Oil rig worker saw Malaysian flight 307 buning in the sky?
"The site is also near where South China Sea oil rig worker Michael Jerome McKay today described seeing what he believes to be the plane burning - in one piece - flying at a high altitude slightly off from the standard route of planes that cross the sea shortly after the plane vanished.
'There was no lateral movement, so it was either coming toward our location, stationary, or going away from our location,' he wrote in a letter to his employers and seen by ABC News."
If this is true, what could have gone wrong with the plane? Could it have been a shooting star, meteor, comet or something else instead of a burning plane?
Thanks.
2014-03-12T18:38:45Z
Could it have been an old, orbiting satellite falling down to Earth, burning up in the night sky? One wonders...
?2014-03-12T19:17:29Z
Favorite Answer
He probably would have known if it was a meteor; a 777 would have started breaking up at a little over Mach 1. A meteor would have been travelling at Mach 30 or more. There's no way that the plane or a meteor could have been "stationary."
It is also very possible that it could have been a reentering satellite, space junk, or spent rocket booster. but it again would have been travelling much faster.
But it could be that the plane was in flames, and broke up when it no longer could control it's airspeed - that would explain the large pieces that the Chinese may have found.
First of all, how did he know what flight it was? Or even what airline?
We see planes flying overhead everyday. Unless you're some sort of savant who has memorized the entire flight path database, there's no way you can tell what flight that is. It's not as though these are numbers that are painted on the plane. And if the plane was on fire, I doubt he would even be able to tell what airline it belonged to.
I'll have to agree with the other poster that he probably saw a meteor - assuming he saw anything at all.
There are plenty of things that can cause a fire on board a plane. After all, the wings are full of highly flammable fuel and there have been incidents where a spark or short in the electrical system ignited the fuel, blowing the plane to bits.
But...that's just it. If there was such an explosion, it would have shredded the plane...meaning there should be plenty of debris that would be easily detected.
Another speculation is that the plane suffered a catastrophic, but limited structural failure causing part of the cabin to literally blow off. This has happened in the past. In one case the plane managed to land, but in another case, the tail literally fell off the plane, causing it to crash. However in that case too there was a nice big cloud of debris on the water. The pilots were also able to radio the problem to ground control before they crashed as well.
So, the fact we suddenly lost contact with the plane, and can't find it is doubly confusing.
They have already searched the area near the rig. Even if the plane went down straight into the water, there would be floating debris in the area. And they have seen *nothing*.
BTW, shooting stars and meteors are the same thing. But there is a good chance that the worker saw something like that.
China has picked up debri from their footage from space in the area the burning plane was seen, so all seems to fit together now...but it has taken too long to find, and there needs to be better tracking and technology on all planes - the whole tracking system should change asap. There could have been an early intervention ie help landing of the plane if it was tracked and shown it was in trouble at an early stage.