What if some group hijacked the plane and had some black boxes they dumped into the ocean to monitor the search techniques?
Why do I find the fact that the Chinese found the ping, funny?
A couple of questions that have occurred to me:
1. Is there no coding on the Pings to allow the identificatin of the aircraft? Seems odd if not. Slight variations in the ping rate and/or duration would do the trick I would think. Or some sort of modulation or frequency offset.
2. How do they effect geolocation? Seems hard unless you have multiple hits from different locations.
“The U.S. Navy’s TPL-25 Towed Pinger Locator sonar”
And U.S. technology proves critical to the world once again. Good thing this wasn’t a Malaysian Pinger Locator or it might be pointing at catfish farms in Alabama by now.
“Just days before batteries on the black box pingers are expected to expire,”
This may or may not be accurate. A friend worked for the Public Utilities Commission. They were required to change the battery in their chlorimeter every week, whether they used it or not. Every few months he’d give me a bag of batteries. Each one would last me 9 months or so in my same model chlorimeter. And I did 4 tests a day to his maybe once a week. So they may last longer than is being reported.
However,,,,,, I did read that they were supposed to have been changed a year and a half ago, but weren’t. If that is true,,, they could run out at any time, but there’s no way anyone can tell just when that will be.
Bogie
I have watched Mr. Angus Houston give press conferences. He stikes me as a person who wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthtful of it.
For him to sound this optimistic I feel he has additional confirmatory info not made public. - tom
Meanwhile on an airstrip in Pakistan/Iran or Diego Garcia. :-)
generally go with the simplest explanation. The pilot was upset with his government about the jailed opposition leader, apparently having marital issues and probably decided to hijack the plane and ditch it in the Indian ocean so nobody would find it and it would be a great embarrassment to his government. If that was his goal, mission accomplished. It all seems to fit, he turned off the transponder at just the right time, turned off the acars system, flew around Indonesia and ran into a deep part of the ocean and ditched the plane. He made one mistake though, the acars system was only partially disabled and they got a periodic ping from it that allowed them to figure out where it went. If it wasn’t for that ping there would be no hope of ever finding that plane which was the hijackers obvious intent.
How would one go about extracting a Black Box from an aircraft in water over 10,000 ft?
The last 4 pingings have been within kilometers of each other:
http://www.jacc.gov.au/media/releases/2014/april/mr_014-2.jpg
The plane may be in one piece and may not have settled on the bottom but may still be floating around with the underwater currents a mile or so down.
And that may explain why there is no debris on the surface — it’s all still entombed in the aircraft.
4/4 no flights in or out of DG for 72 hours. Hmmm.
