Bharat Rakshak

OFFICIAL STATEMENT BY CHIEF OF ROYAL MALAYSIAN AIR FORCE ON BERITA HARIAN NEWS ARTICLE DATED 11th MARCH 2014 ON SEARCH AND RESCUE OPERATIONS IN THE STRAITS OF MALACCA

1. I refer to the Berita Harian news article dated 11th March 2014 on Search and Rescue Operations in the Straits of Malacca which (in Bahasa Malaysia) referred to me as making the following statements:

The RMAF Chief confirmed that RMAF Butterworth airbase detected the location signal of the airliner as indicating that it turned back from its original heading to the direction of Kota Bahru, Kelantan, and was believed to have pass through the airspace of the East Coast of and Northern Peninsular Malaysia.

The last time the plane was detected by the air control tower was in the vicinity of Pulau Perak in the Straits of Malacca at 2.40 in the morning before the signal disappeared without any trace, he said.

2. I wish to state that I did not make any such statements as above, what occurred was that the Berita Harian journalist asked me if such an incident occurred as detailed in their story, however I did not give any answer to the question, instead what I said to the journalist was “Please refer to the statement which I have already made on 9 March 2014, during the press conference with the Chief of Defence Force at the Sama-Sama Hotel, Kuala Lumpur International Airport”.

3. What I stated during that press conference was,

The RMAF has not ruled out the possibility of an air turn back on a reciprocal heading before the aircraft vanished from the radar and this resulted in the Search and Rescue Operations being widen to the vicinity of the waters of Pulau Pinang.

4. I request this misreporting be amended and corrected to prevent further misinterpretations of what is clearly an inaccurate and incorrect report.

5. Currently the RMAF is examining and analyzing all possibilities as regards to the airliner’s flight paths subsequent to its disappearance. However for the time being, it would not be appropriate for the RMAF to issue any official conclusions as to the aircraft’s flight path until a high amount of certainty and verification is achieved. However all ongoing search operations are at the moment being conducted to cover all possible areas where the aircraft could have gone down in order to ensure no possibility is overlooked.

6. In addition, I would like to state to the media that all information and developments will be released via official statements and press conferences as soon as possible and when appropriate. Our current efforts are focused upon on finding the aircraft as soon as possible.

Thank You

GENERAL TAN SRI DATO’SRI RODZALI BIN DAUD RMAF
Chief of Royal Malaysian Air Force

ThalesRaytheonSystems today announced full system acceptance has been finalized with the Royal Malaysian Air Force for the Malaysian Air Defense Ground Environment Sector Operations Center III (MADGE) Program. ThalesRaytheonSystems provided the Malaysian Ministry of Defence an enhanced national command and control system.

“The C2 system we’ve executed in Malaysia represents technological integration at its best,” said Kim Kerry, CEO of U.S. Operations for ThalesRaytheonSystems. “We worked with our Malaysian customers to integrate their legacy system and have augmented it with proven technologies, such as the Sentry® command and control system and the Ground Master 400 (GM 400) radar. The result is a system that reliably and effectively meets their requirements.”

The MADGE system operates in real-time and features multi-radar tracking and a flexible human-machine interface. The GM 400 radar will provide additional long-range surveillance capabilities for the Royal Malaysian Air Force.

The Ground Master 400 is part of ThalesRaytheonSystems’ (TRS) fully digital 3-D air defense Ground Master radar family using digital beamforming. The GM 400 is a 3D long-range radar, offering detection from very high to very low altitudes. It tracks a wide range of targets from highly manoeuvrable low-flying tactical aircraft to unconventional smaller targets such as UAVs, ensuring an excellent wide-area air picture. GM 400 is an AESA radar that can be set up by a four man crew in 30 minutes. The system fits in a 20 foot shipping container and weighs less than ten tons. When deployed on site, the radar can be connected to operate as part of a networked air defense organization and can be controlled from a remote location.

