New Straits Times......
17 April 2014| last updated at 07:19PM
MH370 Tragedy: Approach may be reviewed if no concrete evidence: Hishammuddin
KUALA LUMPUR: The approach in the search for the vanished Malaysia Airlines MH370 aircraft, currently based in the southern Indian Ocean, may be reviewed if the information gleaned from the search which enters its 41st day today, does not meet its objective.
Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said this was among the matters raised between Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in a telephone conversation this morning.
"Abbott said that if within a stipulated time, not in terms of days but in terms of what information we received, (we) did not achieve the target, an announcement will be made whereby, we may have to relook and reconsider the approach used.
"...this does not mean we will stop the search operation but it is about how the search is carried out, and possibly where," he said at a media conference after an appreciation ceremony in conjunction with the closing of the 2014 Asia Defence Service Exhibition (DSA) here today.
He said, other than proving that any action concerning the mission to look for the aircraft would not be carried out without joint discussion, Najib's conversation with Abbott also showed the special relations between the two leaders.
Flight MH370 with 239 people departed on March 8 from the KL International Airport at 12.41am and went off the radar, an hour later over the South China Sea. The aircraft was scheduled to arrive in Beijing at 6.30am on the same day.
A search and rescue operation involving 26 countries was launched to find the aircraft, beginning in the South China Sea and then expanded to the Melaka Strait and Andaman Sea and now in the southern Indian Ocean.
The search in the southern Indian Ocean started on March 20, namely, on the 13th day of the international search for MH370, after Abbott announced the nation's satellite had observed two objects which could be related to the search for the aircraft.
In the same development, Hishamuddin said the search mission and investigation into the cause of the disappearance of Flight MH370 were not influenced at all by speculations by irresponsible quarters.
"We will not entertain anything which can adversely affect the investigation and the search mission. In fact, we believe every speculation will be answered when the investigation committee and panel of inquiry is set up," he added.
Hishammuddin said the proposal to set up an international panel of inquiry, which should have been tabled before the Cabinet yesterday, had to be postponed to the coming Cabinet meeting.
"We could not distribute the paper to all relevant ministries for their comments on time. So, I will table the paper again to the Cabinet, and hope the people will not speculate on the status of that panel (of) experts until the Cabinet decides," he said.
Hishammuddin reiterated that it would not be fair to the Malaysian Government to just focus on the Chinese families in this unprecedented incident because the missing MH370 also involved 14 other nationalities on board, including Malaysians.
He also said that, for the time being, there was no need for the government to buy new equipments such as satellite with radar, because of the MH370 tragedy, as the most important thing was to upgrade all the technologies that it had.
"I have been briefed...and 2014 DSA gave me the opportunity to gauge our strengths and weaknesses. But, at the end of the day, we have to leave it to the air force and the end-users will advise me as to what is best," he said. - BERNAMA
Malaysia Chronicle.......
Friday, 18 April 2014 06:15
COME CLEAN on radar failure & ‘SECRET' origin of mangosteens on board MH370 - Anwar tells Najib
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Responding to Prime Minister Najib Razak’s scathing attack using a misquoted quote of his, Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim responded with two questions pertaining to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Firstly, Anwar said acting Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein should answer why Marconi radar failed to detect MH370 when it turned back to Peninsular Malaysia.
“How could the five states have missed it? This is wrong and the negligence can disrupt national security. Why the hundreds millions radar in Gong Kedak failed?”
Secondly, Anwar questioned on the mysterious four tonnes of mangosteen carried by flight MH370 and the government’s refusal to release cargo manifest from MH370.
“Does the world accept the fact that there were four tonnes of mangosteen outside of the season for mangosteen? Don’t know if there’s a warehouse which keeps the mangosteens,” he quipped.
Touching on Najib’s attack based on his comment made to Chinese daily Southern Weekly, claiming he could have solved the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 mystery “in one second if he was prime minister”, Anwar accused the Prime Minister of twisting his words.
Anwar said the interview was wrongly translated and what he meant was it would take one second for him to take immediate action and ensure flow of information if he was the prime minister.
“Bernama made the wrong translation of the Southern Weekly. It’s the usual UMNO’s type-of-slander to attack without referring to the actual quote,” he chided. -Harakahdaily
Friday, 18 April 2014 16:49
SEARCH ON LAND, NOT WATER - MH370 families tell officials as subs fail to sight debris, black boxes
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In the search for debris from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, numerous findings of wooden pallets, nets and floating garbage are keeping grieving families clinging on to the hope that those on board may still be alive, and prompting theories from aviation and ocean experts about the plane's final minutes.
