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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 18, 2014 14:33:51 GMT -5
US Navy ship ends search for missing Malaysian airliner; patrol aircraft continue huntPublished March 17, 2014 Associated Press WASHINGTON – The Navy ship that has been helping search for the missing Malaysian airliner is dropping out of the hunt, U.S. military officials said Monday. The Navy's 7th Fleet determined that long-range naval aircraft are a more efficient means of looking for the plane or its debris, now that the search area has broadened into the southern Indian Ocean. Long-range Navy P-3 and P-8 surveillance aircraft remain involved in the search, Cmdr. William Marks, a spokesman for the 7th Fleet, said in an emailed statement. The USS Kidd, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer that has been searching in the Indian Ocean, will return to its normal duties. The Malaysian Airlines plane has been missing for more than a week. No debris or wreckage associated with the aircraft has been found. The P-8 Poseidon and the P-3 Orion can cover up to 15,000 square miles in one nine-hour flight. The aircraft also are equipped with advanced surface search radars and electro-optical sensors and can fly at low altitudes if visual identification is needed. The decision was made in consultation with the government of Malaysia. A Pentagon spokesman said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Malaysian Minister of Defense Hishammuddin Tun Hussein on Monday evening that the United States is fully committed to working with Malaysia to locate the plane.' link
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 18, 2014 19:58:35 GMT -5
Thailand gives radar data 10 days after plane lostAssociated Press 11 hours ago . BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand's military said Tuesday that its radar detected a plane that may have been Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 just minutes after the jetliner's communications went down, and that it didn't share the information with Malaysia earlier because it wasn't specifically asked for it. A twisting flight path described Tuesday by Thai air force spokesman Air Vice Marshal Montol Suchookorn took the plane to the Strait of Malacca, which is where Malaysian radar tracked Flight 370 early March 8. But Montol said the Thai military doesn't know whether it detected the same plane. Thailand's failure to quickly share possible information regarding the fate of the plane, and the 239 people aboard it, may not substantially change what Malaysian officials know, but it raises questions about the degree to which some countries are sharing their defense information, even in the name of an urgent and mind-bending aviation mystery. With only its own radar to go on, it took Malaysia a week to confirm that Flight 370 had entered the strait, an important detail that led it to change its search strategy. When asked why it took so long to release the information, Montol said, "Because we did not pay any attention to it. The Royal Thai Air Force only looks after any threats against our country, so anything that did not look like a threat to us, we simply look at it without taking actions." He said the plane never entered Thai airspace and that Malaysia's initial request for information in the early days of the search was not specific. View gallery Missing Malaysia Airlines jet A man stands in front of a board with messages of hope and support for the passengers of the missing … "When they asked again and there was new information and assumptions from (Malaysian) Prime Minister Najib Razak, we took a look at our information again," Montol said. "It didn't take long for us to figure out, although it did take some experts to find out about it." Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12:40 a.m. Malaysian time and its transponder, which allows air traffic controllers to identify and track the airplane, ceased communicating at 1:20 a.m. Montol said that at 1:28 a.m., Thai military radar "was able to detect a signal, which was not a normal signal, of a plane flying in the direction opposite from the MH370 plane," back toward Kuala Lumpur. The plane later turned right, toward Butterworth, a Malaysian city along the Strait of Malacca. The radar signal was infrequent and did not include any data such as the flight number. He said he didn't know exactly when Thai radar last detected the plane. Malaysian officials have said Flight 370 was last detected by their own military radar at 2:14 a.m. The search area for the plane initially focused on the South China Sea, where ships and planes spent a week searching. Pings that a satellite detected from the plane hours after its communications went down have led authorities to concentrate instead on two vast arcs — one into central Asia and the other into the Indian Ocean — that together cover an expanse as big as Australia. Thai officials said radar equipment in southern Thailand detected the plane. Malaysian officials have said the plane might ultimately have passed through northern Thailand, but Thai Air Chief Marshal Prajin Juntong told reporters Tuesday that the country's northern radar did not detect it. link
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Post by PurplePuppy on Mar 18, 2014 23:13:38 GMT -5
New evidence in Flight 370 search explains plane's pathBy Mariano Castillo, Catherine E. Shoichet and Evan Perez, CNN updated 10:30 PM EDT, Tue 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. And it looks like that turn was no accident. A law enforcement official told CNN Tuesday that the aircraft's first turn to the west was almost certainly programmed by somebody in the cockpit. The official, who has been briefed on the investigation, said the programmed change in direction was entered at least 12 minutes before the plane's co-pilot signed off to air traffic controllers, telling them, "All right, good night." Analysts on CNN's "AC360" offered different interpretations of what that could mean -- with some experts cautioning the change in direction could have been part of an alternate flight plan programmed in advance in case of emergency, and others warning it could show something more nefarious was afoot. "We don't know when specifically it was entered," said Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation. New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt said the new timeframe "makes the issue of foul play seem more significant." "Because by doing that," he said, "what it basically shows is that this thing was already heading in a different direction when they're saying good night." But still, the new details about what happened don't add up to a clear answer. "Like everything on this story, we learn a little bit," Schmidt said, "but then we just have more questions." Inside the cockpit of a Boeing 777 Police search pilots' homes Partner: I have to prepare for worst Did plane drop 5,000 ft. to avoid radar? Evidence that someone programmed the plane's computer and the Thai data that surfaced Tuesday corroborate a leading theory from Malaysian investigators: The missing plane veered off course in a deliberate act by someone who knew what they were doing. But investigators still don't know who was at the controls, or why whoever was flying the plane apparently took it far from its original destination. An initial search of the pilots' personal computers and e-mails found nothing to indicate that the sudden deviation in the aircraft's route was planned, U.S. officials said Tuesday after being briefed by Malaysian authorities. The officials said they had also reviewed cockpit conversations between the plane and air traffic controllers and heard nothing suspicious or anything that would explain why the jetliner changed course. And a flight simulator belonging to pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah did not show any of the unexplained paths the plane may have flown after it went off the grid, officials said. Schiavo said it's no surprise investigators found nothing suspicious in the pilots' homes. "I've worked on many cases were the pilots were suspect, and it turned out to be a mechanical and horrible problem," she said. "And I have a saying myself: Sometimes an erratic flight path is heroism, not terrorism. And I always remind myself of that, not to jump to that conclusion. Sometimes pilots are fighting amazing battles, and we never hear about it. " Thailand: Plane sent intermittent signal The Thai military's revelation that it also spotted the plane turning west toward the Strait of Malacca is one encouraging sign that investigators could be on the right track after days of searching for the missing plane have failed to turn up any answers about its location. 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 suggests that the plane was deliberately flown off-course, turning west and traveling back over the Malay Peninsula and out into the Indian Ocean. The Thai data are 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. Investigators say they're still not sure where the plane ended up. The total area now being searched stands at 2.97 million square miles -- an area nearly the size of the continental United States -- Hishammuddin Hussein, the Malaysian defense and transport minister said. "This is an enormous search area," Hishammuddin said. "And it is something that Malaysia cannot possibly search on its own. I am therefore very pleased that so many countries have come forward to offer assistance and support to the search and rescue operation." Turn made by computer? The pilot and first officer of the missing plane, both of them Malaysian, have come under particular scrutiny in the search for clues. But officials have reported no evidence to tie the pilot and first officer to the plane's disappearance. One aviation expert, writing an opinion piece for CNN.com, floated the idea last week that whoever changed the plane's course was an expert. The cockpit computer programming analysis, first reported by The New York Times Tuesday, has increased investigators' focus on the pilot and first officer, the newspaper said. Asked about the report Tuesday, Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said, "As far as we're concerned, the aircraft was programmed to fly to Beijing. That's the standard procedure." But he didn't rule out the possibility the flight path had been reprogrammed. "Once you're in the aircraft," he said, "anything is possible." China clears citizens China says it has found no evidence that any of its citizens on board the missing plane were involved in hijacking or terrorism. Background checks on all passengers from the Chinese mainland on the plane have found nothing to support such suspicions, Huang Huikang, the Chinese ambassador to Malaysia, said Tuesday, according to the state-run Chinese news agency Xinhua. Authorities have said they are investigating all 239 people who were on board the flight, which disappeared more than 10 days ago. According to the airline, 153 of the 227 passengers on board the plane came from mainland China or Hong Kong. By effectively ruling out suspicions for a large majority of the passengers, Chinese authorities appear to have significantly shortened the list of possible suspects in the investigation. The Chinese ambassador's statement is also likely to greatly dampen speculation that Uyghur separatists from China's far western region of Xinjiang might have been involved in the plane's disappearance. One of the two long corridors where authorities say the plane was last detected stretched over Xinjiang, and unconfirmed reports had suggested the possibility that Uyghurs might be connected to the case. Chinese authorities have accused separatists from Xinjiang of carrying out a terrorist attack this month in which eight attackers armed with long knives stormed a train station in Kunming, a city in southwestern China, killing 29 people and wounding more than 140. China said Tuesday that it had begun to search for the plane in the parts of its territory that fall under the northern corridor, deploying satellite and radar resources. Experts are analyzing past and present data along the arc stretching through Chinese territory, Hong Lei, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a news briefing Tuesday in Beijing. Still a mystery Eleven days after Flight 370 disappeared, the bottom line is that the fate of the flight remains a mystery. As time has passed, initial theories about mechanical error have led to more elaborate ideas about complicated hijacking or commandeering plots. Former Malaysia Airlines pilot Nik Huzlan has flown the same aircraft that is now missing. "I know, I flew this plane," he said. "This is very, very strange. The lack of communication is puzzling. How the pilots are not communicating." Huzlan has come up with his own theories. "From (the) second or third day, I've come to my own private conclusion that it must have been unlawful human interference," he said. "It could have been anyone on the airplane." CNN has talked to more than half a dozen U.S. military and intelligence officials who emphasize that while no one knows what happened to the plane, it is more logical to conclude it crashed into the Indian Ocean. The officials say there is no evidence that any U.S. satellite data registered an unknown aircraft in any of the Asian countries along the path the plane may have taken. According to these officials, it is overwhelmingly likely if the plane had crashed on land, there would be some evidence of that, and if it had landed, someone would have seen it. U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel raised the issue of transparency when he spoke with his Malaysian counterpart Monday, according to two U.S. officials. Both officials said it was not a criticism of the Malaysians, but more a discussion about the need to share information with the world on one of the most complex search operations in history. "He was saying the best way to handle this is to continue to be transparent and tell what you know when you know it," one official said of Hagel's conversation. In the first days after the incident, some U.S. officials had said the Malaysian government did not share enough radar and technical data about the flight. Malaysian officials have defended their handling of the crisis, stressing that the situation is unprecedented. Video at link
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 19, 2014 0:54:28 GMT -5
Malaysian Airlines MH370: live updates
Maldives 'witnesses' report seeing 'low flying jet' on morning that MH370 disappeared, as the search becomes the longest in modern aviation history - follow latest updates on missing Malaysia Airlines plane Visitors are silhouetted against a slideshow of best wishes for the missing Malaysia Airline, MH370, during an event at a shopping mall, in Petaling Jaya Photo: Joshua Paul/ AP 1:50AM GMT 18 Mar 2014 This page will automatically update every 90 secondsOn Off Missing flight: What could have happened? • Maldives 'sighting' of low flying plane • Disappearance officially longest in history • Five Indian Ocean runways found on Captain's simulator • Chinese relatives go on hunger strike for information • Australia admits search is like looking for 'needle in haystack' • 2.24 million square nautical mile search area • Deep sea search equipment being used • China finds no terror links to nationals on flight • Co-pilot spoke final words - "All right, good night" • Could Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have landed undetected? • In pictures: The hunt for MH370 Latest 04.30 Police in the Maldives are today investigating reports that islanders saw a “low-flying jumbo jet” on the day the missing Malaysia Airlines plane vanished. “The police are looking into the reports in the media saying that a low-flying aeroplane was sighted above Kuda Huvadhoo,” a statement said. Related Articles 10 of the biggest aviation mysteries 17 Mar 2014 Could flight MH370 have landed undetected? 17 Mar 2014 Malaysia Airlines MH370: Co-pilot was last to speak from cockpit 17 Mar 2014 Friend says MH370 pilot 'disciplined and professional' 18 Mar 2014 Several alleged sightings of the Boeing 777 have proved to be false alarms and reports of debris at sea have also turned up nothing. Quote 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,” the Haveeru website quoted one witness as saying. Haveeru journalist Farah Ahmed said several witnesses had given similar accounts. Quote These people first heard a very loud noise from a plane flying unusually low and they came out to see it,” he said 03.55 Just as war, as Billy Bragg once sang, is good for business, so it seems a missing plane, with little other than conjecture and rumour about its whereabouts, is good for TV ratings. CNN, whose coverage of developments has been extensive, has seen prime-time ratings jump 68 per cent over the year’s average. Seventeen of the 20 most popular articles on the BBC’s website last week were about the plane, bringing in more traffic to the site than any story since the Japanese tsunami in 2011. The story has also brought a grim surge in visitors to websites that focus on aviation issues. Quote There’s no question this is the biggest thing we’ve ever covered,” said Chris Sloan, who runs airchive.com and whose site gained some 1,500 Twitter followers in the past week. “But this is not the way we wanted to gain traffic.” 02.55 With the plane missing for 10 days, German insurer Allianz said on Tuesday it had started making payments on claims linked to the jetliner, according to the Reuters news agency. 01.45 While the Malaysian team coordinating the search have come under heavy criticism for their handling of the crisis, there has so far been little backlash against Malaysian Airlines, while the causeof the disappearance remains unknown. Australia's Sydney Morning Herald have spoken to industry figures to assess the impact on the Airline, with the negative impact likely to be short-lived. ‘‘The numbers are holding up pretty well," said Flight Centre spokesman Hadyn Long of bookings with the company. Lots more at link.
