thisisajokeright Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> asdfasdfasd Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > thisisajokeright Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> > > NBC4 reporting that the Malaysian PM is
> > confirming
> > > the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean. He's
> > > putting a lot of stock into the circular and
> > > rectangular objects located overnight.
> >
> > I'm sure at this point, he and his government
> want
> > this whole incident over and done with. The
> > scrutiny will continue though for years to
> come.
> > You can bet the conspiracy theorists will be
> out
> > in droves, but to be fair, they might be on to
> > something here.
>
>
> Hi you! (if it IS you LOL)
>
> I can't imagine how much money it's cost several
> nations to look for this plane. I sincerely hope
> they've found it because, 17 days later, I'm tired
> of hearing about it.

Hi, yeps it's me! LOL

Well, I hope so too, interesting story but now its just painful.

How 'groundbreaking' number crunching found path of Flight 370
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/24/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-satellite-tracking/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- Monday's announcement by Malaysia's Prime Minister acknowledging that missing Flight 370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean opens the door to a big question: How did new number crunching confirm the Boeing 777's path?

Now we know for sure "there's no way it went north," said Inmarsat Senior Vice President Chris McLaughlin.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday that the plane was last tracked over the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth, Australia. Malaysian Airlines has informed passengers' relatives that "all lives are lost," a relative told CNN.

Monday's announcement brings new questions about the mystery that has captivated the planet for more than two weeks. It also provoked a call that all airliners be constantly tracked.



How Inmarsat found MH370's path

Gauging Inmarsat's confidence in search The mathematics-based process used by Inmarsat and the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) to reveal the definitive path was described by McLaughlin as "groundbreaking."



Experts: Flight ended west of Perth

Flight ended in ocean, questions remain "We've done something new," he said.

Here's how the process works in a nutshell: Inmarsat officials and engineers were able to determine whether the plane was flying away or toward the satellite's location by expansion or compression of the satellite's signal.

What does expansion or compression mean? You may have heard about something called the Doppler effect.

"If you sit at a train station and you listen to the train whistle -- the pitch of the whistle changes as it moves past. That's exactly what we have," explained CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers, who has studied Doppler technology. "It's the Doppler effect that they're using on this ping or handshake back from the airplane. They know by nanoseconds whether that signal was compressed a little -- or expanded -- by whether the plane was moving closer or away from 64.5 degrees -- which is the latitude of the orbiting satellite."

Each ping was analyzed for its direction of travel, Myers said. The new calculations, McLaughlin said, underwent a peer review process with space agency experts and contributions by Boeing.

It's possible to use this analysis to determine more specifically the area where the plane went down, Myers said. "Using trigonometry, engineers are capable of finding angles of flight."

What could wreckage tell us about Flight 370's fate?

No surprise

Experts said they weren't surprised by the news that the flight traveled along the southern track -- one of two possible paths revealed by satellite data last week. The possible northern track toward Pakistan would have been heavily monitored by radar. Pakistan had said it found no evidence of Flight 370 on its radar systems.



New French images may show objects

Challenge of searching the Indian Ocean

Chinese satellite spots floating object "It was very difficult to believe that no watch captain" along the possible northern path "would've seen a burning or distressed aircraft in the sky during the course of their watch," said McLaughlin.

Is the more pinpointed flight path now focused enough to increase the chances of finding wreckage from the plane?

If the flight definitely ended far from land, does that support the theory that the plane was not hijacked? It's just one question of many that investigators likely will be pondering in the coming days.

Hours before the Prime Minister's announcement, Australian officials said they had spotted two objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be related to the flight, which has been missing since March 8.

One object is "a gray or green circular object," and the other is "an orange rectangular object," the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.

"This is obviously a major tragedy," McLaughlin said. "The only thing you can hope is that from this, just as the Titanic resulted in (new safety legislation), that from this, there will be a mandate that all aircraft should be constantly tracked."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Satellite experts use "groundbreaking" process to track Flight 370's final hours
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777's last position was "in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth"
Satellite official: Hopefully, this will trigger a "mandate that all aircraft should be constantly tracked"

Fact #6: BREAKING NEWS. News Summary of what's happened over the last 18 days.

The plane flew high, the plane flew low.
The captain went where nobody knows
The media is left to presuppose

The plane flew to the left, and then to the right
It vanished out of everyone's sight
Lithium batteries explode like dynamite.

The plane flew low, the plane flew high
It decompressed and the passengers died.
Conspiracies soar that the government lied!

It flew over land and flew over ocean
It turned and turned in mysterious motion
"Abducted by aliens" is a cult devotion

It could've gone south, could've gone north
Or west and east and back and forth
Kept in the dark, officials show no remorse

Now the FBI has sent in it's crew
Malaysia still doesn't have a clue
Australia says the plane's in the ocean blue

The Chinese scream, worrying time and a half
18 days have gone by, radar gaffe.
That what happens with an incompetent staff.

Families of the victims received a late night text
"Passengers lost" with no proof, left many perplexed
A resolution that they simply couldn't accept.
Attachments:

LOL

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/mh370-satellite-images-show-122-potential-objects-n62356

They found 100+ objects that could be the plane (so a debris field)

thisisajokeright Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/mh370
> -satellite-images-show-122-potential-objects-n6235
> 6
>
> They found 100+ objects that could be the plane
> (so a debris field)

Or it's bodies that were dumped by a local contractor.

Maybe! Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> thisisajokeright Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> >
> http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/mh370
>
> >
> -satellite-images-show-122-potential-objects-n6235
>
> > 6
> >
> > They found 100+ objects that could be the plane
> > (so a debris field)
>
> Or it's bodies that were dumped by a local
> contractor.

LOL!! Yes, all the way over in the Indian ocean, 2500 miles west of Perth.

Malaysian official: Praying for plane survivors, but ...
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/29/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Watch "Flight 370: The Final Hours" tonight at 6:30 ET.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) -- It sounds like a mixed message.

Earlier this week, loved ones of those aboard missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 heard this: "All lives are lost."

But Saturday, a Malaysian official met with relatives and then told reporters he had not closed the door on the hope of relatives that survivors may exist among the 239 people aboard the Boeing 777-200 ER that went missing March 8.

"Even hoping against hope, no matter how remote, of course, we are praying and we will continue our search for the possible survivors," said Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's acting transportation minister.

"More than that, I told the families I cannot give them false hope. The best we can do is pray and that we must be sensitive to them that, as long as there is even a remote chance of a survivor, we will pray and do whatever it takes."

The sole representative of families of passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 leaves a conference at a Beijing hotel on Friday, March 28, after other relatives left en masse to protest the Malaysian government's response to their questions. Authorities are combing thousands of square miles of the southern Indian Ocean in search of the wreckage of Flight 370, which disappeared March 8. Malaysian authorities declared that the plane had most likely been lost with all aboard in the remote sea far off Australia. A member of the Royal Australian Air Force is silhouetted against the southern Indian Ocean during the search for the missing jet on Thursday, March 27. Flight Lt. Jayson Nichols looks at a map aboard a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft during a search on March 27. People in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, light candles during a ceremony held for the missing flight's passengers on March 27. Crew members of the Chinese icebreaking ship Xuelong scan the Indian Ocean during a search for the missing jet on Wednesday, March 26. People work at a console at the British satellite company Inmarsat on Tuesday, March 25, in London. The mother of a passenger who was on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 cries at her home in Medan, Indonesia, on March 25. Australian Defense Minister David Johnston speaks to the media March 25 about the search for the missing jet. A family member of a missing passenger reacts after hearing the latest news March 25 in Kuala Lumpur. Angry relatives of those aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 react in Beijing on Monday, March 24, after hearing that the plane went down over the southern Indian Ocean, according to analysis of satellite data. Grieving relatives of missing passengers leave a hotel in Beijing on March 24. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, delivers a statement about the flight March 24 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Razak's announcement came after the airline sent a text message to relatives saying it "deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH 370 has been lost and that none of those onboard survived." Relatives of the missing passengers hold a candlelight vigil in Beijing on March 24. A member of the Royal Australian Air Force looks out an aircraft during a search for the missing jet March 24. A woman reads messages for missing passengers at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur on March 24. Flight Lt. Josh Williams of the Royal Australian Air Force operates the controls of an AP-3C Orion on Sunday, March 23, after searching the southern Indian Ocean. Ground crew members wave to a Japanese Maritime Defense Force patrol plane as it leaves the Royal Malaysian Air Force base in Subang, Malaysia, on Sunday, March 23. The plane was heading to Australia to join a search-and-rescue operation. A passenger views a weather map in the departures terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Saturday, March 22. A Chinese satellite captured this image, released on March 22, of a floating object in the Indian Ocean, according to China's State Administration of Science. It is a possible lead in the search for the missing plane. Surveillance planes are looking for two objects spotted by satellite imagery in remote, treacherous waters more than 1,400 miles from the west coast of Australia. A member of the Royal Australian Air Force looks down at the Norwegian merchant ship Hoegh St. Petersburg, which took part in search operations Friday, March 21. The Royal Australian Air Force's Neville Dawson, left, goes over the search area with Brittany Sharpe aboard an AP-3C Orion some 2,500 kilometers (about 1,500 miles) southwest of Perth, Australia, over the Indian Ocean on March 21. Satellite imagery provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority on Thursday, March 20, shows debris in the southern Indian Ocean that could be from Flight 370. The announcement by Australian officials that they had spotted something raised hopes of a breakthrough in the frustrating search. A closer look at the satellite shot of possible debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Another satellite shot provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority shows possible debris from the flight. A closer look at the satellite shot of possible debris. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority's John Young speaks to the media in Canberra, Australia, on March 20 about satellite imagery. A distraught relative of a missing passenger breaks down while talking to reporters at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Wednesday, March 19. A relative of missing passengers waits for a news briefing by officials in Beijing on Tuesday, March 18. A relative of a missing passenger tells reporters in Beijing about a hunger strike to protest authorities' handling of information about the missing jet. A member of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency joins in a search for the missing plane in the Andaman Sea area around the northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra on Monday, March 17. Relatives of missing passengers watch a news program about the missing plane as they await information at a hotel ballroom in Beijing on March 17. Malaysian Transportation Minister Hishamuddin Hussein, center, shows maps of the search area at a hotel next to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 17. U.S. Navy crew members assist in search-and-rescue operations Sunday, March 16, in the Indian Ocean. Indonesian personnel watch over high seas during a search operation in the Andaman Sea on Saturday, March 15. A foam plane, which has personalized messages for the missing flight's passengers, is seen at a viewing gallery March 15 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. A member of the Malaysian navy makes a call as his ship approaches a Chinese coast guard ship in the South China Sea on March 15. A Indonesian ship heads to the Andaman Sea during a search operation near the tip of Sumatra, Indonesia, on March 15. Elementary school students pray for the missing passengers during class in Medan, Indonesia, on March 15. Col. Vu Duc Long of the Vietnam air force fields reporters' questions at an air base in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, after a search operation on Friday, March 14. Members of the Chinese navy continue search operations on Thursday, March 13. The search area for Flight 370 has grown wider. After starting in the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, the plane's last confirmed location, efforts are expanding west into the Indian Ocean. A Vietnamese military official looks out an aircraft window during search operations March 13. Malaysian air force members look for debris on March 13 near Kuala Lumpur. A relative of a missing passenger watches TV at a Beijing hotel as she waits for the latest news March 13. A member of the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency scans the horizon in the Strait of Malacca on Wednesday, March 12. Relatives of missing passengers wait for the latest news at a hotel in Beijing on March 12. Journalists raise their hands to ask questions during a news conference in Sepang on March 12. Indonesian air force officers in Medan, Indonesia, examine a map of the Strait of Malacca on March 12. A member of the Vietnamese air force checks a map while searching for the missing plane on Tuesday, March 11. Iranians Pouri Nourmohammadi, second left, and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, far right, were identified by Interpol as the two men who used stolen passports to board the flight. But there's no evidence to suggest either was connected to any terrorist organizations, according to Malaysian investigators. Malaysian police believe Nourmohammadi was trying to emigrate to Germany using the stolen Austrian passport. An Indonesian navy crew member scans an area of the South China Sea bordering Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand on Monday, March 10. Vietnam air force Col. Le Huu Hanh is reflected on the navigation control panel of a plane that is part of the search operation over the South China Sea on March 10. Relatives of the missing flight's passengers wait in a Beijing hotel room on March 10. A U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopter lands aboard the USS Pinckney to change crews before returning to search for the missing plane Sunday, March 9, in the Gulf of Thailand. Members of the Fo Guang Shan rescue team offer a special prayer March 9 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. A handout picture provided by the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency shows personnel checking a radar screen during search-and-rescue operations March 9. Italian tourist Luigi Maraldi, who reported his passport stolen in August, shows his current passport during a news conference at a police station in Phuket island, Thailand, on March 9. Two passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight were reportedly traveling on stolen passports belonging to Maraldi and an Austrian citizen whose papers were stolen two years ago. Hugh Dunleavy, commercial director of Malaysia Airlines, speaks to journalists March 9 at a Beijing hotel where relatives and friends of the missing flight's passengers are staying. Vietnamese air force crew stand in front of a plane at Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh City on March 9 before heading out to the area between Vietnam and Malaysia where the airliner vanished. Buddhist monks at Kuala Lumpur International Airport offer a special prayer for the missing passengers on March 9. The Chinese navy warship Jinggangshan prepares to leave Zhanjiang Port early on March 9 to assist in search-and-rescue operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight. The Jinggangshan, an amphibious landing ship, is loaded with lifesaving equipment, underwater detection devices and supplies of oil, water and food. Members of a Chinese emergency response team board a rescue vessel at the port of Sanya in China's Hainan province on March 9. The vessel is carrying 12 divers and will rendezvous with another rescue vessel on its way to the area where contact was lost with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The rescue vessel sets out from Sanya in the South China Sea. A family member of missing passengers is mobbed by journalists at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Saturday, March 8. A Vietnamese air force plane found traces of oil that authorities had suspected to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the Vietnamese government online newspaper reported March 8. However, a sample from the slick showed it was bunker oil, typically used to power large cargo ships, Malaysia's state news agency, Bernama, reported on March 10. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, arrives to meet family members of missing passengers at the reception center at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8. Malaysia Airlines official Joshua Law Kok Hwa, center, speaks to reporters in Beijing on March 8. A relative of two missing passengers reacts at their home in Kuala Lumpur on March 8. Wang Yue, director of marketing of Malaysia Airlines in China, reads a company statement during a news conference at the Metro Park Lido Hotel in Beijing on March 8. Chinese police at the Beijing airport stand beside the arrival board showing delayed Flight 370 in red on March 8. A woman asks a staff member at the Beijing airport for more information on the missing flight. A Malaysian man who says he has relatives on board the missing plane talks to journalists at the Beijing airport on March 8. Passengers walk past a Malaysia Airlines sign on March 8 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Malaysia Airlines Group CEO Ahmad Juahari Yahya, front, speaks during a news conference on March 8 at a hotel in Sepang. "We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts" with the jet, he said. The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370HIDE CAPTION<<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 >>>
Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Flight attendant's husband speaks out

Malaysian officials under fire

New details in Flight 370 search Eight planes and a number of ships scoured some 97,000 square miles (252,000 square kilometers) of water Saturday hundreds of miles off Australia for signs of the plane, with aircraft reporting sightings of objects similar to those reported Friday, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.

Two vessels -- one of them a Chinese warship -- retrieved objects, "but so far no objects confirmed to be related to MH370 have been recovered," the authority said.

Crew members aboard a Chinese plane dropped buoys to mark three suspected debris sites, China's state-run CCTV reported.

"After entering the search area, the airlifter flew for about 20 minutes," crew member Wang Zhenwu told the television network. "We found an L-shaped debris in orange color right below the plane's right wing. Then within around three minutes, we found a stripe-shaped object. We immediately reported our findings to the captain."

The captain, Liu Jun, said buoys containing dye were dropped on each of the suspected sites, according to CCTV.

The hunt was to resume Sunday morning.

As the search continued, Hishammuddin met with family members, who have listened keenly as data analyses and estimates of Flight 370's whereabouts have changed.

'They're still alive'

In Beijing on Saturday, some of the relatives of the missing vented their anguish in the streets.

"They're all still alive, my son and everyone on board!" yelled Wen Wancheng, 63, whose only son was among the passengers. "The plane is still there too! They're hiding it."

He held aloft a banner that read: "Son, mom and dad's hearts are torn to pieces. Come home soon!"

Many relatives doubtless remember the speculation from early in the search that the plane may have landed somewhere. They implored Hishammuddin to redouble the efforts, and he said Malaysian authorities would do so.



New details in Flight 370 search

Transport official reassures families

Countries unite in search for Flight 370

Missing Malaysia flight stirs old memories "What they want is a commitment on our part to continue the search, and that I have given," Hishammuddin said. "For me, as the minister responsible, this is the hardest part of my life, at the moment," he told reporters.

"Miracles do happen, remote or otherwise, and that is the hope that the families want me to convey -- not only to the Malaysian government, MAS (Malaysia Airlines), but also to the world at large," he said.

He said the effort was still to find survivors.

Sea objects

On Saturday that meant hunting again for plane debris in an ocean awash in debris -- including odds and ends from passing ships -- in hopes that among it are pieces of the jet.

After the latest data analysis, experts says they believe that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared three weeks ago, ended up in the southern Indian Ocean.

Investigators concluded this week that, during the flight's initial phase, the plane was traveling faster -- and therefore burning fuel faster -- than they had thought. Authorities have concluded that it could not have traveled as far south as they had thought earlier.

The new search area is 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) northeast of the previous one and closer to Australia's coast, so it's easier to reach. It's also marked by calmer waters.

Ships plowed the waters of the search area and eight planes searched from above.

"Unfortunately, we didn't find anything of significance out there," flight captain Russell Adams said after returning to Perth.

Malaysia plane saga: Your questions answered

Still, the new search area is vast and remote, roughly 123,000 square miles (319,000 square kilometers) in size and 1,150 miles (1,850 kilometers) west of Perth.

Pieces of debris spotted Friday were hundreds of miles away from each other, but given the ocean conditions and the time passed since the airplane's purported crash, they could be part of the same object.

Friday's sightings included 11 small objects spotted by a military P-3 plane. CNN's Kyung Lah, who went out on a U.S. Navy P-8 search plane Friday, said its crew spotted white objects, orange rope and a blue bag.

"At one point, sure, everybody on board got a little excited, but it's impossible to tell from that distance what anything is," she said.

If and when the jet is found, the key question would remain: Why did it go down? That may not be answered until investigators retrieve the aircraft and try, literally, to piece together what happened to it.

Vast, shifting search

The shifting hunt for Flight 370 has spanned vast bodies of water and continents.

It started in the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, where the plane went out of contact with air traffic controllers.

When authorities learned of radar data suggesting the plane had turned westward across the Malay Peninsula after losing contact, they expanded the search into the Strait of Malacca.

When those efforts proved fruitless, the search spread north into the Andaman Sea and northern Indian Ocean.

It then ballooned dramatically after Malaysia announced March 15 that satellite data showed the plane could have flown along either of two huge arcs, one stretching northwest into the Asian land mass, the other southwest into the Indian Ocean.

The search area at that point reached nearly 3 million square miles.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that further analysis of the data led authorities to conclude the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean, far from land.

Malaysian officials then told the families of those on board that nobody would have survived. On Saturday, after confronting relatives' grief, they made that conclusion seem less final.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The search is to resume Sunday morning
Ships retrieve new debris, but no objects linked to missing plane, Australia says
Malaysian official: "I told the families I cannot give them false hope"
The search for missing Flight 370 has gone on for three weeks
Attachments:

