Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370

This horrendous story has been dominating the news for a week now. A plane full of passengers and crew, simply disappeared.

Leaving behind no trace. No one knows where it is or where it went. Disappeared off radar and that was that.

Under normal circumstances and in the day or so after this even arose, we all thought it had crashed. That the wreckage would be found and the families and loved ones of those aboard would get some closure. 7 days into this sorry saga and the family are far from gaining any closure and even further from knowing what happened to their loved ones.

As the various stories and theories emerged, from it flying over part of Malaysia and ditching between Malaysia and Indonesia to fisherman seeing bright lights from the plane flying low, to the Malaysian Government's yes and no dance about what the military radar.. To a possible terrorist attack by two people traveling on stolen passports (both of whom were identified as two Iranian young men traveling to Europe via China to seek asylum and whose families were waiting for them at the airport in Germany before they realised that they were on the doomed flight.. Plus the other numerous theories bandied about.. This has been a horrific week for all concerned.

This morning I awoke to satellite images from China and the story of a New Zealander working on an oil rig in the area who spotted a ball of fire in the sky, approximately where China's satellite images appeared to show something or other in the water. And it was a feeling of 'oh finally'. Those poor family and loved ones waiting every single day can finally find some closure and move on and grieve. Not so.

The so called debris from the satellite images were discounted and the news came out stating there was nothing there.

So where is it?

By this afternoon, we went from a promising possible sighting of a plane crashing into the sea - not that this is positive of course, but after so many days of this horror show, the result was somewhat promising - Well after today's fiasco, the Wall Street Journal released a piece that.. well..

U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.

Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program.

That raises a host of new questions and possibilities about what happened aboard the widebody jet carrying 239 people, which vanished from civilian air-traffic control radar over the weekend, about one hour into a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

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U.S. counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner's transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe.

The investigation remains fluid, and it isn't clear whether investigators have evidence indicating possible terrorism or sabotage. So far, U.S. national security officials have said that nothing specifically points toward terrorism, though they haven't ruled it out.

But the huge uncertainty about where the plane was headed, and why it apparently continued flying so long without working transponders, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for a reason that appears unclear to U.S. authorities. Some of those theories have been laid out to national security officials and senior personnel from various U.S. agencies, according to one person familiar with the matter.

At one briefing, according to this person, officials were told investigators are actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted "with the intention of using it later for another purpose."

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As part of its maintenance agreements, Malaysia Airlines transmits its engine data live to Rolls-Royce for analysis. The system compiles data from inside the 777's two Trent 800 engines and transmits snapshots of performance, as well as the altitude and speed of the jet.

Those snippets are compiled and transmitted in 30-minute increments, said one person familiar with the system. According to Rolls-Royce's website, the data is processed automatically "so that subtle changes in condition from one flight to another can be detected."

The engine data is being analyzed to help determine the flight path of the plane after the transponders stopped working. The jet was originally headed for China, and its last verified position was half way across the Gulf of Thailand.

A total flight time of five hours after departing Kuala Lumpur means the Boeing 777 could have continued for an additional distance of about 2,200 nautical miles, reaching points as far as the Indian Ocean, the border of Pakistan or even the Arabian Sea, based on the jet's cruising speed.

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Let me be the first to say it..

What... the... fuck?!

Malaysia have since (in the last couple of hours) denied this was true.

So where is it?

It is astounding how in this day and age, in a busy shipping and airline 'lane', that a large plane with over 230 people on board can simply just disappear.

What Malaysia earlier discounted - they are now searching in the area where it was rumored that the plane had turned around and was headed towards Indonesia. After they had discounted it.

Earlier on in this fiasco, a pilot had come forward and advised he had spoken to someone on that plane, after Vietnam's air traffic controllers asked him to try to contact the Malaysian flight and he advised someone responded to him and all he heard was static and mumbling.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories..

But this story is like a giant huge conspiracy theory.

The thought that this plane was somehow hijacked and landed somewhere... Heaven knows what happened to the passengers. It is a terrifying prospect and usually, we'd all scoff at such an idea. But here we are, today, extending the actual possibility.

Are they (the authorities) hiding something? Do they know something?