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 19, 2014 12:12:34 GMT -5
Missing Malaysia Airlines plane: possible MH370 sighting as Maldives residents report 'low-flying jumbo'Date March 19, 2014 - 5:19PM As an Australian-led search for a missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet swings into action in the southern Indian Ocean, reports have emerged of a possible sighting of MH370 thousands of kilometres away in the Maldives. Residents on the island nation, in the Indian Ocean about 700 kilometres south-west of Sri Lanka, have reported seeing a ‘‘low-flying jumbo jet’’ on the morning that the missing plane with 239 people on board vanished from civilian radar and lost contact with ground controllers. The large plane was reported to be white with red stripes, which is consistent with the Malaysia Airlines fleet, and was said to have made an incredibly loud noise as it flew over the the island of Kuda Huvadhoo at about 6.15am on March 8, according Maldives newspaper Haveeru "I've never seen a jet flying so low over our island before,’’ one unnamed witness told the newspaper. ‘‘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." Mohamed Zaheem, the island councillor of Kuda Huvadhoo, told the newspaper that other residents had also spoken of the incident. The residents claimed the plane was flying towards the southern tip of the Maldives, the Addu Atoll. The Maldives sighting appears to fit in with a theory proposed by an experienced pilot, Chris Goodfellow, whose blog earlier in the week has gained much online support. Mr Goodfellow believes that the pilot on MH370 may have been heading to the Malaysian resort island of Langkawi for an emergency landing after the transponders were knocked out by a fire on board. Mr Goodfellow said he believed the pilots were overcome by smoke and the plane continued on autopilot until it either ran out of fuel, or crashed. "The reported sighting over the Maldives coincides with the time line well," Mr Goodfellow said in an updated post. "The aircraft is probably a small distance west of Maldives.’’ Investigators have not commented on the reported sighting in the Maldives, which is thousands of kilometres away from where an Australian-led search has begun in a massive stretch of ocean west of Perth. That search operation, covering an area the size of France, began on Tuesday afternoon when an Australian P-3 Orion surveillance plane set off from RAAF base Pearce, outside Perth. Aircraft from the US and New Zealand will join the search on Wednesday, and China has expressed interest in helping. On Wednesday morning, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said three merchant ships near the search area also had responded to a broadcast issued by AMSA’s rescue co-ordination centre. The search area is more than 600,000 square kilometres, and the search is likely to take weeks. John Young, from AMSA’s rescue co-ordination centre, said that search area was the ''best estimate'' of where the plane may have came down. It is a considerably smaller area than the massive arc previously outlined by Malaysian authorities. But Mr Young said it would still be a massive job, and repeated several times it was only a ''possible search area'', underscoring the uncertainty that still surrounds the whole episode. ''A needle in a haystack remains a good analogy,'' he said. ''The sheer size of the search area poses a huge challenge.'' link
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 19, 2014 12:34:19 GMT -5
Malaysia, FBI probing data from pilot's simulatorBy IAN MADER Associated Press KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Malaysian investigators - with the help of the FBI - are trying to restore files deleted last month from the home flight simulator of the pilot aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines plane to see if they shed any light on the disappearance, officials said Wednesday. Files containing records of simulations carried out on the program were deleted Feb. 3 from the device found in the home of the Malaysia Airlines pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu said. Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference that Zaharie is considered innocent until proven guilty of any wrongdoing, and that members of his family are cooperating in the investigation. It was not immediately clear whether investigators thought that deleting the files was unusual. They will want to check those files for any signs of unusual flight paths that could help explain where the missing plane went. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name, said the FBI has been provided electronic data to analyze. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said U.S. investigators are prepared to help any way they can. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 with 239 people aboard disappeared March 8 on a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanations, but have said the evidence so far suggests the flight was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next and why. Investigators have identified two giant arcs of territory spanning the possible positions of the plane about 7 1/2 hours after takeoff, based on its last faint signal to a satellite - an hourly "handshake" signal that continues even when communications are switched off. The arcs stretch up as far as Kazakhstan in central Asia and down deep into the southern Indian Ocean. Police are considering the possibility of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or anyone else on board, and have asked for background checks from abroad on all foreign passengers. Hishammuddin said such checks have been received for all the foreigners except those from Ukraine and Russia - which account for three passengers. "So far, no information of significance on any passengers has been found," he said. The 53-year-old pilot joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981 and had more than 18,000 hours of flight experience. People who knew Zaharie from his involvement in opposition political circles in Malaysia and other areas of his life have described him as sociable, humble, caring and dedicated to his job. The crisis has exposed the lack of a failsafe way of tracking modern passenger planes on which data transmission systems and transponders - which make them visible to civilian radar - have been severed. At enormous cost, 26 countries are helping Malaysia look for the plane. Relatives of passengers on the missing airliner - two-thirds of them from China - have grown increasingly frustrated over the lack of progress in the search. Planes sweeping vast expanses of the Indian Ocean and satellites peering on Central Asia have turned up no new clues. "It's really too much. I don't know why it is taking so long for so many people to find the plane. It's 12 days," Subaramaniam Gurusamy, 60, said in an interview from his home on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. His 34-year-old son, Pushpanathan Subramaniam, was on the flight heading to Beijing for a work trip. "He's the one son I have," Subaramaniam said. Before Wednesday's news briefing at a hotel near the Kuala Lumpur airport, two Chinese relatives of passengers held up a banner saying "Truth" in Chinese and started shouting before security personnel escorted them out. "I want you to help me to find my son!" one of the two women said. Hishamuddin said a delegation of Malaysian government officials, diplomats, air force and civil aviation officials will head to Beijing - where many of the passengers' relatives are gathered - to give briefings to the next of kin on the status of the search. Aircraft from Australia, the U.S. and New Zealand searched an area stretching across 305,000 square kilometers (117,000 square miles) of the Indian Ocean, about 2,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) southwest of Perth, on Australia's west coast. Merchant ships were also asked to look for any trace of the plane. China has said it was reviewing radar data and deployed 21 satellites to search the northern corridor, although it is considered less likely that the plane could have taken that route without being detected by military radar systems of the countries in that region. Indonesian Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said Indonesia military radar didn't pick up any signs of Flight 370 on the day the plane went missing. He said Malaysia had asked Indonesia to intensify the search in its assigned zone in the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra, but said his air force was strained in the task. "We will do our utmost. We will do our best. But you do have to understand our limitations," Purnomo said. Hishammuddin said both the southern and the northern sections of the search area were important, but that "some priority was being given to that (southern) area." He didn't elaborate. Malaysian investigators say the plane departed 12:41 a.m. on March 8 and headed northeast toward Beijing over the Gulf of Thailand, but that it turned back after the final words were heard from the cockpit. Malaysian military radar data places the plane west of Malaysia in the Strait of Malacca at 2:14 a.m. Thailand divulged new radar data Tuesday that appeared to corroborate Malaysian data showing the plane crossing back across Peninsular Malaysia. The military in the Maldives, a remote Indian Ocean island nation, confirmed to Malaysia that reports of a sighting of the plane by villagers there were "not true," the Malaysian defense minister said. German insurance company Allianz said it has made initial payments in connection with the missing plane. Spokesman Hugo Kidston declined to say how much but said it was in line with contractual obligations when an aircraft is reported as missing. link
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 19, 2014 21:23:26 GMT -5
Ex-Israeli Air Security Chief Yeffet: Iran May Be Behind Jet MysteryWednesday, 19 Mar 2014 11:08 AM By Bill Hoffmann Iranian intelligence officials may be behind the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 earlier this month, former El Al Airlines security chief Isaac Yeffet says. "We have bad experiences with the Iranians, unfortunately.... I would not be surprised... if one of the intelligence bodies, group of Iranians, were involved," Yeffet told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV. "They will land [the aircraft] in place that nobody will know. It will take years, if not more, to find what's happened with this aircraft." Yeffet, who is also a former member of the Israeli Secret Service, believes the two passengers traveling with stolen passports may be a key part of the mystery, despite authorities discounting their culpability. "With them [was] an Iranian man [who] said [he] was a businessman but this Iranian went to purchase three tickets for the three of them and paid cash," he said. "Who pays cash money, in the last 20 years, to purchase three tickets... For us, it's immediately a suspicious sign. "They boarded the flight without any difficulty and I am afraid if they had the plan to hijack the aircraft, inside the aircraft they will have more people to assist them." Yeffet does not believe the Bejing-bound airliner, which had 239 passengers aboard, crashed into the sea. "If it was in the water we would find debris. History shows us that aircraft that crash in [the] ocean will be found immediately... if not the same day then the next day,'' he said.\ Video at link.
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 19, 2014 21:25:58 GMT -5
No sign of MH370 explosion, head of global monitoring body saysOrganization that tracks nuclear weapons tests has made its air and sea data available to national experts, thus far to no avail By Times of Israel staff and AP March 19, 2014, 6:33 pm 0 A Chinese relative of passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane cries as she holds a banner in front of journalists reading 'We are against the Malaysian government for hiding the truth and delaying the rescue. Release our families unconditionally!" at a hotel in Sepang, Malaysia, Wednesday, March 19, 2014. Malaysian authorities examined new radar data from Thailand that could potentially give clues on how to retrace the course of the Malaysia Airlines plane that vanished early March 8 with 239 people aboard en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Twenty-six countries are looking for the aircraft as relatives anxiously await news. (photo credit: AP Photo) A Chinese relative of passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane cries as she holds a banner in front of journalists reading 'We are against the Malaysian government for hiding the truth and delaying the rescue. Release our families unconditionally!" at a hotel in Sepang, Malaysia, Wednesday, March 19, 2014. Malaysian authorities examined new radar data from Thailand that could potentially give clues on how to retrace the course of the Malaysia Airlines plane that vanished early March 8 with 239 people aboard en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Twenty-six countries are looking for the aircraft as relatives anxiously await news. (photo credit: AP Photo) Twelve days after the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, one of the world’s most sophisticated monitoring networks has not detected any indication that the plane exploded in mid-air or crashed. The head of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which operates an acutely sensitive global verification system to detect nuclear explosions and also picks up other major explosions, earthquakes, tsunamis and more, said Wednesday afternoon that it had registered no high-altitude blast or crash into the sea that could account for the disappearance of the airliner. Speaking to The Times of Israel during a visit to Jerusalem for talks aimed at encouraging Israel to ratify the test ban treaty, Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo said the CTBTO had also made all of its data available to its users around the world, for them to “cross-cut” with their own data, and that this too had produced no indications that the plane blew up in mid-air or crashed. Zerbo stressed that “we cannot rule anything out,” however. He specified that detecting an explosion in the air, using CTBTO’s infrasound monitoring systems (which detect very low-frequency sound waves in the atmosphere produced by natural and man-made events), necessitated what he called “favorable wind conditions” which did not always apply in the area close to the Equator. And he said favorable conditions were also a factor in the effectiveness of CTBTO’s hydroacoustic systems, which detect acoustic waves in the oceans. CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo (photo credit: AP Photo/Jason DeCrow) CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo (photo credit: AP Photo/Jason DeCrow) Nonetheless, he noted that the CTBTO’s global detection systems were the only ones that proved capable of confirming a North Korean nuclear test last year, and proved uniquely effective in measuring the Japanese tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster three years ago. Thus there would certainly have been a chance that an explosion or crash of MH370 would have been detected, he said, and the more so after relevant nations were enabled to compare CTBTO data with their own scientific data and particular areas of expertise. “So far,” he said, “nothing.” Meanwhile, Malaysian investigators were trying to restore files deleted last month from the home flight simulator of the pilot aboard the missing Malaysian plane to see if they shed any light on the disappearance, Malaysia’s defense minister said Wednesday. Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference that the pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, is considered innocent until proven guilty of any wrongdoing, and that members of his family are cooperating in the investigation. Files containing records of simulations carried out on the program were deleted February 3, Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu said. It was not immediately clear whether investigators thought that deleting the files was unusual. They will want to check those files for any signs of unusual flight paths that could help explain where the missing plane went. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 with 239 people aboard disappeared March 8 on a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanations, but have said the evidence so far suggests the flight was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next and why. Investigators have identified two giant arcs of territory spanning the possible positions of the plane about 7½ hours after takeoff, based on its last faint signal to a satellite — an hourly “handshake” signal that continues even when communications are switched off. The arcs stretch up as far as Kazakhstan in central Asia and down deep into the southern Indian Ocean. Police are considering the possibility of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or anyone else on board, and have asked for background checks from abroad on all foreign passengers. Hishammuddin said such checks have been received for all the foreigners except those from Ukraine and Russia — which account for three passengers. “So far, no information of significance on any passengers has been found,” Hishammuddin said. The 53-year-old pilot joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981 and had more than 18,000 hours of flight experience. People who knew Zaharie from his involvement in opposition political circles in Malaysia and other areas of his life have described him as sociable, humble, caring and dedicated to his job. The crisis has exposed the lack of a failsafe way of tracking modern passenger planes on which data transmission systems and transponders — which make them visible to civilian radar — have been severed. At enormous cost, 26 countries are helping Malaysia look for the plane. Relatives of passengers on the missing airliner — two thirds of them from China — have grown increasingly frustrated over the lack of progress in the search. Planes sweeping across vast expanses of the Indian Ocean and satellites peering on Central Asia have turned up no new clues. “It’s really too much. I don’t know why it is taking so long for so many people to find the plane. It’s 12 days,” Subaramaniam Gurusamy, 60, said in an interview from his home on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. His 34-year-old son, Pushpanathan Subramaniam, was on the flight heading to Beijing for a work trip. “He’s the one son I have,” Subaramaniam said. Before Wednesday’s news briefing at a hotel near the Kuala Lumpur airport, two Chinese relatives of passengers held up a banner saying “Truth” in Chinese and started shouting before security personnel escorted them out. “I want you to help me to find my son!” one of the two women said. Hishamuddin announced that a delegation of Malaysian government officials, diplomats, air force and civil aviation officials will head to Beijing — where many of the passengers’ relatives are gathered — to give briefings to the next of kin on the status of the search. Aircraft from Australia, the US and New Zealand on Wednesday scoured a search area stretching across 305,000 square kilometers (117,000 square miles) of the Indian Ocean, about 2,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) southwest of Perth, on Australia’s west coast. Merchant ships were also asked to look for any trace of the plane. Nothing has been found, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said. China has said it was reviewing radar data and deployed 21 satellites to search the northern corridor, although it is considered less likely that the plane could have taken that route without being detected by military radar systems of the countries in that region. Those searches so far have turned up no trace of the plane, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said. Indonesian Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said Indonesia military radar didn’t pick up any signs of Flight 370 on the day the plane went missing. He said Malaysia had asked Indonesia to intensify the search in its assigned zone in the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra, but said his air force was strained in the task. “We will do our utmost. We will do our best. But you do have to understand our limitations,” Purnomo said. Hishammuddin said both the southern and the northern sections of the search area were important, but that “some priority was being given to that (southern) area.” He didn’t elaborate. Malaysian investigators say the plane departed 12:41 a.m. on March 8 and headed northeast toward Beijing over the Gulf of Thailand, but that it turned back after the final words were heard from the cockpit. Malaysian military radar data places the plane west of Malaysia in the Strait of Malacca at 2:14 a.m. Thailand divulged new radar data Tuesday that appeared to corroborate Malaysian data showing the plane crossing back across Peninsular Malaysia. The military in the Maldives, a remote Indian Ocean island nation, confirmed to Malaysia that reports of a sighting of the plane by villagers there were “not true,” the Malaysian defense minister said. German insurance company Allianz said Wednesday that it has made initial payments in connection with the missing plane. Spokesman Hugo Kidston declined to say how much had been paid, but said it was in line with contractual obligations when an aircraft is reported as missing. link
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 19, 2014 22:54:11 GMT -5
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Australia says possible objects in Indian OceanBy Chelsea J. Carter, Mitra Mobasherat and Pamela Brown, CNN updated 11:30 PM EDT, Wed March 19, 2014 Source: CNN STORY HIGHLIGHTS NEW: More than 60 ships and 50 aircraft are searching for the missing flight NEW: Two planes were not initially allowed to fly through Indonesian airspace President Barack Obama says search for Flight 370 is ''a top priority'' No information of significance has so far been found on any passengers, authorities say Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) -- [Breaking news update at 23:24 p.m. Wednesday ] Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Thursday that authorities have spotted two objects in the Indian Ocean that are possibly related to the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The reports say the objects were found in the southern Indian Ocean and a Royal Australian Air Force plane is attempting closer inspection. Australian search teams have been at the forefront of search efforts in the remote southern Indian Ocean. [Last update posted at 20:02 p.m. Wednesday] Missing flight simulator data probed in Flight 370 disappearance (CNN) -- Investigators looking at the flight simulator taken from the home of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah have discovered that some data had been deleted 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 may not tell us anything. It's a step in the process," one U.S. law enforcement source told CNN. "It could be a very insignificant detail in the process." Investigators have been looking into the background of all 239 passengers and crew members aboard the plane that vanished in the early morning hours of March 8 while en route from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China. Particular attention has focused on the pilot and first officer on Flight 370, but authorities have yet to come up with any evidence explaining why either of them would have taken the jetliner off course. Acting Transportation Secretary Hishammuddin Hussein didn't say what had been deleted, but simulation programs can store data from previous sessions for later playback. He also did not say who might have deleted the data. FBI examination Data deleted from pilot's simulator? See officials remove screaming mothers Who was in command of missing airplane? Specialists are examining the simulator in hopes of recovering the data that was deleted, Hishammuddin said. Among them are experts at the FBI's forensics lab in Quantico, Virginia, who are examining a copy of the simulator's hard drive, as well as a copy of the hard drive from the computer of co-pilot Fariq Ab Hamid, law enforcement sources told CNN. The FBI examination of the computer drives involves sorting through a large volume of data, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation. "It is going to take some period of time, but we are analyzing it with a great degree of urgency. It is prioritized right at the top because the world is trying to figure this out," the official said on condition of anonymity. Deleted files from Shah's simulator could reveal it had been 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, said Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation. "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 on her home computer. 'Grasping at straws' President Barack Obama called the search for Flight 370 "a top priority," telling KDFW of Dallas on Wednesday that the United States will keep working on it. "We have put every resource that we have available at the disposal of the search process," he said. But beyond help with the computer drives, the Malaysian government has not put in a formal request for additional FBI help overseas, according to the senior U.S. official. "We have made it clear we are ready to provide help whenever they need it," the official said. "We are grasping at straws. No one is running on anything white hot." More than 60 ships and 50 aircraft are participating in the search. But at least two aircraft, a Japanese search plane and a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion, sat on a runway at a Subang air base this week after Indonesia refused to allow the planes to fly through its airspace. "From what I understand, this is an international operation," Cmdr. William Marks, spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet, told CNN by telephone. "...I'm confident we're going to be flying today or very soon." Later, Indonesia's military spokesman told CNN clearance was given to all search planes. Although the search area spans nearly 3 million square miles, a U.S. government official familiar with the investigation said the missing plane is most likely somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean. "This is an area out of normal shipping lanes, out of any commercial flight patterns, with few fishing boats, and there are no islands," the official said, warning that the search could well last "weeks and not days." Angry families want answers The lack of progress has angered and frustrated families, who have accused Malaysian officials of withholding information. 'No motive' in disappearance of airplane Watch flight simulator attempt theory Families not getting enough support Why were no calls made from Flight 370? Some family members staged a protest at the Kuala Lumpur hotel where media covering the search are staying. Their efforts were cut short by security guards who removed them through a crush of reporters, dragging one as she screamed. "I don't care what your government does," one woman shouted, referring to the Malaysians. "I just want my son back." The agony of the wait is also being felt by families in Beijing, the scheduled destination for Flight 370. They gather daily for a briefing with officials. Ye Lun, whose brother-in-law is on the missing plane, says every day is the same. He and his group leave the hotel in the morning for a daily briefing, and that's it. They go back to the hotel to watch the news on television. In a statement, Hishammuddin said Malaysian authorities "regret the scenes at this afternoon's press conference." "One can only imagine the anguish they are going through," he said of the families. "Malaysia is doing everything in its power to find MH370 and hopefully bring some degree of closure for those whose family members are missing." An abrupt change in direction The disappearance continues to intrigue the public and frustrate officials, who have turned up no sign of the plane despite the involvement of teams from 26 nations. On Tuesday, a law enforcement official told CNN that the aircraft's first major change of course -- an abrupt westward turn that took the plane off its route to China and back across the Malay Peninsula -- was almost certainly programmed by somebody in the cockpit. The change was entered into the plane's system at least 12 minutes before a person in the cockpit, believed to be the co-pilot, signed off to air traffic controllers. Two minutes after the signoff, the plane's transponder stopped communicating details about the plane's altitude, speed and heading. Some experts said the change in direction could have been part of an alternate flight plan programmed in advance in case of emergency; others suggested it could show something more nefarious was afoot. But Hishammuddin said Wednesday that "there is no additional waypoint on MH370's documented flight plan, which depicts normal routing all the way to Beijing." The Thai military, meanwhile, said it had spotted the plane turning west toward the Strait of Malacca early on March 8. That supports the analysis of Malaysian military radar that has the plane flying out over the Strait of Malacca and into the Indian Ocean. But it didn't make it any clearer where the plane went next. Authorities say information from satellites suggests the plane kept flying for about six hours after it was last detected by Malaysian military radar. How do passenger jets change flight paths? Analyst: MH370 is game changer like 9/11 Examining MH370 conspiracy theories Malaysian authorities, who are coordinating the search, say the available evidence suggests the missing plane flew off course in a deliberate act by someone who knew what they were doing. Background checks Investigators are looking into the background of all the passengers and crew members on board the plane, as well as its ground crew, Malaysian officials have said. They've received background checks for all passengers on board, with the exception of those from Russia and Ukraine, Hishammuddin said. So far, no information of significance has been found about any passengers, Hishammuddin said. China says it has found nothing suspicious during background checks on its citizens on the flight -- a large majority of the plane's passengers. And some experts have warned against hastily jumping to conclusions about the role of the pilots. "I've worked on many cases were the pilots were suspect, and it turned out to be a mechanical and horrible problem," said Schiavo. "And I have a saying myself: Sometimes, an erratic flight path is heroism, not terrorism." Why were there no phone calls? Ticking clock Searchers are racing the clock in their efforts to find the plane and its flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders. The devices have batteries designed to send out pings for 30 days. That leaves 18 days until the batteries are expected to run out. The task is being complicated by the scope of the search area, as well as the depth of some of the waters being searched -- up to 23,000 feet (7,000 meters). Searchers trying to find and retrieve wreckage and bodies from Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, had to use unmanned submarines. It took nearly two years to find the bulk of the wreckage, including the flight data recorders, in waters nearly 12,000 feet deep. It took even longer to determine what happened to the plane. Video at link
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 21, 2014 21:06:37 GMT -5
7 Facts that may actually make the Maldives Islands the perfect haven for hijackers of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370By DJ Tanman on March 21, 2014 First the eyewitness reports came in, missing Malaysia flight 370 plane was spotted in the Maldive Islands the same day it vanished, seen in a group of 1200 scant islands and atolls in the middle of the Indian Ocean, an Islamic state known in recent years as a haven for terrorists groups. Then came the reports from officials from the Maldives: “untrue” . The Malaysian Government’s assumption to not search Al Qaeda infested Maldives Islands, a know terrorist haven , simply because an “official” there says eyewitness sightings is “untrue” could be a huge error if in fact the sightings were true. How the missing plane may possibly have been directly under the nose of the satellite which “pinged” the “guestimated” location to thousands of miles away. Wikileaks Founder Julian Assage and many others have released many reports on the dangers and build up of terror groups in the Maldive islands, which has now been converted to the ideal terrorist haven right under the world’s nose. 7 Facts that may actually make the Maldives Islands the perfect haven for hijackers of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Direct Flight Plan?: Flight 370 had the means of fuel, distance, and potentially cooperative local terrorists groups there, dozens of landing sites on atolls, sand bars, 400 uninhabited islands and a direct flight there with no radar from other countries. Fact #1 The Eyewitnesses to Flight 370 in Maldives are in the only location where there have been eyewitness accounts, yet has not been searched. On a remote island in the Maldives, it was only a few years ago where the USA released Al Qaeda operative Ibrahim Fauzeei from Guantanamo Bay with the condition that the local strict Islamic country of Maldive keep him on the islands. When he was released the President of the Maldives was reported to have welcomed him as a “brother”. In the past years there has been kidnappings of Chinese there, and terror attacks and a notable build up of factions of terror groups who have made the Maldives very strict Islamic regime, a terrorist “pirates cove“. Now residents there in those same island chains claimed they saw a “low flying jumbo jet” the same morning that the Malaysian plane disappeared. This sighting by many residents, was reported on the the website of the tiny Maldivian news outlet Haveeru. Residents on the isle of Kuda Huvadhoo in the Dhaalu Atoll gave a description that matched the commercial airliner: white with red stripes, according to the news outlet. “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,” an unidentified eyewitness said, according to Haveeru. “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.” These claims, published in a story Tuesday, were denied quickly by Malaysian officials citing a phone call they had with authorities in the Maldives. .But new information is surfacing that the source of this denial is being made by a country that has a long standing history of harbouring of terrorists and therefore its dismissal of this sighting should be questioned again and the area around the islands searched immediately if in fact eyewitnesses to the sighting of Flight 370 exist there. The Maldives is made up of nearly 1200 islands, 400 of them uninhabited and many sand bars and atolls that could be capable of a rough, but plausible jet landing on one of the many atolls or even ditching in shallow waters surrounding the plush islands. The Maldives coast guard told CNN it had no such reports. The same coast guard we might note who is under the control of a country that harbors openly terrorist groups including Al Qaeda. We thought we should dig deeper here. Malaysia, also a predominantly Muslim