Malaysia Air Airliner missing

[Rob]

Originally Posted by Cybercowboy

I agree. Except I think it was the government placing those items it there.

Reminds me of the commercial about the Oldest Trick In The Book.

[Y2Kvert4me]

Thread (semi) cleaned up. 75 posts removed and some unnecessary member bashing edited.

Let's try to keep this to news of the plane. If all you care to do is argue religion, do it elsewhere.

[VITE1]

'Credible lead' shifts search area for missing Malaysian jet; new objects sighted | Fox News

PERTH, Australia – The search zone for the Malaysian airliner that crashed in the Indian Ocean nearly three weeks ago has shifted 680 miles to the northeast after new analysis of radar data suggested the plane flew faster than thought and used more fuel, which may have reduced the distance it traveled, Australia said Friday.

The revised search area comes as the weather cleared enough Friday to allow planes to hunt for fresh clues to the fate of the plane carrying 239 people that went missing March 8.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said the change was based on new analysis provided by the international investigative team in Malaysia.

"This is a credible new lead and will be thoroughly investigated today," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Friday.

"This is an extraordinarily difficult search, and an agonizing wait for family and friends of the passengers and crew," he said. "We owe it to them to follow every credible lead and to keep the public informed of significant new developments. That is what we are doing."

Aircraft from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority spotted multiple objects Friday and those images will be reviewed in them overnight hours.

According to continuing analysis of radar data between the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca before contact was lost with the Boeing 777, the aircraft was traveling faster than previously estimated, resulting in increased fuel use and reducing the possible distance the aircraft could have flown into the Indian Ocean.

The new area is 123,000 square miles and about 1,250 miles west of Perth, Australia, the launching area for the search. The pervious search area was more southwest and about 1,550 miles from Perth. In total about 160,000 square miles were covered in the search.

The shift in search areas comes after searchers in planes and ships had scoured parts of the southern Indian Ocean for objects spotted bobbing in sea.

But strong winds and fast currents have made it difficult to pinpoint them, and the search for the plane has yet to produce a single piece of debris -- not to mention its so-called black boxes, which could solve the mystery of why the jet, en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, flew so far off-course.

For relatives of the 239 people aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the various clues and failed searches so far have just added to their agonizing waits.

Wang Zhen, whose parents were aboard the missing plane, said in a telephone interview in Beijing that he was becoming exasperated.

"There is nothing I can do but to wait, and wait," he said. "I'm also furious, but what is the use of getting furious?"

In the last week, Japan, Thailand and France have all said their satellites had picked up images of objects that could be debris from the plane. Most of the objects have measured from about 3 feet to about 65 feet. Those sightings were in an area southwest of the new zone, and none have been found yet.

Japan's Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office said the objects its satellite spotted were located about 1,560 miles southwest of Perth, which would place them in the same general area as the 122 objects spotted by a French satellite on Sunday.

A Thai satellite revealed about 300 objects about 125 miles to the southwest of the items seen by the Japanese and French satellites. The photos were taken Monday, one day after the French and two days before the Japanese.

A Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. John Kirby, said the U.S. has also been "sharing imagery as appropriate" with investigators, but he declined to say what it entailed.

It's unknown whether any of the objects detected by the various satellites were the same. Currents in the ocean can run about 2.2 mph and wind also could move material.

If and when any bit of wreckage from Flight 370 is recovered and identified, searchers will be able to narrow their hunt for the rest of the Boeing 777 and its flight data and cockpit voice recorders. The plane was supposed to fly from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing but turned away from its route soon after takeoff and flew for several hours before crashing.

Malaysian officials said earlier this week that satellite data confirmed the plane crashed into the southern Indian Ocean. On Thursday, Malaysia Airlines ran a full-page condolence advertisement with a black background in a major Malaysian newspaper.

"Our sincerest condolences go out to the loved ones of the 239 passengers, friends and colleagues. Words alone cannot express our enormous sorrow and pain," read the advertisement in the New Straits Times.

Officials still don't know why Flight 370 disappeared. Investigators have ruled out nothing -- including mechanical or electrical failure, hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or someone else on board.

Some speculation has focused on the pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, but his son, in an interview published Thursday in the New Straits Times, rejected the idea that his father might be to blame.

"I've read everything online, but I've ignored all the speculation," Ahmad Seth said. "I know my father better."

