MALAYSIAN Airlines flight en route to China is missing.

[Seee3]

This episode confirmed my suspicions on conspiracies and lies of which the most atrocious are :

1. A simple creation of "an unprecedented calculation" bullshit can shift the search area to where you like it to be.
2. The PM of a large country can be bought over to lend weight to the wasteful search, announcing confidently that the search area should be correct.
3. Useful resources of unbelievable proportion can be deployed by authorities, knowing that it is all a wayang show.

In conclusion, ang mo are better liars than Asians which is why they need to get Aussie to take over the daily updates. Too much respect has been accorded to the capability of the ang mo which is why there are few (besides relatives of the passengers) who question and challenge the so called unprecedented calculation.

 

[king_of_abalone]

Never trust an Ang Moh. They are only one rung lower than the Indians when it comes to writing talkware and flipping prata.

 

[GoldenPeriod]

Two films inspired by flight MH370’s disappearance hawked at Cannes

Movies inspired by MH370's disappearance pitched at Cannes festival

PUBLISHED : Monday, 19 May, 2014, 9:58pm
UPDATED : Monday, 19 May, 2014, 9:58pm

Agence France-Presse in Cannes

The trailer for one of two films inspired by missing flight MH370 touted at Cannes. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Two films inspired by the missing Malaysian Airlines' flight MH370 are being touted to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival, barely two months after the plane vanished with 239 people on board.

They are going to have to find Asian hollywood actors

 

[SpaceTruckin]

China says space debris recovered: report

AFP
May 19, 2014, 1:40 pm

Beijing (AFP) - Objects that crashed to the ground in China have been identified as space debris, state media reported, after a Russian rocket carrying a communications satellite fell back to Earth minutes after lift-off.

Qiqihar city in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, which borders Russia's far east, reported that several objects appeared to have fallen from the sky on Friday, the Xinhua news agency said.

After analysis, experts have concluded they were "parts from a carrier rocket or a satellite", Xinhua said Sunday, citing the China National Space Administration.

Authorities were communicating on the issue "with relevant parties", it added.

The report came after Russia's space officials said the Proton rocket's control engine failed Friday just over nine minutes following blastoff from the Baikonur space centre Moscow leases in Kazakhstan -- the latest blow to the country's once-proud space industry.

State television showed the carrier and its Express-AM4P satellite burning up in the upper layers of the atmosphere.

The 150-million-euro ($205-million) satellite -- built by Airbus Group's Astrium corporation -- was meant to provide Internet access to far-flung Russian regions with poor access to communication.

 

[SpaceTruckin]

MH370 'may have been shot down by mistake during military operation'

Yahoo7 and Agencies May 19, 2014, 9:34 am

A new book has published accusations that the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 may have been accidentally shot out of the sky by US and Thai fighter jets in a training exercise mishap.

Flight MH370: The Mystery alleges that a US-Thai joint strike fighter jet training drill shot down the doomed passenger jet and its 239 on board, claiming the search party was intentionally sent in the wrong direction as part of a sophisticated cover-up.

Author Nigel Cawthorne describes how a man, working on an oil rig at the same time the plane's transponders went off, saw a burning jet near the military exercise being conducted.

"After all, no wreckage has been found in the South Indian Ocean, which in itself is suspicious."

He says the hundreds of families of victims will "almost certainly" never know what really happened in the early huors of March 8, 2014.

"Did they die painlessly, unaware of their fate? Or did they die in terror in a flaming wreck, crashing from the sky in the hands of a madman?"

The family of missing Brisbane man Rod Burrows has criticised the timing of the new book's release, saying they are still at pains after 71 days of ongoing search efforts to no avail.

"It's devastating for the families, it's been 10 weeks tomorrow and there's nothing," said Rod's mother, Irene.

Films inspired by missing flight MH370 touted at Cannes

Two films inspired by the missing Malaysian Airlines' flight MH370 are being touted to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival, barely two months after the plane vanished with 239 people on board.

Potential buyers will get a sneak preview of "A Dark Reflection" by Fact Not Fiction Films at a "screening" on Monday, according to a full page advertisement in industry trade journal The Hollywood Reporter.

"What Happened on Flight 313?" reads the advertisement which appeared on Sunday and 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 disappeared on March 8.

