Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 – News Headlines and Updates
Scroll down for the most recent news about the missing plane
or jump to: May 28 updates
April 25, 2014 – Richard Quest speaks to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak about their actions the night MH370 went missing. During this CNN interview the Prime Minister said:
“The military radar has some capability – it tracked an aircraft which did turn back, but they were not sure, exactly sure, whether it was MH370, what they were sure of was that the aircraft was deemed not to be hostile…”
Later in the interview, when asked why no planes were sent to investigate why the plane turned back, PM said:
…”they were not sure, but it behaved like a commercial airliner…”
When asked if he had any doubts regarding provided satellite data indicating that plane flew for 7 hours towards Antarctica, PM said:
“to be honest, I found it hard to believe to begin with because how could a plane that was supposed to be heading towards Beijing, they (experts from US and UK) could decide that the plane ended half way towards Antarctica, it is a bizarre scenario which none of us would have contemplated…”
Note: what kind of airplane seen on Malaysian military radar, would be considered to be “not hostile”?
The answer could only be: “their own military plane”, or a military plane of allied forces, or a commercial plane (however in such case they should know if it is MH370 or not).
MH370 News Updates by Date
Malaysian Transportation Minister Hishamuddin Hussein, center, shows maps
of the search area at a hotel next to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 17
239 people onboard of flight MH370 would fill this entire conference room (exactly 240 seats)…
Lives, not numbers: Snapshots of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 passengers
March 15-16, 2014
The missing Malaysian jetliner was deliberately diverted and continued flying for more than six hours after severing contact with the ground, meaning it could have gone as far northwest as Kazakhstan or into the Indian Ocean’s southern reaches, Malaysia’s leader said Saturday.
The plane could have flown on for up to 2,000 miles, reaching as far as northern India or even the north-west coast of Australia.
Prime Minister Najib Razak’s statement confirmed days of mounting speculation that the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 to Beijing more than a week ago was not accidental. It also refocused the investigation into the flight’s crew and passengers, and underlined the complicated task for searchers who already have been scouring vast areas of ocean.
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“Clearly the search for MH370 has entered a new phase,” Najib said at a televised news conference.
Najib stressed that investigators were looking into all possibilities as to why the Boeing 777 deviated so drastically from its original flight path, saying authorities could not confirm whether it was a hijacking. Earlier Saturday, a Malaysian official said the plane had been hijacked, though he added that no motive had been established and no demands had been made known.
“In view of this latest development, the Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation into the crew and passengers on board,” Najib told reporters, reading from a written statement but not taking any questions.
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Investigators have concluded that one or more people with significant flying experience hijacked the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, switched off communication devices and steered it off-course, a Malaysian government official involved in the investigation said Saturday.
No motive has been established and no demands have been made known, and it is not yet clear where the plane was taken, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media. “It is conclusive,” he said. He said evidence that led to the conclusion were signs that the plane’s communications were switched off deliberately, data about the flight path and indications the plane was steered in a way to avoid detection by radar.
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Fariq Hamid, left, and Zaharie Shah.(Twitter/Facebook)
Zaharie Ahmad Shah was the pilot on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which went missing; Fariq Abdul Hamid was the co-pilot.
Note: image to the right is only for purpose of illustration of what amount of 239 people onboard looks like – it is not exact seating of the flight MH370.
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If the pilots were involved in the disappearance, were they working together or alone, or with one or more of the passengers or crew?
Did they fly the plane under duress or of their own volition?
Did one or more of the passengers manage to break into the cockpit, or use the threat of violence to gain entry and then pilot the plane?
Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possibilities, and to establish what happened with any degree of certainty investigators will likely need to examine information, including cockpit voice recordings, from the plane’s flight data recorders (commonly referred to as a black box) should the jet be located.
The number of countries involved in search for the missing plane has now risen from 14 to 25, despite India having been told to pause their search yesterday. The Malaysian authorities are now looking at areas of land in 11 countries. The Malaysian government has asked France, China and the USA to provide further satellite data, while the search corridor for the plane has been widened to countries as far as Kazakhstan and Indonesia.
March 16, 2014 Headlines
- CNN update: http://www.cnn.com – 2014/03/16
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…what the Boeing 777-200 was carrying has also piqued the interests of investigators, especially with 20 Freescale Semiconductor staff on board.Freescale’s Facebook has been inundated with conspiracy theories over what the plane might be carrying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.Talk of “stealth-like devices” had first been laughed off, but foreign investigators helping to locate the missing aircraft and its 239 passengers and crew are looking into the cargo manifest seriously.After all, avionics, radar and defence systems are part of the business of the Austin, Texas-based company.“It is common for commercial flights to be carrying high value goods that can compromise security, but usually the pilot is notified about it through a NOTOC (Notification to Captain) Form,” said a source.“So exactly what MH370 was carrying and if the pilots knew what they were carrying is a matter of interest,” he said.“Just what was in cargo? That is what we want to find out,” said the source, adding that it is not unusual for Governments to send classified materials which are of security risk on commercial liners to avoid detection.“It is akin to hiding in plain sight,” he added.Last week an aviation expert told fz.com that the air waybill must be given equal importance as the passenger manifest.
Read more: http://www.fz.com/content/mh370-focus-cargo-and-business-class#ixzz2wEHr812p
March 17, 2014
- Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 was transporting 3-4 tonnes of mangosteens to China, said the airline’s group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya (pic) today. Speaking at the latest press conference on the missing MAS flight MH370, Ahmad Jauhari added that there was no hazardous cargo on board the aircraft.
- Satellite signals can confirm a plane’s identity
- Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Get up to speed on the latest developments
- Plane takeovers a dangerous reality
March 18, 2014
(CNN) — New information from the Thai government bolsters the belief that missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took a sharp westward turn after communication was lost. The Thai military was receiving normal flight path and communication data from the Boeing 777-200 on its planned March 8 route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing until 1:22 a.m., when it disappeared from its radar. Six minutes later, the Thai military detected an unknown signal, a Royal Thai Air Force spokesman told CNN. This unknown aircraft, possibly Flight 370, was heading the opposite direction. Malaysia says the evidence gathered so far suggests the plane was deliberately flown off course, turning west and traveling back over the Malay Peninsula and out into the Indian Ocean.
But investigators don’t know who was at the controls or why whoever it was took the plane far away from its original destination. The Thai data is the second radar evidence that the plane did indeed turn around toward the Strait of Malacca. It follows information from the Malaysian Air Force that its military radar tracked the plane as it passed over the small island of Pulau Perak in the Strait of Malacca. “The unknown aircraft’s signal was sending out intermittently, on and off, and on and off,” the spokesman said. The Thai military lost the unknown aircraft’s signal because of the limits of its military radar, he said. The radar data is an encouraging sign that investigators are on the right track, but they still are not sure where the plane ended up.
The latest findings say the plane’s last known location detected by a satellite is somewhere along two wide arcs: one stretching north over Asia and the other south into the Indian Ocean. The plane’s last electronic connection with the satellite was about six hours after it last showed up on Malaysian military radar. — Source >>
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Malaysia Airlines MH370 pilot ‘had five runways programmed into flight simulator’
UP TO five practice runways around the Indian Ocean were reportedly discovered programmed into Captain Zaharie Shah’s flight simulator, Malaysian media claims.
The Berita Harian Malay language paper quoted unnamed sources close to the investigation as saying that the airport runways were Male International Airport in the Maldives, Diego Garcia and three runways in India and Sri Lanka.
“We are not discounting the possibility that the plane landed on a runway that might not be heavily monitored, in addition to the theories that the plane landed on sea, in the hills, or in an open space,” the Malay Mail Online quoted the source as saying.
The unconfirmed report then goes on to say that all runways programmed into the simulator are 1000 metres long.
Like many other theories, this has not been confirmed by Malaysian authorities and if it is eventually proven, it could just mean Captain Shah was practising emergency landings on his home flight sim.
The bizarre part of this report, if it proves to be true, is the listing of the mysterious island of Diego Garcia as an airport programmed in the flight simulator.
Diego Garcia is a British territory in the central Indian Ocean. On the island there is United States Navy support facility which is home to 1700 military personnel, 1500 civilian contractors, and various Naval equipment. It has received press coverage in recent years after reports emerged claiming Diego Garcia was used to detain alleged terrorists by the US.
Flight MH370: Residents on remote island in Maldives ‘saw jet matching missing Malaysia Airlines plane’s description’
Residents on a remote island in Maldives claim they saw a ‘low-flying jumbo jet’ matching the description of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the hours after it disappeared.
Several residents of Kuda Huvadhoo, in Dhaalu Atoll, said they saw a white aircraft with red stripes flying so low over the island the plane’s doors were clearly visible.
Islanders claim they were disturbed by an incredibly loud noise at about 6.15am local time on March 8 and saw a plane travelling from north to south-east, towards Addu – the southern tip of Maldives, it is reported.
The alleged sighting – around 2,000 miles away from Kuala Lumpur – came hours after Beijing-bound flight MH370 vanished on the same day with 239 people on board.
Investigators now believe it was deliberately steered off-course after it took off from the Malaysian capital.
One witness told HaveeruOnline: ‘I’ve never seen a jet flying so low over our island before. We’ve seen seaplanes, but I’m sure that this was not one of those. I could even make out the doors on the plane clearly.
‘It’s not just me either, several other residents have reported seeing the exact same thing. Some people got out of their houses to see what was causing the tremendous noise too.’
The last ‘ping’ signal from the aircraft was detected by a satellite in an area near a US naval base on Diego Garcia and Maldives.
