Malaysia Airlines Plane Missing At Sea Off Vietnam

[Shawn1814]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/08/malaysia-airlines-plane-missing_n_4924974.html#comments

KUALA LUMPUR/PHU QUOC ISLAND, Vietnam, March 9 (Reuters) - A missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner may have turned back from its scheduled route before vanishing from radar screens, military officers said on Sunday, deepening the mystery surrounding the fate of the plane and the 239 people aboard.

More than 36 hours after the last contact with Flight MH370, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, officials said they were widening the search to cover vast swathes of sea around Malaysia and off Vietnam, and were investigating at least two passengers who may have been using false identity documents.

In a sign that Malaysia's airport controls may have been breached, Prime Minister Najib Razak said security procedures were being reviewed.

"We will enhance them if necessary, because we still do not know the cause of the incident," he told reporters.

Despite dozens of military and civilian vessels and aircraft criss-crossing waters beneath the lost plane's flight path, no wreckage has been found, although oil slicks have been reported in the sea south of Vietnam and east of Malaysia.

The passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans - Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi - who, according to their foreign ministries, were not on the plane. Both had apparently had their passports stolen in Thailand during the past two years.

The BBC reported that the men using their passports had purchased tickets together and were flying on to Europe from Beijing, meaning they did not have to apply for a Chinese visa and undergo further checks.

An employee at a travel agency in Pattaya, in Thailand, told Reuters the two had purchased the tickets there.

U.S. and European security officials said there was no proof of foul play and there could be other explanations for the use of stolen passports.

FOUR SUSPECTS

There were no reports of bad weather and no sign of why the Boeing 777-200ER disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur early on Saturday.

"What we have done is actually look into the recording on the radar that we have and we realised there is a possibility the aircraft did make a turnback," Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told reporters at a news conference.

The search was being extended to the west coast of the Malay peninsula, in addition to a broad expanse of the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, he said.

Malaysia Airlines said it was "fearing for the worst" and that it had sought assistance from an Atlanta-based disaster recovery management specialist.

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said authorities were also checking the identities of two other passengers, other than the men on the Austrian and Italian passports.

"All the four names are with me," said Hishamuddin, who is also defence minister. "I have indicated to our intelligence agencies and I have also spoken to international intelligence agencies for assistance."

He said help was also being sought from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). However, an attack was only one of the possibilities being investigated.

"We are looking at all possibilities," he said. "We cannot jump the gun. Our focus now is to find the plane."

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the head of the department of civil aviation, later told reporters only two passengers were being investigated and that authorities were checking CCTV footage of the two as they boarded the aircraft.

OIL SLICKS

Vietnamese naval boats sent from the holiday island of Phu Quoc patrolled stretches of the Gulf of Thailand, scouring the area where an oil slick was spotted by patrol jets just before nightfall on Saturday.

"Our two rescue boats have approached the two oil spills since 3 a.m. today but we haven't found any sign of the Malaysian plane yet. Other boats are ready to go to support if needed," Admiral Ngo Van Phat told Reuters.

Besides the Vietnamese vessels, Malaysia and neighbouring countries have deployed 22 aircraft and 40 ships in the search. China and the United States have sent ships to help, and Washington has also deployed a maritime surveillance plane.

U.S. officials from Boeing, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration were on the way to Asia to help in investigations, NTSB said in a statement.

The airline has said 14 nationalities were among the passengers, including at least 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.

NO MAYDAY

The 11-year-old Boeing, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines, took off at 12:40 a.m. (1640 GMT Friday) from Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Aboard were 227 passengers and 12 crew.

It last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu. Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed it flew northeast after takeoff, climbed to 35,000 ft (10,670 metres) and was still climbing when it vanished from tracking records.

Boeing said it was monitoring the situation but had no further comment.

Paul Hayes, director of safety at Flightglobal Ascend aviation consultancy, said the flight would normally have been at a routine stage, having reached initial cruise altitude.

"Such a sudden disappearance would suggest either that something is happening so quickly that there is no opportunity to put out a mayday, in which case a deliberate act is one possibility to consider, or that the crew is busy coping with what whatever has taken place," he told Reuters.

The disappearance of the plane is a chilling echo of an Air France flight that crashed into the South Atlantic on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board. It vanished for hours and wreckage was found only two days later.

John Goglia, a former board member of the NTSB, the U.S. agency that investigates plane crashes, said the lack of a distress call suggested that the plane either experienced an explosive decompression or was destroyed by an explosive device.