Mohamad Sahril Shaari, 24, whose cousin Muhammad Razahan Zamani was on board, told The Wall Street Journal, "I do not think it is in any sea because if it was, they would have found the broken pieces. I think the plane most probably landed somewhere. You should spend time looking for the plane on land.”
Like many other relatives of the flight's passengers, he demanded evidence about his cousin's fate.
"Show us irrefutable proof, or we are not going to accept that they are dead." he was reported as saying.
The lack of physical evidence leaves the passengers' relatives sceptical about the fact that the plane crashed in the ocean, believing instead that it could have landed on an isolated spot, reported The Wall Street Journal.
Another relative of a flight steward on board the plane is Philip Tan, who told The Wall Street Journal that the lack of debris from the plane gives him hope that his brother might be alive and that the plane landed somewhere.
"If the debris is found, that would dash our hopes of survivability," he added.
According to the report, Tan was also inclined to believe the theory that the Boeing 777 was taken over remotely by the US and flown to a distant US military base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.
The report cited the director of Merdeka Center, Ibrahim Suffian, who said that Malaysians' trust in their government's handling of the missing plane is low.
This was concluded from a poll by the center released this week, revealing that 54% Malaysians feel that the government is hiding information about the plane and only 26% believed the government was being truhtful.
Family member of passengers from China has also voiced their need to see something tangible in order to believe the plane had crashed.
In the report, Che Yutian who has a 25 year old cousin on board the plane said, "Unless there is physical evidence, we refuse to accept any conclusion from Malaysia Airlines that there are no survivors. Right now it's all based on guessing and deduction."
Australian officials say they are confident they have located the general area where the plane went down, however there is still a huge difference between the conclusions offered by technical experts and what families believe happened to the plane.
A former chief crash investigator for Boeing Co., John Purvis said that a steep and fast dive into water might leave scant surface debris, where it could have blown into so many small pieces that 'you wouldn't be able to find much debris'.
On the other hand, a slow gradual descent toward calm water – even with a big, widebody jet like the 777 – "might give you a complete airplane under the surface, if it was a gentle enough event," he told The Wall Street Journal.
Other than the possibility that there wasn't much debris to begin with, oceanographers, aviation experts and search authorities say the mislead in the first few weeks in the South China Sea might have cost them the debris.
Simon Boxall, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton in the UK told The Wall Street Journal strong currents and eddies may have carried the surface debris more than 600 miles north, east or west during that time.
Another oceanographer at the University of Western Australia, Charitha Pattiaratchi added that cyclone Gillian had also passed close by the search area in late March, and could have caused the ocean to churn up the debris, making large pieces smaller and sinking some.
The report said that when jetliners crash into water, the amount and size of debris can vary greatly depending variables such as the plane's altitude, the angle it went down, and its speed.
The report brought up examples of crashes where the debris was so fine that "it took a lot of reconstruction to figure out" what part of the plane it came from.
In the wreckage of EgyptAir flight 990 that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 1999, the floating debris were all very small in size, according to the report.
In the case of Air France flight 447 crash 2009, rescuers and salvage crews found hundreds of floating remains, including 50 bodies, uninflated life jackets, seat cushions and the plane's complete tail fin; but it was only two years later that they managed to locate the main wreckage on the ocean floor, the report said. –TMI
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/17/mh-370-search-running-out-of-time-says-tony-abbott
MH370 search is fast running out of time, says Australian prime minister
'We believe that search will be completed within a week or so,' says Tony Abbott
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Tony Abbott says the most promising leads in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean will be exhausted in a week.
On Monday it was announced the search would be conducted by a remote controlled submersible called Bluefin-21 that would scour the ocean floor with sonar to attempt to locate signs of the plane.
But in an interview with the Wall Street Journal the prime minister said: "We believe that search will be completed within a week or so.
"If we don't find wreckage, we stop, we regroup, we reconsider."
Search authorities detected four earlier pings consistent with those from a black box and sent the underwater vehicle to search the most likely area where the plane is believed to have gone down.
But the Bluefin-21 has faced difficulties in completing its missions, and has now been forced to surface early twice, once due to a technical issue and once due to reaching the 4,500m limit of its undersea capabilities.
The ocean where the search is focusing has not been mapped in great detail and the depth may exceed 4,500m. If this is the case, another vehicle may need to be chartered to continue the search.
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