HaveeruOnline has also quoted a local aviation expert as saying the plane spotted above Maldives is ‘likely’ to be missing MH370 as instances of any aircraft flying over the island at the reported time was rare.
A total of 26 countries are helping to search for the missing plane – but Maldives is not one of them.
Flight MH370: Maldives airport could be suitable for landing…
March 19, 2014
2nd Boeing Untracked, Same MH370 Region
Missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was possibly flown a route another Boeing did last year without telling officials, through the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, an event you probably never heard about and officials dare not mention regarding today’s missing Boeing.
On Jan. 17, 2013 around 10:30pm, a chartered Boeing 737 landed in Port Moresby International Airport in Papua New Guinea (PNG) causing chaos, confusion, investigations leading to drugs, guns, bought politicos and former British soldiers, with U.S. officials’ involvement.
Last January’s event was called a “serious lack of coordination in line agencies in the dispensing critical information.” It was called worse than that after learning top drug smugglers chartered the Boeing 737 to meet American and Vanuatu officials in PNG, with former British soldier bodyguards.
On board the Boeing 737 were the only the crew, Vu Anh Quan Saken, his younger brother Charles Henry Quan, both Vanuatu Diplomatic Passport holders of Vietnamese ethnicity and known drug smugglers. five crews. (Vanuatu was formerly called the New Hebrides.)
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(CNN) Missing flight simulator data probed
Investigators looking at the flight simulator taken from the home of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah have discovered that some data had been erased from it, Malaysia’s acting transportation minister said Wednesday. What the revelation means is unclear. It could be another dead end in an investigation that has been full of them so far, or it could provide further evidence for the theory that one or more of the flight crew may have been involved in the plane’s disappearance 12 days ago.
“It’s a thin lead, but it’s a lead,” former U.S. Federal Aviation Administration official Mary Schiavo told CNN.
Interim Transportation Secretary Hishammuddin Hussein didn’t say what had been deleted, but simulation programs typically store data from previous sessions for later playback. He also did not say who might have deleted the data.
On the one hand, such files could reveal the simulator was used to practice diverting the plane and flying it to an unfamiliar airport, experts said.
But even if investigators retrieve past simulations showing that Zaharie practiced flying to seemingly odd locations, that doesn’t necessarily indicate evidence of anything nefarious, Schiavo said.
“You put in strange airports and try to land there, just to see if you can do it,” said Schiavo, adding that she sometimes does just that on the flight simulation program she has on her home computer.
One expert said deleting the files seemed odd. Desktop pilots don’t usually delete such files because they are small and often kept to gauge progress, said Jay Leboff, owner of HotSeat, a simulator manufacturer.
“It would be suspicious to me, because there’s no need to do it,” he said. Experts are examining the simulator in hopes of recovering the deleted data, Hishammuddin said. A law enforcement source told CNN on Wednesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is examining the hard drive.
If the files have not been overwritten by new data, retrieving them probably would be trivial for a computer expert, said Joseph Caruso, CEO of Global Digital Forensics. And even if they are, tools exist to help retrieve partial files that could be of use to investigators, he said.
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Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: How do passenger jets change flight paths?
(CNN) — The timing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370’s change of direction is a focal point of the investigation into its disappearance, and it appears the passenger jet was programmed to steer off course before the pilots signed off with air traffic control — and that the change of course was transmitted to air traffic controllers.
The flight’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System communicates various data to the ground, including engine reports, maintenance requirements and weather conditions.
The last transmission from Flight 370’s ACARS system came at 1:07 a.m. The next update was due at 1:37 a.m. It never came.
While all information so far indicates that someone inside the cockpit, believed to be the co-pilot, made the last verbal communication with air traffic controllers — “All right, good night” — at 1:19 a.m., a law enforcement official told CNN that the plane’s programmed change in direction was entered at least 12 minutes before the plane’s verbal sign-off.
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More Headlines from March 19, 2014:
- Missing flight simulator data probed in Malaysia Flight 370 disappearance
- Searching for the plane truth — amid speculation
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There are 634 Runways in Range for Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from civilian radar. Amid unusual (some say unlikely) theories that the flight may have landed, can we figure out how many runways might be available?
Officials searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane are fairly certain it was intentionally flown off course for an extended period of time. They are basing that theory on a series of satellite “pings” the plane sent as it soared off toward India and the Middle East — or maybe out into the expanse of the Indian Ocean.
Flying on a full tank of fuel, data show the jetliner could have traveled at least 2,200 nautical miles after it vanished from its last confirmed location over the Gulf of Thailand. If piracy was the culprit behind the plane’s disappearance, then the hijackers were likely looking for a place to land. A Boeing 777-200 like Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 would need at least 5,000 feet of runway, according to an American Airlines pilot who spoke to Slate.
Operating under the assumption that the plane flew for a maximum of five hours, that it could have landed on a runway at least 5,000 feet long, and using data provided by a company that lists coordinates for runways around the world, the Data News team at WNYC put together a map that details all of the possible runways that the plane could have reached.
There are 634 possible runways spread across 26 different countries stretching from the northern tip of India to the western coast of Australia.
There were reports and rumors that the plane landed on Diego Garcia–a footprint-shaped atoll located about 2,000 nautical miles east of the coast of Tanzania and 2,500 miles from the Australian west coast and is located in the British Indian Ocean Territory. Conspiracy blog JimStoneFreelance.com said that “Diego Garcia remains by far the most highly probable location for flight 377.” Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia “provides logistic support to operational forces forward deployed to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf areas of responsibility in support of national policy objectives” and is on “an atoll of the Chagos Archipelago in the British Indian Ocean Territory, located 7 degrees south of the equator.” The U.S. Navy operates a Naval Support Facility on Diego Garcia, which includes a naval ship and submarine support base, a military support base, a space-tracking facility and communications base, and an anchorage.
PS Since the plane MH370 was hijacked and (so far) no terrorist group has claimed responsibility, is it possible that the plane landed in a secret location (perhaps military) and the reason for no disclosure at this time is a plan to use this plane soon for a major “anonymous” attack (perhaps on Iran or Israel) ???
Use Google Earth for satellite view of islands with airports suitable for landing.
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Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Missing plane search timeline LIVE UPDATES
March 20, 2014
A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet
by BY CHRIS GOODFELLOW, a Canadian Class-1 instrumented-rated pilot for multi-engine planes
There has been a lot of speculation about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Terrorism, hijacking, meteors. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN; it’s almost disturbing. I tend to look for a simpler explanation, and I find it with the 13,000-foot runway at Pulau Langkawi.
The left turn is the key here. Zaharie Ahmad Shah was a very experienced senior captain with 18,000 hours of flight time. We old pilots were drilled to know what is the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us, and airports ahead of us. They’re always in our head. Always. If something happens, you don’t want to be thinking about what are you going to do–you already know what you are going to do. When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The captain did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer.
The pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event onboard that made him make an immediate turn to the closest, safest airport.
When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and searched for airports in proximity to the track toward the southwest.
For me, the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire. And there most likely was an electrical fire. In the case of a fire, the first response is to pull the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses, the plane would go silent. It probably was a serious event and the flight crew was occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such situations.
There are two types of fires. An electrical fire might not be as fast and furious, and there may or may not be incapacitating smoke. However there is the possibility, given the timeline, that there was an overheat on one of the front landing gear tires, it blew on takeoff and started slowly burning. Yes, this happens with underinflated tires. Remember: Heavy plane, hot night, sea level, long-run takeoff. There was a well known accident in Nigeria of a DC8 that had a landing gear fire on takeoff. Once going, a tire fire would produce horrific, incapacitating smoke. Yes, pilots have access to oxygen masks, but this is a no-no with fire. Most have access to a smoke hood with a filter, but this will last only a few minutes depending on the smoke level. (I used to carry one in my flight bag, and I still carry one in my briefcase when I fly.)
What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. You will find it along that route–looking elsewhere is pointless.
Ongoing speculation of a hijacking and/or murder-suicide and that there was a flight engineer on board does not sway me in favor of foul play until I am presented with evidence of foul play.
We know there was a last voice transmission that, from a pilot’s point of view, was entirely normal. “Good night” is customary on a hand-off to a new air traffic control. The “good night” also strongly indicates to me that all was OK on the flight deck. Remember, there are many ways a pilot can communicate distress. A hijack code or even transponder code off by one digit would alert ATC that something was wrong. Every good pilot knows keying an SOS over the mike always is an option. Even three short clicks would raise an alert. So I conclude that at the point of voice transmission all was perceived as well on the flight deck by the pilots.
But things could have been in the process of going wrong, unknown to the pilots.
Evidently the ACARS went inoperative some time before. Disabling the ACARS is not easy, as pointed out. This leads me to believe more in an electrical problem or an electrical fire than a manual shutdown. I suggest the pilots probably were not aware ACARS was not transmitting.
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Fire in an aircraft demands one thing: Get the machine on the ground as soon as possible. There are two well-remembered experiences in my memory. The AirCanada DC9 which landed, I believe, in Columbus, Ohio in the 1980s. That pilot delayed descent and bypassed several airports. He didn’t instinctively know the closest airports. He got it on the ground eventually, but lost 30-odd souls. The 1998 crash of Swissair DC-10 off Nova Scotia was another example of heroic pilots. They were 15 minutes out of Halifax but the fire overcame them and they had to ditch in the ocean. They simply ran out of time. That fire incidentally started when the aircraft was about an hour out of Kennedy. Guess what? The transponders and communications were shut off as they pulled the busses.
