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09 April 2014| last updated at 04:08PM
MH370 Tragedy:More underwater pings heard
PERTH: A ship searching for the missing Malaysian jet has detected two more underwater signals that may be emanating from the aircraft’s black boxes, and the Australian official in charge of the search expressed hope today that the plane’s wreckage will soon be found.
Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the search for the missing plane in the southern Indian Ocean, said that the Australian navy’s Ocean Shield picked up the two signals on Tuesday, and that an analysis of two sounds detected in the same area last week showed they were consistent with a plane’s black boxes.
“I’m now optimistic that we will find the aircraft, or what is left of the aircraft, in the not-too-distant future — but we haven’t found it yet, because this is a very challenging business,” Houston said at a news conference in Perth, the hub for the search operation.
The Ocean Shield first detected underwater sounds on Saturday before losing them, but managed to pick them up again on Tuesday, Houston said.
The ship is equipped with a U.S. Navy towed pinger locator that is designed to detect signals from a plane’s two black boxes — the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.
A data analysis of the signals heard Saturday determined they were distinct, clear and pulsed consistently — indicating they were coming from a plane’s black box, Houston said.
“(The analysts) therefore assess that the transmission was not of natural origin and was likely sourced from specific electronic equipment,” Houston said. “They believe the signals to be consistent with the specification and description of a flight data recorder.”
Despite the promising evidence, Houston warned he could not yet conclude that searchers had pinpointed Flight 370’s crash site.
“I think that we’re looking in the right area, but I’m not prepared to say — to confirm — anything until such time as somebody lays eyes on the wreckage,” he said.
Finding the black boxes quickly is a matter of urgency because their locator beacons have a battery life of only about a month — and Tuesday marked exactly one month since the plane vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board.
Once the beacons blink off, locating the black boxes in such deep water — about 4,500 meters, or 15,000 feet — would be an immensely difficult, if not impossible, task.
Houston acknowledged they were running out of time, and noted that the signals picked up on Tuesday were weaker and briefer than the ones heard over the weekend — suggesting that, if they are coming from the plane’s black boxes, the batteries are dying.
The two signals detected on Saturday lasted two hours and 20 minutes and 13 minutes, respectively; the sounds heard Tuesday lasted just 5 and a half minutes and 7 minutes.
“So we need to, as we say in Australia, `make hay while the sun shines,”’ Houston said.
Picking up the sound again is crucial to narrowing the search area so a small, unmanned submarine can be deployed to create a sonar map of a potential debris field on the seafloor. It takes the sub, dubbed “Bluefin 21,” six times longer to cover the same area than it does the towed pinger, which is pulled behind the boat at a depth of 3,000 meters (9,800 feet).
U.S. Navy Capt. Mark Matthews said the detections indicate the device emitting the pings is somewhere within about a 20 kilometre (12 mile) radius.
Still, he said, that equates to a 1,300 square kilometre (500 square mile) chunk of the ocean floor, which would take the sub about six weeks to two months to canvass. So it makes more sense to continue using the towed pinger locator for now, he said.
The fading strength of the more recent signals could indicate any number of things about the device emitting them, Matthews said.
“It could be sinking into silt, it could be the batteries reaching the end of their life, it could be further away,” Matthews said. “It could be even closer, but with different temperature, salinity or pressure profiles affecting the sound.”
Matthews was hopeful that searchers had zeroed in on Flight 370’s location.
“It’s certainly a man-made device emitting that signal,” he said. “And I have no explanation for what other component could be there.”
Houston said a decision had not yet been made on how long searchers would to wait after the final sound was heard before the sub was deployed, saying only that time was “not far away.”
“Hopefully in a matter of days, we will be able to find something on the bottom that might confirm that this is the last resting place of MH370,” he said.
The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on a trip from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing has sparked one of aviation’s biggest mysteries.
The search has shifted from waters off of Vietnam, to the Strait of Malacca and then to waters in the southern Indian Ocean as data from radar and satellites was further analysed.
But finding any wreckage in such deep water has proved to be a monumental task. The Bluefin sub’s sonar can scan only about 100 meters (328 feet) and it can “see” with lights and cameras only a few meters.
