Dude, where's my airplane?

Oh don't look so shocked.  You are just mad that you didn't think of it.

One week ago today, (opkay owing to the date line, likely one week and a day ago), Malaysia Airlines flight 370 evaporated into thin air somewhere within the box between Bejing and Kuala Lumpur to the north and south, and London and Oklahoma City to the east and west.

Give or take 20K miles or so.

In a world where there are satellites that can read the license tags on cars from 300 miles high, and satlellites can pinpoint someones location to within six feet a Boeing 777 vanished.  As in pouf, see ya, adios or whatever the proper Malaysian term for goodbye might be.

It reminds me of a movie...not that great a movie mind you...that came and went some 25 years or so ago...

No, I never saw it and I only made it about 10 pages into the novel.  So how did I figure out that the disappearance of this jumbo jet hat is possibly the case of life imitating art yet again?  Well, that is the wonder of the Wiki-Wiki Wikipedia world, friends.  Sure any village idiot with a smart phone can f-up history if they want to, but the basic premise remains.  

And no, I don't think that's the way it went, but it's my transitional device so bear with me.

The most chilling part of the week-long search is that nobody on this entire big blue ball of dirt knows where the hell this big aluminum bird is.  Not a bloody soul.  They have been chasing flotsam in two oceans for a week, raising hopes and fears with every piece of debris lolling in the waves only to have the nightmare of the loved ones left behind continue after each discovery is refuted.  There is a lot of dead reckoning involved with this search because technology can only go so far but the backstory changes on this almost hourly.

Only today did anyone in authority finally put an official label on what the rest of the world thought on day one: Terrorism.  They didn't come out and say it, but hundreds of miles off course, and a deactivated transponder can only lead one direction.  It's sad that we have to think of it like that, but in the post 9/11 world cynicism sadly reigns.  The victims are, of course, the families of those on board.  I could not fathom how crazy I'd be if day after day went by and there was something being assumed about my loved one on board.  At this point, eight days later with nothing conclusive I'd probably have to be sedated heavily.

 

The search dynamic is described as looking for an airliner as large as a football field in cubic space in an area that would encompass the entire continent of North America.  Basically looking for a needle in a stack of needles.  When the plane was lost on radar it was estimated that they had fuel on board to continue flying another 2500 miles.  This is basically pegging the crazy sh!t-o-meter big time.

I don't think this one will have a happy ending, friends.  

\