Month: March 2014

Today is the 11th day of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

What is traumatic and excruciating for the families, relatives and friends of the 239 passengers and crew on board as well as an international community united in their prayer for their safety is that despite spawning the largest-ever multi-national air-sea search – involving over a hundred ships and aircrafts from 26 countries – there is nothing to indicate the whereabouts of the aircraft or the people on board.

This is the time for everyone regardless of race, religion, politics or nationality to continue to unite as one to pray and hope for the safety of the 239 people on board the missing MH370.

As I said in my speech in Parliament last Thursday (the sixth day of the missing MH370): Continue reading “Hishammuddin’s “For BN MPs only” briefing on MH370 very negative and divisive, inimical to Parliament’s role to conduct full investigations into MH 370 tragedy after SAR operation”

The Malaysian Insider
March 18, 2014

The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has taken another confusing twist, after authorities backtracked on when a crucial communications system on the aircraft was switched off.

The airline’s group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told a news conference yesterday that it was unclear exactly when one of the plane’s automatic tracking systems had been disabled and the last words from the cockpit, believed to be from the co-pilot, could have been done before the communication system was switched off.

This contradicts an earlier statement by Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein that the communications system had been “disabled” at 1.07am on March 8 – before the verbal sign-off was given to air traffic controllers at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, said a report in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Jauhari told yesterday’s press conference that the communications system, known as the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), had worked normally at 1.07am but then failed to send its next regularly scheduled update at 1.37am.

“We don’t know when the Acars system was switched off,” he said.

Jauhari said that the verbal signoff was given by radio from the aircraft at 1.19am which was between the two scheduled transmission times for the ACARS system.

A second communications system, a transponder that communicates with ground-based radar, then ceased working at 1.21am. Continue reading “Flip-flop over ACARS switch off time, FBI help, adding to MH370 muddle, say reports”

By Siva Govindasamy and Tim Hepher
Reuters
Mar 17, 2014

(Reuters) – Whether by accident or design, whoever reached across the dimly lit cockpit of a Malaysia Airlines jet and clicked off a transponder to make Flight MH370 vanish from controllers’ radars flew into a navigational and technical black hole.

By choosing one place and time to vanish into radar darkness with 238 others on board, the person – presumed to be a pilot or a passenger with advanced knowledge – may have acted only after meticulous planning, according to aviation experts.

Understanding the sequence that led to the unprecedented plane hunt widening across two vast tracts of territory north and south of the Equator is key to grasping the motives of what Malaysian authorities suspect was hijacking or sabotage. Continue reading “Planning could hold key to disappearance of Flight MH370”

The Malay Mail Online
March 18, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 18 ― Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 would have triggered the military alarms of numerous nations if it had flown a northerly course as some investigators suspect, a former US intelligence agent said.

Mike Morell said the passenger plane carrying 239 people onboard had most likely gone the southern route where it would have better chances of escaping radar detection.

“There are a lot of defence radars up there with China and India and the US and Afghanistan.

“So again, it is most likely the southern route,” the former deputy director of the US Central Investigation Agency (CIA) said in an interview yesterday on US broadcast programme, CBS This Morning. Continue reading “Southerly route ‘most likely’ for missing MH370, says ex-CIA agent”

The Malaysian Insider
March 17, 2014

Central Asian neighbours Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan said on Monday no unidentified planes had crossed their air space on March 8, making it unlikely that a missing Malaysia Arlines jetliner could have been diverted along a northern route via Thailand.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished with 239 people aboard, could hypothetically have reached Kazakhstan’s air space, but it would have been detected there, the Kazakh Civil Aviation Committee said in a detailed statement sent to Reuters.

“Even if all on-board equipment is switched off, it is impossible to fly through in a silent mode,” said the statement signed by the committee’s deputy head Serik Mukhtybayev. “There are also military bodies monitoring the country’s air space.”