[Mike Mercury]

[ApexOversteer]

"Let's look over here.'

"We might have found something!"

"Oh, no... sorry, it was nothing."

"Let's look over here.'

"We might have found something!"

"Oh, no... sorry, it was nothing."

"Let's look over here.'

"We might have found something!"

"Oh, no... sorry, it was nothing."

"Let's look over here.'

"We might have found something!"

"Oh, no... sorry, it was nothing."

"Let's look over here.'

"We might have found something!"

"Oh, no... sorry, it was nothing."

"Let's look over here.'

"We might have found something!"

"Oh, no... sorry, it was nothing."

[Sea Six]

Well.

If they'd just look over there, we might get somewhere.

[DAB]

or we could just drain the ocean and see what collects in the strainer by the drain. duh.

[Rob]

Remember Captain John that paid for my ticket? I saw him post some pics of the crane and wench on board one of his planes heading over there for the recovery operation.

My guess is they know something.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by Dixievet

Remember Captain John that paid for my ticket? I saw him post some pics of the crane and wench on board one of his planes heading over there for the recovery operation.

My guess is they know something.

Pics of wench? She sounds like a comely lass, indeed.

[CubSmurf]

Originally Posted by Dixievet

Remember Captain John that paid for my ticket? I saw him post some pics of the crane and wench on board one of his planes heading over there for the recovery operation.

My guess is they know something.

Did he say where he was headed?

[VITE1]

Searchers work to recover new objects spotted in hunt for Malaysian jet | Fox News

PERTH, Australia – No debris spotted in an area off the west coast of Australia has been recovered, a Malaysian minister involved in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 said Saturday, adding he hoped for some news soon.

The first plane back from the search Saturday, a Chinese Ilyushin IL-76, spotted three floating objects, China's official Xinhua News Agency said, a day after several planes and ships combing the newly targeted area closer to mainland Australia saw several other objects, including two rectangular items that were blue and gray.

Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters near Kuala Lumpur after meeting several families of passengers on the plane that there was no new information on the objects, which could just be regular debris, or could be from the missing plane.

"I've got to wait to get the reports on whether they have retrieved those objects. ... Those will give us some indication," said Hishammuddin, who was accompanied by his wife and children as he visited the relatives at a hotel in Putrajaya, Malaysia.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said that objects cannot be verified or discounted as being from Flight 370 until they are relocated and recovered by ships. "It is not known how much flotsam, such as from fishing activities, is ordinarily there. At least one distinctive fishing object has been identified," it said.

The three objects spotted by the Chinese plane Saturday were white, red and orange in color, the Xinhua news report said.

Flight 370 disappeared March 8 while bound from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and investigators have been puzzling over what might have happened aboard the plane, with speculation ranging from equipment failure and a botched hijacking to terrorism or an act by one of the pilots.

The latter was fueled by reports the pilot's home flight simulator had files deleted from it, but Hishimmuddin said checks, including ones by the FBI, turned up no new information.

"What I know is that there is nothing sinister from the simulators but of course that will have to be confirmed by the chief of police," he said.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said a cold front would bring rain, low clouds and reduced visibility over the southern part of the search area, with moderate winds and swells of up to 6 feet. Conditions will improve Sunday, although rain, drizzle and low clouds are still likely.

Newly analyzed satellite data shifted the search zone on Friday, raising hopes searchers may be closer to getting physical evidence that that the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean with 239 people aboard.

That would also help narrow the hunt for the wreckage and the plane's black boxes, which could contain clues to what caused the plane -- flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur -- to be so far off-course.

The U.S. Navy has already sent equipment that can detect pings from the back boxes, and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told reporters in Sydney that the equipment would be put on an Australian naval ship soon.

"It will be taken to the most prospective search area and if there is good reason to deploy it, it will be deployed," he said, without giving a timeframe. Other officials have said it could take days for the ship -- the Ocean Shield -- to reach the search area.

The newly targeted zone is nearly 700 miles northeast of sites the searchers have crisscrossed for the past week. The redeployment came after analysts determined that the Boeing 777 may have been traveling faster than earlier estimates and would therefore have run out of fuel sooner, officials said.

