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Malaysian flight with 239 people aboard missing, including 153 Chinese nationals
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'Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 plane found in Bermuda Triangle!' Viral Facebook links are profiting hackers
Videos are links to fake sites or spreading malware that hackers make money from
Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith
Saturday 15 March 2014
Viral Facebook posts claiming the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 flight has been found are pieces of malware and links to fake surveys posted by hackers, who are now profiting from people’s growing interest in the story.
The posts contain videos that look legitimate and claim the plane has been found in various places, from the Bermuda Triangle to having been spotted at sea, with many stating its passengers are “alive” or “saved”.
Many of the links are prefixed with the worlds “Breaking” or “Shocking video” to grab people’s attention.
Latest: Did jetliner fly into area controlled by Taliban?
Chris Boyd, a malware intelligence analyst for Malwarebytes, told Wired.co.uk that his company first saw the links spreading on Twitter, with “a mixture of tweets leading to known sites originally posted to Facebook and a new batch of spamblogs, survey scams [and] imitation news sites”.
Some of the fake video sites ask people to share groups such as “Pray for MH370” on Facebook, while other links take people to realistic looking news sites where users have to click “share” before being able to watch the videos.
The same scams have been seen with previous disaster stories such as the Japanese Tsunami from 2011 and the Philippines earthquake last year. Boyd, who previously tracked scams in relation to these events, said: “They ranged from Malware and 419 scams to fake donation pages and search engine positioning.
“Anything involving a potential disaster is big money for the scammers, as there’s a split between clickers with a penchant for salacious content and those who simply want to know if a relative is OK, or if there’s any more news on a breaking disaster.”
Scammers then profit from the fake surveys that appear when users follow the links in the posts, while users that fill out the surveys will be sharing personal information with third party marketers who have bought the information.
Boyd said popular fake scam pages can be shared “hundreds and thousands of times” and that “there’s big money in it for anybody willing to plumb the depths of human misery.”
Flight MH370: lost jet exposes gaps in Malaysia's defences
Allies and neighbours concerned after prime minister discloses flight MH370 crossed its territory without being picked up by military radar
Cabin crews of Vietnam Air Force are seen onboard a flying AN-26 Soviet made aircraft during a search operation for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 plane Photo: AP
By Dean Nelson, in Kuala Lumpur
11:14PM GMT 16 Mar 2014
Malaysia has rejected questions over its air defence systems following the seizure and disappearance of flight MH370 and claimed the lessons learned from the crisis could “change aviation history”.
The disclosure by Prime Minister Najib Razak that the Malaysia Airlines plane was seized shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, turned around over the South China Sea and flew back over Peninsular Malaysia without alerting the country’s defence forces has caused alarm among neighbours and allies.
After the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States, air defences across the world were tightened and new procedures adopted to speed the detection of rogue aircraft and intercept them before they could be used as weapons of terrorism.
But the apparent failure of Malaysia, which has a defence agreement with Britain, to notice that the plane had changed direction, fallen off the radar and then flown towards and through its air space has identified serious loopholes in its air defences.
Most countries with advanced air forces would detect an incoming hostile aircraft 200 miles from shore and scramble fighter jets to challenge it.
There has been strong criticism of the failure in China, India and in private by Western diplomats and defence analysts.
A Western security source said while the current focus is on helping Malaysia locate the missing plane, “there are a lot of questions – how did it get to the point where it came back and went wherever? You would have thought [planes] would have been scrambled and the Malaysians would have acted.”
Sugata Pramanik, an Indian air traffic controllers’ leader, said a plane can “can easily become invisible to civilian radar by switching off the transponder ... But it cannot avoid defence systems.”
One senior Indian Navy commander, Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai, however said his country’s military radars were occasionally “switched off as we operate on an 'as required’ basis”.
The Royal Malaysian Air Force is widely respected and has a fleet of Sukhoi S30 and F16 fighter jets and does regular training exercises with their British, Australian, New Zealand and Singapore counterparts.
