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Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Malaysia Airlines Mystery March 19 , 2014 -- A day 12 rolls on , Malaysian Authorities swat down theories ( Maldives sighting ) , try to keep relatives calm ( as relatives try to storm pres briefing ) , attempt to tamp down speculation ( while trying to retrieve deleted files from the pilot's home flight simulator ) and still are requesting military radar ( has the US supplied its data yet from Diego Garcia ? )
We’re going to tie up this live blog. Here’s a summary of where things stand:
• The 13th day of the search for MH370 has opened in the southern Indian Ocean, with five merchant ships answering a call to search alongside surveillance aircraft from Australia, the US and New Zealand.
• Frustrated relatives of missing passengers were ejected from a news conference with Malaysian officials Wednesday. The relatives accused authorities of withholding information. “We can’t stand it any more,” one shouted. Malaysia Airlines promised to provide more updates to families.
• Malaysian officials said the search for MH370 was “now a truly international effort” involving 26 countries. FBI investigators were asked to help recover deleted files from a flight simulator the pilot used and to analyse other electronic files.
• MH370 may not have used waypoints to navigate after losing contact with ground control, Malaysia’s defense minister suggested, contradicting a Reuters report last week.
• Investigators examining the plane’s disappearance believe it flew into the southern Indian Ocean, a source told Reuters. “The working assumption is that it went south, and furthermore that it went to the southern end of that corridor,” said the source.
Summary
• Malaysian officials portrayed the search for MH370 as “now a truly international effort” involving 26 countries. Newly supplied Thai radar data was said to back up the theory that the plane turned west after disappearing.
• US investigators in Quantico, Virginia, were examining “hard drives belonging to [the] two pilots”, CNN reported. Malaysian officials said some material had been deleted from a flight simulator used by the pilot.
• MH370 may not have used waypoints to navigate after losing contact with ground control, Malaysia’s defense minister suggested, contradicting a Reuters report last week.
• Frustrated relatives of missing passengers were ejected from a news conference with Malaysian officials Wednesday. The relatives accused authorities of withholding information. “We can’t stand it any more,” one shouted. Malaysia Airlines promised to provide more updates to families.
• The authorities in the Maldives have dismissed reports of a possible sighting of the plane over the islands. The Maldives government told the Malaysian authorities the reports were “not true”.
• Investigators examining the plane’s disappearance believe it flew into the southern Indian Ocean, a source told Reuters. “The working assumption is that it went south, and furthermore that it went to the southern end of that corridor,” said the source.
Flight simulator
Screengrab from YouTube showing MH370 pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah explaining an air conditioning system in front of his homemade flight simulator Photograph: /YouTube
The home-made flight simulator recovered from the pilot’s home of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah included five practice runways, according to the Australian news site News.com citing a Malaysian media report.
The thinly sourced report is sure to fuel speculation and theories about what happened to the missing plane. It said:
The Berita Harian Malay language paper quoted unnamed sources close to the investigation as saying that the airport runways were Male International Airport in the Maldives, Diego Garcia and three runways in India and Sri Lanka.
“We are not discounting the possibility that the plane landed on a runway that might not be heavily monitored, in addition to the theories that the plane landed on sea, in the hills, or in an open space,” the Malay Mail Online quoted the source as saying.
Today the Malaysian authorities revealed that files had been deleted from the simulator in early February. They are trying to recover the files.
Last week video emerged of Zaharie explaining an air conditioning system in front of his simulator.
Malaysia’s prime minster Najib Razak has thanked David Cameron for satellite data provided by the British company Inmarsat.
Malaysia is urging more countries to volunteer satellite and military radar data to help with the search.
Following a phone call between the two prime ministers, Downing Street said
Prime Minister Najib thanked [David Cameron] and said it remained a very difficult ongoing operation. He appreciated the support of the Air Accidents Investigation Board and the satellite data provided by Inmarsat.
Satellite pings registered on the Inmarsat network suggested the missing plane flew on for hours after its transponder was switch.
MH370’s last ping suggested it was in one of two flight corridors: one between Thailand and Kazakhstan, and another between Indonesia and the southern Indian Ocean. The last confirmed communication was at 08.11 am on the day it went missing, which would indicate that the Boeing continued flying for nearly seven hours after contact was lost.
Here are the key points to emerge from the press briefing:
Malaysia has dismissed reports of a possible sighting of the plane in the Maldives. The authorities in the Maldives have told Malaysia the reports are “not true”, according to acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein.
Hishammuddin said he “fully understands” the frustration of relatives of the missing passengers after they tried to storm the press conference. He said Malaysia would send a high-level delegation to Beijing to liaise with the families. Earlier Malaysia Airlines promised more support and information updates to relatives.
