Day: March 21, 2014

The Malaysian Insider
March 21, 2014

Five days after satellites captured images of debris and objects which may be linked to flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean and a day after the release of those images by the Australian authorities, reports have pieced together questions related to the search for the missing plane in waters 2,500km from Perth.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER (9M-MRO) took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am on March 8 but disappeared en route to Beijing. There were 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board.

This morning, Australia said it would resume the hunt for objects found on the ocean surface.

Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) general manager John Young said yesterday the largest piece was about 24m. Ships and aircraft from the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand have joined the Australian-led search effort.

Here are the top 12 questions on missing flight MH370:

When will we know whether the debris from the southern Indian Ocean is from flight 370?

The satellite images of the debris taken on Sunday have not been confirmed as MH370 but they are being seen as the best lead in the investigation for the missing plane so far. Continue reading “After satellite find, 12 questions emerge about MH370”

The Malaysian Insider
March 21, 2014

March 21, 2014.Dozens of ships and aircraft have joined the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 but after 14 days, experts have now raised the question: what if the Boeing 777-200ER (9M-MRO) is never found?

Although many experts think such an idea seems unlikely, especially in the age of modern technology, history has shown that it was not impossible, AP reported today.

“When something like this happens that confounds us, we’re offended by it, and we’re scared by it,” Ric Gillespie, a former aviation accident investigator was quoted as saying. Continue reading “What if MH370 is never found?”

Open Letter to the Voters of Kajang on the Kajang by-election on Friday, 21st March 2014:

I had expressed two hopes in the Kajang by-election on Sunday.

Firstly, that the Kajang voters could perform the impossible to make the Barisan Nasional candidate lose the deposit on polling day on March 23.

But this is just an “impossibly tall order” which is unlikely to be achieved on Sunday, as we will then not be talking about the Pakatan Rakyat/PKR candidate Datuk Seri Dr. Wan Azizah Wan Ismail winning the Kajang by-election or securing a bigger majority than the 6,824 votes won by former PKR Assemblyman Lee Chin Chen in the 13 General Election last May, but a humongous, unprecedented and unimaginable majority of some 24,000 votes.

This is because if the BN candidate is to lose deposit in Sunday’s by-election, the BN must be denied one-eighth of the votes cast. Assuming a voter turn-out of 80% of the 40,000 voters in Kajang, this means that the BN must not win more than one-eighth of the votes cast or not more than 4,000 votes – which will give Azizah 28,000 votes and BN 4,000 votes from the 32,000 votes or a majority of some 24,000 votes! Continue reading “Third Call to Kajang voters – unite solidly to vote for Wan Azizah in Sunday’s by-election on behalf of 30 million Malaysians as vote of confidence in her becoming the first woman Prime Minister of Malaysia”

By Justin Ong and Boo Su-Lyn
The Malay Mail Online
March 21, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 21 — When Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, the world poured out its sympathy to Malaysia.

The disappearance of a Boeing 777-200ER — considered one of the safest planes in aviation history — with 239 passengers onboard captured the world’s attention and the media obliged, with news outlets arriving in droves to cover the tragedy.

The first faces that the world saw of Malaysia was that of MAS chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya and Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) director-general Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman.

From the offset, Azharuddin appeared uncomfortable in front of cameras, speaking with apprehension palpable to those watching.

As hours turned into days and with no signs of the plane, however, sympathy gave way to frustration and attention slowly turned from Malaysia’s loss of a passenger plane to its handling of the search.

Under the unforgiving glare of the assembled international and local media, whose reports were played again and again on 24-hour news channels and shared globally on social media sites to be further dissected, Malaysia’s well-coiffed image on the international stage began to be picked apart. Continue reading “In MH370 search, unforgiving spotlight on Malaysia”

By PAOLO MARENGHI and MIKE TREW

abcnews
March 20, 2014

A British satellite company said today that it had indications that the missing Malaysia Airlines plane may have crashed into the Indian Ocean as early as two days after the plane’s disappearance.

The search for the jetliner did not move into the Indian Ocean until more than a week after the plane vanished in the middle of the night from Malaysian airspace on March 7.

“This is very troubling, just thinking of the time wasted and what was ever on the water moving farther away,” said ABC News consultant Tom Haueter, a former National Transportation Safety Board investigator.

