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  • Malaysia Plane: The Saga Continues

    Malaysia Plane: The Saga Continues

    It has been a grueling three weeks for the families, the search teams, and the others involved in this unprecedented aviation disaster with the vanishing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

    Malaysian authorities say the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean. Search efforts are concentrated in an area far off Australia’s west coast. The first search area started in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, approximately 1,500 miles southwest of Perth, AU.

    However, after a more detailed and calculated search, the first suspected area has changed. The new area is to the north by nearly 700 miles. Search teams have found quite a few new objects, but whether the debris is connected to the to the Boeing 777 is still undetermined.

    The change in the search area is based on radar and satellite data, and further mathematical calculations indicating that investigators believe the plane was traveling faster than initially thought in the early part of its flight. Because of that, it burned through more fuel than first believed, hence the 700 miles north of the ‘previously assumed’ crash site.

    Meaning that authorities have concluded that it could not have traveled as far south as they once thought.

    Early Friday, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that as a result of ocean drift, the new search area “could still be consistent” with various objects spotted earlier by satellites. The objects that were initially spotted came from satellite data by China, France, the U.S., and later Imnarsat.

    However, Australia has a different view of the search area:

    “In regards to the old areas, we have not seen any debris,” said John Young, general manager of emergency response for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

    “And I would not wish to classify any of the satellite imagery as debris, nor would I want to classify any of the few visual sightings that we made as debris. That’s just not justifiable from what we have seen.”

    But in contrast to the first search area, which could only be flown over a couple of hours each trip due to the 4 hour flight to the area, Australian officials say the new search area is closer to land and in a gentler region of ocean, making for longer, safer and more consistent searches.

    But it’s still a huge area at 123,000 square miles and will take some time to search.

    “We’re kind of starting from square one with a whole new search and a whole new set of premises,” CNN aviation analyst Jeff Wise said Friday.

    Family members are in agony as they wait for answers, many displaying emotional outbursts picked up by cameras.

    “My heart can’t handle it. I don’t want to hurt my children,” Cheng Li Ping told CNN as she waited in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for evidence about what happened to her husband.

    Although as of Saturday, debris spotted in the new area should be retrieved in the very near future, but nothing is concrete as to where Malaysian Flight 370 is, or where it ended up.

    Image via YouTube

  • Flight MH370: Pilots Investigated, Search Widens

    It is day ten and still no definite answers on the disappearance of Flight 370, while families and friends sit impatiently waiting to learn the fate of this plane and its 239 passengers and loved ones.

    The plane departed for an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing at 12:40 a.m. on March 8. The plane communications stopped at 1:20 a.m., and the jet went missing.

    On Saturday, however, there appears to be new information as the Prime Minister of Malaysia stated, “Someone deliberately diverted Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and shut down communications with the ground, and the jetliner continued flying for six hours.”

    This brought about a shift in focus of the investigation, pointing to the crew and passengers of the plane, and expanding the search to a now 4,000 mile radius.

    Prime Minister Najib Razak’s statement also meant the flight path of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 to Beijing could have strayed as far as the southern Indian Ocean or northwest to Kazakhstan, complicating the work of search crews who already have been scouring vast stretches of ocean for clues to this aircraft’s disappearance.

    Police on Saturday told CBS News that the homes of all of the jetliner’s flight crew were searched after being under surveillance for the last few days. Authorities have said they will be investigating the pilots as part of their probe, but have released no information about how they are progressing.

    “Clearly the search for (Flight) MH370 has entered a new phase,” Najib said at a televised news conference.

    Experts have previously said that whoever disabled the plane’s communication systems and then flew the jet must have had a high degree of technical knowledge and flying experience. One possibility they have raised was that one of the pilots wanted to commit suicide.

    Today, 25 countries are involved in the continued search, scouring every possible area the plane could have flown.

    The biggest parts of the plane’s passengers were Chinese, and the Beijing government is under pressure to give relatives some definite news of the plane’s fate. In a statement after Najib finished speaking, Beijing urged “Malaysia to expand and clarify the search areas based on the latest information and step up search efforts,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qing Gang said. “We ask Malaysia to involve more countries in the search.”

    Image via YouTube

  • Malaysia Airlines Flight: What Experts Now Think

    The theories have changed dramatically over the disappearance of Malaysian flight 370, which took off on March 8th at 12:41 am from Kuala Lumpur, but lost contact with air traffic control an hour later and disappeared from radar. When it disappeared from radar it was at 35,000 feet about 140 miles off the coast of Vietnam.

