MALAYSIAN Airlines flight en route to China is missing.

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Chinese families clash with police, slam Malaysia over lost plane

By Megha Rajagopalan and Al-Zaquan Amer Hamzah
BEIJING/KUALA LUMPUR Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:35pm EDT

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(Reuters) - Dozens of angry relatives of passengers on a lost Malaysian jetliner clashed with police in Beijing on Tuesday, accusing the Southeast Asian country of "delays and deception" a day after it confirmed the plane crashed in remote seas off Australia.

About 20 to 30 protesters threw water bottles at the Malaysian embassy and tried to storm the building, demanding to meet the ambassador, witnesses said. Earlier, the relatives, many with tear-stained faces, had linked arms and chanted "Malaysian government has cheated us" and "Malaysia, return our relatives" as they marched peacefully and held banners.

The relatives' grief and anger was unleashed on Monday night after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished more than two weeks ago while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

Citing satellite-data analysis by British firm Inmarsat, he said there was now no doubt that the Boeing jet came down in the ocean in one of the most remote places on Earth - an implicit admission that all 239 people on board had died.

Bad weather in the region far off Australia's western coast on Tuesday forced the suspension of the search for any wreckage, just as a series of satellite images and other sightings of floating objects had raised hopes that debris from the plane would be found.

Malaysia's confused initial response to the Boeing 777's disappearance and a perception of poor communications has enraged many relatives of the more than 150 Chinese passengers and strained ties between Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.

After Najib's announcement, Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng demanded Malaysia hand over all relevant satellite analysis showing how Malaysia had reached its conclusion about the fate of the jet.

In a separate statement, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said China would ask Malaysia to provide more detailed and accurate information on the plane, according to a government microblog account. Chinese President Xi Jinping will send a special envoy to Kuala Lumpur to consult with the Malaysian government, state news agency Xinhua said on Tuesday.

ANGER, GRIEF

A group reportedly representing families issued a statement describing the Malaysian airline, government and military as "executioners" who constantly tried to delay and deceive them.

"We will take every possible means to pursue the unforgivable crimes and responsibility of all three," said the statement on the microblog of the Malaysia Airlines MH370 Family Committee.

The relatives protesting in Beijing held signs that said: "MH370, Don't let us wait too long!" and "1.3 billion people are waiting to greet the plane". They wore matching t-shirts that said: "Best of luck to MH370, return home safely."

"We've waited for 18 days and still, you make us wait. How long are we supposed to hang on?" a woman surnamed Zhang told Reuters.

The protest ended after a few hours, when police told protesters to get on buses and escorted them away.

Criticism of the Malaysian national carrier mounted after some relatives of those on board first received the news that the search for survivors was over in an SMS from the airline, which said: "We have to assume beyond all reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and none of those on board survived."

At a news conference at Kuala Lumpur's international airport on Tuesday, company officials defended the move, saying the text message had only been sent as a "last resort" to ensure that some relatives did not hear the news first from media.

"This is a time of extraordinary emotions and we fully understand," said Malaysia Airlines Chairman Mohd Nur Yusof. "In fact, we really feel for the next of kin. In terms of how they react, it's emotional."

Asked whether he would resign over the crisis, the airline's chief executive, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, said that would be a "personal decision" to be made at a later time.

WRECKAGE COULD HOLD KEY

Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off on March 8. No confirmed debris from the plane has been found since.

Investigators believe someone on the flight may have shut off the plane's communications systems. Partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and re-crossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.

Recovery of wreckage could unlock clues about why the plane had diverted so far off course. Theories range from a hijacking to sabotage or a possible suicide by one of the pilots, but investigators have not ruled out technical problems.

As a result of the new satellite analysis, the international search effort has been narrowed to focus solely on the southern end of the possible route - a still massive area of 469,000 sq miles (1.2 million sq km) - Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters.

The search site is far from commercial flight paths about 2,500 km (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth, a region of deep, frigid seas known as the Roaring 40s where storm-force winds and huge waves are commonplace.

Malaysia Airlines said in a statement that it would make arrangements to fly relatives to Australia once it had approval from the investigating authorities.

Australia's Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said his department was working with the airline and Beijing to facilitate visas. Relatives would be given tourist visas with the usual fees waived, he said.

COSTLY, DIFFICULT INVESTIGATION

Najib's announcement opens the way for what will be one of the most costly and difficult air crash investigations ever. Normally, an official investigation can only begin once a crash site has been identified. That would give Malaysia power to coordinate and sift evidence.

A government source told Reuters that Malaysia would lead the investigation, but hoped other countries, especially Australia, would play a major role.

The United States said it was sending an undersea Navy drone to Australia, in addition to a high-tech black box detector, to help in the search.

