Where In The World Is Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?

[JustJohn or JJ]

Currently they have identified that there were 4 people with stolen passports. No debris and the oil slick isn't it. Plane disappears.


Kai or someone correct me if I'm wrong. What I remember from my military days is that a aircraft can hide its identity by turning off its transponder. So the controllers can't identify the plane directly but they still have a image scan from radar. Radar can be avoided by flying below its capability.

Just a thought is that 4 nasties got on the plane, commandeered it, turned off the transponder, turned the aircraft around, went below the radar dome and went wherever it was going to go by the nasties. The black box isn't transmitting anything also. (this is an important issue on the 777)

So, do I sip another afternoon beverage or do I try again later in the evening ? Hmmmmm - - - Na Zdrowie!!!

[Eric]

Curiouser and curiouser. Even in the middle of the ocean it's rather difficult for an airplane to remain hidden forever. Either it crashed with very faulty emergency transmission equipment, or it's been stolen and clandestinely landed somewhere.

[JustJohn or JJ]

MH370 Day Four search starts with new debris field report

Ben Sandilands | Mar 11, 2014 6:56AM
A large debris field sighted late yesterday by a Cathay Pacific flight off the east coast of Vietnam is the latest focus of the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines 777.

There are reports by Bloomberg and a more detailed update in the rolling log at the Aviation Herald.

The debris sighting is in the South China Sea far from the prime search areas in the Gulf of Thailand which have until now been the subject of an expanding international operation.

If this latest area of interest leads to the crash site, it follows that the flight was deliberately kept in radio silence, and that points to criminal interference with its conduct.

It would also raise the obvious question as to how its progress to that location wasn’t seen on Vietnam’s ATC radar screens, even if its identifying transponder had been switched off.

But this is all supposition. In this fourth day of the search much of the evidence as to what happened to the flight will be disappearing, no matter where the wreckage lies.

[karl]

J.J.

A mystery that may never be solved, for as time ticks by, so go chances of discovery. Such a tragedy though for all on board that flight. The Boeing 777 is apparantly a very well designed machine with few faults {most all mechanical devices are prone to some type of failure}, if properly maintained should be any other then mechanical failure.

Air travel is still a calculated risk no matter the built in safety in these machines. It is just the incident of event is so low as to almost remove the risk facter.

Karl

[JustJohn or JJ]

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — China's official Xinhua News Agency said Wednesday that a government website has satellite images of suspected debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane off the southern tip of Vietnam.

The report Wednesday says the images from around 11 a.m. on March 9 appear to show "three suspected floating objects" of varying sizes.

The report includes coordinates of a location in the sea off the southern tip of Vietnam and east of Malaysia, which apparently was part of the original search area after the plane disappeared early Saturday. The images were posted on a national defense technology website.

The Xinhua report says the largest of the suspected pieces of debris measures about 24 meters (79 feet) by 22 meters (72 feet).

The search for the missing plane, which left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, has encompassed 35,800 square miles (92,600 square kilometers) of Southeast Asia and on Wednesday expanded toward India.

Two-thirds of the passengers on the flight were Chinese, and the Chinese government has put increasing pressure on Malaysian officials to find solve the mystery of the plane's disappearance.

Also, Wednesday, it was revealed that the last message from the cockpit of the missing flight was routine. "All right, good night," was the signoff transmitted to air traffic controllers five days ago.

Then the Boeing 777 vanished as it cruised over the South China Sea toward Vietnam, and nothing has been seen or heard of the jetliner since.

Those final words were picked up by controllers and relayed Wednesday in Beijing to anguished relatives of some of the 239 people aboard Flight MH370.

The new Chinese reports of the satellite images came after several days of sometimes confusing and conflicting statements from Malaysian officials.

Earlier Wednesday, the Malaysian military officially disclosed why it was searching on both sides of country: A review of military radar records showed what might have been the plane turning back and crossing westward into the Strait of Malacca.

That would conflict with the latest images on the Chinese website.

For now, authorities said the international search effort would stay focused on the South China Sea and the strait leading toward the Andaman Sea.

Chinese impatience has grown.

"There's too much information and confusion right now. It is very hard for us to decide whether a given piece of information is accurate," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in Beijing. "We will not give it up as long as there's still a shred of hope."

"We have nothing to hide," said Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein. "There is only confusion if you want to see confusion."

Flight MH370 disappeared from civilian radar screens at 1:30 a.m. Saturday at an altitude of about 35,000 feet above the Gulf of Thailand between Malaysia and southern Vietnam. It sent no distress signals or any indication it was experiencing problems.

