'Mid-air disintegration'? You mean an explosion?
"The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet," said the source, who is involved in the preliminary investigations in Malaysia.
If the plane had plunged intact from such a height, breaking up only on impact with the water, search teams would have expected to find a fairly concentrated pattern of debris, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the investigation.
The source was speaking shortly before Vietnamese authorities said a military plane had spotted an object at sea suspected to be part of the missing airliner.
Asked about the possibility of an explosion, such as a bomb, the source said there was no evidence yet of foul play and that the aircraft could have broken up due to mechanical issues.
Malaysian authorities have said they are focused on finding the plane and have declined to comment when asked about the investigations.
However, the source said the closest parallels were the explosion on board an Air India jetliner in 1985 when it was over the Atlantic Ocean and the Lockerbie air disaster in 1988. Both planes were cruising at around 31,000 feet when bombs exploded on board.
On Sunday, they were comparing this plane to Air France 447, but in that case there was wreckage. Pan Am 103 had wreckage because it went down over land. Air India 182 took years to resolve. That's what this one sounds like.
Labels: airport security, Malaysia, terrorism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:47 PM
5 Comments:
Pan Am 103 went down over land because the flight was delayed at Heathrow. If it hadn't been delayed, it would have gone down in the Atlantic Ocean.
We are looking at a repeat of Pam Am 103.
Findalis,
I thought the bomb on Pam Am 103 was triggered by it reaching a certain height.
No it was a timed mechanism. The plan was for it to go down over water. Very hard at the time to find and trace.
Even assuming a high altitude explosion, it will be hard to explain absolutely zero floating wreckage found, if that's how the search continues to play out.
Got this from a comment elsewhere:
Operation Bojinka
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