But the black box detector would not arrive in the search area until April 5, Hishammuddin said, leaving only a few days to pick up locator beacons from the box that stop about a month after a crash due to limited battery life.

The so-called black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - record what happens during flight.

Najib said Inmarsat had performed further calculations on data gleaned from faint pings picked up by satellite that initially only narrowed the search area to two massive arcs.

Giving more details on the analysis on Tuesday, Hishammuddin said it showed that at some time after 0011 GMT - about six hours after its last sighting by Malaysian military radar on March 8 - the aircraft was no longer able to communicate with the ground station.

"This is consistent with the maximum endurance of the aircraft," he said.

He said there was evidence of a further "partial handshake" between the satellite and the aircraft 8 minutes later, but that this transmission was not understood and was being analysed.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard, Megha Rajagopalan and Joseph Campbell in Beijing, Stuart Grudgings, Michael Martina, Siva Govindasamy and A. Ananthalakshmi in Kuala Lumpur; Phil Stewart in Washington; Jane Wardell in Sydney and Matt Siegel in Perth; Writing by Stuart Grudgings; Editing by Alex Richardson)

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

China sends special envoy to Malaysia to press for answers on missing flight MH370

China demands satellite data that prompted Malaysian PM to declare jet was ‘lost’, while hundreds protest outside embassy in Beijing

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 25 March, 2014, 11:40pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 26 March, 2014, 3:25am

Staff Reporters in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing and Agencies

Angry protesters shout slogans in front of the Malaysian embassy in Beijing yesterday. Photo: Reuters

A angry relative yells at security personnel at a protest outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing. Photo: AFP

President Xi Jinping sent a special envoy to Kuala Lumpur yesterday to press for details about the fate of the vanished Malaysian airliner, as relatives of passengers accused that country's officials of lying about the flight's final hours.

The crisis over Malaysia Airlines flight 370 topped the agenda of a central government meeting in Beijing chaired by Premier Li Keqiang .

Xinhua said Deputy Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui would act as the special envoy and head for Kuala Lumpur as soon as possible to "learn about the situation" and "ask the Malaysian side to properly handle related issues".

Watch: Chinese relatives demand 'truth' over MH370 crash

Another deputy foreign minister, Xie Hangsheng , told Malaysia's ambassador to Beijing, Iskandar Sarudin, that China wanted the precise data that prompted Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to announce on Monday night that the flight had "ended" in the southern Indian Ocean.

"We demand the Malaysian side make clear the specific basis on which they come to this judgment," Xie said.

In a statement after the meeting, the State Council said search and rescue was still the priority and that the government would provide legal aid and medical services to passengers' relatives.

After 18 days of anguish, hundreds of Chinese, including relatives of those on board, marched to the Malaysian embassy in Beijing. They carried placards and chanted "liar", and "You owe us an explanation". Tempers flared as protesters pelted the embassy lawn with plastic bottles and scuffled with police, who took no steps to end the demonstration.

Malaysia Airlines chairman Mohammed Nor Mohammed, stuck to his guns, telling a press conference that although no wreckage had been found, there was no doubt the flight was lost.

Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein reiterated that British satellite company Inmarsat used a new technique to trace the plane's path over the Indian Ocean.

Using the data, he said the search in a so-called northern corridor had been ended. The remaining search area is now 469,407 square nautical miles.

Air Marshal Mark Binskin, deputy chief of Australia's Defence Force, said the hunt was still monumental. "We are not searching for a needle in a haystack. We are still trying to define where the haystack is," he said.

Search teams are racing to find the "black box" data recorders, which could explain why the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 changed course before vanishing.

Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales, said the plane could hardly have vanished in a more inhospitable place than the southern Indian Ocean. "It's got some of the strongest winds in the world and the highest waves."

Australia said improved weather would allow the hunt for the plane to resume today after gale-force winds and heavy rain forced a day-long delay.

Chinese media questioned why Malaysian officials had altered the official tally of passengers and crew on Monday.

Najib said 226 passengers and "our 13 friends and colleagues" were aboard, a change from the 227 passengers and 12 crew announced earlier. Malaysian officials said an engineer was previously counted as a passenger.

Danny Lee, Angela Meng, Mandy Zuo, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

New details of the final minutes of flight MH370

Yahoo! and agencies March 26, 2014, 6:33 am

The Malaysian authorities at the forefront of the missing MH370 investigation have revealed that the flight most probably plunged into the southern Indian Ocean between 8:11am and 9:15am on Saturday March 8.

Malaysia’s Defence and acting Transport Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said the new details were the result of never-before-used technology that has helped traced the Boeing 777's final moments on a deadly flight path.

MH370's last complete "handshake" was last captured on an Inmarsat satellite that was covering two massive southern and northern corridors at 8:11am.

Just eight minutes later, there is evidence of a partial handshake with the ground station.