Malaysia’s Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein however dismissed the concerns and said the disaster was an “unprecedented case” with lessons for all.
“It’s not right to say there is a breach in the standard procedures ... what we’re going through here is being monitored throughout the world and may change aviation history,” he said.
His comments were supported by Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s Director General of Civil Aviation, who said “many will have lessons to learn from this. I’ve been in aviation for 35 years and I’ve never seen this kind of incident before”.
Neither elaborated on the loopholes exposed beyond Malaysia by the seizure of MH370 and stressed that Kuala Lumpur would not focus on the issue until it had found the aircraft and its passengers on crew.
Anifah Aman, Malaysia’s foreign minister, told The Telegraph the world was “missing the point” by focusing on security implications and that he still hoped for a 'miracle’ in finding the passengers and crew alive.
“The focus must be on finding the plane. I don’t want to support any of the theories at this juncture. This involves a lot of lives. My worry is where is the plane and what little chance that people are safe so that they can come back ... we believe in miracles and like to think they’re safe and can return to their families,” he said.
The prime minister confirmed on Saturday that the Boeing 777 had been flown from close to Vietnamese air space over the South China Sea, back across the Malaysian peninsula to the Strait of Malacca, close to Penang, and then took two possible navigational corridors.
Search operations, now including 25 countries, are now focused on a northern corridor from the Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan border to northern Thailand and a southern sector from Indonesia to the vast southern Indian Ocean.
The investigation into what happened to the plane is now based on four theories – all of which follow from Mr Najib’s acceptance on Saturday that the plane had been deliberately seized or hijacked.
Police Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar said those who had taken the plane were either hijackers, saboteurs, someone with a personal vendetta or a psychological problem.
His investigation had been launched under a Malaysian law which covers terrorism offences, he said.
Until now the government has been reluctant to refer to the seizure as a hijacking or act of terrorism because they have yet to find any evidence on the motive of whoever seized the plane on Saturday March 8th.
The minister and the police chief’s comments however marked a freer use of the terms following the prime minister’s confirmation that the plane had been deliberately taken and re-routed.
Malaysia has not suffered terrorism on the scale of neighbours Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, although several Malaysian nationals are known to have received training from al-Qaeda.
'Good night': Haunting final contact from missing Malaysian jet
By Anshuman Daga, Niluksi Koswanage and Tim Hepher
KUALA LUMPUR Sun Mar 16, 2014 8:33pm EDT
A woman places a lighted candle on a poster with messages expressing hope for passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 during a candlelight vigil in Petaling Jaya, near Kuala Lumpur March 16, 2014. REUTERS-Samsul Said
(Reuters) - The last words from the cockpit of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 - "all right, good night" - were uttered after someone on board had already begun disabling one of the plane's automatic tracking systems, a senior Malaysian official said.
Both the timing and informal nature of the phrase, spoken to air traffic controllers as the plane with 239 people aboard was leaving Malaysian-run airspace on a March 8 flight to Beijing, could further heighten suspicions of hijacking or sabotage.
The sign-off came after one of the plane's data communication systems, which would have enabled it to be tracked beyond radar coverage, had been deliberately switched off, Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said on Sunday.
"The answer to your question is yes, it was disabled before," he told reporters when asked if the ACARS system - a maintenance computer that sends back data on the plane's status - had been deactivated before the voice sign-off.
The pilot's informal hand-off went against standard radio procedures, which would have called for him to read back instructions for contacting the next control center and include the aircraft's call sign, said Hugh Dibley, a former British Airways pilot and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
Investigators are likely to examine the recording for any signs of psychological stress and to determine his identity to confirm whether the flight deck had been taken over by hijackers or the pilot himself was involved, he said.
Malaysian investigators are trawling through the backgrounds of the pilots, crew and ground staff who worked on the missing Boeing 777-200ER for clues as to why someone on board flew it perhaps thousands of miles off course.
