Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-370 goes missing

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 11 Mar 2014 19:35

Austin had posted pix of the russian version of this system once. DEW sats with IR sensors to detect the heat flashes of launched missiles
---cnn---
However, there's an "off chance," Weeden says, that a super secret U.S. government satellite orbiting 22,000 miles in space might have grabbed evidence. These satellites are in geosynchronous orbit. As a group, they can observe virtually the entire globe. "We know that their mission is to detect ballistic missile launches via heat," says Weeden, now a technical adviser for Secure World Foundation. "We don't know if they're sensitive enough to track something like a bomb blast, even if that's what happened."

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 11 Mar 2014 19:40

have to agree with Theo...if it headed into southern IOR with 6 hrs of fuel in tank...its unlikely to be ever found unless it fell on the one shipping lane that goes from south africa to australia. rest is empty and the home of lurking SSBNs and whales only. IOR is way bigger than the Atlantic and way more empty than the Pacific which has 1000s of islands big n small in indonesia and polynesia. depth is high. no coral islands south of maldives. no volcanic islands south of mauritius except a couple near antarctica.

its the last Dark Territory.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 11 Mar 2014 19:42

CRamS wrote:Its cruel on my part to bring in politics when 240 people are dead and still no answers, but as I watch the Malaysians struggle with the investigation, I shudder to think what would be the western, Chinese, and DDM reaction had this been an Indian plane that went missing. Can you imagine the racist contempt that would have been hurled by the likes of NYT etc on India's incompetence and the chorus taken up by self flagellating DDM with their pet peeves on India not being able to fly an aircraft but wastes money on space launches and the like.

Question.

How much do Americans care when they are criticized by Chinese, Iranian or Russian media?

There is, in my view, merit in not taking notice of barking western dogs unless it is your contention that the US is so big and so powerful that Indians should take notice and make sure they do not attract negative attention.

Unless you believe that India badly needs internal correction to reach the hallowed western defined standards that would avoid western criticism, why not simply ignore such things and carry on? There is a likelihood that countries like India will be criticized no matter what we do.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Mar 2014 19:44

Singha wrote:Austin had posted pix of the russian version of this system once. DEW sats with IR sensors to detect the heat flashes of launched missiles
---cnn---
However, there's an "off chance," Weeden says, that a super secret U.S. government satellite orbiting 22,000 miles in space might have grabbed evidence. These satellites are in geosynchronous orbit. As a group, they can observe virtually the entire globe. "We know that their mission is to detect ballistic missile launches via heat," says Weeden, now a technical adviser for Secure World Foundation. "We don't know if they're sensitive enough to track something like a bomb blast, even if that's what happened."

weeden needs to check his paper. It was laready stated that US had looked at its data and so no evidence. I commented on that one page ago.

BTW geosynchronous sats are tuned to look for long wave IR signals which can be transmitted through the atmosphere which absorbs all other IR signals. And explosions dont have long wave IR.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 11 Mar 2014 19:44

and the tales of phones ringing and online accounts being active sound like out of the series "Lost" ... that was a spooky one for sure.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 11 Mar 2014 19:51

Malaysia is not as important nor does it have same weight as India. Usually countries criticize peer countries.
In Telugu there is a proverb "viyyAnikainA kayyAnikaina sama ujjI tO nE" - for an alliance or a war one it is advisable to choose an equal.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 11 Mar 2014 19:53

Clearly, neither Malaysia, nor Vietnam have 3D radar coverage more than a short distance away from their coastlines. The mysterious "military radar" seems to know more - but whose was it. I suspect radar coverage in this area is nothing like in the North Atlantic, or Arctic circle. The area is too big for land based radar and that is why maritime recce is necessary.

Can someone tell me or Google and tell me how far away a plane flying 10 km up can be seen on radar and how far away it needs to be to disappear from line of sight due to the earth's curvature?

UlanBatori · Post by **UlanBatori** » 11 Mar 2014 19:56

Hope is still on my side.
Its not really inaccessible/uninhabited places there, are they? Not like Siberia or Mongolia or Sahara or ice-cap of American West/Rockies or Himalayas or Andes. Malay Peninsula/southernMyamnar/Thailand don't have big ranges full of tall mountains. Smoke would have been seen from habitations.

