MALAYSIAN Airlines flight en route to China is missing.

[PrivateEyes]

Flight MH370 search ships detect more pulse signals from depths of Indian Ocean

Search co-ordinator urges caution over three pulse signals from the potential crash zone

PUBLISHED : Monday, 07 April, 2014, 4:43am
UPDATED : Monday, 07 April, 2014, 9:09am

Associated Press in Perth

An updated handout picture shows the Chinese Maritime Safety Administration (MSA) ship Haixun 01 has reportedly detected a pulse signal in the Indian Ocean and could be from the black box of flight MH370. Photo: EPA

Three separate but fleeting sounds from deep in the Indian Ocean offered new hope yesterday in the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, as officials rushed to determine whether they were signals from the plane's black boxes before their beacons fall silent.

The head of the multinational search being conducted off Australia's west coast confirmed that a Chinese ship had picked up electronic pulse signals twice in a small patch of the search zone, once on Friday and again on Saturday.

Yesterday an Australian ship carrying sophisticated deep-sea sound equipment picked up a third signal in a different part of the massive search area.

Angus Houston

"This is an important and encouraging lead, but one which I urge you to treat carefully," said Angus Houston, who is co-ordinating the search.

He stressed that the signals had not been verified as being linked to flight 370, which was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board.

"We have an acoustic event. The job now is to determine the significance of that event," Houston said, referring to each of the three transmissions. "There are lots of noises in the ocean, and sometimes the acoustic equipment can rebound, echo if you like."

The British navy ship HMS Echo was moving to the area where the signals were picked up by the Chinese patrol vessel Haixun 01 and would probably get there early today, Houston said.

The Australian navy's Ocean Shield would also head there, but would first investigate the sound it picked up, he said.

Speculation regarding the plane's flight path also grew after a report claimed the aircraft flew around Indonesian airspace after vanishing from Malaysian military radar.

The Boeing 777 jet might have intentionally taken a route designed to avoid radar detection, CNN quoted an unnamed senior Malaysian official as saying.

Two-thirds of the passengers aboard the missing plane were Chinese, and a group of relatives has been in Kuala Lumpur to follow the investigation.

As some families were leaving yesterday, they issued a letter requesting that the international rescue bodies that found a missing Air France jet in 2009 join the current search operation.

Additional reporting by Teddy Ng

 

[PrivateEyes]

Task force on flight tracking to report by December, IATA chief says

Task force to examine options following disappearance of flight MH370

PUBLISHED : Monday, 07 April, 2014, 4:43am
UPDATED : Monday, 07 April, 2014, 8:15am

Tiffany Ap [email protected]

Tony Tyler

An aviation task force set up to address concerns over flight tracking after the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines plane will prepare a report for the public by December, says the head of the global airline association.

Tony Tyler, director general of the International Air Transport Association, stressed that although the committee would explore live data streaming on planes, it would need to "keep the problem in proportion" and costs might be a limiting factor.

"I want to get an answer by December. I think it's quite urgent," said the former chief executive of Cathay Pacific. "I'd like to see a report from the task force with a recommendation, I hope, with what we should be doing about tracking planes."

Task-force members will include but are not limited to the International Civil Aviation Organisation, aircraft manufacturers, equipment makers, satellite service providers, air-traffic managers and rescue teams.

The airline industry and the Malaysian government have faced heavy criticism over the handling of the flight MH370 incident as victims' families still search for answers almost a month after the plane vanished. However, Tyler discouraged rushing to premature solutions.

"Now is the time to think very carefully and bring the experts together," he said.

Although it was too early to estimate how much better tracking measures would cost, Tyler said live data streaming via satellites might be cost-prohibitive.

"We need to keep the problem in proportion. It is the first and only time it's happened, but we must make sure it can't happen again … Everybody has to consider the technical aspects and of course what it will cost … sending large quantities of data via satellite networks is expensive.

"It hasn't been seen as necessary and even now I think we need to establish whether it is necessary. I'm not saying it is. I think we need to take a good look at that question," he said.

Most planes download information at certain moments such as take-off, climbing and then cruising. Once a plane hits cruise height, data is typically released only every 30 minutes.

"The data ... is contained on the aircraft," Tyler said. "The idea behind data streaming is that even if you can't find the aircraft, you would still have the data. That's the issue."

