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MAS B772 9M-MRO Flight MH370 KUL-PEK Missing with All 239 POB Presumed Killed

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China gets taste of world criticism in MH370 hunt

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/china-gets-taste-of-world-criticism-in-mh370-hunt

 

Relatives of MH370 passengers storm out of glitch-ridden MAS briefing, says report

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/relatives-of-mh370-passengers-storm-out-of-glitch-ridden-mas-briefing-says

 

After bulk cancellation of MH bookings, one can expect more response from the Chinese.

The western media and Malaysia blamed China for providing satellite images which leads to false hope and wasted time. Let's be realistic, all satellite images provided by Australia, France and China had not lead to any findings at all. China took all the blame for wasted the time I'm the early days of the search. This perhaps is a way of diverting the attention on the part of the Malaysian authorities for not providing consistent information and that the aircraft had took a turn towards the west. I think much time and money have been wasted by the Malaysian authorities instead.

 

To be fair, if you look at China's equipment, the Il-76s they sent are ancient and that they claimed that they found the ping signals with a hand held search device, is pretty dodgy. Well indeed they are rushing and keen to win the trophy of finding the aircraft. However it should be noted that, they are just a developing country and compared to developed countries, it is akin to comparing apple with oranges. Any hope of finding the aircraft so far is going to be with American equipments. One thing that struck me the most is that, the Malaysian authorities have been slack at sending their equipment to the search area. They came up with various excuses (such as lack of equipment) and left others to do the job first.

Edited by S V Choong

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On January 23, 2008 a very peculiar thing happened. Commercial airspace at one of the world's busiest airports was shut down for over 50 minutes. On that day, an aircraft without an approved flight plan entered Singapore's airspace. Immediately, the Republic of Singapore Air Force dispatched a pair of F-16D fighter jets to intercept the aircraft and escorted it to land at Singapore Changi Airport. Upon landing, airport police immediately surrounded the plane.

 

"At 6.42pm (2142 AEDT), two Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) F-16 fighters were scrambled to intercept a civilian aircraft, a Cessna 208, which was heading towards Singapore airspace without an approved flight plan,'' the ministry's director of public affairs, Colonel Darius Lim, said in a statement. "The aircraft was escorted to land at Singapore Changi Airport."

 

The above incident highlights the standard operating protocol an Air Force, Civil Aviation Authority and Local Police Force needs to follow in the event of an unidentified aircraft entering it's airspace without an approved flight plan.

 

However amidst this hoo-ha, there was one small detail worth noting. The plane took off from Koh Samui, Thailand. And running the full length between Thailand and Singapore is the land mass of Peninsular Malaysia.

 

In essence, this means that the Department of Civil Aviation of Malaysia and the Royal Malaysian Air Force had allowed an unknown aircraft to invade over 131 thousand square km of sovereign Malaysian territory and despite this occurring over a period of 3 hours, did not lift a finger to respond.

 

This incident highlighted a huge security flaw in Malaysia's Air Defence umbrella. One that if it had patched during any of the subsequent 6 years that followed, would have prevented a bigger tragedy that came with greater embarrassment, scrutiny and loss.

 

6 years later on 8 March 2014, Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing. It never landed at its intended destination. Instead, less than an hour after take-off, the transponder was turned off and 3 sets of military radars tracked the plane flying past Penang and across the breadth of Malaysia from the Gulf of Thailand towards the Indian Ocean.

 

Unlike the Cessna airplane in the earlier example which was intercepted by the RSAF, 3 sets of people manning Malaysia's military radars never sounded any alarms. The RMAF never dispatched any fighter jets on standby and the Department of Civil Aviation of Malaysia never shut down Malaysian airspace when a rogue plane very much larger than a Cessna aircraft flew across it's airspace.

 

Suffice to say, had the Department of Civil Aviation of Malaysia or the RMAF been doing their job properly as exemplified by the example given above, we would not have gone 9 days and counting into a search for a missing and possibly hijacked plane.

 

Investigators may have recently concluded that the plane had its transponders deliberately turned off and its flight plan deliberately altered but it is the greater observing public who have the biggest conclusion of all; that Malaysian leadership is sorely incompetent when it comes to handling a crisis. In this respect, Malaysia has much to learn from its Southern neighbour. Had the supposed hijackers targeted a plane flying through a more efficient jurisdiction, the outcome would have been very different today.