So land crash seems more and more unlikely as time passes. Ocean debris sightings - problem may be that there are thousands, and only some 10 planes and 25 ships to go check. No one wants to make announcements after the "oil slick" and "door" and "life-raft" came up empty.

Weird: maybe decompression with something hitting windshield. Pilots dying, can't reach transponder switches for MayDay. Garbled radio transmission until they passed out. Plane descends on autopilot? to lower alttitude, cruises until fuel runs out? Terrible for the passengers.. I hope it was much swifter than that.

Hope: They should check WW2 airfields.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Mar 2014 19:58

New search area

NYT Link

The younger person was on his way to meet his mother in Europe. Sorry for her and him.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 11 Mar 2014 20:01

The Malacca straits are chock full of shipping and debris would be picked up sooner or later. It may have come down on land.

Dilbu · Post by **Dilbu** » 11 Mar 2014 20:04

I have a feeling this fake passport thing is an unrelated issue. This must be a routine job for human trafficking industry there. An accident occurs and fake passport gets the spotlight. If this flight had landed safely these gentlemen with fake passport would have walked away without anyone batting an eyelid.

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 11 Mar 2014 20:07

even in the central peninsula the interior has large mountains and dense forests, but a lot more habitation that borneo
unlikely something can go missing completely
especially, it would have come into radar coverage from airfields on the east coast and penang possibly as well as southern thailand

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 11 Mar 2014 20:10

>>I shudder to think what would be the western, Chinese, and DDM reaction had this been an Indian plane that went missing. Can you imagine the racist contempt that would have been hurled by the likes of NYT etc on India's incompetence and the chorus taken up by self flagellating DDM with their pet peeves on India not being able to fly an aircraft but wastes money on space launches and the like.

Why do you shudder, and why are you bothered by someone's racist contempt? Does it matter? That is a state of mind to be encouraged on their part, as it is far from an accurate perception of us no?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 11 Mar 2014 20:11

that is great nicobar island at left edge of the map.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 11 Mar 2014 20:12

shipping map Malacca strait
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K-mmeIQXbx4/U ... Strait.png

Indian Navy/AF will be involved by now.

Live ship tracking
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 11 Mar 2014 20:15

Australian over the horizon radar reach - not far enough

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Mar 2014 20:35

Hindu reports:

Missing airliner flew West

Missing Malaysia jet 'flew west' after last contact

Ananth Krishnan

Beijing,

Rescuers on Tuesday widened the search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet after it emerged that the Boeing 777 had possibly flown hundreds of kilometres west across Malaysia up to the Malacca Straits following its last radar contact.

Malaysian military officials said the aircraft changed course away from its planned route north towards Beijing near Kota Bharu, where it last made contact, and then "took a lower altitude".

The Boeing then may have flown west, reaching as far as the Malacca Strait off Malaysia's western coast, around 500 kilometres away from where the plane was earlier thought to have disappeared, military officials told Reuters.

The new revelation came on the fourth day of search operations, as aircraft and vessels from eight countries continued to unsuccessfully scour the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea northeast of the country, and began to expand the search into the Malacca Straits.

The Malaysian government said earlier the aircraft, with 239 people on board, had disappeared from civilian air traffic control at 1.30 am Saturday local time, around 50 minutes after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.

Military radars, however, detected the airplane one hour later, at 2.40 am, Malaysian Air Force chief Rodzali Daud told local media, raising the possibility that the plane, which had not sent any distress signal, had flown west with its transponders turned off following its last contact with civilian air traffic control an hour earlier.

The development came as officials said the two passengers on board with stolen passports were likely not linked with terror groups and were Iranian migrants, aged 18 and 29, seeking asylum in the West.

The Malaysian police chief said the two were likely "trying to migrate to Germany". The Iranian government said it would offer assistance with the Malaysian investigation into the stolen passports.

On board flight 370 were 154 Chinese, five Indians, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians and travellers from the United States, France and half a dozen other nations. Some of the passengers' relatives, including 9 Chinese and three Indians who have waiting desperately in Beijing for news of their loved ones, travelled to Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday morning.

So Malaysian military was sleeping for four days while the search was in wrong area. Truly sad behavior by the MAF chief in not getting with the program.

UB looks like a hostile take over with reduced altitude to fly under the civilian air control radar with transponders switched off.

MH-370 was making an undetected U-Turn towards Indian Ocean.