Investigators are trying to recover deleted files on the home-made flight simulator recovered from the home of the pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah. But the authorities have stressed that the passengers and crew on the flight are innocent unless proven others, and urged the media to avoid “unnecessary speculation”.
Malaysia has again appealed to other countries to volunteer more satellite and radar data about the fight, after Thailand released radar data 11 days after the flight disappeared. The Thai radar data backs up Malaysia conviction that the plane took a deliberate westerly turn.
Other countries are taking a lead role in the search operation over their territories. No major breakthrough has been reported in narrowing the search area from the two long flight corridors currently being examined.
Malaysia's acting mnister of transport Hishamuddin Hussein leads another daily press conference on the search for the missing plane. Photograph: Vincent Thian/AP
The search for MH370 continues. As I stated at yesterday’s press conference, this is now a truly international effort.
Our focus remains the search and rescue operation. We are working on narrowing the search corridor by:
gathering satellite information analysing radar data increasing air and surface assets, and increasing the number of technical experts. We are also taking further steps to address the needs of the families at this difficult time.
Operational update
I will start by giving a brief operational update.
As we have said, the search for MH370 involves diplomatic, technical and logistical challenges.
Accordingly, the main technical team organising the search and rescue operation has been broken into three groups: a diplomatic team, led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; an assets deployment and logistics team led by the Armed Forces; and a technical group retaining overall operational control, which is led by the Department of Civil Aviation.
On the diplomatic front, all 26 countries involved in the search and rescue operation have verbally agreed to assist the operations, and Malaysia has written to all countries formally requesting co-operation. A number of assets which have already been committed are awaiting diplomatic clearance to begin operations. Once we receive formal clearance, we can then speed up the deployment of assets along the search corridors.
As I stated yesterday, although the search is still co-ordinated by Malaysia, our partners are increasingly taking the lead in their own territory and in agreed search sectors. We welcome this, and again would like to thank all our partners for their continued assistance and support.
I can confirm that we have received some radar data, but we are not at liberty to release information from other countries. I appeal to all our partners to continue volunteering any and all information that could help with the investigation and the search for MH370.
Regarding reports that the plane was sighted in the Maldives, I can confirm that the Malaysian Chief of the Defence Force has contacted his counterpart in the Maldives, who has confirmed that these reports are not true.
Waypoints
I am aware of speculation that additional waypoints were added to the aircraft’s flight routing. I can confirm that the aircraft flew on normal routing up until the waypoint IGARI. There is no additional waypoint on MH370’s documented flight plan, which depicts normal routing all the way to Beijing.
Police investigation
On the police investigation, as the Inspector General of the Police confirmed, the case has been classified under Section 130C of the Penal Code. All passengers, crew and ground staff handling the aircraft are being investigated.
We are sharing all information relevant to the case with all relevant international investigative agencies that require it. We have received passenger background checks from all countries apart from Ukraine and Russia, both of which had nationals on board. So far, no information of significance on any passengers has been found.
Local and international expertise has been recruited to examine the pilot’s flight simulator. Some data had been deleted from the simulator and forensic work to retrieve this data is on-going.
I would like to take this opportunity to state that the passengers, the pilots and the crew remain innocent until proven otherwise. For the sake of their families, I ask that we refrain from any unnecessary speculation that might make an already difficult time even harder.
High level team
I would like to announce that in addition to the team that is already on the ground, Malaysia is currently assembling a high-level team that will immediately travel to Beijing. The team will give briefings and updates to the next of kin on the latest situation, and on search and rescue plans.
The team will include representatives from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Royal Malaysian Air Force, the Department of Civil Aviation, and Malaysia Airlines.
The team will be led by Lieutenant General Dato’ Sri Ackbal bin Haji Abdul Samad RMAF (Air Operation Commander, Royal Malaysia Air Force), assisted by Ahmad Nizar bin Zolfakar (Director, Air Traffic Services, Department of Civil Aviation) and will include a senior 777 pilot.
Concluding remarks
We will persevere. Our immediate focus is the search and rescue operation. We are pursuing every means possible to narrow the two search corridors.
That report isn’t however as surprising as this in the EU Times claiming, among other things, that a secret cargo consignment on board had caused China authorities to plan to divert the Beijing bound flight with 239 people on board to one of its military fields, only to see it diverted by the US military toward the Indian Ocean.
Should such reports be dismissed out of hand? Arguably they shouldn’t, as there may be something in them that is true and relevant. The difficulty for readers who don’t sign up for conspiracy theories is in attempting to guess what is real, and what is unreal.
