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

[Kee Hooi Yen 0]

Suddenly I think of the earlier rumour that the plane has landed in Nanning. I know it is absurd but what if it is true...

[Waiping 12]

Just wondering how does the insurance work? Any payment made from the insurer yet since MH already have incurred some cost in accommodating the victims of the family?

[KK Lee 5]

 

Mar 15, 2014, 09.18PM IST [ Subhro Niyogi ]

 

KOLKATA: Air traffic controllers at Kolkata have ruled out the possibility of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 flying over Indian airspace, one of the two possibilities that Malaysian

 

Indian air space is closely monitored. Was in the cockpit once while over Indian air space, pilot tried to take a short cut between two way points that would over fly restricted air space was told off by atc.

[BC Tam 2]

Sort of strange how the human imagination works

When news first broke of this incident, hijacking was thought the greatest threat to safety of those on board

I guess now the best hope of anyone having survived is that the plane had been hijacked

[xtemujin 0]

Evidence of missteps by Malaysia mounts, complicating flight search
World | Keith Bradsher and Michael Forsythe, The New York Times | Updated: March 16, 2014 06:46 IST

 

Sepang: The radar blip that was Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 did a wide U-turn over the Gulf of Thailand and then began moving inexorably past at least three military radar arrays as it traversed northern Malaysia, even flying high over one of the country's biggest cities before heading out over the Strait of Malacca.

 

Yet inside a Malaysian air force control room on the country's west coast, where American-made F-18's and F-5 fighters stood at a high level of readiness for emergencies exactly like the one unfolding in the early morning of March 8, a four-person crew did nothing about the unauthorized flight. "The watch team never noticed the blip," said a person with detailed knowledge of the investigation into Flight 370. "It was as though the airspace was his."

 

It was not the first and certainly not the last in a long series of errors by the Malaysian government that has made the geographically vast and technologically complex task of finding the $50 million Malaysia Airlines jet far more difficult.

 

A week after the plane disappeared, the trail is even colder as the search now sprawls from the snowy peaks of the Himalayas to the empty expanses of the southern Indian Ocean. Nobody knows yet whether the delays cost the lives of any of the 239 people who boarded the flight to Beijing at Kuala Lumpur's ultramodern airport here. But the mistakes have accumulated at a remarkable pace.

 

"The fact that it flew straight over Malaysia, without the Malaysian military identifying it, is just plain weird - not just weird, but also very damning and tragic," said David Learmount, the operations and safety editor for Flightglobal, a news and data service for the aviation sector.

 

Senior Malaysian military officers became aware within hours of the radar data once word spread that a civilian airliner had vanished. The Malaysian government nonetheless organized and oversaw an expensive and complex international search effort in the Gulf of Thailand that lasted for a full week. Only on Saturday morning did Prime Minister Najib Razak finally shut it down after admitting what had already been widely reported in the news media: Satellite data showed that the engines on the missing plane had continued to run for nearly six more hours after it left Malaysian airspace.

 

Finding the plane and figuring out what happened to it is now a far more daunting task than if the plane had been intercepted. If the aircraft ended up in the southern Indian Ocean, as some aviation experts now suggest, then floating debris could have subsequently drifted hundreds of miles, making it extremely hard to figure out where the cockpit voice and data recorders sank.

 

And because the recorders keep only the last two hours of cockpit conversation, even the aircraft's recorders may hold few secrets.

 

With so much uncertainty about the flight, it is not yet possible to know whether any actions by the Malaysian government or military could have altered its fate. Responding to a storm of criticism, particularly from China, whose citizens made up two-thirds of the passengers, Najib took pains in a statement early Saturday afternoon to say that Malaysia had not concealed information, including military data.

 

"We have shared information in real time with authorities who have the necessary experience to interpret the data," he said, reading aloud a statement in English at a news conference. "We have been working nonstop to assist the investigation, and we have put our national security second to the search for the missing plane."

