Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 missing!

Or, in a tinfoil hat moment, one could believe that the plane is being held somewhere for a terrorist attack, to be filled with Nigerian school girls , who have just recently converted to Islam....
 
Garyvdh said:
BOOK SUGGESTS MISSING MALAYSIAN AIRLINER ACCIDENTALLY SHOT DOWN

The first book about missing flight MH370 suggests it may have been shot down during a military exercise and the accident is being covered up, it was reported Sunday. Flight MH370 - the Mystery, written by Anglo-American author Nigel Cawthorne, cites anonymous sources to suggest that misinformation was released so the search would concentrate on the wrong area, The Sun-Herald newspaper reported. The book published by Sydney group New South cites a claim by New Zealander Mike McKay that he saw a burning plane from the oil rig he was working on in the Gulf of Thailand on March 8, the day the plane went missing. Cawthorne links the supposed sighting to joint US military exercises in the region at the time. Cawthorne writes if MH370 was accidentally shot down during live fire exercises "those involved would have every reason to keep quiet about it." He even suggests that if a flight black box is found it could be a fake planted by those involved in the coverup. But, he added, "I'm not saying that's what happened." The book goes on sale Monday. Meanwhile, the Australian navy ship Ocean Shield is waiting for repairs to be done to the submersible sonar Bluefin 21 before it can resume the search in the southern Indian Ocean. The Joint Agency Coordination Centre running the Indian Ocean search had no comment about the new book.


Source : Sapa-dpa /aw
Date : 18 May 2014 06:48
Click to expand...

LOL

I think the "it's been beamed up by a giant alien mothership" has more chance of being considered a viable supposition.
 
Ah, so the Brits and Ozzies are covering up as well? Why would they do so? Why spend millions meticulously plotting non-existent pings and searching for the plane? The book is pure opportunistic BS capitalizing on peoples' obsession with loopy conspiracy theories. It takes three femtoseconds to see that this is utter nonsense.
 
FILMS INSPIRED BY MISSING FLIGHT MH370 TOUTED AT CANNES

Two films inspired by the missing Malaysian passenger jet have emerged at the Cannes Film Festival, barely two months since it went missing with 239 people on board.

"A Dark Reflection" by Fact Not Fiction Films will be screened to potential buyers on Monday on the sidelines of the festival, according to a full page advertisement in industry trade journal The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday.

"What Happened on Flight 313?" reads the advertisement which shows a woman silhouetted at the end of a runway.

The runway lights glow behind her while overhead a passenger jet looms in the darkness, lit by two harsh white lights.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, vanished on March 8. No trace of it has been found.

Meanwhile, a half-page advertisement in the Reporter's Cannes edition on Thursday publicised another similar film.

The advertisement for "The Vanishing Act" featured a plane rising out of the clouds under the caption "The untold story of the missing Malaysian plane".

The film is being promoted by Indian film director Rupesh Paul, the man behind erotic movie "Kamasutra 3D".

In addition to being the world's biggest film festival, Cannes is also a huge film market where movies are bought and sold.

It was not known if "The Vanishing Act" is also being shown at Cannes or what stage each project has reached. Some market screenings are of part-completed films.


Source : Sapa-AFP /mjs
Date : 18 May 2014 20:38
 
MALAYSIA DEFENDS MILITARY INACTION ON MH370 RADAR

(AP Photo TOK101-0408141050)

Malaysia's defense minister on Monday defended his military's failure to scramble a fighter jet to follow a Malaysian airliner when it veered off course and vanished two months ago, saying it wasn't seen as a hostile object.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 became invisible to civilian radar when its transponder stopped transmitting during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8. But the plane was tracked by Malaysian military radar after it turned in a westerly direction across Peninsular Malaysia.

In response to criticism that fighter jets should have been scrambled to investigate the then-unidentified flight through Malaysian air space, Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told Australian Broadcasting Corp.'s "Four Corners" program broadcast Monday that the plane was deemed commercial and not hostile.

"If you're not going to shoot it down, what's the point of sending it (a fighter) up?" Hishammuddin asked.

He said had the Boeing 777 been shot down with 239 passengers and crew on board, "I'd be in a worse position, probably."