Background checks of passengers have drawn a blank but not every country whose nationals were on board has responded to requests for information, police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said.
No trace of the plane has been found more than a week after it vanished but investigators believe it was diverted by someone with deep knowledge of the plane and commercial navigation.
Malaysia briefed envoys from nearly two dozen nations and appealed for international help in the search for the plane along two arcs stretching from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the far south of the Indian Ocean.
"The search area has been significantly expanded," Hishammuddin said. "From focusing mainly on shallow seas, we are now looking at large tracts of land, crossing 11 countries, as well as deep and remote oceans."
The plane's disappearance has baffled investigators and aviation experts. It disappeared from civilian air traffic control screens off Malaysia's east coast less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.
Malaysian authorities believe that, as the plane crossed the country's northeast coast and flew across the Gulf of Thailand, someone on board shut off its communications systems and turned sharply to the west.
Electronic signals it continued to exchange periodically with satellites suggest it could have continued flying for nearly seven hours after flying out of range of Malaysian military radar off the northwest coast, heading towards India.
The plane had enough fuel to fly for about seven-and-a-half to eight hours, Malaysia Airlines' Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said.
Malaysian officials briefed ambassadors from 22 countries on the progress of the investigation and appealed for international cooperation, diplomats said on Sunday.
PILOTS' HOMES SEARCHED
On Saturday, police special branch officers searched the homes of the captain, 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and first officer, 27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid, in middle-class suburbs of Kuala Lumpur close to the international airport.
An experienced pilot, Zaharie has been described by current and former co-workers as a flying enthusiast who spent his days off operating a life-sized flight simulator he had set up at home.
Police chief Khalid said investigators had taken the flight simulator for examination by experts.
Earlier, a senior police official said the flight simulator programs were closely examined, adding they appeared to be normal ones that allow players to practice flying and landing in different conditions.
Police sources said they were looking at the personal, political and religious backgrounds of both pilots and the other crew members. Khalid said ground support staff who might have worked on the plane were also being investigated.
A second senior police official told Reuters investigators had found no links between Zaharie, a father of three grown-up children and a grandfather, and any militant group.
Postings on his Facebook page suggest the pilot was a politically active opponent of the coalition that has ruled Malaysia for the 57 years since independence.
A day before the plane vanished, Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to five years in prison, in a ruling his supporters and international human rights groups say was politically influenced.
Asked if Zaharie's background as an opposition supporter was being examined, the first senior police officer would say only: "We need to cover all our bases."
Malaysia Airlines has said it did not believe Zaharie would have sabotaged the plane and colleagues were incredulous.
"Please, let them find the aircraft first. Zaharie is not suicidal, not a political fanatic as some foreign media are saying," a Malaysia Airlines pilot who is close to Zaharie told Reuters. "Is it wrong for anyone to have an opinion about politics?"
Co-pilot Fariq was religious and serious about his career, family and friends said.
The two pilots had not made any request to fly together.
(Additional reporting by Anshuman Daga, Al-Zaquan Amer Hamzah, Stuart Grudgings and Anuradha Raghu in Kuala Lumpur, Michael Martina in Beijing, Paul Sandle in London, Mark Hosenball in Washington, Sanjib Kumar Roy and Nita Bhalla in Port Blair, India, Sruthi Gottipati in Visakhapatnam, India, Frank Jack Daniel and Douglas Busvine in New Delhi, Jane Wardell in Sydney, John Irish in Paris, Jim Loney and Andy Sullivan in Washington; Writing by Alex Richardson and Frances Kerry; Editing by Rosalind Russell and Paul Tait)
Agence France-Presse
March 17, 2014 5:47am
Chinese slam Malaysia for 'contradictory' jet information
Malaysia drew a fresh round of scathing criticism from China Monday over conflicting information on missing jet MH370, with state media and social media users voicing increasing scepticism as the search enters its 10th day.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Saturday announced that the Malaysia Airlines flight's disappearance may have been "deliberate" and that the aeroplane flew for several hours after leaving its intended flight path.