    It has been six days since the plane and its 239 passengers completely vanished, despite the tremendous search efforts of 57 ships and 48 aircraft from 13 countries, all looking in a search radius that just keeps expanding.

    Today, the search radius has widened to 27,000 nautical miles, and the theories of what happened to this plane are changing daily.

    The latest theory, which was determined by top aviation experts and being evaluated at this time, is that maybe it landed in a remote Indian Ocean island chain.

    However, Denis Giles, editor of the Andaman Chronicle newspaper, says there’s just nowhere to land such a big plane in his archipelago without attracting notice, according to CNN.

    “There is no chance, no such chance, that any aircraft of this size can come towards Andaman and Nicobar Islands and land,” he said.

    This supposition of its landing on an island is based on analysis of radar data revealed Friday by Reuters which is suggesting that the plane wasn’t just blindly flying northwest from Malaysia.

    Although it is just one of many theories being discussed about what might have happened to the aircraft, it seems to be the most reasonable, considering there is not another single clue to guide these searchers, the families or airline officials in a different direction at this time.

    Reuters reported that whoever was piloting the plane was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands.

    The radar data doesn’t show the plane over the Andaman Islands but only on a known route that would take it there, Reuters cited its sources as saying.

    The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. U.S. investigators that concluded that the pings didn’t come from other planes have led many experts and investigators to believe that the plane flew for hours before completely disappearing.

    But this theory begs the question – Who? Why? And what do they want if the plane was indeed hijacked. Experts have pretty much eliminated the idea that the two passengers with stolen passports were terrorists – what else could they have wanted with the plane?

    It is a Boeing 777 – one of the most sophisticated and reliable planes in the sky. Could they have wanted just the plane, or are there passengers that might bring a large ransom?

    These are questions that have yet to be answered, but not because they have not been evaluated.

    At this point, there are no definite answers, and until this plane is located, it is doubtful anyone will know exactly what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 or its passengers.

    Image viaYouTube

  • Missing Malaysia Airplane – What We Now Know

    The Malaysia Flight MH370 and its disappearance is getting stranger every day – how does a huge Boeing 777 just disappear without a trace?

    Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 took off at 12:41 am from Kuala Lumpur on the morning of March 8, but lost contact with air traffic control an hour later and disappeared from radar. When it disappeared from radar it was at 35,000 feet about 140 miles off the coast of Vietnam.

    No trace of the plane and the 239 people on board has been found and few details about what could have happened to the plane have been released.

    Experts have all kinds of theories, but no real clues and what has been determined as a possibility is as follows:

    As far as a hijack situation, investigators are “not discounting” the possibility, but there is no evidence pointing to it.

    Another terrifying possibility, is a group of Chinese separatists called the “Chinese Martyr Brigade” that claimed responsibility for the incident.

    The separatist group has not provided many details about the fate of the plane itself, and officials remain skeptical of the claim, local news reports said.

    The other possibility, as a radar recording indicates, is that the plane may have turned back toward Malaysia after taking off, but the pilots made no such indication on the radio.

    Evidence of oil slicks spotted off the Vietnam coast were thought to be signs of the downed plane, but tests have come back showing they had nothing to do with the aircraft and were not related to the disappearance. Same with a piece of debris discovered and thought to be from the plane, also proved to be unrelated.

    Another pretty strong possibility could be terrorism, because two passengers used stolen passports, one from Austria and one from Italy, to board the flight. The two individuals who used the stolen passports were identified on CCTV footage and described by a Malaysian official as “not Asian-looking.”

    As of Monday, March 10, nothing more has been officially defined as the cause of the disappearance and it is all still a mystery.

    As of today, nine countries are now searching for the plane or any sign of it, including Vietnam, China, Singapore, Indonesia, USA, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines. The U.S. Navy has sent the 7th Fleet’s USS Pinckney, carrying two search and rescue helicopters and a maritime surveillance aircraft.

    The search team consists of 40 ships and 34 aircraft looking for evidence or any trace of the flight, including debris or wreckage in an area that is 100 nautical miles around the west coast of Malaysia.

    The plane was a Boeing 777-200 with a clean flight history; Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record, according to the Flight Safety Foundation. The pilot is Zahari Ahmad Shah, 53, who is a veteran pilot and joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981. He had over 18,000 flying hours.

    So what happened?

    Image via YouTube