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Showing posts with label Indian Ocean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indian Ocean. Show all posts

Tuesday 25 March 2014

Flight MH370 ended in southern Indian Ocean! All 239 lives lost, British Inmarsat & AAIB cited, no evidence


Search area for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 update on 23 March 2014.
Search area for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

Analysis by the British satellite company Inmarsat and the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) was cited on Monday by the Malaysian prime minister as the source of information that has narrowed the location where the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean to a corridor a couple of hundred miles wide.

The analysis follows fresh examination of eight satellite "pings" sent by the aircraft between 1.11am and 8.11am Malaysian time on Saturday 8 March, when it vanished from radar screens.

The prime minister, Najib Razak, said: "Based on their new analysis, Inmarsat and the AAIB have concluded that MH370 flew along the southern corridor, and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.



"This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean."

He added that they had used a "type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort".

The new method "gives the approximate direction of travel, plus or minus about 100 miles, to a track line", Chris McLaughlin, senior vice-president for external affairs at Inmarsat, told Sky News. "Unfortunately this is a 1990s satellite over the Indian Ocean that is not GPS-equipped. All we believe we can do is to say that we believe it is in this general location, but we cannot give you the final few feet and inches where it landed. It's not that sort of system."

McLaughlin told CNN that there was no further analysis possible of the data. "Sadly this is the limit. There's no global decision even after the Air France loss [in June 2009, where it took two years to recover the plane from the sea] to make direction and distance reporting compulsory. Ships have to log in every six hours; with aircraft travelling at 500 knots they would have to log in every 15 minutes. That could be done tomorrow but the mandate is not there globally."

Since the plane disappeared more than two weeks ago, many of the daily searches across vast tracts of the Indian Ocean for the aircraft have relied on Inmarsat information collated halfway across the world from a company that sits on London's "Silicon Roundabout", by Old Street tube station.

Using the data from just eight satellite "pings" after the plane's other onboard Acars automatic tracking system went off at 1.07am, the team at Inmarsat was initially able to calculate that it had either headed north towards the Asian land mass or south, towards the emptiest stretches of the India Ocean.

Inmarsat said that yesterday it had done new calculations on the limited data that it had received from the plane in order to come to its conclusion. McLaughlin told CNN that it was a "groundbreaking but traditional" piece of mathematics which was then checked by others in the space industry.

The company's system of satellites provide voice contact with air traffic control when planes are out of range of radar, which only covers about 10% of the Earth's surface, and beyond the reach of standard radio over oceans. It also offers automatic reporting of positions via plane transponders. It is possible to send route instructions directly to the cockpit over a form of text message relayed through the satellite.

Inmarsat was set up in 1979 by the International Maritime Organisation to help ships stay in touch with shore or call for emergency no matter where they were, has provided key satellite data about the last movements of MH370.

Even as the plane went off Malaysian air traffic control's radar on 8 March, Inmarsat's satellites were "pinging" it.

A team at the company began working on the directions the plane could have gone in, based on the responses. One pointed north; the other, south. But it took three days for the data to be officially passed on to the Malaysian authorities; apparently to prevent any more such delays, Inmarsat was officially made "technical adviser" to the AAIB in its investigation into MH370's disappearance.

Inmarsat's control room in London, like some of its other 60 locations worldwide, looks like a miniature version of Nasa: a huge screen displays the positions of its 11 geostationary satellites, and dozens of monitors control and correct their positions. A press on a key can cause the puff of a rocket on a communications satellite 22,236 miles away, nudging its orbit by a few inches this way or that.

More prosaically, Inmarsat's systems enable passengers to make calls from their seats and also to use Wi-Fi and connect to the internet while flying.

If the plane has its own "picocell" essentially a tiny mobile phone tower set up inside the plane then that can be linked to the satellite communications system and enable passengers to use their own mobile phones to make calls, which are routed through the satellite and back to earth.

After its creation, Inmarsat's maritime role rapidly expanded to providing connectivity for airlines, the media, oil and gas companies, mining and construction in remote areas, and governments.

Privatised at the end of the 1990s, it was floated on the stock market in 2004, and now focuses on providing services to four main areas: maritime, enterprise (focused on businesses including aviation), civil and military work for the US government, and civil and military work for other governments. The US is the largest government client, generating up to a fifth of its revenues of about £1bn annually. The firm employs about 1,600 staff.

, technology editor The Guardian

 This graphic from The Telegraph indicates the suspected flight path of MH370 and the location of the past week's debris sightings and searches:





  China demands more information from Malaysia

Earlier, China’s foreign ministry urged Malaysia to provide all available information and evidence o...

Monday 24 March 2014

China search plane spots "large objects" related to missing Flight MH370


  China search plane spots "large objects"



A Chinese search plane reports it has discovered floating debris that could be related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean.

The crew says it spotted two "relatively large" objects and several smaller ones spread over several kilometers. China has diverted its icebreaker ship, Xuelong, toward the location where the debris was spotted. It's expected to arrive on early Tuesday.

China has also asked Australia to send its aircraft to the area. Ten planes are combing the southern Indian Ocean.

Australia said the search area was widened from 59,000 to 68,000 square kilometers.

The expansion came after French satellite revealed "floating debris" in an area north of pictures previously captured by Australian and Chinese satellites. It's the third set of satellite images in a week.

The Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss says the new lead is promising. He cautions that the search in the icy southern Indian Ocean remains difficult, as rain was expected today.

"We still don't even know for certain that the aircraft is even in this area. We're just, I guess, clutching at whatever little piece of information comes along to try and find a place where we might be able to concentrate the efforts," Truss said.

Malaysian authorities have said the black box is expected to run out of power in two weeks, and won't be able to send any signal thereafter.


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Sunday 23 March 2014

Chinese satellite spots large new object could be related to missing MH370


The Chinese embassy here confirmed Saturday that Chinese satellite spotted a 22-meter-long and 13-meter-wide floating object along the southern corridor missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 might have taken. Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, who placed the size of the object at 22 meters by 30 meters at a press conference, later corrected his statement. Photo: Xinhua / State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense

The Chinese embassy in Malaysia confirmed Saturday a Chinese satellite had spotted a floating object along the southern corridor missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 might have taken.



The satellite images, which China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said were taken Tuesday, show that the 22-meter-long, 13-meter-wide object was about 120 km southwest of suspicious debris, one of which was of similar size, captured by an Australian satellite (belonged to DigitalGlobe Inc, an American Colorado-based company that collects imagery for the US government and other countries, as well as private companies ) two days earlier and announced by Australian authorities Thursday.

Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein put the size of the object at 22 meters by 30 meters at a press conference, but later corrected his statement.

Australia's acting prime minister Warren Truss said Saturday the suspicious objects remained "the best lead" in the massive search for the missing flight.

The objects might have either drifted or sunk, but "if there's something to be found, I'm confident this search will find it," Truss told a press conference.

The hunt would continue "indefinitely" until "we are absolutely satisfied that further searching would be futile," he said. "That day is not in sight."

In response to Xinhua queries, he said there were many explanations for the satellite images provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) but they remained "a very credible lead."

What Australia needed to do now was exert all possible efforts to search for the missing plane, he told Xinhua.

On Thursday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the Australian satellite had spotted two objects, one 24 meters long, in the southern Indian Ocean possibly related to the Boeing 777 aircraft which disappeared early March 8 while carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The discovery led the multinational search forces to focus on a 36,000-square-km sea area about 2,500 km southwest of Perth, but so far there have been no findings of note.

Meanwhile, two Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft from the Chinese Air Force left Malaysia on Saturday for Australia to join the search in the southern Indian Ocean.

With Australian and New Zealand airforce P3 Orions limited by the vast distances and their dependence on infrared imaging, the Chinese IL-76 will be a welcome relief to the authorities here as the challenges of the task at hand begin to overwhelm available resources.

Commander Liu Dianjun told Xinhua he hoped the integration of Chinese military assets could precipitate a swift conclusion to the agonizing international search.

A Malaysian military official said the arrival of the Chinese aircraft beefed up the assets deployed for the search and rescue operation and boosted confidence of all the staff from different countries involved in the operation.

Truss also said the same day the arrival of Chinese military aircraft had provided a glimmer of hope.

A Chinese joint working group also paid two visits to family members of Chinese passengers on Saturday and Wednesday.

Guo Shaochun, head of the Chinese task force, said two weeks had passed since flight MH370 went missing and they were as anxious as the family members about what happened to the passengers.

Guo said the Chinese government attached great importance to coordinating support with Malaysia for the family members, and the Malaysian authorities said they would always be responsible.

"Please be at ease and take good care of yourselves, whether staying in Malaysia or leaving the country, your choice will be respected," he said.

Family members said their major concern was to find their loved ones, and they hoped Malaysia would keep them posted about any findings and intensify search and investigation efforts.

Meanwhile, the Indian government told Malaysian investigators it had found no evidence the missing jet flew through its airspace after checking its radar records, local media reported Saturday.

India's response is crucial, as any of their radar data could help identify whether the jet turned north or south after disappearing off radar, but the issue is also sensitive because of the presence of military radar. - Xinhua

Chinese vessels divert to southern Indian Ocean

More Chinese vessels are now en route to the search area and China’s Maritime Search and Rescue Cent...

Chinese satellite spots large floating object in Indian Ocean

The search for missing flight MH370 continues, and a Chinese satellite has reportedly spotted a new ...

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Saturday 22 March 2014

DigitalGlobe: Large area slowing search, the satellite images found might not be related to the MH370


WASHINGTON: The sheer number of images covering a large swath of ocean contributed to a delay in revealing what could be debris from the Malaysia Airlines plane that has been missing for nearly two weeks, a satellite image company said.

DigitalGlobe Inc, a Colorado-based company that collects imagery for the US government and other countries, as well as private companies, confirmed on Thursday that it had collected satellite images on March 16 that appeared to show debris that may be related to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

It said it provided the images to Australian authorities, which released them on Thursday.

DigitalGlobe said the Australian government had begun combing through the imagery of the current search area only in the last few days, after the massive international effort was expanded to the southern Indian Ocean region and waters near Australia.

Malaysian officials described the images as a credible sign of a possible wreckage from the flight, which left Kuala Lumpur on March 8 en route to Beijing with 239 people aboard and vanished after about an hour of flight.

Australian authorities, however, cautioned that the debris in the pictures might not be related to the missing plane.

“Given the extraordinary size of the current search area, the lengthy duration of the analysis effort was to be expected,” DigitalGlobe spokesman Turner Brinton said in a statement.

Brinton said the company’s five high-resolution satellites capture more than three million sq km of earth imagery each day.

“This volume of imagery is far too vast to search through in real time without an idea of where to look,” he said.

The large objects that Australian officials said were spotted by satellite five days ago are the most promising find in days as searchers scour a vast area for the plane.

The larger of the objects four days ago measured up to 24m long and appeared to be floating in waters several thousand metres deep, Australian officials said. The second object was about five metres long.

Brinton declined comment on whether the debris was spotted by DigitalGlobe’s own analysts, government analysts or Internet users participating in a “crowdsourcing” effort launched by the company to help locate the plane.

Brinton said the images were captured on March 16 by the company’s Worldview-2 satellite at a resolution of about 50cm, and the company was continuing to collect imagery over the area where the possible debris had been spotted.

DigitalGlobe said it had been collecting images over a broader area than the official search area, while focusing the efforts of its crowdsourcing volunteers on the search areas identified by authorities.

“The efforts of millions of online volunteers around the world allowed us to rule out broad swaths of ocean with some certainty,” Brinton said. — Reuters

Related:

Day 14: Malaysian authorities hold press conference

Malaysian authorities have held a press conference with an update on their search and investigation....

Crossover: New discovery a breakthrough?

For more, we have CCTV NEWS anchor James Chau in Kuala Lumpur. ...
Telegraph.co.uk‎ 

  1. BBC News
    Could maths be used to locate the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370? ... that planes were usually found very close to where they were last known ...
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Friday 21 March 2014

DigitalGlobe, satellite co that provides the image of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370; Australian plane fails to locate debris

DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 satellite>

Meet WorldView-2, the satellite that provided Australian authorities with the images that appear to show two objects in the Indian Ocean 2500 kilometres south-west of Perth that may be related to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Launched on October 8, 2009, and owned by US satellite company DigitalGlobe, WorldView-2 provides imagery at a resolution of approximately 50 cm. It takes a new image of any place on earth every 1.1 days (1 day ,  2 hours and 24 minutes).

The satellite, among four others that DigitalGlobe owns, weighs 2800 kilograms, operates at an altitude of 770 kilometres, and is able to collect nearly 1 million square kilometres of imagery every single day, which is then distributed to those who pay for access to DigitalGlobe's imagery.

