Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Left: The Malaysian lawyer and activist Grace Subathirai Nathan, whose mother was on board MH370. Right: Blaine Gibson, an American who has mounted a search for debris from the airplane. (William Langewiesche)

William Langewiesche has a story in The Atlantic that summarizes what we know about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which isn't much. He also relates some theories about what happened, all of which he dismisses, except for one, which is pretty grizzly.

The most interesting part is about Blaine Gibson, who had no connection with the flight or the investigation, but took it upon himself to go searching for bits of wreckage washing up on Indian Ocean beaches. Surprisingly he found a bunch. Well, several pieces anyway.

William has nothing good to say about the government of Malaysia, unless you consider, corrupt, incompetent, morons as 'good'.

Via Posthip Scott

Still Looking for that Missing Airliner

INDIAN OCEAN (April 14, 2014) Operators aboard the Australian navy vessel ADF Ocean Shield move U.S. Navy's Bluefin-21 into position for deployment. Using side scan sonar, Bluefin will descend to a depth of between 4,000 and 4,500 meters, approximately 35 meters above the ocean floor to spend up to 16 hours at this depth collecting data. Joint Task Force 658 is supporting Operation Southern Indian Ocean, searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Peter D. Blair/Released)

4,500 meters is almost 3 miles deep. That won't get you to the very deepest part of the ocean, which is more like 7 miles, but it's pretty darn deep, and still deeper than most conventional submarines.

Bluefin is now owned by Batelle, a not-for-profit research outfit headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, where I lived when I was in Junior High School. There is a similar outfit in San Antonio, Texas, which is just down the road from Austin, called the Southwest Research Institute. They are called non-profits now, but when I first ran into them they were called not-for-profit. I took this to mean that they could make money from what they were doing, but it was all plowed back into their organization or research, not distributed to stock holders, because there aren't any stock holders.

Ocean Shield

April 9, 2014. Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion flies past Australian Defense vessel Ocean Shield on a mission to drop sonar buoys to assist in the acoustic search of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean. The ship searching for the missing Malaysian jet has detected two more underwater signals that may be emanating from the aircraft's black boxes. (Photo by Australian Defense Force)

Ship builders are building some funny looking ships these days. This one was originally ordered by a Norwegian company that is in the offshore oil and gas business. Before it was launched it was sold to the Australian Navy. The visor over the bow is a helipad.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Two Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft from Chinese Air Force on the tarmac in Perth, Australia, on March 22, 2014. (Xinhua/Lui Siu Wai)

Chinese aircrews flying Russian built aircraft out of Australia to search for an American built Boeing 777 airliner being flown by a Malaysian crew.