Sad. Very good aircraft however. One of the safest in the air. Last year in San Francisco where those three people died during that 777 crash landing (pilot error), was the only serious accident I think that aircraft has had.
Wierd...better half woke up with a start this morning (around 2-3AM), telling me that she'd seen a qantas plane go down (in the neighbourhood...which we can vouch for not having happened)
That's what I was thinking. It is VERY unusual that a distress beacon wouldn't have been activated if it was in fact a crash without any foul play even if the pilots didn't manually activate the warning beacon the plane would automatically do it if it went down.
When big planes vanish like this, it is usually the case that they crashed into a mountain, or mechanical/pilot error issues caused an ocean impact. This news is sad.
Even if they were to lose all the engines, they would have had time to send out distress signal. Short of plane splitting in the midair, there should be some time before it will hit the ocean.
And unfortunately in today's information age, at least half of what gets reported in the first 48 hours will be pure speculation or inaccurate. I'll sit back and wait for a bit before thinking we have any true idea of what happened.
Sad news regardless. Still wouldn't hesitate to fly the triple 7. One of the safest planes ever made.
I went to flight aware flight tracker and it appears that the plane had just reached cruising altitude before contact was lost with it. (I would say that it was on autopilot at this time) That is what is VERY odd about this incident, usually that is the period of time when a plane is LEAST likely to have issues. Strange.