Category: MH 370

Members of Parliament have received the notice for an emergency meeting of Parliament on Wednesday, 17th July 2014, by the Parliament Secretary Datuk Roosme binti Hamzah by email timed 5.40 am to debate the MH 17 tragedy.

Malaysians are still reeling from the unspeakable and indescribable horror of a second air disaster in less than five months to hit the country and the national airline Malaysian Airlines, claiming a total of 537 lives from over 10 different countries.

There are great differences between the MH 370 disaster of March 8 with 239 passengers and crew on board and the MH 17 disaster of July 17 with 298 passengers and crew on board, firstly, the latter is an atrocious crime against humanity representing inexcusable and unpardonable war crimes while the cause of the latter remains a great mystery despite the largest and longest (and continuing) multi-national land, sea and under-sea search in history; and secondly, the bereaved families, relative and friends of the victims of the MH 17 disaster can have closure although still demanding for justice against the perpetrators of the crimes against humanity in downing the civilian aircraft from the skies while the bereaved families, relatives and friends of the victims of MH 370 disaster are still looking for a closure, as the announcement by the Prime Minister on March 24 that the Malaysian airline “ended it journey in the South Indian Ocean” proved to be “a closure without closure”. Continue reading “Emergency Parliament on Wednesday should have two separate motions to discuss not only Thursday’s MH 17 disaster which costs 298 lives but also the MH 370 disappearance 133 days ago with 239 lives on board”

by Jahabar Sadiq
Editor
The Malaysian Insider
19 July 2014

No words can take away the great pain that all of us feel for flight MH17. Nothing could have prepared us for what happened on July 17 as much as nothing had prepared us for flight MH370’s mysterious disappearance on March 8.

No country, no airline and no one deserves a single or double tragedy that has struck Malaysia Airlines, Malaysia and Malaysians. And those who died or vanished in either MH17 or MH370.

It goes without saying then that we should not add words to deepen the pain in our hearts for these two tragedies. Malaysia Airlines – one of the world’s safest carrier – lost 510 passengers, 27 crew member and two planes in the space of 131 days. Continue reading “Stop blaming Malaysia Airlines for downed MH17”

By GeoResonance
Global Research
June 30, 2014

The staff at GeoResonance are not prone to conspiracy theories, we all deal with facts and science. It appears some of the authorities involved in the search have not been completely transparent with all of the facts. The MH370 tragedy has created more world interest than any event since 9/11, under those circumstances 100% transparency is a must. There are many unanswered questions.

The families and friends of those on board MH370 are dismayed that Inmarsat admitted the raw data released was only enough to prove their original model. Everyone was expecting all of the raw data to be released which would have allowed alternative models to be created. This could have shown up any errors that may exist in the original model which “assumes” MH370 ended up in the Southern Indian Ocean.

Many people are asking why the Australian over the horizon radar Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) did not see MH370. The map below showing the JORN range is taken from an Australian Air Force fact sheet on JORN (https://www.airforce.gov.au/docs/JORN_Fact_Sheet.pdf)

On 26th of June 2014, the Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss presented the latest search area in the Southern Indian Ocean. Continue reading “The Search for Malaysian Airlines MH370. Unanswered Questions. Wreck of Unidentified Aircraft in Bay of Bengal? Crucial Information Withheld”

Malaysians have been hit by the twin disaster of two disappearances.

The first is the 115-day disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 370.

Despite the world’s largest and longest land, sea and under-sea search, not only is there no wreckage or debris of the aircraft with 239 passengers and crew on board after nearly four months of search, there is even controversy as to the aircraft’s flight-path and its final destination.

The latest 55-page report released by the Australian Transport Safety Board last Thursday postulated that the MH 370 flight was on autopilot with the passengers and crew having died from suffocation, with the plane likely crashed farther south into the Indian Ocean than previously thought – a distance of some 5,000 kilometres.

The idea of a “ghost plane” for a whole stretch of journey completely on autopilot as far as Kuala Lumpur to New Delhi (3,831), Kabul (4,838 km), Beijing (4,335 km), Seoul (4,662km), Tokyo (5,315 km) or Perth (4,162 km) simply boggles the mind.