"It had to be quick because there was no communication," Goglia said. He said the false identities of the two passengers was "a big red flag".

[Rock & Roll Hall of Game]

1) you should quote that

2) This is one strange story... Let's see how it plays out

[Reyna ♔]

Can planes not use GPS or something?

[Shawn1814]

Can planes not use GPS or something?

You would have thought the pilots would have said something before whatever happened unless there was no warnings..

[Shawn1814]

1) you should quote that

2) This is one strange story... Let's see how it plays out

[Reyna ♔]

You would have thought the pilots would have said something before whatever happened unless there was no warnings..

True, but they should still have some way of locating these planes besides radar and all this guessing. I don't think some sort of tracker would be too hard or costly to install.

[janetDAYZ]

True, but they should still have some way of locating these planes besides radar and all this guessing. I don't think some sort of tracker would be too hard or costly to install.

That's EXACTLY what I was thinking when I heard about this. There should be ways to track planes..the same way u can track mofoz on their cell phones. You would think they would have came up with something for incidents like this, especially since flights have disappeared so many times in the past.

[Reyna ♔]

That's EXACTLY what I was thinking when I heard about this. There should be ways to track planes..the same way u can track mofoz on their cell phones. You would think they would have came up with something for incidents like this, especially since flights have disappeared so many times in the past.

Right. I'd figure they'd try this out on planes right after they saw it work on phones and cars. You'd think so. Guess this incident might make sure they do that.

[bu.]

The black box always survives, right? Why not place a tracker in that? It's more likely that a wreckage would be found nearby or at least some clues if they did that.

I wonder what's happened though. There seems to be no clear 'idea' yet...just possibilities.

[janetDAYZ]

In this case they said the black box is the only thing that might possibly help them tryna discover where the wreckage is. Their last resort is to use some kind of technology (Idk wut its called) that's possibly gonna be able to locate where the black box is now but its not guaranteed cuz if in fact its under water, it lessens the possibilities

[Rock & Roll Hall of Game]

That's odd.. They put a GPS tracker in a $800 phone but not one in their billion dollar airplanes

[janetDAYZ]

They just said radar does indicate the plane did in fact turn around while en route to Beijing. Anddddd that two of the passengers plane tickets were purchased with stolen passports.

[Rock & Roll Hall of Game]

Scary.. Probably a crash since they can't find it

Not to mention the oil trail

[janetDAYZ]

I dnt think it was ever a question on whether it was a crash or not. That much was/is assumed for the most part.

[Bailey]

That's odd.. They put a GPS tracker in a $800 phone but not one in their billion dollar airplanes

I live to not like you .....and in that I love you

[Escapade]

This story is creepy!

[Rock & Roll Hall of Game]

This is how LOST started...

Too soon?

[janetDAYZ]

For you? Never.

[Rock & Roll Hall of Game]

But seriously, i really apologize if this was insensitive. I wish their families & friends we comfort at this difficult time.

[Bailey]

This is how LOST started...

Too soon?

I said the same thing today at work

[bu.]

This is how LOST started...

Too soon?

I've been itching to say "This is some Lost shit" . It is the 10th year anniversary lol

[bu.]

There are some astonishing things you’re not being told about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the flight that simply vanished over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 people on board.

The mystery of the flight’s sudden and complete disappearance has even the world’s top air safety authorities baffled. “Air-safety and antiterror authorities on two continents appeared equally stumped about what direction the probe should take,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

WSJ goes on to report:

“For now, it seems simply inexplicable,” said Paul Hayes, director of safety and insurance at Ascend Worldwide, a British advisory and aviation data firm.

While investigators are baffled, the mainstream media isn’t telling you the whole story, either. So I’ve assembled this collection of facts that should raise serious questions in the minds of anyone following this situation.

• Fact #1: All Boeing 777 commercial jets are equipped with black box recorders that can survive any on-board explosion

No explosion from the plane itself can destroy the black box recorders. They are bomb-proof structures that hold digital recordings of cockpit conversations as well as detailed flight data and control surface data.

• Fact #2: All black box recorders transmit locator signals for at least 30 days after falling into the ocean

Yet the black box from this particular incident hasn’t been detected at all. That’s why investigators are having such trouble finding it. Normally, they only need to “home in” on the black box transmitter signal. But in this case, the absence of a signal means the black box itself — an object designed to survive powerful explosions — has either vanished, malfunctioned or been obliterated by some powerful force beyond the worst fears of aircraft design engineers.

