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Thursday 20 March 2014

Flight MH370: two satellite objects spotted in southern Indian Ocean

A satellite image shows possible debris from the missing Malaysian plane

Australia's prime minister has announced that two objects possibly related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight have been spotted on satellite imagery and an air force aircraft had been diverted to the area to try to locate them.

The Orion aircraft was expected to arrive in the area oon Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Tony Abott told Parliament in Canberra. Three additional aircraft are expected to follow for a more intensive search, he said.

^{Royal Australian Air Force pilot, Flight Lieutenant Russell Adams from
the tenth Squadron, piolts his AP-3C Orion over the Southern Indian Ocean}

"New and credible information has come to light in relation to the search ... in the south Indian Ocean," he said. "The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search."

"Following specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified," he said.

Mr Abbott said he had already spoken with his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak and cautioned that the objects had yet to be identified.

"The task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult and it may turn out they are not related to the search for MH370," he said.

^{An Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) graphic shows the search
areas for the Malaysia Airlines (AP)}

No confirmed wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been found since it vanished from air traffic control screens off Malaysia's east coast early on March 8, less than an hour after taking off.

The search for the plane was yesterday narrowed down to an area in the southern Indian Ocean off the coast of west Australia.

^{Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott tells parliament in Canberra that
satellite imagery has found two objects possibly related to the search for
missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370}

Investigators believe that someone with detailed knowledge of both the Boeing 777-200ER and commercial aviation navigation switched off the plane's communications systems before diverting it thousands of miles off its scheduled course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Exhaustive background checks of the passengers and crew aboard have not yielded anything that might explain why.

Relatives of passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane are gathered at a television viewing room in Beijing, China (AFP/GETTY)

The FBI is helping Malaysian authorities analyse data from a flight simulator belonging to the captain of the missing plane, after initial examination showed some data logs had been deleted early last month.

- The Telegraph

Expert: Missing plane more likely found in southern corridor (Video)

An aviation expert believes there's a high possibility that the missing plane could be found in the southern search corridor. But he added, it’s unlikely that the plane would have found a runway to safely land on.

"Plane unlikely to avoid radar detection in Northern corridor...also zero possibility for the plane to land in a temporary airport, technically it works, but it’s very hard, requires geological conditions, and people on board will suffer heavy injuries." Armartya De, Sr. Aviation Consultant of Frost & Sullivan, said.

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Tuesday 18 March 2014

If MH370 was a hijack bid, it was a terrorism motivated; China deploys 21 satellites and 11 ships search aid

It is increasingly common for terrorist groups not to claim responsibility for their actions, a leading expert says, amid heightened speculation one or both of the pilots may have been involved in diverting Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Greg Barton, the international director of the global terrorism research centre at Monash University, said there were several reasons a terrorist group might remain silent about hijacking the flight.

''Perhaps this operation was only partially successful, and that the plan had been to turn back and crash into the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur,'' Professor Barton said. ''Perhaps the pilots foiled the plan, we will never know.

''But that would be a motive for a group not to claim it, as they may want to try it again,'' he said.
Conjecture over pilot involvement in the plane's disappearance was fuelled on Sunday by a new timeline suggesting the flight's signalling system was disabled before a pilot spoke to air traffic control without mentioning any trouble.

But whether it was an act of terrorism remains a question that may not be answered unless the black box flight recorders are found.

Professor Barton cited the 1988 Lockerbie disaster, in which Pan Am flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb over a Scottish town, killing 270 people, as an example of an attack no one admitted ordering.

''It also took quite a while for al-Qaeda to claim responsibility for 9/11,'' Professor Barton said. ''And in the November 2008 attacks at several Mumbai hotels, Lashkar- e- Taiba was blamed but never actually claimed it,'' he said.

Clive Williams, a visiting professor at the Australian National University's centre for military and security law and an adjunct professor at Macquarie University's centre for policing, intelligence and counter terrorism said while terrorism could not be ruled out, it seemed less likely than other possibilities.

''Terrorism is by definition politically motivated with a strategic outcome in mind. If terrorism was the motivation you would expect that the perpetrators would have already used the plane as a weapon against a possible target, such as Mumbai or Colombo, would have made political demands, or would have tried to put pressure on a target government.''

Since 2000 there have been only 18 hijacks or attempted hijacks of large passenger aircraft. Of these, seven were by passengers wanting to get to a destination to seek asylum, one was criminally motivated to steal the cargo, six were by mentally ill persons, and four were politically motivated (counting September 11 as one incident), Professor Williams said.

By Anne Davies The Sydney Morning Herald

11 Chinese ships team up in Singapore for search mission

It has been 11 days since the Malaysian flight MH370 went missing. 239 passengers were on board the ...

China deploys 21 satellites to assist hunt for MH370

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Sunday 16 March 2014

MH370 flight confirms: “deliberate acts”, suggest hijacking and terrorism planning, crew under scrutiny

Malaysian PM confirms that deliberate acts were involved in the plane’s disappearance

Any terrorist seizure of the plane ‘would have required one hell of a piece of planning

Flight MH370 weighs 250 tonnes, spans more than 60 metres and has been hunted by search teams from more than a dozen countries, but after more than a week the search for missing Malaysian Airlines jet is becoming vastly bigger. And vastly more complicated, amid suggestions of a “deliberate act” to take it off course.

The expansion came after leaked reports from US officials, suggestions of terrorism and the revelation from Malaysia's Prime Minister that investigators believed new satellite data showed “deliberate action by someone on the plane” had flown the aircraft and it's 239 passengers and crew of course for up to seven hours.

Speaking at a press conference in the Malaysian capital, Najib Razak said: “Clearly, the search for MH370 has entered a new phase. Over the last seven days, we have followed every lead and looked into every possibility… we hope this new information brings us one step closer to finding the plane.”

He added that, based on the data, investigators were now pursuing the belief that the plane's last location was along one of two possible corridors or arcs - a northern route stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, or a southern one stretching from Indonesia to the vast emptiness of the Indian ocean.

Click here for enlarged view of graphic

And as police raided homes of the pilot and co-pilot, the Prime Minister said that, while investigators were still exploring “all possibilities”, attention was increasingly being focused on the possible role of the passengers or crew of the plane

This weekend Malaysian officials, along with experts from the US National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration, and Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch, continue to refine the new data, which originated from signals sent by the plane via the British company Inmarsat's satellite network over the Indian Ocean. The Independent on Sunday understands that these signals came from a “failsafe” function of an Inmarsat Swift 64 communications system fitted to the ill-fated aircraft.

The announcement by Mr Najib was the most definitive suggestion that investigators were exploring a possible hijacking or terrorism.

Aviation consultant Chris Yates said: “It's increasingly clear that the hand of some form of terrorism is at play here, whether from a group or one skilled individual. The levels of specialist aviation knowledge on display here cause me to cast my mind back to 9/11 when hijackers had acquired a level of technical and flight training.”

David Gleave, a former air crash investigator, added that any terrorist seizure of the plane “would have required one hell of a piece of planning”.

The home of Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, the first officer on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, about 15 miles west of Kuala Lumpur. Credit Lai Seng Sin/Associated Press

Police drove to the residential compound in Kuala Lumpur where the missing plane's pilot Fariq Abdul Hami lives, according a guard and local reporters

Phil Giles, a former air safety investigator who worked on the Lockerbie Bombing, said: “Taking over a Boeing 777 without experience or skill is akin to some Somalian bloke in a tiny boat trying to take over a super tanker and captain it. Unless the hijacker has a fair amount of technical and aviation knowledge he would have to rely on putting a gun to the pilot's head.”

In Malaysia this new information meant an end to the search in the South China Sea and a renewed focus on the Indian Ocean. At the same time officials were continuing to get radar data and other relevant information from the countries whose air space the two routes being examined pass through. The northern corridor would trace a busy route, passing northern Thailand and Burma and entering into China on the way towards central Asia.

The southern route, meanwhile, would pass over Indonesia and then the open waters of the southern Indian Ocean. The New York Times reported that officials believed the southern corridor to be the most likely to have been taken by the plane. “The US Navy would not be heading toward Kazakhstan,” a person briefed on the investigation told the paper.

Other have suggested the complexity of the search and sensitivity of military radar and satellite information may have been a cause of delay, pointing to the fact that American newspapers have been briefed by the Pentagon and that the destroyer USS Kidd and a P-8 Poseidon search plane moved into the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal prior the Malaysian government's announcement on Saturday.

Tony Cable, an investigator who worked for the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch for 32 years, said: “The sensitivity of some of the military radar and satellite information here is clearly posing a problem for the investigation…. I suspect there is an awful lot more information that is known that is not being released.”