Delays in confirming the flight's change of direction led to several days of wasted searching for wreckage in the South China Sea along the airliner's original course, before an analysis of satellite data identified the southern Indian Ocean as a more likely crash site.

Hishammudin previously defended the military's inaction in pursuing the plane for identification after a preliminary report on its disappearance was released early this month.

On that occasion, he said he was informed of the military radar detection two hours later and relayed it to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who immediately ordered a search in the Strait of Malacca.

Also on "Four Corners," Asuad Khan, the brother-in-law of missing pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, rejected speculation that Zaharie was the perpetrator of a mass murder-suicide.

Asuad said media reports that his sister Faizah and her children had left Zaharie hours before the flight were false.

Separately, officials said a Chinese navy survey ship will start mapping the seabed off the west Australian coast this week as part of a new phase of the search.

Chinese, Australian and Malaysian authorities met at the west coast port city of Fremantle over the weekend and agreed that the Chinese ship Zhu Kezhen will conduct a bathymetric survey of the Indian Ocean floor as directed by Australian air crash investigators, Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Center said in a statement.

The Canberra-based center said the ship was scheduled to sail for the survey area on Wednesday, weather permitting.

After an initial air and seabed search failed to find any trace of the plane, authorities this month announced a new phase of the search would be conducted over a vastly expanded area of seabed measuring 60,000 square kilometers (23,000 square miles). The new phase also involves mapping the seabed, where depths and topography are often unknown.

Negotiations are underway to contract powerful sonar equipment to scour the seabed for wreckage that could be in water more than 7 kilometers (23,000 feet) deep.

The original search of less than 400 square kilometers (155 square miles) of ocean floor where sounds consistent with aircraft black boxes were thought to have emanated was conducted by an unmanned U.S. Navy sub, the Bluefin 21, near its 4.5-kilometer (2.8-mile) depth limit.

The Bluefin 21 continued searching an ever widening area until a communications problem was discovered last week involving the transponders on the sub and the Australian navy ship that tows it, Ocean Shield.

The center said the Ocean Shield arrived on Sunday at the Australian west coast port of Geraldton, where preparations are underway to install spare transponder parts on both the ship and sub.


Source : Sapa-AP /mm
Date : 19 May 2014 13:40
 
MALAYSIA RELEASES SATELLITE DATA ON MISSING JET

The Malaysian government on Tuesday released 45 pages of raw satellite data it used to determine the flight path of the missing jetliner, information long sought by relatives of some of the 239 people on board.

But independent experts said the communication logs didn't include key assumptions, algorithms and metadata needed to validate the investigation team's conclusions that the plane flew south and crashed in the remote Indian Ocean.

"It's a whole lot of stuff that is not very important to know," said Michael Exner, a satellite engineer who has been intensively researching the calculations. "There are probably two or three pages of important stuff, the rest is just noise. It doesn't add any value to our understanding."

Almost three months since it went missing en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, no trace of the jet has been found, an agonizing situation for family members stuck between grief and the faintest hope, no matter how unlikely, their loved ones might still be alive. The mystery disappearance also has nurtured speculation and wild conspiracy theories.

Several family members have been highly critical of the Malaysian government's response, accusing them of failing to release timely information or even concealing it. The government, which in the early days did release contradictory information about the plane's movements, insists it is being transparent in what has been an unprecedented situation.

An international investigation team led by Malaysia has concluded that the jet flew south after it was last spotted on Malaysian military radar about 90 minutes after takeoff and ended up in the southern Indian Ocean off western Australia. This conclusion is based on complex calculations derived in part from hourly transmissions between the plane and a communications satellite.

An unmanned U.S. Navy sub that has been scouring an approximately 400 square kilometer (155 square mile) patch of seabed since April was scheduled to finish its mission on Wednesday. The Bluefin 21 has been searching in an area where sounds consistent with aircraft black boxes were detected last month.

The next search phase will be conducted over a much bigger area -approximately 60,000 square kilometers (23,000 square miles) - and will involve mapping of the seabed. The area's depths and topography are largely unknown.

Officials are looking to hire powerful sonar equipment that can search for wreckage in deeper water than the Bluefin.

Angus Houston, who is heading up the search, said in early May that it would take a couple months before any new equipment would be ready to be deployed.

