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KUALA LUMPUR, March 15 (Reuters) - A missing Malaysian airliner appears to have been deliberately steered off course after someone on board shut down its communications, Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Saturday.
A week after the disappearance of flight MH370, Najib said its last transmission of satellite data came nearly seven hours after it disappeared from radar screens.
But the new satellite data gave no precise location, and the plane's altered course could have taken it anywhere from central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean, he said.
Minutes after the Malaysian leader outlined investigators' latest findings, police began searching the house of the aircraft's 53-year-old captain for any evidence that he could have been involved in foul play.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in the early hours of March 8 with 239 passengers and crew aboard.
Najib, giving his first statement at a news conference since then, confirmed reports that investigators believe somebody cut off the plane's communications reporting system, switched off its transponder and steered it west, far from its scheduled route.
"In view of this latest development the Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation into the crew and passengers on board," he said.
"Despite media reports the plane was hijacked, I wish to be very clear, we are still investigating all possibilities as to what caused MH370 to deviate."
Search operations by navies and aircraft from more than a dozen nations were immediately called off in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea to the east of Malaysia, where the plane dropped off civilian air traffic control screens at 1:22 a.m. last Saturday (1722 GMT on Friday).
Malaysia said new data showed the last communication between the missing plane and satellites at 8:11 a.m. (0011 GMT), almost seven hours after it turned back and crossed the Malay peninsula.
The data did not show whether the plane was still flying or its location at that time, presenting searchers with a daunting array of possible last locations. Seven hours' more flying time would likely have taken it to the limit of its fuel load.
TWO CORRIDORS
Najib said the plane's final communication with satellites placed it somewhere in one of two corridors: a northern arc stretching from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, or a southern one stretching from Indonesia to the vast southern Indian Ocean.
"Clearly, the search for MH370 has entered a new phase," said Najib, whose government has come under criticism for its slow release of information surrounding one of the most baffling mysteries in aviation history.
India stepped up its search in two areas at the request of Malaysia - one around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and another further west across the Bay of Bengal - but found no evidence that would indicate that the plane had come down in its waters, the Defence Ministry said.
A senior military official in Port Blair, capital of the archipelago, said Indian aircraft had combed waters stretching up to 300 nautical miles (550 km) offshore and overflown all 572 islands in the chain but "we don't have anything so far".
India's Eastern Naval Command was investigating a separate rectangular 'box' 15 km wide by 600 km long, some 900 km east of Port Blair, but had found nothing.
About two-thirds of the passengers on board the flight were Chinese, and Beijing has been showing increasing impatience with the speed and coordination of the Malaysian search effort.
On Saturday, China said it had demanded that Malaysia keep providing more thorough and accurate information, and added that it was sending a technical team to Malaysia to help with the investigation.
China's Xinhua state news agency said in a commentary that Najib's disclosure of the new details was "painfully belated".
"And due to the absence - or at least lack - of timely authoritative information, massive efforts have been squandered, and numerous rumours have been spawned, repeatedly racking the nerves of the awaiting families," it said.
The fate of flight MH370 has been shrouded in mystery since it disappeared off Malaysia's east coast less than an hour into its scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.
But investigators have increasingly discounted the possibility of an accident due to the deliberate way it was diverted and had its communications switched off.
EXPERIENCED CAPTAIN
Investigative sources told Reuters on Friday they believed the plane was following a commonly used navigational route when it was last spotted early on Saturday, northwest of Malaysia.
Their suspicion has hardened that it was flown off-course by the pilot or co-pilot, or someone else with detailed knowledge of how to fly and navigate a large commercial aircraft.
No details have emerged of any passengers or crew with militant links or psychological problems that could explain a motive for sabotaging the flight.
The experienced captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was a flying enthusiast who spent his off days tinkering with a flight simulator of the plane that he had set up at home, current and former co-workers said. Malaysia Airlines officials did not believe he would have sabotaged the flight.
The 27-year-old co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, was religious and serious about his career, family and friends said, countering news reports suggesting he was a cockpit Romeo who was reckless on the job.