Sometime between 8:19am and 9:15am, all communication was lost.

Investigating authorities have concluded that the Malaysia Airlines flight crashed into a remote area of the southern Indian Ocean during that final 56 minutes because the jet would have been out of fuel.

Search for Malaysian plane to resume

Blustery conditions in the southern Indian Ocean are expected to ease on Wednesday allowing authorities to resume the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

Gale force winds and heavy swells disrupted search and recovery efforts on Tuesday.

A crew member of an RAAF AP-3C Orion aircraft looks out from an window during the search for potential MH370 debris. Photo: Getty.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority says the visual search will resume with weather conditions expected to improve.

Twelve aircraft, seven military and the rest civilian will take to the skies over the search zone.

HMAS Success will be conducting a surface sweep, looking for objects of interest.

A ground controller guides a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion to rest upon its return from a search for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 over the Indian Ocean, at RAAF Pearce air base in Perth. Photo: AAP

Six countries are assisting the search - Australia, New Zealand, United States, Japan, China and South Korea.

India has offered to join the efforts.

China's polar supply ship Snow Dragon and three other ships are expected to arrive in the search area on Wednesday.

Families set to arrive in Perth

The grief-stricken families of passengers aboard missing Flight MH370 are expected to begin arriving in Perth within days as search teams race to locate the plane's black box before it stops emitting a locator signal.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Australia would waive visa fees for the families, telling Parliament that those who come "will be in the arms of a decent country".

The Malaysian Government said on Monday night the plane had been lost in the southern Indian Ocean.

The enormity of the search was laid bare yesterday with Vice-Chief of the Defence Force Mark Binskin saying teams were not searching for a needle in a haystack but rather still trying to find the haystack.

US officials said the Pentagon had rushed a special undersea "pinger" locator to Perth to hopefully find the black box flight recorder. The locator, which will likely be towed behind a warship, is the best hope of finding the black box before it runs out of batteries in 12 days.

Planes from South Korea arrived yesterday but the search lost valuable time when it was abandoned in bad weather.

Defence Minister David Johnston said the search would be put on hold for at least 24 hours, warning the area of the Indian Ocean where the plane is thought to have gone down was dangerous and remote.

It was expected to resume today with up to 12 planes as Chinese ships were likely to reach the search area.

The family of Perth man Paul Weeks, who was onboard MH370, were comforting one another yesterday at the home he shared with wife Danica and their two sons at The Vines.

Mr Weeks, who moved to Perth from New Zealand more than two years ago, was en route to his first shift as an engineering supervisor in Mongolia.

Mrs Weeks said she was trying to come to terms with the unbelievable situation and was focusing on her boys, Lincoln, 3, and Jack, 11 months.

Her mother, Kay Thompson, said everyone had hoped for something better. "You can imagine how we feel," she said.

"We have been waiting for two weeks but that is the way it is and we are all dreadfully sad."

Malaysia Airlines is examining options to fly relatives of the passengers to Perth.

It has said it would pay for relatives to fly to Perth if and when debris was found.

 

[Vermin]

Mystery of MH370 'may never be solved'

AFP
March 26, 2014, 6:04 am

Kuala Lumpur (AFP) - Even if searchers are able to miraculously pluck Malaysia Airlines flight 370's "black box" from the depths of the vast Indian Ocean, experts say it may not solve one of aviation's greatest mysteries.

Planes, ships and state-of-the-art tracking equipment are hunting for any trace of the passenger jet, which Malaysia said crashed in the forbidding waters after veering far from its intended course.

They face a huge challenge locating the Boeing 777's "black box", which holds vital clues to determining what caused the plane to vanish after it took off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on March 8.

But experts believe the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder may not yield answers on the riddle of how and why the plane diverted an hour into the flight, and embarked on a baffling journey to the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean.

The data recorder details the aircraft's path and other mechanical information for the flight's duration, and "should provide a wealth of information", US-based aviation consultancy firm Leeham Co said in a commentary.

But the cockpit voice recorder -- which could reveal what decisions were made by those at the helm and why -- retains only the last two hours of conversations before the plane's demise.

That means potentially crucial exchanges surrounding the initial diversion, which took place halfway between Malaysia and Vietnam, will be lost.

"Clearly, it won?t reveal anything that happened over the Gulf of Thailand -- this will have been overwritten by the end of MH370," it said.

Leeham added that it also remains to be seen whether the cockpit recorder will contain anything pertinent about the plane's final two hours, when it is believed to have either ditched or run out of fuel.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday that Flight MH370 had gone down in the Indian Ocean with its 239 passengers and crew, citing new satellite data analysis.

But its exact location and the circumstances of its diversion remain a mystery. No distress signal was ever received.