In an editorial, the China Daily newspaper questioned why the announcement from Kuala Lumpur came more than a week after the flight vanished and wondered whether Malaysia was sharing all of the information it had gathered.
"The contradictory and piecemeal information Malaysia Airlines and its government have provided has made search efforts difficult and the entire incident even more mysterious," the newspaper wrote.
"What else is known that has not been shared with the world?" it asked.
Two-thirds of the passengers on board the flight were Chinese, and Beijing has been critical of Malaysia's sharing of information -- a concern reiterated Monday as fears mounted that the plane might have been hijacked.
"It is of the utmost importance that any loopholes that might have been exploited by hijackers or terrorists be identified as soon as possible because we need counter-measures to plug them," the China Daily wrote.
Yao Shujie, the head of the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham, wrote in an op-ed in China's state-run Global Times newspaper that Malaysia "has lost authority and credibility" due to its chaotic response.
"The lack of national strength and experience in dealing with incidents has left the Malaysian government helpless and exhausted by denying all kinds of rumours," Yao wrote.
He added: "If the search continues to be fruitless even following the new information, Malaysia would be better off handing over its command in the international rescue operation."
The plane's disappearance remained the most hotly debated topic on China's popular social networks, with many users of Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, echoing concerns over the Malaysian government's release of information.
"Why is it only now that they've confirmed it may have been hijacked?" one Sina Weibo user wrote Monday morning in response to the latest revelations by Kuala Lumpur. "Malaysia, what else are you hiding?"
Another posted: "I'm really getting more and more disappointed in Malaysia and their unreliable government. I'm not planning on travelling there anytime in the future."
Last week, one of the most widely forwarded messages was a posting that read: "Vietnam keeps discovering. Malaysia Airlines keeps denying. China keeps sending rescue teams."
On Monday, the meme had taken a new twist.
"Malaysia has been telling a week's worth of lies. Vietnam has fished out a week's worth of trash. China has forwarded a week's worth of news," read the latest viral message.
Flight recorders from an Air France plane which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 were found almost two years later. But since cockpit recorders are capable of storing at most the last two hours of audio from the flight, it seems unlikely they will capture any clues from perhaps the most crucial section of the flight: the point at which it diverts. There may be no evidence as to whether someone entered the cockpit or a pilot set the plane on another course of his own volition.
Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Did jetliner fly into area controlled by Taliban? Net widens after claims final satellite signal could have been sent from the ground
Pilots’ homes searched as number of countries involved in search rises to 25
Kunal Dutta Author Biography , David Keys , Andrew Buncombe
Sunday 16 March 2014
The missing Malaysian airlines flight MH370 may have been deliberately flown under the radar to Taliban-controlled bases on the border of Afghanistan, it has emerged, as authorities said that the final message sent from the cockpit came after one of the jet's communications systems had already been switched off.
Eight days after the Boeing 777 vanished, The Independent has learnt that Malaysian authorities are seeking diplomatic permission to investigate a theory that the plane was flown to one of a number of Taliban strongholds on the Afghan border in North West Pakistan.
The latest revelation came as it was revealed that the final message sent to air traffic controllers from the jet's cockpit - “ All right, good night” - was spoken after someone on board had already disabled the plane's ACARS reporting system.
Around 14 minutes later someone also switched off the plane's transponder, which identifies it to commercial radar systems. Malaysian Air force Major General Affendi Buang told reporters that the two separate actions, along with the calm message in between, “will tell you something” about whether the diversion was deliberate or not.
At least 25 countries are now assisting in the search for the plane, intensifying challenges of co-ordinating ground, sea and aerial efforts. Countries known to be involved include Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia, with special assistance regarding satellite data requested from the US, China and France.