 

Malaysia Airlines issued a similarly defensive statement late Saturday afternoon. "Given the nature of the situation and its extreme sensitivity, it was critical that the raw satellite signals were verified and analyzed by the relevant authorities so that their significance could be properly understood," the airline said. "This naturally took some time, during which we were unable to publicly confirm their existence."

 

Aviation experts said that a trained pilot would be the most obvious person to have carried out a complicated scheme involving the plane. Yet for a week after the plane's disappearance, Malaysian law enforcement authorities said that their investigation did not include searching the home of the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah.

 

On Saturday afternoon, the police were seen entering the gated community where Zaharie was said to have lived, and Malaysian media reported that they had searched his premises. The police declined to comment. It is not known whether the authorities made any effort to secure Zaharie's home and prevent any destruction of evidence over the past week.

 

Najib said on Saturday that "the Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation into the crew and passengers on board." But Zaharie has not been accused of any wrongdoing. No information has been released yet on whether the homes of the co-pilot or flight attendants might be searched.

 

Even before the plane took off, Malaysian immigration officials had already allowed onto the plane at least two people using passports that had been logged into a global database as stolen, although there is no evidence that either person carrying a stolen passport was involved in diverting the plane.

 

A British Royal Air Force base in the colonial era, the Malaysian air force base at Butterworth sits on the mainland across from the island of Penang at the northern reaches of the Strait of Malacca. There, in the early morning hours of March 8, the four-person crew watching for intrusions into the country's air space either did not notice or failed to report a blip on their defensive radar and air traffic radar that was moving steadily across the country from east to west, heading right toward them, said the person with knowledge of the matter.

 

Neither that team nor the crews at two other radar installations at Kota Bharu, closer to where the airliner last had contact with the ground, designated the blip as an unknown intruder warranting attention, the person said. The aircraft proceeded to fly across the country and out to sea without anyone on watch telling a superior and alerting the national defense command near Kuala Lumpur, even though the radar contact's flight path did not correspond to any filed flight plan.

 

As a result, combat aircraft never scrambled to investigate. The plane, identified at the time by Najib as Flight 370, passed directly over Penang, a largely urban state with more than 1.6 million people, then turned and headed out over the Strait of Malacca.

 

The existence of the radar contact was only discovered when military officials began reviewing tapes later in the morning on March 8, after the passenger jet failed to arrive at its destination in Beijing. It was already becoming clear that morning, only hours after the unauthorized flyover, that something had gone very wrong. Tapes from both the Butterworth and Kota Bharu bases showed the radar contact arriving from the area of the last known position of Flight 370, the person familiar with the investigation said.

 

General Rodzali Daud, the commander of Malaysia's air force, publicly acknowledged the existence of the radar signals for the first time on Wednesday, well into the fifth day after the plane's disappearance. He emphasized that further analysis was necessary because the radar plots of the aircraft's location were stripped of the identifying information given by the plane's onboard transponders, which someone aboard the aircraft appears to have turned off.

 

The failure to identify Flight 370's errant course meant that a chance to send military aircraft to identify and redirect the Boeing 777 aircraft was lost. And for five days the crews on an armada of search vessels, including two U.S. warships, focused the bulk of their attention in the waters off Malaysia's east coast, far from the plane's actual path.

 

Rodzali went to Butterworth air force base the day that the plane disappeared and was told of the radar blips, the person familiar with the investigation said. The Malaysian government nonetheless assigned most of its search and rescue resources, as well as ships and aircraft offered by other nations, to a search of the Gulf of Thailand where the aircraft's satellite transponder was turned off, while allocating minimal attention to the Strait of Malacca on the other, western side of Peninsular Malaysia.

 

(Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Sepang, Nicola Clark from Paris, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.)