The technical data released Tuesday consisted of data communication logs from the satellite system operated by the U.K's Inmarsat company. The plane sent hourly transmissions to a satellite. The signals were never meant to track an aircraft's path, but investigators had nothing else to go on because the plane's other communication systems had been disabled.

Investigators determined the plane's direction by measuring the frequency of the signals sent to the satellite. By considering aircraft performance, the satellite's fixed location and other known factors, it could determine the plane's location to be north or south of the satellite.

Congregating in Internet chat rooms and blogs, many scientists, physicists and astronomers have been trying to replicate the math used, either as an intellectual exercise or out of a belief they are helping the relatives or contributing to transparency around the investigation into the missing plane.

Duncan Steel, a British scientist and astronomer, said some of the data "may" explain the belief that the aircraft went south rather than north, but that further confirmation would take a day or so. But he too was disappointed by the release of the data.

"One can see no conceivable reason that the information could not have been released nine or ten weeks ago. Even now, there are many, many lines of irrelevant information in those 47 pages," he said in an email.

Soon after takeoff, the plane disappeared from commercial radar over waters between Malaysia and Vietnam. The search was initially focused there but gradually shifted to the west of peninsular Malaysia. Authorities say they believe the plane was deliberately diverted from its flight path, but without finding the plane or its flight data recorders have been unable to say with any certainty what happened on board.


Source : Sapa-AP /kn
Date : 27 May 2014 09:39
 
MH370 RELATIVES ACCUSE MALAYSIA OF WITHHOLDING DATA

Families of passengers aboard missing flight MH370 on Wednesday accused Malaysia of withholding crucial satellite data, saying a long-awaited report is incomplete and does not prove the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean.

Authorities on Tuesday released a 47-page summary of communication logs from the Malaysia Airlines plane recorded by British satellite operator Inmarsat, information which relatives and independent experts had demanded.

No wreckage from the jet, which disappeared on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board, has been found despite a massive international search off western Australia.

Many relatives are frustrated over the lack of progress, and have little faith in the complex process used to form the theory that the plane veered off course for reasons unknown after losing contact, and then crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.

Michael Exner, a US-based satellite engineer and one of the most prominent independent experts to analyse the findings, said Malaysia had failed to provide crucial supporting details together with the Inmarsat logs.

"There is a little bit more new information that may help us. But there is just a very large body of metadata that is missing," he told AFP.

"They are not being transparent," he added. "It may not be possible to draw any conclusions. Why don't they just release all? Why do they hide so much of it?"

Exner said it would take days to properly examine even the limited technical data that had been released.

Steve Wang, a spokesman for a support group of relatives of the flight's 153 Chinese passengers, accused authorities of holding back data.

"We want a complete report releasing all the information on how the theory behind the plane's position was reached, so that we can invite experts to give their independent opinion."

"So much time has passed and nothing has been found, so we doubt that the calculated position of the plane is correct," he said.

Sarah Bajc, the girlfriend of American passenger Philip Wood and a vocal critic of the Malaysian response, said the authorities had chosen to "manage" what they released instead of handing over the original raw data.

"This report is anti-climatic. Our original request for the data was over two months ago... For it to have taken so long to release data that has still been manipulated is just ridiculous," she told AFP.

The Boeing 777's transponder, which relays an aircraft's location, and its Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting Systems (ACARS), which transmits information on a plane's mechanical health, appear to have been shut off around the time it went missing.

That forced authorities to piece together a picture of its path from other information including satellite signals, radar data and aircraft performance calculations.

The untested method has left the door open for relatives, already critical of the handling of the Malaysia-led investigation, to suggest that authorities may have got their sums wrong.

In response to the criticism, Malaysia's civil aviation chief Azharuddin Rahman said that any further queries should be directed to Inmarsat.

"There is no plan at this stage to provide any further details on the Inmarsat raw data," he told AFP.

Malaysia has insisted it is doing as much as it possibly can in what is an unprecedented situation.

However, the coalition that has been in power for 57 years has a history of using its entrenched position of power to cover up scandals -- a backdrop that has fuelled the scepticism and conspiracy theories.

Relying in part on the Inmarsat data, officials believe the jet inexplicably veered off its flight path before crashing into the sea, possibly after running out of fuel.

The sketchy data was extrapolated using the Doppler effect -- the change in frequency of waves from a moving object -- to decipher the final flight path.

