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ArishMell · 70-79, M
Another search was planned last year. I don't know if it has started; but I don't see it as having any higher chance of success than the first attempts, because its direction after last radio and radio contact are not known.
The first searches were based partly on the calculated drifts of a few items washed ashore.
If it is found, there will not be any bodies on board. Those will have disappeared long ago; leaving just synthetic-fibre clothes as grim traces. It had become a grave and should NOT be disturbed save only for retrieving the flight recorders in the very slim hope of being able to analyse them.
I would think the chances of establishing why the 'plane lies where it does, and what happened in the last stage of its flight, very slim indeed.
Similarly, would the flight-recorders' memories be retrievable after all this time in sea-water a few thousand metres deep? Even if they were, would they really tell us anything useful?
(There were some fantasies circulating at the time, of it having been highjacked and flown inland to some unknown destination, but that is not credible.)
The first searches were based partly on the calculated drifts of a few items washed ashore.
If it is found, there will not be any bodies on board. Those will have disappeared long ago; leaving just synthetic-fibre clothes as grim traces. It had become a grave and should NOT be disturbed save only for retrieving the flight recorders in the very slim hope of being able to analyse them.
I would think the chances of establishing why the 'plane lies where it does, and what happened in the last stage of its flight, very slim indeed.
Similarly, would the flight-recorders' memories be retrievable after all this time in sea-water a few thousand metres deep? Even if they were, would they really tell us anything useful?
(There were some fantasies circulating at the time, of it having been highjacked and flown inland to some unknown destination, but that is not credible.)