The maximum depth it can dive is 4,500 meters (14,800 feet) — and there are some areas of the search zone that are deeper than that. That means a different machine may need to be brought in if debris is resting on the deepest part of the seafloor.
Search crews are also contending with a thick layer of silt on the sea floor that can both hide any possible wreckage and distort the sounds emanating from the black boxes that may be resting there, said Royal Australian Navy commodore Peter Leavy, who is helping to lead the search.
Meanwhile, the search for debris on the ocean surface picked up intensity on Wednesday, with 15 planes and 14 ships scouring a 75,400 square kilometre (29,100 square mile) area that extends from 2,250 kilometres (1,400 miles) northwest of Perth.
Despite the challenges still facing search crews, those involved in the hunt were buoyed by the Ocean Shield’s findings.
“I’m an engineer so I don’t talk emotions too much,” Matthews said.
“But certainly when I received word that they had another detection, you feel elated.
You’re hopeful that you can locate the final resting place of the aircraft and bring closure to all the families involved.” --AP
09 April 2014| last updated at 07:01PM
MH370 Tragedy: Australian ship detects new signals
PERTH: Two fresh signals have been picked up in the search for missing Malaysian flight MH370, raising hopes Wednesday that wreckage will be found within days even as black box batteries start to expire.
Australian ship Ocean Shield detected the signals Tuesday to match a pair of transmissions picked up over the weekend that have been analysed as consistent with signals from the plane’s flight data recorder, the head of the search said.
“Ocean Shield has been able to reacquire the signals on two more occasions, late yesterday afternoon and later last night,” said Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre.
The Australian ship has now picked up four transmissions, crucial information as searchers try to pinpoint the crash zone for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board.
Officials had feared that the signals which were initially picked up might not be detected again, particularly since the batteries on the black box tracking beacons have a normal lifespan of about 30 days.
The new transmissions, found in the same broad area as the previous two, lasted for five minutes and 32 seconds and about seven minutes respectively, Houston said.
“Yesterday’s signals will assist in better defining a reduced and much more manageable search area on the ocean floor,” Houston said.
“I believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify the aircraft before we can confirm with certainty that this is the final resting place of MH370.”
Houston, however, again urged caution for the sake of the families of those aboard the flight which mysteriously vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and said the search for more signals would go on.
“Hopefully with lots of transmissions we’ll have a tight, small area and... in a matter of days we’ll be able to find something on the bottom that might confirm that this is the last resting place of MH370,” Houston told reporters.
For families of MH370 passengers, who marked the one-month anniversary of the plane’s disappearance on Tuesday, the suspense has been excruciating.
“Let’s wait and see. I want to see the evidence that the plane is at the bottom of the sea,” said Malaysian Tan Tuan Lay, whose daughter, 31-year-old bank employee Chew Kar Mooi, was one of the passengers on board.
“I am really sad (about) what has happened but I am prepared to accept what ever comes,” Tan said when asked to comment on the fresh signals.
Australia confirmed Wednesday that the first signals were consistent with black box recorders and that the search was narrowing.
“The analysis determines that a very stable distinct and clear signal was detected at 33.331 kHz and that it consistently pulsed at a 1.106 second interval,” Houston said.
“They believe the signals to be consistent with the specification and description of a flight data recorder.”
Authorities have been searching a linear arc produced from satellite data and believed to represent the last stretch of the plane’s flight path.
While China’s Haixun 01 vessel initially reported some acoustic signals at the southern end of this trajectory, these have not occurred again, Houston said.
No other ships will be allowed near the Ocean Shield, as its work must be done in an environment as free of noise as possible, but a modified RAAF AP-3C Orion was parachuting sonar buoys into the vicinity.
These will float on the surface and have a hydrophone attached dangling 1,000 feet below to hopefully pick up any emissions, although officials warned these could be dulled by thick silt on the seabed.
With the clock ticking on how long the black boxes could feasibly continue to transmit, Houston said it would not be long before a US-made autonomous underwater vehicle called a Bluefin 21 would be sent down to investigate.
