Flight MH370 families start fund to uncover truth about vanished jet
A Chinese relative of passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 prays in front of candles. (AFP Photo / Wang Zhao)
Not satisfied with the lack of progress being made on locating Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, relatives of passengers are planning to launch a $5 million fundraising campaign aimed at triggering another investigation.
According to a report by USA Today, the campaign will seek $3 million to reward a whistleblower for coming forward with new information and $2 million for private investigators to look into any other leads that emerge.
The campaign has been dubbed “Reward MH370: The Search for the Truth,” and will officially launch on Monday through the crowd-funding website Indiegogo. Composed of families from the United States, Australia, France, India, and New Zealand, the campaign does not include the participation of Chinese or Malaysian families, whose relatives were the primary travelers on the plane.
As for why these families decided they needed to start such an effort, American Sarah Bajc – whose partner, Philip Wood, was on the plane when it disappeared – said it’s necessary considering the failure to locate the plan up to this point.
"We are taking matters into our own hands," Bajc told USA Today. "There is no credible evidence" the plane is somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean. "I'm convinced that somebody is concealing something.”
Although Bajc is certainly not alone in feeling that way, these accusations have been denied by officials conducting the search.
"Nothing important is being concealed in any way," said Angus Houston, the head of Australia’s joint agency managing the search. "My approach has always been to be as open as I could possibly be.”
Houston acknowledged that not all the information is out in public just yet, but that a complete review is underway and should be finished sometime in June.
Meanwhile, Malaysian officials have also denied that transparency is an issue, though the country’s acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein has stated that "requests made by next-of-kin and international media cannot be accommodated 100%."
While Bajc is hopeful and believes outside action must be taken, she is also cautioning those who donate. Even if the campaign is fully funded, results are not guaranteed.
"Granted, $2 million in investigation services won't go very far," Bajc told USA Today. "Clearly, they've already spent $100 million, and they've gotten nothing. But we're not going to approach it with boats in the ocean. We're going to approach it with human intelligence."
As far as the official search goes, the US Navy’s deputy director of ocean engineering Micheal Dean said at the end of May that the four pings believed to have been coming from MH370’s black box were actually coming from an unrelated source. As RT reported then, Dean said there was no evidence suggesting the pings came from the black boxes, and the international group charged with finding the plane halted its search for debris in the suspected area of the Indian Ocean.
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SYDNEY: Australia is investigating an account from a sailor who said she may have seen Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on fire, as officials said the hunt for the plane could dive much deeper.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading the search at the request of the Malaysian government, is looking at the claim from a British yachtswoman made this week.
"The ATSB received... a message from a member of the public, reporting that they had seen what they believed to be a burning aircraft in the sky above the Indian Ocean on the night of the disappearance of MH370," a spokesman told AFP in an email Wednesday.
"That information has been forwarded to the ATSB's MH370 Search Strategy Working Group for review."
Flight MH370, which was en route from Kuala Lumpur to the Chinese capital Beijing when it inexplicably diverted, is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
An extensive search for the plane, which vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board, has so far found nothing, including an intensive underwater hunt with a mini-sub that could dive to 4,500m.
The ATSB on Wednesday released a request for tenders for a company to dive even deeper, to depths of up to 6,000m.
It said the successful bidder would be engaged as a prime contractor and provide the expertise, equipment and vessels needed to carry out the search for the Boeing 777 from August.
"The successful tenderer will use the data from a bathymetric survey (already under way) to navigate the search zone, which has water depth between 1,000 and 6,000m," it said.
An international team is now determining a search zone of up to 60,000sq km based on where the aircraft last communicated with an Inmarsat satellite.
British yachtswoman Katherine Tee added to speculation about the location of a possible crash site by revealing she saw a glowing plane over the Indian Ocean in March.
The 41-year-old said she told Australian authorities of her sighting of a plane with "what appeared to be a tail of black smoke coming from behind it" while she travelled from Kochi in India to Phuket in Thailand.
"There were two other planes passing higher than it - moving the other way - at that time," she wrote on sailing site Cruisers Forum, a firm for which she also works.
"I recall thinking that if it was a plane on fire that I was seeing, the other aircraft would report it."
She said she told no one at the time because she and her husband, who was onboard but asleep, had been having difficulties and had not spoken for about a week.
"And most of all, I wasn't sure of what I saw," she said. "I couldn't believe it myself."
But after confirming her yacht's position using GPS data in recent days, she said she knew she was in the "right place at the right time" and told authorities.
MH370's last known position, as tracked by military radar, was roughly west of Phuket, although the search area has focused on a zone hundreds of kilometres further south. – AFP
http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2014/06/04/MH370-British-sailor-claims-saw-plane-on-fire/
PETALING JAYA: A British sailor has filed a report over her purported sighting of the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 while crossing the Indian Ocean in March.
