Malaysia has asked India to join the expanding search for the missing Boeing 777 near the Andaman Sea - far to the northwest of its last reported position and a further sign that authorities have no idea where the plane might be more than four days after it vanished.
The mystery over the plane's whereabouts has been confounded by confusing and occasionally conflicting statements by Malaysian officials, adding to the anguish of relatives of the 239 people on board the Malaysia Airlines flight.
'There's too much information and confusion right now. It is very hard for us to decide whether a given piece of information is accurate,' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters in Beijing. 'We will not give it up as long as there's still a shred of hope.'
The mother of passenger Zou Jingsheng, who would only give her name as Zou, wept and spoke haltingly about her missing son while staying at a hotel near the Beijing airport. She expressed frustration with the airline and the Malaysian government over their handling of the case.
'I want to talk more, but all this is very stressful, and after all it is my son's life that I am concerned about. I just want to know where he is, and wish he is safe and alive,' she said.
Malaysia Airlines flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing early Saturday morning and last made contact with ground control officials about 35,000 feet above the Gulf of Thailand between Malaysia and southern Vietnam before vanishing.
Dozens of planes and ships from at least eight nations are scouring waters on both sides of peninsular Malaysia but have found no trace of the jet.
Citing military radar, Malaysian authorities have said the plane may have turned back from its last known position, possibly making it as far as the Strait of Malacca, a busy shipping lane west of the narrow nation some 400 kilometres from the plane's last known coordinates.
Authorities have not ruled out any possible cause, including mechanical failure, pilot error, sabotage or terrorism. Both the Boeing 777 and Malaysia Airlines have excellent safety records. Until wreckage or debris is found and examined, it will be very hard to say what happened.
IAF aircraft on standby for search of Malaysian plane
APIndonesian Air Force officers examine a map of the Malacca Strait during a briefing at Suwondo air base in Medan, North Sumatra on Wednesday.
APMalaysia’s well-known shaman Ibrahim Mat Zin, bottom right, prays to locate the missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Wednesday.
APRelatives of passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines plane browse their smartphone for the latest news inside a hotel room set in Beijing on Wednesday. The missing Malaysian jetliner may have attempted to turn back before it vanished from radar, but there is no evidence it reached the Strait of Malacca, Malaysia's air force chief said on Wednesday.
APA US Navy helicopter departs from the USS Pinckney to aid in the search and rescue efforts for the missing Malaysian airlines in the Gulf of Thailand. File photo
Missing plane: Prayer, search continue
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The search area for the IAF is likely to be the Malacca Strait near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The Indian Air Force on Wednesday said it has kept its aircraft on standby for taking part in the search operations for locating the missing Malaysian plane with 239 people on board.
“We have kept our aircraft on standby and as soon as we get a go ahead, we are ready to take off for search operations,” an IAF spokesperson said.
The search area for the IAF is likely to be the Malacca Strait near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The IAF has its Dornier aircraft along with the Mi-17 helicopters deployed in the Island territory and if the need be, the Navy can deploy the P-8I and the Tu-142 maritime surveillance aircraft.
Malaysia has sought India’s assistance to trace its missing aircraft as the government here initiated the process of appointing designated people to share information and take the matter forward.
The Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane, which had five Indians on board, vanished over the South China Sea on Friday one hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.
India has a tri-services military command at Andaman and Nicobar islands and Navy and air force carry out regular patrols in the area.
Search and rescue operations which had been mobilised since early Saturday morning have failed to find the jetliner in the South China Sea and authorities have expanded the area of search into the Andaman sea, Malaysian officials said.
Authorities have put the plane’s last known point of contact with air-traffic control off eastern Malaysia — roughly midway between Kota Bharu and the southern tip of Vietnam, flying at 35,000 feet
Search for Malaysia Airlines jet widened to Andaman Sea
Vietnam fully resumed its search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner MH 370, after communicating with Malaysian authorities over media reports, subsequently denied, regarding the plane’s last known location.
“Search activities are being deployed as normal, expanding to the east and south of the plane’s last known trajectory,” Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army, Vo Van Tuan, tolddpa.
Media reports on Tuesday said that military radar had last detected the plane near Pulau Perak, an island in the Malacca Strait between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra. On Wednesday morning, Vietnamese authorities said they were scaling back the search for the plane pending confirmation from Malaysia.
Malaysia has asked for India’s assistance in searching for the missing Boeing 777 jetliner to widen the search to an area near the Andaman Sea, Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said Wednesday.
Mr. Akbaruddin said India had appointed a contact person to liaise with Malaysian authorities, but did not give details about what kind of help India would offer.
Indian navy ships frequently patrol the seas around the Strait of Malacca and regularly conduct exercises with countries in the region.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Wednesday appealed for patience in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 amid confusion over the aircraft’s last known location.