Get on Google Earth and type in Pulau Langkawi and then look at it in relation to the radar track heading. Two plus two equals four. For me, that is the simple explanation why it turned and headed in that direction. Smart pilot. He just didn’t have the time.
Please leave a comment about what you think about this mystery…
Possible MH370 flight debris spotted in southern Indian Ocean
No sign of mystery objects as Australia suspends search for the day
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) — A day that began with high hopes ended with uncertainty late Thursday in Australia as darkness put an end to the search for two objects captured on satellite and described as possible debris from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Aircraft from Australia, New Zealand and the United States, along with a Norwegian merchant ship, will resume the search Friday, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
Hindered by poor weather in a wild, remote area of the southern Indian Ocean, neither the surveillance planes nor the massive Norwegian cargo ship managed to spot the debris photographed Sunday by a commercial satellite.
Even before suspending the search for the day, authorities cautioned the objects could be something other than plane wreckage, such as shipping containers that fell off a passing vessel.
The objects
Satellites captured images of the objects about 14 miles (23 kilometers) from each other and about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) southwest of Australia’s west coast. The area is a remote, rarely traveled expanse of ocean far from commercial shipping lanes. The commercial satellite images, taken Sunday, show two indistinct objects of “reasonable size,” with the largest about 24 meters (79 feet) across, said John Young, general manager of emergency response for the Australian maritime agency.
They appear to be “awash with water and bobbing up and down,” Young said.
The objects could be from the plane, but they could be also something else — like a shipping container — caught in swirling currents known for creating garbage patches in the open ocean, he said.
“It is probably the best lead we have right now,” Young said. “But we need to get there, find them, see them, assess them to know whether it’s really meaningful or not.”
It took four days for the images to reach the authority “due to the volume of imagery being searched, and the detailed process of analysis that followed,” the agency said in a prepared statement.
The size of the objects concerned David Gallo, one of the leaders of the search for Air France Flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.
“It’s a big piece of aircraft to have survived something like this,” he said, adding that if it is from the aircraft, it could be part of the tail.
The tail height of a Boeing 777, the model of the missing Malaysian plane, is 60 feet.
Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, said she believes Australian officials would not have announced the find if they weren’t fairly sure of what they had discovered.
“There have been so many false leads and so many starts and changes and then backtracking in the investigation,” she said. “He wouldn’t have come forward and said if they weren’t fairly certain.”
Although the overall search area spans a huge expanse of 3 million square miles, U.S. officials have been insistent in recent days that the aircraft is likely to be found somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.
March 21, 2014
Two additional Chinese rescue vessels are headed to the southern Indian Ocean in search of the Malaysia Airlines jet, Xinhua reported. The vessels will search area more than 3,000 km southwest of Perth, Australia, around where possible debris from flight MH370 was found on Thursday. Xinhua added that five more ships will eventually make their way to the southern Indian Ocean.
March 22, 2014
China announced that it has satellite images of a large object floating in the search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, but Australian-led search teams found no sign of it Saturday.
Satellite photo release by Chinese of the new object sighted.
Located 2630km from Perth #MH370 pic.twitter.com/JBgCbP22kV
Another day of intense searches by air and sea concluded for the night with no new clues to give families answers about the fate of the passengers and crew.
The object the Chinese photographed is 22.5 meters long and 13 meters wide (74 feet by 43 feet), officials said.
China said the satellite images showing the “suspected floating object” were captured four days ago, on March 18.
The floating object was about 77 miles from where earlier satellite images spotted floating debris.
March 23, 2014
A growing number of airplanes scoured the southern Indian Ocean on Sunday as the 16-day search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 continued, but the end result was frustratingly the same — nothing.
Buoyed by a third set of satellite data that indicated possible debris from the plane in the water, the international team led by Australia fought bad weather early in the day as it looked for signs of the missing Boeing 777 and the 239 people who were aboard. Eight aircraft and one ship conducted Sunday’s search and there were no sightings of significance, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said in a written statement. Four more jets — two from China and two from Japan — are set to join the reconnaissance team on Monday, the organization said.
Earlier, French authorities passed on satellite data showing “potential objects in the vicinity of the southern corridor” of the search area for the plane, Malaysia’s acting transportation minister said.”Malaysia immediately relayed these images to the Australian rescue coordination center,” Hishammuddin Hussein said. Satellite images previously issued by Australian and Chinese authorities have also pointed to possible large floating objects, stoking hopes searchers may find debris from the missing plane. Sunday’s search was a visual search, AMSA rescue spokesman Mike Barton told reporters. Eyes took precedence over radar. Four of the planes were civil aircraft, each with five volunteers from Australia who scanned the water.
Pallet found
On Saturday, searchers found a wooden pallet as well as strapping belts, AMSA’s John Young said. The use of wooden pallets is common in the airline industry.”It’s a possible lead … but pallets are used in the shipping industry as well,” he said Sunday. Authorities have said random debris is often found in the ocean.The Sunday search was split into two areas that cover 59,000 square kilometers (23,000 square miles), about 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth.
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Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) — As a growing number of airplanes scoured the southern Indian Ocean in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, authorities released new details that paint a different picture of what may have happened in the plane’s cockpit.
Military radar tracking shows that the aircraft changed altitude after making a sharp turn over the South China Sea as it headed toward the Strait of Malacca, a source close to the investigation into the missing flight told CNN. The plane flew as low as 12,000 feet at some point before it disappeared from radar, according to the source.
The sharp turn seemed to be intentional, the source said, because executing it would have taken the Boeing 777 two minutes — a time period during which the pilot or co-pilot could have sent an emergency signal if there had been a fire or other emergency onboard.
Authorities say the plane didn’t send any emergency signals, though some analysts say it’s still unclear whether the pilots tried but weren’t able to communicate because of a catastrophic failure.
The official, who is not authorized to speak to the media, told CNN that the area the plane flew in after the turn is a heavily trafficked air corridor and that flying at 12,000 feet would have kept the jet well out of the way of that traffic.
Earlier Sunday, Malaysian authorities said the last transmission from the missing aircraft’s reporting system showed it heading to Beijing — a revelation that appears to undercut the theory that someone reprogrammed the plane’s flight path before the co-pilot signed off with air-traffic controllers for the last time.
That reduces, but doesn’t rule out, suspicions about foul play in the cockpit. The new details give more insight about what happened on the plane, but don’t explain why the plane went missing or where it could be.
Analysts are divided about what the latest information could mean. Some argue it’s a sign that mechanical failure sent the plane suddenly off course. Others say there are still too many unknowns to eliminate any possibilities.
Click to Enlarge. Image Source: Malaysian government. Skyvector.
March 24,2014
Breaking news update
British investigators have concluded that missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370’s last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean west of Perth, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said.
Malaysian airlines have announced beyond any reasonable doubt that flight MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board have survived.
The airline has informed the relatives of those on board the doomed flight that the plane is “lost” with no survivors.
Note: The communication below was shared with the family members of passengers and crew of MH370
Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume that MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean. As you will hear in the next hour from Malaysia’s Prime Minister, new analysis of satellite data suggests the plane went down in the Southern Indian Ocean.
On behalf of all of us at Malaysia Airlines and all Malaysians, our prayers go out to all the loved ones of the 226 passengers and of our 13 friends and colleagues at this enormously painful time.
We know there are no words that we or anyone else can say which can ease your pain. We will continue to provide assistance and support to you, as we have done since MH370 first disappeared in the early hours of 8 March, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
The ongoing multinational search operation will continue, as we seek answers to the questions which remain. Alongside the search for MH370, there is an intensive investigation, which we hope will also provide answers.
We would like to assure you that Malaysia Airlines will continue to give you our full support throughout the difficult weeks and months ahead.
Once again, we humbly offer our sincere thoughts, prayers and condolences to everyone affected by this tragedy.
Source: Official Updates from Malaysia Airlines
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has made an announcement, saying
The analysis was provided by British satellite company Inmarsat and the U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch.
Based on their new analysis… MH370 flew along the southern corridor and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean west of Perth, Razak said Monday.
“This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, that flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.”
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Lives, Not Numbers
239 people onboard of flight MH370 would fill this entire conference room (exactly 240 seats)…
Lives, not numbers: Snapshots of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 passengers
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A reporter on board the Chinese plane for China’s official Xinhua news agency said the search team saw “two relatively big floating objects with many white smaller ones scattered within a radius of several kilometers,” the agency reported Monday. The Chinese plane was flying at 33,000 feet on its way back to Australia’s west coast when it made the sighting, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
Click to Enlarge the image.
March 25, 2014
Malaysian officials say they can tell you how Flight 370 ended. It crashed into the Indian Ocean, they’ll say, citing complicated math as proof. They can tell you when it probably happened — on March 8, sometime between 8:11 and 9:15 a.m. (7:11 to 8:15 p.m. ET), handing you a sheet with extraordinarily technical details about satellite communications technology.
What they still can’t tell you is why, or precisely where, or show you a piece of the wreckage.
All those uncertainties are too much for relatives of the 239 people aboard the plane, some of whom marched to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing to denounce the airline, the country and just about everything involved with an investigation that has transfixed the world and vexed experts.
Crash conclusion explained
Hishammuddin spent part of Tuesday’s briefing explaining how investigators came to the conclusion that the plane must have gone into the southern Indian Ocean.
He said the analysis was based on sophisticated mathematics calculating how long it took signals from a transmitter on the plane to reach an orbiting Inmarsat communications satellite.
Much like the horn from a passing car whose pitch rises as it approaches and then falls as it races away, engineers were able examine the satellite’s signal and determine it had to be moving south, he said.