Houston said officials were probably close to using this device because the last acoustic signal was very weak, indicating the batteries were running down.
“I don’t think that time is very far away,” he said.
Up to 11 military aircraft, four civil planes and 14 ships were searching Wednesday over a zone covering 75,423 square kilometres (29,000 square miles), Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre said.
The focus of the search area is 2,260 kilometres (1,400 miles) northwest of Perth.
The case of the missing jet has baffled aviation experts and frustrated the families of those on board, two-thirds of whom were Chinese.
Despite extensive searches on the ocean surface, no debris has yet been found, but Houston voiced optimism that the aircraft will be found “in the not too distant future”.--AFP
09 April 2014| last updated at 01:57PM
MH370 Tragedy: Experts confirm pulse signals are from a black box
PERTH: Experts in Australia and the United States have confirmed that the pulse signals picked up by vessels searching for a missing Malaysian airliner in the southern Indian Ocean are from a man-made device and are not natural sounds from the sea, according to the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC).
Its chief co-ordinator, Air Chief Marshal (Rtd) Angus Houston, said Wednesday the experts, from the Australian Joint Acoustic Analysis Centre (AJACC) in New South Wales and the black box manufacturer in the United States, had confirmed that the 33.31 kHz signals were from the flight data recorder of a black box.
However, it could not be confirmed whether the signals had come from the black box of the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight, MH370, he said.
"The two recent signals were detected by the Australian Defence Vessel (ADV) Ocean Shield at 4.27 pm and 10.17 pm yesterday," he told a press conference on developments in the search for the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft.
The first signal lasted for five minutes and 32 seconds and the second, seven minutes, he said.
Last Monday, Ocean Shield detected two signals after having picked up one on Sunday, while a Chinese ship, Haixun 01, traced two signals last Friday and Saturday.
Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, left the KL International Airport at 12.41 am on March 8 and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later, while over the South China Sea. It was to have arrived in Beijing at 6.30 am on the same day.
A multinational search was mounted for the aircraft, first in the South China Sea and then, after it was learned that the plane had veered off course, along two corridors - the northern corridor stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, and the southern corridor, from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.
Following an unprecedented type of analysis of satellite data, United Kingdom satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) concluded that Flight MH370 flew along the southern corridor and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.
Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak then announced on March 24, seventeen days after the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, that the flight path of MH370 "ended in the southern Indian Ocean".
Houston said the signals were getting weaker, probably because the black box’s battery was dying or the device was being moved by the ocean's currents.
"The more detection of signals we get, the better we can refine the search area," he said.
He said that for the time being the search area of the Ocean Shield was 25 sq km where it was using a towed pinger locater, while aerial search would also begin at the designated area.
Houston cautioned that one of the challenges for the underwater search would be silt on the ocean floor that could hinder the visual cameras in the search for the aircraft.
He said the silt could be 10 metres deep or more.
Meanwhile, the commander of Joint Task Force 658, Commodore Peter Leavy, said at the same press conference that the search teams had lowered 84 sonar buoyant floats in the search area to assist the Ocean Shield to detect the signals.
He said the devices had several sensors that could detect any signal from about 1,000 feet (304.8 metres) deep.
He also said that the use of submarines in the search was not suitable due to their limited submerge capability compared to the depth of the ocean, which was 4,500 metres. -- BERNAMA
Malaysia Chronicle......
Wednesday, 09 April 2014 06:42
MURDER WITHOUT A BODY OR MOTIVE? MH370 - the world's greatest detective story
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THERE’S a commentary emerging that people are “getting bored” of the MH370 yarn.
If that is so, people are hard to please. We are witness, in real time, to the world’s greatest detective story, replete with false leads and a cast of possible villains.
It’s like a murder where there’s not only no body, there’s no apparent motive.
But the sense is that the net is closing.
Suspicion first turned, without much basis, on terrorists, then the pilots, and then on Malaysia itself.
Only two weeks ago, the story that the plane had possibly headed for Kazakhstan, or deep south into the Indian Ocean, seemed absurd. Then we were led astray by stories of “debris fields” supposedly spotted on satellite.