So what gives? Vizag?

saip · Post by **saip** » 11 Mar 2014 20:45

They must have flown over land and no jets were scrambled? Unidentified plane would have definitely provoked a reaction, methinks.
Did the Malaysian military shoot it down?

member_28502 · Post by **member_28502** » 11 Mar 2014 20:51

Usually Flights are not alone in their path. There would have been or must have been other flights on the same flight path or criss crossing.
For instance AI non stop flight from Delhi to JFK would encounter a bunch of flights on its over Afghanistan, Russian federation republics
over Hungary Turkey Romania all the way to (over) Scotland then only it again becomes solitary bird till over Greenland close to Iceland capital Reykjavik.

All this can be seen on the monitor on every seat Your Flight path and also you can see the nose camera shot.All this possible if the pilot or other switch it off. No need to carry GPS if you want to know when to take over the a/c

Besides each flight is supposed to have a Marshal ... a standard practice since 9-11, but always on El Al flights since Entebe

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 11 Mar 2014 20:56

Catastrophic electric system failure?

The 777 has redundant electronics and electricity that powers everything, including secondary power source to the control surface hydraulics (usually using Ram Air Turbines). The control surfaces have bleed air from the Turbofans as their primary power source. That means if for some reason the power fails and the redundancies fall through, the airplane will drift chaotically with engines running.

Given that the vast Indian ocean with nothing other than Diego Garcia is to the West ~~EastWest~~ of Malaysia, the aircraft could have followed a chaotic path into the sea with no one able to spot it.

If it was a terror plot someone would have come forward by now claiming responsibility.

Edited to correct some factual errors in the early morning post: Early morning grogginess.

Edit to correct east and west again: Its official! I do not know the difference between west and east.

member_28502 · Post by **member_28502** » 11 Mar 2014 20:58

It has a range 7700 nautical miles if fuelled in this instance max range

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Mar 2014 21:11

LokeshC, Not if its a failed plot. It won't have any four fathers. Lockerbie never had one.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 11 Mar 2014 21:14

If they crossed into northern Malacca Strait, probably the most powerful primary radar (the active military kind, not secondary passive transponder based civil one) would be the Indian radars on the Andamans. Wonder if they saw anything. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar really don't have anything much of the kind, I think .

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Mar 2014 21:18

Might have been shut down due to lack of spare parts and switched on only during crisis.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 11 Mar 2014 21:22

Someone suggested a lack of oxygen slowly incapacitating the crew. This has actually happened on a commercial airliner in 2005.

Helios Airways Flight 522

The aircraft continued on its course on auto-pilot. Since the ATC couldn't contact it, the Greeks scrambled F-16s to intercept it. The F-16 pilots saw one of the incapacitated pilots slumped in his seat. The plane eventually ran out of fuel and crashed.

If this is what had happened in MH370, the aircraft would have continued on its original course toward China. Or maybe, one of the pilots just before he passed out, tried to turn it around and only succeeded in turning it west toward the straits of Malacca.

saip · Post by **saip** » 11 Mar 2014 21:24

But why was the transponder turned off?

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 11 Mar 2014 21:25

Re: Helios flight.
It was not an incapacitated pilots, it was a flight attendant with an oxygen tank waving to one of the F-16 pilots to rescue him. He did not know how to fly it and disengage the autopilot. He was the only one conscious at that time.

The reason for that one was that the cabin pressurization was set to manual (from automatic) after a technician checked the doors for leak and the pilot forgot to set it back to automatic.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 11 Mar 2014 21:26

LokeshC wrote:Catastrophic electric system failure?

The 777 has redundant electronics and electricity that powers everything, including secondary power source to the control surface hydraulics (usually using Ram Air Turbines). The control surfaces have bleed air from the Turbofans as their primary power source. That means if for some reason the power fails and the redundancies fall through, the airplane will drift chaotically with engines running.

For that to happen, both engines have to fail simultaneously and the RAT has to fail to deploy. The probability of that happening on a modern jet like the 777 is about the same as that of an Alien abduction I'd say.

saip · Post by **saip** » 11 Mar 2014 21:28

Another similar case was that of Payne Stewart

http://www.cnn.com/US/9910/25/wayward.j ... newssearch

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 11 Mar 2014 21:29

nachiket,

Yes. That has about as much chance as most CTs we get to hear about now and then and I dont deny it. Other than 3 - 4 redundant independent systems failing, terrorism or alien abduction I admit, I am really stumped on trying to figure this one out

.