Graphics supplied by Ministry of Transport Malaysia “Doppler correction contributions”
Engineers checked their calculations against data from other Boeing 777 flights that day and found their technique was sound, he said.
One mystery remains in the data: The plane’s transmitter and satellite tried to make one final connection at 8:19 a.m.
“At this time this transmission is not understood and is subject to further ongoing work,” he said.
The analysis shows that the plane didn’t answer a ping from the satellite ground station at 9:15 a.m. (8:15 p.m. ET), leading investigators to conclude the plane’s satellite transmitter stopped working sometime between 8:11 and 9:15 a.m.
“This,” Hishammuddin said, “is consistent with the maximum endurance of the aircraft.”
Malaysia has convened an international working group to help further narrow the search area. It involves agencies with “expertise in satellite communications and aircraft performance,” he said.
It will build on the existing analysis of satellite data in hopes of pinpointing a more exact location for the plane’s location.
What happened to cause the plane to veer off course and presumably crash into the Indian Ocean hours after it was supposed to arrive in Beijing remains unknown.
Authorities and analysts have speculated anything from mechanical failure to terrorism to pilot suicide could have played a role.
Police have interviewed scores of people, and the Royal Malaysian Air Force is conducting its own inquiry into the disappearance, authorities say.
Anguished families react
Tuesday’s announcement was met with anger by relatives, many of whom said it was premature to declare their loved ones dead before locating any wreckage or bodies. Others accused Malaysian officials of lying or concealing facts.
Source: CNN
March 26, 2014
Satellite Spots 122 objects in ocean near suspected crash site
New satellite images provided by a French defense firm show 122 objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean, not far from other satellite sightings that could be related to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the Malaysian transport minister said Wednesday. The objects were scattered over 154 square miles (400 square kilometers), acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Bin Hussein said.
Hishammuddin said he wasn’t sure if Australian authorities coordinating the search for the plane Wednesday had been able to follow up on the new satellite images, which came from Airbus Defence and Space.
Searches resumed Wednesday after a one-day delay caused by poor weather. However, the last of 12 planes dispatched to the site left the search area late Wednesday without finding anything significant, Australian officials said. Search aircraft did spot three objects, but none were obvious plane parts, the Australian Maritime Safety Agency said. The latest objects seen on satellite range from about 3 feet (1 meter) to about 75 feet (23 meters), Hishammuddin said. Some appear bright, indicating they may be solid, he said.
The latest images appear to be the most significant discovery yet in the hunt for the missing plane, which vanished March 8 with 239 people aboard, said CNN aviation analyst Miles O’Brien. “There’s a very good chance this could be the break we’ve been waiting for,” he said.
Aviation safety analyst David Soucie agreed, saying he was particularly intrigued by the size of the 75-foot object. “It has potential to be a wing that’s floating,” he said. “So I’m really encouraged by it, I really am.” But satellites have captured images of objects before during the current search, crews have yet to spot anything definitively linked to the airplane, and ships haven’t recovered anything of note.
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An ongoing FBI review of the missing jet’s pilots’ hard drives, including the captain’s flight simulator, has not turned up a “smoking gun,” a U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. “They have accessed the data,” the official said. “There is nothing that’s jumping out and grabbing us right now.” The official would not reveal what was on the hard drive, but said the Malaysia Airlines pilot did not encrypt any of the files nor did he appear to go to any great lengths to scrub the hard drive when he deleted files last month.
Source: CNN
March 27-28
They’ve been spotted and spotted again, those objects in the southern Indian Ocean. Every time a report comes out that something has been seen that may be related to missing Malaysia Flight 370, hopes have risen. And then, they have fallen. It’s seemed like a daily exercise.
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Forget all those satellite photos showing promising patches of debris. The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has moved again.
In a stunning turn, Australian authorities announced Friday that they were abandoning the remote region of Indian Ocean where search crews had spent more than a week looking for the plane.
A new analysis of satellite data showed the plane could not have flown that far south, they said.
“We have moved on from those search areas,” said John Young, general manager of emergency response for the Australian maritime authority.
The new zone is 680 miles (about 1,100 kilometers) to the northeast, closer to the Australian coast.
In what could be a sign the search is on the right track, or possibly yet another letdown, the agency said five of the 10 planes dispatched to the new search zone spotted objects in the waters below. Crews took photographs of the objects, and those images will be analyzed overnight, the authority said.
“The objects cannot be verified or discounted as being from MH370 until they are relocated and recovered by ships,” the authority said in a statement.
A Chinese vessel is being sent to recover some of the objects Saturday, the authority said.
A New Zealand air force surveillance plane flying over the new search area spotted unidentified objects floating in the water and was returning to its base in Perth, Australia, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said on Twitter.
March 29-31
More objects ruled out of being from missing Malaysia Airlines jet as Australia PM vows search will continue
A cluster of orange objects spotted by a search plane hunting for any trace of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet turned out to be nothing more than fishing equipment, Australian officials said Monday, the latest disappointing news in a weekslong hunt that Australia’s prime minister said will continue indefinitely.
The crew of an Australian P-3 Orion search plane spotted at least four orange objects that were more than 6 feet in size on Sunday, and the pilot, Flight Lt. Russell Adams, dubbed the sighting their most promising lead in the search for Flight 370. But on Monday, Jesse Platts, a spokesman for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, said the objects had been analyzed and officials had confirmed “they have nothing to do with the missing flight.”
It’s a frustrating pattern that has developed in the hunt for the Boeing 777, which vanished on a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 with 239 people aboard: Search crews have repeatedly spotted multiple objects floating in remote patches of the southern Indian Ocean, only for officials to later confirm they aren’t linked to the missing plane.
March 29 – April 3
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) — The families of those on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have been waiting for answers for 20 days. The loved ones of those who were passengers on Malaysia Airlines 653 have been waiting for 37 years.
Flight 653 was hijacked in 1977 en route from the northern Malaysian city of Penang to Kuala Lumpur, the country’s capital. The airliner — a Boeing 737-200 — crashed into a mangrove swamp as it descended, killing all 100 on board. Before Flight 370, it was the deadliest incident in Malaysian aviation history.
“Thirty-seven years down the line, we still don’t really know the truth,” said Ruth Parr, who was 19 when her father, Thomas, died in the crash.
The hijacker or hijackers of MH653 have never been identified, despite cockpit voice recordings that captured everything from the breach of the cockpit, to the sound of gunshots that killed both pilots. According to the Malaysian Civil Aviation Department’s report into the crash, the aircraft was hijacked as it approached Kuala Lumpur.
Amid confusion over whether it was to land there or not, it proceeded towards neighboring Singapore. As it descended, the crew was shot and the aircraft “carried out some unusual pitch up and pitch down terminal maneuvers before finally impacting into swampy ground at some 450 knots.” The report concluded that the crash was caused by the crew being fatally incapacitated, leaving the aircraft “professionally uncontrolled.”
However, some eye witnesses at the time reported seeing the aircraft in flames before it hit the ground, while others reported hearing an explosion before impact — though investigators could not find evidence to support these reports.
Defining event
For other family members of MH653 victims reached by CNN, the recent disappearance of MH370 brought back memories of that traumatic time. Over the years, they have learned to cope with their grief, but the 1977 crash will always be a defining event in their lives.
April 4
What happens after the Malaysian plane’s pingers die?
They are inaudible to humans, but they would be sweet music to searchers hoping to find clues to the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
They’re the sounds believed to be emanating from the underwater locator beacons — known as pingers — that were attached to the jet’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder.
But the clock’s ticking: Their batteries are not guaranteed to work for more than 30 days, and Friday marks day 28.
And they may not even make it that long: The recorders had been scheduled for battery replacements in 2012, but they were never returned for the overhaul, the manufacturer told CNN on Friday.
Have these underwater vehicles found plane wrecks in the past?
Yes. AUVs helped find the downed Air France flight, the wreckage of the plane that was carrying Italian fashion designer Vittorio Missoni when it disappeared last year off Venezuela, and the HMS Ark Royal, a ship sunk by a German U-81 submarine in World War II. The AUV provided black-and-white images of the wreckage site.
Will the mystery of Flight 370 be solved once the data recorders are found?
Not necessarily. The voice recorders retain only the last two hours of recordings. And, since officials believe Flight 370 flew almost seven hours beyond the point where something went terribly wrong, crucial data have almost certainly been erased.
On the positive side, the depletion of the battery will not wipe out data.
Data has been known to survive years in harsh sea water conditions on modern recorders.
Do geopolitical games handicap Malaysia jet hunt?
While Malaysia has been accused of a muddled response and poor communications, China has showcased its growing military clout and reach, while some involved in the operation say other countries have dragged their feet on disclosing details that might give away sensitive defence data.
That has highlighted growing tensions in a region where the rise of China is fuelling an arms race, and where several countries including China, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines are engaged in territorial disputes, with the control of shipping lanes, fishing and potential hydrocarbon reserves at stake.
The Malaysian Airline jet, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, was last officially detected hundreds of miles off course on the wrong side of the Malaysian peninsula.
As mystery deepened over the fate of the Boeing 777 and its 239 passengers and crew, most of them Chinese, it became clear that highly classified military technology might hold the key.
A reluctance to share sensitive data appeared to harden as the search area widened.
“This is turning into a spy novel,” said an envoy from a Southeast Asian country, noting it was turning attention to areas and techniques few countries liked to publicly discuss.
With the United States playing a relatively muted role in the sort of exercise that until recently it would have dominated, experts and officials say there was no real central coordination until the search for the plane was confined to the southern Indian Ocean, when Australia largely took charge.
