Month: March 2015

by Boo Su-Lyn
The Malay Mail Online
March 8, 2015

COMMENTARY, March 8 — Experts appear no closer to solving the enigma of Flight MH370 one year after the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) jet vanished without a trace, making it one of the world’s biggest plane mysteries.

Contact with Flight MH370, which carried 239 people on board comprising mostly China nationals, was lost less than an hour after take-off from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12.41am local time en route to Beijing, China, on March 8 last year.

There was no distress signal and two communication systems aboard the Boeing 777 commercial jet were shut down during the flight in what experts believe was a deliberate move.

The transponder — which identifies the plane and transmits its altitude and location to ground controllers — was turned off at 1.21am local time as the aircraft flew into Vietnamese airspace from Malaysian air traffic control over the South China Sea, a vulnerable point noted by aviation experts in a Reuters report as Malaysian and Vietnamese controllers could assume that the plane was the other’s responsibility.

Another unanswered question is why Flight MH370 veered off from its original flight path and turned west back over the Malaysian peninsula. Continue reading “MH370: Mysteries, missteps and mistrust”

by Muzliza Mustafa
The Malaysian Insider
8 March 2015

When Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 vanished on March 8 last year, many believed the mystery as to its whereabouts could have been prevented had the Malaysian military scrambled jets to investigate an unknown aircraft its radar was tracking across the northern part of the peninsula.

It is still unclear whether any official has been held to account for this lapse in judgment, as questions posed to ministers have been sidestepped.

Former Royal Malaysian Air Force pilot Maj Zaidi Ahmad said the lack of military action at the time stressed the need to change and update certain standard operating procedure (SOP) for the military, as well as for military-civilian cooperation.

This should have been done following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, but the Malaysian military maintained a “lackadaisical” attitude, said Zaidi, who had been a fighter pilot for more than 20 years.

“The 9-11 incident proved that anything can happen and we should be prepared. After 9-11 there was still no SOP between the military and commercial airlines. We should be taking note of things that happen in other countries and be cautious,” Zaidi told The Malaysian Insider. Continue reading “In MH370, military should have learned from 9-11, says ex-airman”

by Elizabeth Zachariah
The Malaysian Insider
8 March 2015

One year since Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 vanished, the plane’s whereabouts remains a mystery, as does the nagging question – why can’t anyone be held responsible?

Scrutiny of the timeline of events after the Boeing-777 disappeared from radar on March 8, 2014 revealed gaps in communication and a lapse of judgment, in particular by the military, which saw the plane on primary surveillance radar, but did nothing to investigate why it had flown off course.

Malaysian military officials revealed on March 12 that an unidentified aircraft, believed to be MH370, had travelled across the peninsula after doing an air turn-back, and was last sighted on military radar 370km northwest of Penang.

Following this, the search area was then expanded from the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea to include the Strait of Malacca.

It was reported then that senior military officers only became aware of the radar data after news of the aircraft’s disappearance had spread.

Criticism quickly rolled in after this revelation, from opposition politicians, civil society, the Malaysian public and international media.

“Clearly, they had let an unidentified aircraft pass through Malaysian sovereign territory without bothering to identify it; not something they were happy to admit,” aviation consultant David Learmount had said.

“There was clearly a significant failure of response on behalf of the Malaysian air force. There’s no real way around it and you might imagine heads would roll for that,” Bangkok-based analyst for defence-and-security-intelligence firm IHS-Jane, Anthony Davis was quoted as saying in a report by Time.

Veteran DAP leader Lim Kit Siang had also called for “heads to roll”, demanding that an inquiry be launched to seek accountability in the plane’s disappearance and subsequent response.

Renewing his calls for accountability, the Gelang Patah MP said no one has been brought to book for the grave error that could have saved millions of ringgit and given the families of the 239 on board the closure they need.

“This only highlights the need to hold an inquiry through the setting up of a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) to look into the incident,” he added.

Lim said then that one of the areas that should be investigated was whether the disappearance of the jet could have been averted if military radar operators had been more vigilant and had acted promptly. Continue reading “A year on, MH370 still a mystery, errors go unpunished”

by Shuang Guo, Lei Yang
Xin Hua
2015-03-08

LOS ANGELES, March 7 (Xinhua) — In an event of a test model plane crash, an emergency recorder and tracking system is separated from the tail section of the plane.

The test, which is shown in a video clip, is part of a series of tests completed since October by the U.S. subsidiary of the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) on a comprehensive emergency information recorder and tracking system.

COMAC America Corporation says its emergency recorder system includes a data storage and transmitter called Harbinger, claiming for the system it had been applying new methods that transcend traditional designs of black box recorders used in commercial aircraft.

The yearlong searching effort for Malaysia Airlines’ missing flight MH370 has turned up with no sign of the plane, but it has fueled the company’s resolve to come up with a system more efficient instead. Continue reading “A year into MH370 disappearance, Chinese aircraft maker pushes for new emergency recorder system”

David Stout
Time
March 6, 2015

Without a single scrap of debris, the search for the missing jet will likely end soon, taking with it all remaining hope

You can’t blame Jennifer Chong for being a nervous flyer.

Every time she boards a plane, the resident of Melbourne faces the inevitable walk past the cabin’s front row where her husband of more than 20 years, Chong Ling Tan, had been seated on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Twelve months on from arguably the greatest aviation mystery of all time, Chong says those empty seats can still induce panic.

“I start to think that if anything happened, like a hijacking, then he would be the first one who knows because he’s the one nearest to the cockpit,” Chong tells TIME. Continue reading “The Mystery of Flight 370 Haunts Families and Baffles Experts a Year After Its Disappearance”