The flight lost contact with air traffic control in Indonesia.
Obama was briefed on the situation while on vacation with his family in Hawaii. — Reuters
Showing posts with label Missing Plane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Missing Plane. Show all posts
Sunday
Obama briefed on missing AirAsia flight 8501
The flight lost contact with air traffic control in Indonesia.
Obama was briefed on the situation while on vacation with his family in Hawaii. — Reuters
Saturday
MH370 co-pilot made mid-flight phone call — report
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
Tuesday
Australian ship trawls for signals from missing Malaysian jet
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
Thai police doubt terror link to stolen passports on missing Malaysia Airlines plane
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
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