Part of the problem is that Asia has no NATO-style regional defence structure, though several countries have formal alliances with the United States. Commonwealth members Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia also have an arrangement with Britain to discuss defence matters in times of crisis.
The trillion dollar question to the US and its intelligence services
At the outset of the SAR Mission, all concerned stated categorically that every scenario, no matter how unlikely would be examined critically with no stones left unturned – terrorist hijacking, suicide mission, technical failures, inadequate security, criminal actions of the pilot and or co-pilot etc.
Given the above premise, families of the passengers and the crew of MH 370 have every right to ask the following questions of the US and other countries that have sophisticated technologies to track and monitor airplanes and ships in all circumstances.
Such questions should not be shot down by those who have a hidden agenda that such queries amount to “conspiracy theories”. Far from being conspiracy theories, we assert that the questions tabled below and the rationale for asking them are well founded and must be addressed by the relevant parties, failing which an inference ought to be drawn that they are complicit in the disappearance of MH 370.
Lets us begin.
1) Was the plane ordered to turn back, if so who gave the order?
2) Was the plane turned back manually or by remote control?
3) If the latter, which country or countries have the technologies to execute such an operation?
4) Was MH 370 weaponised before its flight to Beijing?
5) If so, what are the likely methods for such a mission – Biological weapons, dirty bombs?
6) Was Beijing / China the target and if so why?
7) Qui Bono?
8) The time sequence of countries identifying the alleged MH 370 debris in the Indian ocean was first made by Australia followed by France, Thailand, Japan, and Britain via Immarsat. Why did US not offer any satellite intelligence till today?
9) Prior to the switch of focus to the Indian ocean, was the SAR mission in the South China seas, used as a cover for the deployment of undersea equipment to track and monitor naval capabilities of all the nations’ navies competing for ownership of disputed territorial waters? Reuters as quoted above seems to have suggested such an outcome.
10) Why was there been no focus, especially by foreign mass media, on the intelligence and surveillance capabilities of Diego Garcia, the strategic naval and air base of the US?
11) Why no questions were asked whether the flight path of MH 370 (if as alleged it crashed in the Indian Ocean), was within the geographical parameters of the Intelligence capabilities of Diego Garcia? Why were no planes deployed from Diego Garcia to intercept the “Unidentified” plane which obviously would pose a threat to the Diego Gracia military base?
12) The outdated capabilities of the Hexagon satellite system deployed by the US in the 1970s has a ground resolution of 0.6 meters; what’s more, the present and latest technologies boast the ability to identify objects much smaller in size. Why have such satellites not provided any images of the alleged debris in the Indian Ocean? Were they deliberately withheld?
13) On April 6th, 2012, the US launched a mission dubbed “NROL-25” (consisting of a spy satellite) from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The NROL-25 satellite was likely rigged with “synthetic aperture radar” a system capable of observing targets around the globe in daylight and darkness, able to penetrate clouds and identify underground structures such as military bunkers. Though the true capabilities of the satellites are not publicly known due to their top-secret classification, some analysts have claimed that the technology allows the authorities to zoom in on items as small as a human fist from hundreds of miles away. How is it that no imagery of MH370 debris was forwarded to Malaysia, as this capability is not classified though other technologies might well remain classified? (Source: Slate.com)
14) Could it be that the above capabilities were not as touted?
15) However, in December, 2013, the USAtlas V rocket was launched carrying the spy satellite NROL-39 for the National Reconnaissance Office, an intelligence agency which is often overshadowed by the notorious National Security Agency (NSA), only it scoops data via spy satellites in outer space. The “NROL-39 emblem” is represented by the Octopus a versatile, adaptive, and highly intelligent creature. Emblematically, enemies of the United States can be reached no matter where they choose to hide. The emblem boldly states “Nothing is beyond our reach”.This virtually means that the tentacles of America’s World Octopus are spreading across the globe to coil around everything within their grasp, which is, well, everything (Source: Voice of Moscow). Yet, the US with such capabilities remained silent. Why?
It cannot be said that it is not within the realm of probabilities that the US may not want the plane MH 370 to be recovered if rogue intelligence operators were responsible for the disappearance of MH 370.
Military secrets are not for civilian TV news
The Malaysian government does not have the most sophisticated satellite and radar surveillance systems and it took several days for them to admit that they had indeed tracked MH370 back in a westerly direction across the Malay Peninsula.
From that last point of contact on, the Malaysian authorities have been entirely reliant on ‘help’ from countries with powerful military radar systems and, more importantly, the top of the technocratic food chain, satellites.
And there we are faced with a dilemma. Does the military alliance that controls these systems see Malaysia as an ally? Are they willing to reveal the peacetime capabilities of their systems to a foreign power? Ultimately do they have the technical capability to ‘hack’ an airliner’s controls and disable avionics, even steer the plane rendering the pilot? If they can do that do they want to release that information to the world?
There seem to be two main theories emerging as to why, and by far the simplest is the demonstrated by hacker Hugo Teso who is also a commercial pilot. At the ‘Hack in the Box’ conference in April 2013, Teso demonstrated the ability to change speed, altitude and direction of a virtual airplane by sending radio signals to its flight-management system. He has also developed an Android app which demonstrates the vulnerability of modern computer-controlled airliners and business jets called PlaneSploit.
The US has several airbases around the Indian Ocean and South China Sea from which they operate the most advanced electronic warfare gadgetry in the world. Both from specialist warships and electronic warfare pods and installations on a variety of aircraft from the lumbering AWACS battle control planes to fighter jets.
Former scientific adviser to the UK Home Office Dr. Sally Leivesley was quoted by London’s Sunday Express on March 16 as saying, “hackers could change the plane’s speed, altitude and direction by sending radio signals to its flight management system. It could then be landed or made to crash by remote control.” She floated the possibility that this could be the world’s first cyber-hijack.
But Malaysia is a relatively low-tech country and not in a position to know for sure whether this happened or not. Codes of humility in the region also mitigate against the Malaysian authorities being prepared to admit they are out of their depth and lose face.
The second is that MH370’s pilot was simply called by the military on a frequency not being recorded by Air Traffic Control and told something along the lines of, “Vietnamese and other unspecified airspace is suddenly unsafe to fly in due to a military incident so please change frequency and follow instructions to a distant airstrip where we can put you down safely.” The was followed by something like, “Please do not inform passengers as this may alarm them.” The pilot would then be likely to simply comply and passengers may never know that anything was wrong. So if one of these is the means, what about the motive?
April 5
In what may turn out to be a major breakthrough in the monthlong search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370, a Chinese patrol ship searching the southern Indian Ocean discovered Saturday the pulse signal used by so-called black boxes, state news agency Xinhua reported.
But the pulse signal has not been confirmed, China’s Maritime Search and Rescue Center reported, according to China Communications News, which is the Ministry of Transport’s official newspaper.
The signal reported — 37.5 kHz — “is the standard beacon frequency” for the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, said Anish Patel, president of pinger manufacturer Dukane Seacom.
The race is on to find the missing Boeing 777’s locator pingers before their batteries expire.
The acoustic pinger batteries on Flight 370’s black boxes were due to be replaced in June, the Malaysia Airlines chief executive said Saturday.
The Ocean Shield has high-tech gear borrowed from the United States. That includes a Bluefin-21, which can scour the ocean floor for wreckage, and a Towed Pinger Locator 25, with its underwater microphone to detect pings from the jet’s voice and data recorders as deep as 20,000 feet (6,100 meters).
“It is a very slow proceeding,” U.S. Navy Capt. Mark M. Matthews said of the second tool, which is towed behind a vessel typically moving at 1 to 5 knots.
Bill Schofield, an Australian scientist who worked on developing flight data recorders, said: “If they do find it, I think it’ll be remarkable.”
Up to 10 military planes and three civilian aircraft — in addition to 11 ships — were looking Saturday for any sign of Flight 370, according to the Australian government.
The search area was nearly 84,000 square miles (218,000 square kilometers), which is slightly less than the area searched Friday, and focused some 1,050 miles northwest of Perth. This is about 50 miles farther from the western Australian city than had been the case the day before.
April 6
Rescuers are rushing to two sites where Chinese and Australian ships picked up acoustic signals possibly coming from the black box of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. But so far neither of the ‘pings’ detected under the Indian Ocean has been identified.
Malaysian authorities were investigating a theory that flight MH370 could have slipped under Pakistani radars and landed at a Taliban base close to the Afghan border.
According to US officials who helped in the investigation of the missing plane, the Malaysian jet changed course on its way to Beijing via the cockpit’s computerized Flight Management System, not by manual control.
April 7
Almost a month after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared, searchers say pulse signals detected in the Indian Ocean provide the best hope so far for finding it.However, those same officials warn it will take time to confirm if the sonar pings come from the missing plane, meaning nothing is certain yet.The new information raises more questions about what the pulse signals mean and what happens now.
The signals were picked up by the Ocean Shield, an Australian navy ship that’s towing a sophisticated U.S. pinger locator through an area about 1,750 kilometers (1,100 miles) northwest of Perth, Australia.
The first detection lasted for more than two hours; a second lasted for about 13 minutes.
Houston called the signals the “most promising” lead, then said it was the most promising “probably in the search so far; it’s probably the best information that we have had.”
The sounds were heard in seawater about 4,500 meters (14,800 feet) deep, Houston said. “We’ve got a visual indication on a screen, and we’ve also got an audible signal. And the audible signal sounds to me just like an emergency locator beacon,” he said. “We are encouraged that we are very close to where we need to be.”