But even worse than the 115-day disappearance of the MH370 Boeing 777 is the 422-day disappearance of the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who was conspicuously absent to provide the hands-on leadership and direction on major issues affecting the country in the past 14 months. Continue reading “Will first expanded Cabinet meeting tomorrow mark the end of 14-month Najib administration on autopilot since 13GE last May?”

Time/Associated Press
26 June 2014

SYDNEY) — Investigators looking into the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines plane are confident the jet was on autopilot when it crashed in a remote stretch of the Indian Ocean, Australian officials said Thursday as they announced the latest shift in the search for the doomed airliner.

After analyzing data between the plane and a satellite, officials believe Flight 370 was on autopilot the entire time it was flying across a vast expanse of the southern Indian Ocean, based on the straight path it took, Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan said.

“Certainly for its path across the Indian Ocean, we are confident that the aircraft was operating on autopilot until it ran out of fuel,” Dolan told reporters in Canberra, the nation’s capital.

Asked whether the autopilot would have to be manually switched on, or whether it could have been activated automatically under a default setting, Dolan replied: “The basic assumption would be that if the autopilot is operational it’s because it’s been switched on.”

But exactly why the autopilot would have been set on a flight path so far off-course from the jet’s destination of Beijing, and exactly when it was switched on remains unknown. Continue reading “MH370 Was on Autopilot When it Crashed, Say Australian Officials”

The Malay Mail Online
June 25, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, June 25 — The search for flight MH370 which has been missing for more than three months could take “decades”, Malaysia Airlines (MAS) commercial chief Hugh Dunleavy has said.

In an interview with the London Evening Standard daily, Dunleavy said the wreckage from the Boeing 777 could be spread over a large area upon crashing into the southern Indian Ocean, a challenging seabed with mountains and valleys.

“I think it could take a really long time to find. We’re talking decades,” Dunleavy was quoted as saying in the interview published last Monday.

The British director of commercial operations in MAS also hit out at Putrajaya for taking a week to release information that the jetliner had been spotted on military radar when it veered off course and flew across the Malaysian peninsula.

“It made people look incompetent, but the truth is, it’s early in the morning, you’re not at war with anyone, why would you jump to the conclusion that something really bad is now transpiring?” said Dunleavy.

The 61-year-old, who became MAS’ commercial operations director in 2012, also said he only heard about the plane turning around on the news.

“I’m thinking, really? You couldn’t have told us that directly? Malaysia’s air traffic control and military radar are in the same freakin’ building. The military saw an aircraft turn and did nothing,” Dunleavy was quoted as saying Continue reading “MH370 hunt may take ‘decades’, says MAS commercial chief”

By KEITH BRADSHER
New York Times
JUNE 17, 2014

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia plans to resume searching for Malaysia Airlines’ missing Flight 370 to the southwest of the area in the Indian Ocean where the seafloor was scanned in detail last month, Australian officials say.

The shift to the southwest reflects analyses of a series of electronic “handshakes” between the Boeing 777-200 and a satellite operated by the London-based company Inmarsat in the hours after the plane vanished before dawn on March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people aboard.

The satellite data, suggesting that the aircraft turned south across the Indian Ocean after skirting the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, remains the best lead that investigators have in trying to find the plane, said Angus Houston, the retired chief of the Australian military who is overseeing the search.

“We’re going to have to go deep and do a comprehensive look at the ocean floor,” he said, later adding, “The handshakes are the most robust information we have at the moment.” Continue reading “Search for Missing Jet Will Move Southwest, Officials Say”

By Zoe Mintz
International Business Times
June 16 2014

It seems likely to go down as one of the worst examples of botched corporate communications in history: On March 24, 16 days after Malaysian Airlines flight 370 disappeared on its journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the airline delivered official condolences to the relatives of the 239 people who had been on board.

By text message.

“Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived,” the airline declared in its text, acting on fresh satellite data that purportedly confirmed that the flight had crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

For practitioners of the trade known as crisis management, here was a textbook illustration of how not to go about it. Here was a recipe for turning a terrible event into an irredeemable destroyer of brand image. Continue reading “A Disastrous Void: Why The MH370 Public Response Failed”

AFP
The Guardian
17 June 2014

Scientists from British company Inmarsat tell BBC that Australian vessel was distracted by bogus signals

The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is yet to target the most likely crash site, having been distracted by what is now believed to have been a bogus signal, satellite experts have claimed.

Scientists from Inmarsat, the British company that has been helping the search effort, told the BBC’s Horizon programme there was a “hotspot” in the southern Indian Ocean in which it most likely came down. Continue reading “MH370: searchers not looking in the best place, satellite experts say”

By Alan Huffman
International Business Times
June 17, 2014

MH370: 100 DAYS LATER

Right up until the late 18th century, when the first weighted lines were used to probe the ocean depths, many people believed the seas were bottomless — the watery equivalent of infinite outer space.

Even after scientists and mariners began systematically probing the ocean bottoms, the most profound depths remained incalculable, the stuff of dreams and nightmares.

Today, we know that the idea of a bottomless sea is absurd. An eighth-grader with a globe can pinpoint the most profound depth, a seven-mile-deep abyss in the western Pacific known as the Mariana Trench. Three people have actually traveled to the bottom of the trench aboard specially designed submersibles.

In our quest to define and describe the world, we have crisscrossed the oceans and continents compiling exhaustive knowledge about its life forms and features, and extended our physical reach through technology, which provides us instantaneous and pervasive access to information about seemingly everything. No realm seems beyond our jurisdiction. We can now make cell phone calls from the summit of Mount Everest; our backyards are visible to strangers on Google Earth; and our daily movements are tracked by GPS and surveillance cameras.

Yet as the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 made clear, knowledge and access to information can be deceptive. After 100 days of relentless searching, involving more than 40 ships and 39 aircraft from 12 countries, we know little more about the missing Boeing 777 than we did on the day it disappeared. Continue reading “MH370 Search Revives Age-Old Mystery In The Indian Ocean”

By Chris Goodfellow
The Telegraph
16 Jun 2014

Former pilot Chris Goodfellow maintains his view that the loss of MH370 was due to an accident but says matters should be turned over to Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch to find out what really happened

In the early days of the search of MH370, when the mainstream media was favouring a terrorism-hijacking scenario or questioning if one of the pilots was suicidal, I put forward an alternative theory – that the loss of the aeroplane might have been the result of an accident. This theory was picked up on the web and went viral. I did not seek or expect such an enormous response: I wrote simply as a pilot with some knowledge of the issues defending two fellow pilots who were being much-maligned and who could not defend themselves.

More than three months have elapsed since the Boeing 777 vanished after taking off from Kuala Lumpur in the early hours of March 8, bound for Beijing. Yet the mystery of how a modern aircraft can disappear from the face of the earth continues to fascinate and appal. In this era, when delivery companies like UPS and FedEx routinely track vehicles via global satellite positioning (GPS), it seems incredible that this passenger jet, capable of auto-landing in total fog, did not carry a device broadcasting its position in real time and independent of all other systems on board. If one good thing comes out of this accident, it will be a new regulation making the fitting of such a device compulsory.

Since the aircraft belonged to Malaysian Airlines and the incident is presumed to have started in Malaysian airspace, the lead nation in the investigation is Malaysia. In my opinion, this is the Achilles heel of the inquiry. Continue reading “Flight MH370: What are they hiding?”

By Sophie Brown, CNN
June 16, 2014

(CNN) — When authorities confirmed last month that four “pings” heard in the southern Indian Ocean had nothing to do with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, it was a devastating blow for those involved in the investigation, the families of those on board the missing jet, and the countless number of people around the world who had become captivated by the mystery surrounding the plane’s disappearance.

What was described as “the most promising lead” in the search had proved fruitless.

The investigation into the ill-fated flight is already the most expensive in aviation history. Malaysia has spent $8.6 million so far, Australia is expecting to spend around $84 million, and other countries involved in the search have reportedly set aside sizable sums. Meanwhile, families of the missing passengers are working to raise $5 million to encourage anyone with information about the plane’s whereabouts to come forward.

