Flight MH370 - The Hunt for the Missing Malaysian Boeing 777 Jet

[bsteadman]

MH370 search: 'Object of interest' found on Western Australian coast

• "The more we look at it, the less excited we get," official says
• Source says it's torn and misshapen
• Information from the flight data recorders will be key
• Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing 47 days ago

CNN
Ed Payne
4/23/2014

Excerpt:

(CNN) -- Australian officials say an "object of interest" in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane has been found, but Malaysia authorities said it was too early to tell if it is a real lead.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau Chief Commissioner Martin Dolan described the object as appearing to be sheet metal with rivets, and said it was recovered on the coast of Western Australia.

"It's sufficiently interesting for us to take a look at the photographs," he said. "We take all leads seriously."

At a news conference Wednesday, Malaysia's acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said his country has not received any photos from Australia, and that so far, all of the objects found in the search have not been related to the missing plane.

Even the Australians expressed caution.

"The more we look at it, the less excited we get," Dolan said.

The object was picked up near Augusta, some 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Perth, a source with the Australian Defence Force told CNN.

The source also described the object as having rivets on one side with what appears to be a fiberglass coating.

When asked about the shape and scale of the object, the source described it as "kind of rectangular," but torn and misshapen.

The source said it was too difficult to estimate the size because they had only seen one photo with no clear scale.

The object of interest is in the custody of a police agency in Western Australia. Authorities there wouldn't comment further because it's a federal investigation.

A determined effort

The hunt for the Flight 370 is a determined effort, but there have been few headlines so far.

A high-tech underwater drone was completing its 10th mission on Wednesday, without finding any sign of the Boeing 777 jetliner.

The Bluefin-21 has scanned about 80% of the intended territory.

With 20% of the search area left to be explored by the Bluefin-21, the search strategy remains the same, Hishammuddin said Wednesday.

"We will continue with the search operation until we fully cover the search area," he said.

Stormy weather postponed the air search for a second day on Wednesday. The ships plying the waters off the coast of Australia kept their vigil.
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View the complete article, including video, at:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/23/world/...irlines-plane/

[bsteadman1]

Australia transport bureau says beach debris not from MH370

Reuters / US Edition
Reporting by Sonali Paul; Editing by Chris Reese and Richard Pullin
4/23/2014

MELBOURNE

Excerpt:

(Reuters) - Debris picked up on a beach in Western Australia this week is unlikely to have come from the Malaysian Airlines jet that vanished nearly seven weeks ago, Australia's transport bureau said on Thursday.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has assessed the material that washed up on the coast 10 km (six miles) east of the town of Augusta, near the southwestern tip of Australia, the bureau's spokesman said.

"It's considered highly unlikely to be from MH370," spokesman Tony Simes said.

ATSB commissioner Martin Dolan earlier told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio that the bureau had examined detailed photographs of the debris and was satisfied it was not a lead in the hunt for the plane.

"We're not seeing anything in this that would lead us to believe that it is from a Boeing aircraft," he told ABC Radio.

Authorities have given no details on the material, which was the first discovery of suspected debris in weeks and the first since the detection of what were believed to be signals from the plane's black box flight recorder on April 4.

Seabed scans of a 10 km zone off the west coast of Australia have failed to turn up any wreckage, but Malaysia and Australia have vowed to plough on with the search for the plane that went missing on March 8 with 239 people on board.

The U.S. navy drone that has been scouring the seabed is due to end its first full mission in the southern Indian Ocean within days.

Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the search authorities would need to "regroup and restrategize" if nothing was found in the current search zone, but said the search would "always continue".
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View the complete article, including photo, at:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A3M29S20140423

[bsteadman]

Military radar DID track an unidentified aircraft at the time MH370 disappeared, Malaysian PM reveals six weeks after the search began

• Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak said the military's radar tracked what is believed to have been the Malaysian Airlines plane
• It was detected after it had turned back while on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8
• Najib Razak said preliminary findings would soon be made public
• But he declined to say explicitly if the doomed jet was lost for good
• 'I need to take into account the feelings of the next of kin', he told CNN
• Yesterday it emerged material on Australian beach was not from MH370
• Malaysia Airlines flight vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board

The Daily Mail / Mail Online
Dan Bloom and Richard Shears
4/24/2014

Excerpt:

Military radar in Malaysia did track an unidentified aircraft as it flew across the country's airspace after MH370 lost contact with ground control, it was revealed today.

Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak said the military's radar tracked what is believed to have been the Malaysian Airlines plane after it had turned back while on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.