Satellite imagery provided to AMSA of possible debris from MH370. Satellite imagery provided to AMSA of possible debris from MH370.

DigitalGlobe confirmed on Friday that it was the one who provided the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) with the satellite images that were captured on March 16, showing the two objects in the Indian Ocean.

"We have been informed by an Australian government official that it was our imagery Prime Minister Abbott referred to in his recent comments," the company said in a statement.

"Working with our customers, DigitalGlobe continues to task our satellites to collect imagery of a wide area that includes the waters around where the possible debris was identified."

The satellite images released by the Department of Defence. The satellite images released by the Department of Defence.

A clue that DigitalGlobe's satellite was used lies in the imagery released on Thursday afternoon by AMSA to the media after its press conference, which said that DigitalGlobe owned the copyright of the images.

Despite this, when Australian Maritime Safety Authority's general manager John Young took to the podium on Thursday to explain to reporters the discovery of the images that might show pieces of MH370, he carefully omitted to tell them the source.

When asked about it, he avoided the question.

And when reporters phoned Australian defence officials to ask the same question, they were given a firm "no comment" or "we can't discuss".

This may seem odd, because the satellite's owners, DigitalGlobe, were only too happy to tell the media on Friday.

The contrast highlights a longstanding syndrome. Australian officialdom is hyper protective of US intelligence and its sources - even more protective than the Americans themselves.

It's a symptom of the Australian defence establishment's mentality as an anxious junior ally, afraid of giving its senior partner any reason to curtail the flow of intelligence.

A DigitalGlobe spokesmen declined to comment on whether the debris were spotted by DigitalGlobe's own analysts or analysts from governments that use its service, such as Australia and the US.

It couldn't have been discovered by internet users participating in a "crowdsourcing" effort launched by the company to help locate the plane though, as the Australian search area has not yet been uploaded to the site, operated by DigitalGlobe and called Tomnod.

The large objects that Australian officials said were spotted by satellite four days ago are the most promising find in days as searchers scour a vast area for the plane.

The larger of the objects taken four days ago measured up to 24 meters long and appeared to be floating in water several thousand metres deep, Australian officials said. The second object was about five meters long.

DigitalGlobe is the parent company of Tomnod, which has been progressively releasing select areas of satellite imagery to a crowd of more than three million to scour through.

The satellite company has not said if it will release imagery that encompasses the search area off the coast of Western Australia to the public on Tomnod.

"We're working to confirm further details," DigitalGlobe said.

"In the meantime, other customers including the US government and other governments have been receiving our imagery for their own search efforts."

DigitalGlobe said that the sheer number of images covering a large swath of ocean contributed to the delay in revealing what could be debris from the Malaysia Airlines jetliner that has been missing for nearly a week.

"Given the extraordinary size of the current search area, the lengthy duration of the analysis effort was to be expected," a DigitalGlobe spokesman said.

The company's five high-resolution satellites capture more than 3 million square kilometers of earth imagery each day.

"This volume of imagery is far too vast to search through in real time without an idea of where to look," the spokesman said.

A number of Australian government agencies pay DigitalGlobe for access to imagery generated by their satellites, including the Australian Antarctic Division and Geoscience Australia.

Tender documents show that Geoscience Australia alone has paid DigitalGlobe almost $1 million since July, 2012, for satellite imagery over Wide Bay in Queensland and of imagery over the Great Barrier Reef.

It's not clear though through tender documents if Australian intelligence agencies and Defence also pay for access to DigitalGlobe's imagery, as Fairfax was unable to find contracts between them and DigitalGlobe.

DigitalGlobe said no conclusions have been reached about the origins of the objects shown in the imagery near Australia, and it was not aware that any subsequent search missions that have been able to locate them.

"But the experience again demonstrates the unparalleled geographic reach and persistence that satellite imagery provides for critical government missions and emergency response situations," it said.

It's unclear if DigitalGlobe has any restrictions placed upon it by the US government concerning who it shares its satellite imagery with.

- The Sydney Morning Herald with Peter Hartcher and Reuters

Related:
 

China mulls sending Xuelong to join search mission for MH370
The Chinese icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, awaits orders for the search of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 at the port of Perth, a southwestern port city of Australia, March 20, 2014. Xuelong will set off to the waters where suspected debris of the missing flight MH370 has been found, according to the State Oceanic Administration of China. (Xinhua/Tang Zhijian)

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 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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