Air and sea searches over vast stretches of the Indian Ocean have failed to find any sign of the plane.

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".

A 90-second teaser trailer showing terrified passengers and a gun being brandished was shot over six days in Bombay, Variety said in a report.

It is being promoted by Indian film director Rupesh Paul, the man behind erotic movie "Kamasutra 3D", and was presented to buyers in Cannes on Saturday.

Paul, who denied the film was insensitive so soon after the disappearance, said he began work on the project after being contacted by a Malaysian journalist who said he had a theory about what had happened.

He then spent 20 days working on a screenplay using the journalist's idea for the ending, the report added.

The film-maker said he was confident he could make the movie work even if the wreckage of the plane was found.

People had suggested to him that his investment would be wasted if the plane was found and the explanation put forward by his film turned out to be incorrect, he said.

"That's the biggest challenge I'm facing.... Everyone in the world, they want to know what happened," he was quoted as saying.

In addition to being the world's biggest film festival, Cannes is also a huge film market and each year attracts over 10,000 buyers and sellers from around the world.

It was not known whether the "screening" of "A Dark Reflection" would be of a full or part-completed film, or another trailer.

MH370 has been missing ever since it mysteriously diverted from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route.

It is believed to have crashed into the sea far off Australia's west coast.

Australia, which is leading the hunt in the ocean far off its west coast, has said it believes it is looking in the right area based on satellite communications from the plane.

 

[chuckyworld]

Plane still missing? Oh dear....

You still doing LNG, let me know...

 

[po2wq]

tis burger oso cum out n stir sh*t ...

BOEING TECHNOLOGY – WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN

May18th 2014 Written by chedet

1. What goes up must come down. Airplanes can go up and stay up for long periods of time. But even they must come down eventually. They can land safely or they may crash. But airplanes don’t just disappear. Certainly not these days with all the powerful communication systems, radio and satellite tracking and filmless cameras which operate almost indefinitely and possess huge storage capacities.

2. I wrote about the disabling of MH370’s communication system as well as the signals for GPS. The system must have been disabled or else the ground station could have called the plane. The GPS too must have been disabled or else the flight of MH370 would have been tracked by satellites which normally provide data on all commercial flights, inclusive of data on location, kind of aircraft, flight number, departure airport and destination. But the data seems unavailable. The plane just disappeared seemingly from all screens.

3. MH370 is a Boeing 777 aircraft. It was built and equipped by Boeing. All the communications and GPS equipment must have been installed by Boeing. If they failed or have been disabled Boeing must know how it can be done. Surely Boeing would ensure that they cannot be easily disabled as they are vital to the safety and operation of the plane.

4. A search on the Internet reveals that Boeing in 2006 received a US patent for a system that, once activated, removes all control from pilots to automatically return a commercial airliner to a pre-determined landing location.

5. The Flightglobal.com article by John Croft, datelined Washington DC (1st December, 2006) further mentioned “The ‘uninterruptible’ autopilot would be activated – either by pilot, by on board sensors, or even remotely by radio or satellite links by government agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, if terrorists attempt to gain control of the flight deck”.

6. Clearly Boeing and certain agencies have the capacity to take over “uninterruptible control” of commercial airliners of which MH370 B777 is one.

7. Can it not be that the pilot of MH370 lost control of their aircraft after someone directly or remotely activated the equipment for seizure of control of the aircraft.

8. It is a waste of time and money to look for debris or oil slick or to listen for “pings” from the black box. This is most likely not an ordinary crash after fuel was exhausted. The plane is somewhere, maybe without MAS markings.

9. Boeing should explain about this so-called anti-terrorism auto-land system. I cannot imagine the pilots made a soft-landing in rough seas and then quietly drown with the aircraft.

10. Someone is hiding something. It is not fair that MAS and Malaysia should take the blame.

11. For some reason the media will not print anything that involves Boeing or the CIA. I hope my readers will read this.

 

[SpaceTruckin]

Underwater search for MH370 resumes after technical glitches

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 22 May, 2014, 6:02pm
UPDATED : Friday, 23 May, 2014, 6:46pm

Agence France-Presse in Sydney

An officer kneels next to the Phoenix Autonomous Underwater Vehicle ‘Artemis’ Bluefin-21, which has been helping the search. Photo: AFP

A mini-sub searching for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 recommenced its operations on Thursday after technical problems, as it enters its final week of scouring the Indian Ocean seabed for signs of the aircraft.