'The military radar, the primary radar, has some capability,' Mr Najib said.

'It tracked an aircraft which did a turn back but they were not sure, exactly sure, whether it was MH370.

'What they were sure of was that the aircraft was not deemed to be hostile.'

Mr Najib told CNN he did not believe it when he first heard about the critical satellite data on which the current search in the Indian Ocean is based on.

'To be honest, I found it hard to believe,' said the Prime Minister.

'It's a bizarre scenario which none of us could have contemplated so that's why when I met the team...of foremost experts in aviation industry I asked them again and again "are you sure?"'

'And their answer to me was we are as sure as we can possibly be.'

Earlier reports had suggested military radar had not picked up any definite radar information, leading to speculation that the Boeing 777 had been flown deliberately low and close to the coastline to avoid radar.

CNN said that when Mr Najib was asked if he believed the plane was now lost, he replied: 'On the balance of the evidence it would be hard to imagine otherwise.'

The Prime Minister also revealed that the government's preliminary report into the disappearance of the aircraft, which had 239 passengers and crew, would be released next week.

Malaysia's preliminary report into the disappearance of flight MH370 will be released next week, the country's Prime Minister has said.

Najib Razak made the surprise announcement as his government continued to be beseiged by angry families, some of whom refuse to accept the plane was destroyed unless they have hard evidence.

The report has already been sent to the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization but not made public.

Mr Razak told CNN: 'I have directed an internal investigation team of experts to look at the report, and there is a likelihood that next week we could release the report.'

He later confirmed it will be released next week, CNN reported.
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View the complete article, including photos, at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...destroyed.html

[bsteadman]

Indian Ocean undersea hunt for MH370 set to be extended

Reuters
Morag MacKinnon
4/26/2014

PERTH

Excerpt:

(Reuters) - The undersea search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is to be extended beyond the small area identified as its most likely resting place as the quest for any sign of the missing plane enters its 50th day on Saturday.

The submarine drone Bluefin 21 has so far searched about 95 percent of a 10 square km (6.2 square mile) area of the Indian Ocean seabed, pinpointed after the detection of acoustic pings believed to be from the plane's black box flight recorders.

Bluefin 21 had to abort the search on Friday and resurface due to a software malfunction. Technicians fixed the drone overnight and its 14th, 16 hour trip to the sea floor at depths of more than 4.5 km (2.8 miles) was underway on Saturday.

"If no contacts of interest are made, Bluefin-21 will continue to examine the areas adjacent to the 10km radius," Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) in charge of the search said in a statement.

Flight MH370 disappeared without a trace on March 8 flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

The search for MH370 is the longest and most expensive in aviation history, with ships and aircraft from some two dozen nations taking part. The air and sea search continued on Saturday with up to 8 military aircraft and 11 ships.

A U.S. defense official told Reuters on Friday that the sea search is likely to drag on for years as it enters the much more difficult phase of scouring broader areas of the ocean near where the plane is believed to have crashed.

Speaking under condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the search effort, the official said Malaysia would have to decide how to proceed with the search, including whether to bring in more underwater drones.

The Australian and Malaysian governments are under pressure to show what lengths they are prepared to go to in order to give closure to the grieving families of those on board flight MH370.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A3P04Q20140426

[bsteadman1]

MH370 search extended as no trace of jet found in target area

US navy's robotic submarine scours Indian Ocean seabed off Western Australia for missing aircraft's black box

The Guardian
Associated Press in Canberra
4/27/2014

Excerpts:

A robotic submarine scanning the floor of the Indian Ocean off Western Australia for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet is to begin searching outside the original designated area, where it has failed to find any trace of flight MH370.

The US navy's Bluefin 21 has been creating a three-dimensional sonar map of the ocean floor for more than two weeks, near to where signals that are consistent with an aeroplane’s black box were heard on 8 April.
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Johnston said the next phase was likely to involve more powerful side-scan sonar equipment.

A daily air search for debris north-west of Perth was suspended on Sunday because of bad weather, the search centre said.

View the complete article, including photo, at:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...in-target-area

[bsteadman1]

MH370: New phase to include private contractors, may cost $60 million

CNN
Euan McKirdy
4/28/2014

Excerpt:

Hong Kong (CNN) -- The next phase in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will be a more intense underwater search that will use private contractors, take months and cost about $56 million, officials said Monday.

"I regret to say that thus far none of our efforts in the air, on the surface or under sea, have found any wreckage," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Monday.