 

Sadly Malaysian Airlines did not subscribe to the live stream of data for its engines.

Update..

The report that it was sending data yesterday appears to be false. Instead, the engines were simply pinging and they suspect that since it was pinging after it disappeared off radar in Vietnamese airspace and lost all radio contact, with its onboard fuel, that it could have flown for up to 4 more hours...

So the search efforts from some countries may be switched to the Indian Ocean. Which is in the complete opposite direction of where it was headed.

In an echo of claims made in the Wall Street Journal earlier on Thursday that the plane transmitted engine data for hours after the plane disappeared, US officials briefed on the search told Associated Press that Boeing systems on the plane also sent signals to a satellite for four hours after the aircraft went missing.

The Boeing 777-200 was not transmitting data to the satellite, but was instead sending out a signal to establish contact, said the official, who was not named.

If true, it could suggest the aircraft was still flying.

Boeing offers a satellite service that can receive a stream of data during flight on how the aircraft is functioning. Malaysia Airlines did not subscribe to that service, but the plane was still automatically sending pings to the satellite, the official said.

That led searchers to believe the plane could have flown more than 1,600 km (1,000 miles) beyond its last confirmed radar sighting, the official said. The plane had enough fuel to fly about four more hours, he said.

Meanwhile two American officials have told ABC news that two on-board communication systems stopped transmitting data at different times, possibly indicating that the plane did not suffer catastrophic failure.

The data reporting system, they claimed, stopped transmitting at 01:07 (17:07 GMT), while the transponder, which transmits location and altitude and identifies the plane to radar, shut down at 01:21 (17:21 GMT), they told ABC.

Earlier on Thursday, Malaysia's acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein rejected the Wall Street Journal's claims about engine data transmission, saying that both engine makers Rolls-Royce, and Malaysian Airlines said they were "inaccurate".

"The last transmission from the aircraft was at 01:07 which indicated that everything was normal," he said. The Malaysian government has yet to respond to the latest reports.

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The countries involved in this are fed up and rightly so. There are so many conflicting reports coming out of Malaysia and elsewhere that the whole thing just looks like a confused mess.

Unfortunately, there is no sign that this is about to change.

 

It has reached 7 days now.

And yeah, it is getting like that.

The wife of the New Zealand passenger on that plane yesterday advised that the only information she has been getting about this is one text per day.

The wife of Perth engineer Paul Weeks, who was on board the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, says she is angry with the lack of information coming from authorities searching for flight MH370.

Danica Weeks told Melbourne's Fox FM hosts Fifi Box and Dave Thornton that the communication to families of missing passengers had whittled down to just one text message a day since the flight disappeared on Saturday.

"We're getting one text now from Malaysia Airlines a day, and all they say is that [the search zone] is expanding or there's no news as to the missing planes," Mrs Weeks said.
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"I'm just getting to that stage now, I'm passed the shock phase, I'm in that phase of, 'Well how can that be?'"

Mrs Weeks said she struggled to comprehend how the search had taken so long.

"As one reporter said, and pointed out rightly, you can find your phone in the back of the taxi with an app, so how do you lose a plane? Are they actually telling us everything? I'm starting get a angry about the whole process and I can't imagine those poor families in Beijing, they're now on unfamiliar territory and getting nothing."

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I can understand why she and the loved ones of others on that plane are angry.

I don't quite get what Malaysia is doing with this investigation. The constant to and fro with all the information and the complaints from other countries that it is just not telling them everything. Right from the very beginning. Vietnam has been so disgusted that it has scaled back its sea search efforts and China is very angry at how Malaysia is handling this.

Malaysian authorities have made a number of conflicting statements since Saturday, while failing to address rumours about the plane.

1. NEIGHBOURS GETTING ANNOYED

From the time flight MH370 went missing, the nations involved in its search have been out of step - in particular Malaysia and Vietnam.

Vietnam was quick to contribute its resources to the search effort and even quicker to make public each potential development. They promptly announced everything from reported radar readings to oil slick sightings and possible floating debris.

Meanwhile, Malaysia has been on the back foot, hosing down each new glimmer of hope.

And when the Malaysian authorities actually announce something, they have frequently backtracked or denied it within 24 hours.