 

http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/evidence...e-lateststories

Edited March 16, 2014 by xtemujin

[Naim 6]

""Yet inside a Malaysian air force control room on the country's west coast, where American-made F-18's and F-5 fighters stood at a high level of readiness for emergencies exactly like the one unfolding in the early morning of March 8, a four-person crew did nothing about the unauthorized flight. "The watch team never noticed the blip," said a person with detailed knowledge of the investigation into Flight 370. "It was as though the airspace was his."

 

Sleeping on the job, as I said.

[leon t 0]

IMHO I don't agree with the Malaysian govt calling off the search off Vietnam and the South China Sea - as the only fact is that they lost contact at that point - and from there onwards its all conjectures and nothing can be confirmed. Its still a real possibility that the plane may have gone down in that vicinity. From that point the Turn back as supposedly reported by the air force primary radar as Najib has said yesterday "it is believed to be MH 370 BUT CANNOT BE CONFIRMED" - what this means is that from that point all the way to the east of Penang and beyond is only "maybes and if's" and "almost certain" - all these points out to zero confirmation even by the so-called pick up signal by the satellite.

and if only when the RMAF primary radar supposedly detected an aircraft from the area when MH 370 signals stopped and track it across its air space without authorised flight plan - and did nothing for more than 1 hr 10 mins - and note that nothing was said about whether the RMAF even try to establish contact with the aircraft - believed to be MH370 but cannot be confirmed - as shd be the standard SOP. If they had done that or send up the fighters to intercept and sight the plane - then only we all know for sure. But it did not and the question remains that was it even tracked by personnel then - as this info only came up 2 days or so After the event.

[Radzi 2]

I'm resigned to the fact that most likely 9M-MRO will not be found in the near future. Maybe it will be found in the future, but accidentally.

 

Lessons from this incident:

1. Transponder will not be able to be switched off from the cockpit.

2. A&E compartment access door will be secured.

 

And also:

If you want to attack Switzerland, do it during weekend or after office hours. If you want to attack Malaysia, use an airliner.

[Naim 6]

IMHO I don't agree with the Malaysian govt calling off the search off Vietnam and the South China Sea - as the only fact is that they lost contact at that point - and from there onwards its all conjectures and nothing can be confirmed. Its still a real possibility that the plane may have gone down in that vicinity. From that point the Turn back as supposedly reported by the air force primary radar as Najib has said yesterday "it is believed to be MH 370 BUT CANNOT BE CONFIRMED" - what this means is that from that point all the way to the east of Penang and beyond is only "maybes and if's" and "almost certain" - all these points out to zero confirmation even by the so-called pick up signal by the satellite.

and if only when the RMAF primary radar supposedly detected an aircraft from the area when MH 370 signals stopped and track it across its air space without authorised flight plan - and did nothing for more than 1 hr 10 mins - and note that nothing was said about whether the RMAF even try to establish contact with the aircraft - believed to be MH370 but cannot be confirmed - as shd be the standard SOP. If they had done that or send up the fighters to intercept and sight the plane - then only we all know for sure. But it did not and the question remains that was it even tracked by personnel then - as this info only came up 2 days or so After the event.

 

The PM said yesterday the blip was confirmed to be MH370, hence the stop on the SAR in South China Sea.

The Inmarsat satellite ping is the confirmed last known location, so that's the new baseline.

I'm resigned to the fact that most likely 9M-MRO will not be found in the near future. Maybe it will be found in the future, but accidentally.

 

Lessons from this incident:

1. Transponder will not be able to be switched off from the cockpit.

2. A&E compartment access door will be secured.

 

And also:

If you want to attack Switzerland, do it during weekend or after office hours. If you want to attack Malaysia, use an airliner.

 

In a macabre sense, we are lucky the plane didn't smash into KLCC.

[leon t 0]

PM didn't confirm the RMAF blip is that of MH370 - as his exact words " Its believed to be MH 370 BUT CANNOT BE CONFIRMED"

 

- as for the transponder in future, that it cannot be turned off - its not practical in a way - but to make it harder to turned off is more apllicable. this is bec of any incidents relating to the transponder ie in malfunctioning or technical problems or even if there's a chance of a burned out/electrical short and even fire - then it must be able to be able to be turned off.