Malaysia Airlines planes had made nine regular flights to and from Europe over Kazakhstan’s territory on March 8, Mukhtybayev said. Continue reading “Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan says detected no unidentified planes when flight MH370 vanished”

The Malaysian Insider
March 18, 2014

A US naval ship that has been aiding the international search for the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 airplane will be withdrawn from the effort, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

The decision was taken because the search area was now so extensive that it was more efficient to look for the jet using surveillance aircraft, officials said.

The guided missile destroyer, the USS Kidd, had joined the massive search last week and had shifted its focus west to the Andaman Sea on the request of the Malaysian government.

The Kidd, with a MH-60 helicopter on board, had completed a search of 15,000 square miles but “no debris or wreckage associated with an aircraft was found,” it said. Continue reading “US ship withdraws from search for missing flight MH370”

The Malay Mail Online
March 17, 2014

PORT BLAIR (India), March 17 — As the sun set over Port Blair in the Andaman Sea during the past week, runway lights glowed to guide Indian aircraft searching for the missing Malaysian passenger jet back to land.

For the past two days, however, the headquarters of India’s search operations for the plane in the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been quiet as officials await new coordinates from Malaysia. Many of the 2,000 military officers stationed on the islands stayed home to celebrate the holiday of Holi, which marks the start of spring, by smearing coloured powder on each other’s faces.

“Our hands are tied until the Malaysians come back to us with coordinates,” Harmit Singh, spokesman for the Indian military in Port Blair, said today. “Until then, we just sit, wait and try to enjoy Holi.”

Indian officials had deployed ships and long-range aircraft from the island chain to search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 across 250,000 square kilometres (96,500 square miles), an area about the size of the UK Shifting the search further into the Indian Ocean may prove much more difficult.

“The Indian Ocean is daunting,” V.S.R. Murthy, the coast guard’s commander for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, said in an interview on March 15. “There is a massive amount of sea that will need to be searched, which will require many more planes, ships.” Continue reading “India troops seeking jet rest at island base as Malaysia silent”

The Malaysian Insider
March 17, 2014

The investigation into the lost Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 has yet to throw up a persuasive fact that the pilots could have deliberately taken the Boeing 777-200ER to an unknown destination, the Daily Beast reported today.

In an article headlined “The baseless rush to blame the pilots of Flight 370”, the online portal’s journalist Clive Irving noted that “what little evidence there is has been contaminated by the performance of the Malaysian authorities”.

“They resemble a bunch of dumb cops blundering over a crime scene, arguing over what it reveals and what it does not and competing for attention.

“In a sadly familiar ploy of the pursued, the prime minister himself was put up to float a theory so far lacking in any persuasive facts: the pilots did it. Dead men have no defense,” he wrote today in the online portal.

US intelligence officials and the Malaysian government have said that someone in the cockpit had deliberately changed the flight’s course after it vanished from radar screens early March 8 when the passenger jet with 239 people on board was bound for Beijing.

It never arrived and is still missing for the past 10 days. Continue reading “No facts to blame pilots of MH370 yet, says report”

The Malay Mail Online
March 17, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 17 — Investigators initially took the words “Good night” — the last words sent from Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 — to mean all had then been well aboard the plane.

But a revelation now shows that the final transmission was made after someone onboard disabled the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) that conveyed the plane’s health to MAS is raising questions about who was in control of the Beijing-bound plane that is missing along with its 239 passengers.

The chronology indicates that the person who last contacted Subang Air Traffic Control (ATC) was aware that the critical communications system was no longer functional at the time, the Guardian reported yesterday.

Moments after the ACARS link was lost, the plane’s transponder was switched off at 1.22am on March 8, rendering it invisible to commercial radar as it turned around off the coast of Kelantan and made its way back—as military radar has confirmed—across the peninsula and into the Straits of Malacca.

The sequence is reinforcing the hypothesis that MH370 went missing due to possible hijacking, after the Malaysian government said on Saturday that it was all but certain that the plane was diverted from its flight path to Beijing through “deliberate action”.

The government said it was now directing its investigation towards the two pilots, 10 crew members and 227 passengers onboard the flight. Continue reading “Final MH370 radio contact made after data link killed”

The Malay Mail Online
March 16, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 16 — A Pakistani official today dismissed reports suggesting that missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have landed in the South Asian country.