Because it's "highly unlikely" that any debris will be found on the ocean surface, authorities will be suspending aerial searches. By now, most of the debris will have become waterlogged and will have sunk, he said.

Crews will now conduct a thorough search of the ocean floor over a much larger area -- 60,000 square kilometers. The process could take at least six to eight months.

"The aircraft plainly cannot disappear. It must be somewhere," Abbott said. "We do not want this crippling cloud of uncertainty to hang over this family and the wider traveling public."

Demanding answers

It wasn't immediately known how family members of the missing passengers greeted Monday's news.

Furious with Malaysian officials, whom they fault for doing a poor job communicating, many family members plan to take their concerns to Boeing when the aircraft giant holds its annual shareholders meeting in Chicago on Monday morning.

MH370 is a Boeing 777, disappeared March 8 as it flew from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. It was carrying 239 people.

"The briefings are a joke," said Sarah Bajc, whose partner, Philip Wood, was a passenger on the plane. "The patience level of the families group is just gone."

"Boeing is a publicly traded company in the United States, and that puts them in a position of a little bit more fiduciary responsibility," she said.

Malaysian authorities need to do a better job of communicating with the families and answering their questions during briefings, she said, rather than treating passengers' loved ones "as if we are the enemy, as opposed to an interested party in helping to solve this mystery."

Shift in focus

For 52 days, an international coalition has been searching for the plane, focusing its effort in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is believed to have gone down.

Bluefin-21, a submersible on contract to the U.S. Navy, had been scouring the ocean floor for traces of the plane.

But despite multiple missions searching 400 square kilometers (154.44 square miles), it has found no evidence of the missing aircraft's data recorders.

Bluefin will continue to operate. But it will now be joined by sonar devices towed by ships.

The new equipment will be able to perform broad sweeps and provide feedback from the ocean floor. The Bluefin had to be brought up after each mission to have its data downloaded.

The Australian government will continue to work with Malaysian and Chinese authorities. But "one or more" private companies will be contracted to assist, Abbot said.

Further technology, including a number of other underwater vehicles both private and public, could also be pressed into service.

Some of them can go miles deeper than the Bluefin and remain underwater for weeks at a time.
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View the complete article, including video, at:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/28/world/...irlines-plane/

[bsteadman1]

Malaysia releases first report on MH370; company defends wreckage claim

CNN
Holly Yan and Tom Watkins
Updated 5/1/2014

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Malaysia Airlines closing relatives' support centers, urging relatives to return home
• NEW: Malaysia releases its preliminary Flight 370 report
• GeoResonance talks about its find but won't give specifics on technology
• Bangladesh has sent two ships to the Bay of Bengal to look into the claim

(CNN) -- [Breaking news update, posted at 8:22 a.m. ET]

Malaysia has released to the public its preliminary report on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The report says officials apparently didn't notice for 17 minutes that the plane had gone off radar on March 8 -- and didn't activate an official rescue operation for four hours.

[Earlier version, posted at 7:21 a.m ET]

As the world waits to see Malaysia's first report on Flight 370, the private company that says it may have found plane wreckage defended its claim.

Fifty-four days have passed since the plane carrying 239 people disappeared. After intense criticism from relatives of passengers, Malaysian officials are expected to publicize their preliminary report Thursday.

Bracing for the report

Malaysia has already submitted its preliminary report to the International Civil Aviation Organization, as required. Officials came under heavy criticism last week for not making it available to relatives of passengers.

While authorities are not required to make a preliminary report public, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak gave in.

On Thursday, throngs of police guarded the Lido Hotel in Beijing ahead of the report's release. More than 100 passengers on the plane are Chinese, and relatives have been receiving updates from Malaysia Airlines officials at the hotel.

Sometimes, the encounters were marked with screams and sobs.

Relatives who have been holding out hope that their loved ones survived have left messages on a conference room board.

"Little Ling, why don't you call home?" one said.

"We're waiting for you to come home for dinner."

Airline urging relatives to return home, paying compensation

Ahead of the report's public release, the airline told relatives it would soon close its support centers at Lido Hotel and "around the world," urging them to return to their own homes to receive updates by phone and other means.

The airline, which has been hosting the families at hotels for weeks, said the Lido center would close Friday, and all others by May 7.

"Instead of staying in hotels, the families of MH370 are advised to receive information updates on the progress of the search and investigation and other support by Malaysia Airlines within the comfort of their own homes, with the support and care of their families and friends," the airline said in a news release.

The airline said it would open "family support centers" in Beijing and Malaysia's capital; it wasn't immediately clear what those centers would do.