country whose Muslim pilots are suspected in foul play in the disappearance of the plane, and whose handling of the investigation has been questioned by US authorities, had something to say about the report. If there is one consistency we note in this investigation its the obvious mishandling of information by Malalysia. “I can confirm that the Malaysian Chief of the Defense Force has contacted his counterpart in the Maldives, who has confirmed that these reports are not true,” Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a press conference. The Maldives Ministry of Defense and National Security also confirmed that their radar systems and surveillance mechanisms show no indication of the missing plane. The same officials who report to a President who has made the Maldives island a haven for terrorists. This scenario reminds us of how Al Qaeda terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden got a full months head start to escape Afghanistan when culturally naive officials in the USA played into the hands of Afghan leaders who the west was working with to round up Bin Laden, but turned out to be assisting him in his escape. The USA was reported to only have 2 FBI agents allowed to work on the investigation locally in Malaysia as the Malaysians have the authority over the investigation. Fact #2: The Maldives has been called around the world, “a safe haven to terrorists”, its own President welcoming terrorists as “brothers”. An unfortunate description for this beautiful chain of islands. Fact #3: From Vietnam, China ,Thailand, Australia, numerous countries have claimed they might have found the missing wreckage but none has been found to date despite constant reliance on satellite imagery of alleged aircraft “debris”. Fact #4: The Maldives is country made up by over 1192 islands, and 400 of which are uninhabited. That does not include the many atolls and sand bars , some which a commercial airplane though rough ,could land if not at the central airport. Fact #5: Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange released documents in 2010 showing that American had secretly released Guantanamo terrorist Ibrahim Fauzeei there on condition they would stay there. A sort of modern day Penal Colony. Planning your next vacation there? Goolge “Maldives Terrorism” and when you pull up the numerous reports of terrrorist activity there including Assange’s, you may think twice. Fact #6: Calculations regarding fuel, aircraft speed and distance to Maldives add ups to the early morning sighting thousands of miles and many hours away from the planes last sightings on radar. The plane was estimated to have a range of at least 2500 miles. The distance from Malaysia to the Maldives is 1967 miles. 6:15 a.m. in the Maldives is 9:15 a.m. in Malaysia, so the sighting would have occurred seven hours and 45 minutes after the last radio contact, the now-famous “All right, goodnight” at 1:30 a.m. Malaysian time over the Gulf of Thailand. A 777 series 200ER, with a nearly full load of 227 passengers and 12 crew, cargo, and fuel for the scheduled five and a half hour trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, plus reserves, would typically be able to stay in the air for a maximum of about eight hours. That makes the presence of the aircraft at 6 in the morning local time in the middle of the northern Indian Ocean definitely possible. In fact, the distance between the point of last radio contact and Kuda Huvadhoo is 2,000 miles, which a 777 at cruise speed would cover in far less time. Flying in a straight line from the Gulf of Thailand, MH370 would have appeared over the island no later than 3 a.m. local time, well before sunrise. Fact #7: Officials of Immarsat, the satellite company which has been relied on so heavily admit the current locations thousands of miles away the Australians discovered debris at are “fairly certain” they have the right location, but admit at best this is “probable locations” but not definite since this is the first time this satellite ping technique has been used in the search for a missing aircraft. Noone really knows for sure where the missing plane is. Unlike cell phone technology that relies on multiple satellites and cells to triangulate a location within meters, this system can be off by hundreds or thousands of miles . With a 1 microsecond ( 1/1000 of a second latency ( latency is the time it takes for the satellite and plane’s to digitally “handshake:” a signal quite fast considering it travels at 186,000 miles a second) from the pinging, a latency of 1/1000 plus or minus to due obstructions such as concrete walls, coverings, signal interference, antenna on the jet, weather, or even miscalculations and the current locations “best guesses” by this company could be 2000 miles off range and create an arc for the potential flight path far away, a few more milliseconds and the plane might have to be on the moon to match up the data. And that miscalculation may have searchers looking in the wrong area for the past week. At a Palo Alto California mobile satellite communications consulting site TMFAssocites.com, many engineers chatted openly about the almost unbelievability that the media has not questioned this. One blogger there posted there said: “But, you have to wonder, why has no journalist even raised the question at these press briefings – half of them still seem to understand the arcs as actual flight paths”. Ironically the satellite which is supposed to have transmitted the last “ping” from flight 370 was located nearly directly above the Mildaves Island . Which would make the discovery of the missing plane there in that vicinity if it occurs, literally “under the nose” of the frantic international community searching for the missing plane. This search technique by Satellites and the authority of Malaysia is being heavily relied on to pinpoint the aircraft but may be in fact fallible and the world has already seen how many times so called experts have been wrong in this bizarre vanishing airline case. With perhaps a almost perfect destination to pirate a commercial plane to, a country that welcomes terrorists and many places to land, would make the Maldives remote location a rather ideal place to take air piracy to. One can only hope that the authorities ( not led by terrorists harboring government officials of Maldives) will begin a search there before any second part of a seemingly cold and calculating potential terrorist plot continues to the next level. The Maldives only airport offers direct flights to Iran, Pakistan, Dubai, India, and Afghanistan and direct access by boat to the shores of many countries with known terrorist factions The Perfect “Pirates haven”? We have attempted to contact the journalists in Maldive who first reported the multiple eyewitnesses accounts of the sighting of a plane matching Malaysian Airline flight 370. But with their country officially squashing the reports as “untrue” days after their reports , and in an extreme Islamic country know to welcome terrorists, we were not surprised that the reporters did not reply , perhaps for possible fear of reprisal by their government. link
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 21, 2014 21:36:22 GMT -5
Revealed: The transcript of the final 54 minutes of communication from the flight deck aboard missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 Communication from take off to the point of disappearance is revealed The transcript shows the sharp westwards turn came as the cockpit handed over from Malaysian air traffic controllers to the Vietnamese Expert said that would be the moment he would choose to steal a plane Former pilot Stephen Buzdygan said: 'It was the only time during the flight they would maybe not have been able to be seen from the ground' By Lizzie Parry PUBLISHED: 12:51 EST, 21 March 2014 | UPDATED: 16:22 EST, 21 March 2014 The moment missing flight MH370 turned westwards unexpectedly is the point at which Malaysian air traffic controllers handed over to their Vietnamese colleagues, the final communications from the cockpit today reveal. It fuels theories that the missing Malaysia Airlines plane was hijacked, as one former pilot said it is the point at which the flight would have momentarily been invisible to ground control. The final 54 minutes of communication between the flight deck of the Malaysia Airlines plane and ground control has emerged as day two of a major search of the southern Indian Ocean found no sign of possible debris spotted on satellite. The full communication record of MH370, including the vital moments prior to the disappearance of the Boeing 777 and its 239 passengers could provide crucial clues as to what happened to the aircraft. Banter: A former pilot said the banter between co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid (left) and Captain Zaharie Admad Shah (right) reveals nothing unusual in the lead up to flight MH370's disappearance The transcript reveals all communication between the cockpit and ground control from its taxi on the runway to its final message at 1.07am local time, when co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid said: 'Alright, good night.' Two minutes after this final message the plane's transponder was disabled. Adding weight to the theory that the plane could have been hijacked, the transcript reveals that the point at which the plane took a sharp west turn, was when air traffic controllers in Kuala Lumpur handed over to their colleagues in Ho Chi Minh City. Former British Airways pilot, Stephen Buzdygan told The Telegraph, if he was planning to steal an aeroplane, that would be the moment to choose. He said: 'There might be a bit of dead space between the air traffic controllers … It was the only time during the flight they would maybe not have been able to be seen from the ground.' Another odd feature of the conversations on board the plane is a message repeated by the flight deck, telling air traffic controllers that the plane was flying at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. The message, experts say, was unnecesarily repeated six minutes after it was first delivered. Strange: A former pilot said the plane's sharp westwards turn, as radar contact was lost, came as air traffic controllers in Malaysia handed over to their Vietnamese colleagues. Stephen Buzdygan said that is moment he would choose if he were to steal a plane Steve Landells, a former British Airways pilot who flew Boeing 777s, said: 'It could be as simple as the pilot forgetting or not being sure that he had told air traffic controllers he had reached the altitude. 'He might be reconfirming he was at 350 [35,000 feet]. It is not unusual. I wouldn’t read anything into it.' The search for the possible wreckage of the aircraft has continued in the southern Indian Ocean today. 'It was the only time during the flight they would maybe not have been able to be seen from the ground' - Former pilot Stephen Buzdygan on the moment the plane turned westwards unexpectedly The transcript and final communications mark another piece of evidence to help investigators piece together what happened to the stricken plane. The banter between Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his co-pilot Hamid give no hint of the drama that was to ensue. From the first sign-in at 12.36am local time, when the plane was on the ground in Kuala Lumpur, co-pilot Hamid gave regular and routine updates, alerting air traffic controllers to the plane's location, ascent and altitude. 'The communication up until the plane went to the changeover [to Vietnam] sounds totally normal,' Mr Mr Buzdygan said. 'I’ve done it hundreds of times. It is perfectly normal.' Malaysia Airlines, Malaysia's Civil Aviation Authority and the office of the Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak were contacted by the Telegraph, for confirmation of the communications report. Only the prime minister's office responded, saying it would not release the information. Scouring: Royal Australian Air Force pilot Russell Adams searches an area some 2,500 kilometres southwest of Perth for debris possibly from MH370 Unsuccessful: A second day searching an area of the southern Indian Ocean revealed no sign of the two suspected pieces of debris Search mission: A Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion search plane passes over the Norwegian car transport ship Hoegh St Petersburg, as it scours the ocean for any sign of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight Search planes today scoured a remote patch of the Indian Ocean but came back empty-handed after a 10-hour mission looking for any sign of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet. Australian officials pledged to continue the search for two large objects spotted by a satellite earlier this week, which had raised hopes that the two-week hunt for the Boeing 777 that disappeared March 8 with 239 people on board was nearing a breakthrough. But Australia's acting prime minister, Warren Truss, tamped down expectations. 'Something that was floating on the sea that long ago may no longer be floating - it may have slipped to the bottom,' he said. 'It's also certain that any debris or other material would have moved a significant distance over that time, potentially hundreds of kilometers.' An updated image released by the Australian Maritime and Safety Authority today, detailing the search area planned for today Aircraft and ships from China headed to the desolate southern Indian Ocean to join the new search for the Malaysia Airlines flight, which disappeared into the ether two weeks ago. A satellite spotted two large objects in the area earlier this week, raising hopes of finding the Boeing 777 that vanished on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew on board. Surveillance planes have been scouring the area - about 2,500 kilometres southwest of the Australian city of Perth - the size of the English Channel. But after ten hours the second day of the search proved unsuccessful. Australian officials pledged to continue the effort. even as they tried to tamp down expectations. 'It's about the most inaccessible spot that you could imagine on the face of the Earth, but if there is anything down there, we will find it,' Prime Minister Tony Abbott said at a news conference in Papua New Guinea. 'We owe it to the families and the friends and the loved ones of the almost 240 people on Flight MH370 to do everything we can to try to resolve what is as yet an extraordinary riddle,' he added. Two pieces of wreckage that are possibly from the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 - one estimated to be 78ft in size - have been found to the west of Australia, it was announced today. Pictured: Satellite pictures released by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority of the object thought to be related to the search for MH370 Two Chinese aircraft are expected to arrive in Perth on Saturday to join the search. They will be followed by two Japanese aircraft on Sunday. In Kuala Lumpur, where the plane took off for Beijing, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein thanked the more than two dozen countries involved in the overall search that stretches from Kazakhstan in Central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean. He called the whole process 'a long haul'. The search area indicated by the satellite images in the southern Indian Ocean is a four-hour round-trip flight from western Australia, leaving planes with only enough fuel to search for about two hours. The images were taken March 16, but the search in the area did not start until Thursday because it took time to analyse them. Read more: Revealed: the final 54 minutes of communication from MH370 - Telegraph link
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 21, 2014 21:41:55 GMT -5
