MH 370 - ten years on

Everyone knows the CIA stole it and killed everyone so they can use it for black ops

it'll be found, just takes time as the search area is so big and they've already burned through so much cash

the titanic remained lost for >50? years and it wasn't found far from where they thought it'd be

a smaller, alloy aircraft in a much larger area just takes a lot of time and money

esp. when there's no real financial reason to find for it

this is why you keep your seat belt on loosely while seated on a long-haul flight

and if you are walking the aisle and your feet feel light

you immediately lift your arms above your head, so they hit the cabin ceiling before your head/neck does

this event doesn't appear to have been turbulence induced but rather a sudden loss of lift because the aircraft malfunctioned...

not good

better use of lee-cloths?

I did that trip on Lan Chile back in the day. Had two fuel stops. On at Tahiti, the other at Easter Island / Rapanui. Was my first time out of NZ ever. Think it was a Qantas plane to Tahiti. Still remember the wall of humidity as we stepped off the plane onto the tarmac in the middle of the night. Something I'd never experienced prior to that.
We had to stay in transit at Easter Island. They didn't have a lounge, or even a terminal really. We had a paddock. With grass. A transit paddock.
Luckily it wasn't raining, although it wasn't nearly as warm as Tahiti. I was keen to check out Easter Island, but they only had one flight a week, and we figured once we'd seen the heads (1 day) we'd be bored shitless with the next 6 days.

I don't remember the hostesses uniforms, although I do recall the ones on the Qantas flight we like old battle-axes, Lan Chile were much nicer. But as soon as we got to Santiago I was introduced to 'coffee with legs'. Coffee bars where the baristas are well-endowed ladies with not much on. Literally a bar, and lechy businessmen would sip their coffees and ogle the ladies. Very un-PC and very Latin American.

EROPs is also referred to, see wiki.ivao.aero/en/home/training/documentation/Extended-range_Twin-engine_Operations
Introduction
Extended range operations by aircraft with two turbine power units (ETOPS or EROPS) are sometimes necessary to permit twin engine aircraft to operate over very long sectors where the range from a suitable alternate aerodrome will exceed the maximum laid down in regulations.

limits appear to be a moving target, from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS
Effective February 15, 2007, the FAA ruled that US-registered twin-engine airplane operators can fly more than 180-minute ETOPS to the design limit of the aircraft. In November 2009, the Airbus A330 became the first aircraft to receive ETOPS-240 approval, which has since been offered by Airbus as an option.[8]

ETOPS-240 and beyond are now permitted[9] on a case-by-case basis, with regulatory bodies in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand adopting said regulatory extension. Authority is only granted to operators of two-engine airplanes between specific city pairs. The certificate holder must have been operating at 180-minute or greater ETOPS authority for at least 24 consecutive months, of which at least 12 consecutive months must be at 240-minute ETOPS authority with the airplane-engine combination in the application.

In 2009 the Airbus A330 was first to receive ETOPS-240 approval

On December 12, 2011, Boeing received type-design approval from the FAA for up to 330-minute extended operations for its Boeing 777 series, all equipped with GE engines, and with Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney engines expected to follow.[10] The first ETOPS-330 flight took place on December 1, 2015, with Air New Zealand connecting Auckland to Buenos Aires on a 777-200ER.[11] On May 28, 2014, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner received its ETOPS-330 certificate from the FAA, enabling LAN Airlines to switch to the 787 from the A340 on their Santiago–Auckland–Sydney service a year later.[12] Until the rule change in North America and Oceania, several commercial airline routes were still economically off-limits to twinjets because of ETOPS regulations, unless the route was specifically conducted as indivertible. There were routes traversing the Southern hemisphere, e.g., South Pacific (e.g., Sydney–Santiago, one of the longest over-the-sea distances flown by a commercial airline), South Atlantic (e.g., Johannesburg–São Paulo), Southern Indian Ocean (e.g., Perth–Johannesburg), and Antarctica.

Before the introduction of the Airbus A350XWB in 2014, regulations in North America and Europe permitted up to 180-minute ETOPS at entry. The A350 XWB was first to receive an ETOPS-370 prior to entry into service by European authorities,[13] enabling economical nonstop routes between Europe and Oceania (and thereby bypassing historical stopovers across Asia and North America) by the late 2010s and early 2020s. This includes the high-demand London–Sydney route, in the latest development for ultra long-haul flights. The A350 XWB's current ETOPS certification covers 99.7% of the Earth's entire surface, allowing point-to-point travel anywhere in the world except directly over the South Pole
 
I understand one of the conditions for the approvals is that the APU must be operating for the entire flight.

The wags say ETOPS stands for Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim