MH370 hunt to shift south

SYDNEY - The drawn-out search for missing Malaysian Flight MH370 will revert to an area south of the previously suspected crash site following new analysis of the plane's flight path, an official said Friday.

Investigators grappling to solve the mystery of the jet's disappearance are reportedly set to scour a zone 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) west of Perth—previously subject to an aerial search—when an underwater probe resumes in August.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the search, would not pinpoint the exact location of the probe as analysis is still ongoing, but said it was clearly further south.

"It is already clear from the provisional results of our analysis that the search zone will be south of the previous search area," a bureau spokesman told AFP.

"But still on the seventh arc where the aircraft last communicated with the satellite."

Australian officials have said repeatedly that the revised search zone will be in the area of the seventh arc, or the final satellite "handshake" from the plane. It is believed to be when the aircraft ran out of fuel and was in descent.

Citing unnamed US sources, The West Australian newspaper said Friday that Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Center (JACC) would soon announce the hunt would move 800 kilometers southwest from where it was previously focused.

It said sources had revealed that survey ship Fugro Equator was already operating in this area and would soon be joined by Chinese vessel Zhu Kezhen.

No sign of plane

A massive aerial and underwater search for MH370, which had 239 people onboard when it diverted from its Kuala Lumpur to Beijing flight path on March 8, has failed to find any sign of the plane.

Scientists from British satellite operator Inmarsat told the BBC earlier this week that the search had yet to target the most likely crash site, or "hotspot", after becoming diverted by pings thought at the time to have originated from the plane's black boxes.

It was not clear from The West Australian report whether the new search area overlaps with the "hotspot".

Until now, the most intensive search had been with a mini-sub in the area where the pings were detected. The area has now been ruled out as the final resting place of MH370. The source of the noises is unknown.

JACC said Friday that the revised search zone, based on an intensive study of satellite communications from the jet and other data, would be announced by the end of the month.

It said the Fugro Equator was now working in this zone.

"Located along the seventh arc, that area is consistent with provisional analysis of satellite and other data that is being used to determine the future search area," it said.

Australian officials announced earlier this week that a survey of the sea bed, as yet mostly unmapped and crucial to the success of the underwater search, had resumed.

The two ships—Fugro Equator and Zhu Kezhen—will survey an area up to 6,000 metres (20,000 feet) deep and covering up to 60,000 square kilometers before an a contractor begins an intensive undersea probe looking for debris. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Malaysia set to release initial report into MH370 disappearance

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia is expected to release a report on Thursday on the missing Malaysia Airlines plane that it has sent to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the UN body that governs global aviation.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak told CNN last week that the report on Flight MH370 would be released this week, and the Ministry of Transport said in a statement that a media release and preliminary report would be issued later on Thursday.

Malaysian officials declined to comment on what the report might contain.

The fact that the aircraft has not yet been found suggests there will be few, if any, major revelations in the report, although any information on the missing flight is being closely followed by families of missing passengers and international media.

The Boeing 777-200ER, which had 239 passengers and crew on board, disappeared off civilian radars on March 8 while on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Relatives of those on board have accused the Malaysian government of bungling the early phase of the search and of keeping them in the dark about the details of the incident.

The search moved to the the Straits of Malacca a week after the disappearance after radar data confirmed that the aircraft made a turn back. It was expanded after satellite data showed it could have taken a course anywhere from central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean.

Satellite data eventually showed that the aircraft flew to the southern section of the Indian Ocean, off the coast of western Australia, where a massive search of the waters and underwater has still not yielded any evidence of the aircraft. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Australia says cost not a concern in MH370 search

PERTH - Australia said Wednesday cost was not a concern in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, after the mini-sub plumbing the depths of the Indian Ocean for wreckage ended its ninth mission empty-handed.

Australia is leading the multinational search for the Boeing 777 which vanished on March 8 carrying 239 people, and is bearing many of the costs of the mission expected to be the most expensive in aviation history.

"There will be some issues of costs into the future but this is not about costs," Defense Minister David Johnston told reporters in Canberra.

"We want to find this aircraft. We want to say to our friends in Malaysia and China this is not about cost, we are concerned to be seen to be helping them in a most tragic circumstance."

China, whose citizens made up two-thirds of the passengers onboard the ill-fated flight, and Malaysia are among eight countries including Australia which have committed assets to the Indian Ocean search.

But with no confirmed sightings of debris from the flight on the surface so far, the search moved underwater nearly two weeks ago and is yet to find any sign of the aircraft.

Speaking to reporters in Canberra, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said searchers still believed the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean.

"Our expert advice is that the aircraft went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean where they have identified a probable impact zone which is about 700 kilometers (435 miles) long, about 80 kilometers wide," he said.

Abbott said based on the detections from what Australia still believed was the black box recorder, an underwater search area of just under 400 square kilometers (154 square miles) was being scoured.

"We haven't finished the search, we haven't found anything yet in the area that we're searching, but the point I make is that Australia will not rest until we have done everything we humanly can to get to the bottom of this mystery," he said.

Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said the device looking for the plane on the seabed had scanned more than 80 percent of its target zone and was now on its 10th dive.

"No contacts of interest have been found to date," it said.

The torpedo-shaped autonomous underwater vehicle called a Bluefin-21 is searching an area at least 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) deep defined by a 10-kilometre radius around a detection of a signal believed to be from the plane's black box heard on April 8.

'Reasonable hope'

A surface search involving up to 10 military aircraft and 12 ships was also scheduled for Wednesday, despite suggestions last week that this effort would be scaled down in coming days.

JACC later suspended the air search activities due to bad weather, which had resulted in heavy seas and poor visibility, but said the ships would continue their work.

The visual hunt covers an area totaling about 37,948 square kilometers, some 855 kilometes northwest of Perth, JACC said.

Johnston said Australia was tracking the cost of the mission, and if the Bluefin-21 failed to spot wreckage the search would move into a new phase, but said Canberra was committed to the task.

"We move to the next phase which is a more intensive single sideband sonar type program, I suspect, but let's take advice of the experts as to where we go forward," he said.

Johnston said Australia was talking with its partners about the assets needed for the next phase of the search for the plane which mysteriously diverted en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Abbott said Australia would not abandon the search and let down the families of the six Australians and 233 other people onboard "by likely surrendering while there is reasonable hope of finding something."

"At the moment we are conducting an underwater search with the best equipment that is currently available," he said.

"If at the end of that period, we find nothing, we are not going to abandon the search. We may well re-think the search, but we will not rest until we have done everything we can to solve this mystery." — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

MH370 co-pilot made mid-flight phone call — report

KUALA LUMPUR — The co-pilot of missing Malaysian airliner MH370 attempted to make a mid-flight call from his mobile phone just before the plane vanished from radar screens, a report said Saturday citing unnamed investigators.

The call ended abruptly possibly "because the aircraft was fast moving away from the (telecommunications) tower," The New Straits Times quoted a source as saying.

But the Malaysian daily also quoted another source saying that while Fariq Abdul Hamid's "line was reattached," there was no certainty that a call was made from the Boeing 777 that vanished on March 8.

The report -- titled a "desperate call for help" -- did not say who he was trying to contact.

Fariq and Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah have come under intense scrutiny after the plane mysteriously vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

Investigators last month indicated that the flight was deliberately diverted and its communication systems manually switched off as it was leaving Malaysian airspace, triggering a criminal investigation by police that has revealed little so far.

The fate of flight MH370 has been shrouded in mystery, with a number of theories put forward including a hijacking or terrorist attack and a pilot gone rogue.

There have been unconfirmed previous reports in the Malaysian media of calls by the captain before or during the flight but no details have been released.

The NST report said that Flight 370 flew low enough near Penang island on Malaysia's west coast -- after turning off course -- for a telecommunications tower to pick up the co-pilot's phone signal.

The phone line was "reattached" between the time the plane veered off course and blipped off the radar, the government-controlled paper quoted the second source as saying.

"A 'reattachment' does not necessarily mean that a call was made. It can also be the result of the phone being switched on again."

Malaysia's transport ministry told AFP that it was examining the NST report and will issue a response.

The Malaysian government and media have repeatedly contradicted each other and themselves over details of the search and criminal investigation. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Australian ship trawls for signals from missing Malaysian jet

SYDNEY/PERTH - An Australian ship which picked up possible "pings" from the black box recorders of a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner has been unable to detect any further signals and time is running out to narrow the massive search, officials said on Tuesday.

Angus Houston, head of the Australian agency coordinating the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, said the month-long hunt in the Indian Ocean was at a critical stage given the batteries in the black box beacons had already reached the end of their 30-day expected life.

A US Navy "towed pinger locator" onboard Australia's Ocean Shield picked up two "ping" signal detections over the weekend – the first for more than two hours and the second for about 13 minutes.

Houston said the signals sounded very much like black box beacons and represented the best lead in the search yet, but efforts to pick up the pings again had so far been unsuccessful.

"If we don't get any further transmissions, we have a reasonably large search area of the bottom of the ocean to prosecute and that will take a long, long time. It's very slow, painstaking work," said Houston.

The black boxes record cockpit data and may provide answers about what happened to the plane, which was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when it vanished on March 8 and flew thousands of kilometers off its Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing route.

Authorities have not ruled out mechanical problems as a cause of the plane's disappearance but say evidence, including loss of communications, suggests it was deliberately diverted.

Analysis of satellite data led investigators to conclude the Boeing 777 came down in an area some 1,680 km (1,040 miles) northwest of Perth, where possible pings were picked up and the search is now focused.

Bluefin on hold

An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) named Bluefin-21 is onboard the Ocean Shield and could be sent to look for wreckage on the sea floor, but narrowing the search zone first was critical, Houston said.

"It is a large area for a small submersible that has a very narrow field of search, and of course, it is literally crawling along the bottom of the ocean," he said.

"That's why its so important to get another transmission and we need to continue until there's absolutely no chance the device is still transmitting."

The Bluefin will scour the ocean floor in 20-hour missions using sonar in an attempt to find the Boeing 777, before its findings are downloaded and analysed on board the Ocean Shield.

If anything unusual is spotted, the sonar on board the robotic vehicle will be replaced with a camera to take a closer look. The potential search area is about 4.5 km (2.8 miles) deep, the outer reach of the Bluefin's range.

Some 133 missions have been completed so far in the multinational aerial hunt for debris in the southern Indian Ocean but have only turned up fishing gear and other detritus.

"They go on with the same intensity that we have carried through to this point in time," Defense Minister David Johnston told reporters. "We are throwing everything at this difficult and complex task."

Up to eleven military planes, three civilian planes and 14 ships will take part in the search on Tuesday, with the Australian coordination centre reporting good weather in the search area. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Chinese, Australian ships try to verify potential ‘pings’ from Malaysia jet

SYDNEY/PERTH, Australia - Chinese and Australian ships hunting for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner have picked up separate acoustic signals in different parts of a vast Indian Ocean search area and are trying to verify if one could be from the plane's black box recorders.

Australian search authorities said on Sunday a Chinese patrol vessel, the Haixun 01, had picked up a fleeting "ping" signal twice in recent days in waters west of Perth, near where investigators believe Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went down on March 8.

More planes and ships were being sent to assist in that area, but meanwhile, Australia's HMAS Ocean Shield had reported a separate "acoustic event" some 300 nautical miles away.

The Ocean Shield is carrying sophisticated U.S. Navy equipment designed to pick up signals sent from the black boxes, which may hold the key to why the aircraft ended up thousands of kilometers off course.

"We are treating each of them seriously. We need to ensure before we leave any of those areas that this does not have any connection with MH370," Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, head of the Australian agency coordinating the operation, told a media conference in Perth.

A black box detector deployed by the Haixun 01 picked up the signal with a frequency of 37.5kHz per second - the same as emitted by flight recorders - at about 25 degrees south and 101 degrees east, Xinhua reported on Saturday.

Australian search authorities said such a signal would be consistent with a black box, but both they and Xinhua stressed there was no conclusive evidence linking it to the Boeing 777.

"The 37.5kHz is the specific frequency that these locator pingers operate on," said Anish Patel, president of Sarasota, Florida-based Dukane Seacom, which made the black box locator.

"It's a very unique frequency, typically not found in background ocean noise," such as whales or other marine mammals, he told Reuters.

Southern area back in focus

Houston said analysis of earlier satellite data had again led investigators to refine the search area towards the southern part of the corridor.

"The area of the highest probability is, what we think, the southern part where Haixun 01 is operating. That is why we are really interested in the two acoustic encounters that Haixun 01 has had."

The water was around 4,500 meters (14,800 ft) deep in that part of the search area, Houston added.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he was "hopeful but by no means certain" that the reported pulse signals were related to MH370.

"This is the most difficult search in human history. We are searching for an aircraft which is at the bottom of a very deep ocean and it is a very, very wide search area," Abbott told reporters in Tokyo, where he is on a visit.

Up to a dozen planes and 13 ships will be scouring three separate areas about 2,000 km (1,240 miles) northwest of Perth, Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre said on Sunday.

Sonar equipment

Authorities have not ruled out mechanical problems as a cause of the plane's disappearance, but say the evidence, including loss of communications, suggests it was deliberately diverted.

Malaysian authorities have faced heavy criticism, particularly from China, for mismanaging the search and holding back information. Most of the 227 passengers were Chinese.

Malaysia said on Saturday it had launched a formal investigation into the plane's disappearance that would include experts from Australia, the United States, China, Britain and France.

Normally, a formal air safety investigation is not launched until wreckage is found. But there have been concerns that Malaysia's informal investigations to date have lacked the legal standing of an official inquiry convened under U.N. rules.

Under International Civil Aviation Organization rules, the country where the aircraft is registered leads the investigation when the incident takes place in international waters.

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the investigation would comprise three groups: one would examine maintenance records, structures and systems; an "operations" group would study flight recorders, operations and meteorology; and a "medical and human factors" group would look into psychology, pathology and survival. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Corrected satellite data shifts focus south in search for MH370 — official

PERTH — Corrected satellite data has shifted the focus for the hunt for missing Malaysia Airline Flight MH370 to the south, the head of the agency coordinating the search mission said Sunday.

"The whole of the existing search area remains the most likely area that the aircraft entered the water, but based on the new advice the southern area now has a higher priority," retired air chief marshal Angus Houston said.

The Chinese ship Haixun 01, which has detected some signals that could be from the plane's beacons, is in this more southern area of the Indian Ocean search zone. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Biggest search yet for Malaysian jet in Indian ocean

PERTH - Four weeks after the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner, searchers on Saturday launched the most intensive hunt yet in the southern Indian Ocean, trying to find the plane's black box recorders before their batteries run out.

Up to 10 military planes, three civilian jets and 11 ships will scour a 217,000-sq-km (88,000-sq-mile) patch of desolate ocean some 1,700 km (1,060 miles) northwest of Perth near where investigators believe the plane went down on March 8 with the loss of all 239 people on board.

"If we haven't found anything in six weeks we will continue because there are a lot of things in the aircraft that will float," Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the head of the Australian agency coordinating the operation, told reporters.

"Eventually I think something will be found that will help us narrow the search area."

Authorities have not ruled out mechanical problems as a cause but say the evidence, including the loss of communications, suggests Flight MH370 was deliberately diverted thousands of kilometres from its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Dozens of flights by a multinational taskforce have so far failed to turn up any trace of the plane, and investigators concede the task has been made more difficult by the lack of data.

The Boeing 777 was briefly picked up on military radar on the other side of Malaysia and analysis of subsequent hourly electronic "handshakes" exchanged with a satellite led investigators to conclude the plane crashed far off the west Australian coast hours later.

Sonar search

Sonar equipment on two ships joining the search may help find the plane's black box voice and data recorders that are key to unlocking what happened on the flight. The black box is equipped with a locator beacon that transmits "pings" when underwater, but its batteries may only last 30 days.

Australian authorities said the so-called Towed Pinger Locator will be pulled behind navy ship HMAS Ocean Shield, searching a converging course on a 240-km (150-mile) track with British hydrographic survey ship HMS Echo.

Experts have warned the Towed Pinger Locator may be of little use unless investigators can get a much better idea of exactly where the plane went into the water, because its limited range and the slow speed at which it must be pulled behind the ship mean it cannot cover large areas of ocean quickly.

"I won't even call it an area. What we are doing is we are tracking down the best estimate of the course that the aircraft was on," US Navy Captain Mark Matthews told Reuters. "It takes a couple of days on each leg so its a slow-going search."

Britain is also sending HMS Tireless, a Trafalgar-class nuclear submarine with sonar capabilities, and a Malaysian frigate was due to arrive in the search area on Saturday.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his Australian counterpart, Tony Abbott, this week toured RAAF Base Pearce, near Perth, from where aircrews seven countries have been operating.

"The world expects us to do our level best, and I'm very confident we will indeed show what we can do together as a group of nations; that we want to find answers, that we want to provide comfort to the families and we will not rest until answers are indeed found," Najib said.

Malaysian authorities have faced heavy criticism, particularly from China, for mismanaging the search and holding back information. Most of the 227 passengers were Chinese. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Math wizards stand ready to join Malaysia Airlines search

RESTON - Math wizards who pinpointed the final resting place of a doomed Air France jet deep beneath the Atlantic stand ready to do so again for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

No one has yet asked Metron, a scientific consulting firm, to join the search for the missing Boeing 777, but that hasn't stopped it from getting a head start, using the few nuggets of data currently in the public domain.

"We're trying to get our hands on all the publicly available data so we can start doing an independent assessment," Van Gurley, head of Metron's advanced mathematics applications division, told AFP on Wednesday.

As that assessment evolves, "we'll provide it to anyone who's interested," added Gurley at Metron's head office in Reston, Virginia, a suburb of Washington.

Founded in 1982, with a staff of 170 that includes experts in applied mathematicians, Metron conducts highly specialized mathematical analysis for US national security applications, such as sonar systems.

But it has also developed a much-used search and rescue protocol for the US Coast Guard based on a theorem developed by early 18th century English statistician, philosopher and Presbyterian minister Thomas Bayes.

"It's a structured method that forces you to look at all the available information about a problem and then apply a confidence factor—how confident you are in any piece of information," Gurley said.

No single bit of data is ever thrown away, but as information is confirmed over time—say, when a speck in a satellite image turns out to be genuine debris—the probability that the target item is in a given spot evolves.

In the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic in 2009 with 228 on board, the target was its flight data recorder lying at the bottom of the ocean.

The French air accident investigation agency BEA turned to Metron to figure out the most likely spot where the so-called black box might be—successfully, it turned out when undersea drones recovered it in May 2011.

In that case, however, floating debris from the Airbus A330 had been located within a week and the search area was limited to a circle about 80 miles (130 kilometers) in diameter, Gurley said.

That's practically a flyspeck compared to the vastness of the remote section of the Indian Ocean where the Malaysian authorities said Wednesday that "122 potential objects" had been spotted by satellite in recent days—with not a single piece of confirmed debris since the jet went missing on March 8.

"Everybody wants to know where it is, and the answer is: we don't know," said Gurly, sitting alongside a vivid computer image of the entire Indian Ocean depicting the latest search zones west of Australia.

Overlaid on the screen are green triangles, each representing a ship at sea, provided by exactEarth, a Canadian firm that tracks ship movements worldwide in real time using satellite signals.

Just three triangles stood out in the search zone Wednesday, all of them Australian vessels combing the waters for debris.

Commercial shipping lanes to and from Australia lie well to the north, and they're not especially crowded. Gurley acknowledges that Bayesian theorem doesn't guarantee success.

While the Coast Guard regularly uses Bayesian theorem to find, say, fishermen lost at sea, it came up short when Metron was asked in 2007 to find missing US adventurer Steve Fossett, who had been out flying a small airplane in a mountainous corner of California.

A year passed before a hiker just happened upon some of Fossett's belongings, some distance from where he was presumed to be. Bones found nearby were confirmed through DNA tests to be his.

Asked what the odds of locating Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, let alone the cause of its disappearance, Gurley said the technical means to accomplish the mission is at hand, as difficult as it might be.

"The technology is available to get to the ocean bottom in this part of the world and search it," he said. "But it's an incredibly challenging task—and I think it's really going to come down to time, and will." — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

New images show more than 100 objects in Indian Ocean that could be MH370 debris

PERTH/KUALA LUMPUR - New satellite images have revealed more than 100 objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing for 18 days with 239 people on board, Malaysia's acting transport minister said on Wednesday.

The latest sighting came as searchers stepped up efforts to find some trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, thought to have crashed on March 8 after flying thousands of miles off course.

"It must be emphasized that we cannot tell whether the potential objects are from MH370," Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference. "Nevertheless, this is another new lead that will help direct the search operation."

The images were captured by France-based Airbus Defence & Space on Monday and showed 122 potential objects in a 400 sq km (155 sq mile) area of ocean, Hishammuddin said. The objects varied in size from one meter to 23 meters (75 ft) in length, he said.

A dozen aircraft from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, China, Japan and South Korea were once more scouring the seas some 2,500 km (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth in the hunt for wreckage on Wednesday, after bad weather the previous day forced the suspension of the search.

"The crash zone is as close to nowhere as it's possible to be but it's closer to Australia than anywhere else," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, before leading the country's parliament in a moment's silence.

"A considerable amount of debris has been sighted in the area where the flight was last recorded. Bad weather and inaccessibility has so far prevented any of it from being recovered. But we are confident that it will be."

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak this week confirmed Flight MH370, which vanished while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

Citing satellite-data analysis by British company Inmarsat, he said there was no doubt the Boeing 777 came down in one of the most remote places on Earth—an implicit admission that everyone on board had died.

Recovery of wreckage could unlock clues about why and how the plane had diverted so far off course in one of aviation's most puzzling mysteries. Theories range from a hijacking to sabotage or a possible suicide by one of the pilots, but investigators have not ruled out technical problems.

Australia, China and France have all released satellite images over the past week showing possible debris in the same general area as the latest sighting, but no confirmed wreckage has been located.

Passenger relatives distraught

An Australian navy ship returned to the area after being driven away by gale force winds and 20-meter (66 ft) waves on Tuesday, while a Chinese icebreaker and three Chinese navy vessels were now in the search zone.

Two Chinese ships were looking for a two-meter floating object spotted earlier in the day by an aircraft, China's state news agency Xinhua reported.

The United States has sent an undersea Navy drone and a high-tech black box detector which will be fitted to an Australian Defense vessel due in Perth in the coming days.

The so-called black boxes—the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder—record what happens during flight, but time is running out to pick up locator beacons that stop about a month after a crash due to limited battery life.

Malaysia said on Tuesday that the US "Towed Pinger Locator" would not arrive in the search area until April 5, which would give it only a few days to find the black box before the beacon battery would be expected to run out.

The prolonged and so far fruitless search and investigation have taken a toll, with dozens of distraught relatives of Chinese passengers clashing with police in Beijing on Tuesday, accusing Malaysia of "delays and deception."

Malaysia's confused initial response to the plane's disappearance and a perception of poor communications have enraged many relatives of the more than 150 Chinese passengers and have strained ties between Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.