Search planes were sent out Saturday from Perth, Australia, in a staggered manner, so at least one plane will be over the area for most of the daylight hours. It is also closer than the previous search area, with a flying time of 2 1/2 hours each way, allowing for five hours of search time, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

The Australian statement said five P-3 Orions -- three from Australia and one each from Japan and New Zealand -- plus a Japanese coast guard jet, the Chinese Ilyushin IL-76, and one civilian jet acting as a communications relay, took part Saturday.

Abbott said the job of locating the debris was still difficult. "We should not underestimate the difficulty of this work -- it is an extraordinarily remote location."

The area spans about 123,000 square miles, roughly the size of Poland. In most places, depths range from about 6,560 feet to 13,120 feet, although the much deeper Diamantina trench edges the search area.

The hunt for the plane focused first on the Gulf of Thailand, along the plane's planned path. But when radar data showed it had veered sharply west, the search moved to the Andaman Sea, off the western coast of Malaysia, before pivoting to the southern Indian Ocean, southwest of Australia.

That change was based on analysis of satellite data. But officials said a reexamination and refinement of that analysis indicated the aircraft was traveling faster than previously estimated, resulting in increased fuel use and reducing the possible distance it could have flown before going down. Just as a car loses gas efficiency when driving at high speeds, a plane will get less out of a tank of fuel when it flies faster.

Relatives and friends of the passengers said they were tortured by the uncertainty over the fate of their loved ones, as they wait for hard evidence that the plane had crashed.

"This is the trauma of maybe he's dead, maybe he's not. Maybe he's still alive and we need to find him. Maybe he died within the first hour of the flight, and we don't know," Sarah Bajc, the American girlfriend of U.S. passenger Philip Wood, said in an interview in Beijing.

"I mean, there's absolutely no way for me to reconcile that in my heart," she said.

If investigators can determine the plane went down in the newly targeted zone, recovery of its flight data and cockpit voice recorders could be complicated.

While investigators appear to be focusing on an area where much of the sea floor is about 6,600 feet below the surface, depths may reach a maximum of about 19,700 feet at its easternmost edge, she said.

[VITE1]

Mistrust between US, Malaysia strains probe of missing jet | Fox News

Mistrust between U.S. and Malaysian air-accident investigators has hampered a multinational probe into the jetliner that went missing three weeks ago, people familiar with the investigation said, with no clear leads emerging about who or what was responsible for its disappearance.

As search ships raced to try to confirm airborne sightings of potential wreckage in the newest search area, officially both sides said cooperation between the two countries is good. But people familiar with both countries' efforts say that isn't always the case.

U.S. investigators say they aren't getting a full flow of information from the Malaysians—prompting some to complain to headquarters in Washington that they feel relegated to the margins, according to several people familiar with the matter. Malaysian investigators, meanwhile, are wary of information leaks they believe are occurring more regularly among their counterparts from Washington.

With a little more than a week left on the battery life of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's data recorders, known as black boxes, search crews were on their way to the new search zone where five planes had spotted debris potentially related to the plane. Though investigators have determined the Boeing 777 went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean, based on satellite data, a criminal probe into the flight's disappearance has yielded few clues in the two weeks since the Malaysian government announced its suspicion that a deliberate act brought down the Boeing 777.

Twin probes into how and why the plane went down rest largely in the hands of Malaysian police and air-safety officials, and Americans working in Kuala Lumpur are convinced their side is "mainly getting bits and pieces, rather than a full download from the Malaysians," said one U.S. official briefed on the investigation. Members of the on-site U.S. contingent are "vetting all the information they do get, to ensure accuracy," the official added.

In Malaysia, the government has tight control over the media and leaks of information aren't common. By contrast, some people on the Malaysian side perceive Washington to be full of leaks, particularly in the first few days after the plane vanished March 8.

Last week, Malaysia handed over its most important physical evidence to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation—pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah's home flight simulator and computer—for analysis. But before the FBI analysis was complete or the Malaysian government had a chance to make an announcement, a flurry of media reports from Washington revealed that the bureau hadn't found anything to explain Flight 370's disappearance.

"Washington seems to be a leaky boat," said one person familiar with the Malaysian investigation. "It erodes trust." Nevertheless, this person said concern about the Americans' role isn't seriously impeding the investigation. "We have been surprised at how many people we have been able to rope into this," this person said.

[Jeff '79]

F-1 Race goes off at 3:30 am in Malaysia on Sunday morning...

