MH 370 Diary: Three Weeks Gone Today

29 March 2014

We have become very good fishermen!  The 20 or so natives who are with us here are good with nets and they have been bringing us food and clothing regularly.  We built a palm frond fish roaster and so we've had enough to eat.  I hope the people on the other island are doing as well.  We cannot understand them though and Tagluk, who seems to be their boss, gets angry and shakes his gun whenever we ask about when the rescue boat will come.

This island - I think it is near Batti Island in the South Andamans - is a new one they took us to and there are some old American Quonset huts here, probably from WWII.  Tagluk knows a little English and keeps saying "One week go home" but he has been saying that for what seems like a month.  

My friend, who knows a little about commercial aviation, says the small flash we saw about 2 hours before landing was probably a small decoy plane with one of our transponders or ACRS.  His rationale is that if the pilot was going to confiscate all our electronics and then turn off all of our flight's communication devices, why would he risk being detectable by satellite?

I agree.  If this airplane has been sold for nearly a half-billion dollars (as he thinks) it would be nothing for them to introduce a decoy to fool the satellites.  Anyway, after the initial shock it was amazing to see the decoy (if that's what it was) slowly flying away from us and due south toward what must be Antarctica or southern Australia.

Well, that's all for today's news.

- From a note found in a plastic juice bottle on a beach in Sri Lanka , January 7th 2015

MH370:  Wouldn't it Be Nice For a Change....

We live in a world dominated by the unrelenting grim realities of intentional international murder, destruction and evil.  We are almost certain that Flight MH370 lies in pieces somewhere with the precious lives of its passengers just as scattered.

But maybe, instead, for once,  THIS could be what happened...

March 15th 2014  AP - Sources in Thailand's vacation island of Phuket report that the remains of a hot-air ballon have been found on a beach containing a note from one of the passengers on the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that the note was written two days before and was a secured to the home-made balloon - which was then released by someone with knowledge that the primarily easterly winds would carry the fragile craft to a landfall in Thailand.

Although the translation remains unconfirmed, the note reads in part:

"...I was a passenger on Flight MH 370....we were told we had to make an emergency landing and all our cell-phones were confiscated.  We were blindfolded and taken in several boats away from the landing field.  We have been stranded on this beach for three days with very little food and water.  We think this is a small Island somewhere near the Andaman Islands.  There are over 230 people here and we have very little shelter.  Please send help...."

I'm sure the reality will prove to be much more dreadful, but we can hope, right?