But he cautioned reporters to “treat this information cautiously and responsibly until such time as we can provide an unequivocal determination.
“We haven’t found the aircraft yet. We need further confirmation,” Houston said. “And I really stress this. It’s very important.”
— CNN
April 8-9
(CNN) — In a sea of uncertainty, two bits of good news emerged Wednesday.
Searchers picked up fresh signals that officials hope came from locator beacons attached to the so-called black boxes in the tail of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared more than a month ago while carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
The Australian ship Ocean Shield had first picked up two sets of underwater pulses Saturday. It heard nothing more until Tuesday, when it reacquired the signals twice. The four signals were within 17 miles of one another.
“I believe we are searching in the right area, but we need to visually identify wreckage before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH370,” said Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who’s coordinating the Australian operation.
The second piece of good news? Authorities analyzed the signals picked up over the weekend and concluded that they probably came from specific electronic equipment rather than from marine life, which can make similar sounds.
“They believe the signals to be consistent with the specification and description of a flight data recorder,” Houston said. “I’m now optimistic that we will find the aircraft or what’s left of the aircraft in the not too distant future.”
Wednesday is Day 33 in the search for Flight 370, which went missing on March 8. Authorities are pinning their hopes of finding it on the pings.
Time is a looming element: The batteries powering the flight recorders’ locator beacons are certified to emit high-pitched signals for 30 days after they get wet.
“The signals are getting weaker,” Houston said, “which means we’re either moving away from the search area or the pinger batteries are dying.”
- The first signal, at 4:45 p.m. Perth time on Saturday, lasted two hours and 20 minutes, he said;
- the second, at 9:27 p.m. Saturday, lasted 13 minutes;
- the third signal was picked up Tuesday at 4:27 p.m. and lasted five minutes and 32 seconds;
- the fourth, at 10:17 p.m. Tuesday, was seven minutes long.
“It’s certainly encouraging that more signals have been detected,” Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Kirby told CNN. “There is still much work to do, however.”
April 10-13
Search for the black box and missing plane continues…
(CNN) — Australia’s Prime Minister repeated Saturday that he has a “high degree of confidence” that acoustic signals detected in the Indian Ocean are from at least one of the two black boxes from the missing Malaysian plane, but predicted that finding them remains a “massive, massive task.”
“It is likely to continue for a long time to come,” Tony Abbott told journalists in Beijing, where he was on a diplomatic visit.
More than 35 days since the plane vanished from radar screens early March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, the search continued.
Up to 11 military aircraft, one civil aircraft and 14 ships will assist in Sunday’s search for the missing airliner, the Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority planned a visual search area totaling approximately 22,203 square miles (57,506 square kilometers). The center of the search area lies about 1,367 miles (2,200 kilometers) northwest of Perth.
April 11-14
Search for black boxes from MH370 lead to a dead end when the pings stopped.
The first deployment of an underwater vehicle to hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was aborted early, sending the drone back to the surface before expected.
The Bluefin-21 vehicle was supposed to take 2 hours to get to its designated depth Monday, spend 16 hours searching, and 2 hours coming back up.
Instead, it spent about 7 and 1/2 hours in the water, including descent and ascent times, a source said.
Search officials analyzed data from Bluefin-21 and found no objects of interest, the U.S. Navy said Tuesday.
So what went awry the first time?
“In this case, the vehicle’s programmed to fly 30 meters over the floor of the ocean to get a good mapping of what’s beneath and to the sides, and the chart we have for the area showed that water depth to be between the 4,200 and 4,400-meter depth,” said Capt. Mark Matthews, who heads the U.S. presence in the search effort.
But the water was deeper than expected — about 4,500 meters.
“Once it hit that max depth, it said this is deeper than I’m programmed to be, so it aborted the mission,” Matthews said.
David Kelly, CEO of the company that makes the Bluefin-21, said the device’s safety mechanisms have triggered such recalls in the past.
“Although it’s disappointing the mission ended early, it’s not uncommon,” Kelly said. “We’ve operated these vehicles around the globe. It’s not unusual to get into areas where the charts aren’t accurate or you lack information.”
Mathews said the initial launch Monday night took place “in the very far corner of the area it’s searching, so they are just shifting the search box a little bit away from that deep water and proceeding with the search.”
It is unclear how much of the area — 5 kilometers by 8 kilometers (3.1 miles by 4.9 miles) — the Bluefin scanned during its first attempt. It could take up to two months to scan the entire search area.
If ever found, just which country will take custody of the plane’s data recorders? Malaysia’s Acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Tuesday it wasn’t as important as “finding out the truth.”
Also Tuesday, the Malaysian Cabinet agreed to set up an international investigation. It will be comprised of teams that will look into the airworthiness of the plane, the operational aspect, and the medical and human factors that may have played a part.
April 15
New piece of the puzzle of missing MH370 was released: the co-pilot’s cell phone
While search crews probe the ocean floor, a new detail emerged from the flight.
The cell phone of the first officer of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was on and made contact with a cell tower in Malaysia about the time the plane disappeared from radar, a U.S. official told CNN on Monday.
However, the U.S. official — who cited information shared by Malaysian investigators — said there was no evidence the first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, had tried to make a call.
The official told CNN’s Pamela Brown on Monday that a cell-phone tower in Penang, Malaysia — about 250 miles from where the flight’s transponder last sent a signal — detected the first officer’s phone searching for service roughly 30 minutes after authorities believe the plane made a sharp turn westward.
The details do appear to reaffirm suggestions based on radar and satellite data that the plane was off course and was probably flying low enough to obtain a signal from a cell tower, the U.S. official said.
U.S. officials familiar with the investigation told CNN they have been told that no other cell phones were picked up by the Penang tower.
Pilots are supposed to turn off their cell phones before pushing back from the gate.
When the plane first went missing, authorities said millions of cell phone records were searched, looking for evidence that calls had been made from the plane after it took off, but the search turned up nothing.
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Fariq Hamid, left, and Zaharie Shah.(Twitter/Facebook)
Note: Perhaps the first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, had tried to make a desperate call when pilots lost control of the plane (due to either malfunction of electronic systems or hijacking)?
April 16
As an underwater drone hunts along the bottom of the Indian Ocean for Flight 370, the search above water is under way, with 14 planes heading to the search area. This comes as Australia’s top investigator says the aerial search is expected to end any day. So far nothing: no more pings and no debris.
It’s the latest discouraging news for the families of the plane’s passengers, including Sarah Bajc, who’s partner Philip Wood was a passenger on Flight 370.
- MH370 passenger’s partner: Investigators are not exploring other options
- http://youtu.be/JuTTCXBfGYY
- The key of questions from family members
BTW, is there any connection with a South Korean ferry carrying about 459 people, including 325 students, which sank off South Korea?
Four bodies have been found and 164 people have been rescued and 292 are still missing (most likely dead).
April 17-18
(CNN) — Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 drastically changed course then soared to near its peak altitude, a senior Malaysian aviation source said — adding yet another wrinkle to the enigma of the plane’s last flight .
Before disappearing from radar screens on March 8, the commercial airliner deviated from its planned route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing by turning leftward over water while it was still inside Vietnamese airspace, the Malaysian aviation source told CNN’s Nic Robertson.
The aircraft then climbed to 39,000 feet, just short of the Boeing 777-200ER’s 41,000-foot safe operating limit, and maintained that altitude for about 20 minutes over the Malaysian Peninsula before beginning to descend, the source said.
Why? That and so much else — including where the plane is now — remains a mystery. Investigators have been trying for weeks to piece together bits of information trying to get the answers being demanded by relatives of the 239 people aboard the plane, not to mention millions more around the world who have been captivated by this ordeal.
In addition to this newly revealed development, investigators have determined that the missing jet was equipped with four emergency locator transmitters, or ELTs, which are designed to transmit a plane’s location to an emergency satellite when triggered by a crash or by contact with water, the source added.
The ELTs were at the plane’s front door, its rear door, in the fuselage and in the cockpit, said the source, who was puzzled over why they appear either not to have activated or, if they did activate, why they were not picked up by the satellite.
Relatives of the 239 passengers and crew have raised questions about the ELTs with Malaysian authorities, suggesting there were at least three aboard the plane, including two portable units and one fixed device.
April 19-24
(CNN) — More than six weeks after Flight 370 disappeared, Malaysia’s prime minister says his government is still not prepared to declare it — and the 239 people on board — lost.
“At some point in time I would be, but right now I think I need to take into account the feelings of the next of kin — and some of them have said publicly that they aren’t willing to accept it until they find hard evidence,” Najib Razak told CNN’s Richard Quest in an exclusive TV interview.
Still, he said, it is “hard to imagine otherwise.”
Najib also announced that his government will release a preliminary report next week on the plane’s disappearance. The report has already been submitted to the United Nations.
A month ago, Najib announced that, based on satellite data from Inmarsat, investigators had determined the plane’s “last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth. This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites.
Read between the lines of this interview (this opens possibilities suggested by some conspiracy theories):
Malaysian PM: MH370 not deemed hostile >>
Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Razak said in this interview:
“The military radar has some capability – it tracked an aircraft which did turn back, but they were not sure, exactly sure, whether it was MH370, what they were sure of was that the aircraft was deemed not to be hostile…”
Later in the interview, when asked why no planes were sent to investigate why the plane turned back, PM said:
…”they were not sure, but it behaved like a commercial airliner…”
When asked if he had any doubts regarding provided satellite data indicating that plane flew for 7 hours towards Antarctica, PM said:
“to be honest, I found it hard to believe to begin with because how could a plane that was supposed to be heading towards Beijing, they (experts from US and UK) could decide that the plane ended half way towards Antarctica, it is a bizarre scenario which none of us would have contemplated…”
Note: what kind of airplane seen on Malaysian military radar, would be considered to be “not hostile”?