Three scenarios have gained particular traction: hijacking, pilot sabotage, or a sudden mid-air crisis that incapacitated flight crew and left the plane to fly on auto-pilot for several hours until it ran out of fuel.

Malaysia has said it believes the plane was deliberately diverted by someone on board.

But with the travelling public and aviation industry hanging on every twist in the drama, no firm evidence has emerged from a Malaysian investigation to support any of the theories circulating.

British aviation expert Chris Yates said that even if the black boxes are found, "it seems unlikely that we will get that answer" of why the plane ended up thousands of kilometres off course.

"We still have no idea as to the mental state of the pilot and co-pilot, we have no idea if somebody managed to get into the cockpit to seize the aircraft, and we?ve certainly had no admissions of responsibility since this whole episode started," he told BBC television.

"It is a mystery like no other."

Debris has been sighted far off Australia's west coast but an international search effort has been unable to retrieve any for confirmation, and wreckage could have drifted hundreds of kilometres from where the plane crashed.

"As investigators, we deal with physical evidence and right now we don't have any physical evidence to work with," Anthony Brickhouse, a member of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators, told AFP.

The batteries powering the locator signal of the black boxes will run out in less than two weeks.

A US device capable of detecting that signal even on the ocean floor was being sent to the scene, but weather and treacherous sea conditions have hampered the effort to pinpoint the black box location.

Paul Yap, an aviation lecturer at Singapore's Temasek Polytechnic, said that if the black box is not found, "chances are we are never going to find out what really happened".

"With the new satellite data, I think we can say it is a chessboard," he said of the wide search area.

"The question now is to find which grid on that chessboard to focus on, where the black boxes are."

 

[neddy]

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The West Australian<cite class="article-cite" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; display: block; letter-spacing: normal;">GEOFFREY THOMAS AND AGENCIES The West Australian</cite><time class="article-time" datetime="1395773400" itemprop="datePublished" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; display: block;">March 26, 2014, 2:50 am</time><time class="article-time" datetime="1395773400" itemprop="datePublished" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; display: block;"></time><time class="article-time" datetime="1395773400" itemprop="datePublished" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; display: block;"></time>
</header>
Malaysian authorities at the forefront of the missing MH370 investigation have revealed that the flight most probably plunged into the southern Indian Ocean between 8:11am and 9:15am on Saturday, March 8.
Malaysia’s Defence and acting Transport Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said the new details were the result of never-before-used technology that has helped traced the Boeing 777's final moments on a deadly flight path.
MH370's last complete communication was captured on an Inmarsat satellite that was covering two massive southern and northern corridors at 8:11am.
Just eight minutes later, there is evidence of a partial communication with the ground station.
Sometime between 8:19am and 9:15am, all communication was lost.
Investigating authorities have concluded that MH370 crashed into the southern Indian Ocean during that 56 minutes because it would have been out of fuel.
The search for debris has resumed this morning. It was suspended yesterday because of bad weather in the search zone.
Debris from MH370 is expected to wash up along the WA coast over the next few months as search crews race against the impending winter weather to locate the Boeing 777.
The herculean task of locating MH370 will be the most complex international effort in aviation history and it may be years before the wreckage is found.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said this morning the search for the missing airliner was not open-ended but Australia would not lightly abandon efforts to locate the wreckage.He says Australia is throwing everything it can at the search, which is expected to resume on Wednesday after a 24-hour delay due to bad weather in the southern Indian Ocean.
Up to 12 aircraft are expected in the search area about 2500km southwest of Perth, along with Chinese navy and civilian ships and HMAS Success.
<figure class="article-figure featured-figure" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; float: none;">

<figcaption class="figure-caption" style="margin: -3px 0px 0px; padding: 8px 8px 8px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: GuardSans-n, 'Guardian Sans', HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(137, 139, 149);">A combined map of the search areas.</figcaption></figure>
<figure class="article-figure featured-figure" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; float: none;">

<figcaption class="figure-caption" style="margin: -3px 0px 0px; padding: 8px 8px 8px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: GuardSans-n, 'Guardian Sans', HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(137, 139, 149);">Today's search area.</figcaption></figure>
Four RAAF AP-3C Orion aircraft will be involved and another Australian navy vessel will soon join Success, Mr Abbott said.
As well, equipment to recover the aircraft’s black box flight recorder is on the way from the United States.
Mr Abbott said there was a lot of debris in the area and Australia would keep searching until there was no hope of finding anything.
“We are just going to keep on looking because we owe it to people to do everything we can to resolve this riddle,” he told the Nine Network.
<figure class="article-figure featured-figure" style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; float: none;">

