There appear to
be two stark choices. The first is
easiest. The plane augured into the
ocean at a near vertical dive just like 9/11 Pennsylvania. That was good enough to eliminate debris and
to completely pulverize the plane. It
envisages a struggle on the plane as well with no ability to message. I find this pretty difficult to accomplish
unless the pilot himself somehow emptied the cabin through some ruse and then
put the plane nose down to the vertical.
The second
option is way more difficult. A skilled
pilot and surely the pilot chose to take control of the plane while keeping the
crew at bay. This as surely means
locking down the cabin. Then removal of
the transponder and any other steps become possible. It also makes suicide an unlikely motive.
For that reason
the possible signals are at least promising.
It also begs an important question.
What lawless part of the world would allow this plane to land? There we really have only Somalia. In that case whoever pulled this off was
completely prepared.
Five hours is a
long time and sufficient to get the bird to a roost and under cover.
There are three
separate stories here and it tells us that the searchers are beginning to
suspect the last scenario.
Satellite Firm
Says Its Data From Jet Could Offer Location
By CHRIS BUCKLEY, MICHAEL FORSYTHE and NICOLA CLARK MARCH 14, 2014
SEPANG, Malaysia — As the hunt for the missing
Malaysia Airlines jet expanded into the daunting vastness of the Indian Ocean,
a satellite communications company confirmed on Friday that it had recorded
electronic “keep alive” ping signals from the plane after it disappeared, and
said those signals could be analyzed to help estimate its location.
The information from the company, Inmarsat, could prove to be the first big
break in helping narrow the frustrating search for the plane with 239 people
aboard that mysteriously disappeared from radar screens a week ago, now hunted
by a multinational array of ships and planes that have fanned out for thousands
of square miles.
Inmarsat, a Britain-based satellite communications
provider of systems to ships and airplanes, had equipment aboard the Malaysia
Airlines Boeing 777 jetliner, said David Coiley, the vice president of the
company in charge of the aviation business. The equipment automatically
communicates with satellites, much as a mobile phone would automatically
connect to a network after passing through a mountain tunnel, he said.
More information on the search for the Malaysian
jetliner on the Minute including the United States' silent role in the
investigation and withering criticism of Malaysia's political elite.
“It does allow us to determine where the airplane is
relative to the satellite,” he said of the signal, which he likened to the
“noises you might hear when you when you put your cell phone next to a radio or
a television speaker.” He said: “It does allow us to narrow down the position
of the aircraft.”
Because the pings go over a measurable distance at a
specific angle to one of the company’s satellites, the information can be used
to help calculate the trajectory and location of an aircraft, he said.
“Communications systems are part of the mandatory
requirement for operating any flight, and we are comfortable that it would have
been operating accordingly,” Mr. Coiley said. He said Inmarsat was sharing
information with the airline and investigators, but would not comment further
on that information.
The Inmarsat disclosure came amid other signs that
the aircraft may have turned sharply west from its intended northward route
from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and traveled far from the initial focus of the
search.
The jet disappeared from the flight control radar an
hour into its nighttime flight, leading the Malaysian government and others
during the first 72 hours of the search-and-rescue operation to concentrate
ships and aircraft in the Gulf of Thailand and nearby waters to the east of
Malaysia.
Increasingly, however, the search has encompassed
seas to the west of Peninsular Malaysia, stretching from the Strait of Malacca
to the Bay of Bengal, where the United States and India sent military planes
and ships. The move came in tandem with an increasing amount of evidence that
the aircraft flew for as long as four hours after it disappeared from air
traffic control radar after 1 a.m. last Saturday.
Even with the help of the Inmarsat data, the new
focus on the open ocean shows illustrates the difficulty for the multinational
search force, which now must scan thousands of miles of the world’s third-largest
ocean. The initial search area was in the relatively confined and shallow
waters of the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand, which are among the world’s
busiest maritime routes. If the plane ended up in the ocean depths, it will be
far harder to find and recover.
At a news conference, the Malaysian defense
minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, who has been the chief public face of his
government’s search effort, said that searching seas both to the east and west
of his country was a logical next step after days of fruitless searching and
false starts. But he also acknowledged that, seven days after it vanished, an
aircraft with 239 passengers and crew onboard remains unaccounted for, leaving
family members in tormented wait.
“A normal investigation becomes narrower with time,
I understand, as new information focuses on the search,” said Mr. Hussein, who
is also acting transport minister. “But this is not a normal investigation.”
He said the multinational search had expanded on
both sides of Malaysia, into the South China Sea, and increasingly into the
Indian Ocean. “It is basically because we have not found anything in the areas
that we have searched,” he said.
But aviation experts, news reports and some American
officials have also pointed to military radar and signals collected by
satellites as furnishing stronger evidence that the Boeing 777 plane turned
sharply from its planned course, flew over the Malaysian peninsula and then
headed west toward the Andaman Sea and the the Indian Ocean.
A report from Reuters news agency on Friday said
that information culled from military radar records indicated that the plane
may have been deliberately flown far off its intended route, from Kuala Lumpur
to Beijing, and when last recorded was heading toward the Andaman Islands,
which belong to India.
If the aircraft did divert so drastically from its
planned route, then any clues left by electronic signals captured by satellite
and radar will become far more important.
It was not clear if the calculations were underway
or had been completed, but ships were headed toward the Indian Ocean.
The multinational effort was scattered across the
northern reaches of the Indian Ocean. Indian military forces continued their
efforts Friday to find traces of the airplane in the Andaman Sea, which lies to
the west of Thailand, and expanded the search to the area west of Nicobar
Island in the Bay of Bengal. The search in the Indian Ocean includes ships,
planes and nearly 1,000 personnel from India’s navy, coast guard and air force.
A spokesman for the Indian navy refused Friday to
offer an estimate of how long the search might take. “How can you ask such a
question?” said the spokesman, Capt. D.K. Sharma. “This is like looking for a
needle in that vast expanse of sea.”
Adding to the growing emphasis, the Chinese government
announced that the Haixun 31, a civilian patrol ship that has been the command
vessel for China’s contingent in the search, would move from the Gulf of
Thailand to the Strait of Malacca, on the other side peninsula. A report on
Chinese state television news said a group of experts had advised the Chinese
Maritime Search and Rescue Center to “expand the scope of the search.”
On Friday the United States Navy continued its
maritime aircraft patrols, focusing on the area to the west of Malaysia, said
Cmdr. William Marks, spokesman for the Seventh Fleet. The Navy’s new P-8A
Poseidon patrol craft arrived on Friday, he said. The aircraft, built with the
airframe of a Boeing 737, has a range of more than 1,300 miles and can search
vast swathes of ocean. India on Thursday said it was also deploying its own
variant of the aircraft, the P-8i, as well as the C-130J Hercules and other
aircraft.
The difficulty, Commander Marks said in an
interview, was that given the vastness of the Indian Ocean, the area is best
patrolled by aircraft, but sacrificed is the more thorough intense searches by
surface ships and helicopters in more confined areas.
“Everything is a trade off. I think the challenge is
the sheer size of the area,” Commander Marks said.
Malaysia plane:
Indian Ocean search for missing jet
Analysis
Jonathan AmosScience
correspondent, BBC News
This story is a mystery for sure, but information is
now starting to emerge that allows us to join some of the dots.
We know the aeroplane was fitted with a satellite
system that enabled it to pass information to the ground during flight. It is
my understanding that this system, operated by London's big satellite
telecommunications company Inmarsat, received an automated signal from Malaysia
Airlines flight MH370 at least five hours after the plane was reported lost.
There is no way that signal could have been sent
unless the plane was intact and powered. These types of satellite systems can
pass a range of data, even voice calls.
But even if the last communication was a simple,
automated ping carrying no real information, its receipt alone should make it
possible to work out an approximate position for the aircraft at the time of
that last signal. This may well explain why the US has now sent search teams to
the Indian Ocean.
The US has sent surveillance teams to the Indian
Ocean to help search for the missing Malaysian plane, after claims emerged that
it may have flown for longer than investigators had thought.
Unnamed officials said the plane sent signals to
satellites for up to five hours after its apparent disappearance.
However, investigators said the data were not
conclusive and Malaysia refused to comment on the claims.
Flight MH370 vanished last Saturday with 239 people
on board.
The plane, which was flying from Kuala Lumpur to
Beijing, last made contact with air traffic control over the South China Sea to
the east of Malaysia.
But several US media reports on Thursday cited
unnamed officials as saying that the Boeing 777 was "pinging"
satellites for hours after its last contact with air-traffic controllers.
That led searchers to believe the plane could have
flown more than 1,600 km (1,000 miles) beyond its last confirmed radar
sighting.
The US, which is one of a number of countries
helping in the search for the plane, has now sent a navy destroyer and a
sophisticated surveillance aircraft to the Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles west
of Malaysia.
The Indian navy, air force and coast guard are also
now assisting after a request for help from the Malaysian government.
The BBC's Jonathan Head in Kuala Lumpur says there
have already been a number of false leads in the search for the missing plane.
However, he says the latest claims are being taken
seriously by the US.
Reuters news agency later quoted unnamed sources
close to the Malaysian investigation as saying that an unidentified aircraft
had been tracked by radar flying north-west of Malaysia on Saturday.
The sources said investigators now suspected it was
the missing plane.
White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed that US
teams were shifting their focus to the Indian Ocean because of "new
information", but he gave no further details.
Malaysia's acting transport minister Hishammuddin
Hussein said in a news conference that the search area was expanding both east
and west of the Malaysian peninsula.
He said he was aware of the claims about satellite
data, but he would not comment on any claims unless the information had been
"corroborated by the relevant authorities".
India has military radar installations in the
Andaman Islands with a range stretching well beyond the area where some believe
the jet may have come down.
It is thought that they would have picked up
anything the size of a commercial jet.
Some 153 of the passengers on board the Malaysia
Airlines plane were Chinese, and Beijing has been putting pressure on Malaysia
to intensify its search.
Earlier this week, Chinese officials released
satellite pictures of debris in the South China Sea.
Hishammuddin Hussein said the images were not
connected to Flight MH370's disappearance.
