Posted on 03/13/2014 11:38:06 AM PDT by mandaladon
U.S. officials have an "indication" the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner may have crashed in the Indian Ocean and is moving the USS Kidd to the area to begin searching.
It will take another 24 hours to move the ship into position, a senior Pentagon official told ABC News. "We have an indication the plane went down in the Indian Ocean," the senior official said. The official said there were indications that the plane flew four or five hours after disappearing from radar and that they believe it went into the water.
Pentagon officials said that the USS Kidd was being moved at the request of Malaysia and is heading towards an area where the Indian Ocean and the Andaman Sea meet. It has helicopters aboard that can scour the area.
The U.S. action came hours after Malaysian officials said they had extended their search into the Andaman Sea and had requested help from India in the search for the missing plane and its 239 passengers.
Investigators also said today that U.S. officials gave them reasons to keep searching the waters west of Malaysia, far from the flight path of the Malaysia Airlines plane.
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that the search’s “main focus has always been in the South China Sea,” which is east of Malaysia and along the plane’s route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
But the search was extended earlier this week to include water far to the west on the other side of Malaysia. “We are working very closely with the FAA and the NTSB on the issue of a possible air turn back,” Hishammuddin said, referring to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board.
(Excerpt) Read more at gma.yahoo.com ...
That corroborates first person statements from a good friend of mine who flew THAT aircraft type.
He hated the rubber jungle.
The masks will drop in either condition, sudden or gradual.
Thanks. That’s one of the great things about FR. I learn something new every day.
Electrical fire involving the transponders, according to so-called experts on CNN.
A day or so ago, Malaysia asked India to help search too, which is a possible indication we aren’t the only ones with possible knowledge of a crash in the Indian Ocean.
A couple of reasons -- sometimes ATC requests the transponder to be turned off, such as during ground operations (many transponders do this anyway on the ground, without moving the switch to "standby"). And another reason is, you may need the capacity to turn as many components off as possible, in the event of an electrical fire.
It might have been less than 15 minutes. All I remember is it felt like we on the hill of a roller coaster going down as fast as possible for a long time. I did not time it. There were some folks, especially the young girl across the isle, who were crying and very scared. I remember teaching the people around me how to equalize the pressure in their ears like I had learned in scuba class.
When the cabin depressurized we were right around the ND/MT border. Once we dove and leveled off they originally talked about landing at Miles City, MT. However, they did not think the runway was long enough. At that point we were only about 1/2 way through our flight so we still had plenty of fuel. So, we flew on at low altitude to Billings.
Once we were on the ground and the plane came to a stop on the runway the pilot/copilot came out of the cabin. The pilot took a big breath. Everybody on the plane stood up and started clapping out of relief.
The captain said the masks were working in the cockpit but they did not deploy in the passenger compartment. Thus the reason for the rapid decent.
I was about the third person in line once we got in the terminal. The first two got a direct flight to Spokane on turbo prop. Me and two other people got on a Continental flight to Denver and a connecting flight to Spokane. United gave us a voucher for dinner. The rest of the people were put up in a hotel in Billings for the night. I guess I could have gotten a free roundtrip flight anywhere United flew if I had really wanted to. The thing is United never offered us anything. Nobody ever contacted me even to say, I am sorry. I guess they were probably worried about a lawsuit.
Could someone have been in the plane's jump seat? Someone not listed as being on the plane?
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