The last confirmed location of MH370 on civilian radar off Malaysia was at 1.31am last Saturday, about 40 minutes after it took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport. At that point it was heading north-east across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand on what should have been a six-hour flight to Beijing.

After that it seemed the plane disappeared from civilian radar but showed up - as a blip - on radar used by the Malaysian military. The latest revelation shows that the Boeing 777 continued to leave the faintest traces, in a series of “pings” from its Inmarsat Swift 64 system.

This 20-year-old communications is device fitted to 90 per cent of the world's wide body jet aircraft and in the case of MH370 enhanced the operation of the aircraft's flight transponder and Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), both of which were deliberately deactivated early in the flight.

The IoS understands that the disabling of the ACARS system enabled a failsafe “ping” mode in the Swift 64 system, which has been compared to an “I'm here” announcement. The last of these messages came at 8.11am local time last Saturday, more than seven-and-a-half hours after it took off.

When fully operational Flight MH370's ACARS and Swift 64 only offer very basic altitude and location information and The IoS understands the aircraft wasn't fitted with more sophisticated equipment on sale, which would have allowed investigators to gain a full GPS fix.

Communication between the aircraft and satellites is only possible when the plane is airborne and the final transmission however would have come towards the very end of flight MH370's endurance - officials in Kuala Lumpur said the plane was carrying sufficient fuel for 8 hours.

However through analysis of the position and view of the receiving geostationary Inmarsat satellite over the Indian Ocean has allowed officials to plot a “rough calculation” of the two “arcs” the plane may have taken, which has led to increased search emphasis on the Indian Ocean and wild speculation the aircraft may have travelled as far as Kazakhstan.

The revelations were reportedly welcomed by relatives of the passengers in China, who believe the development keeps alive the hope they may somehow be reunited with their loved ones. However the government in Beijing - which has 153 citizens on board the flight - urged Malaysia to continue providing it with “thorough and exact information” on the search, state news agency Xinhua said.

- The Independence

Passengers and Crew of Missing Plane Scrutinized for Aviation Skills - Missing MH370: Crew and passengers under scrutiny

Heavily guarded: Security personnel keeping a strict watch over the gated community in Laman Seri where Capt Zaharie resides. - Bernama

PETALING JAYA: As investigators search for clues about the person who turned off MH370’s communications system, police are looking into the crew and passengers again, this time paying close attention to those with aviation expertise.

Intelligence sources said investigations would include political and religious leanings, as well as travel patterns of those on board.

Minute details, such as hobbies and behavioural patterns, will also be put under the microscope as the investigations now focused on hijack.

Yesterday afternoon, a group of policemen conducted a search at Capt Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s house in Shah Alam.

Three policemen in an MPV were seen at the gated community in Section 13 at around 2.40pm. They left at 4.45pm.

It was unclear if they took away a flight simulator from the house.

Malaysia Airlines employees said a few pilots did have flight simulators in their homes but claimed that Capt Zaharie’s was one of the most impressive sets.

Capt Zaharie had previously posted on German online forum X-Sim.de that he had built a flight simulator himself.

“About a month ago I finished assembly of FSX and FS9 with 6 monitors,” read his message, which was signed off as Capt Zaharie Ahmad Shah Boeing 777 Malaysia Airlines in November 2012.

Checks revealed that FSX and FS9 are over-the-counter flight simulator games made by Microsoft. These can easily be bought online.

According to some family friends, Capt Zaharie’s family had moved out a few days ago after MH370 went missing.

According to MAS employees, a driver had told them that Capt Zaharie kept to himself while being driven to the KLIA for the flight.

He had studied aviation at the Philippine Airlines Aviation School in Pasay City in 1980.

He joined Malaysia Airlines a year later.

The Penangite became a captain in the early 1990s and has 18,360 flying hours under his belt.

His colleagues described him as a jovial and professional “aviation geek” who collected remote-controlled miniature aircraft, light twin engine helicopters and amphibious aircraft.

Outside of aviation, he runs a YouTube channel dedicated to DIY projects, where he teaches viewers how to fix home appliances like air-conditioners.

The same group of policemen also conducted a search at MH370 co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid’s house a few hours after searching Capt Zaharie’s house.

Police arrived at Fariq’s house at Section 7 here around 8.05pm and left about an hour later.
It was unclear if anything was taken from the house.

- The Star/Asia News Network

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Thursday 13 March 2014

Chinese satellite images show possible MH370 floating objects

<<Video: Chinese officials have released satellite images of possible crash site of the missing images

Chinese officials have released satellite images of possible crash site of the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner. The State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence announced the discovery on Wednesday, saying pictures obtained on Sunday showed three suspected floating objects. They measured 13 by 18 meters, 14 by 19 meters and 24 by 22 meters.

The objects were observed in waters between Malaysia and Vietnam. All previous reports of debris since Flight MH-370 disappeared have proved to be unrelated to the plane. Some 10 Chinese satellites have been used to help the search and rescue operation.

Criticism mounts of 'chaotic' search for plane

A well-known Malaysian ëbomohí (shaman), Ibrahim Mat Zin offering to locate the missing plane using a spiritual method and prayers, arrives in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday. Malaysia faced a storm of criticism over contradictions and information gaps in the hunt for a missing airliner. Photo: AFP

China urged Malaysia on Wednesday to release "authoritative and detailed" information about the missing Malaysian plane through a unified channel in a timely manner, amid criticism of Malaysia for their confused reaction.

Expressing appreciation for Malaysia's sincere attitude and active efforts, Guo Shaochun, leader of the Chinese government joint work team, urged Malaysia to listen seriously and respond quickly to the reasonable appeals of the missing passengers' relatives.

"China asks for a unified channel on the Malaysian side to release authoritative and detailed information on the issue in a timely manner," said Guo at a meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.

Malaysian air force Chief General Rodzali Daud Wednesday denied a local media report that quoted him as saying that the missing MH370 was last detected at 2:40 am Saturday by the air force in the vicinity of Pulau Perak in the Strait of Malacca before the signal disappeared.

Rodzali said that the radar tracking was at 2:15 am and to the northwest of Penang Island on Malaysia's west coast, adding that it was an "unidentified object."

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang also said Wednesday that information about the missing plane was "chaotic."

He urged Malaysia to take primary responsibility in communication and coordination in the joint search efforts, and "give the passengers' relatives and the international community an answer as soon as possible."

The successful boarding of two Iranian citizens using stolen passports and the released photos showing them photoshopped on to the same lower body drew criticism of the Malaysian government.

"It has badly damaged its national image. Rumors could easily grow under such circumstances, as could fear. This may turn out to be a fiasco for Malaysia in handling the crisis at the present stage," Steven Dong, a professor from the Communication University of China in Beijing, told the Global Times. He added that the country's aviation management system was also flawed, with passengers reportedly allowed into the cockpit.

Uncertainty has allegedly halted Vietnam's search mission, which was then denied by Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese army. The Vietnam Ministry of Transport on Wednesday also criticized the slack response of Malaysia.

Malaysia said 42 ships and 39 aircraft have been deployed so far in the search, with India, Japan and Brunei joining the multinational hunt for the missing plane.

China's third military aircraft arrived in the Gulf of Thailand on Wednesday to join its eight vessels in the black box signal probe, with more ships expected.

One of China's satellites detected objects suspected to be floating materials, Chinese authorities said.

Meanwhile, a badly damaged raft was found by local fishermen near the west coast of Malaysia and villagers on the east side of the country reported to police they heard a loud noise that sounded like the fan of a jet engine around 1:20 am on Saturday, according to local media.

Zhuang Guotu, dean of the Research School of Southeast Asian Studies at Xiamen University, told the Global Times that it may not be fair to overly blame Malaysia, whose administration efficiency is at the intermediate level within Asia.

"We have seen its immediate response to the search for the plane after it went missing. It is understandable that people get anxious when little progress has been made, but Malaysia is a developing country with limited manpower," Zhuang noted.

- Contributed by Jiang Jie Global Times

China forces to search 19,768 sq km for missing jet
(updated by 11:50 on March 13)

11:43 China forces to search 19,768 sq km for missing jet

11:22 [Photo]Chinese satellite finds debris at suspected missing plane site

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Tuesday 11 March 2014

Terrorist attack on missing MH370 not ruled out

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the chief of Malaysia's civil aviation, said hijacking has not been ruled out as a cause of the plane's disappearance. He told the BBC that what happened to the jet remains "a mystery". No sightings of debris from the plane in the seas south of Vietnam have been confirmed.