TVRacer.com - TV Racing Schedule

[Rob]

Originally Posted by CubSmurf

Did he say where he was headed?

Nope.

[Mike Mercury]

from Sky News:

Crews Fail To Find MH370 Debris
Some 18 planes and ships are sent to the search area but only retrieve "fishing equipment and other flotsam".

The search for the missing Malaysia Airline plane has failed to find any debris in the Indian Ocean despite the hunt being stepped up.

Nine aircraft and eight ships from half a dozen countries scoured the area on the busiest day for the search since Australia began co-ordinating the operation almost two weeks ago.

More than 250,000 sq km of ocean was searched on Sunday as the operation was intensified.

But although more debris was spotted from the air the only items retrieved from the water so far were not believed to be from flight MH370.

One of the vessels being sent to the area where investigators believe flight MH370 is most likely to have crashed has been fitted with a black box detector.

The equipment, known as a hydrophone, will be towed behind the ship to listen for acoustic signals from the Boeing 777's data recorders.

The equipment may hold vital clues about what happened to the plane, although time is running out to find it as its batteries could die in little more than a week.

As well as the black box detector, which can trace pings emitted from depths of up to 6,000 metres, an autonomous underwater vehicle will be used to search for any debris hidden from view beneath the surface.

On Saturday, a Chinese aircraft saw three items - two of which were red and white, the same colours that feature on the outside of the plane - and a Royal Australian Air Force plane spotted multiple objects in the search area, about 1,100 miles off Australia's western coast.

However, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said most of what had been recovered was "fishing equipment and other flotsam".

"My understanding from this morning is that there has been no discrete debris associated with the flight," Australian Navy Commodore Peter Leavy told reporters.

He said the search in the new zone was complicated as it was in a shipping lane where there was a considerable amount of rubbish floating.

The US Navy officer in charge of the Towed Pinger Locator (TPL) told journalists in Perth that the lack of information about where the plane went down has seriously hampered the search.

"Right now the search area is basically the size of the Indian Ocean, which would take an untenable amount of time to search," he said.

"If you compare this to Air France flight 447, we had much better positional information of where that aircraft went into the water."

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced a new co-ordination centre to lead the search for flight MH370 and provide a single point of contact for distraught families.

Based in Perth, the centre will be led by the country's former chief of the defence.

It will co-ordinate the contacts between nations taking part in the search and ensure families get all the information and help they need.

Mr Abbott said the Australian government "won't rest until we've done everything we reasonably can to get those families and to get the wider community of the world a little more peace and a little more insight into exactly what happened".

So far, even though more ships are scouring the area off western Australia, none of the recovered items has been connected to the flight.

Chinese relatives of passengers on board flight MH370 have flown from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur to meet top officials in the investigation.

They have accused authorities in Malaysia of "delays and deception" and demanded they be told the "truth" about what happened.

Also in the Malaysian capital, teams and spectators at the F1 Grand Prix observed a minute's silence for the victims and drivers wore helmets reading "Pray for MH370".

[99 pewtercoupe]

They are running out of time for the batteries in the black box(s)
Once they stop pinging, finding them will be exponentially harder
(assuming they are at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and not at some remote airfield )

[Rob]

Originally Posted by 99 pewtercoupe

They are running out of time for the batteries in the black box(s) Once they stop pinging, finding them will be exponentially harder (assuming they are at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and not at some remote airfield )

They know where that plane is.

But the dead batteries will be the excuse on why they cannot find it. Again, I stand by the theory that the govt put that thing in that part if the ocean on purpose.

[DAB]

????

Reason?

[JRD77VET]

Originally Posted by Dixievet

They know where that plane is.

But the dead batteries will be the excuse on why they cannot find it. Again, I stand by the theory that the govt put that thing in that part if the ocean on purpose.

Originally Posted by DAB

????

Reason?

Bad and/or evil devices on board. Maybe nerve agents, maybe a dirty bomb or maybe ????

[Mike Mercury]

Originally Posted by Dixievet

They know where that plane is.

But the dead batteries will be the excuse on why they cannot find it. Again, I stand by the theory that the govt put that thing in that part if the ocean on purpose.

at this point, that is a very good possibility.

maybe a navy seal or Israeli IDF was onboard (due to the discovery of the dirty cargo) and took the flight over. It either was crashed where the nuke/nerve agent could do no harm... or the plane was landed where the cargo could be captured.