As the search enters its second week, several governments are using imagery satellites - platforms that take high definition photos - while data from private sector communications satellites is also being examined. China alone says it has deployed 10 satellites.
"The area is enormous. Finding anything rapidly is going to be very difficult," said Marc Pircher, director of the French space centre in Toulouse. "The area and scale of the task is such that 99 percent of what you are getting are false alarms."
The corridors given by Najib represent a satellite track, which appears as an arc on a map. The plane did not necessarily follow the corridor, but was at some point along its path at the moment the signal was sent.
Officials at Kazakhstan's state air navigation service were not available for comment while in Turkmenistan, state aviation officials referred queries to the Foreign Ministry.
Afghanistan's ministry of aviation said its controllers were certain the plane had not crossed their airspace. A spokesman for Pakistan's civilian airspace authority said: "We have not received any requests from Malaysia authorities for help, nor have we any information on the plane's whereabouts."
SATELLITES
Earlier, a source familiar with official U.S. assessments of electronic signals sent to geostationary satellites operated by Britain's Inmarsat said it appeared most likely the plane had turned south over the Indian Ocean, where it would presumably have run out of fuel and crashed into the sea.
If so, just finding the plane - let alone recovering the "black box" data and cockpit voice recorders that hold the key to the mystery - would be a huge challenge.
The Indian Ocean has an average depth of more than 12,000 feet, or two miles (3.5 km). This is deeper than the Atlantic, where it took two years to locate wreckage on the seabed from an Air France plane that vanished in 2009, even though floating debris quickly gave an indication of the area of the crash.
Any debris would have been widely dispersed by Indian Ocean currents in the week since the plane disappeared.
"We have many radar systems operating in the area, but nothing was picked up," Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai, Chief of Staff of India's Andamans and Nicobar Command, told Reuters.
"It is possible that the military radars were switched off as we operate on an as-required basis. So perhaps secondary radars were operating, which may not have the required range to detect a flight at an altitude of 35,000 feet."
The other interpretation was that the aircraft continued to fly to the northwest and headed over Indian territory.
The source said it was believed unlikely the plane had flown for any length of time over India because it has strong air defence and radar coverage that should have allowed authorities to see the plane and intercept it.
It is extremely rare for a modern passenger aircraft to disappear once it has reached cruising altitude, as MH370 had. When that does happen, the debris from a crash is usually found relatively quickly, close to its last known position.
In this case, there has been no trace of the plane, nor any sign of wreckage.
The maximum range of the Boeing 777-200ER is 7,725 nautical miles or 14,305 km. It is not clear how much fuel the aircraft was carrying, though it would have been enough to reach its scheduled destination, Beijing, a flight of five hours and 50 minutes, plus some reserve.
The Wall Street Journal reports on a potential clue in the plane investigation:
A “partial ping” received eight minutes after a final complete transmission between Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and an orbiting satellite began on the missing jet, in the latest clue that could help investigators unravel what happened to the jet before it stopped flying.
The final partial transmission from the missing Boeing Co. 777-200ER, which disappeared from civilian radar on March 8, “originates with the aircraft for reasons not understood,” said Chris McLaughlin, senior vice president of Inmarsat PLC, which operates the satellite.
Chicago-based law firm Ribbeck Law Chtd., representing the father of a passenger on MH370, filed a request in Illinois state court on Tuesday seeking Malaysia Airlines and Boeing's records on the missing plane, Bloomberg reports.
Januari Siregar, father of passenger Firman Chandra Siregar, has requested 26 types of data, including information about the maintenance of the jet, the crew's training, and any cargo on board, according to the report.
Read the full story here.
Wired explains that U.S. Navy underwater microphones may be essential to the MH370 search now that authorities are looking in an area of the southern Indian Ocean in places as deep as 23,000 feet.
From Wired:
The 70-pound tow fish, which is formally known in true Pentagon style as Towed Pinger Locator 25, is a hydrodynamic microphone designed specifically to listen for the acoustic signal of the data and cockpit voice recorders carried aboard all commercial and military aircraft. It can track the devices to depths of 20,000 feet.
