Another piece from missing Malaysian plane may have been found
It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing and dominated the new cycle for a while.
It was somewhat of a relief when a part later confirmed to have come from the missing airplane was found last July on Reunion Island east of Madagascar. But that was it since then. Now another possible piece has been found in very roughly the same area, on a sandbank on the eastern shore of the mainland in the Mozambique Channel, which separates Madagascar from the east African coast:
The object has the words “NO STEP” on it and could be from the plane’s horizontal stabilizer ”” the wing-like parts attached to the tail, sources say. It was discovered by an American who has been blogging about the search for MH370.
Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Center said it was aware of the discovery and arranging for a thorough examination. Malaysia Airlines said it was “too speculative at this point” to comment.
Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said on Twitter that there was a “high possibility debris found in Mozambique belongs to a” Boeing 777, but said that was “yet to be confirmed and verified.”
It could take about a month for definitive word on whether the part is indeed a piece of the plane. A search of a section of ocean floor as large as South Carolina has been ongoing and is due to be completed in midyear. So far, 75% of the area has been scrutinized, and nothing has been found.
[NOTE: I said “nothing has been found,” but that’s not strictly true. Nothing of the plane has been found on the ocean floor. But a 19th-century shipwreck has been located.]
The Boeing people who built the thing will know if it belongs to a triple 7 the moment they see it. I recognized the first piece of wreckage pulled from the sea when the Challenger blew up as one of the payload’s flight computers the moment I saw it because I had spent several years sitting next one in a test lab and every flight article rolled by me a few feet from my desk.
Right now i am a bit (more) worried about some family that lives in the earthquake zone that got hit with a 7.9
How does a Malaysian
Airlines plane become Indonesian?
Oops, that was an error I meant to fix and forgot in my haste. Thanks! I’m away from my computer till this evening and intend to correct it then.
The various speculations about the causes aren’t likely to be addressed by this piece, which would have been pretty far from anything that might have crashed the aircraft.
We know the thing crashed, we know there are pieces.
What we need are more relevant chunks than the trailing edge of a stabilizer.
Might also need some honesty about the pilot, too.
5 key developments since MH370 vanished two years ago
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/03/03/five-key-developments-since-flight-mh370-vanished/81259820/
the article kind of sums up from the first piece found in july, to this one…
Found “on a sandbank on the eastern shore of the mainland in the Mozambique Channel, which separates Madagascar from the east African coast.”
Let’s do some geography here.
The “eastern shore of the mainland” would be Mozambique itself.
Reunion Island, where the other piece was found,
is about 200 miles EAST of Madagascar.
The mainland is about 250 miles WEST of Madagascar.
Madagascar is 1000 miles North-South. About 200 miles East-West.
(Plus or minus for these distances)
So Reunion Island is about 650 miles from Mozambique as the crow flies.
The finding of these two fragments, vastly separated from one another, means nothing in the search for the plane. That search is a waste of time and money. The plane is proven dead, end of story.
Frog:
However, they are indeed relatively near each other compared to the vast vast Indian Ocean. They of course point to the fact that the plane “is proven dead.” This is just further proof of it, but we pretty much already knew it.
However, it’s not “end of story” for those who lost their loved ones. Nor for Malaysia. Nor for anyone who cares about aviation accidents and getting to the bottom of them, nor for anyone who cares about the possibility of sabotage and/or terrorism (particular the possibility of a terrorist pilot). If these finds and more could point to the location of the wreckage of the plane (which is probably somewhere on the bottom of the ocean), much might be discovered to answer the question of what happened to this plane, which remains one of the biggest mysteries—if not THE biggest—in aviation history.
I’m surprised at your lack of curiosity.
I’m just a nobody, and have not kept up much with search of the Malaysian jet. I just seen on my local news that another piece of the (possible) jet had been found, and couple questions come to mind…..first off , of the news clips I have seen of (photos) wreckage from this jet , every piece I have seen seems to have the words “no step” painted on. I’m very certain that the 777 truly has the words”no step” painted on alot of areas on it, but I ask what are the chances that a few (relatively) small pieces that have been discovered would All have these words painted on them.and secondly what are the astronomical odds that a man that blogs, YouTubes,has spoken to family members of the lost passengers ,ect. about said plane would actually be the one of a few people in the entire continent of Africa to find a “piece of said 777” and it too have the words “no step” painted clearly on it….and Has zero barnacles,ect on it. Just my (very over stated) thought on the matter.