He also questioned why governments were not utilising the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS), a flaw that was highlighted by two MH370 passengers using fake passports to board the plane.

Sixty governments around the world, including the United States and Britain but not Malaysia, require that airlines provide passenger-screening data ahead of time, costing the industry nearly €8 billion (HK$85 billion) a year. But even some of those 60 governments who require the information are not properly checking APIS.

"It's quite clear now that many countries do not use it," Tyler said. "My question is, if you're not using it, why do you need it? What should be happening is airlines should be providing this data to governments and they should use it to check against the Interpol database."

 

[GoldenPeriod]

bullshit lah. Can't even find one piece of debris how to find the black box.

 

[eatshitndie]

news conference with head of joint search task force to start in minutes. important updates.

 

[eatshitndie]

encouraging info. detected signals underwater consistent with black boxes from aircraft. both pings from flight data recorder and flight voice recorder were detected.

towed pinger from u.s. hears 2+ hours of signal. prc ship haixun 01 at southernmost part of search area while aussie ship ocean shield is at northernmost part of search box. u.s. towed pinger is with ocean shield.

 

[po2wq]

MH370: Is it the pinger? 4 reasons to believe; 6 reasons to doubt

After weeks of fruitless searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, it sounds like a promising sign.

When a Chinese patrol ship picked up two pulses in the southern Indian Ocean, the head of the Australian agency coordinating search efforts called it "an important and encouraging lead."

Investigators hope the audio signals are locator beacons from the plane's data recorders, but they're not sure yet.

Is it the discovery we've all been waiting for? Could those be Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's pingers?

Here are four reasons to believe and six reasons to doubt:

REASONS TO BELIEVE

1) The frequency doesn't occur in nature.

The Chinese Haixun 01 patrol ship detected pulses at a frequency of 37.5 kHz, the Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency reported. That's the same frequency of black box pingers -- and that frequency is no accident. The pingers were designed to have that frequency because it does not occur in nature.

2) There were two separate events.

The Haixun 01 reported two pulses within 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) of each other. Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agency Coordination Center, described them as "fleeting, fleeting acoustic events." One was described as being 90 seconds long; no time was given for the other, but it was evidently shorter.

"I think the fact that we have had two detections, two acoustic events, in that location provides some promise which requires a full investigation of the location," Houston said.

3) You usually know a ping when you hear one.

The pings are, under ideal conditions, easily recognizable. They "ping" like a metronome — with a steady pulse about once a second.

4) They're in the right spot.

According to the latest analysis of Inmarsat satellite data and aircraft performance, the Haixun 01 is in the right spot. In fact, search supervisors, citing the new analysis, are moving the focus of the search to an area that includes the location of the Haixun 01.

"The area of highest probability, we think is now probably in the southern part of the area, pretty close to where Haixun 01 is operating," Houston said.

Pulse signals raise new questions

REASONS TO DOUBT

1) The ocean is noisy.

In addition to the Haixun 01's two "acoustic events," ships detected two other events in a very short time, showing exactly how noisy the ocean is.

The British ship HMS Echo recorded one event that was determined to be unfounded. The Ocean Shield, an Australian naval vessel equipped with sophisticated listening equipment, has also detected "an acoustic noise" in another area of the ocean to the north. According to a CNN calculation, the Australian ship was about 350 miles (565 kilometers) away from the spot where the Chinese ship detected the pulses. It's also unclear whether the sound the Australian ship detected was related to Flight 370.

The search team is urging patience and restraint.

2) Only one pulse was detected at a time.

The Haixun 01 detected only one pulse at a time. Assuming both black box pingers are working, are close together, and are unobstructed by debris or terrain — and those are, admittedly, big assumptions — they should have heard two pingers, perhaps like a metronome with an echo.

3) These aren't ideal conditions.

While pingers are easily identifiable under ideal conditions, the current conditions are far from perfect. Video of the searchers show them listening to the hydrophone with earbuds, not headsets that would block out ambient noise.

So the steady "pings" -- which actually sound like the snap of fingers -- could be confused with or overwhelmed by other noise, such as the waves lapping against the boat.

The Chinese said they did not have time to record the pulses, precluding a scientific analysis of the sounds.

4) A spare pinger on the boat might have sent the signal.

In video of the Haixun 01, it appears the Chinese had a spare pinger in the boat.