The Latest Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Malaysian official: Praying for plane survivors,
> but ...
> http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/29/world/asia/malaysia-
> airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
>
> Watch "Flight 370: The Final Hours" tonight at
> 6:30 ET.
>
> Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) -- It sounds like a
> mixed message.
>
> Earlier this week, loved ones of those aboard
> missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 heard this:
> "All lives are lost."
>
> But Saturday, a Malaysian official met with
> relatives and then told reporters he had not
> closed the door on the hope of relatives that
> survivors may exist among the 239 people aboard
> the Boeing 777-200 ER that went missing March 8.
>
> "Even hoping against hope, no matter how remote,
> of course, we are praying and we will continue our
> search for the possible survivors," said
> Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's acting
> transportation minister.
>
> "More than that, I told the families I cannot give
> them false hope. The best we can do is pray and
> that we must be sensitive to them that, as long as
> there is even a remote chance of a survivor, we
> will pray and do whatever it takes."
>
> The sole representative of families of passengers
> aboard missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 leaves
> a conference at a Beijing hotel on Friday, March
> 28, after other relatives left en masse to protest
> the Malaysian government's response to their
> questions. Authorities are combing thousands of
> square miles of the southern Indian Ocean in
> search of the wreckage of Flight 370, which
> disappeared March 8. Malaysian authorities
> declared that the plane had most likely been lost
> with all aboard in the remote sea far off
> Australia. A member of the Royal Australian Air
> Force is silhouetted against the southern Indian
> Ocean during the search for the missing jet on
> Thursday, March 27. Flight Lt. Jayson Nichols
> looks at a map aboard a Royal Australian Air Force
> aircraft during a search on March 27. People in
> Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, light candles during a
> ceremony held for the missing flight's passengers
> on March 27. Crew members of the Chinese
> icebreaking ship Xuelong scan the Indian Ocean
> during a search for the missing jet on Wednesday,
> March 26. People work at a console at the British
> satellite company Inmarsat on Tuesday, March 25,
> in London. The mother of a passenger who was on
> Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 cries at her home in
> Medan, Indonesia, on March 25. Australian Defense
> Minister David Johnston speaks to the media March
> 25 about the search for the missing jet. A family
> member of a missing passenger reacts after hearing
> the latest news March 25 in Kuala Lumpur. Angry
> relatives of those aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight
> 370 react in Beijing on Monday, March 24, after
> hearing that the plane went down over the southern
> Indian Ocean, according to analysis of satellite
> data. Grieving relatives of missing passengers
> leave a hotel in Beijing on March 24. Malaysian
> Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, delivers a
> statement about the flight March 24 in Kuala
> Lumpur, Malaysia. Razak's announcement came after
> the airline sent a text message to relatives
> saying it "deeply regrets that we have to assume
> beyond any reasonable doubt that MH 370 has been
> lost and that none of those onboard survived."
> Relatives of the missing passengers hold a
> candlelight vigil in Beijing on March 24. A
> member of the Royal Australian Air Force looks out
> an aircraft during a search for the missing jet
> March 24. A woman reads messages for missing
> passengers at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur on
> March 24. Flight Lt. Josh Williams of the Royal
> Australian Air Force operates the controls of an
> AP-3C Orion on Sunday, March 23, after searching
> the southern Indian Ocean. Ground crew members
> wave to a Japanese Maritime Defense Force patrol
> plane as it leaves the Royal Malaysian Air Force
> base in Subang, Malaysia, on Sunday, March 23. The
> plane was heading to Australia to join a
> search-and-rescue operation. A passenger views a
> weather map in the departures terminal of Kuala
> Lumpur International Airport on Saturday, March
> 22. A Chinese satellite captured this image,
> released on March 22, of a floating object in the
> Indian Ocean, according to China's State
> Administration of Science. It is a possible lead
> in the search for the missing plane. Surveillance
> planes are looking for two objects spotted by
> satellite imagery in remote, treacherous waters
> more than 1,400 miles from the west coast of
> Australia. A member of the Royal Australian Air
> Force looks down at the Norwegian merchant ship
> Hoegh St. Petersburg, which took part in search
> operations Friday, March 21. The Royal Australian
> Air Force's Neville Dawson, left, goes over the
> search area with Brittany Sharpe aboard an AP-3C
> Orion some 2,500 kilometers (about 1,500 miles)
> southwest of Perth, Australia, over the Indian
> Ocean on March 21. Satellite imagery provided by
> the Australian Maritime Safety Authority on
> Thursday, March 20, shows debris in the southern
> Indian Ocean that could be from Flight 370. The
> announcement by Australian officials that they had
> spotted something raised hopes of a breakthrough
> in the frustrating search. A closer look at the
> satellite shot of possible debris from Malaysia
> Airlines Flight 370. Another satellite shot
> provided by the Australian Maritime Safety
> Authority shows possible debris from the flight.
> A closer look at the satellite shot of possible
> debris. The Australian Maritime Safety
> Authority's John Young speaks to the media in
> Canberra, Australia, on March 20 about satellite
> imagery. A distraught relative of a missing
> passenger breaks down while talking to reporters
> at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on
> Wednesday, March 19. A relative of missing
> passengers waits for a news briefing by officials
> in Beijing on Tuesday, March 18. A relative of a
> missing passenger tells reporters in Beijing about
> a hunger strike to protest authorities' handling
> of information about the missing jet. A member of
> Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency
> joins in a search for the missing plane in the
> Andaman Sea area around the northern tip of
> Indonesia's Sumatra on Monday, March 17.
> Relatives of missing passengers watch a news
> program about the missing plane as they await
> information at a hotel ballroom in Beijing on
> March 17. Malaysian Transportation Minister
> Hishamuddin Hussein, center, shows maps of the
> search area at a hotel next to the Kuala Lumpur
> International Airport on March 17. U.S. Navy crew
> members assist in search-and-rescue operations
> Sunday, March 16, in the Indian Ocean. Indonesian
> personnel watch over high seas during a search
> operation in the Andaman Sea on Saturday, March
> 15. A foam plane, which has personalized messages
> for the missing flight's passengers, is seen at a
> viewing gallery March 15 at Kuala Lumpur
> International Airport. A member of the Malaysian
> navy makes a call as his ship approaches a Chinese
> coast guard ship in the South China Sea on March
> 15. A Indonesian ship heads to the Andaman Sea
> during a search operation near the tip of Sumatra,
> Indonesia, on March 15. Elementary school
> students pray for the missing passengers during
> class in Medan, Indonesia, on March 15. Col. Vu
> Duc Long of the Vietnam air force fields
> reporters' questions at an air base in Ho Chi Minh
> City, Vietnam, after a search operation on Friday,
> March 14. Members of the Chinese navy continue
> search operations on Thursday, March 13. The
> search area for Flight 370 has grown wider. After
> starting in the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam,
> the plane's last confirmed location, efforts are
> expanding west into the Indian Ocean. A
> Vietnamese military official looks out an aircraft
> window during search operations March 13.
> Malaysian air force members look for debris on
> March 13 near Kuala Lumpur. A relative of a
> missing passenger watches TV at a Beijing hotel as
> she waits for the latest news March 13. A member
> of the Indonesian National Search and Rescue
> Agency scans the horizon in the Strait of Malacca
> on Wednesday, March 12. Relatives of missing
> passengers wait for the latest news at a hotel in
> Beijing on March 12. Journalists raise their
> hands to ask questions during a news conference in
> Sepang on March 12. Indonesian air force officers
> in Medan, Indonesia, examine a map of the Strait
> of Malacca on March 12. A member of the
> Vietnamese air force checks a map while searching
> for the missing plane on Tuesday, March 11.
> Iranians Pouri Nourmohammadi, second left, and
> Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, far right, were
> identified by Interpol as the two men who used
> stolen passports to board the flight. But there's
> no evidence to suggest either was connected to any
> terrorist organizations, according to Malaysian
> investigators. Malaysian police believe
> Nourmohammadi was trying to emigrate to Germany
> using the stolen Austrian passport. An Indonesian
> navy crew member scans an area of the South China
> Sea bordering Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand on
> Monday, March 10. Vietnam air force Col. Le Huu
> Hanh is reflected on the navigation control panel
> of a plane that is part of the search operation
> over the South China Sea on March 10. Relatives
> of the missing flight's passengers wait in a
> Beijing hotel room on March 10. A U.S. Navy
> Seahawk helicopter lands aboard the USS Pinckney
> to change crews before returning to search for the
> missing plane Sunday, March 9, in the Gulf of
> Thailand. Members of the Fo Guang Shan rescue
> team offer a special prayer March 9 at Kuala
> Lumpur International Airport. A handout picture
> provided by the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement
> Agency shows personnel checking a radar screen
> during search-and-rescue operations March 9.
> Italian tourist Luigi Maraldi, who reported his
> passport stolen in August, shows his current
> passport during a news conference at a police
> station in Phuket island, Thailand, on March 9.
> Two passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines
> flight were reportedly traveling on stolen
> passports belonging to Maraldi and an Austrian
> citizen whose papers were stolen two years ago.
> Hugh Dunleavy, commercial director of Malaysia
> Airlines, speaks to journalists March 9 at a
> Beijing hotel where relatives and friends of the
> missing flight's passengers are staying.
> Vietnamese air force crew stand in front of a
> plane at Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh City
> on March 9 before heading out to the area between
> Vietnam and Malaysia where the airliner vanished.
> Buddhist monks at Kuala Lumpur International
> Airport offer a special prayer for the missing
> passengers on March 9. The Chinese navy warship
> Jinggangshan prepares to leave Zhanjiang Port
> early on March 9 to assist in search-and-rescue
> operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines
> flight. The Jinggangshan, an amphibious landing
> ship, is loaded with lifesaving equipment,
> underwater detection devices and supplies of oil,
> water and food. Members of a Chinese emergency
> response team board a rescue vessel at the port of
> Sanya in China's Hainan province on March 9. The
> vessel is carrying 12 divers and will rendezvous
> with another rescue vessel on its way to the area
> where contact was lost with Malaysia Airlines
> Flight 370. The rescue vessel sets out from Sanya
> in the South China Sea. A family member of
> missing passengers is mobbed by journalists at
> Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Saturday,
> March 8. A Vietnamese air force plane found
> traces of oil that authorities had suspected to be
> from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the
> Vietnamese government online newspaper reported
> March 8. However, a sample from the slick showed
> it was bunker oil, typically used to power large
> cargo ships, Malaysia's state news agency,
> Bernama, reported on March 10. Malaysian Prime
> Minister Najib Razak, center, arrives to meet
> family members of missing passengers at the
> reception center at Kuala Lumpur International
> Airport on March 8. Malaysia Airlines official
> Joshua Law Kok Hwa, center, speaks to reporters in
> Beijing on March 8. A relative of two missing
> passengers reacts at their home in Kuala Lumpur on
> March 8. Wang Yue, director of marketing of
> Malaysia Airlines in China, reads a company
> statement during a news conference at the Metro
> Park Lido Hotel in Beijing on March 8. Chinese
> police at the Beijing airport stand beside the
> arrival board showing delayed Flight 370 in red on
> March 8. A woman asks a staff member at the
> Beijing airport for more information on the
> missing flight. A Malaysian man who says he has
> relatives on board the missing plane talks to
> journalists at the Beijing airport on March 8.
> Passengers walk past a Malaysia Airlines sign on
> March 8 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
> Malaysia Airlines Group CEO Ahmad Juahari Yahya,
> front, speaks during a news conference on March 8
> at a hotel in Sepang. "We deeply regret that we
> have lost all contacts" with the jet, he said. The
> search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search
> for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The search for
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> Malaysia Airlines Flight 370HIDE CAPTION<<< 1 2
> 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
> 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
> 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41
> 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54
> 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66
> 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 >>>
> Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight
> 370
>
> Flight attendant's husband speaks out
>
> Malaysian officials under fire
>
> New details in Flight 370 search Eight planes and
> a number of ships scoured some 97,000 square miles
> (252,000 square kilometers) of water Saturday
> hundreds of miles off Australia for signs of the
> plane, with aircraft reporting sightings of
> objects similar to those reported Friday, the
> Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
>
> Two vessels -- one of them a Chinese warship --
> retrieved objects, "but so far no objects
> confirmed to be related to MH370 have been
> recovered," the authority said.
>
> Crew members aboard a Chinese plane dropped buoys
> to mark three suspected debris sites, China's
> state-run CCTV reported.
>
> "After entering the search area, the airlifter
> flew for about 20 minutes," crew member Wang
> Zhenwu told the television network. "We found an
> L-shaped debris in orange color right below the
> plane's right wing. Then within around three
> minutes, we found a stripe-shaped object. We
> immediately reported our findings to the
> captain."
>
> The captain, Liu Jun, said buoys containing dye
> were dropped on each of the suspected sites,
> according to CCTV.
>
> The hunt was to resume Sunday morning.
>
> As the search continued, Hishammuddin met with
> family members, who have listened keenly as data
> analyses and estimates of Flight 370's whereabouts
> have changed.
>
> 'They're still alive'
>
> In Beijing on Saturday, some of the relatives of
> the missing vented their anguish in the streets.
>
> "They're all still alive, my son and everyone on
> board!" yelled Wen Wancheng, 63, whose only son
> was among the passengers. "The plane is still
> there too! They're hiding it."
>
> He held aloft a banner that read: "Son, mom and
> dad's hearts are torn to pieces. Come home soon!"
>
> Many relatives doubtless remember the speculation
> from early in the search that the plane may have
> landed somewhere. They implored Hishammuddin to
> redouble the efforts, and he said Malaysian
> authorities would do so.
>
>
>
> New details in Flight 370 search
>
> Transport official reassures families
>
> Countries unite in search for Flight 370
>
> Missing Malaysia flight stirs old memories "What
> they want is a commitment on our part to continue
> the search, and that I have given," Hishammuddin
> said. "For me, as the minister responsible, this
> is the hardest part of my life, at the moment," he
> told reporters.
>
> "Miracles do happen, remote or otherwise, and that
> is the hope that the families want me to convey --
> not only to the Malaysian government, MAS
> (Malaysia Airlines), but also to the world at
> large," he said.
>
> He said the effort was still to find survivors.
>
> Sea objects
>
> On Saturday that meant hunting again for plane
> debris in an ocean awash in debris -- including
> odds and ends from passing ships -- in hopes that
> among it are pieces of the jet.
>
> After the latest data analysis, experts says they
> believe that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which
> disappeared three weeks ago, ended up in the
> southern Indian Ocean.
>
> Investigators concluded this week that, during the
> flight's initial phase, the plane was traveling
> faster -- and therefore burning fuel faster --
> than they had thought. Authorities have concluded
> that it could not have traveled as far south as
> they had thought earlier.
>
> The new search area is 1,100 kilometers (680
> miles) northeast of the previous one and closer to
> Australia's coast, so it's easier to reach. It's
> also marked by calmer waters.
>
> Ships plowed the waters of the search area and
> eight planes searched from above.
>
> "Unfortunately, we didn't find anything of
> significance out there," flight captain Russell
> Adams said after returning to Perth.
>
> Malaysia plane saga: Your questions answered
>
> Still, the new search area is vast and remote,
> roughly 123,000 square miles (319,000 square
> kilometers) in size and 1,150 miles (1,850
> kilometers) west of Perth.
>
> Pieces of debris spotted Friday were hundreds of
> miles away from each other, but given the ocean
> conditions and the time passed since the
> airplane's purported crash, they could be part of
> the same object.
>
> Friday's sightings included 11 small objects
> spotted by a military P-3 plane. CNN's Kyung Lah,
> who went out on a U.S. Navy P-8 search plane
> Friday, said its crew spotted white objects,
> orange rope and a blue bag.
>
> "At one point, sure, everybody on board got a
> little excited, but it's impossible to tell from
> that distance what anything is," she said.
>
> If and when the jet is found, the key question
> would remain: Why did it go down? That may not be
> answered until investigators retrieve the aircraft
> and try, literally, to piece together what
> happened to it.
>
> Vast, shifting search
>
> The shifting hunt for Flight 370 has spanned vast
> bodies of water and continents.
>
> It started in the South China Sea between Malaysia
> and Vietnam, where the plane went out of contact
> with air traffic controllers.
>
> When authorities learned of radar data suggesting
> the plane had turned westward across the Malay
> Peninsula after losing contact, they expanded the
> search into the Strait of Malacca.
>
> When those efforts proved fruitless, the search
> spread north into the Andaman Sea and northern
> Indian Ocean.
>
> It then ballooned dramatically after Malaysia
> announced March 15 that satellite data showed the
> plane could have flown along either of two huge
> arcs, one stretching northwest into the Asian land
> mass, the other southwest into the Indian Ocean.
>
> The search area at that point reached nearly 3
> million square miles.
>
> Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that
> further analysis of the data led authorities to
> conclude the plane went down in the southern
> Indian Ocean, far from land.
>
> Malaysian officials then told the families of
> those on board that nobody would have survived. On
> Saturday, after confronting relatives' grief, they
> made that conclusion seem less final.
>
> STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> The search is to resume Sunday morning
> Ships retrieve new debris, but no objects linked
> to missing plane, Australia says
> Malaysian official: "I told the families I cannot
> give them false hope"
> The search for missing Flight 370 has gone on for
> three weeks
Attachments:

MH370: Anguished Chinese relatives demand 'evidence, truth' from Malaysia
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/30/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- Dozens of anguished Chinese relatives on Sunday demanded that Malaysia provide them with evidence on the fate of their loved ones aboard the missing Flight 370.

The family members arrived in Kuala Lumpur and held a news conference at their hotel, imploring officials to be more transparent.

"We want evidence, we want truth and we want our family," said Jiang Hui, the families' designated representative. The crowd chanted the same words.

"We are here to call for the following three things," he said. "First, the Malaysian side should provide us with timely and comprehensive evidence and answer the families' questions."

He also asked Malaysia to apologize for releasing confusing information and for announcing on March 24 that the plane had crashed without "direct evidence.".

Relatives wore white T-Shirts with the words " Pray for MH370 ... return home safely." Others wept.

"We are here struck with sadness and urgency," Jiang said. "The meetings recently in China were not fruitful with MAS (Malaysia Airlines) officials."

Mixed messages

Family members have accused Malaysian officials of withholding information since the plane vanished three weeks ago.

Of the 239 people aboard the doomed jetliner, 154 were Chinese.

Last week, relatives were told everyone aboard died. But Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's acting transportation minister, told reporters Saturday he had not closed the door on the hope that survivors may exist.

Frustrating search

Beijing has publicly slammed Malaysia's efforts to find the Boeing 777, which went missing March 8 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

And as the frustrating three-week search resumed Sunday, China is among the countries scouring the choppy waters of the southern Indian Ocean for signs of the plane. Weather is forecast to worsen with light showers and low clouds, though search operations are expected to continue, Australian authorities said.

Ten planes will fly over 123,167 square miles (319,000 square kilometers) about 1,150 miles (1,850 kilometers) west of Perth, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.

Eight ships will join the search by the end of the day, including the Australian Ocean Shield, which will be fitted with a "black box" detector and an autonomous underwater vehicle.

And amid the confusion, Malaysia said it has done its best with what it has.

"History will judge us as a country that has been very responsible," Hishammuddin said.

Relatives said they hope to meet the transport minister in Kuala Lumpur. They also asked Malaysia to plan meetings with the various companies involved, including Boeing, the plane's manufacturer.

Race against time

Experts said the clock is ticking.

The batteries on the flight data recorder commonly referred to as the black box are designed to last about 30 days. The plane disappeared March 8 -- 22 days ago.

"We certainly have our challenges in front of us," said Cmdr. Mark Matthews of the U.S Navy.

"What we're trying to find is an acoustic emission from one of the pingers on the flight data recorder, the cockpit voice recorder. Typically these last, the batteries last about 30 days, usually they last a little bit longer and that's what we're trying to find. But what is critical is that the teams that are out there searching for the surface debris, they get good position data on that and they feed it back to the oceanographers, to help us determine a probable point of impact for where the aircraft went in."

Eight planes and a number of ships scoured some 97,000 square miles of water Saturday for signs of the plane, with aircraft reporting sightings of objects similar to those reported Friday, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.

Two vessels -- one of them a Chinese warship -- retrieved objects, "but so far no objects confirmed to be related to MH370 have been recovered," the authority said.

Crew members aboard a Chinese plane dropped buoys to mark three suspected debris sites, China's state-run CCTV reported. It later said Sunday an orange "suspicious object" spotted by a Chinese plane Saturday turned out to be a dead jellyfish.

'They're still alive'

In Beijing on Saturday, some of the relatives of the missing vented their anguish in the streets.

"They're all still alive, my son and everyone on board!" yelled Wen Wancheng, 63, whose only son was among the passengers. "The plane is still there, too! They're hiding it."

He held aloft a banner that read: "Son, mom and dad's hearts are torn to pieces. Come home soon!"

Relatives implored Hishammuddin to redouble the efforts.

"What they want is a commitment on our part to continue the search, and that I have given," Hishammuddin said. "For me, as the minister responsible, this is the hardest part of my life, at the moment," he told reporters.

"Miracles do happen, remote or otherwise, and that is the hope that the families want me to convey -- not only to the Malaysian government, MAS (Malaysia Airlines), but also to the world at large," he said.

Sea objects

The latest data analysis shows Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 ended up in the southern Indian Ocean.

Investigators concluded that during the flight's initial phase, the plane was traveling faster and burning fuel faster than they had thought. As a result, it could not have traveled as far south as they had thought earlier.

The new search area is closer to Australia's coast, so it's easier to reach. It's also marked by calmer waters.

Vast, shifting search

The search for Flight 370 has spanned vast bodies of water and continents.

It started in the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, where the plane went out of contact with air traffic controllers.

When authorities learned of radar data suggesting the plane had turned westward across the Malay Peninsula after losing contact, they expanded the search into the Strait of Malacca.

When those efforts proved fruitless, the search spread north into the Andaman Sea and northern Indian Ocean.

It then ballooned drastically after Malaysia announced March 15 that satellite data showed the plane could have flown along either of two huge arcs, one stretching northwest into the Asian land mass, the other southwest into the Indian Ocean.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that further analysis of the data led authorities to conclude the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NEW: "We are here struck with sadness," relative says
Of the 239 people aboard the doomed jetliner, 154 are Chinese
Beijing has publicly slammed Malaysia's efforts to find the Boeing 777
China is among the countries scouring the southern Indian Ocean for signs of the plane

Watch the news story here:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/30/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Attachments:

Are these objects from Flight 370?
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2014/03/29/nr-lemon-mh370-possible-debris-found.cnn&hpt=hp_t1&from_homepage=yes&video_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F%3Fhpt%3Dsitenav#/video/bestoftv/2014/03/29/nr-lemon-mh370-possible-debris-found.cnn
Attachments:

I'm sick of the endless TV coverage, but something really doesn't add up here.

Its 2014, and with all of our modern technology along with other countries, something of value is or was on that plane.

Tough One Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm sick of the endless TV coverage, but something
> really doesn't add up here.
>
> Its 2014, and with all of our modern technology
> along with other countries, something of value is
> or was on that plane.


Right. There is no solid evidence of anything at this point. It is entirely speculative because neither the wreckage nor the Flight Data Recorder have been found. The government of Malaysia has not been forthcoming about what they actually know and despite their theory that it was sabotage by the pilot, there really is no evidence for that either. Bottom line: Until the plane is found my guess is as good as yours. End of Story.

MH370: New object sightings fuel hopes, but families demand 'truth'
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/30/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (CNN) -- New hope, more frustration.

As the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 turned up fresh potential clues, dozens of anguished Chinese relatives on Sunday demanded that Malaysia provide them with evidence on the fate of their loved ones aboard the missing 777.

Ideal weather conditions gave one Australian aircraft crew the opportunity to detect many objects in the water west of Perth.

It spotted four orange items of interest, took photos and sent the coordinates, but Flight Lt. Russell Adams said the crew couldn't determine if the objects were from the airliner, which officials believe went down in the southern Indian Ocean.

The items were more than 2 meters (6.5 feet) long, he said.

Authorities will analyze the images and then decide whether to send a ship to the debris location.

Adams called the discovery of the four objects one of the "most promising leads" searchers have come across.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority announced that search efforts for Sunday ended with no confirmed sightings of debris from the plane. It added that objects picked up by ships on Saturday turned out to be fishing equipment and other items.

'We want truth'

The family members arrived in Kuala Lumpur and held a news conference at their hotel, imploring officials to be more transparent.

"We want evidence, we want truth and we want our family," said Jiang Hui, the families' designated representative. The crowd chanted the same words.

"We are here to call for the following three things," he said. "First, the Malaysian side should provide us with timely and comprehensive evidence and answer the families' questions."

He also asked Malaysia to apologize for releasing confusing information and for announcing on March 24 that the plane had crashed even though there was not "direct evidence."

Relatives wore white T-Shirts with the words " Pray for MH370 ... return home safely." Some wept.

"We are here struck with sadness and urgency," Jiang said. "The meetings recently in China were not fruitful with MAS (Malaysia Airlines) officials."

Mixed messages

Family members have accused Malaysian officials of withholding information since the plane vanished more than three weeks ago.

Of the 239 people aboard the doomed jetliner, 154 were Chinese.

Last week, relatives were told everyone aboard had died. But Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's acting transportation minister, told reporters Saturday he had not closed the door on the hope that there could be survivors.

Flight attendant's husband wants to give children answers, but has none

Frustrating search

Beijing has publicly slammed Malaysia's efforts to find the Boeing 777, which went missing March 8 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

And as the frustrating three-week search resumed Sunday, China was among the countries scouring the choppy waters of the southern Indian Ocean for signs of the plane.

Ten aircraft flew over 123,000 square miles (319,000 square kilometers) about 1,150 miles (1,850 kilometers) west of Perth, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.

Various ships were also involved in the search, including the Australian navy ship Ocean Shield, which will be fitted with a "black box" detector and an autonomous underwater vehicle.

On Saturday, crew members aboard a Chinese plane dropped buoys to mark three suspected debris sites, China's state-run CCTV reported. It later said Sunday an orange "suspicious object" spotted by a Chinese plane Saturday turned out to be a dead jellyfish.

Amid the confusion, Malaysia said it has done its best with what it has.

"History will judge us as a country that has been very responsible," Hishammuddin said.

Relatives said they hope to meet the transport minister in Kuala Lumpur. They also asked Malaysia to plan meetings with the various companies involved, including Boeing, the plane's manufacturer.

Race against time

Experts said the clock is ticking.

The batteries on the flight data recorder, commonly referred to as the black box, are designed to last about 30 days. The plane disappeared March 8 -- 22 days ago.

"We certainly have our challenges in front of us," said Cmdr. Mark Matthews of the U.S. Navy.

"What we're trying to find is an acoustic emission from one of the pingers on the flight data recorder (and) the cockpit voice recorder. Typically these last, the batteries last about 30 days, usually they last a little bit longer, and that's what we're trying to find. But what is critical is that the teams that are out there searching for the surface debris, they get good position data on that and they feed it back to the oceanographers, to help us determine a probable point of impact for where the aircraft went in."

American pinger locator and undersea search equipment was loaded onto the Ocean Shield. The ship is set to depart by Monday morning, and will take up to three days to reach the search area.

U.S. Navy Cmdr. William Marks told CNN's "State of the Union" that his team really needs a conclusive piece of debris to narrow down the search area, due to the range of the pinger locator.

"We have to be careful not to send it in the wrong place, but we also wanted to get it out there as close as we can to what we believe is the right place," he told CNN's Candy Crowley.

He said if the batteries on the recorders aboard the missing plane run out, the search would require side-scan sonar, one of which has been loaded on a search ship.

"But like I said, without good visual confirmation of debris, which we really have not had yet, it is tough to even go in the general direction," he said.

'They're still alive'

In Beijing on Saturday, some of the relatives of the missing vented their anguish in the streets.

"They're all still alive, my son and everyone on board!" yelled Wen Wancheng, 63, whose only son was among the passengers. "The plane is still there, too! They're hiding it."

He held aloft a banner that read: "Son, Mom and Dad's hearts are torn to pieces. Come home soon!"

Relatives implored Hishammuddin to redouble the efforts.

"What they want is a commitment on our part to continue the search, and that I have given," Hishammuddin said. "For me, as the minister responsible, this is the hardest part of my life, at the moment," he told reporters.

"Miracles do happen, remote or otherwise, and that is the hope that the families want me to convey -- not only to the Malaysian government, MAS (Malaysia Airlines), but also to the world at large," he said.

Sea objects

The latest data analysis shows Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 ended up in the southern Indian Ocean.

Investigators concluded that during the flight's initial phase, the plane was traveling faster and burning fuel faster than they previously had thought. As a result, it could not have traveled as far south as earlier estimates indicated.

The new search area is closer to Australia's coast, so it takes less time to reach, meaning more area can be searched. It's also marked by calmer waters.

Vast, shifting search

The search for Flight 370 has spanned vast bodies of water and continents.

It started in the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, where the plane went out of contact with air traffic controllers.

When authorities learned of radar data suggesting the plane had turned westward across the Malay Peninsula after losing contact, they expanded the search into the Strait of Malacca.

When those efforts proved fruitless, the search spread north into the Andaman Sea and northern Indian Ocean.

It then ballooned drastically after Malaysia announced March 15 that satellite data showed the plane could have flown along either of two huge arcs, one stretching northwest into the Asian land mass, the other southwest into the Indian Ocean.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has said that further analysis of the data led authorities to conclude the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean.
Attachments:

Malaysia plane saga: Your questions answered
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/29/world/asia/malaysia-plane-questions/index.html

CNN) -- The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has raised plenty of questions, but answers have been in short supply since the plane's disappearance March 8. Here's what we know:

What's the latest?

On Saturday, Malaysian officials refused to rule out the possibility that someone may have survived.

"Even hoping against hope, no matter how remote, of course we are praying and we are continuing our search for possible survivors," said Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's acting transportation minister.

Many relatives recall speculation from early on in the search that the plane may have landed somewhere. They have implored Malaysian officials not to give up.

"What they want is a commitment on our part to continue the search, and that I have given," Hishammuddin said.

Though he said he refused to give false hope, he also appeared unwilling to pronounce with certainty that the 239 people aboard the plane when it went missing March 8 are dead.

It's "not unreasonable" for relatives to want to hold on to a glimmer of hope, he said. "Miracles do happen, remote or otherwise, and that is the hope that the families want me to convey not only to the Malaysian government, MAS, but also to the world at large," he said.

But retired airline pilot and aviation specialist John Ransom told CNN on Saturday that the possibility of survival was vanishingly small. "It would be extremely difficult to imagine somebody surviving that," he said.

Wait a minute. Didn't I hear a few days ago that there was no chance of survivors?

Yes. Malaysian officials had told the families that nobody would have survived.

Many relatives were angered Monday when they received this bluntly worded text message: "Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond a reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived," it read.

"My heart can't handle it," Cheng Li Ping told CNN as she waited in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for evidence about what happened to her husband.

Where is the new search area?

It's 680 miles (1,100 kilometers) northeast of where search operations had been focused. That puts it 1,150 miles (1,850 kilometers) off the west coast of Australia. It's about 400 miles (644 kilometers) closer to land than the previous area.

So what does this mean for efforts to find the plane?