Chinese special envoy, Zhang Yesui, met Malaysia's Najib on Wednesday and called for "unremitting efforts" to find the plane, Xinhua said.

Multinational investigation

Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off and investigators believe someone on the flight may have shut off the plane's communications systems.

Partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and re-crossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.

The air crash investigation is shaping up as one of the most costly and difficult ever. Normally, an official investigation can only begin once a crash site has been identified. That would give Malaysia power to coordinate and sift evidence.

A government source told Reuters that Malaysia would lead the investigation, but hoped other countries, especially Australia, would play a major role. —Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Criminal probe underway in Malaysia plane drama

KUALA LUMPUR — The multi-nation search for a missing Malaysian airliner focused on two vast, and vastly contrasting, areas Sunday after Malaysia said it believed the aircraft was deliberately diverted, triggering a full-blown criminal investigation.

Saturday's startling revelations that the Boeing 777's communications systems had been manually switched off before the jet veered westward and flew on for hours raised more perplexing and deeply troubling questions about the fate of the plane and its 239 passengers and crew.

"Who? Why? Where?" ran the front page headline of the Malaysian government-controlled New Straits Times.

Briefing the press on Saturday, Prime Minister Najib Razak declined to use the word hijack, but said the new data suggesting a "deliberate action" by someone on board meant investigators had "refocused their investigation into crew and passengers".

For anguished relatives, the news was a double-edged sword -- holding out the slim hope that hijackers had landed the plane somewhere, while ushering in another agonizing open-ended waiting period.

Relatives of Bob and Cathy Lawton, a missing Australian couple, said they were horrified by the notion of a drawn-out hijack ordeal.

What did they put up with?

"That's one of the worst things I could have hoped for," Bob's brother David Lawton told News Limited newspapers.

"Even if they are alive, what did they have to put up with?"

He said the family was struggling to come to terms with the idea that the couple might never come home and trying not to lose hope.

"We have hopes and dreams that something might come, but at the moment we just don't know. It's all up in the air."

The scope for speculation is as broad as the new search area that stretches from Kazakhstan to the southern Indian Ocean.

Expert opinion that disabling the communications system required specialist knowledge of the Boeing 777 has intensified scrutiny of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his First Officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid.

Scott Hamilton, managing director of US-based aerospace consultancy Leeham Co, said Najib's refusal to confirm a hijacking was telling.

"It sounded to me that the pilots haven't been ruled out. He was saying don't focus only on hijackers," Hamilton said.

Malaysian media reported that investigators had gone to the homes of both pilots on Saturday, although police refused to confirm.

Friends and colleagues of both men have testified to their good character, but questions have been raised over a flight simulator Zaharie had built at home, even though aviation commentators have said this is not uncommon.

Fariq's record was queried after a woman said he had allowed her and a friend to ride in the cockpit of a separate flight.

The alternative scenario that the cockpit was taken over or the pilots coerced, opens a Pandora's Box of possibilities as to who might be involved and with what motive.

Two passengers who boarded the plane with stolen EU passports have been identified as Iranians by Interpol, who said they were most likely illegal immigrants who did not fit terrorist profiles.

The fact that most of the passengers on board the Beijing-bound flight were Chinese has raised the possibility of involvement by militants from China's Muslim ethnic Uighur minority.

Still early days

Security experts warned against jumping to conclusions on the basis of partial, flimsy evidence.

"We have to keep in mind that it's still early in the investigation, even though we're a week out from the plane taking off," said Anthony Brickhouse, a member of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators.

"We still really don't have a lot of evidence to go on. We don't have any wreckage, we don't have the plane itself, we don't have a lot of electronic data from the aircraft."

The search is now focused on two flight corridors -- a northern one stretching from northern Thailand to Kazakhstan and a southern zone from Indonesia towards the southern Indian Ocean.

The last satellite communication from the plane on March 8 came after it had been in the air almost eight hours -- around the time the airline has said it would have run out of fuel.

Several analysts favored a route along the southern corridor over the ocean, saying the northern one would have required the plane to travel undetected through numerous national air spaces in a strategically sensitive region.

"I just can't think of a scenario where this aircraft is sitting on a runway somewhere," said Brickhouse.

Hamilton said a crash in the ocean was the likeliest scenario and one that presented a daunting search and recovery challenge.

"Any floating debris will be widely dispersed and the main debris on the sea floor," he said.

More than a dozen countries have deployed over 100 vessels and aircraft to support the operation. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Radar data suggests MH370 was deliberately flown toward India

KUALA LUMPUR - Military radar-tracking evidence suggests a Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown across the Malay peninsula towards the Andaman Islands, sources familiar with the investigation told Reuters on Friday.

Two sources said an unidentified aircraft that investigators believe was Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints - indicating it was being flown by someone with aviation training - when it was last plotted on military radar off the country's northwest coast.