<figcaption class="figure-caption" style="margin: -3px 0px 0px; padding: 8px 8px 8px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: GuardSans-n, 'Guardian Sans', HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(137, 139, 149);">A RAAF Orion takes off from Pearce air base this morning to resume the search.</figcaption></figure>
“It is not absolutely open-ended but it is not something we will lightly abandon.”
Mr Abbott said he spoke to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Tuesday and pledged Australia’s ongoing help.
“We owe it to the families. We owe it to an anxious world to do everything we can to finally locate some wreckage and to do whatever we can to solve the riddle of this extraordinarily ill-fated flight,” he said.
It took almost two years to find Air France 447 and that was in calmer mid-Atlantic waters, after debris was found six days after the crash in 2009.
According to the lead investigator of the AF447 crash Alain Bouillard, searchers face a “colossal task” that is “far, far harder”. than the two-year search for the Air France plane.
Mr Bouillard said the location of MH370 was “one of the most hostile environments in the world”.
However, searchers were expected to learn from the lessons of the AF447 recovery, observers said.
In that recovery, a team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution operating full ocean depth autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) used sidescan sonar to locate the main debris field at a depth of 4000m. More than 104 bodies were recovered. from the wreckage.
Families set to arrive in Perth | Chinese relatives protest
Fifty bodies were picked up earlier in the sea and 74 were never found.
Without doubt the biggest challenge in locating and recovering MH370 will be the sea condition with winter swells as high as 25m.

​

The location of the MH370 is at the convergence of three currents — the South Indian Ocean Current, which becomes the West Australian Current, the Leeuwin Current and the Antarctica Circumpolar Current.Those underlying currents work below the sea swells that move in a broad easterly or north-easterly direction depending on the frontal activity.
Oceanographer Dr Erik Van Sebille told Channel 7’s Sunrise the currents are extremely strong at up to 2cm a second and would get worse. “And they are only going to get worse”
“The current varies every day and has vortices and debris can move 100km a day (in any direction).”
With the new satellite data from Inmarsat, along with increasing amounts of drift data, searchers will try to zero in on MH370’s initial impact area.
An Australian warship is expected to be tasked with deploying US locator equipment. Yesterday a 5m long 800kg Bluefin drone and a Towed Pinger Locator arrived in Perth on a special G550 jet from the US.
MH370’s black boxes are key to solving the mystery of why the plane veered so far off course.
In theory, the black boxes containing flight data and cockpit voice recordings will continue emitting tracking signals for about another two weeks, with an average audible range of 2km to 3km.
“Picking up a signal from the beacon seems an outside chance,” a member of the team that hunted the black boxes from Air France flight AF447 said. that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009
In that accident, the signals were not heard at all because one transmitter failed and the other fell off and was never found.
The sea bed where MH370 is thought to be is up to 5km deep. But the cockpit voice recorder tapes only the last 30 minutes of the pilots’ conversation and investigators will never hear what happened around the time the plane first changed course.
with agencies

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Finding MH370's black box the key, say Chinese scientists

Chinese experts call on authorities to put aside doubts in race to unlock Indian Ocean mystery

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 25 March, 2014, 12:51pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 26 March, 2014, 9:22am

Stephen Chen [email protected]

The Towed Pinger Locator (TPL) 25 System is used for locating emergency relocation pingers on downed Navy and commercial aircraft at a maximum depth of 20,000 feet (6,000 metres). Photo: AFP

China should put aside doubts and act quickly to recover flight MH370's black box, Chinese scientists say.

Answers to vital questions such as why the plane veered off course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 and out over the southern Indian Ocean, would probably be found in the plane's rugged recording devices, but China needed more information to find them, scientists said.

They said information released by Malaysian authorities had been vague or incomplete, impeding the search.

Professor Fu Xiongjun, an image and signal processing researcher with the Beijing Institute of Technology, said he had doubts about the Malaysian government's search capabilities and hence its announcement. But the conclusion by Western experts that the flight came to a tragic end 2,500 kilometres southwest of Perth had to be accepted.

"Malaysia's claim must be verified, but we can also use the data to run our own estimate on the possible crash site and locate the plane," Fu said.

Yin Junjun, a research fellow on radar signal interpretation with Tsinghua University in Beijing, said that to find the Boeing 777, investigators would need data from at least three satellites to fix its last co-ordinates.

She said if data was recovered from fewer than three, calculations about the plane's location would be unreliable, if not impossible to make.

"Malaysian authorities have made a very definite conclusion on the plane's loss, and I believe it because they have data from more than one satellite," Yin said.

She said the technique of tracking planes with satellite "pings" was based on science that was two centuries old.

Austrian physicist Christian Doppler proposed in 1842 that an observer could detect an object's position based on a change in sound wave frequency. It's the theory that helps drivers detect if a siren is approaching or retreating. The shifting frequency, known as the Doppler effect, can determine an object's relative speed.

Using that principle, satellites can help determine a plane's location. Each hour a satellite received a "ping" from the missing plane and recorded a brief pulse of electromagnetic waves. Yin said that by analysing the wave patterns, investigators might be able to pin down the location.

"The method is simple in theory, but difficult in practice," she said.

Professor Wang Xiuming, a geophysicist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Acoustics, said that given the breadth of the search zone, the plane might not be found without years of effort and at a very high price.

High-resolution sonar imagers can identify objects as long as five metres on the ocean floor at more than 3,000 metres deep, but they can only scan an area about a dozen kilometres wide. Searching the entire floor area would require many ships and many years.

Even the best sonar images are not clear enough to identify plane wreckage, so a search team would need to lower a deep-sea submersible with a camera, which would be costly and time- consuming.

"If the government is determined to find the plane, we will find it sooner or later," Wang said.

But time is working against investigators.

Jiang Yan, chief engineer with the Shanghai Salvage Company under the Ministry of Transport, told China Central Television that China did not have the ability to retrieve wreckage or black boxes from a depth beyond three kilometres.

"Only the United States, Norway or France have the technology and experience," he said. "After April, the weather in the area will become so bad that most search efforts will have to be postponed."

Professor Fu Xiongjun, an image and signal processing researcher at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said that using the raw data, Chinese researchers might reach the same conclusion as Malaysian officials.

"From the first day, China had a dilemma. Most of the passengers on the plane are Chinese but we have made the least discoveries," Fu said. "The embarrassing situation was probably why the government urged Malaysia to be more transparent and asked for the satellite data."

 

[Microsoft]

Will Sinkieland oso get an indirect free kick in tourism...


China tourists steering clear of Malaysia

BEIJING
THE controversy surrounding missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has prompted many Chinese tourists, who once saw Malaysia as an attractive holiday destination, to look elsewhere, travel agents said yesterday.
Eleven Chinese travel agents said that bookings between China and Malaysia had dropped severely, and that many people have cancelled their trips, amid anger over the perceived lack of information provided by the Malaysian government to families of the missing passengers.
"We used to have 30 to 40 customers a month for group tours to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Now, there is no one asking about this route or booking," said a travel agent surnamed Chen.
"Tourists don't even consider going there. Many also have a negative impression of the country now," said Mr Chen of Comfort Travel in the southern city of Guangzhou.
In Beijing, angry relatives of Chinese passengers aboard the missing plane protested yesterday outside the Malaysian Embassy, demanding an explanation from the airline and accusing the government in Kuala Lumpur of "delays and deception".
Flight MH370, with 239 people on board, vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after take-off on March 8 on a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Most of the passengers were Chinese.
"The Malaysian government deliberately delayed publicising real information about the flight. We should punish this completely irresponsible attitude and boycott Malaysian tourism," said a user of Sina Weibo.
The slowdown in Chinese travel could hurt Malaysia's goal of boosting tourism, though the impact on the economy may be limited. Chinese tourist arrivals account for about 12 per cent of Malaysia's total tourists and 0.4 per cent of the country's gross domestic product, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a note. --REUTERS
- See more at: http://news.omy.sg/News/World-News/...clear-of-Malaysia-250282#sthash.COvGxQUR.dpuf

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Search for Malaysian jet resumes off Australia after weather improves

By Megha Rajagopalan and Al-Zaquan Amer Hamzah
BEIJING/KUALA LUMPUR Tue Mar 25, 2014 10:05pm EDT

A Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) AP-3C Orion takes off from RAAF base Pearce to search for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 over the southern Indian Ocean, March 26, 2014. REUTERS/Jason Reed

(Reuters) - Dozens of distraught relatives of passengers on a lost Malaysian jetliner clashed with police in Beijing on Tuesday, accusing Malaysia of "delays and deception" a day after it confirmed the plane crashed in remote seas off Australia.

About 20 to 30 protesters threw water bottles at the Malaysian embassy and tried to storm the building, demanding to meet the ambassador, witnesses said. Earlier, the relatives, many with tear-stained faces, had linked arms and chanted "Malaysian government has cheated us" and "Malaysia, return our relatives" as they marched peacefully and held banners.

The relatives' grief and anger was unleashed on Monday night after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished more than two weeks ago while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

Citing satellite-data analysis by British company Inmarsat, he said there was now no doubt that the Boeing jet came down in the ocean in one of the most remote places on Earth - an implicit admission that all 239 people on board had died.

Bad weather in the region far off Australia's western coast on Tuesday forced the suspension of the search for any wreckage, just as a series of satellite images and other sightings of floating objects had raised hopes that debris from the plane would be found.

Malaysia's confused initial response to the Boeing 777's disappearance and a perception of poor communications has enraged many relatives of the more than 150 Chinese passengers and has strained ties between Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.