EDIT:
Just to add to your point. If the control circuitry/electronics fail. The engines will still run and hence will power the hydraulics. The RAT is deployed only if the engines fail. My point was that the control circuitry (highly redundant) fails, the path that the plane follows will be chaotic. I am not sure how the transponders are powered, if they are also powered from the same source that might also explain how it turned off. I understand that this has extremely low probability and if it happens it would be like a BlackSwan event. Like the trading system that added an extra '0' to a stock market trade resulting in a huge albeit momentary crash in the market.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 11 Mar 2014 21:39

saip wrote:But why was the transponder turned off?

One expert on CNN was saying that 777 plane carry 2 emergency signal beacons which go on automatically if they come in contact with salt water (ocean).

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 11 Mar 2014 21:42

What is the range of those things? Can it be detected with Sats?

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 11 Mar 2014 21:44

Those are ELTs: emergency locator transmitter

How they can be located depends on the kind used.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Mar 2014 21:46

Meanwhile

CNN reports:
Interpol ready to rule out terrorism

(CNN) -- The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 does not appear to be related to terrorism, the head of the international police organization Interpol said Tuesday.

"The more information we get, the more we're inclined to conclude that it was not a terrorist incident" Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said at a news conference in Lyon, France.

Noble's comments echo those of a U.S. intelligence official, who told CNN on Monday that indications increasingly point toward an explanation other than terrorism.

Among the evidence pointing in that direction, Noble said: news from Malaysian authorities that one of two people said to be traveling on stolen passports, an Iranian, was trying to travel to his mother in Germany.

Questions swirl after airliner vanishes

How can a massive airplane go missing? Further, there's no evidence to suggest either was connected to any terrorist organizations, according to Malaysian investigators.

The two passengers in question entered Malaysia using valid Iranian passports, Noble said at a news conference. But they used stolen Austrian and Italian passports to board the missing Malaysian plane, he said.

Noble gave their names and ages as Pouri Nourmohammadi, 18, and Delavar Syed Mohammad Reza, 29.

Malaysian police had earlier identified Nourmohammadi, using a slightly different name and age, and said they believed he was trying to migrate to Germany.

Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar of the Royal Malaysian Police said it doesn't appear the younger Iranian posed a threat.

"We have been checking his background. We have also checked him with other police organizations of his profile, and we believe that he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group," Khalid said.

After he failed to arrive in Frankfurt, the final destination of his ticket, his mother contacted authorities, Khalid said. According to ticketing records, the ticket to Frankfurt was booked under the stolen Austrian passport.

CNN obtained an iReport photo of the two men with two of their friends, believed to have been taken Saturday before the plane disappeared. In it, they are posing with the two others, whose faces CNN has blurred to protect their identities.

The bigger piece of the puzzle

The identification of one of the men helps peel away a thin layer of the mystery surrounding the passenger jet, which disappeared about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

But in the bigger puzzle of the missing plane's whereabouts, there were no reports of progress Tuesday.

Every lead that has raised hopes of tracing the commercial jet and the 239 people on board has so far petered out.

"Time is passing by," a middle-aged man shouted at an airline agent in Beijing on Tuesday. His son, he said, was one of the passengers aboard the plane.

Questions swirl after airliner vanishes

Are flight recorders 'antiquated?' Most of those on the flight were Chinese. And for their family members, the wait has been agonizing.

There were also three U.S. citizens on the plane, including Philip Wood.

"As of yet, we know as much as everyone else," Wood's brother, Tom, told CNN's "AC360" Monday. "It seems to be getting more bizarre, the twists in the story, where they can't find anything. So we're just relying on faith."

The challenge facing those involved in the huge, multinational search is daunting; the area of sea they are combing is vast.

And they still don't know if they're looking in the right place.

"As we enter into Day 4, the aircraft is yet to be found," Malaysia Airlines said in a statement released Tuesday.

Days, weeks or even months

Over the past few days, search teams have been scouring tens of thousands of square miles of sea around the area where the plane was last detected, between the northeast coast of Malaysia and southwest Vietnam.

They have also been searching off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, in the Strait of Malacca, and north into the Andaman Sea. The airline said Tuesday that authorities are still investigating the possibility that the plane tried to turn back toward Kuala Lumpur.

