Search For Flight MH370 Likely To Be Suspended

[Mike Mercury]

Authorities say the hunt for the Malaysia Airlines jet will be suspended if the aircraft is not found in the current search area.
from: Skynews

A statement issued to relatives said for the first time that despite the best efforts of the search operation, which is scouring the Indian Ocean off Australia, the likelihood of finding the aircraft is now fading.

Ministers from Malaysia, China and Australia have met in Kuala Lumpur to discuss the future of the search in one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries.

It has been agreed that if the plane is not found in the current search area, and without any new information about its possible location, the hunt for the plane "would not end, but be suspended".

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said: "In the absence of new evidence, Malaysia, Australia and China have collectively decided to suspend the search upon completion of the 120,000 square kilometre search area.

"Should credible new information emerge which can be used to identify the specific location of the aircraft, consideration will be given in determining next steps."

he families of the missing passengers and crew have called for the operation to continue.

MH370 disappeared during a flight from the Malaysian capital to Beijing in March 2014, with 239 people on board.

Investigators believe the plane was deliberately flown thousands of miles off course before crashing into the southern Indian Ocean off Australia.

Malaysian investigators said last year there was nothing suspicious in the financial, medical or personal histories of the pilots or crew.

Searchers at the Dutch company leading the underwater hunt have said they believe the plane may have glided down to the sea rather than dived, meaning they have been scouring the wrong part of the ocean.

It is the first time officials directly involved in the search have lent some support to contested theories that someone was in control during the flight's final moments.

Grace Nathan, a spokeswoman for the group Voice370, which represents the passengers' next-of-kin, said the search must go on until the aircraft is found, in order to ensure aviation safety lessons can be learnt.

"We don't want the suspension to be just a way to let everyone calm down and slowly forget about it," she said.

"We want them to be doing something in the interim to look for new information."

More than £100m has been spent on an underwater search spanning 120,000 sq km in the southern Indian Ocean, the most expensive operation in aviation history.

A few pieces of debris confirmed to be from the Boeing 777 have washed up on islands thousands of miles from the search zone, but they have failed to shed light on the mystery.

The search was originally scheduled to end in June and has been hampered by bad weather.

http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/532982466da8114058b8ed75/6-heart-wrenching-childrens-drawings-of-malaysia-flight-370.jpg

[VITE1]

:sadangel::sadangel:

[Mike Mercury]

the latest info out right now...

Possible causes of disappearance:

Passenger involvement
Two men boarded Flight 370 with stolen passports, which raised suspicion in the immediate aftermath of its disappearance. The passports, one Austrian and one Italian, were reported stolen in Thailand within the preceding two years. Interpol stated that both passports were listed on its database of lost and stolen passports, and that no check had been made against its database.
The two one-way tickets purchased for the holders of the stolen passports were booked through China Southern Airlines.It was reported that an Iranian had ordered the cheapest tickets to Europe via telephone in Bangkok, Thailand, and paid in cash. The two passengers were later identified as Iranian men, one aged 19 and the other 29, who had entered Malaysia on 28 February using valid Iranian passports.

Crew involvement
Investigators believe someone in the cockpit of Flight 370 re-programmed the aircraft's autopilot before it travelled south across the Indian Ocean. Police searched the homes of the pilots and seized financial records for all 12 crew members, including bank statements, credit card bills and mortgage documents. On 2 April 2014, Malaysia's Police Inspector-General said that more than 170 interviews had been conducted as part of Malaysia's criminal investigation, including interviews with family members of the pilots and crew.
Media reports have claimed that Malaysian police have identified Captain Shah as the prime suspect if human intervention is proven to be the cause of Flight 370's disappearance. The United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation reconstructed the deleted data from Captain Shah's home flight simulator; a Malaysian government spokesman indicated that "nothing sinister" had been found on it. The preliminary report issued by Malaysia in March 2015 states that there was "no evidence of recent or imminent significant financial transactions carried out" by any of the pilots or crew and that analysis of the behaviour of the pilots on CCTV showed "no significant behavioural changes".

Cargo
Flight 370 was carrying 10,806 kg (23,823 lb) of cargo, of which four ULDs of mangosteens and 221 kg (487 lb) of lithium-ion batteries are of interest, according to Malaysian investigators. The four ULDs of mangosteens were loaded into the aft cargo bay of the aircraft. The lithium-ion batteries were divided among two pallets in the forward cargo bay and one pallet placed in the rear of the aft cargo bay.