 

 

Criticism against the Malaysian Government on MH370: Warranted or unfair?

 

http://theunspunblog.com/2014/04/02/criticism-against-the-malaysian-government-on-mh370-warranted-or-unfair/

Edited by S V Choong

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well the RMAF have already said the supposedly MH370 it supposedly tracked was deemed as "not hostile" despite the unusual flight path it took - hence looks like most of the planes without transponders over the years were also deemed as "not hostile". Its a grave danger as to how they simply can determine its "not hostile" in light of after the 911 episode. Or were they really even see the blips at all (?). But yes, the RMAF need to audit and check their protocols when dealing with unidentified aircrafts.

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According to this report,http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/19/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/

Just after turning back to malaysian airspace,The aircraft climbed to 39,000 feet, just short of the Boeing 777-200ER's 41,000-foot safe operating limit, and maintained that altitude for about 20 minutes over the Malaysian Peninsula before beginning to descend.

At this altitude,if the cabin is de presurized,mask will be deployed and the oxygen last for 15 minutes.That leaves 5 minutes of time remaining without oxygen.

But at that altitude the time of useful consiousness (without oxygen) is only 15-20 seconds.After that time all pax will be knocked off,leaving the cabin crew who will transfer to portable oxygen bottles.those bottles will last for 120 minutes on low flow. Then the cabin crew will be knocked off too.

So what does that say?

Edited by jadivindra

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well the RMAF have already said the supposedly MH370 it supposedly tracked was deemed as "not hostile" despite the unusual flight path it took - hence looks like most of the planes without transponders over the years were also deemed as "not hostile". Its a grave danger as to how they simply can determine its "not hostile" in light of after the 911 episode. Or were they really even see the blips at all (?). But yes, the RMAF need to audit and check their protocols when dealing with unidentified aircrafts.

 

Answers are pretty vague here from the authorities.

Assumed 1) that both ATC and the military knew of the blip belongs to MH370, and therefore they deemed is as not hostile..

 

next question is; why both sides did not inform the SAR when they conducted the world biggest SAR over the South China Seas?

 

 

Assumed 2) that both ATC and the military does not know the blip belongs to MH370, then on what reasoning that the military took to consider the blip as non-hostile? What actually made them to take a look again at the radar data? Advise from foreign experts?

In today's PC, Act.MOT dodged the question on whether Malaysia could verify whether the cell-phone pick-up by the telco tower was from the co-pilot's phone. This was actually leaked out by the US's national transport agency.

 

Citing the source as 3rd.party one, he refused to comment on it.

 

The team reviewed again that Malaysia have jurisdiction over the blackbox, and if found, the government will rope in foreign experts to analyse it.

With the AG recently in the UK to discuss with the authorities, makes me wondered why was Malaysia so anxiously wanted the custody of the blackbox?

What is in the content that Malaysia is so worry about ?

Perhaps for reasons of legality? Or the possibility of being sued?

 

Terrain on the seabed is angulated. Bluefin21 is expected to finish scouring the narrowed seabed within a week or two. After that, the team will regroup and apply new approach on the search again.

Malaysia is looking at private firms that are familiar with deep sea searches from both local and foreign.

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Theres a documentary on mh370 on discovery 551 now. Now thatwas quick

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Theres a documentary on mh370 on discovery 551 now. Now thatwas quick

This is actually a rerun.

Edited by Isaac

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What if MH370 had headed for KLCC?

 

If anything MH370 was heading towards Penang second bridge!

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The western media and Malaysia blamed China for providing satellite images which leads to false hope and wasted time. Let's be realistic, all satellite images provided by Australia, France and China had not lead to any findings at all.China took all the blame for wasted the time I'm the early days of the search. This perhaps is a way of diverting the attention on the part of the Malaysian authorities for not providing consistent information and that the aircraft had took a turn towards the west. I think much time and money have been wasted by the Malaysian authorities instead.

 

To be fair, if you look at China's equipment, the Il-76s they sent are ancient and that they claimed that they found the ping signals with a hand held search device, is pretty dodgy. Well indeed they are rushing and keen to win the trophy of finding the aircraft. However it should be noted that, they are just a developing country and compared to developed countries, it is akin to comparing apple with oranges. Any hope of finding the aircraft so far is going to be with American equipment. One thing that struck me the most is that, the Malaysian authorities have been slack at sending their equipment to the search area. They came up with various excuses (such as lack of equipment) and left others to do the job first.