The radar is credited with range accuracy of 50 meters, an azimuth accuracy of 0.3 degrees and an altitude accuracy of 2,000 ft. at 100 naut.mi. distance. Resolution in range is given as 200 meters and as 3 degrees in azimuth. The radar features electronic stabilization between -6 and +5 degrees.

ramana wrote:Be that as may the hon'ble chief should have spoken more forcefully when ~30 ships and ten aircraft form all different countries were scouring the worng area for four days. Giving press releases after all that is useless. Will he provide the fuel and wear tear costs of those nations?

UlanBatori wrote:Where is the report that it something was detected at 2:40, west of the airbase (off the west coast of Malaysia)? That is all that is relevant now.

That's also the problem, isn't it? "It" could have been anything, if the transponder was off and it was beyond or below the effective range of the radar. Could have been Thailand Pakis taking hang-gliding lessons.

Singha wrote:from singapore, most of australia falls between 4000-5000km
http://www.gcmap.com/search?Q=near:SIN+ ... heading:SE

so landing somewhere on or near aus is also a possibility. the 200LR is the long range version of 777...

chaanakya wrote:

ramana wrote:One thing I am not clear is if Interpol "lost passport" database is accessible for airlines or only police forces? If the later then the Interpol chief is talking through his hat and scoring cheap points at this time.

It is available to Immigration officials at the airports.

2 airlines to check passports on Interpol database
By By Jamey Keaten March 11, 2014

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LYON, France (AP) — Interpol is allowing two airlines to check passenger passports against its vast database of lost and stolen travel documents — in a test project aimed to let private sector companies help authorities crack down on criminals who travel with fake documents, the police organization's leader said Tuesday.

It's not known whether stolen passports had to do with Saturday's disappearance of a Boeing 777 bound from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board. But Interpol on Tuesday released an image of two Iranians who used valid Iranian passports to get to Malaysia, then boarded the flight with stolen European passports.

Up to now, only national authorities such as border police have been allowed to verify whether passengers' passports turn up in the database of some 40 million stolen or lost passports in the computer systems of the Lyon, France-based international police agency — not airlines or other private sector companies.

"I have announced today that Qatar Airways and Air Arabia are two airlines that have committed themselves to making sure that all passengers boarding their planes will have their passport data screened against Interpol's database," Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble told reporters at its headquarters.

In essence, the two airlines will be able to query the database but not gain direct access to it, in a program called I-Checkit for private sector companies — which could one day include financial institutions or hotels too, officials said.

While the database has been available to authorities for more than a decade, only a handful of countries actively use it — primarily the United States, Britain and the United Arab Emirates. Noble said that more than 1 billion times last year, travelers boarded planes without their passports being checked against the database.

Air Arabia and Qatar were chosen to test the idea because they approached Interpol and expressed an interest, said Michael O'Connell, director of Interpol's operational police support directorate.

The Interpol chief said stolen passports have been a known problem since at least the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center: "We know that the terrorist mastermind in that bombing was carrying a stolen Iraqi passport to cross borders."

It takes less than a second for countries to query the database via Interpol software and an Internet connection, once a passport is scanned. Interpol says some of its 190 member countries have cited a lack of police resources, privacy concerns, or political hostilities for their failure to check passports against the global data.

"We are saying: Because of the limitations of access by the national authorities, then should we not consider providing access to the airlines themselves as well in a very controlled manner?" O'Connell said. He said the ultimate goal is to expand the airlines program. Now, "it's at the embryonic stage," he said.

The database contains passport numbers and nationalities, as well as birthdates. It has no biometric data, Noble said.

As for the two Iranians, Interpol said it obtained their identities from its office in Tehran, and neither man had a criminal record. In a statement, Noble said the task now is to identify the criminal network that provided the passports.

ramana wrote:RV, maybe some of the passengers rushed the cockpit ala Flt 93 in Pennsylvania.

The missing Malaysia Airlines jet sent at least two bursts of technical data back to the airline before it disappeared, New Scientist has learned. The data may help investigators understand what went wrong with the aircraft, no trace of which has yet been found.