Anish Patel, president of pinger manufacturer Dukane Seacom, says it is not recommended to have a pinger near the area where you are trying to listen.

If that pinger gets wet, it will start transmitting, potentially confusing search teams.

"I wouldn't put one where I'm measuring," Patel said. "It's just not good common practice."

5) The equipment was designed for shallow water.

The hydrophone the Chinese used to detect the pulse is "designed for shallow water applications," not for the deep water, said Thomas Altshuler of Teledyne Marine Systems, manufacturer of the hydrophone.

"They are using it in a scenario outside of our normal operation," he said.

Is it possible that it heard a ping from the depths of the Indian Ocean?

"It is possible, but it would be right at the edge of that detection (capability)," he said.

6) The underwater search of a vast area started only recently.

The search area is so large, and the underwater search has just begun. It almost defies belief that the pingers could be found so soon. But then again, almost everything about this case defies belief.

THE BOTTOM LINE

We'll give the final word to Angus Houston.

"This is an important encouraging lead, but one which I urge you to continue to treat carefully," he told reporters. "We are working in a very big ocean and within a very large search area, and so far, since the aircraft went missing, we have had very few leads which allow us to narrow the search area."

... ... ...

 

[PrivateEyes]

Australia says new 'pings' best lead yet in Malaysia jet search

By Jane Wardell and Swati Pandey
SYDNEY/PERTH, Australia Mon Apr 7, 2014 6:32am EDT

Crew aboard the Australian Navy ship HMAS Success watch as a helicopter participates in a Replenishment at Sea evolution with the Royal Malaysian Navy ship KD LEKIU in the southern Indian Ocean during the continuing search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in this picture released by the Australian Defence Force April 7, 2014. REUTERS-Australian Defence Force-Handout via Reuters

(Reuters) - An Australian ship searching for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner has picked up signals consistent with the beacons from aircraft black box recorders, in what search officials said on Monday was the most promising lead yet in the month-long hunt.

The U.S. Navy "towed pinger locator" connected to the Australian ship Ocean Shield picked up the signals in an area some 1,680 km (1,040 miles) northwest of Perth, which analysis of sporadic satellite data has determined as the most likely place Boeing 777 went down.

"I'm much more optimistic than I was a week ago," Angus Houston, head of the Australian agency coordinating the search, told a news conference in Perth in western Australia, while cautioning that wreckage needed to be found for a confirmation.

"We are now in a very well defined search area, which hopefully will eventually yield the information that we need to say that MH370 might have entered the water just here."

If the signals can be narrowed further, an autonomous underwater vehicle called a Bluefin 21, will be sent to find wreckage on the sea floor to verify the signals, said Houston, who noted that the potential search area was 4.5 km (2.8 miles) deep, the same as the Bluefin range.

The black boxes record cockpit data and may provide answers about what happened to the Malaysia Airlines plane, which was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when it vanished off radar on March 8 and flew thousands of kilometres 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.

Malaysia's acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur he was "cautiously hopeful" that the signals picked up would lead to a positive finding soon.

"I am more optimistic than some of the leads we have had. This is something much more positive than others," he said.

The first "ping" signal detection was held for more than two hours before the Ocean Shield lost contact, but the ship was able to pick up a signal again for about 13 minutes, Houston said.

"On this occasion two distinct pinger returns were audible. Significantly, this would be consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder," he said.

AT EDGE OF SEARCH CAPABILITY

The black boxes, thought be to lying on the ocean floor, are equipped with locator beacons that send pings but the beacons' batteries are thought to be running out of charge by now, a month after Flight MH370 disappeared.

"We are right on the edge of capability and we might be limited on capability if the aircraft ended up in deeper water. In very deep oceanic water, nothing happens fast," said Houston.

"This is not the end of the search. We still have got difficult, painstaking work to do to confirm that this is indeed where the aircraft entered the water."

Alec Duncan, expert in underwater acoustics at Curtin University's Centre for Marine Science and Technology said the lead was promising but impossible to verify without confirmed wreckage from the aircraft.

"It's a difficult business, operating underwater and trying to detect anything in the sort of water depth that this search involves and it's impossible to be 100 percent sure of anything until the wreckage is actually on the deck of the ship," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

A second search area was being maintained in waters where a Chinese vessel had also picked up "ping" signals at the weekend in an area more than 300 nautical miles from the latest signals.