[Mulyadir Fitri 0]

I'm resigned to the fact that most likely 9M-MRO will not be found in the near future. Maybe it will be found in the future, but accidentally.

 

Agree Capt. The last position from the Inmarsat satellite ping is a good baseline, but if they killed the satphone after that then we're back to square one

[JuliusWong 0]

Malaysian plane saga highlights air defense gaps: http://goo.gl/n8VQep

 

Reuters Graphic: Diagrams comparing the distance from position of last known contact to wreckage location in a group of similar accidents. Includes comparisons of search area sizes and time taken to discover first signs of debris.

[Naim 6]

PM didn't confirm the RMAF blip is that of MH370 - as his exact words " Its believed to be MH 370 BUT CANNOT BE CONFIRMED"

 

- as for the transponder in future, that it cannot be turned off - its not practical in a way - but to make it harder to turned off is more apllicable. this is bec of any incidents relating to the transponder ie in malfunctioning or technical problems or even if there's a chance of a burned out/electrical short and even fire - then it must be able to be able to be turned off.

 

Read here:

 

"Today, based on raw satellite data that was obtained from the satellite data service provider, we can confirm that the aircraft shown in the primary radar data was flight MH370. After much forensic work and deliberation, the FAA, NTSB, AAIB and the Malaysian authorities, working separately on the same data, concur."

 

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/press-statement-on-mh370-najib-razak

[JuliusWong 0]

 

Edited March 16, 2014 by JuliusWong

[zamim 0]

For 1 week nobody could come out with evidence on the missing B777. We were lost. But suddenly after the arrival of American teams FAA, NTSB, AAIB and most probably FBI and CIA, we decided it was a hijack. Hmmm

[KK Lee 5]

I'm resigned to the fact that most likely 9M-MRO will not be found in the near future. Maybe it will be found in the future, but accidentally.

 

May be some people don't want 9m-mro to be found. Edited March 16, 2014 by KK Lee

[Eddy Liew 0]

I'm resigned to the fact that most likely 9M-MRO will not be found in the near future. Maybe it will be found in the future, but accidentally.

 

Lessons from this incident:

1. Transponder will not be able to be switched off from the cockpit.

2. A&E compartment access door will be secured.

 

And also:

If you want to attack Switzerland, do it during weekend or after office hours. If you want to attack Malaysia, use an airliner.

 

I too have that kind of feeling MRO will not be found in the near future. We just have no clue where has it gone. Hope I am proven wrong however...

 

Perhaps the Suluks will plan for an air borne attack next time. Much easier...

[michgyver 0]

The revelation by an Al-Qaeda informer that he had met Malaysian terrorists over plans to hijack a plane has raised concerns on whether the plot is related to the lost of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

 

The informer, British-born Saajid Muhammad Badat (right) had made the claim in a New York court on Tuesday when testifying via video link in the trial of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama Bin Laden's son-in-law, according to a report by the UK's Sunday Telegraph.

 

When testifying, Saajid said four to five Malaysian men had been planning to take control of a plane by using a bomb hidden in a shoe to blow up the cockpit door.

 

He added that he had met the Malaysians, one of which is a pilot, in Afghanistan and given them a shoe bomb for that purpose.

 

According to the report, Saajid said during the trial the men had raised a problem in their plan - that the cockpit door might he locked, to which he told the court: "So I said, how about I give you one of my bombs to open a cockpit door?"

 

He added that the Malaysian plot was being masterminded by one Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the September 11, 2011 attacks – involving the use of four commercial airplanes as weapons to attack tagets on US soil.

 

'Long time in planning'

 

The report did not state when the meeting took place but is believed to be before Saajid's arrest in 2003.

 

The UK newspaper also quoted security experts as saying that the information was "credible".

 

“These spectaculars take a long time in the planning,” a British security source was quoted as saying.