The Malaysian government said it had asked India to join in the search near the Andaman Sea, suggesting the jetliner might have reached those waters after crossing into the Strait of Malacca, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the flight's last-known coordinates.

Malaysian officials met in Beijing with several hundred Chinese relatives of passengers to explain the search and investigation, and to relay the last transmission that Malaysian air traffic controllers received before the plane entered Vietnamese airspace, according to a participant in the meeting.

Aviation officials in Vietnam said they never heard from the plane.

Its sudden disappearance led to initial speculation of a catastrophic incident that caused it to disintegrate. Another possibility is that it continued to fly despite a failure of its electrical systems, which could have knocked out communications, including transponders that enable the plane to be identified by commercial radar.

Authorities have not ruled out any possible cause, including mechanical failure, pilot error, sabotage and terrorism, and they are waiting to find any wreckage or debris to determine what went wrong.

In June 2013, Boeing issued a safety alert to Boeing 777 operators, telling them to inspect for corrosion and cracks in the crown fuselage around a satellite antenna. The alert says one airline found a 16-inch crack in one plane, then checked other 777s and found more cracking.

"Cracks in the fuselage skin that are not found and repaired can propagate to the point where the fuselage skin structure cannot sustain limit load," Boeing said. "When the fuselage skin cannot sustain limit load, this can result in possible rapid decompression and loss of structural integrity."

Two U.S. Federal Aviation Administration technical experts and a regional representative are in Kuala Lumpur as part of an NTSB team supporting the investigation. Experts in air traffic control and radar are providing technical help, the board said.

Hishammuddin described the multinational search as unprecedented. Some 43 ships and 39 aircraft from at least eight nations were scouring an area to the east and west of Peninsular Malaysia.

"It's not something that is easy. We are looking at so many vessels and aircraft, so many countries to coordinate, and a vast area for us to search," he told a news conference. "But we will never give up. This we owe to the families of those on board."

Confusion over whether the plane had been seen flying west prompted speculation that different arms of the government might have different opinions about its location, or even that authorities were holding back information.

Earlier in the week, Malaysia's head of civil aviation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, was asked why the Strait of Malacca was being searched and replied, "There are things I can tell you, and things I can't," suggesting that the government wasn't being completely transparent.

If all those on board are confirmed dead, it would be the deadliest commercial air accident in 10 years.

Choi Tat Sang, a 74-year-old Malaysian, said his family is still holding out hope that the plane and all on board are safe. His 45-year-old daughter-in-law, Goh Sock Lay, was the chief flight attendant. Her 14-year-old daughter, an only child, has been crying every day since the plane's disappearance.

"We are heartbroken. We are continuing to pray for her safety and for everyone on the flight," he said.

[JustJohn or JJ]

Malaysian plane may have flown hours after losing contact - WSJ

Mar 13th 2014 5:44AM


(Reuters) - U .S. investigators probing the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet believe it may have flown for four hours after losing contact with air traffic controllers, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

If confirmed, the report would represent another dramatic twist in what is already one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation history - the fate of Flight MH370, which took off from Kuala Lumpur early on Saturday and dropped off civilian radar screens less than an hour into its flight to Beijing.

On the sixth day of the search, planes were sweeping an area of sea where Chinese satellite images had shown what could be debris, but had so far found no sign of the airliner.

The Wall Street Journal said U.S. aviation investigators and national security officials believed the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing 777's engines as part of a standard monitoring program. (r.reuters.com/ruw57v)

It raises the possibility that the plane, and the 239 people on board, could have flown on for an additional distance of about 2,200 miles, potentially reaching Pakistan, destinations in the Indian Ocean or Mongolia, the paper said.

A senior Malaysia Airlines official told Reuters that no such data existed, while a second official said he was unaware of it. A spokeswoman for engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce had no immediate comment.

Malaysia Airlines has said previously that the Rolls-Royce Trent engines stopped transmitting monitoring signals when contact with the plane was lost.

PRESSURE ON MALAYSIA

As frustration mounts over the failure to find any trace of the plane, China heaped pressure on Malaysia to improve coordination in the search. Around two-thirds of the people aboard the lost plane were Chinese.

Premier Li Keqiang, speaking at a news conference in Beijing, demanded that the "relevant party" step up coordination while China's civil aviation chief said he wanted a "smoother" flow of information from Malaysia, which has come under heavy criticism for its handling of the disaster.

Vietnamese and Malaysian planes scanned waters where a Chinese government agency website said a satellite had photographed three "suspicious floating objects" on Sunday. The location was close to where the plane lost contact with air traffic control.