Chinese patrol ship Haixun 01 reported receiving a pulse signal with a frequency of 37.5 kHz, consistent with the signal emitted by flight recorders, on Friday and again on Saturday.

Houston said the Chinese and Australian discoveries of pings were consistent with work done on analysing radar and satellite data but the Ocean Shield's leads were now the most promising.

Houston on Sunday said he was comfortable with the level of cooperation between search countries, following criticism that Australia only became aware of the Chinese find at the same time as the Xinhua state news agency filed a story from a reporter on board the Haixun.

"I'm very satisfied with the consultation, the coordination that we are building with our Chinese friends," Houston said.

However, he added that language was sometimes an issue and he had arranged for a Chinese liaison officer to join the Australian-led coordination center.

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

(Additional reporting by Lincoln Feast in Sydney and Anuradha Raghu in Kuala Lumpur; Editing by Michael Perry and Robert Birsel)

 

[eatshitndie]

western media dismisses haixun's pings as "not serious" because tiongs cannot be trusted and endorses ocean shield's pings as "credible" because western technology and methodology are more trustworthy. they can't believe tiongs just literally stick the audio sensor near the water surface and not follow the sophisticated towing approach of the tow pinger.

seems like ang mo is still da bestest!

 

[eatshitndie]

news conference just started. aussie minister says they will follow yesterday's leads by ocean shield and put their focus there. as for tiong's leads the day before, they can go fishing. :p

head of search task force announces ocean shield today has not re-detected signal so far after towing the tow pinger for some time now since early morning. hope they don't lose the signal.

 

[PrivateEyes]

Australian ship trawls for signals from missing Malaysia plane

By Jane Wardell and Swati Pandey
SYDNEY/PERTH, Australia Tue Apr 8, 2014 1:53am EDT

(Reuters) - 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 U.S. 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 it's 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 analyzed 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," Defence 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 center reporting good weather in the search area.

(Additional reporting by Lincoln Feast in Sydney and Anuradha Raghu in Kuala Lumpur; Editing by Dean Yates and Michael Perry)

 

[PrivateEyes]

New ping signals spark confidence in Malaysia Airlines search

By Matt Siegel and Swati Pandey
SYDNEY/PERTH, Australia Wed Apr 9, 2014 2:35am EDT

Makio Miyagawa (R), Japanese ambassador to Malaysia, Hideki Jufuku (2nd R), commander of Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force and Royal Malaysian Air Force members wave to Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force P3C crew departing to Pearce Airbase, to continue search operations of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, at Subang Airbase near Kuala Lumpur April 9, 2014. REUTERS-Samsul Said

(Reuters) - Australian officials said on Wednesday that two new "ping" signals had been detected in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, boosting confidence after more than a month of fruitless searching for the missing jetliner.

The signals, which could be from the plane's black box recorders, bring to four the number of overall "pings" detected in recent days within the search area by a U.S. Navy "Towed Pinger Locator"(TPL).

Angus Houston, head of the Australian agency coordinating the search, struck an optimistic tone when announcing the information, but urged caution as the task of searching the remote Indian Ocean region remained enormous.

"I believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify aircraft wreckage before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH370," Houston told reporters in Perth.

"I'm now optimistic that we will find the aircraft, or what is left of the aircraft, in the not too distant future."

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.

But the batteries in the beacons have already reached the end of their 30-day expected life, making efforts to swiftly locate them all the more critical.

Authorities say evidence suggests the plane was deliberately diverted by someone familiar with the aircraft, but have not ruled out mechanical problems.

Analysis of satellite data led investigators to conclude the Boeing 777 came down in a remote area of the Indian Ocean, some 2,261 kms (1,405 miles) northwest of the Australian city of Perth.

FRESH PINGS BUT IN A LARGE AREA

Up to 11 military aircraft, four civilian aircraft and 14 ships were planned to carry on Wednesday with a massive search that has, so far, yielded frustratingly little concrete information.

On the weekend, the sophisticated U.S. Navy TPL picked up what officials said were two signals consistent with black box locator beacons - the first for more than two hours and the second for about 13 minutes.

On Wednesday, Houston said that another ping was detected on Tuesday afternoon and lasted five minutes, 25 seconds, while a second was picked up on Tuesday night and lasted seven minutes. That brings to four the number of pings found in the area.

But two U.S. Navy officers told Reuters on Wednesday that while the pings had been found within a 1,300 square kilometer area, they were not confident that they represented reoccurrences of the same signal.

"I'd say they are separate acoustic events," said U.S. Navy Captain Mark Matthews, citing the fact that the pings are not close together.

"There has been variability in the geographic position which leads me to be less optimistic than I would be if I could consistently reacquire the signal so that I have a nice, small geographic area to focus the autonomous under water vehicle search on," he added.

An autonomous underwater vehicle named Bluefin-21 is onboard the Ocean Shield and could be sent to look for wreckage on the sea floor once intelligence narrows the search area.

The potential search area is currently about 4.5 km (2.8 miles) deep, the outer reach of the Bluefin's range.

A RACE AGAINST TIME

Although the batteries in the black box recorders are thought to have a lifespan of roughly 30 days, officials have said they can last for as long as two weeks beyond that time.

That meant the search was becoming even more of a race against time than it has been up to now, said Houston.

"I mean, we are looking at this stage for transmissions that are probably weaker than they would have been early on because the batteries of both devices are passed their use-by date and they will very shortly fail," he said.

Despite the new signals being detected, Houston insisted that search teams should exhaust the capability of planes and vessels before deploying underwater vehicles.

"Bear in mind, that the time spent on the surface we're covering six times more area and any given time than we'll be able to do when we go underwater," Houston said.

"So with the batteries likely to fade or fail very shortly, we need to get as much positional data as we can so that we can define a very small search area."

(Reporting by Matt Siegel in SYDNEY, Swati Pandey in PERTH; Editing by Michael Perry)

 

[steffychun]

news conference just started. aussie minister says they will follow yesterday's leads by ocean shield and put their focus there. as for tiong's leads the day before, they can go fishing. :p

head of search task force announces ocean shield today has not re-detected signal so far after towing the tow pinger for some time now since early morning. hope they don't lose the signal.

HMS Tireless is in a key position to re-locate the "pings"

 

[steffychun]

Cost of the search.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26927822

8 April 2014 Last updated at 12:52 Share this pageEmail
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ShareFacebookTwitter.Missing Malaysian plane: How much will MH370 search cost? HMS Echo carries sophisticated underwater detection equipment
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Recovery hope boost
What we know
Checking pulses

In the month since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, search and rescue teams have patrolled areas of the southern Indian ocean, thousands of kilometres apart.

Planes, ships and submarines have all been deployed.

China, Australia, Malaysia, the US, the UK New Zealand, Japan and South Korea have all contributed to the search. So how much is it costing, and who pays?

Malaysia has refused to be drawn. Acting Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein told reporters that the cost of mounting the search was "immaterial" when set against the need to bring solace to the families of the missing.

But mounting a search operation on this scale, and for this length of time, does not come cheap. The bill so far probably runs to £20-25m ($33-42m), estimates Peter Roberts, senior research fellow in sea power and maritime studies at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

This includes the cost of fuel, spare parts, and transporting supplies, as well as the relocation of staff - even costs such as cancelled leave can push up the final bill.

China is one of more than 20 countries contributing to the search for the missing Malaysian plane
'Sense of brotherhood'

Most of the financial burden will be borne by the countries who have contributed their forces.

For example, Australia deployed a navy replenishment vessel, HMAS Success, two weeks ago. It costs AU$550,000 a day to operate, says the Department of Defence, so that comes to $7.7m ($7.2m; £4.3m) already.

And that is just a single ship. HMAS Toowoomba, which has also been involved, costs AU$380,000.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
Saving life at sea is the right thing to do”
End Quote
Peter Roberts

Senior research fellow, Rusi

The US Department of Defense set aside $4m to help the search: between 8 and 24 March, it spent $3.2m, a spokesman told reporters in Washington.

The UK has sent a survey ship, HMS Echo, which is equipped with sensitive underwater detection equipment. The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is not yet putting a price tag on the British role.

"The operation to locate flight MH370 is ongoing as is the work to fully identify the costs," the MoD told the BBC in a statement.

In the end, the cost of sending HMS Echo to the waters off Australia will be met from Treasury contingency funds, says Mr Roberts. Governments will take the costs within their budget "and accept they have to do it".