To aid maintenance, most airlines use the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which automatically collates and files four technical reports during every flight so that engineers can spot problems. These reports are sent via VHF radio or satellite at take-off, during the climb, at some point while cruising, and on landing.

Malaysia Airlines has not revealed if it has learned anything from ACARS data, or if it has any. Its eleventh media statement since the plane disappeared said: "All Malaysia Airlines aircraft are equipped with… ACARS which transmits data automatically. Nevertheless, there were no distress calls and no information was relayed."

This would suggest no concrete data is to hand. But New Scientist understands that the maker of the missing Boeing 777's Trent 800 engines, Rolls Royce, received two data reports from flight MH370 at its global engine health monitoring centre in Derby, UK, where it keeps real-time tabs on its engines in use. One was broadcast as MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the other during the 777's climb out towards Beijing.

As the engine data is filtered from a larger ACARS report covering all the plane's critical flight systems and avionics, it could mean the airline has some useful clues about the condition of the aircraft prior to its disappearance. The plane does not appear to have been cruising long enough to issue any more ACARS reports. It disappeared from radar at 1.30 AM local time, halfway between Malaysia and Vietnam over the Gulf of Thailand.

Under International Civil Aviation Organisation rules, such reports are normally kept secret until air investigators need them.

Satellites deployed

Meanwhile, the search for the airliner and the 239 people on board continues, with satellite technology being deployed. China has repurposed 10 satellites, some thought to have high-resolution imaging capabilities, to help the search effort, while other satellites are providing precision weather information to Chinese ships and aircraft involved in the search.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation, which watches out for nuclear weapons tests worldwide, looked at its data for the last few days to see if its infrasound – below the range of human hearing – recordings, normally used to seek out the muffled crump of underground tests, contained any signature of an aircraft explosion. But it found nothing.

And an ambitious attempt to crowdsource the search has also taken off. Satellite imaging firm Digital Globe has divided up high-resolution images of the region of interest so that web users can scan them for signs of the plane.

A similar crowdsourcing effort was organised by Amazon when pioneer aviator Steve Fossett disappeared in 2007.

UlanBatori wrote:Hope someone is checking out WW2 or makeshift airfields in eastern SL - Batticoloa/Trincomalee area (if not Andamans since all airfields in Andamans may be heavily monitored by Indian military, I HOPE!!!)

I don't think the pilots would have flown into S. Indian ocean on 1-way trip. Why would the hijackers do that either? So it had to be on some fairly well-travelled path, and in 4 days, someone should have seen some wreckage or smoke. Phones ringing -and not ringing later, are both quite plausible, if the turds heard a phone ringing they would have put an end to the phone immediately. I hope not to the owner! Then they would have searched, confiscated and destroyed all phones immediately.

As for FB updates, now THAT is a bit implausible, unless the person posted something relevant.

1. All statements will be from Ophishial Ishtatement Onlee.
2.I am ishtating that I am not abal to ishtate anything onlee.

A Jewish traveler named Andrew was saved from tragedy by a last-minute decision to follow his travel agent’s suggestion not to fly on Shabbat, which is how he narrowly missed boarding the lost Malaysian Air Flight 370, the Boeing 777 that has disappeared from flight maps.

The device you are talking about is called a transponder. This is a device that listens for a signal (an interrogation) and responds with information about the airplane including an ATC assigned code, altitude information and additional aircraft info for certain equipment.

There are 2 ways ATC watches airplanes:

Primary Radar
Secondary Surveillance Radar

The transponder is interrogated by the Secondary radar and the response is listened for. Even with no transponder, the aircraft can still be tracked by primary radar. This is just a normal radar that is good at seeing airplane sized objects and not so great at seeing weather and can occasionally spot a large flock of birds. The primary radar is what provides the "blip" on radar and tracks the airplane. The datablock ATC has on the airplane comes from the secondary, so what ATC will see is a blip with no information. Turning off the transponder is as simple as setting it to OFF or pulling a circuit breaker and yes, it can be selected OFF in flight, it is just a switch.

