Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was loaded with 3 tonnes of mangosteens. Why can't officials find it? The search has been fruitless.

In the Air France crash, they never contacted ATC. Were they in range of ATC at all?

They weren't in range of ATC.

hmm you guys are pretty confident at over 2% but it seems the search area is so massive + the plane is likely under water, that I think's really really doubtful this thing gets found. I hope I'm wrong but I think this thing is gone forever.

maybe 2% is too low but geez it's been 12 days and the closest anyone can estimate is a gigantic area of the Indian Ocean. they need to get much closer to hear the underwater beacon and nobody is going to go cruising the ocean for months on end looking.

Give % for these, totaling 100:

Debris of plane found in water - %

Plane, or parts thereof, found on land (not washed up on land) - %

Nothing ever found - %


I'm going to go: 45, 35, 20

yeah that's a good way to think about it, I just think even debris at this point could be so far away from the crash site that it would only help somewhat. how far can debris float in 12 days in the open ocean?? I guess they could make some guesses with current etc but still they would be looking at massive areas

(and that's assuming they find debris soon...the longer we go the less useful that stuff becomes)

Still a > 2% chance they get radar or some type of telemetry data that narrows it down

Well it's not like they wouldn't have a clue where the plane would be if they found debris. I think they'd be able to figure out a workable perimeter where the plane most likely is.

It's not like countries like China or the USA don't have the money to search for it for months or even years if necessary, I don't think they will give up until they can honestly say they don't know where/how to search anymore.

It's too big of a liability to let something like this go unsolved.

hmm some very back of envelope math says that debris might have floated 5-10 miles. given they should be able to predict currents, that would still be very useful.

however, this stuff may not be founds for some time, they are looking for needles in thousand mile haystacks

LOL, I am not implying it's a great place to sell 777s. I am stating it is the best place in the world to land one without people knowing.

Expiration? I would guess technology will be very good by year 3000.

eh, 2 US Congressman died in a plane crash years back, and the search was called off after about a month iirc. Certainly the authorities will stop at some point.

It was 1972 and was a tiny plane in Alaska. There's a huge difference.

I mean do you honestly believe the FBI will give up the investigation in any less than a year if it remains unsolved?

If only they could get some tide reports:

And then they alter the autopilot in the same way I alter the GPS navigation on my phone?

"I think most of the advanced ways of recovering data involve working on the original since its actually the physical device itself that retains the imprint of deleted data. "

Not so. A competent programmer would be able to make a track and sector duplicate disk.

"Siri, divert to Kuala Lumpur!"

"no Siri, KUALA LUMPUR"

"Dammit"

If you mean the really down and dirty of reading the residual magnetics on the physical disk surface, then OK, would need the actual original.

Dude was lying on the floor receiving IV. I presume they presumed it was worthwhile diverting to Shannon rather than having a stopover on the East Coast (which would probably get him help 30 to 60 minutes later and saving the rest of us 8 hours), or just going through to Chicago. I was at the back of the plane and actual saw him and he looked pretty grim but not ill enough to return to Shannon? But IANAD and the airline has incentives for cautiousness, especially if they have insurance. BTW we were stranded in Shannon for about 3 hours while they tried to locate more saline solution, which they weren't allowed to depart without. They eventually managed to find it, but couldn't locate any extra food for their passengers.

BTW it's fortunate for all that they never announced why the passenger was ill. The passengers' reaction might have been a tad less sympathetic had they known that this was some young guy who'd had a few too many the previous night, and quite possibly should not have been allowed on the plane in the first place.

Yeah, this is correct.

Basically yes. It's not the FBI's problem really. Something else of higher importance will come up even the FBI needs to figure out priorities for how they spend their time.

Has this same flight (KL to Shanghai) flown since this plane disappeared?

As long as terrorism can't be ruled out it's gonna be pretty high priority for them.