Now Vietnam is fed up and has suspended its air search and scaled back its sea search as it waits for Malaysia to clarify the potential new direction of the multi-national hunt.

"We've decided to temporarily suspend some search and rescue activities, pending information from Malaysia," deputy minister of transport Pham Quy Tieu said.

And China, where two-thirds of the passengers are from, isn't happy either.

It's urged Malaysian authorities to "speed up the efforts" to find the plane. It has sent four ships, with another four on the way.

A shopping mall in Beijing suspended advertising on its large outdoor LED screen to display a search timer - an image of an aeroplane along with a digital clock marking the time since contact with the flight was lost.

2. PLANE NOT MISSING, JUST DELAYED

Air traffic controllers apparently lost contact with Flight MH370 at 2.40am on March 8 but the arrivals board at Beijing airport simply said the flight was "DELAYED".

For hours relatives waiting at the destination were completely in the dark, thinking the flight was just late.

Furious family members say they found out about the disaster from the media, not Malaysia Airlines.

It wasn't until 9.05am that Malaysia Airlines issued this statement: "We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts with Flight MH370 which departed Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am earlier this morning bound for Beijing."

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And you can't blame them. Because the list goes on and on. The relatives and loved ones of the Chinese passengers got so angry and frustrated in demanding answers to questions that Malaysia is refusing to answer, that they threw water bottles at Malaysian officials in Beijing. And you can't blame them. Because this is obscene. Malaysia's habit of giving information and then withdrawing it within hours... Not to mention the list of what is wrong with this..

To me it seems as though Malaysia is more intent on upholding the reputation of its national carrier than it is about sharing information about this. They were still trying to deny the information about the radar pings from its engines. Even though other countries found them credible and were expanding the search because of it. But they still tried to deny the plane was still flying after it lost contact.

What I don't get though is why they did not declare the plane was missing earlier. Why did they wait so long to do so? And for the loved one's to have to hear about it from the media. That's just so wrong.

It's become an absolute fiasco. And I feel so sorry for the people whose family and friends were on that flight. However frustrated others may feel about it, what they are feeling would be 1 million times worse. If not more so.

 

The black box has a very short range. So the searchers would need to be within a few kilometers of it to actually detect it.

It's just unfortunate that there is no live streaming of data from planes - so instead of the black box, what was going on with a plane could be streamed live and even communications between the pilots. If this was in place, then yeah, we probably wouldn't be sitting here more than a week later still wondering what happened to the plane. Perhaps this might be an incentive for airlines to set it up so that there is live streaming of some information.

Well, latest update.. Some officials in Malaysia are now saying that it is more than likely that the plane was hijacked. Whether they retract this in the next few hours remains to be seen.

Either way, the whole thing is a complete nightmare for the loved one's of those on board. For it to have landed, it would have to have done so without detection, in the dark, without lights and then hidden and the passengers controlled or disposed of. In this day and age where people have mobile phones, etc.. This would be nearly impossible. You'd need a large number of hijackers controlling the plane at all times, making sure no one was able to use the phones or their own phones, laptops, tablets, etc. If a plane is hijacked.. They'd need to subdue and silence the passengers. The possible alternative is if the passengers and other crew did not know - which would mean it was done by one of the pilots on board.

They should probably start looking at all private and public landing strips in the region.

 

*Sigh*

The Malaysian Prime Minister has given a press conference, and has advised that the actions on the plane appeared to be deliberate and that it was still flying after communication was lost with it.

Satellite information indicates that the plane climbed to an altitude of 45,000ft after contact was lost and that it then turned around and doubled back over Malaysia, where it dropped down to 23,000ft before climbing up again and it then flew towards the Indian Ocean.

Search efforts have now switched to the Indian Ocean, heading north towards India and perhaps inland through Thailand and through to Kazakstan and Turkmenistan; and south past Indonesia and into the Southern Indian Ocean. Since satellite information indicates that the plane was still flying for several hours after it lost contact, it seems fairly certain that it may not have crashed in the South China Sea, but appears to have been flown West. Whether it crashed in the Indian Ocean or landed somewhere else remains to be seen.

Missing for that many hours, it could be anywhere within its fuel range.

One can only imagine the horror of the families and loved ones of those people on board.