False MH370 leads prompt hope, theories from families and experts, says WSJ

In the search for debris from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, numerous findings of wooden pallets, nets and floating garbage are keeping grieving families clinging on to the hope that those on board may still be alive, and prompting theories from aviation and ocean experts about the plane's final minutes.

Mohamad Sahril Shaari, 24, whose cousin Muhammad Razahan Zamani was on board, told The Wall Street Journal, "I do not think it is in any sea because if it was, they would have found the broken pieces. I think the plane most probably landed somewhere. You should spend time looking for the plane on land.”

Like many other relatives of the flight's passengers, he demanded evidence about his cousin's fate.

"Show us irrefutable proof, or we are not going to accept that they are dead." he was reported as saying.

The lack of physical evidence leaves the passengers' relatives sceptical about the fact that the plane crashed in the ocean, believing instead that it could have landed on an isolated spot, reported The Wall Street Journal.

Another relative of a flight steward on board the plane is Philip Tan, who told The Wall Street Journal that the lack of debris from the plane gives him hope that his brother might be alive and that the plane landed somewhere.

"If the debris is found, that would dash our hopes of survivability," he added.

According to the report, Tan was also inclined to believe the theory that the Boeing 777 was taken over remotely by the US and flown to a distant US military base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

The report cited the director of Merdeka Center, Ibrahim Suffian, who said that Malaysians' trust in their government's handling of the missing plane is low.

This was concluded from a poll by the center released this week, revealing that 54% Malaysians feel that the government is hiding information about the plane and only 26% believed the government was being truhtful.

Family member of passengers from China has also voiced their need to see something tangible in order to believe the plane had crashed.

In the report, Che Yutian who has a 25 year old cousin on board the plane said, "Unless there is physical evidence, we refuse to accept any conclusion from Malaysia Airlines that there are no survivors. Right now it's all based on guessing and deduction."

Australian officials say they are confident they have located the general area where the plane went down, however there is still a huge difference between the conclusions offered by technical experts and what families believe happened to the plane.

A former chief crash investigator for Boeing Co., John Purvis said that a steep and fast dive into water might leave scant surface debris, where it could have blown into so many small pieces that 'you wouldn't be able to find much debris'.

On the other hand, a slow gradual descent toward calm water – even with a big, widebody jet like the 777 – "might give you a complete airplane under the surface, if it was a gentle enough event," he told The Wall Street Journal.

Other than the possibility that there wasn't much debris to begin with, oceanographers, aviation experts and search authorities say the mislead in the first few weeks in the South China Sea might have cost them the debris.

Simon Boxall, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton in the UK told The Wall Street Journal strong currents and eddies may have carried the surface debris more than 600 miles north, east or west during that time.

Another oceanographer at the University of Western Australia, Charitha Pattiaratchi added that cyclone Gillian had also passed close by the search area in late March, and could have caused the ocean to churn up the debris, making large pieces smaller and sinking some.

The report said that when jetliners crash into water, the amount and size of debris can vary greatly depending variables such as the plane's altitude, the angle it went down, and its speed.

The report brought up examples of crashes where the debris was so fine that "it took a lot of reconstruction to figure out" what part of the plane it came from.

In the wreckage of EgyptAir flight 990 that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 1999, the floating debris were all very small in size, according to the report.

In the case of Air France flight 447 crash 2009, rescuers and salvage crews found hundreds of floating remains, including 50 bodies, uninflated life jackets, seat cushions and the plane's complete tail fin; but it was only two years later that they managed to locate the main wreckage on the ocean floor, the report said. – April 18, 2014.