The U.S. has deployed a pair of tow fish to a Royal Australian Navy Rescue Ship, which will drag them through the search area looking for pings from the missing plane's flight data recorder, according to Wired.
Read the full report here.
The Washington Post reports that Chinese officials are concerned that relatives grieving the disappearance of flight MH370 could redirect their anger from Malaysia onto China.
From The Washington Post:
At a meeting of provincial officials last week, according to people who were in the room, they discussed preventing a larger movement from forming out of the passengers’ families.
While the families' outrage and frustration is genuinely targeted at Malaysian authorities, China is taking care to make sure it stays that way, the Post notes.
At a rare-sanctioned protest at the Malaysian embassy in Beijing on Tuesday, plainclothes men who did not appear to be family members came to rally the protesters, according to the Post:
In the meantime, in one bus, a man with a loudspeaker prepared the relatives. “We don’t have any contradictions with the Chinese government, right?” he yelled into the loudspeaker, waiting for them to yell back “right!” “We don’t have any contradictions with the media, right?”
Read the full story here.
Relatives of passengers on missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 protest outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing on March 25, 2014. (AFP/AFP/Getty Images)
From the Associated Press:
Malaysia Airlines says it is providing comprehensive support for the families of the 239 people aboard Flight 370.
FOOD AND LODGING: Hotel, transportation, meals and other expenses have been provided for up to five family members per passenger since the flight disappeared March 8, and the airline intends to continue the support as long as families require it.
FINANCIAL HELP: The airline provided US,000 per passenger to the next of kin initially and will offer more payments as the search for the jetliner continues.
ROUND-THE-CLOCK CARE: It has assigned more than 700 caregivers — including two per family — to offer support and counseling to families on a 24-hour basis.
When Malaysia Airlines Flight #370 disappeared on March 8, it carried 227 passengers and 12 crew members. The youngest passenger was 2-year-old Yan Zhang, the oldest was 79-year-old Baotang Lou.
Click here to view the entire passenger/crew manifest.
By: Tan Sri Md Nor Md Yusof, Chairman of Malaysia Airlines
As you will be aware, last night the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najjib Razak, announced new evidence regarding the disappearance of MH370 on 8th March.Based on this evidence, the Prime Minister’s message was that we must accept the painful reality that the aircraft is now lost and that none of the passengers or crew on board survived.
This is a sad and tragic day for all of us at Malaysia Airlines. While not entirely unexpected after an intensive multi-national search across a 2.24 million square mile area, this news is clearly devastating for the families of those on board. They have waited for over two weeks for even the smallest hope of positive news about their loved ones.
This has been an unprecedented event requiring an unprecedented response. The investigation still underway may yet prove to be even longer and more complex than it has been since March 8th. But we will continue to support the families – as we have done throughout. And to support the authorities as the search for definitive answers continues. I will now ask our Group Chief Executive¸ Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, to provide you will with fuller details of our support for the families.
By: Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, Group Chief Executive Officer, Malaysia Airlines
I stand before you today not only as the Group Chief Executive Officer of Malaysia Airlines, but also as a parent, as a brother, as a son. My heart breaks to think of the unimaginable pain suffered by all the families. There are no words which can ease that pain. Everyone in the Malaysia Airlines family is praying for the 239 souls on MH370 and for their loved ones on this dark day. We extend our prayers and sincere condolences.We all feel enormous sorrow and pain. Sorrow that all those who boarded Flight MH370 on Saturday 8th March, will not see their families again. And that those families will now have to live on without those they love. It must be remembered too that 13 of our own colleagues and fellow Malaysians were also on board.
And let me be very clear on the events of yesterday evening. Our sole and only motivation last night was to ensure that in the incredibly short amount of time available to us, the families heard the tragic news before the world did. Wherever humanly possible, we did so in person with the families or by telephone, using SMS only as an additional means of ensuring fully that the nearly 1,000 family members heard the news from us and not from the media.
Ever since the disappearance of Flight MH370 Malaysia Airlines’ focus has been to comfort and support the families of those involved and support the multi-national search effort. We will continue to do this, while we also continue to support the work of the investigating authorities in the Southern Indian Ocean.