The problem with radar is that it only works so far from a radar transmitter and the further away you are the higher you must be to be seen by the radar. Over the ocean away from land, you are going to be on the fringe of radar or out of radar contact completely and thus unable to be tracked directly by ATC (at this point, non-radar procedures such as position reporting and ETAs can be used to track positions).

With the proper knowledge of the aircraft systems almost anything can be turned off. That's what we do at the end of almost every flight day. Most of the communications systems can actually be turned off fairly easily, but the average person would not know how to do it.

In airplanes like the 777, there are multiple ways that they communicate but all of them can be turned off (transponders, ACARS reports, CPDLC, ADS-B, radios, satellite phones, etc.). Some are automatic and some are manual, and not all aircraft have all of them. Most of them have a switch or can be controlled through the Flight Management System, but the ones that don't will have a circuit breaker designed to protect the system which may be pulled in order to deactivate the system.

Can ADSB be totally disabled from the cockpit? ADSB sends a big message along the lines of "warning: navigation performance degraded" to ATC via satellite when transponders aren't working as prescribed. So any supposed hi-jackers would need to know to kill ADSB/SATCOMS first. But this would alert ATC immediately, who would then check for an RPS on the radar screen. In order not to see anything, the transponders would need to be killed within a couple of seconds of ADSB. This just doesn't add up

Mr. Robertsson noted that since the plane had been fully fueled for a trip to Beijing, it could have traveled a great distance beyond its last reported position. “The aircraft could have continued another five or six hours out into the ocean,” he said. “It could have gone to India.”

Khalid Abu Bakar, the inspector general of the Malaysian police, said previous reports by Malaysian officials that five passengers had failed to board the flight and that their baggage had been removed were false. “Everybody that booked the flight boarded the plane,” he said.

Malaysian military now reveals it tracked MH370 to the Malacca strait

In a strange twist, Malaysia's military believes it tracked the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 by radar over the Strait of Malacca, far from where it last made contact with civilian air traffic control over the Gulf of Thailand.


A military source confirmed with Reuters that the Boeing 777-200ER with 239 on board changed course and made it to the other side of the Malay peninsula.

"It changed course after Kota Baru and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Straits," the military official, who has been briefed on investigations, told Reuters.


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

The airline said on Saturday that the flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew last had contact off the east coast Malaysian town of Kota Baru.

The Berita Harian newspaper was the first to report this development, quoting the Royal Air Force Malaysia (RMAF) chief General Tan Sri Rodzali Daud as saying they tracked the signal to Pulau Perak on the country's west coast.

"The last time the plane could be traced by an air control tower was near Pulau Perak, which is on the Straits of Malacca at 2.40am.

"After that, the signal from the plane was lost," he said.

Incidentally, Malaysia Airlines first statement on the missing jetliner on Saturday said that air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane at 2.40am but it was later corrected to 1.30am.

It was also reported that a Singaporean air traffic surveillance and control unit also picked up the signal that MH370 "made a turn back before it was reported to have climbed 1,000 metres from its original altitude at 10,000 metres”.

It was widely reported that the plane went missing at around 1.30am while flying above the South China Sea between the Malaysian east coast and the southern coast of Vietnam.

The plane reported went off radar and its last known location was 065515 North (latitude ) and 1033443 East (longitude).

This is also supported with police reports made by some east coast residents, who claimed that they have seen huge lights and a plane flying at some 1,000 metres above sea level off Kota Baru.

However, search and rescue (SAR) authorities have failed to find any sign of the plane in the waters of the South China Sea.

Indications that MH370 might have turned back have since led the SAR operations to be expanded to the Straits of Malacca and the Andaman Sea.

The operations to find the missing plane involve armed forces and authorities from Australia, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines and the United States, apart from Malaysia.

