Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 piece found?

rwellner98

rwellner98

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http://www.airlive.net/2015/07/breaking-piece-of-wing-found-on-la.html

"The debris of a wing plane was found this morning on west coast of La Réunion (French Island).

The presence of many shells, investigators confirm that the debris remained a while in the water."

A french pilot analyzed the photo and has a comparison between it and schematics from the plane. Looks pretty convincing.

mh370.jpg
 
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Wouldn't they just need to check serial numbers?

And after that, ocean currents?
 
rwellner98 said:
The ocean currents part, at least, makes sense. Broadly western straight toward that area.
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It might help create a trail, a radial to follow, but I doubt the main body had the buoyancy to make that far.
 
The article also mentions an A310 and a twine (no mention of the type) that was lost in that area over the last several years. If that is just a flap it certainly looks a bit large to be from the other two planes.
 
Henning said:
It might help create a trail, a radial to follow, but I doubt the main body had the buoyancy to make that far.
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It's not about the ocean currents floating it there, it's about following the currents back to where it still is.
 
Norman said:
3,000NM or so, 5 or 6 hours flight time? I can see it making the area easily.
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From the ping trail? I'm not seeing it, IIRC that took it down the other side of the Indian Ocean. I have a feeling this piece is neutrally buoyant and rode the currents a long way.
 
StinkBug said:
It's not about the ocean currents floating it there, it's about following the currents back to where it still is.
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Right, and hopefully there will be some trail of parts to work out more precisely exactly where that is, because ocean currents are not stable, they are very dynamic.
 
Henning said:
Right, and hopefully there will be some trail of parts to work out more precisely exactly where that is, because ocean currents are not stable, they are very dynamic.
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And if some parts were buoyant for a while, and eventually sank, you'd be looking for bits and pieces scattered over a large part of the planet.
 
Matthew said:
And if some parts were buoyant for a while, and eventually sank, you'd be looking for bits and pieces scattered over a large part of the planet.
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They still are. Anything to narrow and refine, or bring in new parameters is useful.
 
drotto said:
The article also mentions an A310 and a twine (no mention of the type) that was lost in that area over the last several years. If that is just a flap it certainly looks a bit large to be from the other two planes.
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definitely not from an a310. Looks a lot like the 777 flaperon
 
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If it's confirmed to be from a 777 (which should be easy to do) then it's MH370. It's not like there are other lost 777s floating around out there.
 
Bonchie said:
If it's confirmed to be from a 777 (which should be easy to do) then it's MH370. It's not like there are other lost 777s floating around out there.
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I would presume it to be authentic to MH370, I doubt the part sketch is fraudulent, and that is a good match. The question is how much of a path did that flap travel by itself? Is the main body just offshore, or 1000 miles away? Is there a "trail of crumbs"?:dunno:
 
Henning said:
I would presume it to be authentic to MH370, I doubt the part sketch is fraudulent, and that is a good match. The question is how much of a path did that flap travel by itself? Is the main body just offshore, or 1000 miles away? Is there a "trail of crumbs"?:dunno:
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theoretically it could've drifted 6000+nm. I doubt there is a "main body"
 
ktup-flyer said:
theoretically it could've drifted 6000+nm. I doubt there is a "main body"
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There is always a " main body" of wreckage, even if that body is a cluster of fragments. Even when airliners go into oceans, large non buoyant parts are recovered from a reasonably small area. Then there is the trail of parts with various states of buoancy and rates of loss that will land down current.

Problem is when searching an ocean floor with side scan sonar is that while there are few aircraft down in the area, there are centuries worth of shipwrecks and in more recent times containers lost overboard, down there that you have to sift through.

One thing we know is it happened north of the Southern Ocean current influence.
 
If it hit hard enough and shattered, I'd assume the landing gear and engines might be found close together. Everything else, who knows? Some stuff floated away, some stuff sank slowly enough that it could have been carried a very long way before it hit bottom. Some stuff is still floating around, and some stuff beached and covered with sand.

The resolution of some of those sonar images I've seen looks pretty good - but how close to the debris does it have to be to get those pictures?
 
Henning said:
From the ping trail? I'm not seeing it, IIRC that took it down the other side of the Indian Ocean. I have a feeling this piece is neutrally buoyant and rode the currents a long way.
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There has been so much misinformation disseminated on this incident I'm not sure what to believe. Definitely not certain I'd trust the ping trail, just saying the fuel on-board may have been enough to get near that island. OTOH, ocean currents could have done the job.

I'm not into conspiracy theories, but the 777 could be anywhere on the bottom of the Indian Ocean or sheltered in Pakistan for all we know.

Like we've been doing, we'll just have to wait and see.
 
Norman said:
There has been so much misinformation disseminated on this incident I'm not sure what to believe. Definitely not certain I'd trust the ping trail, just saying the fuel on-board may have been enough to get near that island. OTOH, ocean currents could have done the job.