The ship will stay there as long as it has a role to play, he says: "Mariners have got a very strong sense of brotherhood: saving life at sea is the right thing to do."

Once the search is completed, attention is likely to turn to improving the tracking technology.

"It is hard for anyone to imagine that we can't continuously track aircraft anywhere in the world," says Mr Roberts.

There, the most expensive part of the process will not be the development or fitting of any technology, but the cost of getting it accepted and standardised by aviation regulators around the world.

The most expensive salvage operation in aviation history came after an Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed in the Atlantic in 2009.

After multiple searches over three years, the final bill came to 32m euros (£26m; $44m).

For now, Australia has joined Malaysia in downplaying the cost factor: Prime Minister Tony Abbott has vowed to ''spend what we need to spend to get this job done."

He has called it "an act of international citizenship on Australia's part,'' but added: ''At some point there might need to be a reckoning''.

 

[PrivateEyes]

Unmanned submarine put on hold as MH370 search officials continue to hunt for 'pings'

The Bluefin 21 miniature submarine will use sonar to create images of the seabed in an effort to locate debris

PUBLISHED : Monday, 07 April, 2014, 4:18pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 08 April, 2014, 4:49pm

Agencies in Perth

The Bluefin 21 is hoisted back on board the Australian Defense Vessel Ocean Shield. Photo: AFP

An unmanned submarine that the Australian government said would be launched today to help search for missing flight MH370 will not be deployed until the search area has been further narrowed down, officials said today.

Angus Houston, head of the Australian agency coordinating the search, said the Bluefin 21 would only be put in the water when search teams had picked up more signals.

Able Seaman Clearance Divers Matthew Johnston (right) and Michael Arnold embarked on Australian Defence Vessel Ocean shield to scan the water for debris of the missing flight near Perth, Australia. Photo: EPA

"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."

Australia's Acting prime Minister Warren Truss said earlier that the submarine would be put in the water close to where possible black box 'pings' were detected.

The three search areas in the Indian Ocean, west of Australia, where 12 planes and 14 ships are searching for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. Photo: AMSA/EPA

Once launched from the Australian navy's Ocean Shield ship, it will use sonar to create images of the seabed in an effort to locate any debris from the flight, which went missing a month ago today.

If any potential wreckage is discovered the sub will be fitted with a camera and sent back to photograph the scene.

Crews have so far had no luck in relocating the signals that were picked up at the weekend, Truss said.

"Today is another critical day as we try and reconnect with the signals that perhaps have been emanating from the black box flight recorder of the MH370," he said.

"The connections two days ago were obviously a time of great hope that there had been a significant breakthrough and it was disappointing that we were unable to repeat that experience yesterday."

Australian former Defence Chief Angus Houston has revealed an Australian navy ship has detected new underwater signals consistent with aircraft black boxes. Photo: EPA

“Everyone’s anxious about the life of the batteries on the black box flight recorders. Sometimes they go on for many, many weeks longer than they’re mandated to operate for — we hope that’ll be the case in this instance. But clearly there is an aura of urgency about the investigation.”

Finding the plane's two black boxes is crucial in unravelling what happened to the Malaysia Airlines jet after it vanished from radar screens on March 8.

The Ocean Shield, using a "towed pinger locator" detected underwater "signals" consistent with black box transmissions for more than two hours on Sunday, officials revealed yesterday.

Former Australian defence force chief Angus Houston, who is leading the Perth-based hunt, said the signals in the Indian Ocean suggested ships and planes were searching "very close to where we need to be".

But search teams are locked in a race against time, with batteries in the plane's two flight data recorders powerful enough to emit pings for only about a month.

Houston said the navy's Ocean Shield first detected the signal late on Saturday night, holding it for two hours and 20 minutes before it was lost.

After making a turn, it again detected a pulse, receiving it for 13 minutes. "On this occasion, two distinct pinger returns were audible," he said.

"Significantly, this would be consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder."

US Navy Captain Mark Matthews talks to reporters. Photo: EPA

Warning that it could take days to confirm whether they were black box signals, he added: "Clearly this is a most promising lead, and probably in the search so far, it's … the best information that we have had.

"We've got a visual indication on a screen and we've also got an audible signal - and the audible signal sounds to me just like an emergency locator beacon."

Malaysia's acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said last night: "We are cautiously hopeful there will be a positive development in the next few days, if not hours."

The airliner's black boxes normally emit a frequency of 37.5 kilohertz, while both signals picked up by the Australian ship were 33.3 kilohertz, said US Navy Captain Mark Matthews.

However, officials contacted the manufacturer of the flight recorders and were told the frequency could drift near the end of their shelf lives.

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Malaysian Defence Minister and acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein (left) and Malaysia's Department Civil Aviation Director General Azharuddin Abdul Rahman listen to a question from journalist during a media conference in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: EPA

News of the Australian discovery came as the British ship HMS Echo spent yesterday scouring the seas following reports that the crew of the Chinese Haixun 01 had detected brief signals using a device dangled over the side of the vessel, 555 kilometres away.

Twelve planes and 14 ships were yesterday searching three designated zones, one of which overlaps with the Ocean Shield's underwater search.

Last night the head of Malaysia Airlines, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, again refused to be drawn on whether he would resign. He said: "I have work to do here."

Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse

 

[PrivateEyes]

More pings raise hopes that plane wreckage will be found soon

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 09 April, 2014, 9:06am
UPDATED : Thursday, 10 April, 2014, 3:34am

Agencies in Perth

Australian seamen scour the ocean for debris. Photo: AFPTwo more underwater signals had been detected in the hunt for flight MH370, officials said yesterday, raising hopes that wreckage of the plane would be found within days.

The "pings" were picked up during a sweep of the Indian Ocean on Tuesday by the Australian naval vessel Ocean Shield.

Angus Houston, who is leading the search operation, said sounds detected in the same area last week had been analysed and were "consistent with the specification and description of a flight data recorder".

"[The analysts] therefore assess that the transmission was not of natural origin and was likely sourced from specific electronic equipment," he said.

"I'm now optimistic that we will find the aircraft or what is left of the aircraft in the not too distant future, but we haven't found it yet because this is a very challenging business."

Despite the two new detections, Houston acknowledged that search crews were running out of time in the hunt for the Malaysia Airlines aircraft's two black boxes, as batteries powering transmissions run down.

Signals picked up at the weekend were held for more than two hours, while the latest sounds lasted for just five-and-a-half minutes and seven minutes.

Once the beacons fall silent, locating the flight recorders, thought to be in water some 4.5 kilometres deep, would be an immensely difficult, if not impossible, task.

"We need to, as we say in Australia, 'make hay while the sun shines'," Houston said. "I believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify the aircraft before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH370."

No other ships are allowed near the Ocean Shield while it pulls along the "towed pinger locator" because its work must be done in an environment as free of noise as possible.

A modified Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion has been parachuting sonar buoys into the vicinity. The buoys float on the surface and have a hydrophone dangling 300 metres below to hopefully pick up any transmissions. Officials warned though that transmissions could be dulled by thick silt on the seabed.

Houston said a decision had not yet been made on how long searchers would wait before an unmanned submarine was deployed. Such a vehicle will use sonar to map the seabed, a long, laborious task.

The search for debris on the surface of the ocean picked up intensity yesterday, with 15 planes and 14 ships scouring an area of 75,427 square kilometres northwest of Perth. Flight MH370 and the 239 people it was carrying vanished on March 8 after leaving Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.

Associated Press, Agence France-Presse

 

[steffychun]

HMS Tireless will find it.

 

[winnipegjets]

Shows how incompetent mudland is ...outsource the search totally to Aussies.

 

[steffychun]

Shows how incompetent mudland is ...outsource the search totally to Aussies.

oui, much better than Singapore ok? Sinkieland so stingy stopped helping.

 

[Thick Face Black Heart]

It is very sad that up to this day, conspiracy theories abound. And each conspiracy theory seems more out of the world than the last. From killing of Navy SEALs assigned to protect sensitive cargo, to abduction of an entire plane carrying some high tech military equipment, the stories get more ridiculous and full of holes.

The simplest explanation is the best explanation. We appeal to Occam's Razor.

This is my take on what happened. Like MI 185 SilkAir, MH370 had an electrical fire mid-route. As the fire spread, it cut off communications, transponders, signalling equipment, and other circuitry one by one.

The pilot turned around and tried to head for the closest airport or airbase to land. Unfortunately, the crew was asphyxiated by the fumes and they lost consciousness. The plane drifted for a long distance until finally it simply broke apart and crashed into the South Indian Ocean. The heavy wreckage sunk quickly.