Mr. Najib urged Malaysians to support the government and pray for “some information that can finally lead us to the discovery of the aircraft soon.” “We must face this great challenge from Allah calmly,” he said in a television interview. “The government is doing everything to increase assets, aircraft and ships with sophisticated equipment. I am certain we will eventually find it. The question is when. Under the present situation, we must have patience and pray,” he added.
More than four days after Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 went missing en route to Beijing, authorities acknowledged on Wednesday they didn’t know in which direction the plane and its 239 passengers was heading when it disappeared, vastly complicating efforts to find it.
Amid intensifying confusion and occasionally contradictory statements, the country’s civil aviation authorities and the military both said the plane may have turned back from its original route toward Vietnam, possibly as far as the Strait of Malacca on the eastern side of the country.
Authorities have not ruled out any possible cause, including mechanical failure, pilot error, sabotage or terrorism in the disappearance of the plane. The 777 is a modern aircraft that has an excellent safety record, as does Malaysia Airlines.
Authorities began their search for the missing aircraft at the position it was last reported to be at over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam. But they have also said search operations were ongoing in the Malacca strait. Scores of planes and aircraft have been scouring both locations.
The country’s air force chief, Gen. Rodzali Daud, released a statement denying remarks attributed to him in a local media report saying that military radar had managed to track the aircraft turning back from its original course, crossing the country and making it to the Malacca strait to the west of Malaysia. The Associated Press contacted a high-level military official, who confirmed the remarks.
Gen Rodzali referred to a statement he said he made on March 9 in which he said the air force has “not ruled out the possibility of an air turn back” and said search and rescue efforts had been expanded to the waters around Penang Island, in the northern section of the strait.
It is possible that the radar readings are not definitive or subject to interpretation, especially if a plane is malfunctioning.
The country’s civilian aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said he could neither confirm nor deny military’s remarks. That suggests disagreement or confusion at the highest level over where the plane is most likely to have ended up.
“There is a possibility of an air turn back. We are still investigating and looking at the radar readings,” he said on Wednesday
The strait is a busy shipping lane that separates Malaysian from Indonesia’s Sumatra Island.
Adding to the confusion, Indonesia air force Col. Umar Fathur said the country had received official information from Malaysian authorities that the plane was above the South China Sea, about 10 nautical miles from Kota Bharu, Malaysia, when it turned back toward the strait and then disappeared. That would place its last confirmed position closer to Malaysia than has previously been publicly disclosed.
Col. Fathur said Malaysia authorities have determined four blocks to be searched in the strait, which Indonesia was assisting in.
Vietnamese military authorities said they were searching for the plane on land sea.
Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of Vietnamese People’s Army, said there were 22 aircraft and 31 ships from Vietnam and other countries involved in the hunt in its area of responsibility.
Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12-41 a.m. on Saturday, bound for Beijing. Authorities initially said its last contact with ground controllers was less than an hour into the flight at a height of 35,000 feet, when the plane was somewhere between the east coast of Malaysia and southern Vietnam.
Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar, who has been ordered to look at possible criminal aspects in the disappearance of Flight MH370, said hijacking, sabotage and issues related to the pilots’ psychological health were being considered.
Searching the sea from space
Five days after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared off radar, and with the search area widening, attention is focussing on how satellites can help scan large areas of the sea.
China was the first to say this week that it had reconfigured 10 satellites to search for the missing plane.
Vietnam has used a satellite to survey the seas around Tho Chu Island, one of the possible crash areas.
The sensors on the Chinese satellites include high-resolution optical telescopes, infrared cameras, and microwave detectors, according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.
One of the highest-resolution commercial satellites, the GeoEye-1, used by Google for its maps service, has a resolution of around half a metre.
However, ocean waves can make detection from space difficult.
“If the object is non-metallic, such as plastic, it would be very difficult to spot with radar,” Professor Xie Tao at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology told the newspaper.
Military satellites with more sophisticated equipment have also been involved in the search, the report said.
Analysing the satellite images is another challenge.
US satellite company DigitalGlobe has uploaded satellite images of over 3,200 square kilometres of the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand to its crowdsourcing website Tomnod.
It asks users to scan the images and tag anything that could be wreckage, a life raft, or oil.
Some have questioned however whether the satellite search effort has come too late.
Dr Chi Tianhe, a satellite imaging researcher who took part in the Chinese search, told the South China Morning Post that a lack of staff monitoring data around the clock, and poor coordination with international agencies had reduced the chances of success.
In the days since the plane went missing, any debris is likely to have floated far from the crash site, experts say, also meaning that the most likely period for finding something from MH370 may have passed.
IAF aircraft on standby for search of Malaysian plane - The Hindu