Sunday marked 100 days since the Boeing 777 disappeared. To the frustration and disappointment of many, no tangible evidence has been found. How long will authorities keep working to solve this expensive mystery and what are their reasons for doing so? CNN speaks to aviation experts for their views. Continue reading “MH370: How long will the search continue?”

by Binoy Kampmark
Counterpunch
June 09, 2014

The Lure of Conspiracy

It has been unendurable for those families who remain none the wiser for what happened to the Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370, which vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board. In such a vacuum of uncertainty, theories form and hypotheses develop. If one of the most extensive aviation searches in history cannot uncover the remains of a vanishing flight, the reasons may lie elsewhere. Well, that is at least what is being proposed by such individuals as Ethan Hunt, whose namesake from Mission Impossible suggests tasks more foolhardy than constructive.

For Hunt, the absence of a plane equates to the presence of conspiracy, and that old faith in the malice that is human kind asserts itself. “The mystery is unprecedented in the history of aviation, and we need to work as a collective community with one goal of finding the truth, the plane and the passengers.”

There are those of like mind. Former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, never averse to blending demagoguery with conspiracy when in office, suggested that the CIA, Boeing and the media were bound by a wicked design. “Clearly Boeing and certain agencies have the capacity to take over ‘uninterruptible control’ of commercial airliners of which MH 370 B777 is one.” In a blog post, he expressed puzzlement that, “For some reason the media will not print anything that involves Boeing or the CIA” (Breathecast News, May 26). Instead, Malaysian authorities were being singled out as the inept bogeymen of a badly directed mission. Continue reading “MH 370, Rewards and Whistleblowers”

By Andrew Marszal
The Telegraph
09 Jun 2014

“Inescapable uncertainties” over speed, flight path and altitude of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 mean search area will shift again, reports claim

The search for MH370 looks set to expand further as authorities on Monday signalled another major shift in the search area, in what is already set to be the most costly search in aviation history.

New doubts over previous calculations concerning the missing Malaysia Airlines flight’s speed, flight path and altitude have caused authorities to refocus their efforts on new sections of the vast Indian Ocean, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Describing all calculations concerning the plane’s final location as “educated guesses”, people familiar with the process told the newspaper that search teams are likely to shift “significantly south or southwest” from the areas of the ocean bed scoured in May.

An announcement on the location of the new area is expected by mid-June. Continue reading “MH370 search area ‘to shift again’ amid new doubts over speed and altitude”

The Malay Mail Online
June 9, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, June 9 — Groups representing the families of the passengers and crew aboard Flight MH370 issued a letter of thanks to the governments and teams involved in the search for the missing plane, but the Malaysian government was conspicuously absent from the list.

Voice 370 and MH370 Family Association, in a joint letter addressed to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) chief coordinator Angus Houston, said they deeply appreciated the efforts by all involved in finding the elusive aircraft.

“This incident has no such precedent through the history of aviation, and we would like to highlight the progress made toward understanding the events unfolding in the morning of March 8 and fate of the plane in the face of innumerable obstacles and complications,” the letter read.

“It is here that we would like to applaud the relentless efforts of the men and women of the search crews directly involved in the search operations for MH370 and those involved in the analysis of the flight path of the plane; this letter is a medium insufficient to convey the depth of the gratitude felt by all affected families toward your endeavours.”

The families thanked Abbott and Houston for “their gracious assumption of responsibility for the coordination of the search” in the southern Indian Ocean where the plane is believed to have ended its flight.

“Their calm and able handling of the situation has assured the families that this responsibility has been passed to capable hands,” said the letter. Continue reading “Malaysia omitted as MH370 families thank all involved in search”

Review of Syed Husin Ali’s Memoirs of a Political Struggle.
by M. Bakri Musa

Syed Husin Ali: Memoirs of a Political Struggle. Strategic Information and Research Development Center, Petaling Jaya, 2013. 273 pp.

The deserved universal condemnation and merciless ridicule of the Malaysian authorities’ bungling of the MH370 tragedy did not arise in a vacuum. From leaders’ refusing to entertain questions at their press briefings to radar operators ignoring intruding beeps on their screens, this unconcealed contempt for the public, and the accompanying lackadaisical attitude, is the norm.

