Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is Missing

kwaigonegin said:

Water landing is certainly possible as evidenced by US Airways Flight 1549. Of course ocean landing is very different than river however if the seas were relatively calm during the landing it is certainly possible to ditch relatively intact with an experienced pilot which I believe the capt of MH370 was.

In many ways it's actually easier because he doesn't have to do any course changes, last minute maneuvers to avoid populated areas, structures, cables etc. All he had to do was slowly guide the plane down.

Again assuming if that was what really happened.

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B.I.B. said:

It was generally regarded that it was harder to get the attitude of the plane right and all it would take is one wing to slightly clip the water and she would flip.and break up.

just look at Ethiopian flight 961 which tried to land in water off the cosmos islands in thje iIndian ocean.

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delft said:

Two remarks:
If the wing part recovered on Mauritius went to the bottom of the ocean before it detached and floated away we must have a maximum depth the aircraft lies at because at a greater depth the part would have been crushed. As this part will not have been designed for submersion that depth must be really shallow. Isn't it more likely that the part detached when another part of the wing was crushed? Something to consider.
It is possible that the automatic pilot kept the aircraft in a wing level flight after the engines stopped and landed the aircraft on the water without pilot input. In another bizarre episode nearly sixty years ago a Dutch pilot left his office in a F-84G or F-84F ( I don't remember which ) after which the aircraft continued flying for another half hour and made a neat wheels up landing in an agricultural area. It was repaired IIRC.

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French Investigators Confirm Wing Fragment Came From Flight MH370
SEPTEMBER 04, 2015 2:52 PM ET

French authorities have formally confirmed that a piece of debris found on the French island of La Réunion in the Indian Ocean in July belongs to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The Boeing 777 vanished on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. From Paris, reporter Jake Cigainero tells our Newscast unit that the mystery surrounding the plane and the 239 people aboard is far from solved.

Cigainero reports:

"French investigators have identified the wing fragment as part of the missing plane by matching serial numbers with maintenance records.
"The French prosecutor's office says that investigators now know 'with certitude' that the wing fragment came from the missing Boeing 777.
"What exactly happened to the plane still remains one of the greatest aviation mysteries that experts say won't be solved without the black box recorders."
French investigators have been examining the condition of the wing fragment, called a flaperon, for clues about the plane's fate.

According to The Associated Press:

"Officials who scrutinized data exchanged between the plane's engine and a satellite determined that the jetliner took a straight path across the ocean, leading them to believe that the plane flew on autopilot for hours before running out of fuel and crashing into the water."

Cigainero also reports that Australian teams continue to search for more debris in an expanse of the Indian Ocean where the plane is believed to have gone down. That area is more than 2,000 miles from where the flaperon was found.

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...
A Boeing 777 wing was discovered in July on Réunion Island. Authorities have confirmed that the wing most likely belonged to the plane, which disappeared with 239 people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.

Authorities have since redirected the search to a

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that is 2,000 kilometers west of Perth, Australia, but the efforts have been fruitless.

Experts have debated whether search initiatives are on the right track. German scientists involved in the plane debris recovery have said that barnacles on the discovered Boeing 777 wing suggest that the search is thousands of miles off target.

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PanAsian said:

Don't know if this had been posted earlier in a different thread but the flaperon has been confirmed as MH370's.

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And the latest, note the mention in the final paragraph:

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Jeff Head said:

Yes...but in that instance, the pilot was not landing the aircraft unimpeded. He was actually struggling with hijackers in the cockpit as he brought it in.

It is likely that had he been un-impeded, he may have been able to avoid so much cartwheeling and problems and a lot more people would have survived.

As it was, it is amazing that he came in as level as he did in that situation.

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delft said:

It was mentioned when the flaperon was just found that the type of barnacle would point to the extent of ocean were these barnacles live. So were do these then hail from if it isn't the area where the Australians are looking?

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PanAsian said:

And why isn't the search area being moved based on the evidence found?

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