The new search area is closer to land and in a less-hostile region of ocean, making for longer, safer and more consistent searches.

But, at 123,000 square miles (319,000 square kilometers), it is an area the size of New Mexico.

"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.

Hmm, I thought everyone was confident the old search zone was the right place to look. What happened?

Investigators concluded this week that, during the flight's initial phase, the plane was traveling faster -- and therefore burning fuel faster -- than they had thought. They based that conclusion on radar and satellite data.

The plane would have had less fuel left for its flight over the Indian Ocean. Authorities have concluded it could not have traveled as far south as they had thought earlier.

They estimate the plane went down about 680 miles (1,100 kilometers) northeast of the previous search zone.

But what about all those floating objects spotted by satellites?

Early Friday, Hishammuddin, Malaysia's acting transport minister, said that, as a result of ocean drift, the new search area for the plane "could still be consistent" with objects spotted earlier by satellites.

But Australian searchers have a different view.

"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."

Could currents have carried the debris there?

No way, according to University of Western Australia oceanographer Charitha Pattiaratchi.

Pattiaratchi modeled currents in the search zone and said objects floating in the water would have tended to stay trapped in eddies "barely leaving the search area."

"There is absolutely no connection, in terms of the debris between the two locations," he said in an e-mail, noting that they are some 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) apart.

He said currents in the new search zone are weaker, which means that any debris would likely be concentrated in a smaller area.

Another oceanographer, Curt Ebbesmeyer of Seattle, said objects would likely drift about 10 miles (16 kilometers) a day, and smaller objects could reach the west coast of Australia in about three months.

Learn about technology being used in the search

What happens if some of this debris turns out to be from the plane?

Oceanographers would pore through current and wind data to try to trace where the debris may have been at the time the plane was lost, CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr reported.

The United States would send a "pinger locator" to the area to try to locate the flight data and cockpit voice recorders; an unmanned, small submarine would also be sent to map the ocean floor and look for objects.

Salvage vessels outfitted with grappling equipment attached to thousands of feet of cable would be sent to the area, according to Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board.

That's what happened after the July 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, New York. Investigators found 97% of the plane and reassembled it in a hangar to find out how the crash happened. But flight recorders aboard Flight 370 were set to document 82 indicators -- versus 18 in the TWA jet -- and their recovery may obviate the need for such painstaking and time-consuming work.

"If there's something conclusive on the 82 parameters that says something like the engines quit or there was a fire extinguisher that went off, things like that, then that would narrow the accident down. They might not have to reconstruct the entire aircraft," former Federal Aviation Administration investigator David Soucie told CNN.

How many countries are involved in search efforts?

Malaysia is coordinating the search, which involves crews from six countries. Australia is leading the effort, based out of Perth, with China, New Zealand, the United States, South Korea and Japan contributing aircraft. China has also sent ships to help the search effort.

Watch the news story here:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/29/world/asia/malaysia-plane-questions/index.html

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~Transportation minister: Families want "a commitment on our part to continue the search"
~The shift to a new search area is based on new calculations about how far the plane flew
~New area is closer to land and in an area with better weather
~Satellite photos taken over old area don't appear to show plane debris, Australian official says

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Clock winding down on black box beacon battery
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia-airlines-flight-370-clock-winding-down-on-black-box-beacon-battery/

PERTH, Australia - The so-called black box, or automated flight data recorder, was invented by Australian David Warren in 1953 after he had lost his father in a plane crash as a boy.

Sixty years later, in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australia -- along with America and China -- has taken the lead in the race against time to try and locate the plane's wreckage somewhere across a stretch of southern Indian Ocean estimated to be an area roughly the size of Poland, about 1,150 miles to the west of Australia.

Flight 370 was last heard from on March 8. Every plane's black box is fitted with a low frequency acoustic beacon that, when activated after a crash, emits a unique, continuous "ping" for searchers to detect and has a battery life of roughly 30 days (PDF). A host of environmental factors, from depth and temperature of the water to the relative damage done to the equipment, can affect both the life of the battery and the ease of the search.

That gives the people searching for Flight 370 a little more than a week, perhaps 10 days at most, to not just pinpoint the place where a 240-foot plane went down in a roughly 200,000-square-mile area, but also find it on the ocean floor

The seafloor within the search area is covered in squishy sediment and is generally flat, save for a steep slope and trench near its southern end.

Unless the plane's fuselage went down the slope or into the trench, the underwater geography should not hinder the search. The area is dominated by Broken Ridge, a plateau where depths range from as shallow as about 2,625 feet to about 9,843 feet.

Search efforts continue for missing Boeing 777 more than a week after the flight vanished

At the edge of the plateau closest to Antarctica is the Diamantina trench, which seafloor mappers have found is as deep as 19,000 feet, though it could be deeper in places that have not been measured.

The frequency acoustic beacon has a range of up to 12,000 feet, or 2.2 miles or so, and the Australian warship, the "Ocean Shield," that is supposed to leave Perth Monday is towing a U.S. Navy ping locator that has the "capability to do search and recovery operations down to a depth of 20,000 feet."

A map of the planned search area for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, March 28, 2014.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) announced today the search area for missing Flight 370 has shifted closer to the Western Australian Coast after receiving radar analysis suggesting the airliner did not travel as far south as originally thought
Attachments:

Any news on this? Did they find the plane?

Flight 370: The search goes under water
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/04/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews

Perth, Australia (CNN) -- The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took on increasing urgency Friday as searchers began scouring the ocean floor and the batteries powering its locator pingers approached the end of their expected lifetimes.

If they die, so too could investigators' best hope of determining what caused the jetliner to vanish from radar screens last month.

Fourteen aircraft and 11 ships were involved in Friday's activities, reported the Australian agency coordinating the search efforts.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has determined a search area of about 84,000 square miles (218,000 square kilometers), 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) northwest of Perth.

Weather in the area was good, with visibility greater than 6 miles (10 kilometers).

But searchers were fighting steep odds.

"Really, the best we can do right now is put these assets in the best location -- the best guess we have -- and kind of let them go," U.S. Navy Cmdr. William Marks told CNN. "Until we get conclusive evidence of debris, it is just a guess."

Bill Schofield, an Australian scientist who worked on developing flight data recorders, said, "If they do find it, I think it'll be remarkable."

The decision about where in the southern Indian Ocean to focus British and Australian naval ships equipped with sophisticated listening technology was nothing more than an educated guess of where the plane may have hit the water.

On Friday, ships did report sightings of objects, but none were linked to plane debris.

The British Royal Navy survey ship HMS Echo and the Australian naval supply ship Ocean Shield began searching the depths Friday along a single 150-mile (240-kilometer) track, said retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the head of the Australian agency coordinating the search.

The Ocean Shield is equipped with high-tech gear borrowed from the United States:

• The Towed Pinger Locator 25 contains an underwater microphone to detect pings from the jet's voice and data recorders as deep as 20,000 feet (6,100 meters). It is towed behind a vessel that typically travels at 1 to 5 knots, depending on the water's depth.

"It is a very slow proceeding," said Capt. Mark M. Matthews, director of ocean engineering.

• The Bluefin-21 is an underwater vehicle that can scour the ocean floor for wreckage and can also be used to find mines. It is 16.2 feet long, weighs 1,650 pounds, can work for 25 hours at 3 knots and can operate to a depth of nearly 15,000 feet.

The ocean in the search area is 6,500 feet to 13,000 feet deep.

Since the devices don't require daylight, they can search around the clock.

The HMS Echo also carries advanced sensor and survey equipment.

But time is running out -- the batteries that power the recorders' pingers, or locator beacons, are designed to last at least 30 days from the time they begin operating.

The Boeing 777-200ER was carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing when it disappeared on March 8. If it crashed into the water, its recorders' pingers could go mute as soon as Monday.

The decision about where to focus the underwater search was based on the same kind of analysis of radar, satellite imagery and other data that investigators have used to determine a series of shifting search areas in recent weeks.

"The area of highest probability as to where the aircraft might have entered the water is the area where the underwater search will commence," Houston told reporters Friday. "It's on the basis of data that arrived only recently, and it's the best data that is available."

'Long way to go'

The search also was continuing above the waves.

Officials have repeatedly warned of a potentially prolonged hunt for the missing passenger jet.

Houston said Friday he expects the search area to continue to be adjusted on "a semi-regular basis."

"We've still got a long way to go," he said.

In the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, officials found debris on the surface after five days of searching. But it took them nearly two years to find the main pieces of wreckage, the flight recorders and many of the bodies of those on board.

With Flight 370, the search teams have even fewer clues.

On Thursday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott warned that "we cannot be certain of ultimate success in the search" for the Malaysian aircraft. He described it as the most difficult search "in human history."

Authorities have yet to explain why the plane flew off course or where it ended up; investigations into the 227 passengers and 12 crew members have yielded no suggestion that any of them might have been behind the disappearance.

6 missteps in the investigation

Families' frustrations

Malaysian officials held a briefing for Malaysian relatives of those aboard MH370 on Thursday evening at a Kuala Lumpur hotel, but attendees told CNN that nothing new had emerged.

Mohammad Sahril Shaari, whose cousin Mohammad Razahan Zamani was a honeymooning groom on the plane, said the three-hour session had felt like a "waste of time."

He added, "I was hoping for some news that they had tracked the plane or some parts of it, but nothing like that happened."

Selamat Bin Omar, the father of another passenger, Malaysian civil flight engineer Mohammed Khairul Amri Selamat, said officials described in detail the satellite data that has led investigators to the current search area.

"They could not tell us if the plane crashed," he said. "They said they were still looking into it."

Danica Weeks, wife of passenger Paul Weeks, said after the meeting that the jet's disappearance still perplexes her. "The hardest process for me is understanding that a commercial airliner can just go black," the New Zealander told CNN's Paula Newton.

"That someone can just turn off all communications, all matter of tracking an airliner, and it can just disappear. And this is the mystery."

About the search for the plane, she said, "If it's there, they will find it. But are they in the right place? It's all calculations. It's all guesswork."

Hanging on to hope

Weeks said her infant son Jack will celebrate his first birthday next month, and their 3-year-old son, Lincoln, was still coming to grips with their loss.

"Dad was everything for him," she said. "He read Lincoln always his bedtime story, and they had this saying that they'd say -- you know, 'Good night, I love you and see you in the morning for breakfast.'

"And now he comes out and I tell him that Dad is up in the sky, and we come out every night and we find the brightest star. We find the brightest star and he says, 'Good night, Daddy, I love you. See you in the morning for breakfast.' And that breaks my heart."

But, four weeks after the plane vanished, she too has not given up on seeing him for breakfast.

"I know it sounds crazy, but I still have a slight hope, you know," she said, adding that she will be able to grieve only after confronted by evidence of his death.

"The grief at this point still hasn't started for me," she said. "I have my moments, but until I have evidence, I still don't know."

The partner of American passenger Philip Wood was also among those who attended Friday's meeting. "The only thing I learned last night after three hours is that the Malaysian families are more calm and rational than the Chinese," Sarah Bajc told CNN's Judy Kwon in an e-mail.

"But they are equally frustrated and have totally lost faith in the Malaysian government."

Bajc noted that officials have concluded that the jetliner flew over Malaysia "for quite a long time."

"It is impossible that this relatively sophisticated military power didn't see it," she said. "They are clearly hiding something. We just don't know what."

Malaysia refuses to let families hear the plane's radio communications

The Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation denied a request by Malaysian families to release the audio recording of radio communications among the pilot, co-pilot and air traffic control, two people who attended the briefing said.

The department's chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, told the relatives that even the families of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid have not been allowed to listen to the recording because it is part of an ongoing investigation, the two attendees said.

Malaysian authorities released a transcript of the recording Tuesday.

"This is an event that is so unprecedented and I think that is so significant that it can never be allowed to get off the screens, get off the radar," K.S. Narendran told CNN's Erin Burnett.

His wife, Chandrika Sharma, was on the flight.

"My concern is that if we don't really get to the bottom of it, we cannot really be certain that we are safe and that we are secure every time we board a flight."

Go here to watch the news story:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/04/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~NEW: A month later, still holding on to hope: "See you in the morning for breakfast"
~Two naval vessels begin the underwater search using listening technology
~They focus on the "area of highest probability" of where the plane may have hit water
~The visual search resumes Friday with more than two dozen ships and aircraft
Attachments:

REPORT: PULSE SIGNAL DETECTED - Chinese ship picks up signal in ocean

The signal has a frequency of 37.5 kHz, state news agency Xinhua reports. That is the standard beacon frequency for voice and data recorders, an expert says.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/05/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- In what may turn out to be a major breakthrough in the monthlong search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370, a Chinese patrol ship searching the southern Indian Ocean discovered Saturday the pulse signal used by so-called black boxes, state news agency Xinhua reported.

But the pulse signal has not been confirmed, China's Maritime Search and Rescue Center reported, according to China Communications News, which is the Ministry of Transport's official newspaper.

The signal reported -- 37.5 kHz -- "is the standard beacon frequency" for the plane's cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, said Anish Patel, president of pinger manufacturer Dukane Seacom.

"They're identical."

The frequency was chosen for use in the recorders "to give that standout quality that does not get interfered with by the background noise that readily occurs in the ocean."

But he said he would like to see more evidence. "I'd like to see some additional assets on site quickly -- maybe some sonobuoys," he said, referring to 5-inch-long (13-centimeter) sonar systems that are dropped from aircraft or ships.

And he said he was puzzled that only one signal had been detected, since each of the recorders was equipped with a pinger, which is also called a beacon.

Other experts cautioned that no confirmation had been made that the signal was linked to the missing plane.

Information not verified

"We are unable to verify any such information at this point in time," the media office of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said in an e-mail.

A source at the Australian Defence Force told CNN that it got word of the report around noon Saturday (midnight Friday ET) but had not communicated with the ship in the 10 hours since.

Though other countries' search teams communicate directly with Australian officials by texting, communication with the Chinese searchers goes first to Beijing, which then communicates with officials in Australia, the source said.

As of 10 p.m. (10 a.m. ET) on Saturday, no such communication had occurred, the source said.

The tentative nature of the report was not lost on one Chinese relative of one of those aboard. "There is not confirmation, and we are all waiting patiently," the relative told CNN Producer Judy Kwon in a text message.

"We've had a lot of red herrings, hyperbole on this whole search," said oceanographer Simon Boxall, a lecturer in ocean and earth science at the University of Southampton told CNN. "I'd really like to see this data confirmed."

If this proves to be what investigators have been searching for, "then the possibility of recovering the plane -- or at least the black boxes -- goes from being one in a million to almost certain," he said.

But, he added, "It could be a false signal."

CNN aviation analyst David Soucie was less skeptical. "This is a pinger," the airplane accident investigator said. "I've been doing this a lot of years, and I can't think of anything else it could be."

Xinhua said the detector deployed by the Haixun (pronounced "high shuen") 01 patrol ship picked up the signal around 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude. "It is yet to be established whether it is related to the missing jet," it said.

Committees being formed

The announcement came nearly a month after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared, and on the same day that the nation's acting transportation minister said three committees were being formed to tackle the disappearance of the flight.

One will tend to the families of passengers aboard the missing flight, the second will oversee the investigation team and a third committee will handle the deployment of assets, said Hishammuddin Hussein.

Malaysia will also appoint an independent investigator to lead an investigation team, the acting minister said.

The team will include an airworthiness group to look at issues such as maintenance records, and an operations group to examine such aspects as as flight recorders and operations. A medical and human factors team will investigate issues such as psychology, he said.

The team will include representatives from Malaysia, Australia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom and France, he said.

Hishammuddin also addressed "unfounded allegations made against Malaysia," which "include the extraordinary assertion that Malaysian authorities were somehow complicit in what happened to MH370."

He added, "I should like to state, for the record, that these allegations are completely untrue."

Hishammuddin pointed to a statement from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which says Malaysia has "done its level best" in an operation that "is the biggest and most complex we have ever seen."

The minister, who had earlier briefed ASEAN ministers and the United States at a joint defense forum, thanked the United States for its "unwavering support" and said the ministers had pledged their continued cooperation.

The hunt for evidence continued Saturday -- both on the surface of the southern Indian Ocean and below it.

The British submarine HMS Tireless is in the search area, Hishammuddin said.

A parallel search of the hard drives of a flight simulator found in the home of one of the pilots turned up nothing conclusive, a U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation told CNN on Friday.

There was no "we got it" information, though there were some "curious" things, the official said.

The captain, veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had programmed alternate routes into the simulator, but he appeared to have done so to come up with plans of action in case of emergencies, the official said.

The searches appear to be what an experienced and professional pilot would do, the official said.

Race against time to find pingers

In the Indian Ocean, the hunt was continuing.

The British Royal Navy survey ship HMS Echo and the Australian naval supply ship Ocean Shield searched Friday for the plane's pingers and possible wreckage on the ocean floor -- 6,500 feet (2000 meters) to 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) below the surface.

The search was along a single 150-mile (240-kilometer) track, said retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the head of the Australian agency coordinating the operation.

The race is on to find the missing Boeing 777's locator pingers before their batteries expire.

The acoustic pinger batteries on Flight 370's black boxes were due to be replaced in June, the Malaysia Airlines chief executive said Saturday.

"We can confirm there is a maintenance program. Batteries are replaced prior to expiration," Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said.

The Ocean Shield has high-tech gear borrowed from the United States. That includes a Bluefin-21, which can scour the ocean floor for wreckage, and a Towed Pinger Locator 25, with its underwater microphone to detect pings from the jet's voice and data recorders as deep as 20,000 feet (6,100 meters).

"It is a very slow proceeding," U.S. Navy Capt. Mark M. Matthews said of the second tool, which is towed behind a vessel typically moving at 1 to 5 knots.

Bill Schofield, an Australian scientist who worked on developing flight data recorders, said: "If they do find it, I think it'll be remarkable."

Up to 10 military planes and three civilian aircraft -- in addition to 11 ships -- were looking Saturday for any sign of Flight 370, according to the Australian government.

The search area was nearly 84,000 square miles (218,000 square kilometers), which is slightly less than the area searched Friday, and focused some 1,050 miles northwest of Perth. This is about 50 miles farther from the western Australian city than had been the case the day before.

Who's talking?

The cockpit conversation recording of the flight has been played to friends of the pilot and first officer, as well as to other pilots, in order to identify who was speaking, a source close to the investigation said Saturday.

But the voices have not been identified, the source said.

The recording was not played to the families of the pilot and first officer, the source said.

Lack of clues complicates search

Officials have repeatedly said that the search may not conclude soon.

In the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, officials found debris on the surface after five days of searching. But it took nearly two years for them to find the main pieces of wreckage, the flight recorders and many of the bodies of those on board.

With Flight 370, the search teams have had even fewer clues.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott described it as the most difficult search "in human history."

Investigations into the 227 passengers and 12 crew members have yielded no suggestion that any of them might have been behind the disappearance.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Cockpit recording has been played to friends of the pilot, first officer, source says
"I can't think of anything else it could be," says CNN aviation analyst
"This could be a variety of things," says oceanographer Simon Boxall
Chinese ship hears pulse signal in southern Indian Ocean

Watch the news story here:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/05/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Attachments:

China ship hears 'signal'; unclear if jet-related
http://news.msn.com/world/china-ship-detects-pulse-signal-in-indian-ocean

PERTH, Australia (AP) — A Chinese ship involved in the hunt for the missing Malaysian jetliner reported hearing a "pulse signal" Saturday in Indian Ocean waters with the same frequency emitted by the plane's data recorders, as Malaysia vowed not to give up in the search for the jet.

Military and civilian planes, ships with deep-sea searching equipment and a British nuclear submarine scoured a remote patch of the southern Indian Ocean off Australia's west coast, in an increasingly urgent hunt for debris and the "black box" recorders that hold vital information about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's last hours.

After weeks of fruitless looking, officials face the daunting prospect that sound-emitting beacons in the flight and voice recorders will soon fall silent as their batteries die after sounding electronic "pings" for a month.

A Chinese ship that is part of the search effort detected a "pulse signal" in southern Indian Ocean waters, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported. Xinhua, however, said it had not yet been determined whether the signal was related to the missing plane, citing the China Maritime Search and Rescue Center.

Xinhua said a black box detector deployed by the ship, Haixun 01, picked up a signal at 37.5 kilohertz (cycles per second), the same frequency emitted by flight data recorders.

Malaysia's civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, confirmed that the frequency emitted by Flight 370's black boxes were 37.5 kilohertz and said authorities were verifying the report. The Australian government agency coordinating the search would not immediately comment on it.

There are many clicks, buzzes and other sounds in the ocean from animals, but the 37.5 kilohertz pulse was selected for underwater locator beacons on black boxes because there is nothing else in the sea that would naturally make that sound, said William Waldock, an expert on search and rescue who teaches accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.

"They picked that (frequency) so there wouldn't be false alarms from other things in the ocean," he said.

Waldock cautioned that "it's possible it could be an aberrant signal" from a nuclear submarine if there was one in the vicinity.

If the sounds can be verified, it would reduce the search area to about 10 square kilometers (4 square miles), Waldock said. Unmanned robot subs with sidescan sonar would then be sent into the water to try to locate the wreckage, he said.

John Goglia, a former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board member, called the report "exciting," but cautioned that "there is an awful lot of noise in the ocean."

"One ship, one ping doesn't make a success story," he said. "It will have to be explored. I guarantee you there are other resources being moved into the area to see if it can be verified."

The Boeing 777 disappeared March 8 while en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people aboard. So far, no trace of the jet has been found.

Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia's defense minister and acting transport minister, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur that the cost of mounting the search was immaterial compared to providing solace for the families of those on board by establishing what happened.

"I can only speak for Malaysia, and Malaysia will not stop looking for MH370," Hishammuddin said.

AP Photo: Lai Seng Sin

A woman ties a message card for passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Saturday, April 5, 2014.

He said an independent investigator would be appointed to lead a team that will try to determine what happened to Flight 370. The team will include three groups: One will look at airworthiness, including maintenance, structures and systems; another will examine operations, such as flight recorders and meteorology; and a third will consider medical and human factors.

The investigation team will include officials and experts from several nations, including Australia — which as the nearest country to the search zone is currently heading the hunt — China, the United States, Britain and France, Hishammuddin said.

A multinational search team is desperately trying to find debris floating in the water or faint sound signals from the data recorders that could lead them to the missing plane and unravel the mystery of its fate.

Finding floating wreckage is key to narrowing the search area, as officials can then use data on currents to backtrack to where the plane hit the water, and where the flight recorders may be.

Beacons in the black boxes emit "pings" so they can be more easily found, but the batteries last for only about a month.

Officials have said the hunt for the wreckage is among the hardest ever undertaken, and will get much harder still if the beacons fall silent before they are found.

"Where we're at right now, four weeks since this plane disappeared, we're much, much closer," said aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas, editor-in-chief of AirlineRatings.com. "But frustratingly, we're still miles away from finding it. We need to find some piece of debris on the water; we need to pick up the ping."

If it doesn't happen, the only hope for finding the plane may be a full survey of the Indian Ocean floor, an operation that would take years and an enormous international operation.

Hishammuddin said there were no new satellite images or data that can provide new leads for searchers. The focus now is fully on the ocean search, he said.

Two ships — the Australian navy's Ocean Shield and the British HMS Echo — carrying sophisticated equipment that can hear the recorders' pings returned Saturday to an area investigators hope is close to where the plane went down. They concede the area they have identified is a best guess.

Up to 13 military and civilian planes and nine other ships took part in the search Saturday, the Australian agency coordinating the search said.

Because the U.S. Navy's pinger locator can pick up signals to a depth of 6,100 meters (20,000 feet), it should be able to hear the plane's data recorders even if they are in the deepest part of the search zone — about 5,800 meters (19,000 feet). But that's only if the locator gets within range of the black boxes — a tough task, given the size of the search area and the fact that the pinger locator must be dragged slowly through the water at just 1 to 5 knots (1 to 6 mph).

Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, head of the joint agency coordinating the operation, acknowledged the search area was essentially a best guess, and noted the time when the plane's locator beacons would shut down was "getting pretty close."

The overall search area is a 217,000-square-kilometer (84,000-square-mile) zone in the southern Indian Ocean, about 1,700 kilometers (1,100 miles) northwest of the western Australian city of Perth.
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with all the leads this thread gave them for free i can't beleive they didn't find it

My understanding is the Chinese are not are part of the coordinated search and rescue effort (per the video). They are doing their own search and then notifying their superiors.

should have called a japanese fishing vessel to find it

those often have plenty of listening gear on board !

It's curious that the Chinese boat was searching in an area outside of the established search area and got those pings. Coincidence?

There's even an Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Wikipedia page that is absolutely huge!

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370

"NEW" UFO Sightings! Malaysian Flight 370, And Three Incredible UFO Reports! March 21, 2014 Incredible Videos and Photos Submitted to Thirdphaseofmoon This Week of March!