Katherine Tee, 41, said she was sailing from Cochin, India towards Phuket, Thailand with her husband Marc Horn, 50, when she saw what looked like a plane on fire crossing the night sky during her lone night watch on March 7-8.
"I saw something that looked like a plane on fire. That's what I thought it was. Then, I thought I must be mad… It caught my attention because I had never seen a plane with orange lights before, so I wondered what they were," she told thePhuket Gazette on Monday.
Tee said the outline of the plane "looked longer than planes usually do", with what appeared to be a black plume of smoke streaming from its rear.
On that night, two other planes with normal navigation lights were moving in the opposite direction.
"I remember thinking that if it was a plane on fire that I was seeing, the other aircraft would report it,"she added.
Tee did not share her experience with anyone until they arrived in Phuket on March 10.
There, she heard news of the MH370 tragedy - where the aircraft carrying 239 people from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur vanished from radar screens in the early hours of March 8 and remains missing till this day - and told other sailors of what she saw.
"Some suggested I should say something, that (what I saw) might have been it. Most said that the flight was heading toward Vietnam. I wasn't sure of the date or time (of the sighting). I am still not," she said.
Tee doubted anyone else would believe her eyewitness account, hence her delay in making a report.
"Most of all, I wasn't sure of what I saw. I couldn't believe it myself, and didn't think anyone would believe me when I was having trouble believing my own eyes.
"I did think that what I saw would add little, and be dismissed with the thousands of other sightings that I assumed were being reported.
"I thought that the authorities would be able to track (the plane's) GPS log, which I assumed was automatically transmitted, or something like that," she added.
Nearly three months later, a radio news report prompted Tee to share what she saw with her husband, who cross-referenced their route only to discover that the yacht was in the vicinity of one of MH370's projected flight paths.
On Sunday, they filed a report with the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), the organisation coordinating the search for MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean.
"Will this help the authorities of the families get closure? I have no idea. All I can confirm is that I have since learnt that we were in the right place at the right time, so it seems possible, but I chose to sweep it under the carpet and now I feel really bad," said Tee.
http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Regional/2014/06/03/Emirates-chief-asks-why-no-fighter-jet-tracked-MH370/
Emirates chief asks why no fighter jet tracked MH370
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SYDNEY: Emirates chief Tim Clark has reportedly questioned why fighter jets did not intercept Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 when it veered widely off course, but said he believed the missing plane will be found.
Clark said that more information on the disappearance of the Boeing jet, which was carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, was needed before the industry changes its aircraft tracking procedures.
The Emirates boss told The Australian Financial Review at an annual airlines conference in Doha that the plane would have been intercepted by military aircraft if it had flown off course over other countries.
"If you were to fly from London to Oslo and then over the North Sea you turned off and then went west to Ireland, within two minutes you'd have Tornadoes, Eurofighters, everything up around you," he said.
"Even if you did that over Australia and the US, there would be something up. I'm not quite sure where primary radar was in all of this."
His comments came as the International Air Transport Association conference looked at ways of improving the tracking of aircraft through flight data transmissions or technologies to monitor their movements.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation has also formed a working group to explore tracking methods.
"In my view we are all plunging down a path that (says) 'we have got to fix this'," Clark said. "This is the door closing after the horse has gone 25 miles down the track.
"We need to know more about what actually happened to this aeroplane and do a forensic second-by-second analysis of it. I think we will find it and get to the bottom of it."
Australia is leading the hunt for MH370, which is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, but there have been no signs of the plane since it vanished over the South China Sea on March 8 despite an intense air, sea and underwater search.
Malaysia's air force has acknowledged that military radar tracked what it called an "unidentified object" - later determined to be MH370 - crossing back through Malaysian airspace and out toward the Indian Ocean after the plane diverted.
The air force said it took no action because the aircraft was not deemed "hostile", drawing heavy criticism over the lost opportunity to intercept or further track the plane.
Malaysia's government has defended the air force decision, without elaborating on how it was made, but Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has said military procedures would be reviewed in the wake of MH370. -AFP
Good morning,
ReplyDeleteI don't know why the new flt MH370 report just seems like more mud in the water but it does for some reason.
As for how much gold is left in western vaults I would bet that it's not near what they are saying, a fraction, a small fraction of reported.
Nice weather down here today, we had the rain Wed night.
I hope everyone has a great day.
Morning Kev and NW - there is so little news per se on flight 370 these days ........it's as if the plane has suffered a second disappearance ! Just kind of odd for that story to be " floated " almost two months after the disappearance. And just after the pings were completely discounted as a rationale for searching the Indian Ocean ( at the area they have been searching .)
DeleteIronically , it could be China investigating its missing metals in its Ports that might open the vaults at the CME and London for examination....Can't wait to see how the China situation resolves , as well as what they find out about physical gold and silver allegedly in US vaults !
Seems nice today , supposed to be real nice this weekend too !
Enjoy your day .....