One phase of the search -- using a mini-submarine to scour the ocean depths -- is set to end this week. The next phase will involve using sophisticated equipment to scan the unmapped ocean bed.

Australia, which is leading the hunt in the Indian Ocean, has committed up to US$84 million towards the search operation over two years.


Source : Sapa-AFP /aw
Date : 28 May 2014 10:18
 
New image of seafloor zone where Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 might lie:

Description and images at Earthsky and their source, the American Geophysical Union.

A new illustration of the seafloor, created by two of the world’s leading ocean floor mapping experts, details underwater terrain where the missing Malaysia Airlines flight might be located.
sea-floor-big-e1401207763554.jpg
"Seafloor topography in the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 search area. Dashed lines approximate the search zone for sonar pings emitted by the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder popularly called black boxes. The first sonar contact (black circle) was reportedly made by a Chinese vessel on the east flank of Batavia Plateau (B), where the shallowest point in the area (S) is at an estimated depth of 1637 meters. The next reported sonar contact (red circle) was made by an Australian vessel on the north flank of Zenith Plateau (Z). The inset in the top left shows the area’s location to the west of Australia. Image credit: Walter H.F. Smith and Karen M. Marks"
Click to expand...
 
MH370 SEARCH ON RIGHT TRACK: AUSTRALIAN TRANSPORT CHIEF

The head of Australia's transport safety bureau has defended the fruitless hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, saying he is confident that search teams are targeting the right area.

Satellite analysis in the days after the Boeing 777 went missing on March 8 with 239 people onboard placed the jet somewhere in a huge tract of the Indian Ocean stretching from near Indonesia south towards Antarctica.

But in a setback, the area believed to be the jet's most likely resting place based on the detection of acoustic "pings" was Thursday ruled out after an extensive underwater search.

Australia's Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan told AFP the source of the acoustic transmissions, thought to be man-made, was still a mystery.

"To be frank, we don't know. We like to be the experts but sometimes we just don't know the answer," he said, refusing to speculate on whether they came from the Australian vessel hunting for signals from the aircraft's black boxes.

Dolan, whose organisation is playing a key role in the search effort, said the four signals detected in April were then the best lead in the hunt for the plane, which mysteriously diverted from its Kuala Lumpur to Beijing route.

"This was the best area to look at the time. We still don't have anything that confirms that it's the wrong place. But we will do our analysis and we will determine the best search area for the next phase."

Dolan said while experts were reassessing the satellite data that led the search to the southern Indian Ocean, the linear arc produced by analysis of this information still likely represented the plane's flight path.

"That arc is definite. We know that somewhere close to that very long arc is where the aircraft will be found," he said in an interview late Thursday.

The arc was produced by analysing satellite signalling messages, also referred to as "handshakes", between the ground station, the satellite and the aircraft's satellite communication system.

Dolan said experts believed the aircraft would be found near the area representing the last of these signals, thought to be have been sent when the plane ran out of fuel.

"The thing that we're absolutely confident of is somewhere on that long arc we will find the aircraft," he said.

"But because it's so long we have to be able to find a much smaller segment of the arc to concentrate our search and that's what our analysis is looking at defining.

"So we are reanalysing all the satellite data and aircraft performance information and everything else to define an area of up to 60,000 square kilometres, which is the most likely one for the location of the aircraft."

The next phase will focus on using the satellite data to confirm a search area, completing mapping of the sea floor and getting towable sonar and other equipment to carry out an intensive deep water search, which could take up to a year.

Dolan voiced confidence that investigators had been given all the information available, but said he could understand the anger of relatives still looking for answers almost three months after the plane went missing.

"We're conscious that people don't have a particular confidence in the analysis," he said. "We have a much higher confidence. But we are nevertheless doing a cross check to verify it."

Dolan said the search was considered unique because there was so little information to go on, likening it to a worst-case scenario for aviation safety authorities.

"In an organisation like mine you work out what's the worst thing that will ever happen and hope that it never does," he said.

"And Australia has been very good at managing the safety of aviation, but our worst case scenario is a widebody passenger aircraft in mid-ocean.

"We've actually got plans to deal with this sort of thing, we just hoped we would never have to use those plans for real."


Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 30 May 2014 07:59
 
Nice to see a frank admission that not everything is known or understood at this stage. Gives one more confidence that they're doing this right. And it slays the loopy conspiracy theories.
 
AUSTRALIA PROBES POSSIBLE MH370 WITNESS ACCOUNT

Australia was Wednesday investigating an account from a sailor who said she may have seen Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on fire, as officials said the hunt for the plane could dive much deeper.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading the search at the request of the Malaysian government, is looking at the claim from a British yachtswoman made this week.

"The ATSB received... a message from a member of the public, reporting that they had seen what they believed to be a burning aircraft in the sky above the Indian Ocean on the night of the disappearance of MH370," a spokesman told AFP in an email.

"That information has been forwarded to the ATSB's MH370 Search Strategy Working Group for review."

Flight MH370, which was en route from Kuala Lumpur to the Chinese capital Beijing when it inexplicably diverted, is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

An extensive search for the plane, which vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board, has so far found nothing, including an intensive underwater hunt with a mini-sub that could dive to 4,500 metres.

The ATSB on Wednesday released a request for tenders for a company to dive even deeper, to depths of up to 6,000 metres (19,800 feet).

It said the successful bidder would be engaged as a prime contractor and provide the expertise, equipment and vessels needed to carry out the search for the Boeing 777 from August.

"The successful tenderer will use the data from a bathymetric survey (already under way) to navigate the search zone, which has water depth between 1,000 and 6,000 metres," it said.

An international team is now determining a search zone of up to 60,000 square kilometres (24,000 square miles) based on where the aircraft last communicated with an Inmarsat satellite.

British yachtswoman Katherine Tee added to speculation about the location of a possible crash site by revealing she saw a glowing plane over the Indian Ocean in March.

The 41-year-old said she told Australian authorities of her sighting of a plane with "what appeared to be a tail of black smoke coming from behind it" while she travelled from Kochi in India to Phuket in Thailand.

"There were two other planes passing higher than it -- moving the other way -- at that time," she wrote on sailing site Cruisers Forum, a firm for which she also works.

"I recall thinking that if it was a plane on fire that I was seeing, the other aircraft would report it."

She said she told no one at the time because she and her husband, who was onboard but asleep, had been having difficulties and had not spoken for about a week.

"And most of all, I wasn't sure of what I saw," she said. "I couldn't believe it myself."

But after confirming her yacht's position using GPS data in recent days, she said she knew she was in the "right place at the right time" and told authorities.

MH370's last known position, as tracked by military radar, was roughly west of Phuket, although the search area has focused on a zone hundreds of kilometres (miles) further south.


Source : Sapa-AFP /kd
Date : 04 Jun 2014 08:29
 
Sailor's MH370 'sighting' probed

Australia was yesterday investigating claims by a sailor that she might have seen Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on fire in the sky.


The 41-year-old said she had told Australian authorities of her sighting of a plane with "what appeared to be a trail of black smoke from behind it" while she was sailing from Kochi, in India, to Phuket, in Thailand.

"There were two other planes passing higher than it - moving the other way," she said. "I recall thinking that if it was a plane on fire the other aircraft would report it."

She said she told no one at the time because she and her husband, who was aboard but asleep, had become estranged and had not spoken for about a week.

The report adds to speculation about the location of the crash site of the plane, which disappeared on route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March.
Click to expand...
:eek:
Link.
 
MALAYSIA, AUSTRALIA TO SHARE COST OF MH370 SEARCH

Malaysia and Australia will share the cost of the next phase of the search for a Malaysian Airlines plane that went missing more than three months ago, a senior official said Monday. "Costs will be shared 50-50 between Malaysia and Australia," deputy defence minister Abdul Rahim Bakri said, adding that there were no figures yet for how much they would have to spend. The Australia Transport Safety Board last week issued a tender to continue the deep-water search for the Beijing-bound MH370 that disappeared on March 8 and is suspected to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. Malaysia Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that Malaysia had spent 27.6 million ringgit (8.6 million dollars) in fuel and food for equipment and personnel in the search. "The cost that we had to bear is relatively small compared to the other assets given by other countries used in the search," he said in a press briefing. Malaysian officials were to go to Canberra on Tuesday to discuss the next phase of the search.


Source : Sapa-dpa /mr
Date : 09 Jun 2014 12:27
 
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