Malayasian Prime Minister has confirmed the data indicates beyond all reasonable doubt the plane had crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean.
EDIT: Full text of statement:
"This evening I was briefed by representatives from the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB). They informed me that Inmarsat, the UK company that provided the satellite data which indicated the northern and southern corridors, has been performing further calculations on the data. Using a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort, they have been able to shed more light on MH370’s flight path.
Based on their new analysis, Inmarsat and the AAIB have concluded that MH370 flew along the southern corridor, and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.
This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.
We will be holding a press conference tomorrow with further details. In the meantime, we wanted to inform you of this new development at the earliest opportunity. We share this information out of a commitment to openness and respect for the families, two principles which have guided this investigation.
Malaysia Airlines have already spoken to the families of the passengers and crew to inform them of this development. For them, the past few weeks have been heartbreaking; I know this news must be harder still. I urge the media to respect their privacy, and to allow them the space they need at this difficult time."
NYTimes Breaking News…thanks to the Claymation Dude who finally agreed to tell the rest of world what we had already suspected for days
The prime minister of Malaysia announced in Kuala Lumpur that there was no longer any doubt that the missing Malaysian Airlines jetliner, Flight 370, crashed in the Indian Ocean.
Prime Minister Najib Razak said the conclusion was based on new analysis of data from an automated satellite system on the plane, performed by Inmarsat and the British national aviation safety agency. The analysis narrowed down the possible paths the Boeing 777 aircraft could have taken as it kept flying for hours after contact with ground controllers was lost on March 8, and it ruled out that the plane could have gone anywhere but the remote waters southwest of Australia, where there is no place the plane could have landed safely.
“It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean,” Mr. Razak said.
not tryign to be the cynical weasel, but you think they just said that so the world would get off Malaysia’s back about how poorly they’re handling things?
^ It was British investigator analysis based on data from Inmarsat. Along with the number of debris sightings today by the Aussie/Chinese searchers, it sounds like this is probably correct.
Also it’s the most plausible and obvious. I mean, I think it would be a cool news story if terrorist pilots made an alliance with the martians to send the plane back in time and change the course of solar history, but the simplest answer is often the correct one.
It’s almost more concerning though that the plane sailed on until it ran out of fuel, of course in the middle of no where. What the heck happened here? I’d almost rather know it was something nefarious, because that’s managable and known. Some unexplained mechnical fault is certainly more concerning, considering the 777 is in heavy use worldwide right now.
If there was an incredibly bad accident on board, as a pilot, wouldn’t you at least want to at least crash near land or on land in some remote area? they now say that the plane flew really low so at least there’s breathable air (no compression issue with high altitudes). well if it was that bad, they should have had some control to bring it down sooner, and nearer to civilization.
So the plane was likely flying for hours to get to the South Indian Ocean with no way to contact the ground and no pilot control that could change the plane’s course. Passengers had little option but to enjoy free pretzels, nuts, and perhaps a little booze for a few hours until the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the the middle of oceanic nowhere. Wow, what a way to go…
I don’t think conspiracy theories can be ruled out just yet. The fact that the plane kept flying without communication is very odd. Whatever happened must have taken out communications and the capacity to steer without taking out the capacity to fly in general, not to mention not show up on anyone’s radar, which seems inconsistent with something like a fire, which should have taken out everything.
To me, this seems more consistent with something like either hacking into the flight computer to shut off the appropriate systems and fly the plane to nowhere, or to mess with the air pressure inside the plane. Alternately, it seems like the sort of thing that might happen if 1) a fast-acting nerve gas or similar agent had been released, incapacitating the crew and passengers, or 2) some kind of high altitude decompression had taken place to incapacitate crew and passengers. In both of those scenarios, it would suggest that the pilots had the time to change target altitude and partially change course before becoming incapacitated, then the plane flew in a straight line until the end. Why transponders were turned off is still unexplained, unless you suspect a successful hacking job.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then, I bet Osama (yes Osama, he ain’t dead) has the plane and plans to load it with chemicals, nuclear weapons, anthrax, bird flu, and SARS and crash it into the new WTC site.
It was inevitable I guess… I was still holding out hope for a hijacking or mangosteen heist because it meant there was a chance of survival. A crash in the ocean means even if some people survived impact, there is no way they survived holding onto a life raft for over 2 weeks in the ocean. RIP
^^^ Perhaps the low altitude was to allow the bad guys to jump to an awaiting ship. Maybe there was something on that flight someone wanted really badly and the authorities either don’t want us to know about it, or don’t know about it themselves.
If there was decompression, getting to a low altitude would potentially solve that problem and be a rational response by the pilots. Even if the pilots blacked out from low oxygen at 30,000 feet, there would be hope of waking up once at 5000 feet, where the outside air has enough oxygen to breathe. Setting autopilot to get to 5000 feet is a logical first step, and steering the plane to where it wouldn’t go into any jumpy country’s airspace or air traffic lanes is a logical step for the pilot to take.
In an anoxic environment, one has maybe 15-30 seconds of good thinking time, and maybe 45-60 seconds of consciousness. Given that some of those 15-30 seconds would have been spent wondering what the heck happened and figuring out what to do about it, one can imagine just enough time to decide to change course and altitude before blacking out at the controls.
If it took more than 5 minutes to get to a breathable altitude, however, the plane may have arrived at 5000 feet but the pilots and passengers were already dead from oxygen deprivation. If that’s what happened, the good news is that they likely wouldn’t have suffered much. Indeed, some of them may not even have known what was happening before passing out.
Still, the wierd question is why was the transponder turned off.
We don’t know that the transponder was “turned off” - but only that authorities stopped receiving the signals. The transponder is a mechanical box that transmits signals to ground based radar. It is possible that the transponder failed due to reasons related to the air craft’s failure (power outage, fire, etc.) or that the low altitude and lack of radar coverage in the Indian Ocean resulted in no one detecting the transponder signals.
You might be able to have an electrical fire that would impact flight controls/transponder, but not the structural integrity of the aircraft. Or alternatively the flight controls could be intact but the crew overcome by toxic smoke from the (possibly electrical) fire. I think a sudden electrical fire seems pretty reasonable, and probably a lot more likely like monsters, aliens, stealing cargo or other nefarious outcomes.
I wonder how the Malaysian authorities confirmed that the passengers and crew were all dead “beyond reasonable doubt”. It’s reasonable to conclude that the airplane crashed in the Indian Ocean. However, what assumptions are made in concluding that everyone died?