Pakistan’s Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Aviation Shujaat Azeem told news portal Dawn.com that the country’s military did not observe the Boeing 777-200ER approach or enter its airspace.

“It’s wrong, (the) plane never came towards Pakistan,” he was quoted as saying in the report.

India today similarly discounted the possibility of the plane entering its airspace.

Yesterday, Malaysia revealed that satellite data has allowed investigators to arrive at two “corridors” where the plane could possibly be located: a northern arc from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in central Asia, or a southern one from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

The northern corridor would have brought the plane towards South Asia. Continue reading “Pakistan says MH370 did not land there”

The Malaysian Insider
March 16, 2014

Investigators are puzzled over Malaysian military’s inaction in responding to an unidentified blip on their radar screens that was later said to be the missing flight MH370, the New York Times reported today.

It reported that the plane flew past three military radars and over Penang but nothing was done to identify it, which would have helped prevent its disappearance.

“The watch team never noticed the blip, it was as though the airspace was his,” a person with detailed knowledge of the investigation reportedly told the NYT.

Still, the report said that this was not the first, nor would it be the last of the long series of errors the Malaysian government has made, which complicated the task of finding the missing Boeing 777-200ER (9M-MRO) with239 onboard.

Today is the eight day since the plane disappeared from radar and the trail had gotten weaker as the search expands to Kazakhstan to the vast Indian Ocean. Continue reading “Why didn’t Malaysian military react to MH370 blip on radar screens, ask investigators”

The Malaysian Insider
March 16, 2014

Indian military authorities have dismissed the possibility that the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370, which mysteriously disappeared eight days ago en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, could have flown over India on its way to Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan in Central Asia, the Times of India reported.

“If the jetliner had tried to cross the Indian mainland, our primary radars (which bounce radio signals off targets) would have picked it up despite its transponders being switched off (secondary radars beam signals that request information from a plane’s transponders),” said a top Indian Air Force (IAF) officer.

If an “unidentified” plane had been picked up flouting prescribed procedures or with switched-off transponders or not “squawking” IFF (identification, friend or foe) codes, a series of “air defence measures” would have kicked in – including the scrambling of fighters – to “detect, identify, intercept and destroy” the intruder, the newspaper reported. Continue reading “MAS jet couldn’t have flown over our airspace, says India’s military”

The Malaysian Insider
March 15, 2014

The week-long search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 took a major new turn today as evidence indicated that its communication systems were manually switched off and the airliner was deliberately diverted.

The first concrete, verified lead as to the possible reason behind the disappearance has fuelled speculation over how and why MH370 might have been commandeered – and its likely fate.

Here are some of the possible scenarios being weighed up by experts.

Theory: Terror attack

Why: As the theory that the plane was deliberately taken over gains traction, questions over the involvement of terrorist organisations have come back to the fore. Continue reading “What could have happened to flight MH370?”

The Malay Mail Online
March 16, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 16 — Malaysia repeatedly rejected Interpol’s offers to help investigate Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 even as the government now believes the plane went missing due to “deliberate action”, a Western law enforcement agent has alleged.

Speaking to ABC News in the United States, the official who went unnamed accused Malaysia of jealously guarding its information to the point of turning away the aid offered by the intergovernmental police agency.

“It’s the old pre-9/11 approach: close-hold information, don’t share anything,” the anonymous official was quoted as saying by ABC News on its website yesterday, referring to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

ABC News quoted other unidentified law enforcement officials who expressed concern that the alleged refusal by Malaysia to take up Interpol’s offer may have caused leads into the mysterious disappearance of MH370 to grow cold.

The allegations raised the ABC News report that Malaysia was unwilling to share information appeared at odds, however, with Putrajaya’s action in releasing highly-confidential raw data from its military radars to countries assisting in the search, including China and the US.

Such data is often among a country’s most closely-guarded secrets as it can be used to ascertain its defensive strengths and vulnerabilities; no country willingly divulges such information if it can be avoided. Continue reading “Official: Interpol snubbed even as foul play seen in MH370”