I Saw Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 In Water – Woman says

26 March 2014 

Introduction 

Malaysian flight  MH370 went missing on 8 March with 239 people on board.  It was en routed from Kuala Lumpurto Beijing.  The experts now pin-pointed the plane's location to be about 2,500 km west of Perth,  Australia.  Till date,  there is still no sighting of the plane nor its debris.  This article is not offering any expert view but some arguments and pictures from another angle. 

The Johor Housewife

A Johor housewife, Mrs Latife Dalelah, claimed that she saw an aircraft  half submerged in the waters  at about 2:30 pm  Malaysian time (same for the rest)  when she was returning to Kuala Lumpur after a pilgrimage to Mecca on 8 March.   The news said that she took Saudis flight SV2058 that left Jeddah at 8.30am but actually,  she took Saudis flight SV2798 and not SV2058 as shown in the attached. 

 

Flight Path of SV 2798

According to flightradar’s flight history,  Saudis Airline SV2788’s flight path is as shown.  On 8 March 2014,  SV 2798 took the red dotted path  flying over Chennai of India.

Using the flight data found at flightrada24,  one could determine that flight SV2798 was  above Chennai at around 1300 hour (5:00 UTC).  It then jumped to show SV2798 at the marked location at 1500 hours as there was no data in flightradar24 for 2 hours between the two time intervals on 8 March.    If one interpolates the time and distance,    one could find the rough location where  Mrs Latife Dalelah sighted the airplane at 14:30 hours.    It was at a distance almost perpendicular to the site where Tomnod map 4543, 5239 and other maps were located.  

The same is shown on  a google earth map where Tomnod maps were tagged.

Update:

For those interested in finding out the co-ordinates of the various Tomnod maps using Google Earth or Google Map can download this file.   It will load and appear automatically in Google Earth or map. To get the co-ordinates,  click the "direction" at the bottom.

 What is Tomnod map?

Tomnod is a website where it allows volunteers to spot and tag any object using satellite images.  So far,  some of the maps showing possible debris findings were circulated around in various forums and twitted around as shown in the Appendix.
 

Can one see object from a plane flying at around 35,000 feet?

Many web articles said can.  One of them claimed that we could see a 737 plane or smaller ones from 30,000 feet and  777 is almost twice the size of 737.  He assumed that one should have a normal vision, or vision that was corrected to be normal.   

This website offered a calculator that says that human eyes can see an object about 250 miles away from 35,000 feet.  This is  roughly the distant from where  Mrs Latife Dalelah was to the Tomnod maps.

 

The Satellite Pinging 

The experts used doppler effect of the satellite pinging and the 4 pings to pin-point the where-about of MH370.  Although this Doppler effect of satellite pinging was never used before to locate a plane,  many,  including the Malaysian PM,  have accepted it beyond reasonable doubts.  This Doppler effect concept appears to go against Mrs Latife Dalelah’s plane sighting because the plane was not moving after it had crashed. It could not have been providing the satellite pings with Doppler effect throughout the next 4 hours.   The only logical explanation that can hold some water is that the aircraft’s  satellite pinger might be floating after the crash and was transmitting the signal although the quality, strength and also the frequency of the signal could be affected after being partly submerged in water.    

Conclusion 

There could and just may be possible that Mrs Latife Dalelah had seen flight MH370.   If that is the case,  the multi-nation search now carrying out in the southern Indian Ocean west of Australiawill be futile and will  turn up no result.

Update 1:  Check the vision of the lady  26 March

 

Someone in a forum suggested that lady's vision should be checked as she was over 50.  This suggestion is reasonable but in the first instance,  someone must accept her story.  BTW,  how much would it cost to send a plane there to check it out?

 

 

Update 2:  How deep is the seamount  26 March

 

The seamount or the mountain under water where the Tomnod maps are located is called the "ninetyyeast ridge" in the eastern Indian Ocean as shown.  It is about 5000 km in length,  stretching from the Andaman islands all the way to Western Australia.  According to this echogram from this article,  the ridge is still very deep,   around 1,500 to 2000 metres.  Therefore,  it is likely that any plane landed there would have sunk after sometime.

 

 

 

 Update3 : Picture from the Plane 28 March

 

A Chinese forumer took a photo of Lanzhou airport from a plane.  He said  he was about 10,000 metres (or about 32,800 feet) high and about 200 km away when he took the following  picture with his  Canon digital camera that  has no focusing function.  The parking planes can be seen roughly. 

 

  

Update 4:  Timing of the sighting - 28 March

 

Mrs Latife Dalelah saw  the plane floating in the water at 2:30 pm Malaysian time and the Malaysian's military radar spotted the plane flying around Andaman sea and disappeared from the limit of its screen around 2:15 am,  about 200 miles North West of Penang.  There is an approximate 10 hours between the two locations.  Although the plane might take another hour to fly to the crash site,  the timing is against  Mrs Latife Dalelah's plane sighting unless the plane could float in the water with air pockets in the fuselage and the wings for about 9 hours.

 

 

Update 5: Can Plane float in the water? - 28 March

 

Plane will eventually sink when landed on water.  The time taken will depend on the condition of the aircraft,  how it is damaged as well as the pressure within the aircraft and whether there are still air pockets large enough to hold up the plane.  In the history of aviation,  most planes landed on water sunk within an hour.  However, on 23 November 1996,  there was an Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 (a Boeing 767-260ER) floated in the Indian Ocean for some time until the 50 survivors were rescued. 

 

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Appendix I:  Tomnod maps

1)  Tomnod map 4534 and 5239 

Tomnod map 4534 and 5239 contain some satellite images debris that were suspected to be from MH370.   

5239 appears to show the 2 engines of the Boeing 777

It matches the dimensions of Boeing 777 when a 777 was superimposed as shown in the following picture. 

 

Isn't the engines supposed to have sunk? 

It may be because the plane actually hit the seamount as it crashed (see google earth map)  and the plane did not sink immediately when the satellite image was taken.  The waves or ripples created on top and around the right wing suggested some very big boards as large as a wing of a plane was submerged underneath the water.  Just like what was seen here for this plane

 

Map 4543 which shows some debris that appears to match one of the logo of MAS airline “Malaysia” although many said the fonts were not the same.  It may have been distorted due to the poor resolution of the satellite images 

 

Other debris found around the area