Missing boeing 777

I thought the passports had been reported stolen. It seems there is more to this than meets the eye!

Agree jingle about the poor people waiting for any sort of news!

The stolen passports probably were reported but that doesn't mean passport controls will necessarily pick up their use, especially in a foreign airport. Apparently the FBI is going to help with the investigation.

And five people had luggage removed from the flight because they didn't turn up at the gate? Five people checked in and then didn't get on. Seems a lot.

So we grumble about entering passport details ahead of time but the Americans have just been proved right and everyone should now get their passports checked before their flight is confirmed. Think of me today I have butterflies as I'm flying from Hanoi today to Hue

You'll be fine Stansgran but be prepared for long queues - I bet customs will have tightened up a lot!

I hear that a yellow object, possibly a life raft, has been spotted. It will give rise to a little hope.

Shutting the gate after the horse has bolted springs to mind NfkDumpling What I can't understand is, with all the technology we have at our fingertips today shouldn't the stolen passports have "flagged up" on a screen somewhere?

I can't even begin to imagine how the poor relatives and friends of those onboard are feeling.

Wonder what they do about the photo. To be honest most of my "foreign" trips are via the tunnel, and they always look very closely there.

Stansgran. Try not to worry. It is a fact that it's the safest time to fly. Security is ultra tight after any tragedy where there are security issues.

Lessons will be learned. They scan passports everywhere we have been recently and I would have expected that to flag up a stolen passport. Perhaps not everywhere has the technology.

Nonnie , you are right, according to my DH, who is in the " business " of dealing with aircraft crashes, not all countries have the link up to Interpol, who hold stolen passport data.

Different countries have different rules. Data isn't always kept up to date and any system is only as good as the people using it. Perhaps iris scans and facial recognition technology are the only ways forward. But then, it's always been that whatever security technology is invented, sooner or later someone will find a way round it.

There was an interesting article in last week's Guardian about internet security. There's a group of people who meet every three months to make sure that internet security is still working. They each have a key that has to be put with other ones to make the system work.
Anyway, they have to enter a locked room and go into a cage, using iris recognition. It did not work the time that the reporter was there to observe, and they then were locked in the cage and had to set off an alarm to get out of it.
Security does not always work, even when it's as tight as possible.

That sounds like garbage, djen. Internet security is not in any one place and not governed by any one group of people. Have you a link to the original article, please?

article here

I recall the Mossad hit squad who travelled to Dubai on stolen/forged passports and assassinated the ex PLO? guy in his hotel room.

I believe the passports were those of British and Irish citizens.

I seem to remember a journalist saying that he had travelled using his wife's passport with no problems at all; so obviously no one looks very closely at the photos.

Thanks, jings. Forwarded the link to DH who read it and explained it to me. About 3% of his explanation stuck. Suffice it to say that it's about protecting domain name servers and the world wide web, which is not the whole internet. He also seemed to be saying that it isn't all in place yet but they've started a process.... And there was something about using humans to do stuff cos computers can't do random. He thinks email would not work without this DNS protection.

In short, dead complicated and dead awesome.

Apologies for the garbage comment, djen.

System not servers.

What I have been thinking about is that if the plane had been blown apart by a massive explosion high in the air it would be likely to scatter smaller pieces of debris across a wide area.

I would have thought that an accident like this would be more likely to provide a lot of floating debris which would be relatively easy to spot by Radar etc, than if an intact plane just dropped straight into the sea and sank under the massive weight.

Any tame aeronautical engineers on GN?

Then there's the black box which gives out a bleep for a number of days after a plane has come down. Why has n't that been located? It's all so very strange.

How deep is the sea in that area?

I'm sure it's very deep but, according to himself, those bleeps carry better through water.