Following Najib's announcement, Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng demanded that Malaysia hand over all relevant satellite analysis showing how Malaysia had reached its conclusion about the jet's fate.

In a separate statement, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said China would ask Malaysia to provide more detailed and accurate information on the plane, according to a government microblog account. Chinese President Xi Jinping will send a special envoy to Kuala Lumpur to consult with the Malaysian government, state news agency Xinhua said on Tuesday.

The U.S. State Department said the United States was cooperating with Malaysia and working to verify the data from Inmarsat and the Kuala Lumpur government about the course of the U.S.-made plane.

"Basically, we are going back and looking at how they got to where they got to and seeing if our math experts and folks can get to the same place as well," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told a regular news briefing.

ANGER, GRIEF

A group reportedly representing families issued a statement describing the Malaysian airline, government and military as "executioners" who constantly tried to delay and deceive them.

"We will take every possible means to pursue the unforgivable crimes and responsibility of all three," said the statement on the microblog of the Malaysia Airlines MH370 Family Committee.

The relatives protesting in Beijing held signs that said: "MH370, Don't let us wait too long!" and "1.3 billion people are waiting to greet the plane." They wore matching T-shirts that said: "Best of luck to MH370, return home safely."

"We've waited for 18 days and still, you make us wait. How long are we supposed to hang on?" a woman surnamed Zhang told Reuters.

The protest ended after a few hours when police told demonstrators to get on buses and escorted them away.

Criticism of the Malaysian national carrier mounted after some relatives of those on board first received the news that the search for survivors was over in an SMS, or text message, from the airline saying, "We have to assume beyond all reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and none of those on board survived."

At a news conference at Kuala Lumpur's international airport on Tuesday, company officials defended the move, saying the text message had only been sent as a "last resort" to ensure that some relatives did not hear the news first from media outlets.

"This is a time of extraordinary emotions, and we fully understand," said Malaysia Airlines Chairman Mohd Nur Yusof. "In fact, we really feel for the next of kin. In terms of how they react, it's emotional."

Asked whether he would resign over the crisis, the airline's chief executive, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, said that would be a personal decision to be made later.

WRECKAGE COULD HOLD KEY

Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off on March 8. No confirmed debris from the plane has been found since.

Investigators believe someone on the flight may have shut off the plane's communications systems. Partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and recrossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.

Recovery of wreckage could unlock clues about why the plane had diverted so far off course. Theories range from a hijacking to sabotage or a possible suicide by one of the pilots, but investigators have not ruled out technical problems.

As a result of the new satellite analysis, the international search effort has been narrowed to focus solely on the southern end of the possible route - a still-massive area of 469,000 square miles (1.2 million sq km) - Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters.

The search site is far from commercial flight paths about 2,500 km (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth, a region of deep, frigid seas known as the Roaring 40s where storm-force winds and huge waves are commonplace.

Malaysia Airlines said in a statement that it would make arrangements to fly relatives to Australia once it had approval from the investigating authorities.

Australia's Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said his department was working with the airline and Beijing to facilitate visas. Relatives would be given tourist visas with the usual fees waived, he said.

COSTLY, DIFFICULT INVESTIGATION

Najib's announcement opened the way for what will be one of the most costly, difficult air crash investigations ever. Normally, an official investigation can only begin once a crash site has been identified. That would give Malaysia power to coordinate and sift evidence.

A government source told Reuters that Malaysia would lead the investigation, but hoped other countries, especially Australia, would play a major role.

The United States said it was sending an undersea Navy drone to Australia, in addition to a high-tech black box detector, to help in the search.

But the black box detector would not arrive in the search area until April 5, Hishammuddin said, leaving only a few days to pick up locator beacons from the box that stop about a month after a crash due to limited battery life.

The so-called black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - record what happens during flight.

Najib said Inmarsat had performed further calculations on data gleaned from faint pings picked up by satellite that initially only narrowed the search area to two massive arcs.

Giving more details on the analysis on Tuesday, Hishammuddin said it showed that at some time after 0011 GMT - about six hours after its last sighting by Malaysian military radar on March 8 - the aircraft was no longer able to communicate with the ground station.

"This is consistent with the maximum endurance of the aircraft," he said.

He said there was evidence of a further "partial handshake" between the satellite and the aircraft eight minutes later, but that this transmission was not understood and was being analyzed.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard, Megha Rajagopalan and Joseph Campbell in Beijing, Stuart Grudgings, Michael Martina, Siva Govindasamy and A. Ananthalakshmi in Kuala Lumpur; Phil Stewart and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Jane Wardell in Sydney and Matt Siegel in Perth; Writing by Stuart Grudgings; Editing by Alex Richardson and Jonathan Oatis)

 

[po2wq]

China tourists steering clear of Malaysia ...

nax, prc biz shud steer clear of msia ...