The lithium-ion batteries were contained in a 2,453 kg (5,408 lb) consignment being transported between Motorola Solutions facilities in Bayan Lepas, Malaysia and Tianjin, China; the rest of the consignment consisted of walkie-talkie chargers and accessories. The batteries were assembled on 7 March and transported to the Penang Cargo Complex to be transported by MASkargo—Malaysia Airlines' cargo subsidiary—to be loaded onto a lorry to transport it to Kuala Lumpur International Airport and onwards by air to Beijing. At the Penang Cargo Complex, the consignment was inspected by MASkargo employees and Malaysian customs officials, but did not go through a security screening, before the truck was sealed for transfer to the airport. The consignment did not go through any additional inspections at Kuala Lumpur International Airport before it was loaded onto Flight 370. Because the batteries were packaged in accordance with IATA guidelines, they were not regulated as dangerous goods. Lithium-ion batteries can cause intense fires if they overheat and ignite, which has led to strict regulations on their transport aboard aircraft. A fire fuelled by lithium-ion batteries caused the crash of UPS Airlines Flight 6 and lithium-ion batteries are suspected to have caused a fire which resulted in the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 991; both were cargo aircraft.

A 4,566 kg (10,066 lb) consignment of mangosteens was aboard Flight 370, over half of which was harvested in Muar, Malaysia and the remainder from Sumatra, Indonesia.[10]:107 The mangosteens were packaged in plastic baskets containing 8–9 kg (18–20 lb) of mangosteens and covered with a water-soaked sponge to preserve their freshness. The mangosteens were loaded into four ULDs at Kuala Lumpur International Airport and inspected by officials from Malaysia's Federal Agriculture Marketing Authority before being loaded onto Flight 370. According to the head of Malaysian police, Inspector-General Tan Sir Khalid Abu Bakar, the people who handled the mangosteens and the Chinese importers were questioned to rule out sabotage.

Other info:
Information sharing
Public communication from Malaysian officials regarding the loss of the flight was initially beset with confusion. The Malaysian government and the airline released imprecise, incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate information, with civilian officials sometimes contradicting military leaders. Malaysian officials were criticised for such persistent release of contradictory information, most notably regarding the last location and time of contact with the aircraft.

Malaysia had initially declined to release raw data from its military radar, deeming the information "too sensitive," but later acceded. Defence experts suggested that giving others access to radar information could be sensitive on a military level, for example: "The rate at which they can take the picture can also reveal how good the radar system is." One suggested that some countries could already have had radar data on the aircraft but were reluctant to share any information that could potentially reveal their defence capabilities and compromise their own security. Similarly, submarines patrolling the South China Sea might have information in the event of a water impact, and sharing such information could reveal their locations and listening capabilities.

[Mike Mercury]

MH370 Deliberately Flown Into Sea - Crash Expert

Damage to part of the wing supports the theory that the plane was under control when it went down, the expert says.

Larry Vance has told Australian television he can see no other theory to explain why the Malaysia Airlines plane crashed in March 2014 with 239 people on board.

Mr Vance said a section of a wing recovered from the sea showed evidence that it was it was extended, suggesting a controlled landing rather than an accidental crash.

"Somebody was flying the airplane into the water," he told Channel Nine's 60 Minutes programme.

"Everybody should then have concluded in my opinion that this was a human engineered event, there's no other explanation."

Mr Vance, who has led more than 200 air crash investigations, has based his theory on the small piece of wing called a flaperon, which was found on Reunion Island a year ago and confirmed to be from the doomed airliner.

He said damage along its edge proved it was extended, and the extending can only be activated by a person.

And he said the failure by rescuers to find any floating debris could also be explained by the plane making a slow, controlled landing, rather than a massive impact.

French investigators are examining the flaperon, but have yet to release their findings.

"It wasn't broken off. If it was broken off, it would be a clean break. You couldn't even break that thing. I know from experience that it's wide," said Mr Vance.

"If you wanted to break that off, you couldn't do it and make it look like that. That had to be eroded away."

The Australian-led search for the plane has been based on it not being under human control when it inexplicably veered off course while on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

It is thought it went down in the southern Indian Ocean.

It has been revealed that the captain's home flight simulator showed that a month before the doomed flight, he plotted an almost identical route deep into the same sea.

Peter Foley, an Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) crash investigator, agreed with Mr Vance that a rogue pilot could have been responsible.

And he said that if the plane was piloted until the end, it could have landed outside the current search area.

Another piece of wing believed to be from the plane recently found in Tanzania is being analysed to see if it too was extended at the end of the flight.

Mr Foley said if it was it meant someone was in control of the aircraft.

The fate of flight MH370 is one of aviation's biggest mysteries.

The search for the missing Boeing 777 has been focused on an area of the ocean floor more than 1,500 miles off the west coast of Australia.

Aircraft and ships using underwater drones and sonar equipment have been used to scour a 75,000 square mile area.

But it is thought the search may be closed down by the end of the year if it does not find any new evidence.

[mrvette]

Hell with all that theory, change the search area to some region around where that flap was found.....them things not made of Styrofoam and as such will not float forever....look no more than 50 miles offshore from the flap site.....

jeez.....:issues:

[NCC-1701]

I would not fly unless the airline is US and the pilots are american. :cert: