TexasCHLforum.com

KD5NRH wrote:

philip964 wrote:Plane entered the ocean in vertical nose dive says team from Texas A&M at Qatar.

Taking into account suggestions from other aviation experts, Chen says the vertical dive entry would have caused the wings to break off almost immediately at the surface. But the wings and other heavy debris would have sunk to the bottom of the ocean, leaving no trace of the airplane crash site for search teams to find.

So all the fuel and hydraulic connections between the wings and fuselage would somehow seal themselves up to prevent any sort of oil slick on the surface?

If it was out of fuel, only the hydraulics would leak, and that slick would be like a needle in a haystack. (I am not saying this story is true. Just that the likelihood of a large slick might be lower than one would think.)

After days of utter confusion I have a theory. There was a fire in the cockpit that took out the electronics that control communications. The pilot turned the plane around to fly to the nearest airport in Malaysia. The pilot and the copilot were overcome by smoke and became unconscious. The plane, on autopilot, kept flying in the direction the pilot had programmed in until it ran out of fuel. Then it plunged into the Indian Ocean.

They'll be lucky if they ever find it.

They said on Channel 5 News last night that radar only has a range of about 120 miles. After that they are dependent upon the plane to communicate with satellites to report its position. They only do this once an hour. So "disappeared" might not be referring to vanishing off the radar screen. It may mean that they didn't report in when they should have.

Since planes are flying about 300mph, they would cover a lot of territory between transmissions, which would make the search area very large even if they stayed on their flight path. If they diverted, then the search could be off by 200 miles or more.

They have now discovered that two stolen passports were used to board the aircraft, and they are investigating foul play. They believe the plane may have blown up at 35,000 feet, which would scatter debris over a very wide area and make it much more difficult to find identifiable pieces.