The last plot on the military radar's tracking suggested the plane was flying toward India's Andaman Islands, a chain of isles between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, they said.

Waypoints are geographic locations, worked out by calculating longitude and latitude, that help pilots navigate along established air corridors.

A third source familiar with the investigation said inquiries were focusing increasingly on the theory that someone who knew how to fly a plane deliberately diverted the flight, with 239 people on board, hundreds of miles off its intended course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

"What we can say is we are looking at sabotage, with hijack still on the cards," said that source, a senior Malaysian police official.

All three sources declined to be identified because they were not authorised to speak to the media and due to the sensitivity of the investigation.

Officials at Malaysia's Ministry of Transport, the official point of contact for information on the investigation, did not return calls seeking comment.

Malaysian police have previously said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.

The comments by the three sources are the first clear indication that foul play is the main focus of official suspicions in the Boeing 777's disappearance.

As a result of the new evidence, the sources said, multinational search efforts were being stepped up in the Andaman Sea and also the Indian Ocean.

LAST SIGHTING
 
In one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation, no trace of the plane nor any sign of wreckage has been found despite a search by the navies and military aircraft of more than a dozen countries.

The last sighting of the aircraft on civilian radar screens came shortly before 1:30 a.m. Malaysian time last Saturday (1730 GMT Friday), less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur, as the plane flew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand. That put the plane on Malaysia's east coast.

Malaysia's air force chief said on Wednesday an aircraft that could have been the missing plane was plotted on military radar at 2:15 a.m., 200 miles (320 km) northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia's west coast.

This position marks the limit of Malaysia's military radar in that part of the country, a fourth source familiar with the investigation told Reuters.

When asked about the range of military radar at a news conference on Thursday, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said it was "a sensitive issue" that he was not going to reveal.

"Even if it doesn't extend beyond that, we can get the cooperation of the neighbouring countries," he said.

The fact that the aircraft - if it was MH370 - had lost contact with air traffic control and was invisible to civilian radar suggested someone aboard had turned its communication systems off, the first two sources said.

They also gave new details on the direction in which the unidentified aircraft was heading - following aviation corridors identified on maps used by pilots as N571 and P628. These routes are taken by commercial planes flying from Southeast Asia to the Middle East or Europe and can be found in public documents issued by regional aviation authorities.

In a far more detailed description of the military radar plotting than has been publicly revealed, the first two sources said the last confirmed position of MH370 was at 35,000 feet about 90 miles (144 km) off the east coast of Malaysia, heading towards Vietnam, near a navigational waypoint called "Igari". The time was 1:21 a.m.

The military track suggests it then turned sharply westwards, heading towards a waypoint called "Vampi", northeast of Indonesia's Aceh province and a navigational point used for planes following route N571 to the Middle East.

From there, the plot indicates the plane flew towards a waypoint called "Gival", south of the Thai island of Phuket, and was last plotted heading northwest towards another waypoint called "Igrex", on route P628 that would take it over the Andaman Islands and which carriers use to fly towards Europe.

The time was then 2:15 a.m. That's the same time given by the air force chief on Wednesday, who gave no information on that plane's possible direction.

The sources said Malaysia was requesting raw radar data from neighbours Thailand, Indonesia and India, which has a naval base in the Andaman Islands. (Additional reporting by Christine Chan in Singapore. Writing by Alex Richardson. Editing by Dean Yates) — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Thai police doubt terror link to stolen passports on missing Malaysia Airlines plane

 BANGKOK - Thai police suspect two men travelling on stolen passports on a Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared on Saturday were not involved in terrorism but instead evidence was suggesting they could have been asylum seekers.

Interpol confirmed on Sunday that at least two passengers on the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing used passports stolen in Thailand within the last two years leading to speculation that the plane had been attacked.

Thai police and foreign police investigators have been questioning two travel agents in the resort city of Pattaya, where the tickets were bought for the two men who boarded the flight using the stolen passports.

"We haven't ruled it out but the weight of evidence we're getting swings against the idea that these men are or were involved in terrorism," Pattaya chief of police Supachai Puikaewcome told Reuters on Tuesday.

Both of the tickets, bought for the travellers by two Iranians, were for travel on from Beijing to Europe at the cheapest price, Supachai said.

"Judging by the ticket booking alone, if it was terrorism they would have specified the route and the plane they wanted to take. Instead, they asked for the most cost-effective ticket and did not specify the route or the airline."

Police were hoping to question one of the Iranians who had paid for the tickets in cash. Supachai identified him only as Hasem and said he was known to be in Pattaya.

A second Iranian, who Supachai identified as Kazem Ali, had booked the tickets by telephone with a Pattaya travel agent. Ali was believed to be in Iran.