The search also encompasses the land in between the two areas of sea.

But it could be days, weeks or even months before the searchers find anything that begins to explain what happened to the plane, which disappeared early Saturday en route to Beijing.

In the case of Air France Flight 447, which disappeared over the Atlantic in 2009, it took five days just to find the first floating wreckage.

And it was nearly two years before investigators found the bulk of the French plane's wreckage and the majority of the bodies of the 228 people on board, about 12,000 feet below the surface of the ocean.

The Gulf of Thailand, the area where the missing Malaysian plane was last detected, is much shallower, with a maximum depth of only 260 feet and an average depth of about 150 feet.

"If the aircraft is in the water, it should make recovery easier than the long and expensive effort to bring up key parts of the Air France plane," Bill Palmer, an Airbus A330 captain for a major airline, wrote in an opinion article for CNN.

But if Flight 370 went down farther west, it could have ended up in the much deeper waters of the Andaman Sea.

No possibilities ruled out

Aviation officials say they haven't ruled out any possibilities in the investigation so far. It's hard for them to reach any conclusions until they find the plane, along with its voice and data recorders.

Malaysian police, who are tasked with looking at whether any criminal cause was at play, are focusing on four particular areas, Khalid said Tuesday: hijacking, sabotage, psychological problems of the passengers and crew, and personal problems among the passengers and crew.

He said police were going through the profiles of all the passengers and crew members.

Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told CNN's Jim Clancy that those involved in the search for the plane are determined to carry on.

"We just have to be more resolved and pay more attention to every single detail," he said Tuesday. "It must be there somewhere. We have to find it."

'Crucial time' passing

But if the plane fell into the sea, the more time that goes by, the harder the task becomes as ocean currents move things around.

"Crucial time is passing," David Gallo, with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday. "That search area -- that haystack -- is getting bigger and bigger and bigger."

Gallo described what will happen once some debris from the aircraft is found, though he stressed there's still no evidence the plane hit the water.

"Once a piece of the debris is found -- if it did impact on the water -- then you've got to backtrack that debris to try to find the 'X marks the spot' on where the plane actually hit the water, because that would be the center of the haystack.

"And in that haystack you're trying to find bits of that needle -- in fact, in the case of the flight data recorders, you're looking for a tiny little bit of that needle," he said.

Technology put to use

Countries involved in the search have deployed sophisticated technology to help try to track down the plane.

China has adjusted the commands for as many as 10 satellites in orbit so that they can assist with weather monitoring, communications and other aspects of the search, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.

And the United States has put a range of naval technology to use in the search.

That includes a Navy P-3C Orion aircraft, which can cover about 1,000 to 1,500 square miles every hour, according to the U.S. 7th Fleet.

The Orion, which is focused on the area off the west coast of Malaysia, has sensors that allow the crew to clearly detect small debris in the water, the fleet said.

CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest described the search as "extremely painstaking work," suggesting a grid would have been drawn over the ocean for teams to comb, bit by bit.

Quest said that the expanding search area shows how little idea rescue officials have of where the plane might be. But he's still confident they'll find it eventually.

"It's not hopeless by any means. They will find it.," he said. "They have to. They have to know what happened."

So what was the airliner doing at low altitude with civil transponders switched off anf flying on a course opposite to that it was supposed to be flying? Recall the courses flown by the hijacked US airlines planes on 9/11?

and Reuters:

MH-370 turned back and flew some distance into Malacca Strait:Source

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's military believes the jetliner missing for almost four days turned and flew hundreds of kilometres to the west after it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country's east coast, a senior officer told Reuters on Tuesday.

In one of the most baffling mysteries in recent aviation history, a massive search operation for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER has so far found no trace of the aircraft or the 239 passengers and crew.

Malaysian authorities have previously said flight MH370 disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for the Chinese capital Beijing.

"It changed course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait," the senior military officer, who has been briefed on investigations, told Reuters.

That would appear to rule out sudden catastrophic mechanical failure, as it would mean the plane flew around 500 km (350 miles) at least after its last contact with air traffic control, although its transponder and other tracking systems were off.

A non-military source familiar with the investigations said the report was one of several theories and was being checked.