Inmarsat, the maker of satellites, told ABC News that they had an “initial idea” on March 9 and by March 10 were “fairly certain” that the search parties should look in the south Indian Ocean for the vanished plane. Continue reading “Satellite Company Says It Predicted Missing Plane’s Location 10 Days Ago”

Azly Rahman
Malaysiakini
Mar 20, 2014

Waking up this morning I wrote this, concerning the fate of MH370:

in karma there is chaos
in kudrat there is iradat
in qada’ there is qadar
in randomness there is order
in silence there are screams no one will ever hear
in the falling of a tree in a forest there is no sound heard
in seeds of hope there are microbes of destructive forces
in memory there is forgetfulness
in history there is fractal geometry
in the rustle of language there is the violence of semantics

in 1414 these were not made to manifest
because the protagonist of the story and the antagonist are one
in the longest story told
whilst the white noise
of chaos
plays in the background…

Continue reading “Chaos, karma and MH370”

Jon Swaine and Tom McCarthy in New York
Guardian
20 March 2014

In the absence of hard facts, speculation about what really happened on Flight 370 has been rampant. But do any of these explanations hold up? We take a look at the competing theories

It’s 12 days since the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. A 250-ton Boeing 777-200 has, for the time being, vanished. Twenty-six countries have joined a search of 2.24m square nautical miles from central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean. Satellite images have given investigators cause to believe there may be debris in the southern Indian Ocean, but so far, a search of the area has found nothing.

In the absence of confirmed sightings, speculation has been rife about what happened to the plane and the 239 people on board, with competing theories feverishly discussed by professionals and amateurs. Some sound more plausible than others. Here, we assess the relative merits of the more prominent explanations for the plane’s disappearance. Continue reading “The hunt for MH370: which theories are plausible, and which don’t add up?”

The Malay Mail Online
March 20, 2014

SYDNEY, March 20 — Australia expects to make a quick deliberation on whether possible debris seen at sea is indeed from flight MH370, a report said today, but a first spotter flight failed to locate anything in bad weather.

Authorities should know something definite on the possible discovery of debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane within “two or three days”, the Australian Associated Press quoted Defence Minister David Johnston as saying in Jakarta.

But a Royal Australian Air Force Orion sent today to investigate possible wreckage from the Boeing 777 failed to spot debris, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said.

The P-3 surveillance aircraft was sent to the Indian Ocean search zone some 2,500 kilometres (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth after Australia revealed the presence of two objects at sea possibly related to flight MH370.

“RAAF P3 crew unable to locate debris. Cloud & rain limited visibility,” AMSA said on its Twitter feed. “Further aircraft to continue search for #MH370.” Continue reading “MH370: Australia says definite findings on debris likely within 3 days”

The Malaysian Insider
March 20, 2014

After many hours involving aircraft from Australia, New Zealand and the United States, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa) has said it has ended its search efforts for the day for possible debris from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Surveillance had scoured a remote and stormy section of the Indian Ocean for most of Thursday, looking for a pair of floating objects that Australia and Malaysia guardedly called a “credible” lead in the 12-day-old hunt for a missing passenger jet.

Australia said the objects – one was estimated at 24 metres across – were captured in satellite imagery, raising hopes of a breakthrough in the Malaysian plane’s mysterious disappearance as relatives of the 239 people aboard braced for another emotional roller-coaster.

Four search aircraft were dispatched from Australia – which has taken charge of the search in the southern Indian Ocean – to the area about 2,500 kilometres southwest of Perth where the grainy images were snapped.

The planes – two from Australia, one from New Zealand and one US aircraft – covered an area of 23,000 sq km without any sighting before the search was suspended for the day, said Amsa.

Amsa has released a statement saying that it has ended its search efforts for the day. They will resume tomorrow morning. Continue reading “No luck on first day of search at ocean site for debris linked to flight MH370”

By Andy Pasztor, Jon Ostrower and James Hookway
The Wall Street Journal
March 20, 2014

Investigators Are Still Working to Recover From the Delay

Four days went by before officials acted on satellite data showing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 flew for several hours away from the area being covered by a massive international search, people familiar with the matter said—a delay from which investigators are still working to recover.

The satellite’s operator, Britain’s Inmarsat PLC, on March 11 turned over to a partner company its data analysis and other documents indicating that the plane wasn’t anywhere near the areas on either side of Malaysia where more countries and ships had been searching for three days since the plane disappeared. The documents included a map showing two divergent north and south corridors for the plane’s route stretching some 3,000 miles from the plane’s last previously known location, the people said.

The information was relayed to Malaysian officials by Wednesday, March 12, the people said. Inmarsat also shared the same information with British security and air-safety officials on Wednesday, according to two of the people, who were briefed on the investigation.

Two additional people familiar with the Malaysian side of the probe said the information could have arrived in Kuala Lumpur as late as the morning of March 13.

Malaysia’s government, concerned about corroborating the data and dealing with internal disagreements about how much information to release, didn’t publicly acknowledge Inmarsat’s information until March 15, during a news conference with Prime Minister Najib Razak. Malaysia began to redirect the search effort that day to focus on the areas the information described, and said for the first time that deliberate actions were involved in the plane’s disappearance. Continue reading “Critical Data Was Delayed in Search for Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight”