Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 Found?

by JASmius



It almost reached Madagascar?  Or is Reunion Island where the Indian Ocean currents ultimately carried the part(s) of the wreckage that didn't sink?:

Malaysia is "almost certain" that plane debris found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean is from a Boeing 777, the deputy transport minister said on Thursday, heightening the possibility it could be wreckage from missing Flight MH370.

Malaysia Airlines was operating a Boeing 777 on the ill-fated flight, which vanished without a trace in March last year while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in one of the most baffling mysteries in aviation history. The plane was carrying 239 passengers and crew.

Search efforts led by Australia have focused on a broad expanse of the southern Indian Ocean off Australia, roughly 3,700 km (2,300 miles) from France's Reunion Island.

There have been four serious accidents involving 777s in the twenty years since the widebody jet came into service. Only MH370 is thought to have crashed south of the equator.

That certainly narrows the range of possibilities.

French authorities said they were examining the debris, found washed up on Reunion Island east of Madagascar on Wednesday.

"No hypothesis can be ruled out, including that it would come from a Boeing 777," the Reunion prefecture and the French Justice Ministry said in a joint statement on Thursday.

This is one of those updates that tears the recently formed emotional scab right back off the wound:

For the families of those on board, lingering uncertainty surrounding the fate of the plane has been agony.

"Even if we find out that this piece of debris belongs to MH370, there is no way to prove that our people were with that plane," said Jiang Hui, forty-one, whose father was on the flight.

That's certainly true.  On the other hand, since no trace of the jetliner has turned up until now, it's also safe to assume that after a year and a half, it's highly unlikely that there are any survivors.  I can sympathize with wanting to cling to even the flimsiest reeds of hope, but as a general rule, sometimes in life one has to provide one's own cloture as a matter of tough-minded choice and move on.

But obviously not without scoring a hefty payday:

Zhang Qihuai, a lawyer representing some of the passengers' families, said a group of around thirty relatives had agreed they would proceed with a lawsuit against the airline if the debris was confirmed to be from MH370.

And if it's as difficult to make that confirmation as the "experts" are suggesting, that group of two and a half dozen next of kin aren't going to be able to obtain any financial cloture either.

One flaperon is a sad, pathetic memorial to the loss of flight MH370, the rest of which almost certainly sank closer to the area the Aussies have been searching, according to aviation consultant and former NTSB crash investigator Greg Feith.  But at least the more "fanciful" theories about the jetliner's fate can finally be put to rest....







....much to CNN's chagrin.