It certainly does. One of my colleagues was involved in a stratospheric research balloon launch from Gimli when that aircraft landed (rather unexpectedly).

But NASA did a similar cock up on one of its Mars landers. Which was rather more expensive.

Bloody metric.

i figure that some at this site might have problems getting used to it

myself, i can live with mpg rather than litres per 100 km

Apparently they're going to "intensify" the search. Why not do the intensifying bit in the beginning?

Lack of fuel / engine failure has been ruled out as the the aircraft would be able to glide down for 90 miles. There would be enough time to give a distress signal and radars may catch the altitude change.

ok

i guess it is something else then

Waste of resources until they know what area it's in. Ever hear the expression "As big as the sea" or "A sea of something"?
Now if they have a debris field they can track the ocean currents and try to find some chunks from point of impact and on through the direction of drift. Same as all the boats working over a shoal of fish. sorta

For the transponder to quit sending it's burst transmissions there was likely something drastic happened. Nobody's taking credit for blowing it up or shooting it down and I can't think of a group that would commit a crime like this against Malaysia or China offhand so structural failure or fuel or engine explosion is my early guess. I haven't read the debris field article yet but think baggage would be among the floating stuff so that should make it clear if it's the wreck and if there was a bomb in the baggage.

One the passengers with a stolen passport has been identified as a 19 year old from Iran, who is believed to have been in transit to Germany to claim asylum. His mother had been waiting in Frankfurt for him, and has been in contact with police when he failed to contact her.

This is what CBC is currently reporting.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysi...iran-1.2567697

(info subject to change, can't guarantee CBC won't change the story.)

CNN is reporting both stolen passport passengers entered Malaysia on valid passports from Iran, and neither can be linked to any terrorist group and nothing in their background suggests they were.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/world/...html?hpt=hp_t1

Quote:
Why are the cellphones of missing Malaysian Airlines passengers still ringing? Relatives claim that smartphones are still active as the search zone now switches to entirely new area

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...es-active.html

Apparently the planes you can see by zooming in on Google Maps are NOT the missing plane.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014...n_4939573.html

Apparently Google's satellite images aren't live!!

Now they are saying they have a track for the plane as it flew 100 miles off course, at low level, toward the Malacca straights?

What a let down !

One would assume a catastrophic failure or hijack for lost comms. although with no contact from anyone, the latter seems unlikely. Even with no radio contact, it takes seconds to send an emergency squawk code, 7700 or 7500.

Speculation is somewhat pointless at this stage.

The search area is being expanded, not ramped up. This is how a search works, there is a narrow area for the primary search, if that turns nothing up, the search area is expanded, possibly requiring more assets. Searching is not a free for all, it is controlled by a search master who co-ordinates all search assets.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/malaysia...311-hvhjg.html