 

Australia hasn't provided any satellite images. The issue with the PRC imagery is that it was already known to be irrelevant when released (mistakenly, they say, and I believe them). The Il-76MD aren't exactly ancient, being built in 1988 (MSN 0083486570) and 1993 (MSN 0083486570), they are actually younger than most of the aircraft participating in the search. As the mainstay of this search has been visual, these aircraft are quite handy, they have a glass nose and a search radar, and are quite comfortable. I can't offer anything on the first RMAF C130H not arriving until the 29th March, unfortunately.

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According to this report,http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/19/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/

Just after turning back to malaysian airspace,The aircraft climbed to 39,000 feet, just short of the Boeing 777-200ER's 41,000-foot safe operating limit, and maintained that altitude for about 20 minutes over the Malaysian Peninsula before beginning to descend.

At this altitude,if the cabin is de presurized,mask will be deployed and the oxygen last for 15 minutes.That leaves 5 minutes of time remaining without oxygen.

But at that altitude the time of useful consiousness (without oxygen) is only 15-20 seconds.After that time all pax will be knocked off,leaving the cabin crew who will transfer to portable oxygen bottles.those bottles will last for 120 minutes on low flow. Then the cabin crew will be knocked off too.

So what does that say?

 

Can RMAF primary radar measure height accurately?

 

The team reviewed again that Malaysia have jurisdiction over the blackbox, and if found, the government will rope in foreign experts to analyse it.

With the AG recently in the UK to discuss with the authorities, makes me wondered why was Malaysia so anxiously wanted the custody of the blackbox?

What is in the content that Malaysia is so worry about ?

Perhaps for reasons of legality? Or the possibility of being sued?

 

 

Part of MH653 CVR is still classified after 36 years.

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I can't offer anything on the first RMAF C130H not arriving until the 29th March, unfortunately.

 

"It is believed the withdrawal of the five ships led to the decision to send two Royal Malaysian Air Force C130H Hercules aircraft to join the SAR operation last night."

 

http://www.malaysiandefence.com/?p=4284

50 family members return to China

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2014/04/20/50-family-members-return-to-China/

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Whatever they find on MH370 may still be a classified information not for public consumption.

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Whatever they find on MH370 may still be a classified information not for public consumption.

MH370 case is unprecedented and aviation Industry is eager to learn to avoid similar occurrence. If there is nothing to hide, gomen should allow ntsb or aaib to analyse both recorders and publish them in full.

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Can RMAF primary radar measure height accurately?

 

There are a bunch of different radars for different purposes. Air Defence radars are the kind of thing that you don't give away too much about in peace time. Meaning that you don't turn them all on, you don't use your war frequencies, PRFs etc... Surveillance and early warning radars are different to C4 and targeting radars. Mode selection makes a significant difference as to what information you are getting too. There may never have been though a need to enter "track while scan" on this target, if the radar was still operating, for instance, TUDM have a passive system that picks up emissions from aircraft, and this system is quite good - very often it can identify an individual aircraft. So if a need to look at the target in greater depth wasn't felt, possibly because it was identified as to the particular aircraft that it was, or even simply because it was following a regular civil route, a mode change for better information may never have been made. Being able to correctly identify the aircraft because the system is efficient can mean that it won't be prosecuted as a bogey and the mode changes needed to get finer detail won't be engaged. Some of the systems known to be in use by the RMAF can resolve height with an error of less than metre at a fair range, but I doubt they would have been turned on at all. It's a sensitive subject, and rightly so.

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"It is believed the withdrawal of the five ships led to the decision to send two Royal Malaysian Air Force C130H Hercules aircraft to join the SAR operation last night."

 

http://www.malaysiandefence.com/?p=4284

Thanks. I'm intrigued by this statement;

"As the RMN did not have an oiler, the ships will have to return to Perth every time it need to refuel and get supplies, which will reduce their effectiveness in conducting the SAR operation."