Australia is leading the search for the plane which vanished on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people onboard and is using the Bluefin-21 mini-sub until new equipment can be obtained.

“The autonomous underwater vehicle, Bluefin-21, was deployed from the vessel around 2:00 am this morning. It remains underwater on its search mission,” the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said.

The US Navy Bluefin-21, which can plunge to a depth of some 4,500 metres (15,000 feet), was brought back to shore last week to fix technical issues which saw it pulled from the water.

It resumed its search in the remote area of several transmissions believed to have come from the missing aircraft’s black box recorders.

“Over the next week, Bluefin-21 will search the remaining areas in the vicinity of the acoustic signals detected in early April by the towed pinger locator... that are within its depth operating limits,” JACC said.

“This continues the process that will ultimately enable the search team to discount or confirm the area of the acoustic signals as the final resting place of MH370.”

The Australian ship which deployed the Bluefin-21, Ocean Shield, is expected to leave the search area on May 28 and return to Perth on May 31 to demobilise the mini-sub.

MH370 is believed to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean but despite a massive air and sea and underwater search, no sign of any wreckage has yet been found.

While the aerial and sea surface searches have been scaled down, the operation is moving to the next phase which will involve using sophisticated equipment to scan the unmapped ocean bed.

Negotiations are underway to engage contractors to do this work.

JACC said Chinese survey ship Zhu Kezhen left the west Australian port of Fremantle Wednesday to start mapping areas of the ocean floor in preparation for the commercially contracted deep ocean search.

Another Chinese ship Haixun 01 was Thursday to depart for the area to support this operation, tasked with delivering survey data to Fremantle weekly for processing by Australian officials.

JACC said work was continuing to review and analyse all the data and information relating to the likely flight path of MH370.

“This work will confirm the best areas on which to focus an effective future search,” it said.

 

[SpaceTruckin]

Scientists sceptical of satellite firm Inmarsat's raw data on missing Malaysian flight MH370

Scientists question quality of information in 47-page report released by British company

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 27 May, 2014, 11:10pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 28 May, 2014, 1:04am

Stephen Chen and Wu Nan in Beijing and Danny Lee

Malaysia's aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman answers media questions this week at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: AFP

Scientists have questioned the quality of raw data released by British satellite company Inmarsat that was used to determine Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 crashed into the Indian Ocean.

They said the information was insufficient to plot its course.

The London-based firm released a 47-page report yesterday detailing data communication logs recorded by the satellite operator, 10 weeks after the plane vanished on the way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board. The Doppler effect, changes in the frequency of waves from a moving object, was used to deduce the flight path from the data.

But Steve Wang, spokesman for a support group for relatives of the 154 missing Chinese passengers on board, said: "The data they have is only separated data - how could it precisely define the track of the plane? I don't think the Malaysia side is really honest about all the data they have."

Relatives of those on board the Boeing 777 when it vanished want to draft in independent experts to recreate information and determine the plane's course.

Dr Li Min, a researcher at Wuhan University, said the data was insufficient and could not be used to determine the plane's route or last known position.

"With such data, we can only calculate the distance between the plane and satellite. It is a relative position, which means, in theory, the plane could be anywhere on a large sphere around the satellite," he said.

Inmarsat and Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation have also been accused of putting on a political show to coincide with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's visit to Beijing.

Jiang Hui, a member of the family aid group, said: "Personally, I think the data might be helpful … [and] could become key evidence that the Malaysia side had lied."

Inmarsat admitted the data it had released had been simplified and that it had published parts that were "important". Mark Dickinson, Inmarsat's chief engineer, told a US television interviewer the data could not in itself be used to recreate Inmarsat's work, but only to make a judgment about its findings.

"What's more pertinent is to see the messages and the important bits of information … and some explanation behind how the numbers are used," Dickinson said. He said it required a lot of engineering expertise "from different fields".

Professor Zheng Zhengqi, who studied satellite communication at the School of Information Science and Technology in East China Normal University, said the search for flight MH370 might have stretched the capability of Inmarsat and its satellites.

However, one former staunch critic of the Inmarsat data, Duncan Steel, a physicist and visiting scientist at Nasa's Ames Research Centre in California, posted on his blog: "The data now made available appear to make sense."

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said the final attempted contact from the satellite to plane, which was partially successful, suggested an interruption to the electricity supply caused by fuel exhaustion.

The airliner disappeared on March 8. It is thought to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, off western Australia, but an extensive search has found nothing.

 

[SpaceTruckin]

Malaysia and British satellite firm release data on missing flight MH370

Malaysian government releases 47 pages of raw satellite data used to conclude that missing airliner crashed into the southern Indian Ocean

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 27 May, 2014, 12:46pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 27 May, 2014, 5:24pm

Agencies in Kuala Lumpur

Relatives of passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines plane said they had received the data report used to determine the path of the plane. Photo: Wu Nan

Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation and British satellite firm Inmarsat on Tuesday released the data used to determine the path of missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370, following mounting calls from passengers’ relatives for greater transparency.

Relatives of passengers on the missing jet said they had received the data report, comprising 47 pages of raw satellite data, compiled by Inmarsat and Malaysian officials and they published it on their Facebook page.

The Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) said in a statement it had worked with Inmarsat to provide 47 pages of data communication logs recorded by the British satellite operator, as well as explanatory notes for public consumption.

Analysts said it would take time to draw any conclusions from the raw, ”highly technical” data.

The underwater drone involved in the search for the missing flight. Photo: Reuters

The data communications log comprises 14 pieces of data from seven “handshakes,” or pairs of numbers, between the aircraft and the satellite, Inmarsat said last week. One number is time information, the other is frequency.

Some family members of the 239 passengers and crew on board have been demanding Malaysia release the data so that independent experts can verify it.

The Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8 during a scheduled service between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing. Officials, relying in part on the Inmarsat data, have said they believe the plane ended up over the southern Indian Ocean, where it crashed into the sea.

Nothing has been found despite weeks of extensive searches at the surface and on the seabed.

Authorities believe the plane was flown deliberately off course, but are still investigating the cause of the disappearance.

Leading theories being probed by investigators include a possible hijacking, rogue pilot action or mechanical failure.

Screenshot of the satellite data communication logs.

This is the information released to the families of the satellite data communication logs.

The highly technical numerical data used the Doppler effect - the change in frequency of waves from a moving object - to decipher the Boeing 777’s final flight path.

Inmarsat plotted models of the flight’s route by measuring the Doppler effect of the hourly satellite 'pings' from the aircraft, giving corridors arcing north and south along which the plane could have flown for at least five hours.

Despite the plane’s communication systems being switched off, satellite pings were still bouncing back from the aircraft.

The pings are sent from a ground station to a satellite, then onto the plane, which automatically sends a ping back to the satellite and down to the ground station.

They do not include global positioning system (GPS) data, time or distance information, so the British satellite operator measured the amount of time it took for the pings to be returned.

They then compared those figures to data from other Malaysia Airlines planes and similar flight routes, which definitively showed the plane could only have been going down the southern corridor, and would eventually have run out of fuel.

They established an “extraordinary matching” between Inmarsat’s predicted southern path and readings from other planes on such routes.

Inmarsat’s interpretation of the data was subsequently verified by the international investigation team, which includes the DCA, the US National Transport Safety Board, Britain’s Air Accidents Investigations Branch, and China’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Department.

But, with no sign of the plane found since its disappearance on March 8, relatives were sceptical.

“There is no mention on why they are so sure the Inmarsat data is highly accurate and reliable, to the extent that they have thrown all resources there,” the families said in a May 20th report to the governments of Malaysia and Australia, which is coordinating the search efforts.

Shukor Yusof, an aviation analyst with Malaysia-based Endau Analytics, said that the satellite data was “highly technical” and required an expert to decode.

“There are very few people who can make head or tail as to what the numbers indicate. To me as a layman, it looks like a sequence of signals that were given out by the aircraft possibly indicating its flight path,” he said.

Greg Waldron, Singapore-based managing editor with aviation publication group Flightglobal, said the satellite data was consistent with what Inmarsat had previously revealed.

“Basically it shows the timings of the handshakes of the plane with the satellite over the Indian Ocean,” he said.

“But I would not dare to guess if they are searching in the right place. The fact that they are using this type of data shows how desperate the search for the plane is.”

The DCA has previously stressed that satellite data was just one of several elements being examined by investigators.

Malaysian authorities have been tight-lipped on details, saying they can only divulge information once it has been verified and when its release will not affect ongoing investigations into the plane’s disappearance.

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

Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press

 

[SpaceTruckin]

MH370 not in Indian Ocean search zone

Yahoo7 and Agencies May 29, 2014, 3:25 pm

Pings not from MH370 black box: US Navy officialPings not from MH370 black box: US Navy official

The missing Malaysia Airlines plane is not in the Indian Ocean search zone where acoustic "pings" were detected, search co-ordinators have confirmed.

"The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has advised that the search in the vicinity of the acoustic detections can now be considered complete and in its professional judgment, the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370," the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre said on Thursday.

JACC announced on April 7 that a pinger locator towed from the Australian navy vessel Ocean Shield had picked up two acoustic signals, with one held for more than two hours.

At the time, it described the signals as consistent with flight data or cockpit voice recorders, the most promising lead yet and likely from a man-made source.

Two days later, two more signals were detected, holding for about five and seven minutes.

Members of the Malaysia team involved in the search of the Malaysia Airlines MH370 brief relatives of Chinese passengers onboard the missing plane at a hotel in Beijing, China. Photo: AP

JACC's statement on Thursday came hours after CNN reported that the search had gone back to square one, citing US Navy deputy director of ocean engineering Michael Dean as saying the pings came from some other man-made source unrelated to MH370.

"Our best theory at this point is that (the pings were) likely some sound produced by the ship ... or within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator," he said, according to the report.

JACC has also confirmed the end of the Bluefin-21 mission, with the underwater drone detecting no signs of aircraft debris since it began scanning the sea floor off the West Australian coast on April 14.

Pings not from MH370 black box: US Navy official

Underwater signals that focused the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are no longer believed to have come from the black box, according to a US Navy official.

The Bluefin-21, operating from the Australian navy’s Ocean Shield vessel, has been searching a remote area of the Indian Ocean where four acoustic transmissions, believed to have come from the aircraft's black box, were detected in early April.

The US Navy's deputy director of ocean engineering Michael Dean told CNN there was now broad agreement that they came from some other man-made source unrelated to the jet that disappeared on March 8 carrying 239 people.

"Our best theory at this point is that (the pings were) likely some sound produced by the ship ... or within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator," Dean said.

If the pings had come from the recorders, searchers would have found them, he said.

The Phoenix International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Artemis was used as part of the underwater search for the missing jet. Photo: Getty Images

"Always your fear any time you put electronic equipment in the water is that if any water gets in and grounds or shorts something out, that you could start producing sound," Dean said.

Other countries involved in the search had reached the same conclusion, he told CNN.

Australia is leading the search for the plane which vanished on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people onboard and is using the Bluefin-21 mini-sub until new equipment can be obtained.

 

[looneytan]

hoii! Still not found yet ah!

 

[steffychun]

Hopeless lah..aliens took them.

 

[GoldenPeriod]

What happened to great US satellite data? KAPUT?

 

[Midway]

Chinese ship on MH370 search mission returns to port after technical glitch

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 31 May, 2014, 12:46pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 01 June, 2014, 5:14am

Agence France-Presse in Sydney

A Chinese naval ship. The Chinese survey ship, Zhu Kezhen, is returning to port after a technical problem. Photo: AFP

A Chinese ship mapping the ocean floor ahead of an intensive underwater search for missing Flight MH370 was returning to port yesterday due to a technical problem.

The massive Indian Ocean search for the Malaysia Airlines plane, which disappeared on March 8 carrying 239 people, has so far failed to find any sign of the Boeing 777.

The Chinese survey ship, Zhu Kezhen, was conducting a bathymetric survey - or mapping of the ocean floor - to help experts determine how to carry out the next stage of the search on the previously unmapped ocean seabed.

"Zhu Kezhen suffered a defect to its multibeam echosounder and is coming into port to conduct the necessary repairs," Australia's Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC) said. "The journey is expected to take a couple of days."

The search for MH370 has been continually frustrated and last week Australia ruled out an area considered a possible resting place of the plane after a mini-sub dived repeatedly to the seabed and found nothing.

