possible debris...

yeah, nothing has actually been found yet.

I accept that the plane is in the ocean but there has been information released and either contradicted or redacted for the last two weeks so without finding the tail or some identifiable debris, I think this is going to spark conspiracy theories and not satisfy the families who are desperate to hang on to hope.

i agree with the last bit - i think there will always be something about this case that will feed the conspiracy theorists, simply because so many things still don't add up.

but otoh i don't know... there's been a lot of information released quoting unnamed sources or officials, and which were then repeated over and over as fact, even when they were never confirmed by the people in charge. It's easy to say then that there's been contradictory information, but more often than not, the authorities are being forced to contradict bad journalism/speculation that's based on misleading or inaccurate intel.

if you look at all the official statements released from the minister's office, they actually tell a pretty consistent story.

Roz :(

I'm not quite sure if I can follow anymore: have we found anything that is 100% certainly part of this plane? (getting headlines like "all the search for MH370 has found is that the oceans are way more polluted than we thought" and "boeing debris turns out to be garbage" over here now)

No. They're no longer having daily press conferences and there's been no new data to look at either. Basically, the only thing left is to keep searching until they find -something-. Anything.

"show me" could be good but chris' vocals on that are particularly wretched AND IT'S ALSO A SONG THAT FEATURES THE LINE "YOU REMIND ME OF SOMETHING / BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS RIGHT NOW"

demand more from your songwriters
--le goon (J0rdan S.)

err something must have happened with zing and my pocket sorry...

Unfortunate side effect of the MH370 search is bringing this issue to light:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2014/0401/Malaysia-Airlines-Flight-MH370-Search-reveals-extent-of-ocean-garbage-video

Assuming the plane did break into small pieces, the debris field is probably spreading wider and thinner with each passing day. Ebbsmeyer estimates that the debris patch is probably more than 20 miles in diameter and spreading, based on his studies of container spills.

“The debris is going to become less concentrated and harder to spot,” he says. “There’s no doubt that pieces of plastic from this wreck will float for decades, but they’ll become just part of all the other plastic which is not identifiable.”

This is incredibly moving: http://www.raischstudios.com/malaysia-airlines-flight-370/2014/3/30/wqupf9xsv2emht1x020isa25b2wlg0?fb_action_ids=10202818129148470&fb_action_types=og.likes

CNN.com:

It it Flight 370's data recorder?

the blackbox is giving off a sound wave, right? so many places are reporting an "electronic pulse" which I imagine would be highly attenuated in salt water, i.e. it's a waste of blackbox battery.

the australian navy dudes actually term it as an "acoustic event".

Brief summary of today's presser: US towed pinger locator detects signals consistent with those emitted by aircraft black boxes yesterday, in area of about 4,500m in depth. First signal lasted about 2 hours, the second about 13 mins. However, still cannot confirm that the signals were from MH370. Focus today is to reacquire signals before deploying the autonomous underwater vehicle (which has a depth limitation of exactly 4,500m) to map the ocean floor and search for signs of wreckage.

Indeed, according to one highly placed oceanic scientist to whom I spoke recently, it is truly unbelievable: he believes, as do other independent scientists, that the Americans have known exactly where the flight crashed ever since it fell out of the skies; to reveal that they do so would be to endanger covert military information and the operation of underwater sonic arrays whose primary purpose is to detect such large objects in the oceans – in the shape of enemy submarines.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/08/mh370-bleeps-vast-depth-ocean-secrets-americans

These underwater mountains and trenches remain the least unexplored places on earth

guess they don't have editors any more

the underwater mountains and trenches are so gentrified these days

Yeah, I know exactly where the plane is too, but I'll only tell you if you know the secret masonic handshake.

your mom's mountains and trenches remain the least, etc

perspective:
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/the-depth-of-the-problem/931/

What a mess...

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/04/11/malaysian-military-withheld-radar-data-on-flight-mh370-as-nations-searched-wrong-area-sources-say

Some strange developments:

The Co-pilot attempted to make a mobile phone call shortly after the course redirection near Penang.

Citing new radar data, Malaysia military investigators are convinced the plane was flown deliberately low and fast over the Malaysian peninsula and carefully skirted Sumatra Indonesia's coastlines to evade radar detection.

Authorities believe acoustic pings from the black boxes have stopped due to battery fatigue.