Like everyone else, we are waiting for news from those authorities. We know that while there have been an increasing number of apparent leads, definitive identification of any piece of debris is still missing. It is impossible to predict how long this will take. But after 17 days, the announcement made last night and shared with the families is the reality which we must now accept. When Malaysia Airlines receives approval from the investigating authorities, arrangements will be made to bring the families to the recovery areas if they so wish. Until that time, we will continue to support the ongoing investigation. And may I express my thanks to the Government and all of those involved in this truly global search effort.
In the meantime, Malaysia Airlines’ overwhelming focus will be the same as it has been from the outset – to provide the families with a comprehensive support programme. Through a network of over 700 dedicated caregivers, the loved ones of those on board have been provided with two dedicated caregivers for each family, providing care, support and counsel. We are now supporting over 900 people under this programme and in the last 72 hours, we have trained an additional 40 caregivers to ensure the families have access to round-the-clock support.
In addition, hotel accommodation for up to five family members per passenger, transportation, meals and others expenses have been provided since 8th March and that will continue.
Malaysia Airlines has already provided initial financial assistance of USD 5,000 per passenger to the next of kin. We recognize that financial support is not the only consideration. But the prolonged search is naturally placing financial strain on the relatives. We are therefore preparing to offer additional payments as the search continues.
This unprecedented event in aviation history has made the past 18 days the greatest challenge to face our entire team at Malaysia Airlines. I have been humbled by the hard work, dedication, heartfelt messages of concern and offers of support from our remarkable team. We do not know why, and we do not know how this terrible tragedy happened. But as the Malaysia Airlines family, we are all praying for the passengers and crew of Flight MH370.
For past statements, click here.
Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya was asked at a press conference whether he would resign following the disappearance of Flight #370. Yahya said it was a personal decision, and one he would make at a later date, Reuters reported.
Click here for more.
Malaysia Airlines CEO says the airline is 'now supporting' 900 relatives of those on board flight 370.
— Keir Simmons (@KeirSimmons) 5 years ago
Malaysia Airlines CEO says the Australian Government will only grant visas to family members of #MH370 once evidence of the plane is found.
— Karen Barlow (@KJBar) 4 years ago
'@MAS CEO: Have provided initial support of ,000 USD per passenger to each next of kin, prepared to offer more as search continues.
— CNBCWorld (@CNBCWorld) 5 years ago
Malaysia Airlines CEO said Tuesday during a press conference, "We do not know why. We do not know how. We do not know why this terrible tragedy happened."
An Australian official said Tuesday in a press conference: "We're not looking for a needle in a haystack, we're still trying to define where the haystack is."
Australia's Defense Minister said Tuesday that at this point, no debris has been successfully identified or recovered.
"The Prime Minister announced visa fees will be waved for the families" Australian Defense Minister David Johnston on #MH370. #AC360
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) 3 years ago
AFP reports that relatives of Chinese passengers are marching in protest to the Malaysian embassy in Beijing seeking information about the crash:
Around 200 family members, some in tears, linked arms and shouted slogans including "The Malaysian government are murderers" and "We want our relatives back".
The embassy is about four kilometres (2.5 miles) from the Lido Hotel, where meetings have been taking place throughout the drama.
China wants to know how Malaysia drew the conclusion that the plane was lost with no survivors, AP reports:
China's official Xinhua News Agency on Tuesday quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng as telling the Malaysian ambassador to Beijing that China wanted to know the specific facts that led Malaysia to announce Monday night that the plane had been lost.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority suspends Flight 370 search operations due to adverse weather. http://t.co/tSl8FYM5UJ
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) March 24, 2014
From Reuters:
Britain's Inmarsat used a wave phenomenon discovered in the 19th century to analyze the seven pings its satellite picked up from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 to determine its final destination.
The new findings led Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to conclude on Monday that the Boeing 777, which disappeared more than two weeks ago, crashed thousands of miles away in the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board.
The pings, automatically transmitted every hour from the aircraft after the rest of its communications systems had stopped, indicated it continued flying for hours after it disappeared from its flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
From the time the signals took to reach the satellite and the angle of elevation, Inmarsat was able to provide two arcs, one north and one south that the aircraft could have taken.