 

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It is, after all, the reason that HMAS Success was sent into the search area, to allow for underway replenishment of naval vessels participating in the search. HMAS Success has certainly performed underway replenishment of TLDM vessels such as KD Lekiu and KD Kasturi during this search, so I can't see any validity to that statement. Success can also refuel the patrol boats, though they were very ill suited to the Southern Ocean operations - in fact, it is a hard job for a frigate, so withdrawing from those made good sense - but the search operation is much further north now and those waters are well suited to the Kedah class patrol boats, a very capable cousin to the ANZAC class frigate. They are actually substantially larger than a Corvette and are a patrol boat only by dint of their light armament. Which isn't exactly relevant to search operations. It might just be that they are needed at home.

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The Corvette or Kedah class frigates are originally meant for the Iraqi navy just before things turned sour and an embargo was put in place. I got to know this from a navy friend. The ships have been stripped off much of its weaponary and electronics before been offered to Malaysia. I boarded one when the ships called port at Port Klang. Its first Malaysia port. Got a cap for it.

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The Corvette or Kedah class frigates are originally meant for the Iraqi navy just before things turned sour and an embargo was put in place. I got to know this from a navy friend. The ships have been stripped off much of its weaponary and electronics before been offered to Malaysia. I boarded one when the ships called port at Port Klang. Its first Malaysia port. Got a cap for it.

 

You are referring to the Laksamana-class corvettes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laksamana-class_corvette

 

The Kedah-class ships are OPVs, not frigates and they were definitely not built for the Iraqis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kedah-class_offshore_patrol_vessel

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The Corvette or Kedah class frigates are originally meant for the Iraqi navy just before things turned sour and an embargo was put in place. I got to know this from a navy friend. The ships have been stripped off much of its weaponary and electronics before been offered to Malaysia. I boarded one when the ships called port at Port Klang. Its first Malaysia port. Got a cap for it.

Most of them were built in Malaysia, and none started build before 2000. The ship is not stripped, rather it is fitted for, but not with a variety of weapons systems. That means, essentially, you can just bolt them on, all the wiring and other utilities are in place, as is the combat control software. If all the weapons systems are fitted, it is definitely a corvette (in fact, most corvettes are smaller), and one could argue to classify it a frigate (but most would not accept that). The Laksamana corvettes are 675 tonnes displacement and were built by Italy, whilst the Kedah is the German MEKO 100 OPV, with a displacement of 1,850 tonnes, almost three times the displacement of a vessel that traditionally would be larger. AFAIK, there was no stripping of the Laksamana class, but there were different systems fitted to satisfy TLDM requirements. The Kedah class can also exchange weapons systems in days, if all slots are full, to go from say the air warfare role to the ASW role, or slots can be left empty for the OPV role. As patrol boats go, it is a whopper, Australian patrol boats are all around 300 tonnes, for instance.

 

You are referring to the Laksamana-class corvettes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laksamana-class_corvette

That's my guess too.

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You are referring to the Laksamana-class corvettes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laksamana-class_corvette

 

The Kedah-class ships are OPVs, not frigates and they were definitely not built for the Iraqis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kedah-class_offshore_patrol_vessel

 

Sorry for the diversion..

thanks hafizza and p.saccani for the clarification. Appreciated.

So, the one that I boarded was the Laksamana class. Definitely it is not built in Malaysia it made her first Malaysia port call at Port Klang, with much fanfare. What really surprises me is that the kitchen has all the Malaysian "tools" which includes the "lesung batu" (mortar and pestle). Not one but a couple in different sizes. The Quartermaster said is an essential cook ware.

Edited by Cire

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According to a news report, an expert in aviation said that the main wreakage of MH370 may never be found, and stated that if the pilot have intended for the plane to be never found, than the flight plan took by the pilot of MH370 is "brilliant". AF447's wreckage took 2 years to be found even with its location known.

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So, the one that I boarded was the Laksamana class. Definitely it is not built in Malaysia it made her first Malaysia port call at Port Klang, with much fanfare. What really surprises me is that the kitchen has all the Malaysian "tools" which includes the "lesung batu" (mortar and pestle). Not one but a couple in different sizes. The Quartermaster said is an essential cook ware.

Correct, they were all made in Italy. They were refitted to meet Malaysian requirements, not taken over as intended for Iraq, the purchase deal was for the refitted ships.

It was a very good bargain, Malaysia got a lot of bang for its buck.

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