Told of the pending closures at a meeting at Lido Hotel on Thursday, relatives initially met the news calmly.

The airline also said Thursday it would begin making advance compensation to the MH370 passengers' next-of-kin, to help with their immediate economic needs.

Under an international treaty known as the Montreal Convention, the airline must pay relatives of each deceased passenger an initial sum of around $150,000 to $175,000. Relatives of victims can also sue for further damages.

The airline didn't say how much of an advance the families would receive.

Company: Our claims are valid

GeoResonance, the company that says it found what appears to be airplane wreckage in the Bay of Bengal, defended its claim, even though it wouldn't detail the technology it used.

GeoResonance said it used spectral analysis from satellite and plane images to reach their conclusion about the Bay of Bengal site.

The company said it conducted "large scale remote sensing" and detected the presence of aluminum, titanium and copper. Scientists went back to test for other elements that the company says make up a commercial jet.

GeoResonance has faced questions about how it could have found wreckage deep underwater, thousands of miles from the official search area.

"What we say to those people is that that is not about technology, that is about the fact that an object or a combination of objects which produce exactly the same signal as materials used in a plane are detected," GeoResonance Managing Director Pavel Kursa told CNN's Anna Coren.

The company said its search was self-funded and it wants to keep intellectual property private.

"Our technology comprises of 20 different technologies, and a lot of it is very valuable intellectual property," director David Pope said. "And we are not in the business of just giving out intellectual property for nothing."

Analyst: Experts don't support claim

The company said its analysis was done by a team of its scientists in Europe. But GeoResonance declined to name the scientists or the country they worked in and declined to give a reason.

CNN aviation expert Miles O'Brien said GeoResonance's claims are not supported by experts.
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View the complete article, including video, at:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/01/world/...irlines-plane/

[InspectorSmith]

Video title: 15 months: 24 plane crashes

Source: CNN

Date: March 25, 2015

http://www.cnn.com/video/api/embed.h...undup-orig.cnn

[bsteadman]

Mysterious plane wreckage sparks MH370 speculation

Yahoo News
By AFP
7/29/2015

Excerpts:

A mysterious piece of plane debris washed up on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion on Wednesday, prompting some speculation it could be part of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The two-metre-long piece of wreckage, which seemed to be part of a wing, was found by people cleaning up a beach.
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Xavier Tytelman, an expert in aviation security, said it could not be ruled out that the wreckage belonged to MH370, which vanished without trace in March last year.
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Tytelman noted that local media photos showed "incredible similarities between a #B777 flaperon and the debris found," refering to a Boeing 777 -- the type of plane that disappeared.

He also noted a reference on the wreckage: BB670.

"This code is not a plane's registration number, nor serial number. However... it's clear that this reference would allow a quick identification. In a few days, we will have a definitive answer," Tytelman said.
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View the complete article, including image, at:

https://en-maktoob.news.yahoo.com/my...--finance.html

[bsteadman]

French and Malaysian officials plan next stage of MH370 investigation

The Telegraph
Updated to 8/3/2015

Meeting in Paris comes as strong winds across the French isle of Reunion – where a Boeing 777 wing fragment washed up last week – spark anticipation of further wreckage
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View the complete article, including video and images, at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...asia/malaysia/

[bsteadman]

An Oceanographer Explains How Plane Debris Could Solve The Mystery Of MH370

"The answers are out there. We just need to ask the right questions."

The Huffington Post
Charlotte Alfred, World Reporter, The Huffington Post
8/8/2015

Excerpt:

Every week, The WorldPost asks an expert to shed light on a topic driving headlines around the world. Today, we speak with David Gallo about the latest developments in the search for flight MH370.

The recent discovery of plane debris in the Indian Ocean has raised hopes of finally solving the mystery of the Malaysia Airlines plane that vanished last year.

Malaysia said on Wednesday that the wing piece, called a flaperon, belonged to flight MH370, which went missing with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. While French investigators were more cautious in providing a definitive link, they concur that the debris is a flaperon from a Boeing 777, and flight MH370 is the only plane of that type that is missing.

On Friday, France expanded its search for more debris around the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, where the flaperon was found. Meanwhile, experts continue to scrutinize the wing part for any clues on what happened to plane.

To better understand what these developments could reveal about the missing plane, The WorldPost spoke to David Gallo, director of special projects at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who helped French authorities locate the wreckage of Air France flight 447 in 2011.

How difficult is it to trace back the path of the debris and find where the plane crashed?