The SAR operations are in its fourth day. – March 11, 2014.

saip wrote:NY Times story is adding more confusion

Mr. Robertsson noted that since the plane had been fully fueled for a trip to Beijing, it could have traveled a great distance beyond its last reported position. “The aircraft could have continued another five or six hours out into the ocean,” he said. “It could have gone to India.”

Khalid Abu Bakar, the inspector general of the Malaysian police, said previous reports by Malaysian officials that five passengers had failed to board the flight and that their baggage had been removed were false. “Everybody that booked the flight boarded the plane,” he said.

NYTimes

Adding to the confusion, Tengku Sariffuddin Tengku Ahmad, spokesman for the prime minister’s office, said in a telephone interview that he had checked with senior military officials, who told him there was no evidence that the plane had recrossed the Malaysian peninsula, only that it may have attempted to turn back.

“As far as they know, except for the air turn-back, there is no new development,” Mr. Tengku Sariffuddin, adding that the reported remarks by the air force chief were “not true.”

saip wrote:Nachiket:
I was referring to the second para. So far it has been claimed the baggage of the passengers who did not board was off loaded. Now the official was claiming no one missed the fligt.

Aviation authorities in Kuala Lumpur have asked India to help locate the missing Malaysian airliner that is now believed to have strayed towards the Malacca Strait, and a military search mission is expected to be launched as early as Wednesday.

Indian maritime search aircraft are likely to be deployed to join the search after a request was received by the Chennai air traffic control authorities from their counterparts in Kuala Lumpur, sources said.

The request came after the latest findings by the Malaysian air force suggested flight MH370, a Boeing 777 plane, may have strayed off course during its journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and headed in the opposite direction to the Malacca Strait.

Reports quoting the Malaysian air chief said the last located position of the plane is now suspected to be in the western part of the busy strait that sees heavy shipping traffic. This location is close to the Andaman Sea that is dominated by the Indian Navy.

Sources said the Navy, that has assets near the location including several radars, ships and aircraft, has not been officially asked to take part in the search yet.

However, the Navy and IAF are expected to extend full cooperation from Wednesday morning to search for the missing plane whose passengers include five Indian nationals.

It is possible that the crash site was visited by Malaysia government officials earlier today Tuesday, including the defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein who cancelled his attendance at the scheduled daily media conference on the status of the search for the missing 777-200 and its 239 passengers and crew to participate in a search flight on the western side of the Malaysia Peninsula.

Investigators trying to solve the disappearance without trace of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner face an extremely rare challenge that could hinder their efforts: they lack the powers of a formal air safety investigation.

Four days after Flight MH370 went missing in mid-air with 239 people on board, no nation has stepped forward to initiate and lead an official probe, leaving a formal leadership vacuum that industry experts say appears unprecedented.

Malaysian officials are conducting their own informal investigations, in cooperation with other governments and foreign agencies, but they lack the legal powers that would come with a formal international probe under U.N.-sanctioned rules.

Those powers include the legal rights to take testimony from all witnesses and other parties, the right to have exclusive control over the release of information and the ability to centralise a vast amount of fragmentary evidence.

A senior official familiar with the preliminary Malaysian probe said Malaysian authorities could not yet convene a formal investigation due to a lack of evidence on where - namely, in which national jurisdiction - the Boeing 777-200ER jet crashed.

He said this was not hampering their work, that preliminary investigations had begun and that they were working with their neighbours, U.S. officials and the jet's maker, Boeing.

The Malaysians have begun collecting information from neighbouring countries without any problems, including air-traffic control communications and radar data, he said. "There have been no issues in getting that information."

But Southeast Asian waters are rife with territorial disputes, and any decision by Malaysia to unilaterally open a formal investigation under U.N. rules could be seen as a subtle assertion of sovereignty if the crash site turns out to be inside another country's territory.

Without a formal investigative process being convened quickly under rules set out by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a U.N. agency, there is a risk that crucial early detective work could be hampered, and potential clues and records lost, air accident experts said.