Inmarsat's scientists then interrogated the faint pings using a technique based on the Doppler effect, which describes how a wave changes frequency relative to the movement of an observer, in this case the satellite, a spokesman said.
The Doppler effect is why the sound of a police car siren changes as it approaches and then overtakes an observer.
Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch was also involved in the analysis.
"We then took the data we had from the aircraft and plotted it against the two tracks, and it came out as following the southern track," Jonathan Sinnatt, head of corporate communications at Inmarsat, said.
The company then compared its theoretical flight path with data received from Boeing 777s it knew had flown the same route, he said, and it matched exactly.
The findings were passed to another satellite company to check, he said, before being released to investigators on Monday.
The paucity of data - only faint pings received by a single satellite every hour or so - meant techniques like triangulation using a number of satellites or GPS (Global Positioning System) could not be used to determine the aircraft's flight path.
Read the full story here.
Searchers are racing to find the plane's black boxes, AP reports:
By law, the boxes must be able to send those signals for at least 30 days following a crash. But experts say they can continue making noise for another 15 days or so beyond that, depending upon the strength of the black box battery at the time of the crash.
Without the black boxes — the common name for the voice and data recorders normally attached to a fuselage — it would be virtually impossible for investigators to definitively say what caused the crash.
From HuffPost:
The text message immediately set off a firestorm, with many on the Internet quick to criticize the airliner for not reaching out to relatives by more appropriate means.
In reality, the decision to text the families may not be as egregious as it seems.
MH370 families have chided Malaysia Airlines, as well as Malaysian government authorities, in part because the news media has continuously received new information about the missing plane before the families over the past two weeks.
Read the rest here.
Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng told Malaysia's ambassador in Beijing on Monday that China was demanding Malaysia hand over all relevant satellite data analysis on the missing Malaysian airliner, the Foreign Ministry said.
Xie met the ambassador after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, citing new satellite data, said Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared over two weeks ago en route to Beijing, crashed thousands of miles away in the southern Indian Ocean.
A committee representing families of #MH370 passengers accuses the Malaysian government of deliberate delays and cover-ups, CCTV reports.
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) March 24, 2014
families in Malaysia are incredibly distressed. A psychologist part of
medical team here says they will be working through the
night
— Leisha Chi (@leishachi)
24, 2014
Boeing is saddened by today's announcement by the prime minister of Malaysia regarding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies continue to be with the families and loved ones of those aboard. Boeing continues to serve as a technical advisor to the U.S. National Transportation Board.
Malaysia Airlines says
they told "the majority" of families in person or on phone,
the text msg was just an extra. MH370
— malcolmmoore
(@MalcolmMoore)
24, 2014
Inmarsat, the company whose analysis undergirds today's announcement on flight MH370, explained to SkyNews how it was able to locate the flightpath of the missing plane.
As the company had already announced earlier, its satellites kept receiving hourly signals from the plane despite the fact that the jet's communication systems were switched off. Inmarsat then analyzed data from flights that took a similar path to MH370.
Inmarsat's senior vice president Chris McLoughlin said:
"What we did two weeks ago was say it could be north or it could be south, and what we've done is refined that with the signals we got from other aircraft and that gives you a very good fit."
"Previous aircraft provided a pattern, and that pattern to the south is virtually what we got in our suggested estimate. The fit is very, very strong."
"We passed the information on after it had been peer reviewed by others in the UK air industry and after it had been compared with Boeing."
Head over to SkyNews for the full story.
We have asked #Malaysia Airlines about the text messages sent to relatives. Their response here: pic.twitter.com/9fgCU1j8MC
— Mark Stone (@Stone_SkyNews) March 24, 2014
BBC Transport Correspondent Richard Westcott tweets from the offices of British satellite company Inmarsat, who provided data analysis to Malaysia on the location of missing flight MH370.
The room where the MH370 data would have been received http://t.co/g2RmJJ8Xx8
— Richard Westcott (@BBCwestcott) March 24, 2014
