Anyone ever hear of a 75 foot piece of metal airplane that floats?????

[JRutman]

  Lots of interesting comments going on here now. So yes,large pieces possibly can float but as was said,impact with the water would usually rule out many large pieces staying together. Interesting about the composite material.

  As was also said I am skeptical about the wing being in part largely intact as those huge engines with their robust mounts would surely cause severe damage upon being torn off on impact?  So many questions.

  But one must go back to the facts.  And there still aren't that many facts.

Can anyone say Amelia? I know ......different time and circumstances but you can't help but think about that a minute.

J

[TonyT]

I do wonder how much junk is still floating around that part of the world after Japan's sunami, might be some Japanese house roof...

 

Some Aircraft aircraft structure does and will float for a myriad of reasons, composite, sealed box sections, tanks, cylinders, trapped air, plastics etc.. The aircraft engineer in me always looked on the lifejackets carried as simply a floating means to identify the crash site, until the Hudson river Airbus pulled off a landing.

 

If they are... which I feel they are gone.. RIP all.

[Guest Peterpools]

Just seems to me, way too much reporting with virtually nothing to really say. I'm still praying the aircraft is actually down somewhere and all are alive. If we can read the number on a golf ball from a spy satellite, how it couldn't locate a 777 is beyond me? It just doesn't add up

Peter

[LSP_Ron]

I do wonder how much junk is still floating around that part of the world after Japan's sunami, might be some Japanese house roof...

 

 

I don't think currents off Japan flow to the Indian Ocean. All that Japanese floatsum heads to North America some gets to stop in Hawaii

[JRutman]

I don't think currents off Japan flow to the Indian Ocean. All that Japanese floatsum heads to North America some gets to stop in Hawaii

  You are correct Sir!! Hahaha

The prevailing currents in the Indian Ocean run in a giant counterclockwise direction skirting all of the coasts involved. First thing I did think of when seeing the sat pics was the possibility that the large object was a shipping container surrounded by a mass of small floating jetsom. These drifting semi islands now inhabit all of our worlds' oceans and are getting more numerous and larger every day. Add that to the large oil slicks from ships purging their fuel bunkers and we have a huge liquid garbage dump.

J

[Propwash]

In one crash at sea that affected me personally because several good friends were lost, a large section of the wing from a C-130 stayed afloat for several days.  If not for extremely rough seas, it probably would have continued to float for considerably longer.  Incidentally, in spite of catastrophic airframe break-up, one man managed to survive and was picked up hours later floating in a life vest.  

 

Jerry Peterson

[JRutman]

In one crash at sea that affected me personally because several good friends were lost, a large section of the wing from a C-130 stayed afloat for several days.  If not for extremely rough seas, it probably would have continued to float for considerably longer.  Incidentally, in spite of catastrophic airframe break-up, one man managed to survive and was picked up hours later floating in a life vest.  

 

Jerry Peterson

  Sad news about your buddies for sure. My condolences.

The seas in the area of the possible sat pic location are currently in a storm and the waves are from 10 to 20 feet high. This,coupled with the fact the plane has been missing over a week and the fact this area is probably the remotest section of ocean on earth does not lend much hope for survivors I am afraid. Doing without water for over a week for one thing is very"ifey".

  Of course,we then have to go back to fact that this is indeed,the area the plane actually ended up? Back to speculation.

J

[phasephantomphixer]

true it would be difficult to account for a 40' section of modern A/C floating, but as mentioned, several areas do float depending on breakup on impact. All flight control surfaces are Honeycomb core so if separated, or attached to a portion of the A/C that isn't heavier than the buoyancy of the surface, it will float. Most all of the interior panels, seats have a foam or composite honeycomb lining and these are items that searchers look for in water crashes. As with everyone, I hope there is some resolve soon, this whole incident is terrible. 

[LSP_Mike]

I keep thinking that seat cushions are floaty.

[98Wrangler]

It is best to ignore the media talking heads...they have no real clue concerning aircraft or flight.

 

I feel very sorry for the families of the passengers, but I think they should just accept the fact that those passengers are never going to come home.

 

And the Malayan authorities obviously screwed up and should be held accountable as should the airline company.

[JRutman]

  And today they are at it again!! New Chinese sat pics of "possible" debris.  Whatever happened to the old news standards that called for at least two verifiable sources before a story was released?

Does the media even know how dumb they sound and how much credability they are loosing?

J

[ghatherly]

Guys, and gals if any are reading this, this is the biggest Disinformation campaign we have ever seen.   The few facts we have point the jet headed due west at an altitude lower than commercials jets normally fly.   The Malaysians have a very good Air Defense Radar system built by the same contractor that built the US and other western systems.   While I am sure their system does not have all of the bells and whistles as ours, It would be a safe bet that it is not as bad as it is being made out to be.  Further more, No jets were scrambled with an unauthorized interdiction into Malayan airspace from the direction of Thailand, a not so friendly neighbor.  This  tells us either the  Malayans are grossly incompetent, which I doubt, or that they stood down.   The jet was headed west, and was sited on a flight path that can be confirmed by time and speed with sightings over the Maldives Islands the following morning.   Other than that it is all speculation.  

 

The arcs that are shown on every TV show and briefing of Asian/ Indian Ocean flight paths are not the planes flight paths based on any facts, and are just no more than wishful thinking. What those diagrams are is the flight paths of the satellites that picked up data from the engines.   The problem with these tracts is they show the Satellite orbital position when the data was received from the the plane.  The Data System used to upload the engine data does not give an aircraft location, as it is not relevant to engine performance.  If it did,  this whole business would be long over with.  Think about how many times you have seen Mission Control of a shuttle mission to see my point in action.  

 

I think the US and some others know exactly where that plane is, and what is going on and/or happened is not good, and that reality is something that our governments judge far worst than a vanishing plane full of people never to be found.

 

 

    Lets hope and pray that  I am wrong these folks are all still alive, and that they come home safe and sound.

 

 

But to answer you question, yes they will float, if they follow the rules of buoyancy.  Ever seen a concrete boat float?

Gary

Edited March 22, 2014 by ghatherly

[Propwash]

If Flt 370 is never found, prepare to be inundated with an endless barrage of outrageous, crackpot, barking-mad conspiracy theories, claims of alien abductions and pseudoscience gibberish .  I heard one commentator speculating that 370 might have flown into a black hole!   Someone informed him if there was a black hole big enough to swallow a commercial jetliner it would also absorb the entire planet, followed by the moon, nearest planets, and, eventually, the whole solar system.

 

Brace yourselves for a whole lot of craziness, which by itself might be amusing if not for the underlying tragedy. 

 

Jerry Peterson   

[BradG]

Gary I think they found the sightings over the Maldives to be false. However, did you see the resolution of the Chinese satellites? Please, you can get better resolution with google earth.

[PhilB]

Unless this was a very low-speed controlled landing on water the aircraft would have broken up badly and the debris field would be huge.

All the things that float would be still around.

Paper, seat cushions, some baggage/personal effects, clothing, aircraft parts that have insulating foam etc etc etc.

Anyone who has seen a debris field of a crashed aircraft on land will know the myriad of things that are strewn around.

 

The trouble is that this is such a large area of ocean that finding it (if it has gone down there) may take time but debris can and does remain afloat for weeks or even months.