Our leaders may have had First World education, alas their mentality remains stubbornly stuck in Third World mode. Their bebalism and tidak apaism make the Jamaican “It’s not my job, mon!” a valid excuse by contrast.

To readers of on-line news portals, I am not stating anything new here; likewise to ordinary citizens who have had to deal with governmental agencies. However, when these general inadequacies and gross incompetence in their infinite manifestations are put in print as in books, there is satisfaction, at least to their authors, that they are being documented for posterity. Continue reading “Malaysian Leaders’ First World Education, Third World Mentality”

Jens Flottau
Aviation Week
Jun 3, 2014

Emirates Airline President Tim Clark is demanding more transparency in the investigation of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. “We are the largest operator of the Boeing 777 in the world. I need to know how anybody could interdict our systems,” Clark told Aviation Week in an interview on the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) annual general assembly in Doha, Qatar. “Something is not right here and we need to get to the bottom of it.”

Clark criticized how the investigation into the disappearance of the Malaysian Boeing 777 has been handled. “There have been many questions unanswered or dealt with in a manner that is unacceptable to the forensic nature of the inquiry.” He believes that “this aircraft was disabled in three primary systems. To be able to disable those requires a knowledge of the system which even our pilots in Emirates don’t know how to do. Somebody got on board and knew exactly what they were up to.” Continue reading “Emirates’ Clark Sees MH370 Investigation Deficiencies”

New Zealand Herald
Jun 4, 2014

A British woman who was sailing near Indonesia at the time Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared says she believes she saw the plane “burning” and billowing smoke before it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

An eye-witness account from yachting enthusiast Katherine Tee, 41, has now been filed with the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) leading the search, based in Australia, which is yet to find any trace of the missing jet.

In her account, Ms Tee has described seeing “an elongated plane glowing bright orange, with a trail of black smoke behind it”, heading from north to south.

The object was flying at “about half the height” of two other flights in the same patch of sky at the time, she said, in a series of posts detailing the sighting on the yachting website Cruisers Forum, where Ms Tee is a moderator.

She later told the Phuket Gazette that she initially dismissed the incident as being “just a meteor” or even a figment of her imagination – until a recent check of GPS logs confirmed that the plane’s projected track may have taken it very close to where the yacht was sailing at the time. Continue reading “Sailor may have seen flight MH370 on fire”

The Malay Mail Online
June 2, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, June 2 ― An expert has said that the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, flight MH370 is not becoming more complicated and that the search and rescue (SAR) team was looking in the wrong area.

New Zealand-based space scientist and physicist, Duncan Steel, made the remarks in an email interview with Bernama following the latest announcement by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which discounted the vicinity of acoustic signals detected previously.

“They were never leads (the claimed acoustic detections). Having discounted them is a good thing, in that it enables other possibilities to be considered,” said Steel, who is also a visiting Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, England and a space scientist at NASA-Ames Research Centre in California, USA.

According to him, the sonic pings in the Indian Ocean were obviously (to a physicist) not from the MH370 emergency locator beacon and that ATSB’s announcement was entirely disconnected from the satellite-derived information.

He believed that based on available information from the released raw data, it was most likely that the aircraft headed south at near 500 knots, and ended up much further south than the current search area. Continue reading “Expert: Search for MH370 not becoming more complicated”

Jamie Freed
Sydney Morning Herald

June 2, 2014

Emirates president Tim Clark says missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 would have in most countries been intercepted by fighters if it flew off course, and says the industry should not change aircraft tracking until it has more facts about the disappearance.

“In my view we are all plunging down a path that [says] ‘we have got to fix this’,” he said on the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association annual meeting in Doha, Qatar.

“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.”

Emirates is a major operator of Boeing 777s, the aircraft type of MH370. The aircraft has been widely considered one of the safest ever built.

Mr Clark questioned why MH370 wasn’t circled by fighter jets after it was spotted by Malaysian’s military on primary radar. Continue reading “Malaysia Airlines flight MH370: Where were the fighters, asks Emirates chief”