Missing jet WAS carrying highly flammable lithium batteries: CEO of Malaysian Airlines finally admits to dangerous cargo four days after DENYING it When asked days ago, he said it was carrying 'tonnes of mangosteens' Lithium-ion batteries have caused 140 mid-air incidents in last 20 years The devices are commonly used in mobile phones and laptops Classed as dangerous by The International Civil Aviation Organisation Reignites theory that missing flight may have crashed after on-board fire Aviation expert said it re-affirm belief that flames started in cargo hold One cargo plane crashed in 2010 after attempting an emergency landing Safety report said battery caught fire and filled the flight deck with smoke By Simon Tomlinson PUBLISHED: 12:11 EST, 21 March 2014 | UPDATED: 16:28 EST, 21 March 2014 Malaysian Airlines today confirmed that flight MH370 had been carrying highly flammable lithium-ion batteries in its cargo hold, re-igniting speculation that a fire may have caused its disappearance. The admission by CEO Ahmad Jauhari comes four days after he denied the aircraft was carrying any dangerous items and nearly two weeks after the plane went missing. He said the authorities were investigating the cargo, but did not regard the batteries as hazardous - despite the law dictating they are classed as such - because they were packaged according to safety regulations. The revelation has thrown the spotlight back on the theory that the Boeing 777 may have been overcome by a fire, rendering the crew and passengers unconscious after inhaling toxic fumes. Lithium-ion batteries - which are used in mobile phones and laptops - have been responsible for a number of fires on planes and have even brought aircraft down in recent years. CHANGING RESPONSES FROM CEO What Ahmad Jauhari said four days ago: When asked at a press conference if there was any dangerous cargo on board, he replied: 'We had a load of mangosteens headed to China. 'It was a large quantity - about three to four tonnes of mangosteens,' he said to laughter from the media. What he said today: 'We carried some lithium-ion small batteries, they are not big batteries and they are basically approved under the ICAO (The International Civil Aviation Organisation) under dangerous goods.' According to US-based Federal Aviation Administration, lithium-ion batteries carried in the cargo or baggage have been responsible for more than 140 incidents between March 1991 and February 17 this year, it was reported by Malaysiakini. In rare cases, aircraft have been destroyed as a result of fires started from the devices, although they have been cargo planes in both incidents. In one case, UPS Airlines Flight 6 crashed while attempting an emergency landing in September 2010 en route from Dubai to Cologne in Germany. Flight MH370 disappeared from radar screens two weeks ago on March 8 after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing. The second day of a new search, concentrating on a desolate area in the southern Indian Ocean, failed to locate two possible pieces of debris from the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777. Aircraft and ships scoured the seas around 2,500kilometres off the coast of the Australian city of Perth, for 10 hours before darkness fell. Australian officials have vowed to continue the search tomorrow. Billie Vincent, the former head of security for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, said the revelation re-affirmed his belief that flames started in the cargo hold, destroying the aircraft's communication systems then filling the cabin with toxic fumes. This, he says, would have overwhelmed the passengers but may have given the pilots a chance to divert the aircraft for an emergency landing. He told Air Traffic Management: 'The data released thus far most likely points to a problem with hazardous materials. 'This scenario begins with the eruption of hazardous materials within the cargo hold – either improperly packaged or illegally shipped – or both.' It is thought the missing plane climbed to 45,000ft - a move Mr Vincent believes may have resulted from the pilots not being able to see the controls properly. Responding to a question at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur, Mr Jauhari said: 'We carried some lithium-ion small batteries, they are not big batteries and they are basically approved under the ICAO (The International Civil Aviation Organisation) under dangerous goods. 'They (lithium-ion batteries) are not dangerous goods per se, but in terms (of) they are (being) declared as dangerous goods under ICAO.' He insisted they were checked several times to ensure they complied with the guidelines. 'Airlines do that all the time, it is not just Malaysia Airlines. These goods are being flown by many airlines as cargo anyway, (which) is based on ICAO’s ruling,' he added. When asked earlier this week if there was hazardous cargo on board, Mr Jauhari said no, adding that it was carrying 'three to four tonnes of mangosteens'. ' Australian search teams still believe they may find survivors IF BATTERY PACKS FAIL THEY ARE PRONE TO BURSTING INTO FLAMES Lithium-ion batteries are found in everyday items including laptops, mobile phones, iPods and other electrical products. They are very common, because pound for pound, they are one of the most energetic rechargeable batteries available. The batteries do have the ability to burst into flames, and while it is uncommon, when they ignite they can cause an extreme fire. Lithium-ion batteries are very sensitive to high temperatures. Heat can cause the battery packs to degrade much faster than they normally would. If the battery fails there is a chance the pack could burst into flames. They can pose a danger and safety hazard since they contain, unlike other rechargeable batteries, a flammable electrolyte and are kept pressurised. Radar also confirmed the flight later dropped to 23,000ft which, according to Mr Vincent, is a diversion altitude set by manufacturers to limit the spread of the fire. The United Arab Emirates’ General Civil Aviation Authority blamed the crash, which killed the crew, on the batteries which it believed may have 'auto-ignited' and filled the flight deck with smoke. The batteries have also caused problems in the cabin including a flight attendant and two passengers who were burned when they handled a mobile phone and spare battery in September 2012. Six months earlier, a lithium battery caught fire inside one passenger's personal air purifier. The incident prompted to the ICAO to introduce a new rule last year stating that any cargo with more than two lithium-ion batteries be packaged under hazardous goods regulations. Malaysia Airlines has not responded to a call from MailOnline. Today the transcript of the last communication between the flight deck of the missing plane and ground control emerged. The final 54 minutes of dialogue between Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid and air traffic controllers is captured from take off until the moment Hamid uttered the last message: 'Alright, good night.' Two minutes later the plane's transponder was disabled. The transcript shows the moment the plane took an unexpected turn west, over north Malaysia coincided with the point at which air traffic controllers in Kuala Lumpur handed over to their Vietnamese colleagues in Ho Chi Minh City. Former British Airways pilot Stephen Buzdygan told The Telegraph, if he was planning to steal an aeroplane, that would be the moment to choose. He said: 'There might be a bit of dead space between the air traffic controllers … It was the only time during the flight they would maybe not have been able to be seen from the ground.' From the first sign-in at 12.36am local time, when the plane was on the ground in Kuala Lumpur, co-pilot Hamid gave regular and routine updates, alerting air traffic controllers to the plane's location, ascent and altitude. 'The communication up until the plane went to the changeover [to Vietnam] sounds totally normal,' Mr Mr Buzdygan said. 'I’ve done it hundreds of times. It is perfectly normal.' Search planes today scoured a remote patch of the Indian Ocean but came back empty-handed after a 10-hour mission looking for any sign of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet. Australian officials pledged to continue the search for two large objects spotted by a satellite earlier this week, which had raised hopes that the two-week hunt for the Boeing 777 that disappeared March 8 with 239 people on board was nearing a breakthrough. But Australia's acting prime minister, Warren Truss, tamped down expectations. 'Something that was floating on the sea that long ago may no longer be floating - it may have slipped to the bottom,' he said. 'It's also certain that any debris or other material would have moved a significant distance over that time, potentially hundreds of kilometers.' Aircraft and ships from China headed to the desolate southern Indian Ocean to join the new search for the Malaysia Airlines flight, which disappeared into the ether two weeks ago. A satellite spotted two large objects in the area earlier this week, raising hopes of finding the Boeing 777 that vanished on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew on board. Surveillance planes have been scouring the area - about 2,500 kilometres southwest of the Australian city of Perth - the size of the English Channel. But after ten hours the second day of the search proved unsuccessful. Australian officials pledged to continue the effort. even as they tried to tamp down expectations. 'It's about the most inaccessible spot that you could imagine on the face of the Earth, but if there is anything down there, we will find it,' Prime Minister Tony Abbott said at a news conference in Papua New Guinea. 'We owe it to the families and the friends and the loved ones of the almost 240 people on Flight MH370 to do everything we can to try to resolve what is as yet an extraordinary riddle,' he added. Two Chinese aircraft are expected to arrive in Perth on Saturday to join the search. They will be followed by two Japanese aircraft on Sunday. In Kuala Lumpur, where the plane took off for Beijing, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein thanked the more than two dozen countries involved in the overall search that stretches from Kazakhstan in Central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean. He called the whole process 'a long haul'. The search area indicated by the satellite images in the southern Indian Ocean is a four-hour round-trip flight from western Australia, leaving planes with only enough fuel to search for about two hours. The images were taken March 16, but the search in the area did not start until Thursday because it took time to analyse them. link
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Post by popcorn on Mar 23, 2014 7:51:45 GMT -5
Lt. Gen. McInerney Says #MH370 Is In Pakistan - 'I Got A Source That Confirmed It Retired Lt. General Thomas McInerney was on America’s News HQ today to once again discuss his theory that missing flight MH370 flew to Pakistan. McInerney and LIGNET Intel Group still believe the plane flew to Pakistan. Langley Intelligence Group Intel Group released a second report Friday on the missing plane. As the search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 drags on without a trace of wreckage at sea, the likelihood of foul play looms larger. One country keeps rising to the top of the list of suspects: Pakistan. Ten days after the flight vanished, LIGNET learned that engineers at Boeing, the plane’s manufacturer, believed the missing aircraft was on the ground in Pakistan. For several reasons, including al-Qaeda’s presence there, historical attack patterns, corruption, weakness and terrorist sympathies at the highest levels inside Pakistan, that hunch may be right. Lt. Gen. McInerney discussed why the plane flew to Pakistan. “LIGNET put out a report, substantiated yesterday, that there sources got their information from Boeing sources, which is covert. Not that they got their information from the Boeing Company because they’re involved in the investigation, that the airplane was in Pakistan. That was confirmed by LIGNET on Monday and I got another source at LIGNET that confirmed it yesterday… I do believe that those people in Pakistan, in the ISI, those people who knew where Osama Bin Laden was and didn’t tell us. I believe those same elements could be involved with getting that airplane into a Pakistan air force base.” source: www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/03/breaking-lt-gen-mcinerney-says-mh370-in-pakistan-i-got-a-source-at-lignet-that-confirmed-it-yesterday-video/
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 23, 2014 22:04:06 GMT -5
Report: Investigators Now Looking for ‘Mystery Woman’ who Called Malaysia Airlines Pilot Before TakeoffMar. 23, 2014 8:16am Sharona Schwartz Investigators are focusing their efforts on discovering who called Malaysia Airlines flight 370’s pilot shortly before takeoff using a prepaid cellphone purchased with a false ID, Britain’s Daily Mail is reporting. According to the report published late Saturday night, “The captain of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 received a two-minute call shortly before take-off from a mystery woman using a mobile phone number obtained under a false identity.” The call was one of the last made to or dialed from Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s cellphone on the day of the flight now more than two weeks ago, the Daily Mail reported. “Investigators are treating it as potentially significant because anyone buying a pay-as-you-go [prepaid] SIM card in Malaysia has to fill out a form giving their identity card or passport number,” the British paper wrote. Cyclists hold a banner as they take a moment of silence and pray during "The Ride of Prayer" for the missing Malaysia Airlines, flight MH370, outside the departure hall of Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia, Sunday, March 23, 2014. Search planes headed back out to a desolate patch of the southern Indian Ocean on Sunday in hopes of finding answers to the fate of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, after China released a satellite image showing a large object floating in the search zone. (AP Photo/Joshua Paul) Cyclists hold a banner as they take a moment of silence and pray during “The Ride of Prayer” for the missing Malaysia Airlines, flight MH370, outside the departure hall of Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia, Sunday, March 23, 2014. (AP Photo/Joshua Paul) After the September 11th Al Qaeda attacks on the U.S., Malaysia instituted an anti-terrorism policy under which every purchased phone number is registered to an individual, the Daily Mail noted. When police tried to locate the person who called the pilot of the ill-fated flight, they instead arrived at a store that sells SIM cards in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. There, they learned it had been “very recently” purchased by an individual who gave a woman’s name, but was later discovered to have been using a false identity. The Daily Mail wrote, “The discovery raises fears of a possible link between Captain Zaharie, 53, and terror groups whose members routinely use untraceable SIM cards. Everyone else who spoke to the pilot on his phone in the hours before the flight took off has already been interviewed.” On the other hand, the use of a prepaid SIM using a false identity would not necessarily point to terrorism. The Daily Mail noted that political activists in Malaysia have in the past masked their identities when purchasing SIM cards of concern their phones are being bugged by the government. FBI computer analysts are now probing the hard drive from Captain Shah’s home flight simulator. They are trying to recover deleted files on the device which is now at the FBI lab in Virginia. The Daily Mail also reported Sunday that Malaysian investigators are set to question the pilot’s “estranged wife” after waiting two weeks “out of respect” of her situation of stress. The paper reported that the couple was separated, but had been living in the same house. They have three children. TheBlaze is unable to independently verify either the report on the mystery caller or that Shah was estranged from his wife. According to other reports, for example in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald on Sunday, Shah was “a happily married pilot with three adult children.” An unnamed source told the Daily Mail, “Faizah has been spoken to gently by officers but she has not been questioned in detail to establish her husband’s behavior and state of mind in the days leading to the incident.” The gentle approach with a potentially key witness has reportedly irked FBI investigators assisting with the probe. “The whole world is looking for this missing plane and the person who arguably knows most about the state of mind of the man who captained the plane is being left alone,” a source close to the FBI team told the Daily Mail. “If we want to eliminate the chief pilot from the inquiry, we must interview her in detail to find out what his state of mind was.” The international search effort continued on Sunday with flights departing at daybreak toward the area west of Perth where suspected debris was spotted in satellite images. Besides the image of unidentified objects in the Indian Ocean spotted by a Chinese satellite as reported on Saturday, a separate sighting of objects including a wooden pallet was reported by one of the civilian search planes, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said in a statement on Sunday. “During Saturday’s search activities a civil aircraft tasked by AMSA reported sighting a number of small objects with the naked eye, including a wooden pallet, within a radius of five kilometers [3 miles].” AMSA which is coordinating the search effort is posting updates regularly on the Indian Ocean search at this link. link
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Post by schwartzie on Mar 24, 2014 23:16:54 GMT -5
Flight 370: Storm of emotions over lives 'lost' as storm at sea delays searchBy Catherine E. Shoichet, Michael Pearson and Mitra Mobasherat, CNN updated 9:28 PM EDT, Mon March 24, 2014 Source: CNN STORY HIGHLIGHTS NEW: "It's almost felt like a miniature roller coaster within the day" Nasty weather forces officials to call off Tuesday's search for the plane Prime Minister says analysis of satellite data shows the plane went down in the Indian Ocean "They have told us all lives are lost," a relative of a missing passenger tells CNN Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) -- For families whose loved ones were aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the past day has been full of news they were dreading. First, a grim-faced Malaysian Prime Minister confirmed their worst fears, announcing Flight 370 went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Then, even as investigators seemed closer than ever to finding the plane, stormy weather forced Australian authorities to call off a day of searching for the Boeing 777. "It's almost felt like a miniature roller coaster within the day," said James Wood, whose brother Philip was one of three American passengers on the plane. Families are stuck in a "holding pattern," he told CNN's "AC360." "We're just waiting and waiting," he said, "and not getting any answers one way or another." Experts: Flight ended west of Perth Source: Flight 370 turned, dropped An agonizing wait continues They'll have to wait at least a day longer. Gale-force winds, large waves, heavy rain and low clouds forecast for the area "would make any air and sea search activities hazardous and pose a risk to crew," the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said Tuesday. Teams will resume searching Wednesday if weather permits, officials said. When they start looking again, they'll be combing the remote area in the southern Indian Ocean where officials now say they believe the flight ended. New analysis of satellite data by a British satellite company and accident investigators led to that conclusion, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday. "They have told us all lives are lost," a missing passenger's relative briefed by the airline in Beijing said. Malaysia Airlines also sent a text message to relatives saying "we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those onboard survived." While the last-minute announcement appeared to end hopes of finding survivors more than two weeks after the flight vanished, it left many key questions unanswered, including what went wrong aboard the Beijing-bound airliner and the location of its wreckage in the deep, wild ocean waters. Flight 370 relative: This is a cover-up Psychologist: Grief is shock, then anger Families told all lives are lost Families overcome after hearing the news For families, some of whom had held out hope their relatives somehow were still alive, the news appeared to be devastating. At a briefing for relatives in Beijing, some were overcome and had to be taken from a hotel on stretchers. In Kuala Lumpur, a woman walked out of a briefing for families in tears. "My son, my daughter-in-law and granddaughter were all on board. All three family members are gone. I am desperate!" a woman said outside the Beijing briefing. Another woman came out of the briefing room screaming, expressing doubts about the Malaysian conclusion. "Where is the proof?" she said. "You haven't confirmed the suspected objects to tell us no one survived." A committee representing some of the families of the 154 Chinese and Taiwanese passengers aboard the missing aircraft sharply criticized the Malaysian government in a statement, accusing authorities of deliberate search delays and cover-ups, China's state-run CCTV reported. "If our 154 relatives aboard lost their lives due to such reasons, then Malaysia Airlines, the Malaysian government and the Malaysian military are the real murderers that killed them," the statement said, according to CCTV. 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. Four scenarios of what happened He said police are focusing on four possibilities about what happened: a potential hijacking, sabotage, psychological issues or personal problems of the passengers and/or crew. "Such cases may take up to a year," Khalid said, "so please don't jump to conclusions that the police are slow." While investigators have yet to find even a piece of the plane, the Prime Minister based his announcement on what he described as unprecedented analysis of satellite data by British satellite provider Inmarsat and the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch. He didn't describe the nature of the analysis. He said the data, drawn from satellite pings the ill-fated airliner continued to send throughout its final flight, made it clear that the plane's last position was in the middle of the southern Indian Ocean, "far from any possible landing sites." He begged reporters to respect the privacy of relatives. "For them, the past few weeks have been heartbreaking," he said. "I know this news must be harder still." The airline said it was making plans to fly families to Australia once wreckage is found. How 'groundbreaking' number crunching found path of Flight 370 Are found objects part of MH370? The deep sea robot search for 370 Two objects in the Indian Ocean The announcement came the same day as Australian officials said they had spotted two objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be related to the flight, which has been missing since March 8 with 239 people aboard. One object is "a gray or green circular object," and the other is "an orange rectangular object," the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said. The Australian naval ship HMAS Success didn't turn up the objects when it searched Monday night, the authority said. The objects are the latest in a series of sightings, including "suspicious objects" reported earlier Monday by a Chinese military plane that was searching in the same area, authorities said. A U.S. surveillance plane sent to follow up was unable to find the objects, and so far, none of the sightings has been definitively linked to Flight 370. Ten aircraft -- from Australia, China, the United States and Japan -- searched the area Monday. China said Monday after the Prime Minister's announcement that it would be sending more ships to help. China has a particularly large stake: Its citizens made up about two-thirds of the passengers on the missing Boeing 777. How Inmarsat found MH370's path A look inside the search for MH370 Satellites helped focused the search Amid a vast regional search that at one point spanned nearly 3 million square miles, searchers homed in on the southern Indian Ocean in recent days after satellite images spotted a variety of unknown objects in an area roughly 1,500 miles southwest of Perth, Australia. Australia reported the first images in the area, followed by China and France. The area also lies on a projected flight path for the aircraft calculated in part from the satellite pings sent by the plane after other communications systems had shut down. Australian officials have repeatedly warned that the objects may not be from the missing plane. They could be containers that have fallen off cargo ships, for example. On Saturday, searchers found a wooden pallet as well as strapping belts, Australian authorities said. Hishammuddin said Monday that wooden pallets were among the items on Flight 370. But such pallets are also common in the ocean shipping industry, so it they may be unrelated to the flight. The investigation into the passenger jet's disappearance has already produced a wealth of false leads and speculative theories. Previously, when the hunt was focused on the South China Sea near where the plane dropped off civilian radar, a number of sightings of debris proved to be unrelated to the search. How they're searching for debris Plane said to have flown low Monday's dramatic developments came after a weekend during which other nuggets of information emerged about the movements of the errant jetliner on the night it vanished. Military radar tracking shows that after making a sharp turn over the South China Sea, the plane changed altitude as it headed toward the Strait of Malacca, an official 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 official. It had reportedly been flying at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet when contact was lost with air traffic control. Also over the weekend, 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. Authorities have said pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah was highly experienced. On Monday, Malaysian authorities said Flight 370 was co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's sixth flight in a Boeing 777, and the first time when he was not traveling with an instructor pilot shadowing him. Video at link"We do not see any problem with him," said Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.
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Post by PurplePuppy on Mar 24, 2014 23:35:06 GMT -5
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Pilot Used 'Emergency and Combat Scenarios' Simulator By Tom Porter March 23, 2014 11:01 GMT Investigators are poring over a state-of-the-art flight simulator built by one of the pilots of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in a search for clues about the plane's disappearance. With the revelation last week that the plane may have been diverted thousands of miles from its scheduled flight path from Kuala Lumpar to Beijing by a skilled aviator, investigators are focusing on the backgrounds and interests of its two pilots, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27. Last week, a state-of-the art-flight simulator was seized from Zaharie's home in an upscale neighbourhood in Kuala Lumpur, and investigators are examining the Microsoft X-plane 10 game he played, which would have allowed him to practise flying in a range of circumstances and weather conditions. “Looking through the flight logs in these simulator games is a key part of the investigation” investigator "Looking through the flight logs in these simulator games is a key part of the investigation," an official close to the investigation told Reuters. "X-plane 10 was interesting to investigators because it was the latest thing Zaharie bought. Also it is the most advanced out there and had all sorts of emergency and combat scenarios." The software would have allowed him to practise landing at more than 33,000 airports, on aircraft carriers, oil rigs, frigates, which pitch and roll with the waves, and heli-pads atop buildings. The simulator also had software to replicate different weather conditions, and to allow him to play with other people online. It has a motion controller that makes the chair pitch and turn like to simulate the climbs, descents and turns of a real plane. Zaharie's set-up also included a centre pedestal, where aircraft controls sit, and overhead panel. The Malaysian team has also asked the FBI for help recovering data deleted from a memory stick on 3 February. In an online forum, Zaharie described his new simulator as "awesome" and declared it his "passion". There is currently no evidence that Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, was responsible for the plane and its 227 passengers and 10 crew vanishing. Those who helped Zaharie construct the simulator said many pilots enjoy flying so much they have a simulator at home. "Many pilots contact me interested in making 'home' simulators. Zaharie along with some others pilots actually used my motion controllers to upgrade the realism of their simulators by building motion platforms," Thanos Kontogiannis, a California-based aviation enthusiast who helped Zaharie build the simulator, posted on his blog on Monday. Aviation experts contacted by Reuters said that the data on the simulator may have been erased as part of regular maintenance, or to improve the simulator's performance. However Nunez Correas, a simulation software developer using some of the same components as Zaharie, said that storage capacity was not a problem for computers running flight simulators, and there was no clear reason to delete data. link
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 26, 2014 13:41:47 GMT -5
Flight MH370: Pilot in wrong state of mind to fly - friendBy Lincoln Tan 11:10 AM Wednesday Mar 26, 2014 Captain facing family and relationship problems before plane disappeared. The captain of Flight 370 was in no state of mind to fly the day it disappeared and could have taken the Boeing 777 for a "last joyride" before crashing into the Indian Ocean, a fellow pilot says. Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah's world was crumbling, said the long-time associate. He had been facing serious family problems, including separation from his wife and relationship problems with another woman he was seeing. The man, who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity, said Captain Zaharie was "terribly upset" when his wife told him she was leaving and believed he may have decided to take the Malaysia Airlines plane to a part of the world he had never flown in. Read more of the Herald's Flight 370 coverage today: • All hope disappears as family grieves for dad • Relief Kiwi air crew ready to take over long search from colleagues • More criticism follows loss announcement Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said data showed the plane, carrying 239 people, crashed into the southern Indian Ocean about 2500km west of Perth on March 8, eight hours after leaving Kuala Lumpur. With no landing sites nearby, the jetliner is presumed lost with no survivors. Search likely to resume today Blustery conditions in the southern Indian Ocean are expected to ease today allowing authorities to resume the search for the jet. Gale force winds and heavy swells disrupted search and recovery efforts yesterday. RNZAF Air Commodore Mike Yardley told TVNZ's Breakfast that the forecast is for improving search conditions. "We're confident we will be out there and we'll be able to conduct a very good visual and radar search,'' he said. The confirmation the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean has helped to motivate the crew, he said. Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak , left, and acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein. Photo / AP "The intention is to swap the crew out on Friday which we're an anticipating will be another rest day. So two days left for these guys, and that will just about make it three weeks [of searching] for them,'' Mr Yardley said. Did he take jet on a "joyride"? Police have found nothing suspicious about Captain Zaharie, a veteran pilot with 18,365 hours' experience, or his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid. Zaharie Ahmad Shah was "terribly upset'' when his wife told him she was leaving, says a friend, who believes he may have set the plane on its fatal course. However the fellow pilot raised questions about the captain's state of mind. He guessed that Captain Zaharie may have considered the flight a "last joyride" - the chance to do things in a plane he had previously been able to do only on a simulator. The friend said Captain Zaharie, who he chatted to when they met several times a year through work, was a fanatic for "the three Fs" - food, family and flying. When he wasn't working he spent hours cooking or using his home-made flight simulator for a variety of situations he wouldn't experience at the controls of a commercial airline, such as flying at the highest and lowest possible altitudes. The simulator was seized last week and is being analysed by the FBI. Investigations so far found that, up to the point when the co-pilot said "all right, good night" to Malaysian traffic controllers, the plane had been flying normally. Military radar tracking showed the aircraft made a sharp turn soon after and started flying at altitudes as high as 45,000ft (13,716m) and as low as 12,000ft before it disappeared. The associate believed the co-pilot must have been incapacitated and the other flight crew kept out of the cockpit. "It is very possible that neither the passengers nor the other crew on-board knew what was happening until it was too late." The friend said the disappearance of the Boeing 777 happened as Captain Zaharie's world was crumbling. "He's one of the finest pilots around and I'm no medical expert, but with all that was happening in his life Zaharie was probably in no state of mind to be flying." Inquiry source: Crash 'deliberate act' Sources close to the inquiry were quoted by Britain's Daily Telegraph as saying investigators believed Flight 370 was crashed deliberately. "This has been a deliberate act by someone on-board who had to have the detailed knowledge to do what was done," an official source said. Investigators believe no malfunction or on-board fire was capable of causing the aircraft's unusual flight or the disabling of its communications system, or of taking it on a seven-hour flight wildly off course. New Zealand aviation expert Peter Clark said he believed Captain Zaharie may have been responsible. "This had to be a pilot or somebody with expert knowledge, who had to know what they were doing to complete this," Mr Clark said. "It had to be somebody with immense knowledge ... the co-pilot would not have the capability of doing this. It's a takeover of the aircraft, it can only be the pilot." He said Mr Fariq was "too inexperienced" to carry out the takeover - it was his first flight as co-pilot without a third pilot in the cockpit overseeing him. Mr Clark said it would have been very simple for the pilot to reprogramme the flight management computer to fly a new course. "All you need to do is fly it to high altitude, de-pressurise the aircraft, you kill everybody on-board including yourself and you have the flight management programmed in and it just continues to fly to the South Indian Ocean until it runs out of fuel." But Mr Clark said it would be very hard to prove it was pilot suicide even if the data recorders were found. Watch: MH370: Missing plane in ocean Video The voice recorder would have been overwritten every two hours and the flight recorder would most likely record that the plane was operating normally and crashed because it ran out of fuel. Malaysia Airlines flight crew on layover in Auckland still hope their colleagues will be found alive, despite the new information. "I just have this gut feeling that they are still alive, and they will be found alive," said a steward who had worked with Captain Zaharie. The fellow pilot said Captain Zaharie had a good sense of humour, was definitely not a terrorist, and loved his family. Key developments • Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Flight MH370 had crashed in the Indian Ocean and there were no survivors. • He said the last known position of the plane was west of Perth. • Malaysia Airlines said each family of the missing passengers had been offered US$5000 and further payments were likely. • Bad weather yesterday delayed searches for wreckage in the southern Indian Ocean. Pictures and video at link
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Post by baydoll on Mar 27, 2014 6:07:32 GMT -5
Report: Investigators Now Looking for ‘Mystery Woman’ who Called Malaysia Airlines Pilot Before Takeoff She could have been his mistress... OR another red herring.