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UFO Sightings Malaysia 370 Conspiracy? New Insight March 17 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB-GoaLSAs0

Over 50 UFO Sightings Reported After Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Near Phuket Thailand [VIDEO]: Pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah Deleted Files Raise Suspicions
http://www.kpopstarz.com/articles/84473/20140319/malaysia-airlines-ufo.htm#iit=1396746986867&tmr=load%3D1396746986320%26core%3D1396746986774%26main%3D1396746986820%26ifr%3D1396746986883&cb=0&cdn=0&chr=utf-8&kw=k-pop%2Ckpop%2Cstars%2Centertainment%2Cnews%2CKorea%2Cmusic%2CFashion%2CGossip%2CDrama%2CSuper%20Junior%2CSNSD%2CWondergirls%2C2NE1&ab=-&dh=www.kpopstarz.com&dr=&du=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kpopstarz.com%2Farticles%2F84473%2F20140319%2Fmalaysia-airlines-ufo.htm&dt=Over%2050%20UFO%20Sightings%20Reported%20After%20Malaysia%20Airlines%20Flight%20370%20Near%20Phuket%20Thailand%20%5BVIDEO%5D%3A%20Pilot%20Zaharie%20Ahmad%20Shah%20Deleted%20Files%20Raise%20Suspicions%20%3A%20Trending%20News%20%3A%20KpopStarz&dbg=0&md=0∩=tc%3D0%26ab%3D0&inst=1&vcl=0&jsl=1∏=undefined&lng=en-us&ogt=description%2Ctitle%2Cimage%2Csite_name%2Curl%2Ctype%3Darticle&pc=men&pub=addthis&ssl=0&sid=5340aaea9a7e548c&srpl=1&srcs=1&srd=1&srf=1&srx=1&ver=300&xck=0&xtr=0&og=type%3Darticle%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.kpopstarz.com%252Farticles%252F84473%252F20140319%252Fmalaysia-airlines-ufo.htm%26site_name%3DKpopStarz%26image%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fimages.kpopstarz.com%252Fdata%252Fimages%252Ffull%252F155714%252Fufo-malaysia-airlines.jpg%26title%3DOver%252050%2520UFO%2520Sightings%2520Reported%2520After%2520Malaysia%2520Airlines%2520Flight%2520370%2520Near%2520Phuket%2520Thailand%2520%255BVIDEO%255D%253A%2520Pilot%2520Zaharie%2520Ahmad%2520Shah%2520Deleted%2520Files%2520Raise%2520Suspicions%26description%3DAs%2520the%2520mystery%2520surrounding%2520Malaysia%2520Airlines%2520Flight%2520370%2520continues%252C%2520a%2520growing%2520interest%2520in%2520UFO%2520sightings%2520has%2520risen.&aa=0&rev=127218&ct=1&xld=1&xd=1

As the mystery surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 continues, a growing interest in UFO sightings has risen.

According to Before It's News, there have been claims of UFO sightings before the Flight 370 disappeared, and since the disappearance, over 50 UFO sightings have been claimed by eyewitnesses.

Alexandra Bruce at ForbiddenKnowledgeTV claims that records on the flight mapping website Flightradar24 shows evidence of possible UFO influence in the Malaysia Airlines disappearance.

You can check the video below which reportedly shows evidence of UFO presence near the flight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5JpbZZKqxy0
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Brit Ship 'Echo' Arrives to Hunt Missing Jet's Black Box
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/brit-ship-echo-arrives-hunt-missing-jets-black-box-n73191

A British Navy survey ship arrived Sunday at the spot in the Indian Ocean where a Chinese vessel detected "pulse signals" Friday and Saturday that could be from the black box of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, a Ministry of Defense spokesperson told NBC News.

The sophisticated HMS Echo 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 also deploy to the location where the crew of Haixun 01 heard pulses, but not before investigating other sounds it picked up 300 nautical miles away from the Chinese ship.

Australian military aircraft were also sent into the Haixun 01's area to investigate, said Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who is coordinating the search.

Searchers are racing against time to recover the battery-powered black box, which presumably holds data that could solve the mystery of why Flight 370 disappeared on March 8.

Black boxes emit pings so that they can be easily found — but the batteries drain in about a month.

The pulses detected by the Chinese ship are "an important and encouraging lead, but one which I urge you to treat carefully," Houston said Sunday.

While the pulses were consistent with the Boeing 777's black box, experts warned the way they were picked up by the Chinese ship and the length of detection — about a minute and a half — didn't make sense.

"The pinger itself is continuous, it’s not intermittent. Even if the battery was dying, it’s either working or it isn’t,” NTSB crash expert Greg Feith told NBC News Saturday.

The Australian and British ships drag detection equipment slowly behind the boats, which provides a more accurate read, The Associated Press reported.

— Elisha Fieldstadt and Peter Jeary, with The Associated Press

British Royal Navy survey vessel HMS Echo is seen in this file handout photograph received via the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in London March 20, 2014. HMS Echo will join the hunt for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, local media reported.
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They just said the Ocean Shield locked on to the pinger for 2 hours. This is huge.

Malaysia Flight 370: New signal sounds 'just like' one from a plane's beacon
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/07/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- After weeks of searching vast swaths of ocean, investigators now have their "most promising" lead yet in finding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

A pinger locator in the Indian Ocean has detected signals consistent with those emitted by a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder, the head of the Australian agency coordinating search operations said Monday.

The sounds were heard at a depth of 4,500 meters (about 14,800 feet), retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said.

A member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force looks at a flare in the Indian Ocean on Friday, April 4, during search operations for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Authorities are combing thousands of square miles of the southern Indian Ocean in search of Flight 370, which disappeared March 8. Members of the Royal New Zealand Air Force monitor data April 4 on board an aircraft during search operations. A relative of a Flight 370 passenger watches television in a Beijing hotel as he awaits new information about the missing plane on Thursday, April 3. Another relative of a Flight 370 passenger waits for updates in Beijing on Wednesday, April 2. Many families have criticized the Malaysian government's handling of information in the plane's disappearance. A member of the Japanese coast guard points to a flight position data screen while searching for debris from the missing jet on Tuesday, April 1. Kojiro Tanaka, head of the Japanese coast guard search mission, explains the efforts en route to the search zone April 1. A woman prepares for an event in honor of those aboard Flight 370 on Sunday, March 30, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. An underwater search-surveying vehicle sits on the wharf in Perth, Australia, ready to be fitted to a ship to aid in the search for the jet. A girl in Kuala Lumpur writes a note during a ceremony for the missing passengers on March 30. A teary-eyed woman listens from the back as other relatives of Flight 370 passengers speak to reporters March 30 in Subang Jaya, Malaysia. Dozens of anguished Chinese relatives demanded that Malaysia provide answers to the fate of those on board. An object floating in the southern Indian Ocean is seen from a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 Orion aircraft searching for the missing jet on Saturday, March 29. Ships participating in the search retrieved new debris Saturday, but no objects linked to the missing plane, according to Australian authorities. A Royal New Zealand Air Force member launches a GPS marker buoy over the southern Indian Ocean on March 29. The sole representative for the families of Flight 370 passengers leaves a conference at a Beijing hotel on Friday, March 28, after other relatives left en masse to protest the Malaysian government's response to their questions. A member of the Royal Australian Air Force is silhouetted against the southern Indian Ocean during the search for the missing jet on Thursday, March 27. Flight Lt. Jayson Nichols looks at a map aboard a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft during a search on March 27. People in Kuala Lumpur light candles during a ceremony held for the missing flight's passengers on March 27. Crew members of the Chinese icebreaking ship Xuelong scan the Indian Ocean during a search for the missing jet on Wednesday, March 26. People work at a console at the British satellite company Inmarsat on Tuesday, March 25, in London. The mother of a passenger who was on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 cries at her home in Medan, Indonesia, on March 25. Australian Defense Minister David Johnston speaks to the media March 25 about the search for the missing jet. A family member of a missing passenger reacts after hearing the latest news March 25 in Kuala Lumpur. Angry relatives of those aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 react in Beijing on Monday, March 24, after hearing that the plane went down over the southern Indian Ocean, according to analysis of satellite data. Grieving relatives of missing passengers leave a hotel in Beijing on March 24. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, delivers a statement about the flight March 24 in Kuala Lumpur. Razak's announcement came after the airline sent a text message to relatives saying it "deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH 370 has been lost and that none of those onboard survived." Relatives of the missing passengers hold a candlelight vigil in Beijing on March 24. A member of the Royal Australian Air Force looks out an aircraft during a search for the missing jet March 24. A woman reads messages for missing passengers at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur on March 24. Flight Lt. Josh Williams of the Royal Australian Air Force operates the controls of an AP-3C Orion on Sunday, March 23, after searching the southern Indian Ocean. Ground crew members wave to a Japanese Maritime Defense Force patrol plane as it leaves the Royal Malaysian Air Force base in Subang, Malaysia, on Sunday, March 23. The plane was heading to Australia to join a search-and-rescue operation. A passenger views a weather map in the departures terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Saturday, March 22. A Chinese satellite captured this image, released on March 22, of a floating object in the Indian Ocean, according to China's State Administration of Science. It is a possible lead in the search for the missing plane. Surveillance planes are looking for two objects spotted by satellite imagery in remote, treacherous waters more than 1,400 miles from the west coast of Australia. A member of the Royal Australian Air Force looks down at the Norwegian merchant ship Hoegh St. Petersburg, which took part in search operations Friday, March 21. The Royal Australian Air Force's Neville Dawson, left, goes over the search area with Brittany Sharpe aboard an AP-3C Orion some 2,500 kilometers (about 1,500 miles) southwest of Perth, Australia, over the Indian Ocean on March 21. Satellite imagery provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority on Thursday, March 20, shows debris in the southern Indian Ocean that could be from Flight 370. The announcement by Australian officials that they had spotted something raised hopes of a breakthrough in the frustrating search. A closer look at the satellite shot of possible debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Another satellite shot provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority shows possible debris from the flight. A closer look at the satellite shot of possible debris. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority's John Young speaks to the media in Canberra, Australia, on March 20 about satellite imagery. A distraught relative of a missing passenger breaks down while talking to reporters at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Wednesday, March 19. A relative of missing passengers waits for a news briefing by officials in Beijing on Tuesday, March 18. A relative of a missing passenger tells reporters in Beijing about a hunger strike to protest authorities' handling of information about the missing jet. A member of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency joins in a search for the missing plane in the Andaman Sea area around the northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra on Monday, March 17. Relatives of missing passengers watch a news program about the missing plane as they await information at a hotel ballroom in Beijing on March 17. Malaysian Transportation Minister Hishamuddin Hussein, center, shows maps of the search area at a hotel next to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 17. U.S. Navy crew members assist in search-and-rescue operations Sunday, March 16, in the Indian Ocean. Indonesian personnel watch over high seas during a search operation in the Andaman Sea on Saturday, March 15. A foam plane, which has personalized messages for the missing flight's passengers, is seen at a viewing gallery March 15 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. A member of the Malaysian navy makes a call as his ship approaches a Chinese coast guard ship in the South China Sea on March 15. A Indonesian ship heads to the Andaman Sea during a search operation near the tip of Sumatra, Indonesia, on March 15. Elementary school students pray for the missing passengers during class in Medan, Indonesia, on March 15. Col. Vu Duc Long of the Vietnam air force fields reporters' questions at an air base in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, after a search operation on Friday, March 14. Members of the Chinese navy continue search operations on Thursday, March 13. The search area for Flight 370 has grown wider. After starting in the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, the plane's last confirmed location, efforts are expanding west into the Indian Ocean. A Vietnamese military official looks out an aircraft window during search operations March 13. Malaysian air force members look for debris on March 13 near Kuala Lumpur. A relative of a missing passenger watches TV at a Beijing hotel as she waits for the latest news March 13. A member of the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency scans the horizon in the Strait of Malacca on Wednesday, March 12. Relatives of missing passengers wait for the latest news at a hotel in Beijing on March 12. Journalists raise their hands to ask questions during a news conference in Sepang on March 12. Indonesian air force officers in Medan, Indonesia, examine a map of the Strait of Malacca on March 12. A member of the Vietnamese air force checks a map while searching for the missing plane on Tuesday, March 11. Iranians Pouri Nourmohammadi, second left, and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, far right, were identified by Interpol as the two men who used stolen passports to board the flight. But there's no evidence to suggest either was connected to any terrorist organizations, according to Malaysian investigators. Malaysian police believe Nourmohammadi was trying to emigrate to Germany using the stolen Austrian passport. An Indonesian navy crew member scans an area of the South China Sea bordering Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand on Monday, March 10. Vietnam air force Col. Le Huu Hanh is reflected on the navigation control panel of a plane that is part of the search operation over the South China Sea on March 10. Relatives of the missing flight's passengers wait in a Beijing hotel room on March 10. A U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopter lands aboard the USS Pinckney to change crews before returning to search for the missing plane Sunday, March 9, in the Gulf of Thailand. Members of the Fo Guang Shan rescue team offer a special prayer March 9 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. A handout picture provided by the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency shows personnel checking a radar screen during search-and-rescue operations March 9. Italian tourist Luigi Maraldi, who reported his passport stolen in August, shows his current passport during a news conference at a police station in Phuket island, Thailand, on March 9. Two passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight were reportedly traveling on stolen passports belonging to Maraldi and an Austrian citizen whose papers were stolen two years ago. Hugh Dunleavy, commercial director of Malaysia Airlines, speaks to journalists March 9 at a Beijing hotel where relatives and friends of the missing flight's passengers are staying. Vietnamese air force crew stand in front of a plane at Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh City on March 9 before heading out to the area between Vietnam and Malaysia where the airliner vanished. Buddhist monks at Kuala Lumpur International Airport offer a special prayer for the missing passengers on March 9. The Chinese navy warship Jinggangshan prepares to leave Zhanjiang Port early on March 9 to assist in search-and-rescue operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight. The Jinggangshan, an amphibious landing ship, is loaded with lifesaving equipment, underwater detection devices and supplies of oil, water and food. Members of a Chinese emergency response team board a rescue vessel at the port of Sanya in China's Hainan province on March 9. The vessel is carrying 12 divers and will rendezvous with another rescue vessel on its way to the area where contact was lost with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The rescue vessel sets out from Sanya in the South China Sea. A family member of missing passengers is mobbed by journalists at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Saturday, March 8. A Vietnamese air force plane found traces of oil that authorities had suspected to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the Vietnamese government online newspaper reported March 8. However, a sample from the slick showed it was bunker oil, typically used to power large cargo ships, Malaysia's state news agency, Bernama, reported on March 10. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, arrives to meet family members of missing passengers at the reception center at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8. Malaysia Airlines official Joshua Law Kok Hwa, center, speaks to reporters in Beijing on March 8. A relative of two missing passengers reacts at their home in Kuala Lumpur on March 8. Wang Yue, director of marketing of Malaysia Airlines in China, reads a company statement during a news conference at the Metro Park Lido Hotel in Beijing on March 8. Chinese police at the Beijing airport stand beside the arrival board showing delayed Flight 370 in red on March 8. A woman asks a staff member at the Beijing airport for more information on the missing flight. A Malaysian man who says he has relatives on board the missing plane talks to journalists at the Beijing airport on March 8. Passengers walk past a Malaysia Airlines sign on March 8 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Malaysia Airlines Group CEO Ahmad Juahari Yahya, front, speaks during a news conference on March 8 at a hotel in Sepang. "We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts" with the jet, he said. 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Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Did Flight 370 purposely avoid radar?

Source: MH370 skirted Indonesia radar

Source: MH370 skirted Indonesia radar "We've got a visual indication on a screen, and we've also got an audible signal. And the audible signal sounds to me just like an emergency locator beacon," Houston said.

"We are encouraged that we are very close to where we need to be."

But it could take days before officials can confirm whether the signals did indeed come from the plane, which fell off the radar on March 8 with 239 people on board.

"In very deep oceanic water, nothing happens fast," Houston said. "I would ask all of you to treat this information cautiously and responsibly. ... We haven't found the aircraft yet."

At least one investigator has described the search not as finding a needle in a haystack, but rather trying to find the haystack.

"It's very exciting, very exciting," forensic audio expert Paul Ginsberg said Monday. "I think we have finally found the haystack."

But some relatives of those on board haven't lost hope, despite Monday's news of the promising signals.

"If the plane is there, its there. We can't change it," the husband of one passenger said. "But I am still hoping for a miracle to happen."

But time could be running out in tracing the sounds. In a few hours or days, the pingers aboard the plane stop transmitting for good.

The batteries inside the beacons, which are designed to start sending signals when a plane crashes into water, last about 30 days after the devices are activated.

Monday marks the 31st day of the search.

What happens after the Malaysian plane's pingers die?

New flight details

While searchers may be getting closer to the plane itself, a fresh mystery has emerged about what happened during the flight.

The aircraft skirted Indonesian airspace as it went off the grid and veered off course, a senior Malaysian government source told CNN on Sunday.

After reviewing radar track data from neighboring countries, officials have concluded that the plane curved north of Indonesia before turning south toward the southern Indian Ocean, the Malaysian source said.

Whoever was flying the plane, the source said, could have been trying to avoid radar detection.

But why?

Like most details in the case that's baffled investigators ever since the plane dropped off Malaysian military radar, it depends on whom you ask.

CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes cautioned against assuming a nefarious reason for steering the plane around Indonesia's airspace.

"I think the plane's being intentionally flown there, but I think it's still a mystery as to why. ... I think they would probably guess they're not avoiding anybody's radar, because there's a lot of radar in the area," he said. "I think they're avoiding getting shot down or colliding with another airplane."

CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien said the new route includes designated waypoints that pilots and air traffic controllers use.

"This particular route that is laid out happens to coincide with some of these named intersections," he said. "So what it shows is an experienced pilot somewhere in the mix on this."

Investigators haven't yet said who they think might have flown the plane off course or why.

The possibility that the plane was hijacked by someone who knew how to fly a commercial jet is still on the table. Authorities have also been investigating the plane's captain and co-pilot. And they haven't ruled out mechanical problems as a possible cause of the plane's diversion.

So far, no physical evidence of the plane's eventual whereabouts has been found, leaving many relatives of those on board trapped in uncertainty.

Zeroing in

The HMS Echo, a British navy ship equipped with advanced detection gear, sailed into the area of the southern Indian Ocean on Monday morning (Sunday afternoon ET) where a Chinese crew had detected two audio signals.

The area of detection is roughly 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) west-northwest of Perth, according to coordinates reported by Chinese state media.

The arrival of the Echo will be critical to the search for the missing Boeing 777. It has state-of-the-art sonar and is capable of mapping the ocean floor, which is about 4,500 meters (2.8 miles) deep in the focused search area.

It should be able to help determine more confidently whether audio signals picked up on Friday and Saturday by the Chinese patrol ship Haixun 01 came from the plane.

The Chinese said the electronic pulses -- detected only 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) apart -- were consistent with those emitted by pingers on an aircraft's black boxes.



Expert: 'Skeptical' pulse signal located

Friends can't ID voice on 370 recording

Australia leads Flight 370 search Sounds travel long distances underwater, Houston said, making it difficult to ascertain their sources. If detectors were near a pinger, they would pick up the signal for a more sustained period.

Houston also said that search authorities were informed Sunday that the Ocean Shield, an Australian naval vessel equipped with sophisticated listening equipment, has detected "an acoustic noise" in another area of the ocean to the north.

'Most promising lead'

The Ocean Shield, which has a high-tech pinger locator borrowed from the U.S. Navy, will continue to pursue the sound it heard. If that lead turns cold, it will move to the other detection area, a journey that will take at least a day, officials said.

On Monday morning, the Ocean Shield was "continuing investigations in its own area," Australian authorities said.

"At the moment, the most promising lead appears to be the one associated with Haixun 01," Houston said.

The pulses registered by the Chinese ship are of particular interest because they occurred in an area that fits with the latest calculation by experts of roughly where the plane is likely to have entered the water, Houston said.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
"We have a promising lead, but we have yet to get confirming evidence," official says
It could still take days to confirm the origin of the signals, he says
A Chinese search ship picked up two signals in the Indian Ocean
The plane flew around Indonesian airspace, a Malaysian source says

Go here to watch the news story:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/07/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Attachments:

So now they are looking for the Pings. Why not look for all of the other passenegrs as well?

A 'PROMISING LEAD'
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/07/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Watch the news story here:
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2014/04/07/malaysia-pings-detected-mclaughlin-newday.cnn.html
Attachments:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/04/07/malaysia-airlines-searchers-say-more-pings-consistent-with-black-boxes-heard/?intcmp=latestnews

This foxnews article states that there is hope to find survivors....what am I missing???? Where would these survivors be?

It's going to take years to find the plane if they ever do find it. Maybe it was sucked into a black hole

Australian PM 'confident' signals are from 'black box'; officials play down 5th ping
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/11/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- The painstaking search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 got a vote of confidence Friday that the effort is headed in the right direction, but officials noted that much work remains.

"We have very much narrowed down the search area, and we are very confident that the signals that we are detecting are from the black box," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said during an official visit to China, where he met with President Xi Jinping.

Abbott was referring to the plane's flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. Locator beacons attached to them are designed to emit high-pitched signals, or pings.

Over the past week, four such pings have been detected by a ping locator towed by the Australian vessel Ocean Shield.

"We are confident that we know the position of the black box flight recorder to within some kilometers, but confidence in the approximate position of the black box is not the same as recovering wreckage from almost 4½ kilometers beneath the sea or finally determining all that happened on that flight," he said.

A fifth ping, detected Thursday by a sonobuoy dropped by an airplane, is "unlikely to be related to the aircraft black boxes," Australian chief search coordinator Angus Houston said Friday.

"On the information I have available to me, there has been no major breakthrough in the search for MH370," Houston said in a statement. "Further analysis continues to be undertaken by Australian Joint Acoustic Analysis Centre."

Friday is Day 35 in the search, and the batteries powering the flight data recorders' locator beacons are certified to emit signals for only 30 days after they get wet.

That has injected the search effort with a heightened sense of urgency.

The signal is "starting to fade, and we are hoping to get as much information as we can before the signal finally expires," Abbott said.

Families skeptical

Families of the 239 people who were aboard when the plane disappeared from radar screens early March 8 met Friday with Malaysia Airlines and government officials. They came away unpersuaded that progress was being made.

"Today, all they said was that they were confident," family representative Steve Wang said. "But that really doesn't mean that they have confirmed it. They didn't use the word 'confirm.' So it could be that it's a real lead, but it could also not be. I think that, at the moment, everyone needs to wait for final, confirmed information."

That view was echoed by Sarah Bajc, whose partner, Philip Wood, was among the passengers.

"Every time some official gives one of those absolute statements of 'We're sure it's the pings from the black boxes' or 'We're sure it's in the ocean,' we all crash," she told CNN's "New Day."

"Our feet get knocked out from underneath us. But then it always ends up reversing itself, and they step back from it."

She expressed skepticism about the way the investigation has been handled. "The fox is very much in charge of the henhouse here," she told "New Day." "We've got a country leading the investigation who also has the primary liability in the case, and it makes us question every step that's taken."

More clues

A senior Malaysian government official and another source involved in the investigation divulged new details about the flight to CNN on Thursday, including information about what radar detected, the last words from the cockpit and how high the plane was flying after it went off the grid.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from military radar for about 120 nautical miles after it crossed back over the Malay Peninsula, sources said. Based on available data, this means the plane must have dipped in altitude to between 4,000 and 5,000 feet, sources said.

The dip could have been programmed into the computers controlling the plane as an emergency maneuver, said aviation expert David Soucie.

"The real issue here is it looks like -- more and more -- somebody in the cockpit was directing this plane and directing it away from land," said Peter Goelz, a CNN aviation analyst and former National Transportation Safety Board managing director.

"And it looks as though they were doing it to avoid any kind of detection."

But former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo was not convinced. She said the reported dip could have occurred in response to a loss of pressure, to reach a level where pressurization was not needed and those aboard the plane would have been able to breathe without oxygen, or to get out of the way of commercial traffic, which typically flies at higher altitudes.

That would have been necessary had the plane's transponder been turned off and it lost communications.

"If you don't have any communications, you need to get out of other traffic," Schiavo said.

"We still don't have any motive and any evidence of a crime yet," she said, adding that most radar can track planes at altitudes below 4,000 feet, so the plane's descent may not have indicated any attempt by whoever was controlling it to hide.

She held out hope that the black boxes hold the answers and that they will be found soon.

New flight details revealed

Malaysian sources told CNN that Flight 370's pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was the last person on the jet to speak to air traffic controllers, telling them "Good night, Malaysian three-seven-zero."

The sources said there was nothing unusual about his voice, which conveyed no indication that he was under stress.

One of the sources, an official involved in the investigation, told CNN that police played the recording to five other Malaysia Airlines pilots who knew the pilot and co-pilot.

"There were no third-party voices," the source said.

Imagining the search underwater

Search area shrinks

Up to 12 military aircraft, three civil aircraft and 13 ships were assigned to assist in Friday's search for the Boeing 777-200ER, which was carrying 239 people when it vanished on March 8 on a fight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.

There were no sightings reported by search aircraft or objects recovered by ships Thursday, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said.

Friday's search area was about 18,000 square miles (46,600 square kilometers), centered 1,436 miles (2,311 kilometers) northwest of Perth.

That's far smaller than the search area's size a few weeks ago.

"It's pretty incredible if you look at where we started, which was virtually the entire Indian Ocean. Now getting it down to what's essentially a couple hundred square miles (where the pings have been detected) is pretty miraculous," U.S. Navy Cmdr. William Marks said.

The Ocean Shield first picked up two sets of underwater pulses Saturday that were of a frequency close to that used by the locator beacons. It heard nothing more until Tuesday, when it reacquired the signals twice. The four signals were within 17 miles of one another.

As the search continues, a U.S. Navy ship will help provide supplies and fuel to the ships that are looking for the missing plane.

The USNS Cesar Chavez will help supply Australian naval ships involved in the search "in the coming days," the Navy said in a statement.