Officials believe the plane diverted from its Kuala Lumpur to Beijing route and ended up in the Indian Ocean, but have little to go on besides satellite signalling messages sent between aircraft, satellite and ground station.

Experts are now reanalysing this satellite data to confirm a search area as well as mapping the sea floor in preparation for the commercially contracted deep-sea search, which is expected to begin in August and take up to 12 months.

JACC said an Australian contracted survey vessel would also be involved in conducting the bathymetric survey, and would arrive in the search area this month.

Australia is leading the hunt for MH370, which disappeared in its search and rescue area, in consultation with Malaysia and China, whose citizens accounted for nearly two-thirds of those onboard the flight.

Malaysia insists it is doing all it can in what is an unprecedented situation but the relatives of those on the plane have expressed anger and frustration at the lack of progress, nearly three months after the plane vanished.

 

[SoleSurvivor]

Emirates chief asks why no fighter jet intercepted missing flight MH370

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 03 June, 2014, 12:50pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 03 June, 2014, 1:15pm

Agence France-Presse in Sydney

A boy looks at a painting of the missing Flight MH370 aircraft at the viewing gallery of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Emirates chief Tim Clark has questioned why fighter jets did not intercept the flight. Photo: EPA

Emirates chief Tim Clark has reportedly questioned why fighter jets did not intercept Malaysia Airlines flight 370 when it veered widely off course, but said he believed the missing plane will be found.

Clark said that more information on the disappearance of the Boeing jet, which was carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, was needed before the industry changes its aircraft tracking procedures.

The Emirates boss told The Australian Financial Review at an annual airlines conference in Doha that the plane would have been intercepted by military aircraft if it had flown off course over other countries.

“If you were to fly from London to Oslo and then over the North Sea you turned off and then went west to Ireland, within two minutes you’d have Tornadoes, Eurofighters, everything up around you,” he said.

An autonomous underwater vehicle is deployed in the southern Indian Ocean to look for the missing flight. Photo: Reuters

“Even if you did that over Australia and the US, there would be something up. I’m not quite sure where primary radar was in all of this.”

His comments came as the International Air Transport Association conference looked at ways of improving the tracking of aircraft through flight data transmissions or technologies to monitor their movements.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation has also formed a working group to explore tracking methods.

“In my view we are all plunging down a path that [says] ‘we have got to fix this’,” Clark said. “This is the door closing after the horse has gone 25 miles down the track.

“We need to know more about what actually happened to this aeroplane and do a forensic second-by-second analysis of it. I think we will find it and get to the bottom of it.”

Australia is leading the hunt for MH370, which is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, but there have been no signs of the plane since it vanished over the South China Sea on March 8 despite an intense air, sea and underwater search.

Malaysia’s air force has acknowledged that military radar tracked what it called an “unidentified object” - later determined to be MH370 - crossing back through Malaysian airspace and out toward the Indian Ocean after the plane diverted.

The air force said it took no action because the aircraft was not deemed “hostile”, drawing heavy criticism over the lost opportunity to intercept or further track the plane.

Malaysia’s government has defended the air force decision, without elaborating on how it was made, but Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has said military procedures would be reviewed in the wake of MH370.

 

[SoleSurvivor]

Private firms to take over search for missing Malaysia Airlines plane

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 05 June, 2014, 4:08am
UPDATED : Thursday, 05 June, 2014, 4:08am

Danny Lee and Stephen Chen in Beijing

The Australia-led search has so far been fruitless. Photo: AFP

The Australian government is inviting search and salvage specialists to take on the task of finding the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

Documents released yesterday show the private sector has effectively been handed control of search operations in an effort to speed up the hunt for flight MH370.

Starting in August, successful bidders will have 300 days to explore 60,000 square kilometres of seabed in the southern Indian Ocean. It's a vast expanse, the size of Sri Lanka, with depths of up to 6,000 metres.

Joining the winning bid will be a consortium of companies including Malaysian oil giant Petronas, which said last night it would fund a deep towed side-scan sonar for the operation. Malaysia last week asked the US to renew a lease on a number of remotely operated underwater vehicles.

Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The aircraft, a Boeing 777, carried 239 people, including 154 Chinese nationals.

The challenging conditions and depths in the Indian Ocean have proved tricky for the Australia-led search mission in the area to date.