Aircraft repeatedly circled the area over the South China Sea but were unable to detect any objects, said a Reuters journalist aboard one of the planes.

One U.S. official close to the investigation said the Chinese satellite report was a "red herring".
It was the latest in a series of false signals given to the multi-national search team that has been combing 27,000 square nautical miles (93,000 square km), an area the size of Hungary, for the Boeing 777-200ER.

On Wednesday, Malaysia's air force chief said military radar had traced what could have been the jetliner to an area south of the Thai holiday island of Phuket, hundreds of miles to the west of its last known position.

His statement followed a series of conflicting accounts of the flight path of the plane, which left authorities uncertain even which sea to search.

LAST SIGHTING

The last definitive sighting on civilian radar screens came shortly before 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, as the plane flew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand.

Rodzali Daud, the Malaysian air force chief, told a news conference on Wednesday that an aircraft was plotted on military radar at 2:15 a.m., 200 miles northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia's west coast at the northern tip of the Strait of Malacca.

But there has been no confirmation that the unidentified plane was Flight MH370, Rodzali said, and Malaysia was sharing the data with international civilian and military authorities, including those from the United States.

"We are corroborating this," he added. "We are still working with the experts."

U.S. counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board may have diverted the plane toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner's transponders to avoid radar detection, The Wall Street Journal said, citing one person tracking the probe.

If the military radar signal cited by Rodzali was the missing plane, the aircraft would have flown for 45 minutes and dropped only about 5,000 feet in altitude since its sighting on civilian radar in the Gulf of Thailand.

That would mean the plane had turned sharply west from its original course, travelling hundreds of miles over the Malay Peninsula from the Gulf of Thailand to the Andaman Sea to a point roughly south of Phuket and east of the tip of Indonesia's Aceh province and India's Nicobar island chain.

Indonesia and Thailand have said their militaries detected no sign of any unusual aircraft in their airspace. Malaysia has asked India for help in tracing the aircraft and New Delhi's coastguard planes have joined the search.

U.S. EXPERTS ASSISTING

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement that its experts in air traffic control and radar who travelled to Kuala Lumpur over the weekend were giving the Malaysians technical help.

A U.S. official in Washington said the experts were shown two sets of radar records, military and civilian, and they both appeared to show the plane turning to the west across the Malay peninsula.
But the official stressed the records were raw data returns that were not definitive.
A dozen countries are taking part in the search, with 42 ships and 39 aircraft involved.

Authorities have not ruled out any cause for the disappearance. Malaysian police have said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.

Two men on board were discovered by investigators to have false passports, but they were apparently seeking to emigrate illegally to the West.

The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 struck a seawall with its undercarriage on landing in San Francisco, killing three people.

Boeing has declined to comment beyond a brief statement saying it was monitoring the situation.
(Additional reporting by Niluksi Koswanage, Siva Govindasamy and Yantoultra Ngui in Kuala Lumpur, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Mai Nguyen, Ho Binh Minh and Martin Petty in Hanoi, Tim Hepher in Paris. Mark Hosenball and Ian Simpson in Washington; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Dean Yates and Nick

[Jaga]

There were 5 pings from the airplane, it might fly under the radar. The airplane captain was a political activist, but not on a radical/conservatist side:

A high-ranking special branch officer, Malaysia's elite investigative unit, confirmed to USA TODAY that a laptop belonging to pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah was being picked apart for clues.

Zaharie has close ties with Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who has been fighting a charge of sodomy. Hours before boarding the flight, Zaharie turned up at the Court of Appeal in the country's new administrative capital, Putrajaya, for a hearing at which Anwar was sentenced to five years in prison. The opposition is appealing Anwar's prison sentence.

Speaking to USA TODAY, a close friend of Zaharie, Peter Chong, said Zaharie does support the opposition but that the reports that he may have had a role in diverting the plane were "not true."

"He is a political activist, yes. And yes, he was in court for Anwar's trial and he is our strong supporter, but that does not make him a terrorist," Chong said.

The scrutiny follows revelations Saturday that someone aboard the jet made a series of highly technical actions to deliberately hide the plane from modern detection systems. Prime Minister Najib Razak said the path of the flight, missing since March 8, was altered shortly after takeoff. The last known signal from the airliner came more than seven hours after takeoff.

The final words from the cockpit to air traffic controllers -- "All right, good night." -- apparently were spoken after the plane was diverted, Razak said.

Nirmala Nadarajah, a former Malaysia Airlines flight attendant, told USA TODAY that Zaharie is a "good, kind man."