 

The report indicated that a plane hijacking plan by Malaysian terrorists were in the works but provided no evidence where it would take place or whether it is related to Flight MH370.

 

MH370 which took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.40am on March 7 and was due to arrive in Beijing at 6.30am vanished from civilian radar at 1.21am.

 

Military radar later picked up the aircraft off the west coast of peninsula Malaysia heading towards the Andaman waters.

 

Not a trace of the plane has been found as search and rescue operation entered the ninth day today.

 

2001 shoe bomb plot

 

Saajid was part of a plot to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb in 2001 but withdrew at the last minute.

 

However, his co-conspirator Richard Reid (right) went ahead with the failed plan on American Airlines Flight 63 bound from Paris to Florida and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

 

Saajid was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2003 after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to destroy a US-bound aircraft.

[Cire 0]

PC now. This time with IGP on board.

Questions are beginning to be dull and not focus on the subject of searching for the aircraft.

Some are asking about the lack of military alertness, family welfare etc..

 

Someone asked whether police have found out if anyone on the aircraft have learnt how to fly an aircraft. IGP says overseas agencies have cleared the passengers but not conclusively as other agencies have not provided any report. Mainly China have complied.

IGP denied not corroborating with other agencies. IGP is background checking everyone who is on board and on the ground. Repeating the answers over several different questions. Investigation is on going. Investigation is on going.

IGP starts to boil when persistent questions is asked whether more investigation on the passengers were carried out or not, and why IGP just concentrate on the pilots. Hishamuddin have to jump in.

 

 

CCTV reporter asked the question why the pilot's family moved out before the plane was reported missing. IGP does not know about this..?? huh?

The pilot's simulator have been dismantled and moved to police hq and assembled back. Experts is looking at it now.

 

DCA is STILL talking with the radar system provider to determine (read) the height of the blip detected on the radar's data... huh?

 

DCA have renact the MH370 flight on a simulator. Confirmed that the MH370 did not carry any hazardous goods. Normal check on the goods were carried out.

Malaysia have not gotten any radar feedback from countries that the plane was suspected to have flown over citing "sensitivity"

 

Malaysia is asking for anyone who can help in the search to come forward and render their services to the Malaysia team..

[Newitt 0]

Sometimes the explanation to a situation is the simplest one. The aircraft will be found one day, most probably in pieces by the fisherfolk.

[Cire 0]

If there's an ounce of truth in the Russian's claim about the US's conspiracy and the secret cargo the reason for it, then the plane and its occupants is as good as gone. The US will not let this conspiracy exposed as the repercussion from the international world community will be enormous.

If they could pull off 9/11, there's nothing quite impossible in this case.

[V Wong 0]

The current focus on the pilot had made me miserable the whole day. I'm sure many 'aviation geeks' here felt the same. Watching CNN a few moments ago - an intelligence expert said don't be surprised something completely new turns up later, which will dispel current findings, because its pure conjecture now what truly happened in flight.

Edited March 16, 2014 by V Wong

[Khalil Abd Halim 0]

another important question is even though all communications system with the ground or satellites have been "allegedly" turned off, wouldnt it be possible that the cabin crew or even anyone of the crew realized that the plane had made a 180 turnback without reason and flying 4-5 hours on opposite direction.

 

is the flight map also received its feed from the satellite communication system or the actual movement of the aircraft? and with this why not a single people in the cabin managed to alert the ground of the turn-back using their cell-phones?If the pilot is acting alone-it would be almost impossible for him to overcome the other 200 plus people on board if they tried to detain him.

[Tom/PER 0]

Cell phones don't get coverage or reception over a certain flight level.

 

You can't slip your phone out at 35,000 ft and send a text to the missus.

[Chris Tan 0]

Cell phones don't get coverage or reception over a certain flight level.

 

You can't slip your phone out at 35,000 ft and send a text to the missus.

Some MH 772s are equipped with email/SMS capabilities.