The answer could only be: “their own military plane”, or a military plane of allied forces, or a commercial plane (however in such case they should know if it is MH370 or not).
The bizarre plot thickens…
More:
- CNN TV exclusive: Interview with Malaysian PM
- http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2014/04/24/mh370-malaysia-prime-minister-najib-razak-quest-part-2.cnn
Worth a Look:
April 25-29
The likelihood of finding any debris on the ocean’s surface is “highly unlikely,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Monday. By now, most of the debris is probably waterlogged and has probably sunk, he said. So officials are moving on to the next phase: a more intense underwater search that will use private contractors and could cost about $56 million. Crews will now scour a much larger area of the ocean floor — 60,000 square kilometers. The process could take at least six to eight months, officials said.
—
A private company declared that it has found what it believes is wreckage of a plane in the ocean, but leaders of the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 are dismissing the claim. The reasons for the skepticism are obvious — the site where GeoResonance says it found the wreckage, in the Bay of Bengal, is several thousand miles away from the current search area in the southern Indian Ocean.
“The Australian-led search is relying on information from satellite and other data to determine the missing aircraft’s location,” the JACC said.
“The location specified by the GeoResonance report is not within the search arc derived from this data. The joint international team is satisfied that the final resting place of the missing aircraft is in the southerly portion of the search arc.”Malaysian acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Malaysia “is working with its international partners to assess the credibility of this information.“GeoResonance said it analyzes super-weak electromagnetic fields captured by airborne multispectral images.” The company is not declaring this is MH370, however it should be investigated,” GeoResonance said in a statement.The company’s director, David Pope, said he did not want to go public with the information at first, but his information was disregarded.“We’re a large group of scientists, and we were being ignored, and we thought we had a moral obligation to get our findings to the authorities,” he told CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday.
GeoResonance’s technology was created to search for nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry under the ocean or beneath the earth in bunkers, Pope said.
Source: CNN
On Wednesday (April 30), Bangladesh sent two navy frigates into the Bay of Bengal to the location cited by GeoResonance. “As soon as they get there, they will search and verify the information,” Commodore Rashed Ali, director of Bangladesh navy intelligence, told CNN in Dhaka.
Note: How strange it seems that when the likelihood of finding any debris on the ocean’s surface became “highly unlikely,” new bread-crumb appears (based on technology which sounds impossible) which may lead to the location of the crash site possibly known to the military since day one (and kept secret for unclear reasons)…
May 1st
MH370 report reveals 4-hour gap before official search for plane began
On the fateful night that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared, officials apparently didn’t notice for 17 minutes that it had gone off radar — and didn’t activate an official rescue operation for four hours.
Those are two of the details outlined in a preliminary report by Malaysia’s Transportation Ministry released to the public Thursday. The report had been sent to the International Civil Aviation Organization, the U.N. body for global aviation.
What’s remarkable about the report is what’s missing from it.
When did the plane disappear?
At 1:21 a.m. on March 8, the plane — carrying 239 people to Beijing — disappeared from radar in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
By then, the plane’s crew should have contacted air traffic control in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, but apparently it didn’t.
And it wasn’t until 17 minutes later that Ho Chi Minh asked Malaysian air traffic control where the plane was.
“We are left to assume (that) for those 17 minutes, Kuala Lumpur either didn’t notice or didn’t act,” CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest said.
Why was there a four-hour gap in response?
Then came a four-hour gap — from the time when officials noticed the plane was missing to when the official rescue operation was launched.
The report gives an account of the conversation air traffic controllers in Vietnam and Malaysia had at that time. Ho Chi Minh City let Kuala Lumpur know at 1:38 a.m. that it was not able to establish verbal contact with Flight 370.
Kuala Lumpur also contacted Singapore, Hong Kong and Cambodia.
Those four hours may have been crucial.
May 2-12
The man leading the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 says the search is the most difficult in human history, but modern technology greatly increases the chances of finding the missing plane.
Angus Houston said the hunt is even more difficult than that for Air France Flight 447, which disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.
“The big difference between Air France 447 and MH370 is that the last known position, in terms of MH370, is at the top of the Malacca Straits, and then the aircraft continued to fly for an extended period after that,” Houston told CNN’s Anna Coren on Monday.
“Whereas Air France, they had a very good last known position, which then turned out to be very close to where the aircraft was eventually found.”
But he said searchers are performing “groundbreaking work” with satellite analysis, which has helped isolate the search area in the Indian Ocean.
“Without that, we would be essentially searching the whole of the Indian Ocean, and I think the chances of finding the aircraft in those circumstances would have been slim,” Houston said. “I think by having this defined search area … I think eventually we will find the aircraft.”
Houston is the chief search coordinator for the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, based in Australia. He said his greatest concern throughout the two-month search has been the families of those on board.
“To have a set of circumstances where you don’t know what’s happened to your loved ones in circumstances such as this, it’s just a terrible, terrible emotional trauma of all of those involved,” he said.
“And beyond that, the wider public has a great interest in what happened here because we all fly in airplanes, and we all fly long distances over water, and a lot of people want to know what happened and why it happened.”
MH370 search may be in wrong ocean.
Experts question math used in search for the final position of MH370.
Michael Exner, founder of American Mobile Satellite Corporation, said that the biggest problem [ with defining search area ] is that INMARSAT has not released enough detail about their data to allow outsiders to confirm their analysis and conclusions. Other experts said that the final position of the missing plane could be could be anywhere along these “arcs”…
Are they searching in the wrong places???
Source: CNN
May 15
Who has the data investigators used to shape their search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and why hasn’t it been released to the public?
The answer to those questions depends on who you ask.
Facing a growing chorus of criticism from scientists and family members who want to see more details about why searchers are combing the southern Indian Ocean for the missing Boeing 777, Malaysia’s top transportation official Thursday claimed his country doesn’t have the raw data from the satellite’s communication with the plane as it flew thousands of miles off course.
The data is crucial because it’s what led investigators to the area where they’re currently searching for the plane. And in recent days,some scientists outside the investigation have suggested they don’t trust investigators’ analysis of the data, and questioned whether searchers are even looking in the right place.
“The raw data is with (satellite company) Inmarsat, not with Malaysia, not with Australia, not with Malaysia Airlines, so if there is any request for this raw data to be made available to the public, it must be made to Inmarsat,” Acting Minister of Transportation Hishammuddin Hussein said.
Australian officials heading the search in the Southern Indian Ocean tell CNN they don’t have the raw data, either.
But Inmarsat, which owns the satellites, insists that the data has already been released to investigators.
“Inmarsat’s raw data was provided to the investigation team at an early stage in the search for MH370,” Chris McLaughlin, the company’s vice president of external relations, told CNN’s “Erin Burnett: OutFront.”
He added, “We have very high confidence in the analysis of this data, which was independently evaluated by the international teams accredited to the official investigation.”
It’s up to investigators, he said, to decide what they want to release — and when. The company says the Convention on International Civil Aviation prevents the release findings from an investigation without the consent from the state conducting the investigation.
“I don’t know who to believe,” CNN aviation analyst Miles O’Brien said. “But isn’t it awful that it’s quite evident somebody is lying here? Somebody is lying. We’re talking about something that involves a missing airliner, now 70 days. Lives lost, families shattered. And there (are) people lying about this. This is absolutely reprehensible. I can’t even believe…it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.”
Aviation attorney Arthur Rosenberg said he thinks the satellite company is obligated to release the data, whether or not Malaysian authorities have it.
“Unfortunately, you almost get the sense that they’re stalling, that there’s something in there that they don’t want the world to see. And that’s the problem,” O’Brien said. “That’s why there’s so little credibility right now about why this search zone has been identified.”
Search officials turn to private companies for help
With no tangible evidence of Flight 370 after more than two months of searching, officials are reaching out to commercial companies for help.
More specialized devices will be needed in this new stage of the search, which will focus on reanalyzing data to help ensure the correct search area; conducting a detailed mapping of the sea bed; and deploying specialized autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).
The Malaysian government is in the process of acquiring tools from companies such as Petronas, Sapura Kencana, Boustead and DEFTECH, acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin said Thursday.
Other nations may have other assets that would complement the search.
Source: CNN
May 28
MH370: What is the Raw Data? Is Inmarsat right?
In the aviation mystery which has baffled the world there is one fundamental question which continues to swirl: Has Inmarsatgot its numbers right?
It was these very calculations which led the search for MH370 far from the plane’s original route across South East Asia and deep into the southern Indian Ocean, off the west coast of Australia. No piece of work is more important in the search for the plane.
I was given exclusive access to the satellite experts who did the ground-breaking work. Time and again, I would ask them the toughest question: “Are you right?”
But before we get there … How did the data come to light in the first place?
Once the plane went missing, the ground station in Perth checked the logs and discovered that while the aircraft’s communications systems were switched off, the plane and the satellite still kept saying “hello” to each other, every hour.
“Having messages for six hours after the plane is lost is probably the biggest disbelief,” admits Inmarsat’s vice president of satellite operations Mark Dickinson.
These messages are the raw data upon which everything rests.
After the alert had been raised at the company’s London headquarters, engineers began urgently interpreting the raw data.
Dickinson explains: “We have some timing information … that allows you to essentially work out the distance from the satellite … and in addition to that there were some frequency measurements.”