 

[po2wq]

Will Sinkieland oso get an indirect free kick in tourism... ...

sinkielan kena scored gol due from deflection ... :o

 

[Microsoft]

Abit gangkor leh...Matlaysia ish much better place to zho gway den sinkieland...

 

[whybornme]

families of prc passengers could get compensation of us$500,000 per life.
should be celebrating instead.

 

[Yazoo]

families of prc passengers could get compensation of us$500,000 per life.
should be celebrating instead.

I doubt it will be enough for them.

 

[looneytan]

oui, I up your points in the past ok.

unwritten gentleman agreement, up you once- forever must not fuck back

 

[Yazoo]

unwritten gentleman agreement, up you once- forever must not fuck back

No such thing. I have added points to those i zapped in the past. Except for PAP IB clones, i have added points to those with funny avatars.

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Chinese insurers start making payments for clients on Malaysia Airlines flight

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 26 March, 2014, 5:00am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 26 March, 2014, 5:03am

Kwong Man-ki in Beijing [email protected]

Ping An Insurance, with 53 clients on flight MH370, said it had paid 10.5 million yuan (HK$13.2 million) to 24 clients up to yesterday after the Malaysian government announced that the flight left no survivors. Photo: Reuters

Chinese insurers have made initial payments to relatives of passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, even as Chinese officials questioned whether there was sufficient evidence to confirm the deaths.

The China Insurance Regulatory Commission issued an urgent notice requiring all insurers to offer fast-track compensation and assistance to relatives of policyholders who boarded the plane on March 8, the day the plane disappeared.

Li Bin, a lawyer with the Beijing Gaose Law Firm, said it wasn't appropriate for insurers to make payments because there had not been enough evidence to declare the passengers dead. "Their bodies were not found, and neither was the plane. Also, the Malaysian government confirmed that the plane crashed, but the Chinese side has yet to confirm," he said.

"If the passengers are missing, it could take a much longer time to confirm," he said.

Some Chinese insurers said they had not made payments pending the Chinese government's confirmation of the deaths, an industry insider said.

Ping An Insurance, with 53 clients on flight MH370, said it had paid 10.5 million yuan (HK$13.2 million) to 24 clients up to yesterday after the Malaysian government announced that the flight left no survivors.

The total payout for Ping An's clients is expected to be well above 10 million yuan, a company spokesman said.

China Life Insurance said payouts totalling 4.17 million yuan were made to seven families up to yesterday. The insurer said it had 32 clients with a total of 74 policies on board the Boeing 777. China Life said it expected the total insurance payout to be about 9 million yuan.

New China Life also said that it had started making payments, and expected that the total would be about 1 million yuan.

German insurer Allianz, with 10 clients on the plane, said it would continue to monitor the situation closely and provide assistance.

 

[Leongsam]

"Tourists don't even consider going there. Many also have a negative impression of the country now," said Mr Chen of Comfort Travel in the southern city of Guangzhou.
In Beijing, angry relatives of Chinese passengers aboard the missing plane protested yesterday outside the Malaysian Embassy, demanding an explanation from the airline and accusing the government in Kuala Lumpur of "delays and deception".

Malaysia is indirectly responsible for the death of about 200 Chinks as a result of this air crash. They vent their anger and carry on with their ridiculous theatrics for weeks on end.

On the other hand this guy murdered 40 million Chinks and they honor his actions with a giant portrait overlooking Tiananmen sq.

 

[laksaboy]

sinkielan kena scored gol due from deflection ... :o

With Pinky having already made lots of snide remarks against China before the MH370 incident, I'd say Sinkieland had already lost the ball countless times in midfield and failed to track back to defend.

 

[neddy]

Malaysia is indirectly responsible for the death of about 200 Chinks as a result of this air crash. They vent their anger and carry on with their ridiculous theatrics for weeks on end.

On the other hand this guy murdered 40 million Chinks and they honor his actions with a giant portrait overlooking Tiananmen sq.

Hey, you gave the same reply as the Japs about the Nanking Massacre. Chairman Mao is the biggest killer of its own people. And the CCP the biggest con job!

The Chinese PRC wayang really show up how they are conned by their own govt.

It also showed up why many countries are not cooperating with China directly, like India.

The Australian reporters were so pissed off when the PRC Perth Consulate only allowed the Chinese press to enter and have a press conference on the latest findings on the Chinese side.

Their excuse: Not enough room to accommodate foreign press.


The same excuses used by the MH370 victims should also be directed to the CCP govt.

 

[neddy]

families of prc passengers could get compensation of us$500,000 per life.
should be celebrating instead.

Cannot even buy a flat in Beijing, esp one with a proper sized living room.