re: Official Thread: Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

I was watching that too. They have no info.

I guess this is as plausible as anything else at this point. Wouldn't it be crazy if it went way over to toward Maldives?

Maldives island residents report sighting of 'low flying jet

Residents of the remote Maldives island of Kuda Huvadhoo in Dhaal Atoll have reported seeing a "low flying jumbo jet" on the morning of the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

A local aviation expert told Haveeru that it is "likely" for MH370 to have flown over the Maldives. The possibility of any aircraft flying over the island at the reported time is extremely low, the expert added.

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Residents of the remote Maldives island of Kuda Huvadhoo in Dhaal Atoll have reported seeing a "low flying jumbo jet" on the morning of the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

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IF the jet went somewhere even semi populated, it was seen... It would have been daylight when they landed and you aren't going to miss a 777 both visually and audibly if it is landing anywhere in your vicinity.

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If it went to the west it may have still been pre-dawn with the multiple times zones.

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True... If it remained in the same timezone it would have been around 8-9am (If the 7hr hours of additional flight is correct).

How far West are those islands?

Quick search says it is three hours behind Malaysian time. May have still been dark.

Damnit. I was hoping to wake up to some new news. Another day of speculation.

I wonder what happened to the oil slick found by the US that they told Malaysia about...

CNN reporting that Israel is stepping up it's air traffic control security, in case of a potential attack.

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They aren't in the arc of possibility.

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Who is giving information about the arc?

Believe nothing you hear. They had an expert come on last night saying he didn't believe the arc was even true.

LINK

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The anonymous air force official told Chinese web portal Tencent that despite initial claims that they could not be certain, the Malaysian military knew very well that the plane they were tracking on radar was flight MH370, and followed it as it climbed above the Boeing 777's approved altitude of 45,000ft and took a sharp turn to the west before descending unevenly to 23,000ft on the approach to the island of Penang.

The plane then climbed back to 35,000ft and headed northwest towards the Indian Ocean, with the final reading showing it above the tiny island of Pulau Perak in the Strait of Malacca at around 2.40am.

Though they had known this all along, Malaysian authorities did not reveal this crucial information until March 15, a week after the plane’s disappearace, the official said. It also meant that Malaysia knew from the beginning that the plane — if it had crashed — was likely in the Strait of Malacca region on the west side of the country as opposed to the South China Sea on the east side, where dozens of ships and aircraft from other countries searched pointlessly for days, the official added.

The official’s allegations are consistent with the way in which Malaysian authorities have released information about the missing flight. The first public announcement made by Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya on Saturday morning was that the plane had remained in contact until 2:40am, but the timing was subsequently changed to 1:20am, just as communications was being handed over from Malaysian air traffic controllers to their counterparts in Vietnam.

It has since been revealed that the plane’s transponder was “deliberately” switched off at 1:21am and that it had completely vanished off Malaysian civilian radar screens at roughly 1:30am. But if the official’s claims are to be believed, then Malaysian authorities knew exactly where the plane was and what it was doing for another 70 minutes.

The official’s revelations about Malaysia’s knowledge about the flight’s true last point of contact are also consistent with why Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director-general of the Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation, said “there are some things that I can tell you and some things that I can’t” when explaining why the search was being expanded to the Strait of Malacca on March 11. In fact, the official said, Malaysia had been secretly searching that region all along.

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