LOST CONTACT

At the time it lost contact with civilian air traffic control, the plane was roughly midway between Malaysia's east coast town of Kota Bharu and the southern tip of Vietnam, flying at 35,000 ft (10,670 metres).

The Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping channels, runs along Malaysia's west coast.

Malaysia's Berita Harian newspaper quoted air force chief Rodzali Daud as saying the plane was last detected at 2.40am by military radar near the island of Pulau Perak at the northern end of the Strait of Malacca. It was flying about 1,000 metres lower than its previous altitude, he was quoted as saying.

There was no word on what happened to the plane thereafter.

The effect of turning off the transponder is to make the aircraft inert to secondary radar, so civil controllers cannot identify it. Secondary radar interrogates the transponder and gets information about the plane's identity, speed and height.

It would however still be visible to primary radar, which is used by militaries.

Police had earlier said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might explain its disappearance, along with the possibility of a hijack, sabotage or mechanical failure.

There was no distress signal or radio contact indicating a problem and, in the absence of any wreckage or flight data, police have been left trawling through passenger and crew lists for potential leads.

"Maybe somebody on the flight has bought a huge sum of insurance, who wants family to gain from it or somebody who has owed somebody so much money, you know, we are looking at all possibilities," Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar told a news conference.

"We are looking very closely at the video footage taken at the KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport), we are studying the behavioural pattern of all the passengers."

A huge search operation for the plane has been mostly focused on the shallow waters of the Gulf of Thailand off Malaysia's east coast, although the Strait of Malacca has been included since Sunday.

Navy ships, military aircraft, helicopters, coast guard and civilian vessels from 10 nations have criss-crossed the seas off both coasts of Malaysia without success.

The massive search for the plane has drawn in navies, military aircraft, coast guard and civilian vessels from 10 nations.

STOLEN PASSPORTS

The fact that at least two passengers on board had used stolen passports has raised suspicions of foul play. But southeast Asia is known as a hub for false documents that are also used by smugglers, illegal migrants and asylum seekers.

Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble named the two men as Iranians aged 18 and 29, who had entered Malaysia using their real passports before using the stolen European documents to board the Beijing-bound flight.

"The more information we get, the more we are inclined to conclude it is not a terrorist incident," Noble said.

Malaysian police chief Khalid said the younger man, who he said was 19, appeared to be an illegal immigrant. His mother was waiting for him in Frankfurt and had been in contact with authorities, he said.

"We believe he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group, and we believe he was trying to migrate to Germany," Khalid said.

Asked if that meant he ruled out a hijack, Khalid said: "(We are giving) same weightage to all (possibilities) until we complete our investigations."

Both men entered Malaysia on Feb 28, at least one from Phuket, in Thailand, eight days before boarding the flight to Beijing, Malaysian immigration chief Aloyah Mamat told the news conference. Both held onward reservations to Western Europe.

Police in Thailand, where the Italian and Austrian passports were stolen and the tickets used by the two men were booked, said they did not think they were linked to the disappearance of the plane.

"We haven't ruled it out, but the weight of evidence we're getting swings against the idea that these men are or were involved in terrorism," Supachai Puikaewcome, chief of police in the Thai resort city of Pattaya, told Reuters.

About two-thirds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew now presumed to have died aboard the plane were Chinese. Other nationalities included 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.

China has deployed 10 satellites using high-resolution earth imaging capabilities, visible light imaging and other technologies to "support and assist in the search and rescue operations", the People's Liberation Army Daily said.

The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 struck a seawall on landing in San Francisco, killing three people.

US planemaker Boeing has declined to comment beyond a brief statement saying it was monitoring the situation.

Gagan, Can you put those known cities on a map for ref using google maps?

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Mar 2014 22:02

Comment int he TOI site

It appears that some one higher up in Malaysia and USA aware of the horrible truth but they are not telling the public. instead they are making tge Vietnamese and Chinese do the wild goose search in their waters where as the plane seems to gone down west of Malaysia peninsula in Malacca strain into Andaman sea. Civilian adminstration telling that they list the contact with the plane while it is close to Vietnam. however miltary radar seems to have picked up its presence west of Malaysia! That means catastrophic failure is ruled out. I think there are only two possibilities. The transponders are deluberatly removed or swiched off in the plane. This is the similar situation of two planes that hit 9/11 world trade center also did the same trick of pulling off transponders so that no communication can be established with the plane and civilian radar cannot detect it. I guess in the case of this flight, it is either a suiside attempt by tge cockpit crew or hijack by terrorists. There are no other possibilties it appears. If it terrorists, I guess they wanted to take the plane and strike at Petronas tower. Smething must have gone wrong or the terrorists were eventually overpowered hy tg crew and passengers. Perhaps it wasbtoo late and plane must have crashedninto Malacca strait. This whole investigation by Malaysian authorities has been clumsy and they seems to have deliberately mislead the public here. It is amazing that the seach area is as wide as 2000 kms apart like searchin a needle in a heystack.