That's probably a sign that search teams are preparing for a lengthy hunt, analysts said.

Tracking pings is only one early step in the hunt to find the plane's data records, wreckage and the people aboard.

"I think they're getting ready for the long haul," said Goelz, the aviation analyst. "Even if they do get four or five more pings, once they drop the side-scanning sonar device down, that is going to be painstaking and long. So I think they are settling in for the long search."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~NEW: Family representative says, "They didn't use the word 'confirm' "
~Australian PM Tony Abbott says officials are confident signals are from plane's "black box"
~"There has been no major breakthrough," the agency says
~Friday's search area is down to 18,000 square miles (46,600 square kilometers)

Watch the news story here:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/11/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Attachments:

Flight MH370 black box 'found' live: Australian PM Tony Abbott 'very confident' search teams have located missing device
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/flight-mh370-black-box-found-3398513#ixzz2ycNjMAxz

He told reporters in China: "We have very much narrowed down the search area and we are very confident the signals are from the black box."
Attachments:

U.S. Navy commander in hunt for airline 'optimistic' as search area narrows
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/11/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- The U.S. Navy commander leading the American effort to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 said he's "optimistic" about how the search is proceeding.

"We are detecting very continuous pings coming through in a manner consistent with exactly what you'd expect from a black box," Cmdr. William Marks told CNN's Erin Burnett on Friday. "We've ruled out that it was anything natural, or anything from commercial shipping, or anything like that."

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said earlier Friday that search efforts are heading in the right direction. Marks said, "I agree with the prime minister. We're optimistic."

Up to nine military aircraft, one civil aircraft and 14 ships will assist in Saturday's search for the airliner, Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre said in a press release. The center of the 41,393-square-kilometer (16,000 square-mile) search area lies about 2,331 kilometers (1,448 miles) northwest of Perth.

During a visit to China, Abbott said, "We have very much narrowed down the search area, and we are very confident that the signals that we are detecting are from the black box."

Abbott was referring to the plane's flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. Locator beacons attached to them are designed to emit high-pitched signals, or pings.

Over the past week, four such pings have been detected by a ping locator towed by the Australian vessel Ocean Shield.

We are confident that we know the position of the black box flight recorder to within some kilometers, but confidence in the approximate position of the black box is not the same as recovering wreckage from almost 4½ kilometers beneath the sea or finally determining all that happened on that flight," he said.

A fifth ping, detected Thursday by a sonobuoy dropped by an airplane, is "unlikely to be related to the aircraft black boxes," Australian chief search coordinator Angus Houston said Friday.

"On the information I have available to me, there has been no major breakthrough in the search for MH370," Houston said in a statement Friday. "Further analysis continues to be undertaken by Australian Joint Acoustic Analysis Centre."

Friday was Day 35 in the search, and the batteries powering the flight data recorders' locator beacons are certified to emit signals for only 30 days after they get wet.

That has injected the search effort with a heightened sense of urgency.

The signal is "starting to fade, and we are hoping to get as much information as we can before the signal finally expires," Abbott said.

Families skeptical

Families of the 239 people who were aboard when the plane disappeared from radar screens early March 8 met Friday with Malaysia Airlines and government officials. They came away unpersuaded that progress was being made.

"Today, all they said was that they were confident," family representative Steve Wang said. "But that really doesn't mean that they have confirmed it. They didn't use the word 'confirm.' So it could be that it's a real lead, but it could also not be. I think that, at the moment, everyone needs to wait for final, confirmed information."

That view was echoed by Sarah Bajc, whose partner, Philip Wood, was among the passengers.

"Every time some official gives one of those absolute statements of 'We're sure it's the pings from the black boxes' or 'We're sure it's in the ocean,' we all crash," she told CNN's "New Day."

"Our feet get knocked out from underneath us. But then it always ends up reversing itself, and they step back from it."

She expressed skepticism about the way the investigation has been handled. "The fox is very much in charge of the henhouse here," she told "New Day." "We've got a country leading the investigation who also has the primary liability in the case, and it makes us question every step that's taken."

More clues

A senior Malaysian government official and another source involved in the investigation divulged new details about the flight to CNN on Thursday, including information about what radar detected, the last words from the cockpit and how high the plane was flying after it went off the grid.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from military radar for about 120 nautical miles after it crossed back over the Malay Peninsula, sources said. Based on available data, this means the plane must have dipped in altitude to between 4,000 and 5,000 feet, sources said.

The dip could have been programmed into the computers controlling the plane as an emergency maneuver, said aviation expert David Soucie.

"The real issue here is it looks like -- more and more -- somebody in the cockpit was directing this plane and directing it away from land," said Peter Goelz, a CNN aviation analyst and former National Transportation Safety Board managing director.

"And it looks as though they were doing it to avoid any kind of detection."

But former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo was not convinced. She said the reported dip could have occurred in response to a loss of pressure, to reach a level where pressurization was not needed and those aboard the plane would have been able to breathe without oxygen, or to get out of the way of commercial traffic, which typically flies at higher altitudes.

That would have been necessary had the plane's transponder been turned off and it lost communications.

"If you don't have any communications, you need to get out of other traffic," Schiavo said.

"We still don't have any motive and any evidence of a crime yet," she said, adding that most radar can track planes at altitudes below 4,000 feet, so the plane's descent may not have indicated any attempt by whoever was controlling it to hide.

She held out hope that the black boxes hold the answers and that they will be found soon.

New flight details revealed

Malaysian sources told CNN that Flight 370's pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was the last person on the jet to speak to air traffic controllers, telling them "Good night, Malaysian three-seven-zero."

The sources said there was nothing unusual about his voice, which conveyed no indication that he was under stress.

One of the sources, an official involved in the investigation, told CNN that police played the recording to five other Malaysia Airlines pilots who knew the pilot and co-pilot.

"There were no third-party voices," the source said.

Imagining the search underwater

Search area shrinks

Up to 12 military aircraft, three civil aircraft and 13 ships were assigned to assist in Friday's search for the Boeing 777-200ER, which was carrying 239 people when it vanished on March 8 on a fight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.

There were no sightings reported by search aircraft or objects recovered by ships Thursday, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said.

Friday's search area was about 18,000 square miles (46,600 square kilometers), centered 1,436 miles (2,311 kilometers) northwest of Perth.

That's far smaller than the search area's size a few weeks ago.

"It's pretty incredible if you look at where we started, which was virtually the entire Indian Ocean. Now getting it down to what's essentially a couple hundred square miles (where the pings have been detected) is pretty miraculous," Marks said.

The Ocean Shield first picked up two sets of underwater pulses Saturday that were of a frequency close to that used by the locator beacons. It heard nothing more until Tuesday, when it reacquired the signals twice. The four signals were within 17 miles of one another.

As the search continues, a U.S. Navy ship will help provide supplies and fuel to the ships that are looking for the missing plane.

The USNS Cesar Chavez will help supply Australian naval ships involved in the search "in the coming days," the Navy said in a statement.

That's probably a sign that search teams are preparing for a lengthy hunt, analysts said.

Tracking pings is only one early step in the hunt to find the plane's data records, wreckage and the people aboard.

"I think they're getting ready for the long haul," said Goelz, the aviation analyst. "Even if they do get four or five more pings, once they drop the side-scanning sonar device down, that is going to be painstaking and long. So I think they are settling in for the long search."

http://sandrarose.com/2014/03/lost-in-the-south-indian-ocean/malaysia-airlines-flight-370-artwork/
Attachments:

Look over here....

http://www.bollyn.com/are-the-israelis-planning-another-9-11-using-the-missing-777/

Schitfler Von Boengingham Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Look over here....
>
> http://www.bollyn.com/are-the-israelis-planning-an
> other-9-11-using-the-missing-777/

Oh wow! What are they doing with a copy of that same type of plane with the Malaysia Airlines logo on it?

Where Are the Pings? Searchers Report None in 24 Hours
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/where-are-pings-searchers-report-none-24-hours-n78611

No signals that might be from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet have been heard in 24 hours, the agency coordinating the search said early Saturday.

The search zone was narrowed yet again to about 16,000 square miles, down from 22,000 on Thursday and double that the day before. At its largest, the search covered 2.96 million square miles, or 11 percent of the Indian Ocean.

The last report of an acoustic signal that might be emanating from the Boeing 777 was on Thursday, when an Australian navy aircraft picked up the signal in the same area a ship first heard sounds consistent with an aircraft's black boxes. The signal picked up by the plane was later determined not to be related to a locator beacon.

Teams are trying to zero in on the black boxes before their batteries run out.

Australia's prime minister has said authorities are confident that signals pulsing in the Indian Ocean are from the jet, missing since March 8.

But an air-disaster expert cautioned Friday that it could just be old oceanography equipment. Greg Feith, a former investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board and an NBC News analyst, said that not much equipment sends signals over the frequency 37.5 kilohertz.

Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre said Saturday that the ship Ocean Shield would continue sweeps with a pinger locator. P-3 Orions also would continue acoustic searches in an attempt to further narrow the area where the black boxes might be.

A towed pinger locator on the deck of the Australian ship Ocean Shield in the Indian Ocean west of Australia on March 31.
Attachments:

Practice run ?

Roger, Rodger....

Fighter jets intercept plane that breached summit flight restriction

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/24/world/europe/summit-plane-intercept/

I tend to agree....Diego Garcia too.....



http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/03/31/356688/mh370-911-false-flag-gone-awry/



"......There is military radar and satellite coverage of that area. The CIA base in Alice Springs Australia knows precisely what happened to that plane. And it is interesting the Malaysian government has asked them and they are not getting any response......"

http://www.rense.com/general96/role.html

Boeing delivered the twin jets to a middleman in October 2013, who delivered one to Malaysian Airlines in November. The timing coincides with the appointment of Joanne Magruire, a veteran Lockheed Martin Space Division executive, to the board of directors of Freescale Semiconductors, whose Kuala Lumpur staffers involved in the design of the Kinesis KL02 microchip were aboard MH370. The plan went like clockwork.

Malaysia flight's co-pilot tried to make cellphone call: report
http://news.msn.com/world/malaysia-flights-co-pilot-tried-to-make-cellphone-call-report

KUALA LUMPUR, April 12 (Reuters) - Investigators probing the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 suspect that the co-pilot of the jetliner tried to make a call with his cellphone after the plane was diverted from its scheduled route, Malaysia's New Straits Times reported sources as saying on Saturday.

The newspaper cited unidentified investigative sources as saying the attempted call from co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's phone was picked up by a cellphone tower as the plane was about 200 nautical miles northwest of the west coast state of Penang. That was around where military radar made its last sighting of the missing jet at 2:15 a.m. local time on March 8.

"The telco's (telecommunications company's) tower established the call that he was trying to make. On why the call was cut off, it was likely because the aircraft was fast moving away from the tower and had not come under the coverage of the next one," the New Straits Times cited a source as saying.

Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the report. The New Straits Times quoted acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein as saying that the report needed to be verified.

But he appeared to cast doubt on the report by saying: "If this did happen, we would have known about it earlier."

The New Straits Times cited separate investigative sources as saying that a signal had been picked up from Fariq's cellphone, but that it could have resulted from the device being switched on rather than being used to make a call.

Malaysia is focusing its criminal investigation on the cabin crew and the pilots of the plane -- 53-year-old captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and 27-year old Fariq -- after clearing all 227 passengers of any involvement, police have said.

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.

The search for the missing jetliner in the southern Indian ocean resumed on Saturday, amid fears that batteries powering signals from the black box recorder on board may have died.

The co-pilot on the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, Fariq Abdul Hamid.
Attachments:

After missing Malaysian plane's pingers are dead, then what?
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/12/world/asia/plane-sonar/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- Once investigators looking for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 decide to shift from listening for pings emanating from the floor of the Indian Ocean to poring over its terrain, they will begin drawing from a whole new set of tools.

Among them will be the Bluefin-21, a probe equipped with side-scan sonar -- an acoustic technology that creates pictures from the reflections of sound rather than light.

"That is a piece of equipment that does assist in locating where the wreckage may be," said Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer from National Geographic who was chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A 'massive, massive task'

Though the discovery of four pings believed to be from the jet's so-called black boxes -- its flight data recorder and its cockpit voice recorder -- have helped investigators narrow the search area, they would still face a formidable task. "It's a lot of terrain to cover," given that the Bluefin-21 moves at the pace of a leisurely stroll, she told CNN.

Though it moves slowly, it creates good images -- so good that they are "almost a picture of what's there ... but it's imaged with sound instead of with a camera."

Once the debris field is found, then other equipment -- such as remotely operated vehicles -- would be brought in to recover the black boxes, Earle said.

ROVs working at depths of three miles would require power conveyed down a cable from a ship above, she said. "There are not many pieces of equipment in the world able to do this."

And there are only a handful of countries that have manned submarines capable of descending to such depths, she said, citing the United States, Russia, Japan, France and China.

"Having the human presence there can make a big difference," she said. It "can give you a real edge in terms of understanding what's there."

The scarcity of resources "shows how ill-prepared we are to operate in the deep sea," Earle said. "We've invested in aviation and aerospace, and we've been neglecting the ocean."

The time to move from listening for pings to looking for debris is fast approaching, said Alan Diehl, a former Air Force accident investigator. "We're right on the cusp where we need to go from passive listening to active (looking) with the Bluefin," he told CNN.

That's because the batteries powering the black boxes' locator devices are probably already dead, said Mary Schiavo, former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, who noted that more than four days had elapsed since any pings were detected.

"I'm surprised that they lasted as long as they did," she said.

The failure of searchers to find any debris linked to the plane has not surprised CNN Aviation Analyst David Soucie, author of "Why Planes Crash."

The model used for tracking the debris could be incorrect, he said, noting that that was the case when investigators were searching for evidence of Air France Flight 447, which plunged into the southern Atlantic Ocean in 2009, killing all 228 people aboard.

"They spent weeks looking for debris in the wrong area," he said.

The lack of debris could also mean that the plane did not break apart on impact, but instead sank largely intact, he said.

If that was the case, it could complicate the effort to retrieve the black boxes, since they were stored inside the tail of the plane. Investigators would have to dismantle the tail in order to extract them and whatever secrets they may hold.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~Probe of the ocean floor will move from ping locators to sonar
~The Bluefin-21 is equipped with side-scan sonar
~And once the debris field is found, investigators would turn to remotely operated vehicles
~An intact plane could complicate the search effort, CNN analyst says

Watch the news story here:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/12/world/asia/plane-sonar/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Malaysia Airlines MH370: New possible 'pings' detected in jet search
If confirmed, underwater signal is 5th picked up during Indian Ocean hunt for jet
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia-airlines-mh370-new-possible-pings-detected-in-jet-search-1.2605073

For the fifth time in recent days, an underwater sensor detected a signal in the same swath of the southern Indian Ocean on Thursday, raising hopes that searchers are closing in on what could be a flight recorder from the missing Malaysian jet.

The Australian air force P-3 Orion, which has been dropping sound-locating buoys into the water near where the original sounds were heard, picked up a "possible signal" that may be from a man-made source, said Angus Houston, who is coordinating the search off Australia's west coast.

"The acoustic data will require further analysis overnight," Houston said in a statement.

If confirmed, the signal would further narrow the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished on March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard.

The Australian ship Ocean Shield picked up two underwater sounds on Tuesday, and two sounds it detected Saturday were determined to be consistent with the pings emitted from a plane's flight recorders, or "black boxes."

The Australian air force has been dropping sonar buoys to maximize the sound-detectors operating in a search zone that is now the size of the city of Los Angeles.

















Royal New Zealand Air Force Captain Lt. Timothy McAlevey scans for debris from missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 on April 11, 2014. On Friday, search and rescue officials in Australia say they are confident they now know the approximate position of the jetliner's black box recorders, but fear their batteries may be dead. (Richard Polden/Reuters)An Australian air force AP-3C Orion flies past Australian Defence vessel Ocean Shield on a mission April 9 to drop sonar buoys to assist in the acoustic search of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the southern Indian Ocean. More underwater signals have been detected that may be emanating from the aircraft's black boxes, raising hope the plane's wreckage will soon be found. (LSIS Bradley Darvill/Australian Defence Force/AP)Should the location of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 be confirmed, it is likely that the Abyss, a deep-sea autonomous underwater vehicle, will be used to explore the wreckage. The Abyss is designed for underwater exploration to depths of up to 6,000 metres and is one of only three similar vehicles of its kind worldwide. (Joern Pollex/Getty)Relatives of passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines jet prayed at a candlelight vigil at the Lido Hotel in Beijing on April 8 while an Australian ship raced to pick up more traces of a possible black box signal first detected on Saturday. The 'pings' were the most promising lead in the month-long hunt. (Jason Lee/Reuters)Australia's Minister of Defence David Johnston and Angus Houston, left, head of the agency coordinating the search, said on Tuesday that a robotic submersible is the best hope of locating the missing jetliner once the batteries die on the plane's flight data recorders. April 8 marks one month since MH370 disappeared. (Richard Polden/Reuters)In the first major break in the month-long hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, search vessels on Monday detected two distinct underwater sounds experts said were very much like the pings associated with aircraft black boxes. Here, Australian Air Force Captain Benn Carroll keeps his eyes on a smoke buoy marking suspected crash debris on Sunday, April 6.. (Sasa Petricic/CBC)A Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft returns to its temporary base at a Perth airport after taking part in the search operation for the missing jetliner on April 6. A retired air marshall in charge of the multinational search confirmed that signals first picked up by a Chinese ship could be coming from a sunken flight data recorder. (Rob Griffith/AP)The Australian-led, multinational effort to find Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 had confirmed that two 'pulses' detected on April 5 could be from a black box. On Sunday, an Australian ship picked up a third signal, although it is not yet known if the sounds are linked to MH370. Here, an Australian member of the search team scans the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean. (Paul Kane/Pool/Reuters)Buoyed by news of a possible black box signal picked up by a Chinese search vessel, up to 14 planes and nine ships resumed looking for signs of the missing jet liner on Saturday. (Nick Perry/Getty)A member of Japan's self-defence force helping in the search for the missing jetliner gets ready to board his P-3C Orion aircraft at an RAAF base near Perth on April 4. (Jason Reed/Reuters)A relative of a passenger travelling on flight MH370 watches the news on TV as he waits for a daily briefing at the Lido Hotel, in Beijing, on April 3. Malaysia's prime minister visited the Australian search base for missing Flight MH370 on Thursday as a nuclear-powered submarine joined the near-four week hunt that has so far failed to find any sign of the missing airliner and the 239 people on board. (Jason Lee/Reuters)High winds and icy weather in the southern Indian Ocean made it difficult for search teams looking for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on March 27. Here, naval aviators assigned to Patrol Squadron VP-16, pilot a P-8A Poseidon during a mission to assist in search and rescue operations. (Eric A. Pastor/U.S. Navy/Reuters)Recent images from French, Thai and Japanese satellites show what could be a large debris field from the airplane presumed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. Here, a flight lieutenant looks at a map as he flies aboard a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft. (Michael Martina/Pool/Getty)A navigation screen used by pilots aboard a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion aircraft shows their current location represented by a white circle during their mission to search for missing Flight MH370. (Michael Martina/Pool/Getty)A satellite image provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority shows a map of the planned search area where Flight MH370 is believed to have gone down. The search area situated in the southern Indian Ocean is off the coast of Perth, Australia. (Australian Maritime Safety Authority/Getty)Canadian pilot, Capt. Mike MacSween, on exchange with the Royal Australian Air Force addresses the media after returning to a base in Perth, Australia, from a search mission for MH370 debris. MacSween is now leading a crew of 12 in their flights over the search zone. (Paul Kane/Getty)
1 of 16Royal Australian Navy Commodore Peter Leavy said each buoy is dangling a hydrophone listening device about 300 metres below the surface. The hope, he said, is that the buoys will help better pinpoint the signals, along with the Ocean Shield, which is slowly dragging a U.S. navy pinger locator through the water.

The underwater search zone is currently a 1,300 square kilometre patch of the ocean floor, and narrowing the area as small as possible is crucial before an unmanned submarine can be sent to create a sonar map of a potential debris field on the seabed.


The Bluefin 21 sub takes six times longer to cover the same area as the pinger locator, and it would take the vehicle about six weeks to two months to canvass the underwater search zone, which is about the size of Los Angeles. That's why the acoustic equipment is still being used to hone in on a more precise location, U.S. Navy Capt. Mark Matthews said.

The search for floating debris on the ocean surface was narrowed Thursday to its smallest size yet — 57,900 square kilometres, or about one-quarter the size it was a few days ago. Fourteen planes and 13 ships were looking for floating debris, about 2,300 kilometres northwest of Perth.

Crews hunting for debris on the surface have already looked in the area they were crisscrossing on Thursday, but were moving in tighter patterns, now that the search zone has been narrowed to about a quarter the size it was a few days ago, Houston said.

Houston has expressed optimism about the sounds detected earlier in the week, saying on Wednesday that he was hopeful crews would find the aircraft — or what's left of it — in the "not-too-distant future."

Separately, a Malaysian government official said Thursday evening that investigators have concluded the pilot spoke the last words to air traffic control, "Good night, Malaysian three-seven-zero," and that his voice had no signs of duress. A re-examination of the last communication from the cockpit was initiated after authorities last week reversed their initial statement that the co-pilot was speaking different words.

The senior government official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media. The conclusion was first reported by CNN.

Investigators suspect the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean based on a flight path calculated from its contacts with a satellite and analysis of its speed and fuel capacity, but the content of the flight data and cockpit voice recorders is essential to solving the mysteries of why the plane was lost.

The search for the black boxes is increasingly urgent because their locator beacons have batteries that last about a month and may fail soon.


An Australian government briefing document circulated among international agencies involved in the search on Thursday said it was likely that the acoustic pingers would continue to transmit at decreasing strength for up to 10 more days, depending on conditions.

Once there is no hope left of the Ocean Shield's equipment picking up any more sounds, the Bluefin sub will be deployed.

Complicating matters, however, is the depth of the seafloor in the search area. The pings detected earlier are emanating from 4,500 metres below the surface — which is the deepest the Bluefin can dive.

"It'll be pretty close to its operating limit. It's got a safety margin of error and if they think it's warranted, then they push it a little bit," said Stefan Williams, a professor of marine robotics at Sydney University.


The search co-ordination centre said it was considering options in case a deeper diving sub is needed. But Williams suspects if that happens, the search will be delayed while an underwater vehicle rated to 6,000 metres is dismantled and air freighted from Europe, the U.S. or Japan.

Williams said colleagues at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts had autonomous and remotely operated underwater vehicles that will dive to 11 kilometres, although they might not be equipped for such a search.

Underwater vessels rated to 6,500 metres could search the sea bed of more than 90 per cent of the world's oceans, Williams said.

"There's not that much of it deeper than six and a half kilometres," he said.

Williams said it was unlikely that the wreck had fallen into the narrow Diamantina trench, which is about 5,800 metres deep, since sounds emanating from that depth would probably not have been detected by the pinger locator.
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My question is, where is the debris field in the area near the pings? The debris they did find wasn't from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. I can understand it drifting away after several weeks, but really no debris?

Commander: 'Very Difficult' Conditions Plague Search for MH370
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/commander-very-difficult-conditions-plague-search-mh370-n79216?ocid=msnhp&pos=1

The hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet is "the most challenging search I've ever seen," the commander of one of the key military ships involved said Sunday.

Commander Phillip Newell of the British Navy ship HMS Echo said the task facing his crew was the toughest he had seen despite the vessel’s "world-leading capability" in collecting data from the bottom of the sea.

The Echo just arrived in the search area last week to hunt down the jets elusive flight recorder.

Using a depth probe attached to the ship with a 13,000 feet cable, the ship is mapping the floor of the Indian Ocean in the zone where sonar pings have been heard, likely from the black box on board doomed Flight MH370.

The area is so remote that little data exists about the sea bed, making it hard for sonic experts to narrow down the possible areas where the Boeing 777 could be located.

Information from HMS Echo is being passed to the Australian naval ship, Ocean Shield, which is towing a detector that can pick up any pings from the wreckage.

“We can deploy into depths to measure oceanographic observations that help define sonar prediction,” Newell said, adding that the area being searched had “very difficult oceanographic conditions.”

“HMS Echo has world-leading capability in collecting oceanographic and hydrographic data and in my 20 years’ experience with the Royal Navy this is most challenging search I've ever seen,” he said.

Missing Plane’s Black Box Batteries May Have Died
http://time.com/#60628/missing-planes-black-box-batteries-may-have-died/

Despite having no new transmissions from the black boxes' locator beacons to go on, air and sea crews were continuing their search for MH370

(PERTH, Australia) — Following four strong underwater signals in the past week, all has gone quiet in the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, meaning the batteries in the plane’s all-important black boxes may finally have died.

Search Narrows for Flight 370

Despite having no new transmissions from the black boxes’ locator beacons to go on, air and sea crews were continuing their search in the southern Indian Ocean on Sunday for debris and any sounds that may still be emanating. They are desperately trying to pinpoint where the Boeing 777 could be amid an enormous patch of deep ocean.

No new electronic pings have been detected since Tuesday by an Australian ship dragging a U.S. Navy device that listens for flight recorder signals. Once officials are confident that no more sounds will be heard, a robotic submersible will be sent down to slowly scour for wreckage.

“We’re now into Day 37 of this tragedy,” said aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas. “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.”
Recovering the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders is essential for investigators to try to figure out what happened to Flight 370, which vanished March 8. It was carrying 239 people, mostly Chinese, while en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.

