Why should we believe the Prime Minister of Malaysia that the plane went down?

I don’t believe it until I find out more.

He has zero credibility now. He is probably right, I’ll give him that, but he cannot make pronouncements about what happened or where it happened. Even the credible authorities (Australia, China, France) won’t state for sure that they have found clear evidence.

It wasn’t his opinion, he was passing on information given by a UK satellite system, the same people who located the final “ping” of the aircraft.
Their data shows conclusively that the flight ended in the Indian Ocean, no other possibility.

@ucme I’m tempted to agree with this, as I see no other real possibility. They found debris and everything, although so far, I don’t think that’s enough yet to confirm the plane crashed there until they inspect the debris in detail…but my guess is, this IS what happened.

A lot of what I’m going to base this is on is the fact that people seem to think that because they don’t know something, it HAS to be something outrageous; but this very incident should probably prove that we don’t have as much control over things as we believe that we do.

Some of what I’ve seen in articles suggest that this MAY have been an act of terrorism of some kind; which is why the plane may have went off course in the first place. (although malfunction is not being pushed out of the possibilities) Whatever happened, I do think it’s probably everywhere in the water now, unfortunately.

Because it’s based on evidence presented by Inmarsat, a British satellite company.

I suppose it’s possible that the satellite company is also lying. Let’s not believe anything until we can personally hold the plane debris in our hands.

It seems very plausible to me. Hoofbeats in the night and all that….

@Symbeline The mystery of what actually caused the plane to be so massively off course may never be solved, all rests on locating the “black box” flight recorder.

@ucme Yeah, and apparently they have to hurry up and find it.

@Symbeline I heard that too, the thing only emits a signal for a certain amount of time.
Also, it depends on how deep the wreckage is, could be a very long wait.

And if it keeps sinking and/or going away with the currents before they get their hands on it, retrieving what is needed might be a difficult job. :/

Let’s hope they find it in time & it holds the key to what happened, for the families sake at least.

Amen to that.

Where the hell else would it have gone? The ping was in the ocean. The plane isn’t sitting on top of a cloud like a Mario Bros. character.

Would have been cool if it did though. :D

My original theory, given on a previous question here, that the plane is hiding behind a cloud until April Fool’s Day, appears to have been debunked…shame that.

Hahaha, on April Fool’s Day it would just come back and land like nothing happened, then the passengers would climb out laughing at everyone.

Their families reaction would be like, “doh, you lot have had us worried sick, cheeky monkeys”…or maybe not.

Sorry – the humo(u)r seems a bit inappropriate at this point.

Don’t think that because we’re making jokes about it, that we don’t think this is horrible. Humor is a good way to deflect negative feelings sometimes.

I think we already covered the empathy factor, relax & stop trying to score futile points.

There are no futile points! :-)

Usually, I’m all for black humor but since the families just found out that the plane is definitively lost, it feels a bit ill-timed. But maybe that’s just me…....

I agree, but this being Fluther ;-}

I’m fairly certain none of the families are members here, so we’re probably in the clear.