• Fact #3: Many parts of destroyed aircraft are naturally bouyant and will float in water

In past cases of aircraft destroyed over the ocean or crashing into the ocean, debris has always been spotted floating on the surface of the water. That’s because — as you may recall from the safety briefing you’ve learned to ignore — “your seat cushion may be used as a flotation device.”

Yes, seat cushions float. So do many other non-metallic aircraft parts. If Flight 370 was brought down by an explosion of some sort, there would be massive debris floating on the ocean, and that debris would not be difficult to spot. The fact that it has not yet been spotted only adds to the mystery of how Flight 370 appears to have literally vanished from the face of the Earth.

• Fact #4: If a missile destroyed Flight 370, the missile would have left a radar signature

One theory currently circulating on the ‘net is that a missile brought down the airliner, somehow blasting the aircraft and all its contents to “smithereens” — which means very tiny pieces of matter that are undetectable as debris.

The problem with this theory is that there exists no known ground-to-air or air-to-air missile with such a capability. All known missiles generate tremendous debris when they explode on target. Both the missile and the debris produce very large radar signatures which would be easily visible to both military vessels and air traffic authorities.

• Fact #5: The location of the aircraft when it vanished is not a mystery

Air traffic controllers have full details of almost exactly where the aircraft was at the moment it vanished. They know the location, elevation and airspeed — three pieces of information which can readily be used to estimate the likely location of debris.

Remember: air safety investigators are not stupid people. They’ve seen mid-air explosions before, and they know how debris falls. There is already a substantial data set of airline explosions and crashes from which investigators can make well-educated guesses about where debris should be found. And yet, even armed with all this experience and information, they remain totally baffled on what happened to Flight 370.

• Fact #6: If Flight 370 was hijacked, it would not have vanished from radar

Hijacking an airplane does not cause it to simply vanish from radar. Even if transponders are disabled on the aircraft, ground radar can still readily track the location of the aircraft using so-called “passive” radar (classic ground-based radar systems that emit a signal and monitor its reflection).

Thus, the theory that the flight was hijacked makes no sense whatsoever. When planes are hijacked, they do not magically vanish from radar.

Conclusion: Flight 370 did not explode; it vanished

The inescapable conclusion from what we know so far is that Flight 370 seems to have utterly and inexplicably vanished. It clearly was not hijacked (unless there is a cover-up regarding the radar data), and we can all be increasingly confident by the hour that this was not a mid-air explosion (unless debris suddenly turns up that they’ve somehow missed all along).

The inescapable conclusion is that Flight 370 simply vanished in some way that we do not yet understand. This is what is currently giving rise to all sorts of bizarre-sounding theories across the ‘net, including discussions of possible secret military weapons tests, Bermuda Triangle-like ripples in the fabric of spacetime, and even conjecture that non-terrestrial (alien) technology may have teleported the plane away.

Personally, I’m not buying any of that without a lot more evidence. The most likely explanation so far is that the debris simply hasn’t been found yet because it fell over an area which is somehow outside the search zone. But as each day goes by, even this explanation becomes harder and harder to swallow.

The frightening part about all this is not that we will find the debris of Flight 370; but rather that we won’t. If we never find the debris, it means some entirely new, mysterious and powerful force is at work on our planet which can pluck airplanes out of the sky without leaving behind even a shred of evidence.

If there does exist a weapon with such capabilities, whoever control it already has the ability to dominate all of Earth’s nations with a fearsome military weapon of unimaginable power. That thought is a lot more scary than the idea of an aircraft suffering a fatal mechanical failure.

Source:

http://www.naturalnews.com/044244_Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370_vanished.html#ixzz2vZpQAn42

[Reyna ♔]

Now that has me scared.

[janetDAYZ]

Alot of that is pure common sense that anyone with a brain knows and/or could have came to a conclusion to on their own,tbh.

And.. #2

It's not "the media" not telling us more its the investigators withholding information to protect the families of those loved ones, juss incase their idea and/conclusion to the mystery ,is wrong. You cant just let the public know every little step closer to a new discovery.For example, US investigators are vague with the public (all the time) when it comes to "updates" and new discoveries only to not compromise the integrity of the investigation. Just a little at a time. It's practically protocol.

[bu.]

I keep reading that some passengers phones are still ringing?