Witnesses such as cargo handlers, mechanics and company officials might be reluctant to speak to Malaysian investigators who were operating outside a formal ICAO-sanctioned probe which could offer them some protection from law suits, experts said.

"The sole objective of an accident investigation is to prevent future accidents and not to apportion blame or liability," said aviation lawyer Simon Phippard of international legal firm Bird & Bird.

"The international standards attempt to provide a degree of protection, for example from criminal prosecution, for individuals who give statements to the enquiry."

The lack of a formal investigation also means Malaysia does not have exclusive control over the release of information or the ability to centralize fragmentary evidence such as wreckage parts and witness accounts, effectively relying for cooperation on other parties' good-will, the experts said.

Under a formal investigation, a board is set up to designate parties to the investigation, including the plane maker, engine maker, unions, the airline and aviation safety regulatory agency of the country where the airline is based. Each of these parties typically has a representative on each of the working groups.

"If they haven't even decided what country is in charge of the investigation, then whatever is being done at this point is probably suffering from a severe lack of top-down control and coordination," said Ted Ellett, an aviation lawyer at Hogan Lovells in Washington and a former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief counsel.

U.S. investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), FAA and Boeing arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Monday and, according to the official familiar with the Malaysian probe, have been talking with the Malaysian investigators.

An NTSB-led team, including the FAA and Boeing officials, is "standing by for when the aircraft is located and they are in touch with Malaysian officials and have offered our assistance and support for anything they may need," NTSB spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said.

Boeing and FAA declined to comment.

LACKING FORMAL POWERS

A lack of clarity over the investigation already appears to be a source of tension between Malaysia and China, which had up to 154 citizens on the Beijing-bound flight and is pushing for a significant role in the investigation. China's Foreign Ministry urged Malaysia on Monday to step up its search efforts and start an investigation "as soon as possible and correctly".

The deputy head of China's civil aviation authority urged Malaysia to help a team of investigators it has said is ready to fly to the Southeast Asian nation to help with the probe.

Governments usually step forward quickly after an accident to claim leadership of the investigation, based primarily on the territory where the plane crashed.

That crucial information remains unknown in this case, as navies, military aircraft, coastguard and civilian ships from 10 nations scour a huge swathe of the sea from the South China Sea to the Strait of Malacca off Malaysia's western coast.

The official familiar with the preliminary Malaysian investigation said the Malaysian government could not launch a formal probe until the crash site had been found, and that it planned to work closely with U.S. authorities and Australia.

"If we wait, we will lose precious time. We know that. That is why our guys have been gathering all of the records and data," the official said.

Under U.N. rules, if a plane crashes in international waters, the country where the aircraft is registered - in this case, Malaysia - is in charge of the investigation.

So, for example, Air France quickly took control of the official investigation when its passenger jet crashed in waters far out into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, even though no wreckage had yet been found.

LEGAL PROTECTION

Vietnam would have jurisdiction if the plane crashed in its territory, but it does not have the resources to lead an investigation and would likely have to get outside help, two regional aviation officials said.

Under rules governed by ICAO, setting up an investigation grants "unhampered access" to all relevant materials including wreckage and data and "unrestricted control" over the evidence and public communications.

"Parties don't relish the idea of their officials or employees being queried or formally interviewed in these accident investigations," Ellett said.

"If there's any question about who has the authority to do it, the parties involved could say we're not going to participate until we know who's really in charge."

With lawsuits potentially swirling, the investigation is meant to encourage witnesses to speak freely about the incident in the interests of airline safety.

Investigators will typically "freeze" documents and records, especially the maintenance records of the aircraft, and acquire radar images and air traffic control recordings. Groups specialising in operations, maintenance and sometimes human factors are set up to sift through each scrap of evidence.

"I can't remember anything like this. Usually it is pretty clear who is responsible for the investigation and they get to work straight away," said one European air safety official, who asked not to be identified.

"It is very important to get all the factual information as soon as possible."