Typical outcome of this looks like that
To be fair many survived that and the number would have been higher if A) swimming would be a more common sport in Africa (yes, politically incorrect but a fact) B) people wouldn't inflate their life vests inside the plane and then can never get out.
But still: Very difficult, you would try it close to the coastline for rescue and never done before with a 777. The 777's engines are probably too low to not cause trouble there.
95% of this thread is pure speculation, why am I not allowed to add some of my own?
Because 95% of this thread is fact-based speculation. It is speculation like "LeBron scored a dozen points in the last...consecutive games, without him the Heats will run into real trouble!" and not "LeBron has scored 61 points a few days ago, he must be an alien from M33 brought here with another member of his species who would later become Steven Moffat, who just writes about real events in M33 and calls it Doctor Who."
Yes, the second one is done here too, but clearly in a joking manner.
Also the
Wall Street Journal reports that the Trent 800 engines have sent on signals for hours after the disappreance, apparently every Rolls-Royce engine automatically sends data to them for analysis. I haven't fully understood how that is done (via satellite?) but apparently the plane stayed airborne a bit longer than your usual water landing.
And CCTV tweeted
this. Make of that whatever you want.
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Furthermore
The Associated Press seems to quote the civil aviation chief of Malaysia. No debris where the Chinese said they would be and Vietnam already searched there days ago. Huh.
Although it should be noted that guy was quoted earlier on that the guys with stolen passports "look like Balotelli" (Italian soccer player for the NASCAR fans here). Which, spoiler alert, they didn't.