After analyzing satellite data, officials believe the plane flew off course for an unknown reason and went down in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia’s west coast. Investigators trying to determine what happened to the plane are focusing on four areas — hijacking, sabotage and personal or psychological problems of those on board.

Two sounds heard a week ago by the Australian ship Ocean Shield, which was towing the ping locator, were determined to be consistent with the signals emitted from the black boxes. Two more pings were detected in the same general area Tuesday, but no new ones have been picked up since then.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has expressed confidence that the pings picked up by the Ocean Shield were coming from the plane’s two black boxes, but he cautioned that finding the actual aircraft could take a long time.

“There’s still a lot more work to be done and I don’t want anyone to think that we are certain of success, or that success, should it come, is going to happen in the next week or even month. There’s a lot of difficulty and a lot of uncertainty left in this,” Abbott said Saturday in Beijing, where he was wrapping up a visit to China.

Searchers want to pinpoint the exact location of the source of the sounds — or as close as they can get — before sending the Bluefin 21 submersible down. It will not be deployed until officials are confident that no other electronic signals will come, and that they have narrowed the search area as much as possible.
The underwater search zone is currently a 1,300-square-kilometer (500-square-mile) patch of the seabed, about the size of Los Angeles.

The sub takes six times longer to cover the same area as the ping locator, and will need about six weeks to two months to canvass the current underwater zone. The signals are also coming from 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) below the surface, which is the deepest the sub can dive.

The surface area being searched on Sunday for floating debris was 57,506 square kilometers (22,203 square miles) of ocean extending about 2,200 kilometers (1,367 miles) northwest of Perth. Up to 12 planes and 14 ships were participating in the hunt.

MORE: 50% of Malaysians are Dissatisfied with the Handling of MH370

Watch the news video here:
http://time.com/#60628/missing-planes-black-box-batteries-may-have-died/

...
Attachments:

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Co-pilot's cell phone was on, U.S. official says
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/14/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- The phone of the first officer of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was on and made contact with a cell tower in Malaysia about the time the plane disappeared from radar, a U.S. official told CNN on Monday.

However, the U.S. official -- who cited information shared by Malaysian investigators -- said there was no evidence the first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, had tried to make a call.

The official told CNN's Pamela Brown on Monday that a cell-phone tower in Penang, Malaysia -- about 250 miles from where the flight's transponder last sent a signal -- detected the first officer's phone searching for service roughly 30 minutes after authorities believe the plane made a sharp turn westward.

The details do appear to reaffirm suggestions based on radar and satellite data that the plane was off course and was probably flying low enough to obtain a signal from a cell tower, the U.S. official said.

The revelation follows reporting over the weekend in a Malaysian newspaper that the first officer had tried to make a telephone call while the plane was in flight.

Asked Sunday by CNN about the newspaper report about a purported effort to make a call by the first officer, Malaysia's acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said, "As far as I know, no, but as I said that would be in the realm of the police and the other international (authorities) and when the time comes that will be revealed. But I do not want to speculate on that at the moment."

U.S. officials familiar with the investigation told CNN they have been told that no other cell phones were picked up by the Penang tower.

Pilots are supposed to turn off their cell phones before pushing back from the gate.

"It would be very rare in my opinion to have someone with a cell phone on in the cockpit," safety analyst David Soucie said. "It's never supposed to be on at all. It's part of every check list of every airline I am familiar with."

When the plane first went missing, authorities said millions of cell phone records were searched, looking for evidence that calls had been made from the plane after it took off, but the search turned up nothing.

Underwater search is shortened

Efforts to find the missing plane and the 239 people aboard were focused beneath the choppy surface of the southern Indian Ocean on Monday as Australian authorities sent a U.S. Navy-contracted submersible diving toward the sea floor.

But after completing just six hours of searching for underwater debris, the autonomous underwater vehicle Bluefin-21 returned to the surface, according to the Joint Agency Coordination Centre in Perth, Australia.

It should have taken the probe and its operators 24 hours to map the first portion of the search area: 16 hours to map, four hours' travel time to just above the ocean floor and back, and four hours for analysts to examine the data gathered.

It is unclear how much of the area -- 5 kilometers by 8 kilometers (3.1 miles by 4.9 miles) -- the Bluefin scanned. It could take up to two months to scan the entire search area.

Officials said a built-in safety feature recalled the underwater search vehicle after it exceeded its operating depth of 4,500 meters (14,763 feet).

Capt. Mark Matthews, who heads the U.S. presence in the search effort, said the Bluefin aborted so the crew could refine the mission parameters. Charts indicated the ocean was at most 4,400 meters (14,436 feet) deep, so when the Bluefin went deeper than that, it was returned to the surface.

"It happened in the very far corner of the area it's searching, so they are just shifting the search box a little bit away from that deep water and proceeding with the search," he told CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront."

The decision to put the Bluefin-21 into the water for the first time in the 38-day search comes nearly a week after listening devices last heard sounds that could be from locator beacons attached to the plane's "black boxes."

"We haven't had a single detection in six days," Australian chief search coordinator Angus Houston said. "It's time to go underwater."

The probe is equipped with side-scan sonar -- acoustic technology that creates pictures from the reflections of sound. Such technology is routinely used to find sunken ships and was crucial in finding Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.

Houston cautioned against hopes that the underwater vehicle will find wreckage of the plane, which disappeared on March 8 on a flight between Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Beijing that should have taken about six hours.

"It may not," he said. "This will be a slow and painstaking process."

The bottom of the search area is not sharply mountainous -- it's more flat and almost rolling, Houston said. But he said the area probably has a lot of silt, which can "complicate" the search.

The search area for the Bluefin is in what officials labeled the most likely area the plane could be.

"It was the site of the highest signal strength or the loudest received signal," Matthews told CNN, referring to the pings detected by a towed pinger locator, a wing-shaped listening device connected to the ship by a cable. "It was also where we had an increase in signal strength as we drove through the area and then a decrease as we drove out of the area."

New clue on the surface of the water?

Another possible clue into the plane's disappearance emerged Monday.

Australian officials announced the Australian ship Ocean Shield had detected an oil slick Sunday evening. It is unclear where the oil came from. A 2-liter sample has been collected for examination, but it will take a few days to analyze.

"I stress the source of the oil has yet to be determined, but the oil slick is approximately 5,500 meters (3.4 miles) downwind ... from the vicinity of the detections of the TPL on Ocean Shield," Houston said.

CNN Aviation Analyst Les Abend, who flies a Boeing 777, said the engines on the plane have about 20 quarts of oil each.

"It could be slowly dripping up to the surface," he told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." "They're saying an oil slick. I'm wondering if it's just some sort of a fluid slick. It could be (from) hydraulics."








Watch this video


How Chinese media covers MH370 story






Watch this video


Finding Flight 370 in the deep sea

If it is oil, it's not the first oil slick detected as part of the search. A similar find in the first days of the search was determined to be fuel oil from a freighter.

Surface search nearing end

Twelve aircraft and 15 ships participated in Monday's search efforts on the surface, covering an 18,400-square-mile (47,600-square-kilometer) area. The surface search was among the last, Houston said.

"The air and surface search for floating material will be completed in the next two to three days in the area where the aircraft most likely entered the water," Houston said.

That search was energized last week when searchers using the Navy-owned pinger locator and sonobuoys detected sounds that could have been from the plane's black boxes, or data and voice recorders.

But after a week of silence, the batteries powering the locator beacons are probably dead, a top official from the company that manufactures the beacons told CNN on Sunday. They were certified to last 30 days, a deadline that's already passed.

That means searchers may not be able to detect any more pings to help lead them to those pieces of the missing plane.

"More than likely they are reaching end of life or already have. If (a beacon) is still going, it is very, very quiet at this point," Jeff Densmore told CNN's "State of the Union with Candy Crowley" on Sunday.

The time is ripe to move on to other search techniques.

"Every good effort has been expended, but it's now looking like the batteries are failing, and it's time to start mowing the lawn, as we say, time to start scanning the sea floor," said Rob McCollum, a CNN analyst and ocean search specialist.

Catherine Tamoh Lion, the mother of the missing plane's chief steward Andrew Nari, said the news that no more pings have been heard is upsetting.

"Our sadness is now just prolonged," she told CNN.

"I feel like they are somewhere," she said of the passengers. "I don't know where. Just praying to God. Miracles can happen. "

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~NEW: CNN aviation analyst says surface slick could be fluid leaking from underwater plane
~Cell phone tower detected co-pilot's phone around time of disappearance, official says
~An oil slick has been found 5.5 kilometers (3.4 miles) from where pings were detected
~Underwater search vehicle comes back to surface early after exceeding depth limit

Watch the news story here:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/14/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Robo-Sub Goes Deeper Than Ever but Still No Sign of MH370
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/robo-sub-goes-deeper-ever-still-no-sign-mh370-n83856?ocid=msnhp&pos=4

Target Area Search for Jet May Be Finished in Days: Report
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/target-area-search-jet-may-be-finished-days-report-n84676

SYDNEY - Australian officials supervising the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 told Reuters on Saturday that an underwater search for the black box recorder based on "pings" possibly from the device could be completed in five to seven days.

A U.S. Navy deep-sea autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, is scouring a remote stretch of the Indian Ocean floor for signs of the flight, which disappeared from radar March 8 with 239 people on board and is believed to have crashed in the area.

The underwater search has been narrowed to a circular area with a radius of about six miles around the location in which one of four pings believed to have come from the black box recorders was detected April 8, officials said.

The massive international search and rescue effort for any physical evidence of the plane's wreckage, now in its seventh week, has so far proved fruitless.

"Provided the weather is favorable for launch and recovery of the AUV and we have a good run with the serviceability of the AUV, we should complete the search of the focused underwater area in five to seven days," the Joint Agency Coordination Centre told Reuters in an email.

Source: Malaysia Airlines jet soared high briefly, then descended
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/18/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/?hpt=hp_t2

(CNN) -- Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 drastically changed course then soared to near its peak altitude, a senior Malaysian aviation source said -- adding yet another wrinkle to the enigma of the plane's last flight.

Before disappearing from radar screens on March 8, the commercial airliner deviated from its planned route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing by turning leftward over water while it was still inside Vietnamese airspace, the Malaysian aviation source told CNN's Nic Robertson.

The aircraft then climbed to 39,000 feet, just short of the Boeing 777-200ER's 41,000-foot safe operating limit, and maintained that altitude for about 20 minutes over the Malaysian Peninsula before beginning to descend, the source said.

Why? That and so much else -- including where the plane is now -- remains a mystery. Investigators have been trying for weeks to piece together bits of information trying to get the answers being demanded by relatives of the 239 people aboard the plane, not to mention millions more around the world who have been captivated by this ordeal.

In addition to this newly revealed development, investigators have determined that the missing jet was equipped with four emergency locator transmitters, or ELTs, which are designed to transmit a plane's location to an emergency satellite when triggered by a crash or by contact with water, the source added.

The ELTs were at the plane's front door, its rear door, in the fuselage and in the cockpit, said the source, who was puzzled over why they appear either not to have activated or, if they did activate, why they were not picked up by the satellite.

Relatives of the 239 passengers and crew have raised questions about the ELTs with Malaysian authorities, suggesting there were at least three aboard the plane, including two portable units and one fixed device.

No comment from Malaysia Airlines

Malaysia Airlines has declined to answer CNN's questions about the ELTs and other matters pertaining to the flight, which vanished six weeks ago after taking off shortly after midnight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The airline said it could not comment on "any questions that relate to information held by other authorities and/or fall under the jurisdiction of the ongoing investigation. ..."

Besides this probe, the plight has spurred an expansive, expensive search to find the aircraft.

That includes the dispatching of up to 11 military aircraft and 12 ships Saturday across three areas off Perth, Australia. They will cover about 20,000 square miles (50,000 square kilometers) and brave isolated showers, according to Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre.

There may not be much more of this, however. Officials have said searches from air and ships are probably nearing an end.

That doesn't surprise former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Managing Director Peter Goelz, given the results so far. "There's a lot of resources being expended there; it's turned up nothing," he said.

But Goelz predicts the underwater phase of the search will continue for the six to eight weeks needed to cover the current search zone. If that turns up nothing, he predicted, towed array sonar probably would be used to search a wider zone.

"This is a very complex operation," ocean search specialist Rob McCallum said. "It's going to be a game of patience now."

As of early Saturday, the underwater drone scouring the bottom of the Indian Ocean had taken six trips looking for the missing jetliner with a seventh mission then underway.

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre said the Bluefin-21 search has covered about 50 square miles. While the information gleamed from the sixth trip was still being analyzed, the first five didn't yield any breakthroughs.

Malaysia's acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein tweeted Friday that authorities are looking at deploying more unmanned underwater probes.

Officials might consider searching along a large portion of sea highlighted by a partial digital "handshake" between the jetliner and an Inmarsat PLC satellite, said Martin Dolan, Australia's top transport official.

That arc of sea is more than 370 miles long and 30 miles wide.

A prolonged undersea search by private contractors could cost a "ballpark rough estimate" of $234 million, said Dolan.

Passengers' kin list questions

The continuing search efforts came as relatives of the people who were aboard the jetliner pressed for answers.

They have drawn up 26 questions that they want addressed by Malaysian officials, who are to meet with them next week in Beijing. Most of the Flight 370 passengers and crew were Chinese.

Among their questions: What's in the flight's log book? Can they review the jet's maintenance records? Can they listen to recordings of the Boeing 777 pilot's conversations with air traffic controllers just before contact was lost?

Hishammuddin has defended his government's handling of the operation and accused members of the news media of focusing on the Chinese families. He said relatives of passengers and crew from other nations represented have not had problems.

"The most difficult part of any investigation of this nature is having to deal with the families," he said.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: 6th underwater drone mission finishes; 7th such trip is underway
NEW: Agency: Up to 11 military planes, 12 ships to take part in Saturday search
Flight 370 is said to have deviated from flight plan while inside Vietnamese airspace
There's still no sign of the Boeing 777, now 6 weeks after it went missing

Certainly the NRO knows where the plane is with our good ol' Merikan know-how in satellite and radar technology.

All that noise on CNNNBCCBSABCFOX is only there to distract you with shiny objects, look over there, not over here....

Really folks...

They aint neva gon find that bitch.

Malaysia's Government to Issue MH370 Death Certificates
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/malaysias-government-issue-mh370-death-certificates-n85131

The Malaysian government will issue death certificates for passengers of missing Flight MH370 and provide financial assistance to families still hanging onto hopes of their loved ones being found alive, officials said on Sunday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Hamzah Zainudin appeared at pains to show that officials were trying to be fair to all relatives of those who went missing when the Malaysia Airlines jet went missing on March 8.

"When we talk about financial assistance, we have to be fair with everybody," he said during a press conference in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday. "The only discussion that we talk to currently is to the next of kin in Malaysia and to representative from China. So, we don't only talk to Malaysia next of kin. We'll talk to everybody."

"We realize this is an excruciating time for the families of those on board," added Zainuddin, who heads a committee overseeing the needs of the next of kin.

He said that he would soon visit Beijing to shore up bilateral relations between Malaysia and China. Two-thirds of the missing plane's 227 passengers were Chinese, and many of their family members have been angered by Malaysia's handling of the investigation.

Despite the fact the search has yielded no evidence of survivors, some families clung onto hope that their loved ones would be found alive.

"We couldn't find it in the sea and we couldn't find it on a land. It's only logical that they're alive," 60-year-old Salamat Omar, a relative of one of the passengers, told Reuters.

Watch the news video here:
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/malaysias-government-issue-mh370-death-certificates-n85131

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Wreckage 'could be found within this week'
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-wreckage-could-be-found-within-this-week-30200578.html

The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight is at “a very critical juncture”, with the area officials believe the wreckage could be in narrowing significantly over the next two days, Malaysia’s acting transport minister has said.

The search of a tight 10 km (6.2 mile) circle of the sea floor by a US Navy underwater drone could be completed within a week, Australian search officials said on Saturday.

The area has been determined based on underwater pings believed to be from the plane's black box recorders, meaning if analysis has been correct and the signal’s were coming from the boxes, remnants from the doomed flight should be located.

The almost two month long search for the plane after it disappeared from radars on 8 March has so far brought no sign of wreckage, and officials have little answer as to what happened in the final hours of the flight.

“Provided the weather is favourable for launch and recovery of the AUV and we have a good run with the serviceability of the AUV, we should complete the search of the focused underwater area in five to seven days,” the Joint Agency Coordination Centre told Reuters in an email.

Officials did not indicate whether they were confident that this search area would yield any new information about the flight, nor did they state what steps they would take in the event that the underwater search were to prove fruitless.

“It is important to focus on today and tomorrow. Narrowing of the search area today and tomorrow is at a very critical juncture,” Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a media conference in Kuala Lumpur, asking for people to pray for success.

Malaysia was asking oil companies and others in the commercial sector to provide assets that might help in the search, Mr Hishammuddin added, after earlier saying more AUVs might be used.

After almost two weeks without picking up any acoustic signals, and long past the black box battery's 30-day life expectancy, authorities are increasingly reliant on the unmanned Bluefin-21 drone, which on Saturday was expected to have dived to unprecedented depths that could risk the equipment.

Because visual searches of the ocean surface have yielded no concrete evidence, the drone, with its ability to search deep beneath the ocean surface with “side scan” sonar, has become the focal point of the search 1,200 miles northwest of the Australian city of Perth.

But hopes that it might soon guide searchers to wreckage are dwindling with no sign of the plane after six deployments spanning 83 square miles. Footage from the drone's sixth mission was still being analysed, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said on Saturday.
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Cyclone threatens to disrupt search for missing Malaysian plane
http://news.msn.com/world/cyclone-threatens-to-disrupt-search-for-missing-malaysian-plane

PERTH, Australia (Reuters) - A tropical cyclone was threatening to hamper the search for a missing Malaysian jetliner in a remote stretch of the Indian Ocean on Monday, as a submarine drone neared the end of its mission scouring the sea bed with still no sign of wreckage.

The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board, has narrowed to a 10 sq km (6.2 sq mile) patch of sea floor about 2,000 km (1,200 miles) west of the Australian city of Perth.

Search authorities and the Australian and Malaysian governments have said a series of sonar signals, or "pings", traced to the area may have emanated from the plane's "black box" and present the most credible lead as to its whereabouts.

However no pings have been detected in almost two weeks and authorities now fear that, with the flight data recorder's battery several weeks past its expected expiry date, the black box may not emit further signals.

A U.S. Navy remote controlled submarine, the Bluefin-21, was on its ninth mission scanning the largely unmapped stretch of sea bed where the pings are believed to have come from, with still no trace found, Australian search officials said on Monday.

"Bluefin-21 has searched approximately two-thirds of the focused underwater search area to date. No contacts of interest have been found to date," the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said in a statement.

The center added that the search, which has so far been largely unimpeded by weather, may be affected as Tropical Cyclone Jack continued to move south over the ocean.

"Widespread showers are developing with isolated thunderstorms to the north and east south-easterly winds," the center said of the weather forecast in the search area.

AIR SEARCH CONTINUES

On Saturday, the center said the Bluefin-21 was expected to complete its search of the targeted area within a week. But with the prospect of that search ending without finding any sign of the plane drawing ever more likely, the authorities are under pressure to determine their next strategy.

The search coordinator, retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, said on April 14 that an air and surface search for debris would end within three days.

But the daily sorties have continued unabated since then, in a search involving some two dozen nations and already estimated to be the most expensive in aviation history.

On Monday, up to 10 military aircraft and 11 ships were expected to help in the day's search, with a total search area covering about 49,491 sq km (19,100 sq miles).

The Malaysian government has said the search is at a "very critical juncture" and asked for prayers for its success. Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has also said the government may consider using more remote controlled submarines in the search.

Where Is Flight MH370? Robo-Sub Covers Two-Thirds of Search Area
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/where-flight-mh370-robo-sub-covers-two-thirds-search-area-n85431?ocid=msnhp&pos=4

An unmanned submarine searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 completed two-thirds of its search area without finding any trace of the jet, officials said Monday.

The U.S. Navy-owned Bluefin-21 is scouring a 6-mile radius around the source of a "ping" detected on April 8 that investigators think may have been sent by the plane's black box recorder.

WATCH: Just how deep is Malaysia jet's black box?

The drone submarine completed its first mission April 13. On Sunday, it completed its eighth mission and a ninth was planned Monday, Australian officials said.



Lt. Kelli Lunt / APThe Bluefin-21 is deployed in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean.
As well as the submarine, 10 military aircraft and 11 ships are still engaged in the search more than six weeks after the Boeing 777 went missing on March 8.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has planned a visual search area of 19,109 square miles, some 1,081 miles northwest of Perth, Australia.

However, AMSA said Monday this search was threatened by deteriorating weather conditions and Tropical Cyclone Jack, which is heading south toward the northern end of the search area.

Meanwhile, another Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 bound for Bangalore, India, was forced to turn back and make an emergency landing at Kuala Lumpur after its landing gear malfunctioned on Sunday. The plane's seven crew members and 159 passengers evacuated the aircraft safely.

As well as the submarine, 10 military aircraft and 11 ships are still engaged in the search more than six weeks after the Boeing 777 went missing on March 8.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has planned a visual search area of 19,109 square miles, some 1,081 miles northwest of Perth, Australia.

However, AMSA said Monday this search was threatened by deteriorating weather conditions and Tropical Cyclone Jack, which is heading south toward the northern end of the search area.

Meanwhile, another Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 bound for Bangalore, India, was forced to turn back and make an emergency landing at Kuala Lumpur after its landing gear malfunctioned on Sunday. The plane's seven crew members and 159 passengers evacuated the aircraft safely.
Attachments:

I'm beginning to think that those so-called pings were decoys. Interesting how it was a Chinese ship to detect them first? And why was that Chinese ship in that area to begin with?

MH370: Obama visits Malaysia as questions loom over missing jetliner
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/27/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews

(CNN) -- Malaysia's government has been widely criticized over its handling of the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and disclosures of its investigations. But on Sunday, U.S. President Barack Obama had words of praise during a visit to the southeast Asian country.

He said the Malaysian government has been "forthcoming" with the United States about the information it has.

"The Malaysian government is working tirelessly to recover the aircraft and investigate exactly what happened," Obama told reporters. He reiterated that the United States would continue to aid in the search and offered condolences to loved ones of those lost.

Obama is the first American leader in decades to visit Malaysia, the Asian nation grappling with the mystery of the vanished jetliner.

He has remained largely quiet over the issue, as an international underwater search focuses on the southern Indian Ocean.

At an elaborate dinner at Istana Negara palace on Saturday, attended by some 600 guests, King Tuanku Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah offered a toast in English and personally thanked Obama for U.S. support in the aftermath of the plane's disappearance.

The missing plane is not the only topic on the President's agenda. Malaysia is a growing partner of the United States, which seeks to deepen that relationship, White House national security adviser Ben Rhodes said.

Topics of discussion between the two leaders will include trade, security and regional issues, he said.

Narrowed search nears end

Because of inclement weather, the planned air and sea search for Sunday was suspended, the Joint Agency Coordination Center said. The search by the Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle went ahead as planned, search coordinators said. It has found nothing of consequence so far.

Obama's visit comes as the initial search by the Bluefin-21 nears its end.

The submersible, which is on contract to the U.S. Navy, is scouring the ocean floor for traces of the plane.

Previously, another device, a towed pinger locator, detected signals that officials believed were from the jet's flight recorders, which determined the current search area for the Bluefin.

The underwater sonar device has slowly scoured 95% of the ocean floor area that searchers had narrowed down for it. So far, it has found no trace of the missing jetliner.

If the Bluefin-21 searches 100% of the area with nothing to show for it, the underwater search may expand, Australian officials said.

On Saturday, the British ship HMS Echo returned to port in Perth, Australia, for replenishment after assisting in the search.

A U.S. Navy source told CNN on Friday that the current search area is expected to move slightly north if the Bluefin doesn't find any wreckage. Specifically, it might shift to encompass a 6-mile radius around where another "ping" was detected.

The underwater search so far has focused on a circle with a 10-kilometer (6-mile) radius around the location of a detected "ping," the Joint Agency Coordination Center said.

"We are currently consulting very closely with our international partners on the best way to continue the search into the future," the Australian-based center coordinating the search said in a statement.

The plane disappeared on March 8 after leaving Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for Beijing.

Preliminary report

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has said a preliminary report on the plane's disappearance will be available to the public next week.

He also asked an internal investigation team to look into what other information may be released publicly next week, his office said.

The report has been sent to the International Civil Aviation Organization, the U.N. body for global aviation, but not yet made available to the public.

The U.N. organization said among the safety recommendations in the report is a suggestion by Malaysia that the aviation world needs to look at real-time tracking of commercial aircraft.

It's the same recommendation that was made after Air France Flight 447 went down in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.

"Anytime there is a tragedy like this, we ought to also reflect on what can be done going forward to prevent something similar from happening again," Obama said.

"That discussion has begun in Malaysia and around the world, and we'll see what improvements might be recommended to continue improving aviation security. One thing is already clear, however, is that large international efforts like this search operation benefit from existing partnerships among nations."

Obama, who will be in Malaysia until Sunday, is the first U.S. president to visit Kuala Lumpur in almost 50 years.