He said the Chinese embassy in Kuala Lumpur had told
Malaysian authorities that the release of the pictures was a
"mistake".
But Chinese state TV said a warship was continuing
to search for the debris and suggested that Malaysia had been unable to analyse
the pictures properly.
Meanwhile, a Chinese research institute on Friday
said it had found evidence of a "sea floor event" some 90 minutes
after the plane disappeared.
The seismology research group at the University of
Science and Technology of China said it happened 116 km north-east of the last
point of contact of the plane, in an area not known for seismic activity,
according to state media.
The research group said the vibrations could have
been caused by the plane plunging into the sea.
Marine geologist Dave Long from the British
Geological Survey told the BBC that the energy released by a plane hitting the
ocean would be rapidly dissipated in the water.
He said any device picking up such small movements
would have to be very sensitive and incredibly close to the impact, meaning
that search teams would now know exactly where to look for the debris.
Investigator:
Missing plane turned back over Malaysia, was being piloted by skilled person
BY EILEEN NG AND IAN MADER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS MARCH
14, 2014 9:00 AM
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Malaysian investigators are
increasingly certain that the missing jetliner turned back across the country
after losing communications, and that someone with aviation skills was
responsible for the unexplained change in course, according to a government
official involved in the probe.
The official, who declined to be identified because
he is not authorized to brief the media, said only a skilled person could
navigate the Boeing 777 the way it was flown after its last confirmed location
over the South China Sea.
Speaking earlier, acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin
Hussein said the country had yet to determine what happened to the plane after
it dropped off civilian radar and ceased communicating with the ground around
40 minutes into the flight to Beijing.
He said investigators were still trying to establish
with certainty that military radar records of a blip moving west across the
Malay Peninsula into the Strait of Malacca showed Malaysia Airlines flight
MH370.
"I will be the most happiest person if we can
actually confirm that it is the MH370, then we can move all (search) assets
from the South China Sea to the Strait of Malacca," he told reporters.
Until then, he said, the international search effort would continue expanding
east and west from the plane's last confirmed location.
The Malaysian official said it had now been
established with a "more than 50 per cent" degree of certainty that
military radar had picked up the missing plane.
On Thursday, an American official said the plane
remained airborne after losing contact with air traffic controllers because it
was sending a signal to establish contact with a satellite. The Malaysian
official confirmed this, referring to the process by its technical term of a
"handshake."
Boeing offers a satellite service that can receive a
stream of data on how an aircraft is functioning during flight and relay the
information to the plane's home base. Malaysia Airlines didn't subscribe to
that service, but the plane still had the capability to connect with the
satellite and was automatically sending signals, or pings, said the U.S.
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to
discuss the situation by name.
Hishammuddin said the government would only release
information about the signals when they were verified.
"I hope within a couple of days to have
something conclusive," he told a news conference.
Malaysia has faced accusations it isn't sharing all
its information or suspicions about the plane's final movements. It insists it
is being open, and says it would be irresponsible to narrow the focus of the
search until there is undeniable evidence of the plane's flight path.
No theory has been ruled out in one of modern
aviation's most puzzling mysteries.
But it now appears increasingly certain that the
plane didn't experience a catastrophic incident over the South China Sea as was
initially seen as the most likely scenario. Some experts believe it is possible
that one of the pilots, or someone with flying experience, hijacked the plane
for some later purpose or committed suicide by plunging the aircraft into the
sea.
Mike Glynn, a committee member of the Australian and
International Pilots Association, said he considers pilot suicide to be the
most likely explanation for the disappearance, as was suspected in a SilkAir
crash during a flight from Singapore to Jakarta in 1997 and an EgyptAir flight
from Los Angeles to Cairo in 1999.
"A pilot rather than a hijacker is more likely
to be able to switch off the communications equipment," Glynn said.
"The last thing that I, as a pilot, want is suspicion to fall on the crew,
but it's happened twice before."
Glynn said a pilot may have sought to fly the plane
into the Indian Ocean to reduce the chances of recovering data recorders, and
to conceal the cause of the disaster.
Scores of plane and aircraft from 12 countries are
currently involved in the search, which currently reaches into the eastern
stretches of the South China Sea and on the western side of the Malay
Peninsula, northwest into the Andaman Sea and further into the India Ocean.
India said it was using heat sensors on flights over
hundreds of uninhabited Andaman Sea islands Friday and would expand the search
for the missing jet farther west into the Bay of Bengal, more than 1,600
kilometres (100 miles) to the west of the plane's last known position. Spokesman
Col. Harmit Singh of India's Tri-Services Command said it began land searches
after sweeping seas to the north, east and south of the Andaman and Nicobar
Islands.
A team of five U.S. officials with air traffic
control and radar expertise — three from the U.S. National Transportation
Safety Board and two from the Federal Aviation Administration — has been in
Kuala Lumpur since Monday to assist Malaysia with the investigation.
___
Associated Press writers Ashok Sharma in New Delhi,
Jim Gomez in Kuala Lumpur, Tran V. Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam, Thanyarat Doksone in
Bangkok, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, and Josh Lederman in Washington
contributed to this report.
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