Occam's Razor, please. The simplest explanation is the best one, and also the most likely one. Don't bring in Navy SEALs or Afghnistan or other fuck nonsense.

 

[Thick Face Black Heart]

This is the kind of speculation journalism that is utterly unhelpful.

Sad that some people still engage in this kind of useless preponderance when there are easy, simple, and highly plausible explanations for every single doubt/point/statement they have raised.

***************************************************************

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2014/04/10/mh370-was-there-a-conspiracy/

From the time Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, we had abstained from commenting or writing anything about it in spite of busybodies coming to our coffee table at Gaya Street daily when the issue was still hot; this is because, as far as we are concerned, the matter has nothing to do with the political and economic interests of Sabah and Sarawak.
If MH370 was destined to end catastrophically together with its precious human cargo and should such came to be and cause the downfall of the tyrannical government of Malaysia, so be it; and may God Almighty have mercy on all those poor souls on board and compassion on their loved ones who have to move on in life with their indescribable emotional losses.
Today, we join our hands in spirit with the victims on board and reach out in solidarity to their families on the ground and to all the good people around the world where ever you are who sympathize with them.
When we were young pupils our masters taught us to always expose conspiracies that harm the welfare of the masses, even when it was not our briefs; and to dispel falsehoods, all we need to do is to cast suggestive but significant doubts to the attention of the public and let the people draw up their own intelligent conclusions (if any).
Let us look at a report published in a New York media recently.
Of all the blunders made by the Malaysian authorities listed down chronologically in the American report, we will only deal with the ones on March 9 and 13, 2014.
(1) March 9 - Five hours after it happened, state-owned Malaysia Airlines finally confirms that MH370 has disappeared.
Question 1
Why was the transponder switched off?
Firstly, it was to make the aircraft inert to secondary radar so that civil air controllers cannot identify it.
Did the culprit(s) who did it also did not want their conversations with the control tower recorded?
Question 2
Why did the aircraft make a left turn back into Malaysian airspace after switching off its tracking device?
If an unidentified aircraft was to encroach into Thailand or Vietnamese airspace, what are the chances it would not be shot down?
Question 3
Why did our Asean neighbours’ air forces not scramble fighter jets to intercept the unidentified aircraft even though the same appeared on their military radar?
Was it because it was within Malaysian airspace all that time?
(2) March 13 – Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein denies a Wall Street Journal report claiming that the plane flew for as many as four hours after disappearing from tracking systems. The government would later accept the version of events.
Question 4
Assuming that the aircraft flew for not less than four hours within Malaysian and international airspace before MAS finally announced its disappearance in the fifth hour later, what was the likelihood that the cockpit was in constant communication with the control tower before negotiations broke down completely rendering MAS unable to conceal the runaway plane?
Question 5
It was reported that the pilot of MH370 was a relative of Anwar Ibrahim and PKR life member who attended the Court of Appeal hearing on March 7, 2014 which sentenced the Opposition Leader to five years imprisonment for the crime of sodomy.
If there really were negotiations with the crew and passengers of MH370 as hostages between the cockpit and the control tower on March 8, 2014 which could have lasted for up to four hours before collapsing in the fifth, what do readers think should be the highly probable ransom – the freedom of Anwar Ibrahim?
Question 6
If the pilot was suicidal because his marriage broke down, could he not have crashed the plane anywhere in Malaysia after the U-turn?
Question 7
Until today no aircraft debris or human remains could be found, could it have meant that it has never crashed in the first place?
If this hijacking was politically motivated, would dead hostages be of any value?
Question 8
What are the chances that Anwar will be acquitted by the Federal Court on appeal, the hostages suddenly rescued from somewhere remote thereafter, and the world is fed with another fantastic Hollywood-style story?
Question 9
Last week Anwar accused the government of covering up the truth about MH370; does this not mean that he knew of the conspiracy?
The families of the Chinese victims from China were also saying the same last month!
Question 10
When a small space capsule returning from outer space can be pinpointed its location the second it impacted into any ocean in the last century, how is it probable that an aircraft many times larger crashing into the Indian Ocean cannot be found?
The author is a retiree in Kota Kinabalu but do, depending on health, time, and interest, blog at http://legalandprudent.blogspot.com giving no quarters to anyone.