The ocean proved too deep for a robotic submarine that went beyond its maximum operating depth of 4,500 metres.

Bidders interested in taking on the contract will need robust equipment capable of navigating "holes, trenches, ridges, steep gradients" and sea floor comprised of "silt, sand, rock and possibly manganese" minerals, the tender says.

The search will be funded from a A$50 million (HK$360 million) pot set aside by Australia.

It will be some weeks until satellite data that led search teams to the Indian Ocean is reappraised to define the 60,000 square kilometres to be searched.

Meanwhile, researchers from Curtin University in Western Australia released underwater data recordings that detected a "dull roar" indicating a high-impact crash in the Indian Ocean, around the time the Boeing 777 was said to have run out of fuel.

"We are cautious whether these acoustic events are related to MH370 … but there is still a small possibility of something to do with it," oceanographer Alec Duncan of the university said.

Analysis of sound data put it within one hour of the last known satellite contact with flight MH370, Duncan said.

Professor Cheng En, who studies underwater sound wave communication at the school of information science and engineering at Xiamen University, said the Australian discovery was possible, because low frequency sound waves could indeed travel thousands of kilometres in water.

Terms of MH370 search contract

Private contractor has 300 days to carry out a seafloor search of 60,000 sq km in the southern Indian Ocean.

Failure to search at least 5,000 sq km every 25 days will result in payment being withheld.

Machinery must be capable of operating at depths between 1,000 and 6,000 metres for up to a year in all ocean currents and sea states.

Must be able to identify, map and photograph wreckage field to determine recovery of human remains, flight and cockpit recorders plus aircraft components or cargo linked to the fate of MH370.

Winning bidder must assemble global team and equipment, ready to search within one month of signing the contract.

 

[SoleSurvivor]

Missing flight MH370: Search for Malaysia Airlines plane to focus on '7th arc' in Indian Ocean

ABC
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The search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will focus on the "7th arc" in the Indian Ocean, based on new data and analysis, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) says.

The ATSB says the area off the Western Australian coast is where the plane is believed to have exhausted its fuel supply and been descending.

It is also the area where the last satellite contact occurred with the aircraft.

"As a result, the aircraft is unlikely to be any more than 20 nautical miles (38 kilometres) west or 30 nautical miles (55km) east of the arc," the ATSB said.

The total extent of the arc is from latitude 20 degrees south to 39 degrees south.

The ATSB says the underwater search area is likely to be reduced in coming weeks to 60,000 square kilometres.

MH370 went missing in March with 239 people on board, including six Australians, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Earlier this month it was revealed that acoustic pings thought to be from the plane's black boxes were not related to the aircraft.

The pings prompted a multinational search that covered 4.64 million square kilometres of ocean but there was no sign of wreckage from the missing plane.

It is now thought the pings probably originated from one of the search ships.

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) on June 1 said the next underwater search would "begin in August and take up to 12 months".

The Federal Government has set aside $60 million to pay a private contractor to carry out that search.

Meanwhile, Curtin University researchers say they still do not know if a signal picked up by offshore sound recorders was caused by the aircraft crashing into the Indian Ocean.

Curtin University's Centre for Marine Science and Technology monitors a number of undersea sound recorders with hydrophones around the Australian coast.

When satellite data showed the missing Malaysian Airlines plane had tracked south into the Indian Ocean, the researchers retrieved an acoustic recorder that sits 400 metres underwater in the Perth canyon, 40 kilometres west of Rottnest Island.

The centre's Alec Duncan said the recorder had picked up a signal on March 8 that could have been caused by MH370.

 

[SoleSurvivor]

MH370 families raise funds to find ‘whistleblower’

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 08 June, 2014, 12:43pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 08 June, 2014, 1:32pm

Agence France-Presse in Kuala Lumpur

Crew deploy the US Navy’s Bluefin-21 in the southern Indian Ocean to look for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 Photo: Reuters

Several families of those aboard Flight MH370 on Sunday launched a drive to raise $5 million (HK$38.8 million) to reward any insider who comes forward and resolves the mystery of the plane’s disappearance exactly three months ago.

The “Reward MH370” campaign launches on fundraising website Indiegogo and aims to raise at least $5 million “to encourage a whistleblower to come forward with information”, the families said in a press release.