It is extremely difficult. It would have been dispersed by winds and the ocean currents for 500-odd days. I don't think it will help refine the present search area in the short term.

But if the current underwater search doesn't find anything, and this remains the only piece of tangible evidence in 16 months of an international investigation -- and into possibly a criminal act -- it will become extremely important.

What will experts be looking for when they examine this object?

Firstly, how it sits in the water. Judging by the barnacles, which grow in sunlight, it looks like it was floating vertically, long side up. This is important because if it sticks above the water it will have been pushed by the wind, and if it was underwater it will have been pushed by the currents -- and these are often opposite directions.

Then, they will look at what the currents and winds were doing each day. It is very hard to backtrack all the way to the date it was lost. It's like finding a balloon on the East Coast of the U.S. and knowing it started on the West Coast -- could you backtrack and find its starting point? That's almost impossible to do. They will have to go back in time and see if the data exists and how detailed it is.

The barnacles could provide some clues -- their size could suggest the minimum length of time the object has been in the water. If they're a certain species of barnacle this could locate the debris in a smaller possible area. Often animals build their shells out of sea water, and the chemicals in them may be different in different areas.

Pollen is also a wonderful indicator of location. Anyone with a car knows that once pollen gets on your windscreen it can survive anything. Pollen, for example from off the Australian coast, could provide more information on the location.

The ocean is a great record keeper. The ocean sediment, rocks, coral, sea animals, ice caps -- they are all continuously recording the earth's history, and this is human history. We're right at the beginning of understanding what ocean forensics might do. The answers are out there. We just need to ask the right questions.

What clues might the debris offer about what happened to the plane?

The investigators will also look at the object itself -- whether it's dented, what the damage is like, and if it has nuts and bolts, whether they are skewed. It appears that the leading piece is in good shape while the tail is crumpled, and this could be due to fluttering in the air. This is important because it might tell you something about how this part came off the plane: whether it came off in the water or in the air, and if it came off in the air, whether it was from an explosion or a mechanical issue.

The investigators will go down to the grains of the metal and examine stresses and strains. This is what we did with Air France 477 and it provided compelling evidence that the plane landed on its belly, tail first -- that it came almost straight down and hit the ocean.

If their analysis shows the piece came off because of a sharp descent this will alter the current analysis that the plane was gliding for a certain time and distance and ran out of fuel. If it came off at supersonic speed, they'll have to shift the search area north.

From my experience I can promise that the French investigators will be completely thorough -- from the largest pieces to the individual grains of metal, they will be looking for any clues they can get.
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View the complete article, including images, at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0d9b743dc2cf4

[bsteadman]

Investigators: Debris came from doomed Flight 370

USA Today
Jane Onyanga-Omara
9/15/2016

Excerpt:

A Boeing 777 wing flap found off the coast of Tanzania in east Africa came from the doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, investigators confirmed Thursday.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said the large piece of debris found on Pemba island on June 20 2016, did come from the plane that disappeared more than two years ago. Part numbers and the January 2002 manufacture date helped identify it.
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View the complete article, including video and images, at:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/w...-370/90399338/

[InspectorSmith]

MH370 flight documents 'show extra fuel and oxygen were added at the last minute - proving pilot intended to change route and crash the jet'

Daily Mail
By JAMES REYNOLDS and CHRIS JEWERS
PUBLISHED: 07:58 EDT, 8 March 2024 | UPDATED: 15:42 EDT, 8 March 2024

Excerpt:

Explosive documents have revealed last-minute changes made to the doomed MH370 flight that vanished ten years ago today, with an expert claiming the evidence shows the captain deliberately crashed in a shocking mass murder-suicide.

The plane's flight plan shows an extra 3,000kg fuel was added to the plane before takeoff, along with extra - unrequired - oxygen supplied only to the cockpit.

Speaking to The Sun, Boeing 777 pilot Simon Hardy said the new details could be proof MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah planned the disappearance that continues to baffle experts.

He told the outlet: 'It's an incredible coincidence that just before this aircraft disappears forever, one of the last things that was done as the engineer says nil noted [no oxygen added], then someone else gets on onboard and says it's a bit low.

'Well it's not really low at all,' he added. 'It's a strange coincidence that the last engineering task that was done before it headed off to oblivion was topping up crew oxygen which is only for the cockpit, not for the cabin crew.'

The Boeing 777 aircraft vanished from radar while en route from Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Satellite data showed the plane deviated from its flight path to head over the southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.

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Read entire article at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...crash-jet.html