“The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet,”
I disagree....A midair breakup would leave a debris field measured in miles, ( think of throwing a bag of popcorn from a auto going 60 MPH), however a nosedive into the ocean could compress the metal into a ball taking most everything to the bottom.. Air France 447 left very little floating debris ......IMHO
While the debris field will measure in miles remember 99% of that debris will sink. People will float for a bit, assuming they don’t get eaten, and seat cushions, maybe meal trays, everything else has enough metal in it to head straight to the bottom. And of course that little bit that floats will be scatter over miles, and drifting. There’s a very good chance we will never find any part of this plane, or if we do find something it’ll be a cushion floating ashore somewhere.
Folks that think this thing should be easy to find need to remember the Challenger disaster. We WATCHED that happen with dozens of cameras and tracking and had recovery efforts mobilized while it was still falling and we still haven’t even recovered half of it and it took over a month to find the crew cabin.
Silly comparison. Try throwing a bag of popcorn over a jungle, and lots of luck.
The cited ~2 hour flight time before losing track of the aircraft would put it quite close to the coastline of the Gulf of Tonkin, and the edge of the Vietnamese jungle.
Think trying to find troops and equipment traveling along the Ho Chi Minh trail... or the discovery of American military wreckage decades after the Vietnam war was over. Specially if the aircraft did not impact in large pieces.