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Post by baydoll on Mar 27, 2014 6:09:15 GMT -5
I like what this guy had to say at Natural News: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 now clearly a government cover-up: All evidence contradicts official story Monday, March 24, 2014 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Learn more: www.naturalnews.com/044430_Malaysia_Airlines_official_story_government_cover-up.html#ixzz2xA0EjeqzThe "official" story of what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is now a blatant cover-up. After an endless stream of wild incompetence from the Malaysian military and government concerning the radar signature of the missing flight, we are now told by the Malaysian government that the flight "went down over the southern Indian Ocean" and that all lives are lost. This explanation smacks of an obvious cover-up for several crucial reasons, all of which are now being utterly ignored by the conventional press: #1) If the plane went down in the ocean, it would have broken up on impact and debris would be easily spotted A Boeing 777 does not -- and cannot -- survive impact with the ocean and remain intact. It simply does not have the structural integrity to survive such an impact, which is a lot like hitting a cement wall at terminal velocity. If Flight 370 hit the ocean, it would have been broken into tens of thousands of pieces, many of which obviously float on water (such as the seat cushions) and would be witnessed washing up on regional shores or easily spotted by search teams. The lack of such debris is strong support that Flight 370 did not crash into the Indian Ocean as we are now being told. #2) The plane continued broadcasting data to Boeing for 4 - 7 hours Remember the fact that the airplane was broadcasting data for at least 4 hours after the transponder was turned off? This fact is now suddenly being dumped from history and from our memories as if it never happened. We already know Flight 370 flew for 4 - 7 hours after diverging from its planned flight course. We already know this could have taken the plane to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran or even North Korea. (Click here to see my map showing possible destinations.) The fact that the plane broadcast this data for hours is not in dispute! Wall Street Journal: "U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines 3786. Flight 370 stayed in the air for up to four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky." The Guardian: "MH370: Missing plane could have kept flying four hours after disappearing, US investigators say... Engine data shows plane could have kept flying for four hours after disappearing" Washington Post: " the plane may have flown for at least four hours after it dropped from civilian radar, U.S. officials said Thursday. A senior U.S. official said the information came from data sent via a satellite communications system by Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. That data has convinced U.S. officials that the plane’s engines continued to run for at least four hours after all other communication was lost." So how does the Malaysian government now explain this? They don't. They simply gloss over this fact and hope we all forget it. They claim the plane went down in the Indian Ocean without flying very far at all. This makes no sense whatsoever and cannot be reconciled with the flight broadcast data received by Boeing. #3) There is ZERO evidence the flight crashed into the Indian Ocean What is the Malaysian government's evidence that Flight 370 ended in the Indian Ocean and "all lives are lost?" They have no evidence. They have no bodies. They have no debris, no flight recorders, no sightings and no radar signatures that would put the aircraft in the Indian Ocean. They have zero evidence. So they are now floating a cover-up to try to put this issue to rest in order to distract from their own incompetence and their bizarre failure to track the radar signature of an aircraft flying well within the range of their radar. In fact, the only debris floating around right now is made of all the fragments of the Malaysian government's inept cover-up attempts that smack of a true "rookie attempt" to roll out a cover-up that's full of holes. This utter lack of evidence did not prevent the Malaysian government from announcing, "we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived." (USA Today) #4) Another crucial fact: It's clear that the transponder was manually turned off in order to hide the plane's new flight path If the pilot of Flight 370 was suicidal and wanted to fly the plane into the ocean, there would be no need to switch off the transponder before doing so. In fact, there would be no need to make all the complex, intentional flight maneuvers which Flight 370 clearly took as has been widely reported. The fact that the transponder was manually disconnected followed by the plane making deliberate maneuvers that put it on a new flight path is near-absolute proof that the persons controlling the aircraft had no intention of flying the plane into the ocean. It's also strong evidence that they did not want governments to track their new flight direction and destination. Without question, they intended to take the plane somewhere else and land it somewhere else, which is exactly why the aircraft continued broadcasting flight performance data to Boeing for 4-7 hours. The Malaysian government is now hoping you forget all these facts in believing their bizarre cover-up explanation. Malaysia's 9/11 official story Flight 370 is now Malaysia's 9/11, complete with nonsense "official" stories and attempts to memory hole all the facts that originally came out in the mainstream media. We are soon going to be told outrageous lies like "Oh, Boeing never received any flight data broadcasts from the aircraft, didn't you know?" Anyone who now cites all the facts which have already been reported in support of the theory that Flight 370 continued on to another destination will be called "conspiracy theorists" and kooks. The mainstream media will start scrubbing stories and retroactively altering its reporting to match the "official" government story. We've seen this before. It's how governments and media outlets sweep 239 lives under the rug and try to discredit anyone who asks skeptical, scientifically-sound questions based on the actual evidence. In truth, the Malaysian government's bizarre new claim that Flight 370 "ended in the Indian Ocean" is the biggest conspiracy theory of all. It's sheer lunacy to reach such a conclusion without compelling evidence to support it, especially in light of all the other evidence that Flight 370 continued on for hours after the transponder was intentionally disabled. Most likely explanation at this point: The aircraft is being turned into a weapon Based on the Malaysian government's obvious cover-up attempt (which is incredibly transparent and childish as far as cover-ups go), it now seems increasingly likely that the Flight 370 aircraft has, indeed, been delivered to a rogue nation where it is being transformed into a weapon. Malaysia has already proven that it is so incompetent that it cannot track huge aircraft flying across its airspace. This means a weaponized Boeing 777 is essentially a "stealth aircraft" to the Malaysian military -- a shocking revelation about military incompetence and lack of national security readiness in that nation. Apparently, this same Boeing 777 can also fly undetected across the airspace of other nations -- most likely by "shadowing" existing flights while turning off its own transponder. Whoever took control of Flight 370 now has a massive stealth weapon which an incredibly long flight range. This aircraft can now be outfitted with nuclear weapons and dispatched to almost any desirable target anywhere in the world, including cities like New York and Washington D.C., unfortunately. I was the first journalist in the world to suggest that Flight 370 had been captured and turned into a weapon. That same story was also the very first story to suggest Flight 370 passengers may still be alive. I still believe Flight 370 passengers may have survived the flight and the landing at the new destination, but now that world governments are rolling out their "official" stories, there is no question in my mind that they will do anything to support those official stories, even if it means discarding the lives of all the passengers. Sadly, I am now forced to recalculate the odds of Flight 370 passengers being found alive at no better than 1 in 5. (It was previously as high as 1 in 2.) But it is not zero! There is a realistic chance the passengers are being kept alive as some sort of international bargaining chip. You can now expect the governments and media outlets of the world to start scrubbing their archived stories and statements, altering the "news history" to fit this new Malaysian government cover-up. I wouldn't even put it past these people to now secretly sink some aircraft debris in the Indian Ocean so they can "find it" and thereby complete the cover-up. If there's one thing I've learned in all my years as an award-winning investigative journalist, it's that you should never trust official stories... especially when they contradict all the earlier evidence. Learn more: www.naturalnews.com/044430_Malaysia_Airlines_official_story_government_cover-up.html#ixzz2xA09NT00
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Post by baydoll on Mar 27, 2014 9:10:17 GMT -5
And still the questions (and there are many) surrounding this mess are never answered!
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 27, 2014 11:39:24 GMT -5
Son of Malaysian Airlines captain breaks silence about fatherSays his father is not a hijacker. "I understand him," he says. By Mike Krumboltz, Yahoo News 2 hours ago Yahoo News Ahmad Seth, the 26-year-old son of Malaysian Airlines flight 370 Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, broke his family's silence about the speculation concerning his father. Seth told New Straits Times that his father is not a "political fanatic." He said, "I've read everything online, but I've ignored all the speculation. I know my father better." “We may not be as close as he travels so much, but I understand him,” he told New Straits Times. Like many others, Seth is still hoping that there will be survivors from the ill-fated flight. Earlier this week, the Malaysian government concluded that the 239 people aboard the flight had died. “Now, we are just waiting for the right confirmation,” Seth said. “I will believe it when I see the proof in front of my eyes.” Seth did not address how his mother and siblings were doing but did say that he is "the strongest in his family in dealing with the crisis," according to New Straits Times. The search for the plane, which went missing 19 days ago, continues. Experts believe it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. New images from Thai and Japanese satellites show debris that may have been part of the plane, according to Reuters. The United States Navy recently delivered equipment used to scan for flight recorders on the ocean floor and send the data back to search headquarters. link
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Mar 28, 2014 15:33:49 GMT -5
New Malaysia plane search area turns up objects AP 3/28/2014 1:49:43 PM PERTH, Australia (AP) — Australian officials moved the search area for the lost Malaysian jetliner 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) to the northeast Friday following a new analysis of radar data, and planes quickly found multiple objects in the new zone. Five out of 10 aircraft hunting for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 found objects of various colors Friday, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said. It said it was not clear whether the objects were from the plane, and photos of them would be analyzed overnight. AMSA said the items included two rectangular objects that were blue and grey — among the colors of the missing plane. A Chinese patrol ship in the area will attempt to locate the objects on Saturday, it said. The three-week hunt for the jet has been filled with possible sightings, with hundreds of objects identified by satellite and others by plane, but so far not a single piece of debris has been confirmed. Australian officials said they turned away from the old search area, which they had combed for a week, because a new analysis of radar data suggests the plane had flown faster and therefore ran out of fuel more quickly than previously estimated. The new area is closer to land and has calmer weather than the old one, which will make searching easier. "We have moved on" from the old search area, said John Young, manager of AMSA's emergency response division. The radar data that was re-analyzed was received soon after Flight 370 lost communications and veered from its scheduled path March 8. The Beijing-bound flight carrying 239 people turned around soon after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, flew west toward the Strait of Malacca and disappeared from radar. The search area has changed several times since the plane vanished as experts analyzed a frustratingly small amount of data from the aircraft, including the radar signals and "pings" that a satellite picked up for several hours after radar and voice contact was lost. The latest analysis indicated the aircraft was traveling faster than previously estimated, resulting in increased fuel use and reducing the possible distance it could have flown before going down in the Indian Ocean. Just as a car loses gas efficiency when driving at high speeds, a plane will get less out of a tank of fuel when it flies faster. Malaysia's civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur that personnel at Boeing Co. in Seattle had helped with the analysis of the flight. Planes and ships had spent a week searching about 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth, Australia, the base for the search. Now they are searching about 1,850 kilometers (1,150 miles) west of the city. "This is our best estimate of the area in which the aircraft is likely to have crashed into the ocean," Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, said at a news conference in Canberra. He said a wide range of scenarios went into the calculation. "We're looking at the data from the so-called pinging of the satellite, the polling of the satellites, and that gives a distance from a satellite to the aircraft to within a reasonable approximation," he said. He said that information was coupled with various projections of aircraft performance and the plane's distance from the satellites at given times. Dolan said the search now is for surface debris to give an indication of "where the main aircraft wreckage is likely to be. This has a long way to go." A number of the objects spotted Friday were white or light in color, AMSA said, adding that the finds needed to be confirmed by ship. Young said the hundreds of floating objects detected over the last week by satellites in the former search area, previously considered possible wreckage, "may or may not actually be objects." "In regards to the old areas, we have not seen any debris and I would not wish to classify any of the satellite imagery as debris, nor would I want to classify any of the few visual sightings that we made as debris. That's just not justifiable from what we have seen," he said. But in Malaysia, Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference that because of ocean drifts, "this new search area could still be consistent with the potential objects identified by various satellite images over the past week." The new search area is about 80 percent smaller than the old one, but it remains large: about 319,000 square kilometers (123,000 square miles), about the size of Poland or New Mexico. Sea depths in the new area range from 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) to 4,000 meters (13,120 feet), Young said. There are trenches in the area that go even deeper, Australia's national science agency said in a statement. That includes the Diamantina trench, which is up to 7,300 meters (24,000 feet) deep, but it was unclear whether the deepest parts of the trench are in the search area. If the wreckage is especially deep, that will complicate search efforts. The U.S. Navy is sending equipment that can hear "black box" pings up to about 6,100 meters (20,000 feet) deep, and an unmanned underwater vehicle that operates at depths up to 4,500 meters (14,800 feet). Young said a change in search area is not unusual. "This is the normal business of search and rescue operations — that new information comes to light, refined analyses take you to a different place," Young told reporters. "I don't count the original work as a waste of time." He said the new search zone, being about 700 kilometers (434 miles) closer to mainland Australia, will be easier to reach. Planes used so much fuel getting to and from the old search area that had only about two hours of spotting time per sortie. The new area also has better weather conditions than the old one, where searches were regularly scrapped because of storms, high winds and low visibility. "The search area has moved out of the 'roaring 40s,' which creates very adverse weather," Young said, referring to the latitude of the previous search area. "I'm not sure that we'll get perfect weather out there, but it's likely to be better than we saw in the past." Australia's HMAS Success was expected to arrive in the area Saturday, Young said. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration patrol boat Haixun 01 was also on site, and several more Chinese ships were on their way. Malaysian officials said earlier this week that satellite data confirmed the plane crashed into the southern Indian Ocean. Authorities are rushing to find any piece of the plane to help them locate the black boxes, or flight data and voice recorders, that will help solve the mystery of why the jet flew so far off-course. The battery in a black box normally lasts for at least a month. Officials are already preparing for the hunt for the black boxes. The U.S. Navy towed pinger locator and Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle are to be fitted onto an Australian vessel, the Ocean Shield, when it reaches Albany, a port near Perth, in a day or two, said a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He did not say how long it would take to reach the search area. He said the Chinese ships are also expected to have acoustic sensors that can listen for black box pingers. The lack of results from the search gave one Malaysian family a little hope that the authorities were wrong in their calculations. Eliz Wong Yun Yi, 24, whose father was on the plane, said her family stopped watching the daily Malaysian news conference because they felt the government was not upfront with information. All the new satellite data added to the confusion, she said. "After so many days, still no plane. We will not believe what they say until the plane wreckage is found. I want to stay positive and believe that my father will come back," she said. Her father, Wong Sai Sang, a 53-year-old Malaysian property sales manager, had been on his way to Beijing for work. link
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Post by PurplePuppy on Apr 2, 2014 23:58:11 GMT -5
Seriously? Minister Hishammuddin Hussein agrees missing Malaysia Airlines plane is a ‘blessing in disguise’ 9 hours ago April 03, 2014 6:42AM THE public face of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight tragedy says the event is a “blessing in disguise”. Malaysia’s Defence and Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein shocked followers on Twitter when he agreed with someone who suggested there was a bright side to the disaster. Kuala Lumpur-based journalist Ismail Amsyar tweeted: “#MH370 is a blessing in disguise for all of us. I understand now the beauty of unity, the sweetness of having each other. @hishammuddinh2o” Six minutes later Hishammuddin replied: “Right u are:)” Right u are:)“@ismailamsyar: #MH370 is a blessing in disguise 4"all of us.I understand now d beauty of unity&sweetness of having each other. — Hishammuddin Hussein (@hishammuddinh2o) April 2, 2014 Followers were quick to question the appropriateness of the tweet. Alan Cook tweeted: “@hishammuddinh2o @ismailamsyar hmmmm not sure the families will be happy to hear that translate it so they can read your statment #mh370”. Hj Azman HMZ also quickly responded: “@hishammuddinh2o @ismailamsyarsorry. I beg to differ with max consideratn & respect to the families. MH370 can’t be a blessing!”. Whether or not it was a blessing, police have now opened a criminal investigation into the disappearance of the plane. Not feeling blessed ... Chinese relatives of passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 wait for new information at a hotel in Beijing. Source: AFP In response Ismail Amsyar, who works for The Malaysian National News Agency or BERNAMA, tweeted: “but u shud see how united we are defending our country from being accused, how strong the local media dispelling -ve reports”. The journalist, who spent two years at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, then back-pedalled on his original tweet. “@hjazman got what u mean..but m not being insensitive or anything. I look at them as my family and i want them back. My apology,” he tweeted. Minutes later, he followed up with this: “@hjazman I’ve been covering this issue since day 1. they are all my family, my Malaysian family. if they hurt, so do i.” Full story with tweets and pictures at link.