He leaves for the Philippines on Sunday, where he will remain until his departure for the United States on Tuesday.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: Obama praises Malaysian government's handling of plane disappearance
NEW: Officials have been "forthcoming" with information, he says
Bluefin-21 starts its 15th mission to search for missing plane's remains
Sunday air and sea search suspended because of weather

Missing Malaysia Flight 370: What If Nothing Turns Up? Pessimism Grows As Search Drags On
http://www.weather.com/tv/tvshows/americas-morning-headquarters/missing-malaysia-airlines-plane-flight-370-update-20140317

More than nine planes and nine ships scoured the Indian Ocean for missing Flight MH370 on Wednesday. Still, no one has the slightest idea where the Malaysia Airlines jet is, and officials are growing pessimistic that the mystery will ever be solved.

Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the multinational search effort out of Australia, said no time frame has been set for the search to end, but that a new approach would be needed if nothing showed up.

"Over time, if we don't find anything on the surface, we're going to have to think about what we do next, because clearly it's vitally important for the families, it's vitally important for the governments involved that we find this airplane," he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has stopped giving details of objects found in the sea.

Police are investigating the pilots and crew for any evidence suggesting they may have hijacked or sabotaged the plane. The backgrounds of the passengers, two-thirds of whom were Chinese, have been checked by local and international investigators and nothing suspicious has been found.

"Investigations may go on and on and on. We have to clear every little thing," Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar told reporters. "At the end of the investigations, we may not even know the real cause. We may not even know the reason for this incident."

Police are also investigating the cargo and the food served on the plane to eliminate possible poisoning of passengers and crew, he said.

The British government said a nuclear-powered submarine with advanced underwater search capability had arrived in the southern Indian Ocean.

The current search area is a 85,000-square-mile patch of sea roughly a 2 1/2-hour flight from Perth. The focus of the search has moved several times as experts try to estimate where the plane is most likely to have landed based on assumptions on its altitude, speed and fuel. Currents in the sea are also being studied to see where any wreckage is most likely to have drifted.

Malaysia has been criticized by the relatives of some Chinese passengers on board, who accuse them of not giving them enough information or even lying about what it knows about the final movements of the plane. Some are staying in hotels in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur, courtesy of Malaysia Airlines.

On Wednesday, authorities organized a closed-door briefing in Malaysia for the families with officials and experts involved in the hunt, including the chief of the Malaysian air force.

It was relayed by video conferencing technologies to the relatives in Beijing. Malaysia's civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, said officials answered all the questions raised by the relatives and that they had "a very good meeting." Several relatives interviewed after the session said officials showed them more satellite and other data, but that they were still not satisfied.

"The fact is they didn't give us any convincing information," said Steve Wang, a representative of some of the Chinese families in Beijing. "They said themselves that there are many different possibilities, but they are judging on the basis of just one of them."

Malaysian officials have on occasion given conflicting accounts and contradictory information over the last three weeks. They maintain they are doing their best in what it is an unprecedented situation, and stress they want the same thing as the families, namely to locate the plane as quickly as possible.
Attachments:

MH370 - Time to move on CNN

Talk about beating a story to death, this Malaysia flight tragedy has simply proved that CNN is relentless in its chase for viewers.

Their ratings were up nearly 80% with their non-stop 24/7 coverage. Just when it looked like they might have milked it for all they could the Korea ferry sank and now they are the go to network for both air and sea tragedy.

It is easy to distinguish between the big three cable networks, CNN is 100% death coverage, MSNBC is 50% prison reports and 50% stooging for the DNC, FOX is of course in the bag for the GOP but manages to actually mention other news items, also they have the best looking women reporters and you can't help wondering if they wear any underwear. I think drooling teen age boys must make up a large segment of viewers on Fox.

Kennesaw Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> MH370 - Time to move on CNN
>
> Talk about beating a story to death, this Malaysia
> flight tragedy has simply proved that CNN is
> relentless in its chase for viewers.
>
> Their ratings were up nearly 80% with their
> non-stop 24/7 coverage. Just when it looked like
> they might have milked it for all they could the
> Korea ferry sank and now they are the go to
> network for both air and sea tragedy.
>
> It is easy to distinguish between the big three
> cable networks, CNN is 100% death coverage, MSNBC
> is 50% prison reports and 50% stooging for the
> DNC, FOX is of course in the bag for the GOP but
> manages to actually mention other news items, also
> they have the best looking women reporters and you
> can't help wondering if they wear any underwear.
> I think drooling teen age boys must make up a
> large segment of viewers on Fox.

To be fair, they got the ratings and it's an interesting story. Are they beating it to death? Oh yes, absolutely, but it's not like they are forcing viewers to watch them. Yes, you can change the channel.

Is this MH370? US pilot believes he's found wreckage of missing airliner after searching through thousands of satellite images online - right where the flight vanished seven weeks ago

Michael Hoebel, from Tonawanda, New York spent hours trawling through pictures on TomNod.com, a website that shares satellite images
He has found images of what he believes to be the intact aircraft just off the northeast coast of Malaysia days after the crash

He has contacted the FBI and NTSB to share his findings
The search for the missing flight, which vanished on March 8, will now focus on the ocean floor, authorities have said
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2614932/U-S-pilot-believes-hes-wreckage-missing-Malaysia-flight-searching-satellite-images.html

A pilot from New York believes he has found the wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airline Flight 370 off the coast of Thailand after searching thousands of satellite images online.

Michael Hoebel, 60, spent hours trawling through the images made available to the public on a crowd-sourcing website, TomNod.com, before coming across what he believes is the doomed plane.

The recreational pilot from Tonawanda said he was shocked to discover that the aircraft, which vanished two months ago, appeared to be in one piece beneath the water off the northeast coast of Malaysia, just west of Songkhla in Thailand. The image was taken days after the crash.

He told WIVB that he used the scale at the bottom of the map on TomNod and compared them to the specs on Boeings' website to establish that the white figure he saw was the perfect size.
'I was taken aback because I couldn't believe I would find this,' he told the news channel.

He pointed to the image on his computer as he explained why he thought it was the missing airliner.

'The lighter skin where the wing attaches to the fuselage - you see that lighter skin,' he said, comparing the grainy image to a photograph of the make of plane.
And when WIVB reporter Ed Drantch questioned if the shadow could be a shark, Hoebel responded: 'That's a 210ft shark.'

TomNod allows members of the public to go through millions of satellite pictures in a bid to help investigate the crash.

It also allows other users to rate whether or not they agree with another user's theory - and so far, no one has disagreed with Hoebel's, he said. No one else has noted finding the wreckage at the same spot, he added.

He said that he started searching for the plane because he wanted to aid the investigation to help the families who had lost loved ones.
He added that he has contacted the NTSB and the FBI with what he found - but so far they have not contacted him in response.

This weekend, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said surface search efforts for the plane have been scaled back because it is 'highly unlikely' clues will be found on the surface.

Instead, the search will enter a new phase with the focus on the ocean floor - despite there being no 'pings' from what was earlier hoped were the aircraft's black boxes.

Mr Abbott said that as the aircraft, which had 239 people on board, has been missing for 52 days, if there had been any debris from the aircraft it would have now sunk.

Malaysia's Prime Minister, Mr Najib Razak, has also conceded that investigators have made no substantial progress since March 8 - the date that the plane is believed to have crashed.

'That's all we have until today,' Mr Najib told the Wall Street Journal.
Attachments:

MH370: New phase to include private contractors, may cost $60 million
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/28/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews

Hong Kong (CNN) -- The next phase in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 will be a more intense underwater search that will use private contractors, take months and cost about $56 million, officials said Monday.

"I regret to say that thus far none of our efforts in the air, on the surface or under sea, have found any wreckage," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Monday.

Because it's "highly unlikely" that any debris will be found on the ocean surface, authorities will be suspending aerial searches. By now, most of the debris will have become waterlogged and will have sunk, he said.

"The aircraft plainly cannot disappear. It must be somewhere," Abbott said. "We do not want this crippling cloud of uncertainty to hang over this family and the wider traveling public."

Demanding answers

It wasn't immediately known how family members of the missing passengers greeted Monday's news.

Furious with Malaysian officials, whom they fault for doing a poor job communicating, many family members plan to take their concerns to Boeing when the aircraft giant holds its annual shareholders meeting in Chicago on Monday morning.

MH370 is a Boeing 777, disappeared March 8 as it flew from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. It was carrying 239 people.

"The briefings are a joke," said Sarah Bajc, whose partner, Philip Wood, was a passenger on the plane. "The patience level of the families group is just gone."

"Boeing is a publicly traded company in the United States, and that puts them in a position of a little bit more fiduciary responsibility," she said.

Malaysian authorities need to do a better job of communicating with the families and answering their questions during briefings, she said, rather than treating passengers' loved ones "as if we are the enemy, as opposed to an interested party in helping to solve this mystery."

Shift in focus

For 52 days, an international coalition has been searching for the plane, focusing its effort in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is believed to have gone down.

Bluefin-21, a submersible on contract to the U.S. Navy, had been scouring the ocean floor for traces of the plane.

But despite multiple missions searching 400 square kilometers (154.44 square miles), it has found no evidence of the missing aircraft's data recorders.

Bluefin will continue to operate. But it will now be joined by sonar devices towed by ships.

The new equipment will be able to perform broad sweeps and provide feedback from the ocean floor. The Bluefin had to be brought up after each mission to have its data downloaded.

The Australian government will continue to work with Malaysian and Chinese authorities. But "one or more" private companies will be contracted to assist, Abbot said.

Further technology, including a number of other underwater vehicles both private and public, could also be pressed into service.

Some of them can go miles deeper than the Bluefin and remain underwater for weeks at a time.

'We're in the right area'

The Bluefin was put to work after officials detected signals they believed were from the jet's flight recorders.

Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, the head of Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre, said Monday the pings detected remained "the best lead we've got."

"I think we're in the right area," Houston said.

Asked whether it was possible that thick silt on the seabed may have buried the aircraft, Houston said some wreckage would still be on top of the silt.

"This is an extraordinary mystery," Prime Minister Abbott said. "We will do everything we reasonably can to resolve it."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~Abbott: 'The aircraft plainly cannot disappear. It must be somewhere'
~Relatives will take their concerns to Boeing's shareholders meeting
~Aerial searches will be suspended
~Bluefin-21 will continue to operate

No debris on the ocean's surface. No wreckage on the seabed. No ELT's activating. All of this points to the plane NOT crashing, but rather landing somewhere.

Putting it into perspective, more men have walked on the moon than have been at the bottom of the deepest ocean. 71 percent of the planet is ocean. 95% of underwater unexplored. 361 million square miles of ocean. A 242 foot long plane with a 200 foot wingspan. Pretty small in the grand scheme of things.

Also if the plane had gone off course and ran out of fuel, any oil slick would be minimal at best. Not to mention that numerous storms had gone through the area likely dispersing any oil slick as it was weeks before crews started searching in the suspected area of Australia.

People are making a big deal about a missing plane (and it's understandable that the friends and family of the passengers would want answers), but the oceans swallow things all the time--never to be seen again. I remember seeing a program on rogue waves and they quoted a statistic that, on average, 2 large ships disappear on the ocean EVERY WEEK. Over 100 ships per year... POOF... gone with little or no trace. Pretty sobering though.

4Mv4k Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> No debris on the ocean's surface. No wreckage on
> the seabed. No ELT's activating. All of this
> points to the plane NOT crashing, but rather
> landing somewhere.

Not if you're searching in the WRONG area.

In the wake of the MH370 loss, I thought it was worth seeing if ships were still disappearing at such a great rate. According to an annual analysis from insurer Allianz, 94 ships (over 100 gross tonnes) were completely
lost in 2013. There are many reasons for a complete loss. “Foundering”
(which means sinking or submerging) caused the vast majority of the big
losses.

But the big question, is how many disappeared without a trace? Again, according to the report, there were 7 ships that were “missing/overdue” in the 11 years from 2002 to 2013.

"Boeing is a publicly traded company in the United States, and that puts
them in a position of a little bit more fiduciary responsibility..."

What "fiduciary responsibility?" The pilot(s) flew the plane into oblivion. How can anyone blame Boeing?
AND, who is paying for all this? When will that be made public? The media seems to be avoiding that subject completely.

There also seems to be something very curious here about Boeing being given the "inside scoop" where the Inmarsat satellite data is concerned. They are also having a major influence upon the search areas using their fuel analysis. Given the lawsuits that are sure to follow it seems that Boeing should recuse itself from this exclusive group of unnamed individuals guiding the search as they perhaps have a vested interest when and IF the plane is ever located.

Jk9Lu Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Boeing is a publicly traded company in the United
> States, and that puts
> them in a position of a little bit more fiduciary
> responsibility..."
>
> What "fiduciary responsibility?" The pilot(s) flew
> the plane into oblivion. How can anyone blame
> Boeing?
> AND, who is paying for all this? When will that be
> made public? The media seems to be avoiding that
> subject completely.

The old prime minister of Malaysia blamed Boeing for building an aircraft that could be controlled by pilots. He felt it was too easy to turn off electrical equipment used to track planes. Under that standard, every aircraft manufacturer in the world is guilty as well.

MH370: Plane audio recording played in public for first time to Chinese families
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/29/world/asia/missing-plane-recordings/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Beijing (CNN) -- It sounds like standard radio chatter between an airplane and ground control, mostly repeating the identifying number of the flight.

But the recording of the conversation that Malaysian officials played for the first time in public in a Beijing conference room on Tuesday are purportedly the last known words of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 before it disappeared on March 8.

"Malaysia three seven zero contact Ho Chi Min 120.9, good night," says a voice identified by Malaysian officials as that of a radar controller in Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysian officials released the audio recording more than 50 days after the plane disappeared, in a long-awaited briefing before scores of relatives of the flight's Chinese passengers.

The first session Tuesday included the release of a chronology of the aircraft's last known contacts with radar stations as well as a satellite orbiting over the Indian Ocean.

At 2:03 a.m. local time on March 8, the operational dispatch center of Malaysian Airlines sent a message to the cockpit instructing the pilot to contact ground control in Vietnam, said Sayid Ruzaimi Syed Aris, an official with Malaysia's aviation authority.

Aris said flight MH370 did not respond to the message.

Fuel calculations

Nearly 20 minutes later, at 2:22 a.m., Aris said the Royal Malaysian Air Force picked up the flight for the last time on its radar system.

By that point, Aris said, the plane was believed to have swerved far off course over the Malaysian coastal area of Penang, in the direction of the Malacca Strait.

According to Malaysian officials in Beijing on Tuesday, there was no direct communication between Malaysian Airlines and MH370 for a five-hour period, until the airline tried unsuccessfully to call the cockpit.

"At 7:13," Aris said, Malaysian Airlines tried to "make a voice call to the aircraft, but no pick-up."

Malaysian officials told Chinese families on Tuesday that, by their calculations, the aircraft would have run out of fuel seven hours and 31 minutes into the flight.

"Based on the fuel calculation ... the aircraft fuel starvation will occur at time 08:12," said Subas Chandran, a Malaysian Airlines representative.

The Malaysian delegation also published slides showing the last known "handshakes" between the aircraft and an Inmarsat satellite over the Indian Ocean.

The sixth and final handshake took place at 8:11 a.m. Malaysian time. According to these Inmarsat data points, in relation to the Inmarsat satellite, Flight 370 was far south of where it should have been, if it had been flying on its planned route to Beijing.

'Making progress'

The latest briefing marked a sharp change from previous combative meetings between Chinese family members and Malaysian officials.

The "families' committee" that has formed itself during the agonizing month and a half since the plane's disappearance has spent weeks demanding details on the aircraft's last known location.

Last week, more than 100 family members marched at midnight to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing and staged a 15-hour sit-in demanding a meeting with a high level technical delegation.

"They are making progress," said Jimmy Wang, a member of the families' technical committee, after Tuesday morning's briefing.

Five hours and 10 minutes when nothing was done? No attempt to contact or find the plane? 2.03am to 7.13 am.

A plane flies undetected for hours, "crashes" into the ocean intact, sinks some 2 miles, imbeds in silt... this sounds crazier than abduction theory

VWVGK Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Five hours and 10 minutes when nothing was done?
> No attempt to contact or find the plane? 2.03am to
> 7.13 am.


Yep, that is really worrisome, and questionable. So why not do something in that 5 hour time period when the plane goes AWOL? It suggests negligence, didn't care. Or, they knew what happened to the plane, they panicked.

Perhaps also they were ashamed they could not track the plane and were hoping the plane would eventually show up on track and no one would know the diifference.

Maybe they felt the plane landed in some region, country and since they could not contact the flight crew, considering the flight path, Maybe they suspected terrorism, especially because of Malaysia's lack of security.

Or maybe the plane was forced down - either by someone on board or by Malaysia itself. Maybe they did do something when they saw the plane went missing, checked it out, and panicked after taking action.

tomorrows CNN article "audience explain their experience of listening to MH370 audio recording"

In addition to the question as to why Malayasian airlines made so few attempts to contact its own aircraft, is the question of what attempts were made, by which agencies, and at what time(s) to contact MH370.

Under the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Search and Rescue rules (to which all countries involved in this drama are signatories) an aircraft in controlled flight is presumed to be in the Distress Phase ("a situation wherein there is a reasonable certainty that an aircraft and its occupants are threatened by grave and imminent danger and require immediate assistance") no later than 30 minutes after loss of radio contact.

In practice, the radio-telephony "hailing" of MH370 should/would have started much sooner than 30 minutes, but by the time 30 minutes had elapsed all ground based control stations within the area would have been alerted by Vietnam Air Traffic Control (ATC) that the aircraft was unreported and overdue and all stations would have been calling MH370, including on international distress radio frequencies, and monitoring their radar for any suspected targets. Was this done? What are the logs of this activity?

It is also required by international ATC regulations that the planned route and altitudes of MH370 would have been required to be protected from other aircraft on the presumption that the aircraft was experiencing total radio failure and proceeding on course. Was this done, and if not, why not?

These and many other important technical questions need to be answered in order to try to assess what really happened.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: GeoResonance survey company says "wreckage of a commercial airliner" found
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia-airlines-flight-370-georesonance-wreckage-of-a-commercial-airliner-found/

The Malaysian government confirmed Tuesday that officials investigating the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 were looking into an Australian company's claim to have located aircraft wreckage on the sea floor in the northern Bay of Bengal -- thousands of miles from the search area scanned meticulously for weeks to the south.

Australian land and sea survey company GeoResonance said in a statement sent Tuesday to CBS News that it had discovered materials "believed to be the wreckage of a commercial airliner" about 100 miles south of Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal using proprietary technology which scans vast areas for specific metals or minerals.

The company said analysis of images take of the same area five days earlier showed the "anomaly had appeared between the 5th and 10th of March 2014."

In a statement released to the press on Tuesday, Malaysian Acting Minister of Transport Hishammuddin Hussein confirmed that his government was "working with its international partners to assess the credibility of this information."

A U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation told CBS News on Tuesday that they were still in the early stages of gathering information about GeoResonance's claim, but they were "very skeptical" it would lead to anything, given all the data that investigators have been working with points to the southern Indian Ocean.


A team of experts working for the International Investigation Team have been studying the data available on the flight, which includes the attempted communications between Flight 370 and satellites which led officials to focus their search in the so-called Southern Arc. They continue to analyze that data and their focus remains to the south, says CBS News transportation correspondent Jeff Pegues.

British satellite company Inmarsat provided the relevant data to the Malaysian government -- a final seven "pings" recorded from the plane to the satellite. Based on those pings alone, two possible flight paths for the plane were charted from its last known location; one heading north toward the Bay of Bengal, and the other heading south into the Indian Ocean.

The company's technology is often used to help clients find mineral deposits for mining, but GeoResonance also has participated in the hunt for old warships or aircraft on the ocean floor.

"During the search for MH370, GeoResonance searched for chemical elements that make up a Boeing 777: aluminum, titanium, copper, steel alloys, jet fuel residue, and several other substances. The aim was to find a location where all those elements were present," said the company in the written statement.

Scanning "multispectral images" taken from the air on March 10 -- two days after Flight 370 went missing -- GeoResonance says it found "an anomaly in one place in the Bay of Bengal" where many of those relevant materials were detected in significant amounts, and in a pattern which matched the approximate layout of a large aircraft.

On March 24, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that, based on new analysis of that data, Inmarsat and the lead investigators had "concluded that MH370 flew along the southern corridor, and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth."

Reached Tuesday by CBS News, Inmarsat Vice President Chris McLaughlin said the decision to focus the search for the missing jet solely in the southern corridor was made by the Malaysian government and its search partners, not Inmarsat.

McLaughlin noted that the data was scrutinized by experts from a variety of different countries, and "all agreed the aircraft came down in the southern Indian Ocean."

One of the primary factors in that decision, according to McLaughlin, was the fact that not a single nation along the northern corridor -- which includes the Bangladeshi coast -- reported picking the plane up on domestic radar.

When the decision to focus on the southern Indian Ocean was made, CBS News' Pegues reported that Inmarsat had also contributed one more piece of evidence which helped guide the move: the so-called Doppler effect.

By measuring the sound waves from the plane's final pings, engineers from Inmarsat were able to determine the aircraft's location relative to the satellite; it's the same effect that makes an approaching vehicle sound different to the human ear than one moving away. The analysis of this data from Inmarsat suggested the plane had travelled south, reported Pegues.

Inmarsat engineers compared Flight 370's direction and speed against six other Boeing 777s flying the same day in various directions. The findings were said to confirm the plane could not have gone north, and instead most likely crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
There have been many false leads in the hunt for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 since it disappeared from commercial radar northeast of Manila on March 8.

Investigators still believe the plane made an inexplicable about-face after losing contact, heading southwest into the Indian Ocean.

Officials said Monday that with not a clue found to date, the huge search area about 1,000 miles southwest of Perth, Australia -- which has been combed fastidiously by a robotic U.S. Navy submarine using sonar imaging -- would be expanded significantly and the air search called off.

"It is highly unlikely at this stage that we will find any aircraft debris on the ocean surface. By this stage, 52 days into the search, most material would have become waterlogged and sunk," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Tuesday.

"Therefore, we are moving from the current phase to a phase which is focused on searching the ocean floor over a much larger area," he said. That search, according to Abbott, could take at least eight months.

GeoResonance said it first alerted officials with Malaysia Airlines, and the Chinese and Malaysian embassies in Australia, that possible aircraft debris had been found in the general area of its discovery on March 31, "well before the black box batteries had expired."

"These details were also passed onto the Australian authorities (JACC) in Perth on April 4, 2014. A more detailed study was completed in early April. The final 23 page report including the precise location of the wreckage was passed onto Malaysian Airlines, Malaysian High Commission in Canberra, Chinese Embassy in Canberra, and the Australian authorities (JACC) on April 15, 2014," according to the company.

It was not immediately clear whether the international search team has previously investigated GeoResonance's information.
Attachments:

British marine archaeologist claims to have found flight MH370 3,000 miles from the search zone after spotting debris painted in the colours of Malaysia Airlines
Tim Akers believes he has discovered MH370 debris off the coast of Vietnam
He says satellite images appear to show tail, wings and other debris
Claims it is more likely plane crashed in South China Sea than Indian ocean

Authorities have been searching for aircraft off coast of Western Australia

Mr Akers had previously been studying Australian waters off Perth for years in search for remains of lost WWII ship - the HMAS Sydney
It comes as airline boss tells relatives of passengers onboard MH370 to go home and wait for further news


A British marine archaeologist claims to have found the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 more than 3,000 miles from where authorities are currently searching.

Tim Akers, 56, had been studying Australian waters off Perth for years in a search for the remains of the country's lost WWII ship - the HMAS Sydney.

The search for the vessel was in the same waters that are believed to contain the missing flight MH370 off the coast of Western Australia.

A massive search operation involving satellites, aircraft, ships and sophisticated underwater equipment capable of scouring the ocean floor has failed to turn up any trace of the Boeing 777, which disappeared on March 8.

But Mr Akers, of North Yorkshire now thinks he might have discovered where the flight, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, went down after it went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

He claims to have identified what he believes is part of the tail of the jet off the coast of Vietnam - just around 1,000 miles from where the plane took off.


His findings appear to support reports this week from a US former pilot Michael Hoebel, from New York, who believes he found the wreckage of the flight off the coast of Thailand.

Mr Akers - who is referenced as an independent researcher with the National Maritime Museum - said he has now identified sections of the aircraft close to where Vietnam authorities received a report from oil workers who saw a plane burning coming out of the sky.

He said it was more plausible the jet crashed in the South China Sea than making it to the south Indian Ocean.


Images taken by Mr Akers from satellite scans appear to show what he claims are a 'tail', 'wings' and other debris.

He said: 'The problem with the debris field in the southern Indian Ocean is that it has to be considered - what other material could be mimicking the debris?

'The only material that could be giving off signals randomly and persistently and multi-coloured debris is remnants from the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 which is still trapped in currents.

















+14
Mr Akers (pictured at his graduation) is referenced as an independent researcher with the National Maritime Museum



'The Japanese earthquake was the same magnitude and its debris is still travelling across the Pacific Ocean - it too will have things which are making noise on scans in the sea.

'The very fact that no debris from a crashed aircraft has been seen or found at sea or on land or beach in Australia so far gives good reason to doubt there's any truth in it ever having been there.

'Reports from the pilot in the US that the plane is seen off Thailand would back up my findings because the plane would break up soon afterwards and the currents in that region are strong.'

Mr Aker said he believes in the South China Sea there have been witnesses, debris, aviation fuel and what he believes are jet aircraft parts.

He said it also appeared on his images that ships registered to Vietnam have been in contact with the wreckage.

