Indian Ocean Debris Believed To Come From Missing Flight MH370

McGruber writes that air crash investigators, though maintaining that it is "too early to tell" with certainty, have 'a high degree of confidence' that a piece of wreckage found on the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion is from a Boeing 777 — the same model as the doomed MH370 which disappeared in March 2014. Investigators will need to examine closely the wreckage to link it to MH370, but MH370 was the only Boeing 777 ever lost over water.

Comments

A "Badly-Damaged" Suitcase has also been found

[McGruber]

A 'badly-damaged' suitcase has also been found in the same area: Google Translation of French-Language news report

Re:A "Badly-Damaged" Suitcase has also been found

[PPH]

With that amount of damage, I'd say it must have come from a United flight.

Currents

[Solandri]

If you look at the currents in the Indian Ocean, and trace backwards from Reunion (it and Mauritius are the two dots east of Madagascar), you pass right through the area they've been searching off of Australia.

Re:Bad news for recovery of the black boxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no autopilot has the ability to land a plane (intact) on water. Heck, I wonder if the data currently gathered by sensors and instruments would suffice to program one - the difficulty is assessing height and with no ILS beams to guide the AP, the radar altimeter is the only choice and probably not accurate enough for determining precisely when to flare (forget GPS and altimeter). Landing on water is so difficult that whilst it might seem preferable to land if no runway is in the vicinity when you need it, almost any somewhat flat terrain is better because then the landing gear can be used to absorb the impact. Water is hard as concrete at that speed (as you should know). And calm water is bad because it's harder for pilots to see their height by looking at it.

The more interesting question is if they can decipher whether it started breaking up in the air. Wings are very robust and due to their shape they fall slower in in-flight breakups so a large chunk of a wing like that requires more examination - and I'd guess they also check for signs of a fire when that has been one of the more credible theories (+ one possible sighting of a burning aircraft from a sailboat under the believed flightpath). But then too the question is whether it was before or after impact.