It does reflect badly on the MAF that they had radar track but allowed the SAR party to look in the wrrng place for four days.
And a sheer lack of human empathy for the missing and now dead.

nawabs · Post by **nawabs** » 11 Mar 2014 22:07

nachiket wrote:Someone suggested a lack of oxygen slowly incapacitating the crew. This has actually happened on a commercial airliner in 2005.

Helios Airways Flight 522

Time of useful consciousness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_us ... sciousness

nawabs · Post by **nawabs** » 11 Mar 2014 22:13

MISSING MH370: Terrorism cannot be ruled out : CIA

http://www.nst.com.my/latest/font-color ... z2vfqSrOOD

CIA Director John Brennan said there had been “some claims of responsibility” over the missing jet that had “not been confirmed or corroborated,” and that he could not exclude the possibility of a terror link.

He provided no further details, but his comment was the first reference by a US official to any alleged claim of responsibility over the jet’s fate.

When asked if he could rule out a terrorist link, Brennan said: “No, I wouldn’t rule it out.”

Brennan, the former counter-terrorism adviser to President Barack Obama, said there were many unanswered questions and it was too early to reach any conclusions about the Malaysia Airlines plane that vanished Saturday with 239 people on board after taking from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.

“We are looking at it very carefully,” he said. “Clearly this is still a mystery.”

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 11 Mar 2014 22:15

our CG assets must be quietly searching the andaman sea ESW of great nicobar.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 11 Mar 2014 22:16

ramana wrote:Meanwhile

CNN reports:
Interpol ready to rule out terrorism

Isn't this premature? Especially now that the MAF says the aircraft basically traveled ~500km in radio silence and transponder turned off? Somebody needs to ask the MAF chief whether he was sleeping all the time their navy was searching in the wrong place.

This sh1t is just getting weirder by the day.

chaanakya · Post by **chaanakya** » 11 Mar 2014 22:18

Indian Navy joins search for missing Malaysian plane in the Malacca Straits

KOLKATA: Ships of the Indian Navy that are on patrol in the Malacca Straits are participating in Search and Rescue (SAR) operations for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that has been missing since Saturday with 239 people on board.

Those tracking the aircraft have said that it disappeared over the Malacca Straits while attempting to fly back to Kuala Lumpur from where it took off for Beijing.

The Indian Navy's satellite Rukmini or GSAT-7 has also been activated to try and pick up any clue that may lead investigators to the missing Boeing 777-200 aircraft.

"Indian Navy ships are on routine patrol in the Malacca Straits. Our ships carry out coordinated anti-piracy patrols with the navies of countries like Indonesia and Malaysia. As per the laws of the sea, it is only natural that our vessels will participate in the SAR operations. The ships that have heli-components will use the aircraft for the operations. Though several navies patrol the busy shipping lines passing through the Malacca Straits, India has a strong presence there," an official said.

The Navy believes that this will also be a good opportunity to try out the Rukmini satellite, which became operational in 2013 and has put up a commendable performance during exercises.

During the recently concluded Theatre-level Readiness and Operational Exercise (Tropex) in the Bay of Bengal, Rukmini was able to network about 60 ships and 75 aircraft seamlessly. The intention of the Indian Navy is to use this geostationary naval communication and surveillance satellite to cover activities up to the Malacca Straits in the east and the Hormuz Strait to the west. Rukmini has a nearly 2,000 nautical mile 'footprint' over the Indian Ocean Region, another official said.

"There is no competition involved but this is certainly a challenge. SAR operations are a crucial part of any navy's duties, particularly if it wishes to achieve 'blue-water' status. In Fact, SAR operations was the highlight of Milan 2014, the exercise organized by the Indian Navy at Port Blair in February this year in which several navies from the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean regions participated," the official added.