The Malaysia Airlines jet lost contact on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard -- about two-thirds of them Chinese.

The Boeing 777 is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, but an extensive search has turned up no sign of wreckage so far, leaving frustrated and anguished families of those aboard suspecting a cover-up.

“We are convinced that somewhere, someone knows something, and we hope this reward will entice him or her to come forward,” said Ethan Hunt, a technology company chief who is heading the “Reward MH370” project.

Sarah Bajc, partner of American passenger Philip Wood, said a handful of families were behind the campaign to look at the unprecedented aviation mystery with “a fresh set of eyes”.

“Governments and agencies have given it their best shot but have failed to turn up a single shred of evidence, either because of a faulty approach or due to intentional misdirection by one or more individuals,” she said in the release.

Malaysia and Australia, which is leading the search far off its western coast, have promised that the hunt for the plane will continue.

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

Australia has also released a request for tenders for a company to be engaged as a prime contractor and provide the expertise, equipment and vessels needed to carry out the deep-sea search from August.

Malaysia -- ruled by the same coalition since 1957 with a history of sweeping scandals aside -- has taken the brunt of criticism from upset relatives.

The Southeast Asian country has insisted it is doing all it can and working closely with Australia, China and other countries to find the jet.

 

[SoleSurvivor]

Man who 'saw MH370' loses his job: report

Yahoo7 and Agencies June 9, 2014, 7:19 am
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A New Zealand man who reported seeing missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 shortly after it disappeared said his email has cost him his job.

Mike McKay made international headlines when he said he saw what he believed what the missing jet on fire while he was working on an oil rig off the Vietnamese coast.

But now the email he sent out has cost him his job, a newspaper in New Zealand reported.

At the time, he wrote to his employers in an email: "'I believe I saw the Malaysian Airlines plane come down. The timing is right."

McKay said the plane, which he believed was about 50-70km from where he was, burned for 10-15 seconds until the flames went out.

The plane was southwest of and at a lower altitude than the normal flight paths, he said.

The email was leaked to the media, and identified the worker's name, place of work, his employer and rig owner Songa Offshore, and the rig operator Idemitsu.

The companies became so inundated with inquiries after the email was leaked that their communications became blocked.

"This became intolerable for them and I was removed from the rig and not invited back," he told the newspaper.

McKay had been interviewed by investigators as the search for the jet turned to the South China Sea, but the search was called off two days later.

At the time, authorities believed the plane had possibly crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

Searchers are looking along the "7th" arc, a route calculated based on pings sent by the missing jet as it continued to fly south after veering off course on March 9.

Families raise funds for reward

Several families of those aboard Flight MH370 launched a drive to raise $5 million to reward any insider who comes forward and resolves the mystery of the plane's disappearance exactly three months ago.

The "Reward MH370" campaign launches on fundraising website Indiegogo and aims to raise at least $5 million "to encourage a whistleblower to come forward with information", the families said in a press release.

The Malaysia Airlines jet lost contact on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard -- about two-thirds of them Chinese.

The Boeing 777 is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, but an extensive search has turned up no sign of wreckage so far, leaving frustrated and anguished families of those aboard suspecting a cover-up.

"We are convinced that somewhere, someone knows something, and we hope this reward will entice him or her to come forward," said Ethan Hunt, a technology company chief who is heading the "Reward MH370" project.

Searchers have been so far unsuccessful in locating missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Photo: Getty Images

Sarah Bajc, partner of American passenger Philip Wood, said a handful of families were behind the campaign to look at the unprecedented aviation mystery with "a fresh set of eyes".

"Governments and agencies have given it their best shot but have failed to turn up a single shred of evidence, either because of a faulty approach or due to intentional misdirection by one or more individuals," she said in the release.

Malaysia and Australia, which is leading the search far off its western coast, have promised that the hunt for the plane will continue.

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

Australia has also released a request for tenders for a company to be engaged as a prime contractor and provide the expertise, equipment and vessels needed to carry out the deep-sea search from August.

Malaysia -- ruled by the same coalition since 1957 with a history of sweeping scandals aside -- has taken the brunt of criticism from upset relatives.

The Southeast Asian country has insisted it is doing all it can and working closely with Australia, China and other countries to find the jet.