"We're looking into all angles including the possibility that these men were involved in human smuggling as Mr. Ali had a relationship with the travel agency and had booked through them previously, very possibly for Iranian nationals," Supachai said.

Police on the Thai holiday island of Phuket said both of the passports had been stolen there. An Italian man reported his passport stolen last year while the other passport, which belonged to an Austrian man, was reported stolen in 2012, an immigration police officer said. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Radar sweeps, binoculars, six navies, but no sign of Malaysia Airlines plane

ABOARD A VIETNAM AIR FORCE AN-26 - Ships from six navies, dozens of military aircraft, sweeps with radar technology that can spot a soccer ball from hundreds of feet in the air—all have failed to find a single confirmed trace of a Malaysia Airlines plane that vanished three days ago.

For the sailors and aircrew, it has been a frustrating operation. One reported sighting of the plane's tail turned out to be a few logs tied together.

On Monday, a Vietnamese jet spotted what it believed was a yellow airline life raft floating in the sea. A helicopter scrambled to investigate pulled a moss-covered cable reel cover from the sea.

The massive search is mainly in a 50-nautical mile radius from the point of last radar contact with the plane, midway between Malaysia's east coast and the southern tip of Vietnam. It's an area of about 27,000 sq km (10,500 sq miles) that includes parts of the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea.

There was little commercial shipping in the area on Monday when a Reuters photographer boarded a Vietnamese air force Antonov-26, a Soviet-era transporter, on an aerial sweep.

The plane spent two-and-a-half hours circling a 400 sq km (155 sq mile) area at about 6,500 ft (1,980 meters), but found nothing as crew members peered down with binoculars.

"The main challenge that we face during these searches is that we have to search with bare eyes from a high altitude," said Captain Vu Duc Long of Vietnam's 918 Squadron.

"We sent out three planes this morning, two conducting the search and the other being the commanding craft. But as of right now, we haven't found anything."

No confirmed sighting of any debris or part of the plane has been reported since flight MH370 vanished from radar screens early on Saturday morning, about an hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Scores of potential sightings have been checked out.

Typically, aircraft report sightings of objects in the water, if possible with photographs, to Malaysian authorities who are coordinating the search. The nearest low-flying aircraft, helicopter or ships are sent to verify the reports.

Expanded search

Malaysia has expanded the search to its west coast after theories that the plane may have turned back toward Kuala Lumpur for some reason. A total of 34 aircraft and 40 ships from 10 nations are involved in the search.

The US 7th Fleet has sent a P-3C Orion surveillance plane from its base in Okinawa, Japan, and the USS Pinckney destroyer that is equipped with two MH-60R Seahawk helicopters for search and rescue.

The Orion was used for more than three hours on Sunday, sweeping about 4,000 sq km every hour. It is equipped with the APS-147, an advanced radar system that can identify a soccer ball bobbing in the water from hundreds of feet in the air.

The Seahawks have been used for night searches, using a forward-looking infra-red camera.

"There are lots of challenges," said Commander William Marks, a spokesman for the 7th Fleet.

"First should the central point be the point of last communication or last radar contact? Then you have to account for winds and currents. Every hour, the area gets bigger. It's been three days since the plane was reported missing, it's a very large area."

China has sent four naval ships, a coastguard vessel and a civilian ship to help. Three other Orions have also been deployed—two from Australia and one from New Zealand.

Besides militaries and high technology, many others are involved in the search.

"We've ordered border guard forces and all fishing boats to check the area," Pham Thanh Tuoi, chairman of the People's Committee of Vietnam's southern Ca Mau Province, told Reuters by phone. "Everyone is on the alert and searching out at the sea, but we haven't found anything yet." — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Vietnamese rescuers see oil slicks as they search for Malaysia plane

HO CHI MINH CITY - Vietnamese rescue planes have spotted large oil slicks and a column of smoke off its coastline, but it was not clear if they were connected to a missing Malaysia Airlines carrier, a transportation ministry official said on Saturday.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER plane carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew went missing off the Vietnamese coast early on Saturday as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and was presumed to have crashed.

"Vietnam rescue airplanes saw two oil spills and one smoke column in the area around 150 miles (250 km) west of Tho Chu island, but we can't confirm it's from that Malaysia plane," Pham Quy Tieu, vice minister of transportation, told Reuters by telephone.

"We sent two maritime boats and some military boats there to clarify, each boat with about 20 people. The oil spills are about 15km long. Those boats will be there in about three to four hours."

There were no reports of bad weather and no sign why the Malaysia Airlines plane would have vanished from radar screens about an hour after take-off.

A large number of planes and ships from several countries are scouring the area where the plane last made contact, about halfway between Malaysia and the southern tip of Vietnam. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com