The MalayMail Online report is carefully qualified as to the claimed Indian Ocean data base on the MH370 captain’s sophisticated home made flight simulator. If that data base was found, it doesn’t necessarily prove anything. But the problem is that his flight is believed by authorities to have been deliberately diverted to an unknown destination, and that as Day 12 of the mystery begins, Australia is leading a very serious and increasingly well resourced search of the southern Indian Ocean.
There are a number of other well argued theories as to what happened to MH370 claiming that a fire or explosion created a crisis shortly after the ‘all right good night’ radio contact with the Malaysia Airlines flight was made at 1.19 am on Saturday 8 March early in its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Common to those theories is that the pilots struggled to get the flight back to Kuala Lumpur from where it had departed 39 minutes earlier, only to be overcome by oxygen starvation in the depressurized airliner, after which the jet flew on until its fuel was exhausted some time after 8.11 am local time when it sent its last electronic trace to a satellite providing communications services to airlines.
The theories are considered well argued by persons with airliner and operational experience. But they come with serious flaws. One such flaw is evidence that the jet flew a cleverly constructed course to minimise the risk of detection after Malaysia’s defence radar tracked it to a point near Phuket in Thailand.
The other is that a fire or explosion in an airliner would be so damaging to the fuselage and systems onboard MH370 that it could not continue to fly for at least another 6 hours 52 minutes as recorded by standby pings from the jet to an Inmarsat parking in geosynchronous orbit high above the western Indian Ocean.
The ability of MH370 to fly for the eight hours for which it carried fuel on departure would be very adversely affected by excursions in which it flew under the radar at low altitudes, or climbed to say 45,000 feet. It is known to have been in the air for a total of at least 7 hours 31 minutes, when the last satellite ping was recorded.
THE key to solving the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 could lie with sensitive radar and satellite technology in Australia.
In a front-page story, which quoted no sources and was more an editorial, the English language New Straits Times, featured a photo on the front page of a “huge radome in the middle of the Australian heartland” and used the headline “The Answer to MH370 could be HERE”.
The story said the Malaysian investigation team is waiting for access to the “big radar picture” which is needed to pinpoint the last movements of the Boeing 777-200.
It specifically mentioned the Jindalee Over-the-Horizon Radar or OTHR, which covers a vast swathe of northern Australia and beyond.
The joint Australia-US Pine Gap satellite tracking facility, near Alice Springs, was also mentioned as having information which could assist the search.
The story points out that for several days now Malaysia’s Defence and acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has been vocal in seeking sensitive radar and satellite data from other nations. He has pointed out that Malaysia has put the search for the plane and its 239 passengers and crew above its national security and he hoped other counties would do the same.
The story is more of an editorial and a thinly veiled plea to countries holding out on handing over what is usually top-secret.
The Malaysian press has historically been far from free and it is believed that the Minister recently had a sit-down with all the country’s newspapers bosses about their coverage of the hunt for MH370.
News Corp Australia has sought comment from the Minister’s office about the issue.
It comes as reports surface that the searches on the pilot and co-pilots homes, emails, computers and phones have thrown up very little in the way of anything suspicious. The pilot’s homemade flight simulator, which has been seized, has also not shown anything suspicious or to indicate that either had anything to do with the plane flying of course before disappearing.
The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) consists of two OTHR - one near Longreach in Queensland and the other near Laverton in Western Australia – which are capable of all-weather detection of air and surface targets inside an arc of up to 3,000 km range extending from Geraldton in the west around to Cairns in the east.
JORN makes a crucial contribution to broad area surveillance of Australia’s strategically important northern approaches.
A Defence spokesperson said Defence would not comment on the operational capability of surveillance systems but said that any Defence information relating to flight MH370 was being passed on to Malaysian authorities.
In any case, it is understood the Jindalee Operational Radar Network, known as JORN, was focussed north when MH370 disappeared and for it to have detected the plane, it would have had to have been facing north-west, which is where MH370 would have approached from.
CONSPIRACY? NO, JUST ‘SLACK AND INCOMPETENT’
CONSPIRACY? More like incompetence, says a leading security expert baffled by the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
Dr Michael McKinley from the Australian National Universitysaid revelations that the missing Boeing 777-200ER was picked up by military radar in several countries but was only reported several days later suggested the search effort had been “slack”.
“The more that comes out, Malaysia and some of its neighbours are not covering themselves in glory on this,” he said.
“It seems to be somewhere between slack and incompetent.”
Overnight it emerged that Thai military radar detected a plane that may have been the missing aircraft just minutes after its communications went down, but didn’t share the information with Malaysia earlier because it wasn’t specifically asked for.
Air Vice Marshal Montol Suchookorn said the Thai air force had not closely watched the aircraft because it did not view it as a threat.
“We did not pay any attention to it,” he said.
“The Royal Thai air force only looks after any threats against our country, so anything that did not look like a threat to us, we simply look at it without taking actions.”
It follows earlier revelations that Malaysian military radar tracked the plane until an hour after it disappeared but did not report this for several days.
Indian officials also said their installations on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands — within the search area for the missing plane — were probably switched off because they “operate on an as required basis”.
Dr McKinley said the security concerns of some countries could explain their slowness to provide full information to help the search effort.
“There are issues that some states don’t want to disclose surveillance capabilities, but this shouldn’t apply to Malaysia or Thailand,” he said.
However, Dr McKinley said some actions had been “bizarre, just bizarre.”
He said diplomatic issues had undoubtedly “complicated” the response to MH370’s disappearance on March 8, but stopped short of saying it had put the response offcourse.
Dr McKinley’s criticisms come as the search for MH370 enters its 12th day, with claims of fresh sightings — both online and real-world — and new theories about what happened to the aircraft.
Upset with the investigation ... Dr Michael McKinley from the ANU.
On the edge ... the Maldive Islands where residents claim to have seen an unusual low-flying jet similar in appearance to Malaysia Airlines MH370.Source: Supplied
MALDIVES RESIDENTS REPORT SIGHTING
EYEWITNESSES claim to have seen a low-flying jumbo jet “with red stripes” similar to that of a missing Malaysia Airlines jet flying over their houses in the Maldives, local media reports.
The Maldivian daily newspaper Haveeru reports residents described a white aircraft with red markings similar to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 passing overhead about 6.15am on March 8.
The claims, which have not been confirmed, follow reports of radar and satellite signals indicating the missing airliner could have followed a track in that general direction.
The holiday islands are about halfway between Malaysia and the east coast of Africa.
It’s about 3200 kilometres from Malaysia — placing it at the extreme edge of how far flight MH370 could travel.
The newspaper reports residents of Kuda Huvadhoo as saying the unknown aircraft made an “incredibly loud noise” as it travelling southeast towards the southern end of the Maldives island chain, the island of Addu.
“I’ve never seen a jet flying so low over our island before. We’ve seen seaplanes, but I’m sure that this was not one of those. I could even make out the doors on the plane clearly,” said an eyewitness.
“It’s not just me either, several other residents have reported seeing the exact same thing. Some people got out of their houses to see what was causing the tremendous noise too.”
Mohamed Zaheem, an Island Councilor, told Haveeru that the residents of the island had spoken to him about the incident.
The Maldives international airport is located on the island of Hulhule and more than there are more than two dozen regularly scheduled flights from most of the world’s major airlines to the popular holiday destination.
Malaysian newspaper Berita Harian reported yesterday that investigators have found five airport runways, which included the Male International Airport in the Maldives, loaded in MH370 pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s homemade flight simulator.
Is this it? ... A university student claims to have found the Malaysia Airlines missing flight MH370 on the website Tomnod. Picture: TomnodSource: Supplied
TOMNOD USER SPOTS PLANE — BUT IS IT MH370?
A Taiwan university student who has assisted the search effort by scouring satellite images on the website Tomnod claims to have found an image of Flight MH370.
The Taiwan China Times reported that the image had not yet been verified and the surrounding jungle landscape had yet to be identified.
Three million people have joined the effort to locate the missing plane on Tomnod, in what may be the largest crowdsourcing project of its kind.
The satellite firm DigitalGlobe, which owns the Tomnod platform, said that its search area now has some 24,000 square kilometres (9,000 square miles) and that more images are being added daily, including a new area in the Indian Ocean.
The company said more than three million people had participated in the program, with some 257 million “map views’’ and 2.9 million areas “tagged’’ by participants.
The response was so great it overloaded the system’s computers for a time last week.
It is unclear whether the above Tomnod image even shows a Malaysia Airlines plane. Commentators have suggested the coloured ring towards the tail seems more like the paint scheme of Qantas than Malaysian Airlines.
Malaysia Airlines ... no ring around the tail. Qantas paintwork ... with distinctive red ring around tail.
THAILAND ‘DIDN’T SHARE’ RADAR DATA
The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet has grown to encompass an area slightly larger than the entire land mass of Australia, as Thailand’s military says its radar detected a plane that may have been flight MH370 just minutes after the jetliner’s communications went down.
But Thailand didn’t share the information with Malaysia earlier because it wasn’t specifically asked for it.
