Remember the October 1972 air plane crash in the Andes?

[Cleita]

It took them 72 days to find the survivors, who had crashed in a remote and nearly inaccessible region of the Andes.

http://www.viven.com.uy/571/Eng/accidente.asp

Watch the video at the website. The reason I post this is that it may take months to find out what happened to Flight MH370. In this case I'm not really hoping for survivors, but I'm sure it will be found in time.

[NightWatcher]

1. and we've made no advances in technology since '72

in 1972 people had rotary phones in their homes, now I have a phone and super computer next to me all the time....

I'm shocked we haven't found them yet. Someone has to know something

[Cleita]

2. I do have a suspicion that the authorities know something we don't.

But I don't know if we will ever find out.

[Jesus Malverde]

3. Considering the US has committed 1 plane and one ship

When it could deploy hundreds of surveillance drones might be a clue they do know something and it's all for show.

This crash should be seen in the context of Malaysian politics where the opposition leader was jailed the day before the crash. This major distraction was said to been "great timing" for the Malay government.

[morningfog]

6. So you think the US knows the plane crashed, and generally where, but

are just letting the rest of the nations search without sharing that info?

[Jesus Malverde]

15. Considering all the initial signs were terrorism, the operators of the global war on terror

seem to be

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. My tinfoil is not that tight

the area where this happened, has a large amount of trash, called the Gyre, and has nasty weather this time of the year.

That said, it is helping the Malay present government, but that is what we call coincidence.

[Jesus Malverde]

16. The Gyre is in the pacific way far away from the indian ocean and the malay coast.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. There are more than these two

Better image of the five of them

[MissB]

5. My brother thinks we will find it.

He thinks it is on land. He thinks we know where it is. I dunno. But I'm not a former military pilot either :/

[Cleita]

8. I get the feeling it's in a hanger someplace and the passengers still alive in

some kind of makeshift prison. But anything could happen. I just keep getting the feeling that they are looking in the wrong place. Maybe it is a coverup and distraction. At first they said it only had enough fuel for five hours and then later they said it flew for seven hours.

[MissB]

12. That's close to his guess too.

He flies a private jet for a living, flying all over the world (it's a big jet, converted with a couple of bedrooms). He thinks it's in a hostile country, and we know where it is and all of the "sightings" are a cover.

I think it is equally plausible that it's at the bottom of the ocean. I just really feel for the families. It must be excruciating.

[Spider Jerusalem]

13. ...

The task of finding a plane in the Indian Ocean is daunting to say the least. In total, this ocean covers 73,556,000 square kilometres.

Aside from the general hugeness of the search area, let alone the ocean itself, there are three main reasons why this search could take a while.

1. IT’S REALLY DEEP

The Indian Ocean has an average depth of more than 3.5 kilometres, making it deeper than the Atlantic. As you might recall, search teams took more than two years to find the wreckage of Air France flight 447 in the Atlantic, even though they discovered debris from the crash early on. Investigators have yet to find any debris from flight MH370.

(snip)

Officially, Australia’s civil aviation radar extends about 410 kilometres offshore, and it’s only used to track aircraft that are approaching WA. But a source from the Civil Aviation Authority has told Reuters the radar’s range is even lower than that.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/why-it-will-be-almost-impossible-to-find-missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-if-its-in-the-indian-ocean/story-fnizu68q-1226857085734

[Spirochete]

19. Perhaps they need to put

Donnie Darko on it. Maybe he'd figure it out...

[Bluenorthwest]

4. The survivors were not actually found, two walked out and found help.

Their story is very amazing. I highly recommend the movie or the book 'Alive'.

[Cleita]

9. That was a good book. n/t

[RebelOne]

20. Read it. They were forced to eat the dead to survive. n/t

[Cleita]

21. Yes. They did. It was also all over the news when they were rescued. n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. So nobody will walk down from Churubusco

(in the movie made in Mexico detailing this) and onto the loving hands of the Mexican Red Cross waiting ambulance crew?

It's always made me smile, not the event itself, but that cheesy movie made about it five years later. At least the American version of that was not made that cheaply

[Cleita]

11. Movies being what they are. They won't be that factual.

The website I linked to does have actual pictures of the rescue and rescuers.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. They made it on the cheap

[frazzled]

18. Or Peruvian LANSA Flight 508, December 1971

Which Werner Herzog explored in his 2000 film Wings of Hope. (Knowing Werner, it's a mix of fact and fiction ... but. for him, the truth lies in the lies as much as the truth: that's what cinema is.)

Wings of Hope (German: Julianes Sturz in den Dschungel) is a 2000 made for TV documentary directed by Werner Herzog. The film explores the story of Juliane Koepcke, a German Peruvian woman who was the sole survivor of Peruvian flight LANSA Flight 508 following its mid-air disintegration after a lightning strike in 1971. Herzog was inspired to make this film as he narrowly avoided taking the same flight while he was location scouting for Aguirre, Wrath of God. His reservation was canceled due to a last minute change in itinerary.

In the film, Herzog and Koepcke visit the scenes of her flight, crash, and escape from the jungle. They take a flight from Lima to Pucallpa (though with a different airline), and sit in the same row of seats where Koepcke sat during the crash. They unearth many large fragments of the plane in the jungle, and then visit the river routes where she traveled for 10 days on foot, and the small village where she was eventually found by three men, one of whom appears in the film.