Finding Nothing In The Right Places

The search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the Southern Ocean was called off, because of a cyclone crossing the Roaring 40s. Five ships and 11 aircraft scheduled to cruise the remote seas some 2500km southwest of Perth were warned of the impending storm and headed to safety of Perth.

A naval officer announced, "Anybody who's out there is coming home and all additional sorties from here are cancelled."

After a month no wreckage from the Boeing 777 has been found on shore or at sea. Objects spotted from satellites have turned out to be either containers washed overboard or large accumulation of plastic trash.

The only two other planes have vanished for this long.

In 2009 Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on May 31, 2009 disappeared into the Atlantic. The two-year search recovered most of the wreckage, the majority of bodies, and the voice and data recorders, but nothing of the Boeing 727 turned up from a missing flight from Angola's capital of Luanda in 2003. Gone forever and no one knows where or at least those that do know aren't saying where.

The same is true for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, then again no one can find anything, if they are looking in the wrogn place.

First the Gulf of Siam and now the Southern Ocean with nary a mention of Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia

Diego Garcia was mentioned by several news agencies in the case of the missing Malaysia Air flight.

No one in the USA knows Diego Garcia, unless he's a family member, then again most Americans can't find Washington DC on a map without the help of a GPS.

Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago was a refuge for shipwrecked sailors of the Indian Ocean. No one attempted to inhabit the atoll until the French imported slaves from Madagascar to work the coconut plantations. Diego Garcia's water supply supported approximately about 1000 Chagossians, but they were deported to other islands in the archipelago and the Seychelles after the arrival of the US Navy in 1971.

No civilians are allowed on the island.

Other than those brought there by the CIA rendition program.

Secret, remote, idyllic.

Just the spot for a little torture in the sun.

MH370 Malaysia

Two weeks ago Malaysia Air flight MH370 disappeared from radar between Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The news media first suspected a crash and an intense search was conducted in the Gulf of Siam without finding any debris.

Family and friends of the 293 passengers and crew wanted answers.

Malaysian authorities had none.

Several days passed before information was released that the Boeing 777 had turned off-course to fly west over Penang into the Indian Ocean. The media focused on a possible hijacking by ethnic Uighurs from western China and then shifted to the pilots perhaps belong to an Islamic plot. An ex-pilot offered a reasonable theory that an electrical fire had erupted in the plane and the pilots had attempted a landing on Langewe Island off the Malaysia Peninsula.

Still no answers.

Still no wreckage.

Yesterday a satellite spotted several lengthy objects floating deep into the Southern Ocean to the west of Australia. The debris lays beyond the range of a 777 and the currents of the Roaring 40s flow north rather than south, however military aircraft have been dispatched to the location and ships are being diverted to conduct a search for wreckage.

According to Bloomberg.com 83 planes have vanished since 1948.

Wreckage from Air France Flight 477 was found in the South Atlantic after five days. Another two years were spent retrieving the black box from the depths of the sea. The treacherous waters of the Roaring 40s will not easily yield its secrets, but I have a theory, that excludes the plane's crashing into the ocean.

The only secure airbase in the Indian Ocean is situated on Diego Garcia, which is a joint UK-USA military base. There are no civilians on the atoll and landing simulations for Diego Garcia were found on the computer of MH370's pilot. Reports of a low-flying passenger plane have come from the Maldives and even ABC news has blogged the possibility of the remote island as a final destination for the 777.

Few aircraft have disapperared so thouroughly as this one and only two entities on this planet have that power.

Nature and the USA.

I'm not betting on either until the new search turns up nothing.

I like sure things.