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Tag: Malaysian 370

  • Missing Flight 370 Black Box Hunted by British Ship

    British Navy ship HMS Echo arrived Sunday in the area in the southern Indian Ocean where a Chinese ship detected “pulse signals” that could be from the black box of the Malaysian Boeing 777-200 jet that has been missing since March 8.

    The HMS Echo, deployed to where the crew of the Chinese vessel Jaixun 01 detected pulses last week, is “capable of collecting an array of military hydrographic and oceanographic data,” according to Britain’s Ministry of Defense.

     The Australian Navy’s Ocean Shield, which is carrying high-tech sound detectors from the U.S. Navy, will first investigate also deploy to the location, but will first investigate other sounds it picked up 300 nautical miles away from the Chinese ship.

    Flight 370 disappeared from radar and broke all communication during a trip from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board on March 8.

    Crews are racing to recover the aircraft’s black box. No signal has been detected from the box since last week, and searchers fear the box’s battery may be dead. Black boxes hold flight data and emit signals so that they can easily be found, but the battery typically lasts only about a month.

    “We’re now into Day 37 of this tragedy,” said aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas on Sunday.

    “The battery life on the beacons is supposed to last 30 days. We’re hoping it might last 40 days. However, it’s been four or five days since the last strong pings. What they’re hoping for is to get one more, maybe two more pings so they can do a triangulation of the sounds and try and narrow the (search) area.”

    Despite having no new transmissions from the black boxes to track, air and sea crews continued their search on Sunday for debris and any sounds that may be emanating from the boxes.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Indian Ocean: Where Malaysian Plane May Have Crashed

    It appears that data analyzed by U.S. officials indicates the missing Malaysia flight 370 may have crashed into the Indian Ocean.

    Since its disappearance over a week ago, there hasn’t been much evidence as to exactly what happened to the aircraft. Many theories, including the Malaysian Prime Minister’s, include hijacking and piracy.

    The Indian Ocean is one place where a commercial airliner can crash without a ship spotting it, radar plotting it or even a satellite picking it up.

    The depth and expanse of that area of water makes it one of the most remote places in the world, making the search for the aircraft even more challenging, if not impossible. As such, the international search effort is refocusing on the area, as one of several possible crash sites.

    The U.S. officials tell American broadcast networks they have indications the jet is in the Indian Ocean, far west of its intended flight path.

    White House spokesman Jay Carney said the United States might expand its search into the ocean because of what he calls “new information.” However, he did not give any further details.

    Australia, which has island territories in the Indian Ocean, has found it necessary to send rescue planes to assist yachtsmen from the cold, mountainous seas in the south from time to time. The area has no radar coverage much beyond its Indian Ocean coast.

    “In most of Western Australia and almost all of the Indian Ocean, there is almost no radar coverage,” an Australian civil aviation authority source said, requesting anonymity as he was not authorized to speak on the record.

    “If anything is more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) offshore, you don’t see it.”

    Indian military aircraft have flown over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; another suspected crash site, with more than 500 mostly uninhabited, heavily forested landmasses, with unsuccessful results.

    Pings to a communications satellite from the plane indicate that the Boeing 777 may have flown for several hours after disappearing from radar, which has expanded the search area again, now to a 4,000-mile circumference.

    Sixty ships and 50 planes from 13 countries are involved in the search, with no definite clues as to where it could have landed or crashed.

    Meanwhile, for the families anxiously waiting and wondering whether the 239 passengers on flight 370 are still alive, there will be no resolution until this airplane is located.

    Image via YouTube