Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Looking at these search maps, I've become doubtful of the claim a few people have made that someone didn't want to be found and deliberately put the plane in the remotest place possible to make it very difficult to ever locate. The reason I say this is that although the plane seems to have gone down a fair distance from Australia, it was nowhere near the middle of the ocean where it could have been. In fact the calculated flight path takes it through an area within Australian radar coverage, so it could easily have been tracked that way and possibly identified as MH370 even without the Inmarsat data.

Has Australia ever commented on why their radar didn't track the plane, if it went down off the coast of northern Australia as the current search area indicates?

CNN decided to address the theories about Diego Garcia and dismissed the idea that the plane could have landed there.

Several of the pictures taken on the Chinese ship which detected signals clearly show the manufacturer's name and model number on the listening device (hydrophone) they were using. This is it:

http://www.benthos.com/index.php/product...75-locator

Checking the specs of the device it only works to a depth of 600 feet, whereas the ocean at that point is about 4500 feet deep, which makes me wonder how the Chinese thought they had any chance of hearing something.

(10-04-2014 09:35 )whizzer Wrote:  Has Australia ever commented on why their radar didn't track the plane, if it went down off the coast of northern Australia as the current search area indicates?

They didn't comment on this at first, but eventually they said their radar wasn't switched on that night.

The Australian searchers have reported finding a signal again today and that's now the 5th time they have picked something up (not counting the 2 Chinese reports). It looks like they are steadily getting closer.

Discovery channel has a programme on the lost plane at 8:00 tonight - Flight 370 The Missing Links.

(10-04-2014 11:59 )marlowe Wrote:  Checking the specs of the device it only works to a depth of 600 feet, whereas the ocean at that point is about 4500 feet deep, which makes me wonder how the Chinese thought they had any chance of hearing something.

Just to correct an error, the ocean in the search zone is about 4500 metres deep, not 4500 feet.

This video has shaken people to the core.



It explains how to hijack a plane by hacking its computer, a job which can be done with a mobile phone. And it was uploaded to YouTube BEFORE flight MH370 went missing.

(10-04-2014 04:42 )southlondonphil Wrote:  Looking at these search maps, I've become doubtful of the claim a few people have made that someone didn't want to be found and deliberately put the plane in the remotest place possible to make it very difficult to ever locate. The reason I say this is that although the plane seems to have gone down a fair distance from Australia, it was nowhere near the middle of the ocean where it could have been. In fact the calculated flight path takes it through an area within Australian radar coverage, so it could easily have been tracked that way and possibly identified as MH370 even without the Inmarsat data.

What you say is fair comment up to a point. But although you say the plane was nowhere near the middle of the ocean where it could have been, there are actually problems with taking a more westerly route. First and foremost being further to the west would have been closer to Diego Garcia, which would have increased the risk of being spotted, not to mention being closer to a radar installation on a place called Cocos island. Going due west may have avoided Diego Garcia but instead taken the plane over the Maldives and into radar there. So all in all the map suggests that the flight south was quite plausibly the best bet, assuming that someone was doing this deliberately and that they wanted the plane to remain unfound.