It has been a strange ride, and there’s still a nagging feeling someone — such as a major power — knows more than they’re saying.
But now the general feeling here in Perth is that something big is about to break on the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines plane.
And it already has.
News that the Australian Defence support vessel Ocean Shield detected two long, sustained and separate frequency transmissions is hugely significant.
The search boss, retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, said the sounds were consistent with the Boeing 777’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.
HOLDING ON TO HOPE: ‘Miracles do happen’
Houston has not yet been able to confirm that the plane has been located, but as he said in Monday’s press conference: “The audible signal sounds to me just like an emergency locator beacon.”
Searching for clues ... HMAS Success's rigid hull inflatable boat is deployed following a reported sighting of potential debris. Picture: Australian Defence Source: AFP
That was a strong remark from Houston, who prefers understatement out of respect for the families of the 239 aboard.
What is really astounding is that a multinational search is underway, on the basis of only hypothetical information.
We are asked to accept that international aviation experts believe they have been able to pinpoint the approximate location of where the plane went down, based on fleeting “handshakes” between a satellite high over the Indian Ocean and distressed plane.
Most of us still find it hard to accept that a plane could go AWOL without its movements being precisely tracked from the very moment it veered from its course to Beijing.
I believe the plane will be found.
But given all the technology and the interests of the various nations involved in this tale, I have less confidence we will ever know the real reason they found it. -News.com.au
Wednesday, 09 April 2014 16:53
CHANCES HIGH BLACK BOX BELONGS TO MH370: Experts confirm pings came fom a black box
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PERTH - Experts in Australia and the United States have confirmed that the pulse signals picked up by vessels searching for a missing Malaysian airliner in the southern Indian Ocean are from a man-made device and are not natural sounds from the sea, according to the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC).
Its chief co-ordinator, Air Chief Marshal (Rtd) Angus Houston, said Wednesday the experts, from the Australian Joint Acoustic Analysis Centre (AJACC) in New South Wales and the black box manufacturer in the United States, had confirmed that the 33.31 kHz signals were from the flight data recorder of a black box.
However, it could not be confirmed whether the signals had come from the black box of the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight, MH370, he said.
"The two recent signals were detected by the Australian Defence Vessel (ADV) Ocean Shield at 4.27 pm and 10.17 pm yesterday," he told a press conference on developments in the search for the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft.
The first signal lasted for five minutes and 32 seconds and the second, seven minutes, he said.
Last Monday, Ocean Shield detected two signals after having picked up one on Sunday, while a Chinese ship, Haixun 01, traced two signals last Friday and Saturday.
Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, left the KL International Airport at 12.41 am on March 8 and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later, while over the South China Sea. It was to have arrived in Beijing at 6.30 am on the same day.
A multinational search was mounted for the aircraft, first in the South China Sea and then, after it was learned that the plane had veered off course, along two corridors - the northern corridor stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, and the southern corridor, from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.
Following an unprecedented type of analysis of satellite data, United Kingdom satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) concluded that Flight MH370 flew along the southern corridor and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.
Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak then announced on March 24, seventeen days after the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, that the flight path of MH370 "ended in the southern Indian Ocean".
Houston said the signals were getting weaker, probably because the black box’s battery was dying or the device was being moved by the ocean's currents.
"The more detection of signals we get, the better we can refine the search area," he said.
He said that for the time being the search area of the Ocean Shield was 25 sq km where it was using a towed pinger locater, while aerial search would also begin at the designated area.
Houston cautioned that one of the challenges for the underwater search would be silt on the ocean floor that could hinder the visual cameras in the search for the aircraft.
He said the silt could be 10 metres deep or more.
Meanwhile, the commander of Joint Task Force 658, Commodore Peter Leavy, said at the same press conference that the search teams had lowered 84 sonar buoyant floats in the search area to assist the Ocean Shield to detect the signals.
He said the devices had several sensors that could detect any signal from about 1,000 feet (304.8 metres) deep.
He also said that the use of submarines in the search was not suitable due to their limited submerge capability compared to the depth of the ocean, which was 4,500 metres. - BERNAMA
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