Using the discrepancy of satellite frequency known as theDoppler Effect, the team spent ten days refining their work before they briefed the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who stunned the world by revealing the plane’s flight had ended in the South Indian Ocean.
Dickinson says that when he realized what had probably happened, his reaction was: “Let’s check this and let’s check it again, because you want to make sure when you come to a conclusion like that you have done the right work… As good engineers we are trained to check and check again.”
So why is Dickinson so sure he is right? Because the model they created showing arcs and Doppler readings was rigorously tested, initially on other aircraft on the satellite at the same time, and then against previous flights by the same aircraft. With minor disagreements both the position and the Doppler reading of those aircraft was predicted accurately.
Other organizations created their own models, ran the comparisons and came to the same conclusions. It is essential to understand: This is not just Inmarsat’s frolic.
“No-one has come up yet with a reason why it shouldn’t work with this particular flight when it has worked with others,” Dickinson told me. “It’s very important that this isn’t just an Inmarsat activity.”
So why haven’t they found the plane where Inmarsat says it should be? Simply put, it’s a big ocean, the ocean floor is very deep, with valleys and hills. In the bigger picture, the search has really only just begun.
The families have been seeking the release of this raw data for weeks.
The satellite company has extracted the crucial lines from the logs and has published it with an explanation and analysis. They have not published the raw computer pages which is likely to raise questions about why not.
Inmarsat says nothing important has been left out, but that the raw data would not have been understandable on its own. The goal of publication is transparency, not verification.
“What this provides is some transparency on what actual data came back and forwards between the plane and the ground station… How that data has subsequently been used so it allows people to see what technique. I’m hoping a great deal of transparency in terms of the analysis by Inmarsat,” says Dickinson.
So, will the publication quell the critics? Probably not. They want every last digit and bit of data so they can re-create the work, something that is impossible without detailed knowledge of the plane’s modem, the satellite’s own movement and the performance capabilities of the 777 aircraft.
Having covered this story from the moment the plane was lost, I know only too well that the everything hinges on Inmarsat’s data.
Could Dickinson be wrong? As an engineer he is, of course open to the possibility, but he insists his data has been “checked and checked … to make sure we’ve got it right. Checked against other flights in the area at the same time; checked against previous flights of this aircraft. At the moment there is no reason to doubt — I believe what this data says.”
And that is the heart of the matter. Inmarsat and others will never say they are convinced, they are not those sorts of people. Certainty is the prerogative of those of us less rigorously trained to consider fallibility. Inmarsat’s engineers will just rely on the numbers.
by Richard Quest, CNN
Read More (source article from CNN) >>
More updates will be posted
Read More: What Really Happened to the Malaysian Flight MH 370?
Did you know?
Time period between previous similar air disasters
TWA 800- Swissair 111:
From and including: Wednesday, July 17, 1996
To, but not including Wednesday, September 2, 1998
Result: 777 days
TWA 800 – MH370 (a Boeing 777):
from and including: Wednesday, July 17, 1996 To and including: Saturday, March 8, 2014
Result: 6444 days
Swissair 111 – MH370:
From and including: Wednesday, September 2, 1998 to, but not including Saturday, March 8, 2014
Result: 5666 days
—–
Four scenarios of what happened
Malaysian police have interviewed more than 50 people in their investigation into the missing plane, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakal told Malaysia’s national news agency Bernama.
He said police are focusing on four possibilities about what happened (but no explanation “WHY?”):
- a potential hijacking,
- sabotage,
- psychological issues or
- personal problems of the passengers and/or crew.
—
Experts have said the presence of two people with stolen passports on a plane was a breach of security, but one that is relatively common in a region regarded as a hub for illegal migration.
Malaysia’s police chief, Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar, said the younger Iranian was “not likely to be a member of a terrorist group”, adding that the authorities were in contact with his mother in Germany, who had been expecting her son to arrive in Frankfurt.
Speaking in Paris later on Tuesday, Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said the two men had travelled from Qatar’s capital Doha on their Iranian passports, and switched to stolen Italian and Austrian passports to board the Malaysia Airlines flight.
What Really Happened to the Malaysian Flight MH 370?
PS When facts are few, imaginations run wild
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777 on the way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, simply vanished from the sky on March 8. In the two weeks since, the mystery of what happened to its 227 passengers and 12 crew members has set off a frenzy of speculation and conspiracy theory hatching.
- It was a rogue pilot. Or was it a hero pilot?
- Terrorists took over the plane. Or were they air pirates? Space aliens?
- Maybe the crew flew the plane into Pakistan.
- Or a black hole?
- Somebody shot it down. Aha! We can’t see the plane because it’s invisible!
- No, it’s a sign from God that the Rapture is coming!
- The Illuminati are behind this!
- And last but not, least here’s that old Internet standby so popular among conservative conspiracy theorists: It’s Obama’s fault.
Pop-culture aficionados have weighed in, too, with comparisons to the television series “Lost” and “Fantasy Island.”
Singer Courtney Love went to her Facebook fan page and posted a helpful map drawn on a satellite photo; she said it showed the wreckage in the waters near the island of Palau Perak.
And YouTube commenters suggested that Pitbull and Shakira might have foreseen the trouble, pointing to their 2012 song “Get it Started.”
They ponder this lyric: “Now it’s off to Malaysia,” Pitbull sings, “Two passports, three cities, two countries, one day.”
Outlandish as some of these theories sound, they are so much more comforting than the truth. The truth is unfathomable. The truth is, we just don’t know.
We can’t know yet and we might never know. Highly trained professionals can’t figure it out, even with all their satellites and radar and pingy things.
Think people don’t just disappear from the sky?
Tell that to folks who have spent a lifetime trying to figure out what happened to Amelia Earhart or D.B. Cooper.
Sinister plot of the secret powers running the military-industrial complex, the Federal Reserve banking system and key Western nations?
Flight MH370 could have become the most devastating terrorist attack in recorded history.
- Could this Boeing 777 — or one just like it — have been used to murder the leaders of the top 53 nations on Earth?
- Why were 20 scientists* with Cosmic Top Secret clearances on Flight 370 — and did some group feel it was absolutely necessary to stop them?
*”Also on the plane were 20 staff members from a US technology company, Freescale Semiconductor, which makes powerful microchips for industries, including defence.Twelve employees were from Malaysia and eight were from China.” – Source>> - Did one of the passengers on Flight 370 successfully send out a message indicating he was being held on a “prison ship” near the biggest US/UK military base in the Indian Ocean — and that the other passengers were still alive?
The global hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight has shifted to a tiny island in the Maldives, where residents spotted a “low flying jumbo jet” hours after the aircraft disappeared. Several witnesses in Dhaalu Atoll saw a plane heading south that bore the red stripe and white background of Malaysia Airlines planes. The sightings, reported by a local news outlet, would have occurred more than seven hours after the plane, carrying 12 crew and 227 mainly Chinese passengers, lost contact with air traffic control and took its sudden westward turn during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in the early hours of Saturday March 8. “I’ve never seen a jet flying so low over our island before. We’ve seen seaplanes, but I’m sure that this was not one of those. I could even make out the doors on the plane clearly,” said an witness. – Source >>
The secret powers running the military-industrial complex, the Federal Reserve banking system and key Western nations — i.e. the Cabal or “Illuminati” — may have just tried to achieve the ultimate world coup. Thankfully, they failed.
Had their plan succeeded, it would have become the defining story of our time — and almost certainly would have started a world war.
Thankfully, the shadowy, elusive group that was likely responsible for this “botched job” may be on the brink of true defeat.
By not fearing them, and being brave enough to objectively examine the evidence, Flight 370 may well be the straw that breaks the Cabal’s back. The sheer size of this investigation, and the number of graphics, has required that we break it into at least two parts. This is the first of those parts. You will not only find clear and compelling evidence that such a Cabal exists. You will also learn about a vast international alliance that is working to defeat them.
A vast international alliance including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, or BRICS, is working to defeat the Cabal.
So far, all of this has been happening behind the scenes, with certain headlines suggesting greater mysteries are at work. That may all soon change. When the truth finally comes out, the last 300 years of world history — at least — may soon be viewed very differently than they are today; and we will have a much happier world.
What Really Happened to the Malaysian Flight MH 370?
So far, there are only two most likely theories explaining mysterious disappearance of the Malaysian plane (and none explains the “why”):
Plane Crash – see a version of such scenario suggested by by Chris Goodfellow, a Canadian Class-1 instrumented-rated pilot for multi-engine planes (read above: the entry for March 20).
Plane Hijacking – a version of which was suggested by Ret. General Tom McInerney, a retired Air Force pilot and a Fox News contributor.
The government of Malaysia reportedly turned to Pakistan for help finding this missing plane. That news comes as an Intel group is claiming that a source within Boeing is claiming that the company (Boeing) which made the jet, also believes this airplane is in Pakistan right now. However the Boeing company has not released any information that substantiates this claim.
The jet changed course shortly after takeoff, adding fuel to the hijacking theory. In other words, they had made the change, had programmed it in at least prior to signing off from air traffic control without mentioning that. A source within Boeing reportedly told this group, LIGNET, which is a bunch of retired CIA types, that Boeing according to this source, believes the jet is in Pakistan. The distance from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and the distance from Kuala Lumpur to Pakistan, Lahore, is the same distance, roughly 2,700 miles.
Reasons for the hijacking are not clear at this time – it could be either cargo or plans to use this plane for a major terrorist attack down the road…
What Really Happened to the Malaysian Flight MH 370?
Official Updates from Malaysia Airlines
Could the plane unload (drop) the cargo on its way to the crash landing in the ocean?
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