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MALAYSIAN Airlines flight en route to China is missing.
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Businessman 'hired dancers' with names matching Flight 370 passports
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 20 March, 2014, 12:31am
UPDATED : Thursday, 20 March, 2014, 4:26am
Sijia Jiang [email protected]
A Chinese man claimed his company offered a short-term contract to Maraldi Luigi (pictured) and Austrian Kozel Christian last June to fly them from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early this year. Photo: AP
Chinese police are questioning a man who claims his company had hired two "foreign dancers" whose names are identical to those on the stolen passports used by two Iranians to board the missing Malaysia Airlines flight.
Xie Zhuoling said his foreign performers' agency in Yinchuan, in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, offered a short-term contract to Italian Maraldi Luigi and Austrian Kozel Christian last June to fly them from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early this year.
Xie said the pair were hired without his knowledge to perform for an unknown third party in Beijing between February 15 and May 14.
Malaysian authorities earlier confirmed that two Iranians using European passports stolen in Thailand were on the missing flight. The passports belonged to Luigi Maraldi and Christian Kozel - identical to the names cited by Xie but with the surnames appearing last, in the Western style. Maraldi's passport was reported stolen on July 22 last year, while Kozel lost his in 2012.
Malaysian investigators said later that the two Iranians were most likely just illegal immigrants, passing through Beijing to Frankfurt and Copenhagen respectively. They were not linked to any known terrorist group.
Xie, who made the claim and posted alleged photos of the contracts online, said in a telephone interview that they were prepared and signed by his legal representative Lei Xiaofang, who "mysteriously disappeared".
His story could not be independently verified and it contained conflicting information. But the online post has attracted 620,000 views since last Friday.
Yinchuan police confirmed that they questioned Xie on Monday and took the alleged documents for investigation.
"We are investigating the contracts and cannot comment before we can conclude if they are authentic or not," an officer said.
But he dismissed Xie's account of Lei's mysterious disappearance, saying: "We believe they were a couple and fell out after financial disputes."
Xie later admitted that he had been in a relationship with Lei but insisted his story was true. "I just want to provide clues to the aircraft investigation," he said.
Harry's view
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Re: BREAKING : MH370 PILOT Did It!
Possible Malaysian plane debris spotted in Indian Ocean off Australia
By Jane Wardell and Siva Govindasamy
SYDNEY/KUALA LUMPUR Thu Mar 20, 2014 5:54am EDT
Satellite imagery provided to Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) of objects that may be possible debris of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in a revised area 185 km (115 miles) to the south east of the original search area in this picture released by AMSA March 20, 2014. A Search aircraft are investigating two objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing for 12 days with 239 people on board, officials said on Thursday. REUTERS/Australian Maritime Safety Authority/Handout via REUTERS
(Reuters) - Search aircraft and ships are investigating two objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing for 12 days with 239 people on board, officials said on Thursday.
Australian officials said the objects were spotted by satellite four days ago in one of the remotest parts of the globe, around 2,500 km (1,500 miles) southwest of Perth in the vast oceans between Australia, southern Africa and Antarctica.
The larger of the objects measured up to 24 metres (79 ft), long and appeared to be floating on water several thousand metres deep, they said. The second object was about 5 metres (16 feet) long.
Officials cautioned it could take several days to confirm if they were parts of the missing plane.
"It's credible enough to divert the research to this area on the basis it provides a promising lead to what might be wreckage from the debris field," Royal Australian Air Force Air Commodore John McGarry told a news conference in Canberra.
No confirmed wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been found since it vanished from air traffic control screens off Malaysia's east coast early on March 8, less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.
"I can confirm we have a new lead," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters in Kuala Lumpur, where the investigation into the missing airliner is based.
Another official in Malaysia said investigators were "hopeful but cautious" about the Australian discovery.
The fate of Flight MH370 has been baffling aviation experts for nearly two weeks.
Investigators believe that someone with detailed knowledge of both the Boeing 777-200ER and commercial aviation navigation switched off the plane's communications systems before diverting it thousands of miles off its scheduled course.
Exhaustive background checks of the passengers and crew aboard have not yielded anything that might explain why.
An Australian air force AP-3C Orion plane was already at the scene, John Young, general manager of the emergency response division of Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), told the news conference in Canberra.
Three more aircraft were also on their way, including a New Zealand Air Force Orion and a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon, the world's most advanced maritime surveillance plane.
A merchant ship diverted for the task was also arriving in the area, Young said. A Royal Australian Navy ship equipped to recover any objects was also en route, but was still "some days away".
China, whose citizens made up about two-thirds of the passengers on board the flight, said it was also sending ships to the area of the sighting, but it was not clear how long it would take for the vessels to reach the scene.
POTENTIAL BREAKTHROUGH
The huge potential breakthrough in an investigation that had appeared to be running out of leads was revealed by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who told parliament the objects had been located with satellite imagery.
"New and credible information has come to light in relation to the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean," Abbott said.
He added that he had already spoken with his Malaysian counterpart, Najib Razak, and cautioned that the objects had yet to be identified.
"The task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult and it may turn out they are not related to the search for MH370," Abbott said.
Young, the Australian official, said it could be some days before authorities have anything to report and added that poor visibility reported in the area could hamper the search.
"It's probably the best lead we have right now but we have to get there, find them, see them, assess them, to know whether it's really meaningful or not," he said.
Images released by Australia showed the satellite pictures were from U.S. company DigitalGlobe Inc and were taken on March 16. Arrows on the images pointed to two indistinct objects apparently bobbing in the water.
The dimensions given are consistent with at least one of the objects possibly being the major part of a 777-200ER wing, which is around 27 metres (89 feet) long, though Australian officials cautioned the first images were indistinct.
The relatively large size of the objects would also suggest that, if they do come from the missing aircraft, it was intact when it went into the water.
FBI HELPING PROBE
Investigators piecing together patchy data from military radar and satellites believe that, minutes after its identifying transponder was switched off as it crossed the Gulf of Thailand, the plane turned sharply west, re-crossing the Malay Peninsula and following an established commercial route towards India.
What happened next is unclear, but faint electronic "pings" picked up by one commercial satellite suggest the aircraft flew on for at least six hours. That would be consistent with the plane ending up in the southern Indian Ocean.
The methodical shutdown of the communications systems, together with the fact that the plane appeared to be following a planned course after turning back, has focused particular attention on the pilot and co-pilot.
The FBI is helping Malaysian authorities analyse data from a flight simulator belonging to the captain of the missing plane, after initial examination showed some data logs had been deleted early last month.
A Malaysian official with knowledge of the investigations into the pilots said three simulator games that 53-year-old pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had played were being looked at.
"We are following up on the data logs being erased," the source said. "These could be logs of the games that were erased to free up memory, so it may not lead us to anything. He played a lot of games, going into hundreds and thousands of hours."
An unprecedented multinational search for the plane has focused on two vast search corridors: one arcing north overland from Laos towards the Caspian Sea, the other curving south across the Indian Ocean from west of Indonesia's Sumatra island to west of Australia.
Australia is leading the search in the southern part of the southern corridor, with assistance from the U.S. Navy.
The depth of the water where the possible debris has been sighted would likely make recovering the "black box" voice and data recorders that may finally unlock the mystery of what happened aboard Flight MH370 extremely challenging.
University of Western Australia Professor of Oceanography Charitha Pattiaratchi said that, based on currents in the area, if the debris is from the plane it probably would have gone into the water around 300-400 km (180-250 miles) to the west.
The search area covered an ocean ridge known as Naturalist Plateau, a large sea shelf about 3,500 metres (9,800 feet) deep, Pattiaratchi said. The plateau is about 250 km (150 miles) wide by 400 km (250 miles) long, and the area around it is close to 5,000 metres (16,400 feet) deep.
"Whichever way you go, it's deep," he said.
(Additional reporting by Tim Hepher, A. Ananthalakshmi and Niluksi Koswanage in Kuala Lumpur, Byron Kaye and Lincoln Feast in Sydney and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by Alex Richardson; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Possible Malaysian plane debris spotted in Indian Ocean off Australia
By Jane Wardell and Siva Govindasamy
SYDNEY/KUALA LUMPUR Thu Mar 20, 2014 5:54am EDT
Satellite imagery provided to Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) of objects that may be possible debris of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in a revised area 185 km (115 miles) to the south east of the original search area in this picture released by AMSA March 20, 2014. A Search aircraft are investigating two objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing for 12 days with 239 people on board, officials said on Thursday. REUTERS/Australian Maritime Safety Authority/Handout via REUTERS
(Reuters) - Search aircraft and ships are investigating two objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing for 12 days with 239 people on board, officials said on Thursday.
Australian officials said the objects were spotted by satellite four days ago in one of the remotest parts of the globe, around 2,500 km (1,500 miles) southwest of Perth in the vast oceans between Australia, southern Africa and Antarctica.
The larger of the objects measured up to 24 metres (79 ft), long and appeared to be floating on water several thousand metres deep, they said. The second object was about 5 metres (16 feet) long.
Officials cautioned it could take several days to confirm if they were parts of the missing plane.
"It's credible enough to divert the research to this area on the basis it provides a promising lead to what might be wreckage from the debris field," Royal Australian Air Force Air Commodore John McGarry told a news conference in Canberra.
No confirmed wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been found since it vanished from air traffic control screens off Malaysia's east coast early on March 8, less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.
"I can confirm we have a new lead," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters in Kuala Lumpur, where the investigation into the missing airliner is based.
Another official in Malaysia said investigators were "hopeful but cautious" about the Australian discovery.
The fate of Flight MH370 has been baffling aviation experts for nearly two weeks.
Investigators believe that someone with detailed knowledge of both the Boeing 777-200ER and commercial aviation navigation switched off the plane's communications systems before diverting it thousands of miles off its scheduled course.
Exhaustive background checks of the passengers and crew aboard have not yielded anything that might explain why.
An Australian air force AP-3C Orion plane was already at the scene, John Young, general manager of the emergency response division of Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), told the news conference in Canberra.
Three more aircraft were also on their way, including a New Zealand Air Force Orion and a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon, the world's most advanced maritime surveillance plane.
A merchant ship diverted for the task was also arriving in the area, Young said. A Royal Australian Navy ship equipped to recover any objects was also en route, but was still "some days away".
China, whose citizens made up about two-thirds of the passengers on board the flight, said it was also sending ships to the area of the sighting, but it was not clear how long it would take for the vessels to reach the scene.
POTENTIAL BREAKTHROUGH
The huge potential breakthrough in an investigation that had appeared to be running out of leads was revealed by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who told parliament the objects had been located with satellite imagery.
"New and credible information has come to light in relation to the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean," Abbott said.
He added that he had already spoken with his Malaysian counterpart, Najib Razak, and cautioned that the objects had yet to be identified.
"The task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult and it may turn out they are not related to the search for MH370," Abbott said.
Young, the Australian official, said it could be some days before authorities have anything to report and added that poor visibility reported in the area could hamper the search.
"It's probably the best lead we have right now but we have to get there, find them, see them, assess them, to know whether it's really meaningful or not," he said.
Images released by Australia showed the satellite pictures were from U.S. company DigitalGlobe Inc and were taken on March 16. Arrows on the images pointed to two indistinct objects apparently bobbing in the water.
The dimensions given are consistent with at least one of the objects possibly being the major part of a 777-200ER wing, which is around 27 metres (89 feet) long, though Australian officials cautioned the first images were indistinct.
The relatively large size of the objects would also suggest that, if they do come from the missing aircraft, it was intact when it went into the water.
FBI HELPING PROBE
Investigators piecing together patchy data from military radar and satellites believe that, minutes after its identifying transponder was switched off as it crossed the Gulf of Thailand, the plane turned sharply west, re-crossing the Malay Peninsula and following an established commercial route towards India.
What happened next is unclear, but faint electronic "pings" picked up by one commercial satellite suggest the aircraft flew on for at least six hours. That would be consistent with the plane ending up in the southern Indian Ocean.
The methodical shutdown of the communications systems, together with the fact that the plane appeared to be following a planned course after turning back, has focused particular attention on the pilot and co-pilot.
The FBI is helping Malaysian authorities analyse data from a flight simulator belonging to the captain of the missing plane, after initial examination showed some data logs had been deleted early last month.
A Malaysian official with knowledge of the investigations into the pilots said three simulator games that 53-year-old pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had played were being looked at.
"We are following up on the data logs being erased," the source said. "These could be logs of the games that were erased to free up memory, so it may not lead us to anything. He played a lot of games, going into hundreds and thousands of hours."
An unprecedented multinational search for the plane has focused on two vast search corridors: one arcing north overland from Laos towards the Caspian Sea, the other curving south across the Indian Ocean from west of Indonesia's Sumatra island to west of Australia.
Australia is leading the search in the southern part of the southern corridor, with assistance from the U.S. Navy.
The depth of the water where the possible debris has been sighted would likely make recovering the "black box" voice and data recorders that may finally unlock the mystery of what happened aboard Flight MH370 extremely challenging.
University of Western Australia Professor of Oceanography Charitha Pattiaratchi said that, based on currents in the area, if the debris is from the plane it probably would have gone into the water around 300-400 km (180-250 miles) to the west.
The search area covered an ocean ridge known as Naturalist Plateau, a large sea shelf about 3,500 metres (9,800 feet) deep, Pattiaratchi said. The plateau is about 250 km (150 miles) wide by 400 km (250 miles) long, and the area around it is close to 5,000 metres (16,400 feet) deep.
"Whichever way you go, it's deep," he said.
(Additional reporting by Tim Hepher, A. Ananthalakshmi and Niluksi Koswanage in Kuala Lumpur, Byron Kaye and Lincoln Feast in Sydney and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by Alex Richardson; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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Re: BREAKING : MH370 PILOT Did It!
Advance Australia Fair.
LHL is probably cursing his high tech toys never found it. Cannot give away more NDP medals.
Advance Australia Fair.
LHL is probably cursing his high tech toys never found it. Cannot give away more NDP medals.
Id give you some points but you seem to have enough....well said. Its the same old kiasu mentality of fucked up companies....if superior says something stupid everyone just bows their head and follows it. Nobody can sense that this is just another move to flood our minds with as much confusion as possible. After 10 years soneone will give a speech saying "we will never know the true fate of mh370 but our hearts go out to the families" Might as well close the case and get back to the other fuckups in the world today.
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hahaha..nowadays many countries have satellites so it is impossible to land on some remote air-strip without being detected
also with ping signals from the airplane, the last location could have been narrowed at an earlier stage..
on aircraft design..it should not be too expensive to make the transponder to be auto active above a h 1000m..and the pilots can only disable the transponder manually below 1000m on a need basis in case there is EM interference during landing approach..truely retarded.
also with ping signals from the airplane, the last location could have been narrowed at an earlier stage..
on aircraft design..it should not be too expensive to make the transponder to be auto active above a h 1000m..and the pilots can only disable the transponder manually below 1000m on a need basis in case there is EM interference during landing approach..truely retarded.
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If the pilot sets autopilot to Langkawi, can't the plane auto land on Langkawi? Or landing cannot be automated at all....?
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ok, dismiss that one. so a deliberate fly to the end of the earth suicide theory may still be plausible. somehow me thinks cockpit crew was incapacitated after reprogramming and making u-turn. :o
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Both kena stroke at the same time.
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not possible, but if all including passengers kena stroke it might be that they were all listening to "china wine."
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uh oh. prc icebreaker, xue-long or snow dragon, is on it's way to search area from the port in perth. 
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"the size of the largest piece of debris is consistent with the xxxxxxxl underwear of my mom-in-law." a heartless insensitive comedian might have quipped. :*:
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hahaha.....things really worked in a very strange way.......for a long while, I could not log in and now I can log in again.....
I am amaze with all the time and resources wasted so far looking for the missing plane where a simple modification to the airplane transponder system in the first place would have prevented this.
At present, the transponder system can be manually switched off by the cockpit crew easily anytime.....
a simple improvement is to automatically switch on the transponder system at a height of say 1000m.....and the cockpit crew can ONLY manually switched off the transponder at a lower height on a need basis like when they encounter electro-magnetic interference from the system during a landing approach....
Also the existing system of pings/handshake signals from MH370 to the satellite would have narrowed down the approximate final position of the plane in the first place and it is really a joke to go around in circle for so many days........truely retarded.
I am amaze with all the time and resources wasted so far looking for the missing plane where a simple modification to the airplane transponder system in the first place would have prevented this.
At present, the transponder system can be manually switched off by the cockpit crew easily anytime.....
a simple improvement is to automatically switch on the transponder system at a height of say 1000m.....and the cockpit crew can ONLY manually switched off the transponder at a lower height on a need basis like when they encounter electro-magnetic interference from the system during a landing approach....
Also the existing system of pings/handshake signals from MH370 to the satellite would have narrowed down the approximate final position of the plane in the first place and it is really a joke to go around in circle for so many days........truely retarded.
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uh oh. prc icebreaker, xue-long or snow dragon, is on it's way to search area from the port in perth.
Is that the ship that pulled the stranded Aussies from Antartica?
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yes, but it got stuck. it's choppers however contributed to the rescue effort.
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you have to know how satellites work together to pinpoint location to understand this. not that easy. first of all, the inmarsat satellite is geo-stationary at geo-sync orbit, and it pinged the plane alone. it doesn't have the luxury of another satellite to help triangulate the pings to 2 points with the intersection of 2 circles. to find 1 location out of 2, you need at least 3 satellites. to find elevation or altitude (the z axis) you need 4. with 1 satellite, the best that can come of it is an arc within the vast circle of 1 satellite coverage. the other 2 coordinates that can be deducted from the arc are from the maximum fuel range of the plane. based on this analysis by u.s. agencies and experts, it makes perfect sense for investigators to narrow the search to these 2 arcs and end of these arcs, and the u.s. narrow those 2 arcs down to 1 for best use of resources - a reason why u.s. started sending the p-8 plane to the indian ocean many days ago and asking aussies for search/intell assistance and logistics facilities out of perth. when shit hits the fan or push cums to shove in a major disaster or trajedy, you can still bet on the u.s. being there with assets to lead and guide in the shadows. kudos to the aussies, but without the u.s. narrowing down the search and deducing from all leads and a bunch of noise and conspiracy theories, we'll still be wondering where the f*ck is that plane. :*:
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hahaha....u are right to say that it requires the resources of various countries to triangulate the approximate location of the plane but with all the publicity and resources on hand, why it took so many days to do so....of course the convenient answer is that countries had reservations showing their cards/capabilities????
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this is a very difficult and unique case, and let's say it's one of a kind of kukubird. :p
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Witch doctor inspires host of MH370 video games
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 20 March, 2014, 11:18pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 20 March, 2014, 11:57pm
Andrea Chen [email protected]
Bomoh Rescue Run was inspired by Ibrahim Mat Zin's antics to locate the missing MH 370. Photo: SCMP, AFP
The witch doctor helping locate the missing Malaysia Airlines jet has inspired a host of mobile video games featuring flying carpets and coconuts as machinery.
The efforts of Ibrahim Mat Zin, a famous Malaysian
bomoh (Malay for shaman), to pinpoint flight MH370 was met with scepticism and ridicule by the public and became instant fodder for mobile game developers.
Forty-six apps under the key word "
bomoh" can be downloaded from Google Play.
One of the first created,
Bomoh Rescue Run by unknown developer Triapps, appeared shortly after Ibrahim Mat Zin performed rituals at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 10 to help find the location of the jet, which carried 227 passengers - mostly Chinese - and 12 crew.
Available since March 13, the game has been downloaded more than 100,000 times, and 78 per cent out of the 3,823 raters gave the app a top rating of five stars.
Users control three witch doctors, in lounge suits riding a flying carpet in a row, to rescue passengers and crew on a runway to gain points. There are three modes of searching: by air, sea or on the street.
The game's description says the shamans perform rituals with water and an enchanted walking stick.
Despite it making light of a touchy subject, it drew positive comments.
"Very creative," said a user labelled Stephy Yi. "Those who want to give it a try should download as soon as possible. The game can be taken off from the shelf anytime."
Other developers have come up with puzzle and adventure games featuring the witch doctor.
Most of the
bomoh games have scored higher than four stars.
Barely three days after the airplane vanished from civilian aviation radar, Ibrahim Mat Zin predicted the jet was either underwater or still flying.
After videos and pictures of his rituals surfaced, Malaysia's religious authorities, who said the rituals contravened Islamic law, dispatched seven officers to the airport to bar the witch doctor if he returned.
Andrea Chen
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Recovery of flight 370 wreckage in Indian Ocean would be 'no easy job'
Depth of Indian Ocean means any retrieval of wreckage would be 'very challenging'
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 20 March, 2014, 10:55pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 20 March, 2014, 11:57pm
Stephen Chen in Beijing [email protected]
Sturla Henriksen, director general of the Norwegian Shipowner's Association. The Norwegian ship "Hoeegh St Petersburg" reached the area of the Indian Ocean where possible debris of the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 plane were spotted. Photo: AFP
Finding the main wreckage and black boxes of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 would require Herculean efforts, state-of-the-art technology and no small amount of luck.
Two large objects were spotted floating in a remote part of the Indian Ocean yesterday, raising hopes that the mystery of the missing Boeing 777 could finally be solved.
But experts quickly cautioned the public about expectations. Even if investigators confirmed that the two objects were from the missing jet, it would take a while to salvage the wreckage and the black boxes - or flight-data recorders - that would most likely have plunged to the ocean floor.
The Indian Ocean is 3,900 metres deep on average, with some parts twice that depth.
Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's acting transport minister, acknowledged the size of the task at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur, comparing the search to the extended hunt for Air France flight 477 in 2009 that took nearly two years.
"The conditions in the Indian Ocean are very similar to that of the Atlantic Ocean. It will be very challenging," Hishammuddin said.
Chinese experts agreed with his assessment.
Professor Dong Chaoyang , an aeronautics scientist at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, compared the task ahead to the hunt for flight 477, the wreckage of which was found some 3,000 metres below the surface. Many of the bodies were never found.
"The depth of 3,000 metres is way beyond the reach of the bravest divers," he said.
"Such hazardous depths will considerably delay the solving of this mystery."
Even the most advanced US nuclear submarine would struggle to operate below 500 metres.
To conduct operations at such depths, the search teams would have to face steel-crushing water pressure, a complete absence of light and extremely low temperatures.
"Even if they found and confirmed the exact location of the wreckage, to reach the black box and bring it up would be a daunting task," Dong said.
"It took more than two years to retrieve the black box of the Air France plane. It could take longer this time."
Once a search area was confirmed, the salvage teams would have to send submarines equipped with advanced sonar systems to pinpoint the precise location of the main area of wreckage.
In the Air France case, France dispatched its nuclear submarine and two ships equipped with towed sonar sensors to search the area once the crash site was found.
It still took the French months to pinpoint the location.
After that, submersible robots salvaged the wreckage. Only a few nations can build and operate such machines.
An oceanographer with the Ocean University of China in Qingdao , who asked not to be identified, said Chinese ships had high-resolution sonar equipment that could penetrate thousands of metres under the water.
"The black boxes are very important to China, we will be forever left in the dark on some serious questions if they are lost, or found by other countries [who may not want to share the data]," he said.
He said China's deep-sea research submersible, the Jiaolong, could reach beyond 7,000 meters with a three-person crew.
But he added that the craft would need to undergo significant modifications for a retrieval mission.
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