Search for Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Drastically Narrows

[BlueStreak]

53. Not to be pedantic, but that chart doesn't say anything about fuel

There is a chopped off sentence that says "... seven hours". 7 hours is the time from the "good night" to the last satellite ping. But we don't know the craft was in the air at the last ping. It could have been in the water for 90 minutes at that point, floating on the surface with battery power responding to the pings. My comment about fuel was based on an "expert's" comment on Thursday. His view was that the fuel would have run out north of the search zone.

You don't load planes up with a full load of fuel. You give them the fuel they need for the flight, plus a contingency amount, but no so much that they would be above landing weight at the destination. That chart is chopped off, but one notices the northern arc is much, much longer than the distance from Kuala Lampur to Beijing and is still going where the chart is chopped, so the interpretive artist clearly does not take fuel into account on this picture.

I find it comical that you insist on precise geometry -- totally ignoring the refractive effect -- to assert that the oil worker could not have seen the plane, yet you gloss over the fuel issue.

I don't know what happened. I do know that most of the reports of "facts" have proven to be wrong. So I categorically reject any claims that one specific theory is "proven". The theory that this was under pilot control is possible, but doesn't seem very likely to me. The point is that you don't know either. Nobody knows.