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Post by PurplePuppy on Apr 3, 2014 0:00:32 GMT -5
Seriously? Minister Hishammuddin Hussein agrees missing Malaysia Airlines plane is a ‘blessing in disguise’ 9 hours ago April 03, 2014 6:42AM THE public face of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight tragedy says the event is a “blessing in disguise”. Malaysia’s Defence and Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein shocked followers on Twitter when he agreed with someone who suggested there was a bright side to the disaster. Kuala Lumpur-based journalist Ismail Amsyar tweeted: “#MH370 is a blessing in disguise for all of us. I understand now the beauty of unity, the sweetness of having each other. @hishammuddinh2o” Six minutes later Hishammuddin replied: “Right u are:)” Right u are:)“@ismailamsyar: #MH370 is a blessing in disguise 4"all of us.I understand now d beauty of unity&sweetness of having each other. — Hishammuddin Hussein (@hishammuddinh2o) April 2, 2014 Followers were quick to question the appropriateness of the tweet. Alan Cook tweeted: “@hishammuddinh2o @ismailamsyar hmmmm not sure the families will be happy to hear that translate it so they can read your statment #mh370”. Hj Azman HMZ also quickly responded: “@hishammuddinh2o @ismailamsyarsorry. I beg to differ with max consideratn & respect to the families. MH370 can’t be a blessing!”. Whether or not it was a blessing, police have now opened a criminal investigation into the disappearance of the plane. Not feeling blessed ... Chinese relatives of passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 wait for new information at a hotel in Beijing. Source: AFP In response Ismail Amsyar, who works for The Malaysian National News Agency or BERNAMA, tweeted: “but u shud see how united we are defending our country from being accused, how strong the local media dispelling -ve reports”. The journalist, who spent two years at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, then back-pedalled on his original tweet. “@hjazman got what u mean..but m not being insensitive or anything. I look at them as my family and i want them back. My apology,” he tweeted. Minutes later, he followed up with this: “@hjazman I’ve been covering this issue since day 1. they are all my family, my Malaysian family. if they hurt, so do i.” Full story with tweets and pictures at link.
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Post by PrisonerOfHope on Apr 5, 2014 15:08:42 GMT -5
New findings may refocus search for Malaysia Airlines jetBy Tom Watkins, CNN updated 3:48 PM EDT, Sat April 5, 2014 Source: CNN STORY HIGHLIGHTS "It ought to be easy to rule it in or rule it out," says CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo Deployment of Australian air force assets to search area "is being considered," official says "This could be a variety of things," says oceanographer Simon Boxall Chinese ship hears pulse signal in southern Indian Ocean (CNN) -- Just as the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 appeared to be stalled, the weekslong effort gained new momentum and urgency Saturday when investigators discovered a pulse emanating from a remote section of the Indian Ocean and a field of debris floating nearby. "I have been advised that a series of sounds have been detected by a Chinese ship in the search area," Angus Houston, the chief coordinator of Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre, said in a prepared statement. "The characteristics reported are consistent with the aircraft black box," he said, adding that a number of white objects were sited about 56 miles (90 kilometers) away. "However, there is no confirmation at this stage that the signals and the objects are related to the missing aircraft," the retired air chief marshal said. Expert: 'Skeptical' pulse signal located China: Pulse signals lasted over a minute China: Ship detects pulse signal Friends can't ID voice on 370 recording Neither the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) nor the Australian Transport Safety Bureau can verify any connection to the missing aircraft, the statement said. The RCC in Australia has spoken to its counterpart in China and asked for any further relevant information, it said. "The deployment of RAAF assets to the area where the Chinese ship detected the sounds is being considered," he added, referring to the Royal Australian Air Force. The state-run Chinese news agency, Xinhua, said a detector deployed by the Haixun 01 patrol ship picked up the signal around 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude. That puts it about 1,020 miles (1,640 kilometers) west-northwest of Perth, Australia, between current and previous search zones, and about 220 miles (354 kilometers) south of the closest of the three areas searched Saturday, said Judson Jones, a meteorologist with CNN International. A previous search area was 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of the area. "It's not the prime search area, but it's not out of the question that this could possibly be from the black box," said David Gallo, who is with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The location lies along one of two tracks along which investigators had postulated the plane flew, noted CNN aviation analyst retired Lt. Col. Michael Kay. "It is, again, more positive evidence," he said. "That is good news." White objects afloat near the search area Also found Saturday -- spotted by a Chinese air force search plane -- were white objects floating near the search area, about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) from Perth, Xinhua said. Those were presumably the same objects cited by Houston. Investigators have failed to link any of the many previous sightings of debris to the missing plane. But the proximity of the two finds raised hopes that this time might be different. The ship first detected a signal Friday but couldn't record it because the signal stopped abruptly, a Shanghai-based Communist Party newspaper said. The signal detected Saturday, the Jiefang Daily said, occurred at 3:57 p.m. Beijing time (3:57 a.m. ET) and lasted about a minute and a half. It was not clear whether the signal had anything to do with the missing plane. A China Central Television correspondent aboard the Haixun-01 (pronounced "high shuen") reported that the 37.5 kHz signal was detected for a minute and a half. Australia leads Flight 370 search Weather conditions and the MH370 search The signal "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. "They're identical." The frequency was chosen for use in the recorders "to give that standout quality that does not get interfered with by the background noise that readily occurs in the ocean." But he said he would like to see more evidence. "I'd like to see some additional assets on site quickly -- maybe some sonobuoys," he said, referring to 5-inch-long (13-centimeter) sonar systems that are dropped from aircraft or ships. And he said he was puzzled that only one signal had been detected, since each of the recorders was equipped with a pinger, which is also called a beacon. Other experts cautioned that no confirmation had been made that the signal was linked to the missing plane. "It ought to be easy to rule it in or rule it out, and they ought to go do it," said Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation. A source at the Australian Defence Force told CNN that it got word of the report around noon Saturday (midnight Friday ET). Saturday's leads came as concern was rising that the batteries powering the missing Boeing 777's locator pingers would soon go dead. The plane disappeared on March 8; its batteries were guaranteed to work for 30 days underwater, and are predicted to die slowly over the following days. Monday marks day 30. The batteries on Flight 370's black boxes were due to be replaced in June, the Malaysia Airlines chief executive said Saturday. "We can confirm there is a maintenance program. Batteries are replaced prior to expiration," Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said. The tentative nature of the report was not lost on one Chinese relative of one of those aboard. "There is not confirmation, and we are all waiting patiently," the relative told CNN Producer Judy Kwon in a text message. Still, Malaysia's acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, was sanguine: "Another night of hope-praying hard," he tweeted in response to the discovery. "We've had a lot of red herrings, hyperbole on this whole search," said oceanographer Simon Boxall, a lecturer in ocean and earth science at the University of Southampton told CNN. "I'd really like to see this data confirmed." If this proves to be what investigators have been searching for, "then the possibility of recovering the plane -- or at least the black boxes -- goes from being one in a million to almost certain," he said. Prime ministers offer no answers No guarantees MH370 will ever be found Are we searching in the right area? But, he added, "It could be a false signal." CNN aviation analyst David Soucie was less skeptical. "This is a pinger," the airplane accident investigator said. "I've been doing this a lot of years, and I can't think of anything else it could be." Committees being formed The announcement came nearly a month after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared, and on the same day that the nation's acting transportation minister said three committees were being formed to tackle the disappearance of the flight. One will tend to the families of passengers aboard the missing flight, the second will oversee the investigation team and a third committee will handle the deployment of assets, said Hishammuddin Hussein. Malaysia will also appoint an independent investigator to lead an investigation team, the acting minister said. The team will include an airworthiness group to look at issues such as maintenance records, and an operations group to examine such aspects as flight recorders and operations. A medical and human factors team will investigate issues such as psychology, he said. The team will include representatives from Malaysia, Australia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom and France, he said. Hishammuddin also addressed "unfounded allegations made against Malaysia," which "include the extraordinary assertion that Malaysian authorities were somehow complicit in what happened to MH370." He added, "I should like to state, for the record, that these allegations are completely untrue." Hishammuddin pointed to a statement from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which says Malaysia has "done its level best" in an operation that "is the biggest and most complex we have ever seen." The minister, who had earlier briefed ASEAN ministers and the United States at a joint defense forum, thanked the United States for its "unwavering support" and said the ministers had pledged their continued cooperation. The hunt for evidence continued Saturday -- both on the surface of the southern Indian Ocean and below it. The British submarine HMS Tireless is in the search area, Hishammuddin said. A parallel search of the hard drives of a flight simulator found in the home of one of the pilots turned up nothing conclusive, a U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation told CNN on Friday. There was no "we got it" information, though there were some "curious" things, the official said. The captain, veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had programmed alternate routes into the simulator, but he appeared to have done so to come up with plans of action in case of emergencies, the official said. The searches appear to be what an experienced and professional pilot would do, the official said. The hunt goes on In the Indian Ocean, the hunt was continuing. The British Royal Navy survey ship HMS Echo and the Australian naval supply ship Ocean Shield searched Friday for the plane's pingers and possible wreckage on the ocean floor -- 6,500 feet (2000 meters) to 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) below the surface. The search was along a single 150-mile (240-kilometer) track, said Houston, Australia's chief coordinator. 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. Who's talking? The cockpit conversation recording of the flight has been played to friends of the pilot and first officer, as well as to other pilots, in order to identify who was speaking, a source close to the investigation said Saturday. But the voices have not been identified, the source said. The recording was not played to the families of the pilot and first officer, the source said. Officials have repeatedly said that the search may not conclude soon. In the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, officials found debris on the surface after five days of searching. But it took nearly two years for them to find the main pieces of wreckage, the flight recorders and many of the bodies of those on board. With Flight 370, the search teams have had even fewer clues. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott described it as the most difficult search "in human history." Investigations into the 227 passengers and 12 crew members have yielded no suggestion that any of them might have been behind the disappearance. Video at link.
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