Terrorism has not been ruled out as a possible cause. Counter-terrorism agencies and the FBI are involved in the operation. It emerged that two passengers who boarded the flight were using passports stolen in Thailand some years back.

The passports were Italian and Austrian. The passengers travelling with them had bought their tickets at the same time from China Southern Airlines which shared the flight with Malaysia Airlines, had consecutive ticket numbers and were both booked on the same onward flight from Beijing to Europe on Saturday. The news emerged when the real owners of the passports were reported safe and sound and not on any flight.

Ronald Noble, the secretary general of Interpol, said in a statement that while it was too soon to speculate on any connection between the theft and the plane's disappearance, it was "clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol databases".

The passengers on the flight were of 14 different nationalities. Two-thirds were from China, while others were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.

Five passengers booked on the flight did not board, and their luggage was consequently removed.

China has sent a team of government officials to Kuala Lumpur to look into the case.

Malaysian King Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah offered his condolences to the passengers.

He said he and the Queen "would like to express our sympathy to the passengers and crew, especially to their family".

However, relatives waiting for news are getting increasingly frustrated, saying they are not getting information on time and that no government officials have visited them, the BBC's correspondent in Beijing adds.

- http://paper.standartnews.com/

China deploys satellites for search operation

China has sent nine vessels to join the search and rescue operation for the plane. The first Chinese...

Two Chinese working groups in Malaysia

Two teams of officials sent by the Chinese government are now in Kuala Lumpur. A delegation from the...

China goes all-out to search for missing jet

Terror group Chinese Martyrs Brigade claims missing flight was ‘payback’, officials label it hoax

A SHADOWY group called the Chinese Martyrs’ Brigade claimed responsibility for the disappearance of Flight MH370 — but officials were sceptical and said the claim could be a hoax.

The group — unheard of before now — on Sunday sent an email to journalists across China that read: “You kill one of our clan, we will kill 100 of you as pay back,” but the message provided no details of what brought the flight down.

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishamuddin Hussein told reporters he doubted the claim’s legitimacy.

“There is no sound or credible grounds to justify their claims,” he said, according to Malaysian news reports.

Other officials said the claim could be a hoax aimed at increasing ethnic tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese in the wake of the March 1 knife attacks in the south-western city of Kunming that left 29 people dead and about 140 others injured.

The message was delivered through an encrypted, anonymous Hushmail service that is virtually impossible to trace, they said.

GHOST FLIGHTS: THE PLANES THAT DISAPPEARED

No lead: Officials said the oil slicks discovered by Vietnamese search aircraft were not aircraft fuel. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

Investigators also said Monday that debris spotted from the air that was originally believed to be from the plane turned out to be a large cable spool unconnected to the aircraft.

They also said an oil slick discovered in the region was not connected to the flight.

Investigators suspect the vanished Malaysian airliner may have been blown out of the sky — just like the jumbo jet that rained deadly wreckage onto Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

A senior official involved in the probe of its disappearance said the evidence so far “appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet,” Reuters reported.

Asked if that suggested a bomb blew up the Boeing 777, the source said there was no evidence yet of foul play, but noted the closest parallels to the plane’s disappearance early Saturday over the South China Sea were the 1980s bombings of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie and Air India Flight 182 off the coast of Ireland.

Although the source added that the flight, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, could have broken apart due to mechanical failure, Malaysian officials have not ruled out a hijacking.

Chinese officials arrive in Malaysia to aid the search. Picture: Getty Images Source: Getty Images

Meanwhile, Hussein said authorities have surveillance video of the two passengers who boarded the plane using stolen passports.

Rahman, the civil aviation chief, said officials had reviewed surveillance tape of the plane’s boarding and are now saying the pair were not Asian, as they had originally indicated.

“We confirmed now they are not Asian-looking males,” Rahman said, adding that one of the men was black.
One had been identified, officials said, though they refused to release a name or nationality.

Malaysian Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said the other passenger also appeared to be Asian, and blasted the border officials who let them through while carrying passports from Austria and Italy.

“Can’t these immigration officials think? Italian and Austrian [passport holders] but with Asian faces,” Hamidi fumed.

Five booked passengers failed to show up for the flight, according to The Wall Street Journal.

- http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates

Possibilities:

Passenger Manifest

More > >

1. Terrorists Attack Kunming Train Station, China's 9/11 !

2. US double standard on terrorism encourages slaughters

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