I'm not into conspiracy theories, but the 777 could be anywhere on the bottom of the Indian Ocean or sheltered in Pakistan for all we know.

Like we've been doing, we'll just have to wait and see.
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Considering how long it has taken to wash up there, my bet is the main body of the wreckage is a long ways away, the wild card being a fitting that was holding a buoyant part on the bottom just turned loose and the wreck is very nearby.

That is what this find mostly does is gives a position to work backwards from so there are two fronts working towards a middle. We now have a 'slice of pie' to search in, and with that defined a more effective search can be performed.
 
Any other reports of how long before there's some kind of confirmation that it's from a 777 and then that it's from a particular 777?
 
Matthew said:
Any other reports of how long before there's some kind of confirmation that it's from a 777 and then that it's from a particular 777?
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I'm pretty sure the 777 part is confirmed, haven't heard about a matching number though.
 
Looks to be in pretty great shape for going through an alleged accident. You'd think they would be a lot more distorted or bent, especially if the flaps were down for ditching (if the pilots were even awake/alive/there).
 
overdrive148 said:
Looks to be in pretty great shape for going through an alleged accident. You'd think they would be a lot more distorted or bent, especially if the flaps were down for ditching (if the pilots were even awake/alive/there).
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Not necessarily. Think about it from a decompression everyone unconscious scenario. AP would hold it at altitude when it ran out of fuel until it got to slow, then it would descend wings level to the ocean just above stall, I assume in the flaps clean configuration (Does a 777 automatically deploy flaps when slow?:dunno:). The forces on the flap may not have been high at all if it was calm sub equatorial waters.
 
Triple Seven flaperon is a composite structure, it's not gonna be "bent"

I think, given the timing this is a very likely spot to discover debris that would have traveled from the area that has been determined most likely to be where it went down. It's also normal for it not to be discovered until it washes up on a shore somewhere. It's a very big ocean out there, bigger than most people can wrap their heads around. There are so many people who have a hard time understanding how, if you went up to 2,000 feet and there were a seat cushion floating out there, you couldn't just see it? :dunno:

Of course some Pakistanis could have took the part down there in a Zodiac and planted it :rolleyes:
 
It's been stated that it is by default from MH370 because it is the only one "loose" in the world.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Did they find more freckle cream?
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No. A carbon fiber assembly that is clearly from a 1937 Electra. They can't match it to any other aircraft from that era, so it MUST be from Amelia's airplane.
 
Henning said:
Not necessarily. Think about it from a decompression everyone unconscious scenario. AP would hold it at altitude when it ran out of fuel until it got to slow, then it would descend wings level to the ocean just above stall, I assume in the flaps clean configuration (Does a 777 automatically deploy flaps when slow?:dunno:). The forces on the flap may not have been high at all if it was calm sub equatorial waters.
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You are making a lot of assumptions about how the autopilot works. This is probably more advanced than some light plane autopilot that would fly the plane into a stall to maintain altitude, but I'm pretty sure you don't know what it would do.
 
If it were floating in the ocean for very long, I'd expect to see something growing on the part- barnacles, seaweed, or something. I note there appears to be something that may have grown visible in the picture. Perhaps by looking at what is found growing on or in the structure, they can determine where that part has been. Sort of the way they looks at insects and pollen to see where an item might have been.
 
Henning said:
Not necessarily. Think about it from a decompression everyone unconscious scenario. AP would hold it at altitude when it ran out of fuel until it got to slow, then it would descend wings level to the ocean just above stall, I assume in the flaps clean configuration (Does a 777 automatically deploy flaps when slow?:dunno:). The forces on the flap may not have been high at all if it was calm sub equatorial waters.
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If the engines quit the autopilot is going to disconnect. My guess would be that since the nose is being held up by downforce on the horizontal stab if it was trimmed to fly at 0.8 Mach the nose will drop and it will try to maintain that speed all the way to the ground.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
If it were floating in the ocean for very long, I'd expect to see something growing on the part- barnacles, seaweed, or something. I note there appears to be something that may have grown visible in the picture. Perhaps by looking at what is found growing on or in the structure, they can determine where that part has been. Sort of the way they looks at insects and pollen to see where an item might have been.
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Some of the pictures showed, and at least one article mentioned, that there were "shells" (probably barnacles) on it.
 
Dan Thomas said:
Some of the pictures showed, and at least one article mentioned, that there were "shells" (probably barnacles) on it.
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Yes, and you can see some of it in the photos. Just nothing near what I would expect to see after a year in the ocean which is why I think that piece washed up a long time ago and they just now found it.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Yes, and you can see some of it in the photos. Just nothing near what I would expect to see after a year in the ocean which is why I think that piece washed up a long time ago and they just now found it.
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It's epoxy with I don't know what kind of paint/uv protection. Hard to call without some testing.
 
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