He said: 'There's no question it could be anything else, because aircraft parts are very distinctive.

'Having seen the oil rig worker's report of the crash and NASA's satellite images of the area it would seem strange the Malaysian authorities have dismissed the area out of hand.

'Logically they should have checked it out by aircraft at low altitude and by a surface warship, but it looks like they chose not to. That in itself is very odd.

'Fortunately the water there is shallow as it's on the continental shelf and there will be debris all over the sea floor.'

Earlier this week, Australian tech firm GeoResonance said it had found what it believed was wreckage of a plane in the Bay of Bengal that should be investigated as potential debris from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, but the possibility was dismissed by search coordinators.

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) managing the multinational search for the missing plane said it believed that the plane came down in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia.

Australian geophysical survey company GeoResonance said it had been conducting its own search for the plane and had found what appeared to be plane wreckage in the Bay of Bengal, thousands of miles from the current search area.

'The company is not declaring this is MH370, however it should be investigated,' GeoResonance said in a statement.


The company's director, David Pope, said he only went public with the information after he felt the authorities were disregarding it.


On Monday meanwhile, it was reported that a pilot from New York believed he had found the wreckage off the coast of Thailand after searching thousands of satellite images online.


Michael Hoebel, 60, spent hours trawling through the images made available to the public on a crowd-sourcing website, TomNod.com, before coming across what he believed was the plane.


The recreational pilot from Tonawanda said he was shocked to discover that the aircraft appeared to be in one piece beneath the water off the northeast coast of Malaysia, just west of Songkhla in Thailand. The image was taken days after the crash.

He told WIVB that he used the scale at the bottom of the map on TomNod and compared them to the specifications on Boeing's website to establish that the white figure he saw was the perfect size.


Soon after the plane went missing, internet investigators from across the world were joining in the search by turning to TomNod.

Singer Courtney Love was just one of the website's users who seemingly spent hours poring over images.

She posted a photograph of satellite imagery from the site on her Facebook page and suggested: 'I'm no expert but up close this does look like a plane and an oil slick.'

Elsewhere, users of social networking site Reddit posted an image which they claim appears to show debris from the plane in the Strait of Malacca.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Monday the chance of finding floating debris was now remote, and a new phase of the search would focus on the seabed northwest of the Australian city of Perth.


Mr Akers has been searching for the missing aircraft by processing data from satellite images from Landsat 7 - NASA's primary photographic satellite and the basis for Google Earth

In August 2006 Mr Akers claimed to the local press in Wetherby, North Yorkshire, to have found HMAS Sydney - despite 60 years of government and international searches.

His claim was then seemingly verified in March 2008 when the wreck was discovered by American marine scientist David Mearns near the same location Mr Akers had predicted off the coast of Australia.

Mr Akers said he uses a method of combining images from different parts of the light spectrum. Using software he developed he said he is able to look underground 75ft under the Earth and 10,000 feet under the sea.

Mr Akers has published his claims on his site australias-titanic.com.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2617647/British-marine-archaeologist-claims-flight-MH370-3-000-miles-search-zone-spotting-debris-painted-colours-Malaysia-Airlines.html#ixzz30ZGKZYLj
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Bangladeshi navy ships search Bay of Bengal for traces of Flight 370
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/02/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

(CNN) -- Two Bangladeshi navy ships have begun searching the Bay of Bengal for traces of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, but have yet to find anything, a commander said Friday.

The ships are operating off a tip from an Australian company that claims to have found possible traces of an underwater airplane wreck in the area.

"We haven't found anything yet, and the frigates will continue the search until they verify all available information," Commodore Rashed Ali, director of Bangladeshi navy intelligence, told CNN on Friday.

Although Australian officials and other experts have derided the claim, acting Malaysian Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said he, too, is considering sending a ship to search -- even though he thinks it is "highly unlikely" the plane will be found in the Bay of Bengal.



MH370 News Conference in Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia Airlines to close hotel centers Relatives of Chinese passengers who were on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 listen to part of the audio communications between Flight 370's cockpit and air traffic controllers during a meeting with Malaysian officials Wednesday, April 30, in Beijing. The flight has been missing since March 8. An autonomous underwater vehicle is brought back aboard the Australian ship Ocean Shield after a search mission for the flight Saturday, April 19, in the southern Indian Ocean. A Royal Malaysian Air Force plane takes off from an airbase near Perth, Australia, to help in the search on Thursday, April 17. Operators aboard the Australian ship Ocean Shield move Bluefin-21, the U.S. Navy's autonomous underwater vehicle, into position to search for the jet on Monday, April 14. A member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force looks out of a window while searching for debris off the coast of western Australia on Sunday, April 13. British Royal Navy sailors aboard the vessel HMS Echo take part in the search for the jet on April 13. Crew members aboard the Echo watch a smaller boat that's part of the British search effort on April 13. The Echo moves through the waters of the southern Indian Ocean. A map provided Saturday, April 12, details efforts to find the missing jet. Chinese navy personnel head out on a boat to the Royal Australian Navy ship HMAS Success on Wednesday, April 9. A Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion, on a mission to drop sonar buoys to assist in the search, flies past the Australian vessel Ocean Shield on April 9. A relative of a missing passenger cries at a vigil in Beijing on Tuesday, April 8. A member of the Royal Australian Air Force walks toward a plane that just arrived in Perth on April 8. Australian Defense Force divers scan the water for debris Monday, April 7, in the southern Indian Ocean. A towed pinger locator is readied to be deployed April 7 off the deck of the Australian vessel Ocean Shield. Capt. Mark Matthews of the U.S. Navy talks to reporters in Perth about the search on April 7. A member of the search operation points to a map outlining search areas during a news conference April 7 in Perth. A U.S. Navy airplane takes off from Perth to assist in the search on April 7. A member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force looks at a flare in the Indian Ocean during search operations on Friday, April 4. Members of the Royal New Zealand Air Force monitor data April 4 on board an aircraft during search operations. A relative of a Flight 370 passenger watches television in a Beijing hotel as he awaits new information about the missing plane on Thursday, April 3. Another relative of a Flight 370 passenger waits for updates in Beijing on Wednesday, April 2. Many families have criticized the Malaysian government's handling of information in the plane's disappearance. A member of the Japanese coast guard points to a flight position data screen while searching for debris from the missing jet on Tuesday, April 1. Kojiro Tanaka, head of the Japanese coast guard search mission, explains the efforts en route to the search zone April 1. A woman prepares for an event in honor of those aboard Flight 370 on Sunday, March 30, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. An underwater search-surveying vehicle sits on the wharf in Perth, ready to be fitted to a ship to aid in the search for the jet. A girl in Kuala Lumpur writes a note during a ceremony for the missing passengers on March 30. A teary-eyed woman listens from the back as other relatives of Flight 370 passengers speak to reporters March 30 in Subang Jaya, Malaysia. Dozens of anguished Chinese relatives demanded that Malaysia provide answers to the fate of those on board. An object floating in the southern Indian Ocean is seen from a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 Orion aircraft searching for the missing jet on Saturday, March 29. Ships participating in the search retrieved new debris Saturday, but no objects linked to the missing plane, according to Australian authorities. A Royal New Zealand Air Force member launches a GPS marker buoy over the southern Indian Ocean on March 29. The sole representative for the families of Flight 370 passengers leaves a conference at a Beijing hotel on Friday, March 28, after other relatives left en masse to protest the Malaysian government's response to their questions. A member of the Royal Australian Air Force is silhouetted against the southern Indian Ocean during the search for the missing jet on Thursday, March 27. Flight Lt. Jayson Nichols looks at a map aboard a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft during a search on March 27. People in Kuala Lumpur light candles during a ceremony held for the missing flight's passengers on March 27. Crew members of the Chinese icebreaking ship Xuelong scan the Indian Ocean during a search for the missing jet on Wednesday, March 26. People work at a console at the British satellite company Inmarsat on Tuesday, March 25, in London. The mother of a passenger who was on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 cries at her home in Medan, Indonesia, on March 25. Australian Defense Minister David Johnston speaks to the media March 25 about the search for the missing jet. A family member of a missing passenger reacts after hearing the latest news March 25 in Kuala Lumpur. Angry relatives of those aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 react in Beijing on Monday, March 24, after hearing that the plane went down over the southern Indian Ocean, according to analysis of satellite data. Grieving relatives of missing passengers leave a hotel in Beijing on March 24. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, delivers a statement about the flight March 24 in Kuala Lumpur. Razak's announcement came after the airline sent a text message to relatives saying it "deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH 370 has been lost and that none of those onboard survived." Relatives of the missing passengers hold a candlelight vigil in Beijing on March 24. A member of the Royal Australian Air Force looks out an aircraft during a search for the missing jet March 24. A woman reads messages for missing passengers at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur on March 24. Flight Lt. Josh Williams of the Royal Australian Air Force operates the controls of an AP-3C Orion on Sunday, March 23, after searching the southern Indian Ocean. Ground crew members wave to a Japanese Maritime Defense Force patrol plane as it leaves the Royal Malaysian Air Force base in Subang, Malaysia, on Sunday, March 23. The plane was heading to Australia to join a search-and-rescue operation. A passenger views a weather map in the departures terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Saturday, March 22. A Chinese satellite captured this image, released on March 22, of a floating object in the Indian Ocean, according to China's State Administration of Science. It is a possible lead in the search for the missing plane. Surveillance planes are looking for two objects spotted by satellite imagery in remote, treacherous waters more than 1,400 miles from the west coast of Australia. A member of the Royal Australian Air Force looks down at the Norwegian merchant ship Hoegh St. Petersburg, which took part in search operations Friday, March 21. The Royal Australian Air Force's Neville Dawson, left, goes over the search area with Brittany Sharpe aboard an AP-3C Orion some 2,500 kilometers (about 1,500 miles) southwest of Perth, Australia, over the Indian Ocean on March 21. Satellite imagery provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority on Thursday, March 20, shows debris in the southern Indian Ocean that could be from Flight 370. The announcement by Australian officials that they had spotted something raised hopes of a breakthrough in the frustrating search. A closer look at the satellite shot of possible debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Another satellite shot provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority shows possible debris from the flight. A closer look at the satellite shot of possible debris. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority's John Young speaks to the media in Canberra, Australia, on March 20 about satellite imagery. A distraught relative of a missing passenger breaks down while talking to reporters at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Wednesday, March 19. A relative of missing passengers waits for a news briefing by officials in Beijing on Tuesday, March 18. A relative of a missing passenger tells reporters in Beijing about a hunger strike to protest authorities' handling of information about the missing jet. A member of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency joins in a search for the missing plane in the Andaman Sea area around the northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra on Monday, March 17. Relatives of missing passengers watch a news program about the missing plane as they await information at a hotel ballroom in Beijing on March 17. Malaysian Transportation Minister Hishamuddin Hussein, center, shows maps of the search area at a hotel next to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 17. U.S. Navy crew members assist in search-and-rescue operations Sunday, March 16, in the Indian Ocean. Indonesian personnel watch over high seas during a search operation in the Andaman Sea on Saturday, March 15. A foam plane, which has personalized messages for the missing flight's passengers, is seen at a viewing gallery March 15 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. A member of the Malaysian navy makes a call as his ship approaches a Chinese coast guard ship in the South China Sea on March 15. A Indonesian ship heads to the Andaman Sea during a search operation near the tip of Sumatra, Indonesia, on March 15. Elementary school students pray for the missing passengers during class in Medan, Indonesia, on March 15. Col. Vu Duc Long of the Vietnam air force fields reporters' questions at an air base in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, after a search operation on Friday, March 14. Members of the Chinese navy continue search operations on Thursday, March 13. The search area for Flight 370 has grown wider. After starting in the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, the plane's last confirmed location, efforts are expanding west into the Indian Ocean. A Vietnamese military official looks out an aircraft window during search operations March 13. Malaysian air force members look for debris on March 13 near Kuala Lumpur. A relative of a missing passenger watches TV at a Beijing hotel as she waits for the latest news March 13. A member of the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency scans the horizon in the Strait of Malacca on Wednesday, March 12. Relatives of missing passengers wait for the latest news at a hotel in Beijing on March 12. Journalists raise their hands to ask questions during a news conference in Sepang on March 12. Indonesian air force officers in Medan, Indonesia, examine a map of the Strait of Malacca on March 12. A member of the Vietnamese air force checks a map while searching for the missing plane on Tuesday, March 11. Iranians Pouri Nourmohammadi, second left, and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, far right, were identified by Interpol as the two men who used stolen passports to board the flight. But there's no evidence to suggest either was connected to any terrorist organizations, according to Malaysian investigators. Malaysian police believe Nourmohammadi was trying to emigrate to Germany using the stolen Austrian passport. An Indonesian navy crew member scans an area of the South China Sea bordering Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand on Monday, March 10. Vietnam air force Col. Le Huu Hanh is reflected on the navigation control panel of a plane that is part of the search operation over the South China Sea on March 10. Relatives of the missing flight's passengers wait in a Beijing hotel room on March 10. A U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopter lands aboard the USS Pinckney to change crews before returning to search for the missing plane Sunday, March 9, in the Gulf of Thailand. Members of the Fo Guang Shan rescue team offer a special prayer March 9 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. A handout picture provided by the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency shows personnel checking a radar screen during search-and-rescue operations March 9. Italian tourist Luigi Maraldi, who reported his passport stolen in August, shows his current passport during a news conference at a police station in Phuket island, Thailand, on March 9. Two passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight were reportedly traveling on stolen passports belonging to Maraldi and an Austrian citizen whose papers were stolen two years ago. Hugh Dunleavy, commercial director of Malaysia Airlines, speaks to journalists March 9 at a Beijing hotel where relatives and friends of the missing flight's passengers are staying. Vietnamese air force crew stand in front of a plane at Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh City on March 9 before heading out to the area between Vietnam and Malaysia where the airliner vanished. Buddhist monks at Kuala Lumpur International Airport offer a special prayer for the missing passengers on March 9. The Chinese navy warship Jinggangshan prepares to leave Zhanjiang Port early on March 9 to assist in search-and-rescue operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight. The Jinggangshan, an amphibious landing ship, is loaded with lifesaving equipment, underwater detection devices and supplies of oil, water and food. Members of a Chinese emergency response team board a rescue vessel at the port of Sanya in China's Hainan province on March 9. The vessel is carrying 12 divers and will rendezvous with another rescue vessel on its way to the area where contact was lost with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The rescue vessel sets out from Sanya in the South China Sea. A family member of missing passengers is mobbed by journalists at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Saturday, March 8. A Vietnamese air force plane found traces of oil that authorities had suspected to be from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the Vietnamese government online newspaper reported March 8. However, a sample from the slick showed it was bunker oil, typically used to power large cargo ships, Malaysia's state news agency, Bernama, reported on March 10. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, center, arrives to meet family members of missing passengers at the reception center at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8. Malaysia Airlines official Joshua Law Kok Hwa, center, speaks to reporters in Beijing on March 8. A relative of two missing passengers reacts at their home in Kuala Lumpur on March 8. Wang Yue, director of marketing of Malaysia Airlines in China, reads a company statement during a news conference at the Metro Park Lido Hotel in Beijing on March 8. Chinese police at the Beijing airport stand beside the arrival board showing delayed Flight 370 in red on March 8. A woman asks a staff member at the Beijing airport for more information on the missing flight. A Malaysian man who says he has relatives on board the missing plane talks to journalists at the Beijing airport on March 8. Passengers walk past a Malaysia Airlines sign on March 8 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Malaysia Airlines Group CEO Ahmad Juahari Yahya, front, speaks during a news conference on March 8 at a hotel in Sepang. "We deeply regret that we have lost all contacts" with the jet, he said. 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Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Hussein said the tip could be confirmed only by sending vessels to the area, which is thousands of kilometers away from the official search area in the southern Indian Ocean.

"But I just want to stress that by doing that, we are distracting ourselves from the main search," he said Friday. "And in the event that the result from the search is negative, who is going to be responsible for that loss of time?"

His comments came three days after the Australian company GeoResonance publicized its claim that it may have found the wreckage of a plane in the bay.

While GeoResonance said it's not sure whether the debris is from Flight 370, the company said it has been pressing officials to take a look.

The chief coordinator of the international search effort said he doubts GeoResonance's claims.

"I am confident that the area in the southern (Indian) Ocean is the right search area, and I'm sure that in ... some time, we'll find the aircraft in that area of the Indian Ocean," chief coordinator Angus Houston said Friday.

Houston said the search for the plane, which was carrying 239 people when it disappeared on March 8, may take eight to 12 months.

MH370 report: Mixed messages ate up time before official search started

Next phase of the search

The Bluefin-21 drone finished its 18th underwater mission and found no debris of interest on the Indian Ocean floor, search officials said Friday.

The drone's search area was set based on the findings of another device, a towed pinger locator, which had detected signals that officials believed were from the jet's flight data recorders.

But no debris from the plane has been found.

The search is entering a new phase, Hishammuddin said Friday. He said officials have had detailed talks with several Malaysian companies about deploying specialized assets such as deep-water towed side-scan sonars and remotely operated vehicles to join in the new phase of the mission.



Why 4 hours to start MH370 search?

New details from Flight 370 report Families told to go home

After nearly two months of waiting at Beijing's Lido Hotel, relatives of Chinese passengers said Friday they've been told to leave.

"Chinese officials asked the family members to leave the hotel by 6 p.m. today," said Wang Yong Zhi, whose wife was on Flight 370. "We don't have a choice."

More than 100 of the plane's passengers are Chinese, and the hotel has been a sentimental and informational hub for their families. Malaysia Airlines officials have been briefing families at the Lido over the past several weeks.

On Thursday, some relatives wailed and yelled when the airline announced it was closing such assistance centers.

"Instead of staying in hotels, the families of MH370 are advised to receive information updates on the progress of the search and investigation and other support by Malaysia Airlines within the comfort of their own homes, with the support and care of their families and friends," the airline said in a news release.

The hotel has seen an increased police and government presence over the past few days. Media have been barred from broadcasting within the hotel complex.

"What can we do?" one relative yelled as others kneeled in front of police.

Airline compensation

Wang said family members signed a letter, left fingerprints and agreed that a committee representing the families would continue working with Malaysia Airlines and the government on issues such as compensation.

Under an international treaty known as the Montreal Convention, the airline must pay relatives of each deceased passenger an initial sum of around $150,000 to $175,000. Relatives of victims can also sue for further damages.

Malaysia Airlines said Thursday it would begin making advance compensation to the Flight 370 passengers' next of kin to help with their immediate economic needs. But the airline didn't say how much of an advance the families would receive.

Sarah Bajc, the American partner of Flight 370 passenger Philip Wood, said she was one of about 500 people at the Lido Hotel meeting Thursday.

She said Chinese relatives had told her they dreaded the day that the hotel centers would close, fearing they wouldn't get timely updates at their rural homes.

"They are very distraught, because the average Chinese family member will be sent home to mostly a very rural place with limited access to (the) Internet," she said. "They just feel like all lines of communications will be cut."

But some family members don't mind leaving the hotel.

"Nothing has changed for me, because living in Lido and living back home is the same to me," said Steve Wang, a relative of one of the passengers.

"We will move on to the next stage, and we will still keep on fighting for the truth and where the plane is and where our loved one is. We will keep on with it. We will never give up."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
~Bangladeshi navy frigates searching Bay of Bengal have found nothing, officer says
~A Malaysian official warns of the consequences of sending ships to the bay
~The joint search chief says he's still confident the plane is in the southern Indian Ocean
~Malaysia Airlines is closing relatives' support centers, urging relatives to return home

Malaysia reveals how long lost jetliner went unnoticed
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia-airlines-flight-370-vanishing-went-unnoticed-for-17-minutes/

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Air traffic controllers did not realize that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was missing until 17 minutes after it disappeared from civilian radar, according to the preliminary report on the plane's disappearance released Thursday by Malaysia's government.

Search efforts continue for missing Boeing 777 more than a week after the flight vanished

In addition to the five-page report, dated April 9, the government also released other information from the investigation into the flight, including audio recordings of conversations between the cockpit and air traffic control, the plane's cargo manifest and its seating plan.

Malaysia also released a map showing the plane's deduced flight path as well as a document detailing actions taken by authorities in the hours after the Boeing 777 disappeared from radar. The reports were mostly information that has been released since the jet disappeared while flying near the border separating Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace.

The plane went off Malaysian radar at 1:21 a.m. on March 8, but Vietnamese air traffic controllers only queried about it at 1:38 a.m., according to the report, which was sent last month to the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Jeff Pegues provides a timeline from the moment the Malaysia Airlines flight took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8, to the ...
After the plane went dark on civilian radar, it made a left turn back toward Malaysia. It followed an established aviation corridor over several navigational "waypoints."

The Malaysian military tracked an unidentified object on its radar traveling west towards the Strait of Malacca. Authorities believe that was Flight 370. At 2:15 a.m., it disappeared from the military radar, about 200 miles northwest of Penang.

Investigators also say the plane's antenna signaled to a satellite multiple times over the next several hours. The last signal came at 8:11 a.m., about the time the plane would have run out of fuel.

The report also said Malaysian authorities did not launch an official search and rescue operation until four hours later, at 5:30 a.m., after efforts to locate the plane failed.




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A separate report listing the actions taken by air traffic controllers showed Vietnamese controllers contacted Kuala Lumpur after they failed to establish verbal contact with the pilots and the plane didn't show up on their radar.

That report also showed that Malaysia Airlines at one point thought the plane may have entered Cambodian airspace. The airline said in the report that "MH370 was able to exchange signals with the flight and flying in Cambodian airspace," but that Cambodian authorities said they had no information or contact with Flight 370. It was unclear which flight it was referring to that exchanged signals with MH370.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak last week appointed a team of experts to review all the information the government had regarding the missing plane, and to decide which information should be made public.

"The prime minister set, as a guiding principle, the rule that as long as the release of a particular piece of information does not hamper the investigation or the search operation, in the interests of openness and transparency, the information should be made public," Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said in a statement Thursday.




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Hishammuddin said Malaysia's military radar tracked the jet making a turn-back in a westerly direction across Peninsular Malaysia after playing back radar data the next morning, nearly seven hours after the plane vanished from civilian radar.

He said he was informed about the military discovery two hours later and relayed this to Najib, who immediately ordered a search in the Strait of Malacca. He defended the military's inaction in pursuing the plane for identification.

"The aircraft was categorized as friendly by the radar operator and therefore no further action was taken at the time," Hishammuddin said.

The preliminary report ends by noting that although commercial aircraft spend considerable amounts of time operating over remote areas, there is currently no requirement for real time tracking of the planes. The report recommends that the International Civil Aviation Organization "examine the safety benefits of introducing a standard for real time tracking of commercial air transport aircraft."




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The cargo manifest includes a receipt for a package containing lithium ion batteries, noting that the package "must be handled with care." Some questions had been raised in March about the batteries, but Malaysia Airlines said then that they were in compliance with the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Air Transport Association requirements and classified as "non-dangerous goods."

Meanwhile, Malaysia Airlines on Thursday advised relatives of passengers who were aboard Flight 370 to move out of hotels and return home to wait for news on the search for the plane.

Since the jet disappeared, the airline has been putting the relatives up in hotels, where they've been briefed on the search. But the airline said in a statement Thursday that it would close its family assistance centers around the world by May 7, and that the families should receive search updates from "the comfort of their own homes."

The airline said that it would establish family support centers in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, and that it would keep in close touch with the relatives through means including phone calls and meetings.




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Malaysia Airlines also said it would soon make advanced compensation payments to the relatives.

The plane vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and most of the 227 passengers were Chinese.

No wreckage from the plane has been found, and an aerial search for surface debris ended Monday after six weeks of fruitless hunting. An unmanned sub is continuing to search underwater in an area of the southern Indian Ocean where sounds consistent with a plane's black box were detected in early April. Additional equipment is expected to be brought in within the next few weeks to scour an expanded underwater area.

The head of the search effort has predicted that the search could drag on for as long as a year.
Attachments:

The story doesn't 'wash' because of the heavy military presence in the region. No way. US Navy alone had two Arleigh Burke class destroyers that should be able to track this plane easily. Australia flies surveillance/spy planes from Australia to Malaysia. US military has radar arrays on land in Indonesia and Singapore.

I'm still puzzled about GeoResonance. Why are they being blown off? Unlike your garden-variety conspiracy theorist, GeoResonance is a legitimate corporation with advanced imaging and analysis equipment that is presenting to the world tantalizingly compelling evidence. Bluefin-21 finished scouring the ocean floor where the black box pings were supposedly detected, and came up with squat. SO WHAT IS GOING ON!

I mean, if there's a coverup happening, then how long can those involved expect it to last when hundreds of grieving and angered families, not to mention the whole world, is watching? Give it up already. Jeez!

Just my view. I believe the aircraft was hijacked and either flew over Burma and landed on one of those old World War II abandoned runways that used to fly supplies over the hump in those days, because Burma shuts its radar down after the last commercial flight of the day and it could easily avoid detection, or it did turn due East and landed at one of the World War II abandoned air bases on those hundreds if not thousands of islands that have no water or inhabitants. I believe that their was something very valuable like $400 Million in GOLD onboard worth stealing and killing for. Just like the Bruce Willis first Die Hard movie. They were just thieves after the money and bonds, but worth billions and that was just a movie. Why not $400 Million in real GOLD? Anyone in the aviation business knows GOLD is transported via Commercial aircraft. Very unfortunate for those onboard. My prays go with them. Best bet! Check the islands.