A twisting flight path described yesterday by Thai air force spokesman Air Vice Marshal Montol Suchookorn took the plane to the Strait of Malacca, which is where Malaysian radar tracked Flight 370 early March 8. But Vice Marshal Montol said the Thai military doesn’t know whether it detected the same plane.
Remote community ... the Maldive Islands town of Kuda Huvadhoo. Picture: Google MapsSource: Supplied
Thailand’s failure to quickly share possible information regarding the fate of the plane, and the 239 people aboard it, may not substantially change what Malaysian officials know, but it raises questions about the degree to which some countries are sharing their defence information, even in the name of an urgent and mind-bending aviation mystery.
When asked why it took so long to release the information, Vice Marshal Montol said, “Because we did not pay any attention to it. The Royal Thai Air Force only looks after any threats against our country, so anything that did not look like a threat to us, we simply look at it without taking actions.”
He said the plane never entered Thai airspace and that Malaysia’s initial request for information in the early days of the search was not specific.
The map where Australia is searching for Flight MH370.Source: Supplied
SEARCH AREA BIGGER THAN AUSTRALIA
“The entire search area is now 2.24 million square nautical miles (7.7 million square kilometres),” acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said in a daily press briefing on Tuesday evening.
Australia has a land mass of around 7.6 million square kilometres.
The search area extends north into south Central Asia, passing across far western China, including Xinjiang and Tibet, as well as south deep into the Indian Ocean west of Australia.
As the search enters its 12th day after the jetliner vanished with its 239 passengers and crew authorities say they still cannot discount any possibility of what happened to the plane.
AUSTRALIA’S SEARCH AREA NOW HALVED
The search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean has moved closer to Australia, with experts halving the area of water where the plane might be found.
And while efforts so far have failed to find signs of the jet, search co-ordinators at the Australian Maritime Safety Authority remain confident.
“With a smaller area closer to Perth and more aircraft ... I hope we will do better tomorrow,” the authority’s head of emergency response John Young said today.
Today’s search was focused on an area of 305,000 square kilometres about 2600 kilometres south-west of Perth. This is an area one third larger than the Australian state of Victoria. Search conditions were moderate.
The Rescue Coordination Centre Australia tasked assets including a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) P3 Orion, a US Navy P3 Poseidon aircraft and a Royal New Zealand Air Force P3.
Five merchant ships have also responded to a broadcast to shipping issued by RCC Australia on Monday night.
Three ships have transited through the area, another is in the area and a further ship is expected to arrive on Thursday afternoon.
Neither the ships nor the aircraft have reported sighting anything in connection to the aircraft.
“The search area has been significantly refined,” Mr Young said. The previous search zone of 600,000 square kilometres, 3200km from Perth, have been reduced following more detailed analysis from the US National Transportation Safety Board.
The new calculations are based on MH370’s fuel reserves.
“We still have grave fears for the safety of anyone who might have managed to escape the aircraft in the southern (Indian) Ocean,” Mr Young said.
“It remains a big area, it’s still very hard to search 300,000 square kilometres ... still almost a third bigger than the state of Victoria.”
Mr Young said it is a challenging search operation and AMSA continues to hold grave fears for the passengers and crew on board the missing flight.
Searching the sea ... the pilot of a RAAF AP-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft scanning the surface of the sea during a search operation for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.Source: AFP
MALAYSIANS URGED TO PUT POLITICS ASIDE
Malaysian authorities are being urged to put domestic politics aside and focus on finding the plane.
Defence and Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein would not comment on the specifics of the police investigation which is currently underway into the pilot copilot, crew, ground staff, engineers and al the passengers.
“The search for MH370 is bigger than politics,” Mr Hussein said, urging all sides of politics to unite “during this difficult time”.
His comments came after Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim has admitted he has a family connection to the MH370 pilot, who may have hijacked the plane in a political protest.
Mr Hussein called on all parties to put politics aside and unite in the hunt for MH370 and attacked the foreign media for stirring up politics.
He was asked if he might call upon his arch political rival, Mr Anwar, to help with the investigation.
“We have been very consistent. The Government’s main focus from day one has been to search and rescue MH370. We didn’t bring this up. In fact the issue of politics was raised by the foreign press, the Daily Mail and CNN. Our position remains this issue is above politics,” Mr Hussein said.
And he appeared shocked then bemused at a question from the French media, inquiring if he was Prime Minister Najib Razak’s cousin and was he protected.
“Where are you from?” he asked. “Yes I can confirm I am Najib’s cousin. I don’t know what I am supposed to be protected from.
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