On Sunday Malaysian officials examined a sophisticated flight simulator belonging to the chief pilot of the missing jet, after experts said only a trained person could have turned off the plane’s communication equipment and flown it off course without being detected.
Working on the theory that the plane was intentionally flown off course, police have delved into the backgrounds of captain Zaharie Ahmed Shah, 53, and 27-year-old co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid. Their homes were searched on Saturday, and on Sunday, experts examined the simulator Mr Shah kept in his home which he had built himself.
There have been no reported sightings or concrete leads on the whereabouts of the jet, which vanished from radar screens shortly after it took off in Kuala Lumpur at 00.40am on the morning of 8 March, destination Beijing.
The final confirmed location for MH370 on civilian radar was at 1.21am, but it was spotted less than an hour later on military radar, far to the west of that position. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak revealed that “ping” signals from the plane was last received at 8.11am.
Zaharie Shah, left, and Fariq Hamid
Based on data collated by the British company Inmarsat’s satellite network, at that point the plane was on one of two possible arcs – one stretching north from Thailand to Kazakhstan and crossing more than 10 countries, and one to the south over Indonesia and out across the southern Indian ocean. Experts have said the aircraft could have been on the ground when it sent its satellite signals.
Boeing 777s need a runway of at least 5,000ft long, limiting the number of possible sites within the 2,200 nautical mile-radius it is believed the plane could have flown from its last known position.
Last night sources in Kuala Lumpur assisting with the investigation told The Independent that full diplomatic permissions were being sought in order to rule out the theory that the plane could have flown to areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan that are not under government control.
Large areas of the southern half of Afghanistan are ruled by the Afghan Taliban, while some areas of north-west Pakistan, adjacent to or near to the Afghan border, are controlled by the Pakistani Taliban.
A spokesman for Malaysian Airlines said: “These are matters for the jurisdiction of those regions and Malaysia’s armed forces and department of civil aviation. In regard to Pakistan and Afghanistan, we cannot explore those theories without permission. We hope to have that soon.”
For a commercial plane to pass undetected through these regions, which are highly militarised with robust air defence networks, many run by the US military, would require a combination of extremely sophisticated navigation, brazen audacity and security failure by those monitoring international airspace. However, with so little known about the fate of the plane, and the investigation growing in scale every day, it is yet another line of enquiry that remains impossible to rule out. On Sunday Pakistani civil aviation officials said they had checked their radar recordings and found no sign of the missing jet.
Malaysian officials said they had requested help from a dozen Asian countries and had asked them to provide radar data. They have also asked for assistance from Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and France, which administers a handful of islands deep in the southern Indian Ocean.
“The search area has been significantly expanded, and the search area has changed. We are now looking at large tracts of land, crossing 11 countries as well as deep and remote oceans,” said Malaysia’s Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.
Khalid Abu Bakar, Malaysia’s police chief, said investigators researching the backgrounds of the people who boarded Flight MH370 had found no passengers with aviation expertise. He said a number of foreign intelligence agencies had been working with the Malaysians, though he said information was still pending from some countries with nationals on the flight.
Police are looking at the personal, political and religious backgrounds of all crew members. A number of ground support staff who might have worked on the plane are also being investigated.
Officials urged reporters not to jump to conclusions on the pilot and co-pilot, who they said had not asked to work together that day, and had not requested additional fuel for the aircraft.
Reuters reported police had said their inquiries had found no links between Captain Shah and any militant group.
Top politician Anwar Ibrahim denies link to captain of missing Malaysia Airlines jet
Anwar Ibrahim reveals he saw pilot at party meetings but didn't know him personally, as he accepts China's criticism over handling of hunt
PUBLISHED : Monday, 17 March, 2014, 11:46pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 18 March, 2014, 2:31am
Adrian Wan in Kuala Lumpur [email protected]
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim answers questions about the plane's disappearance in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: SCMP Pictures
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had seen the captain of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane at meetings of his political party, he told the South China Morning Post yesterday.
But he did not know him personally and criticised attempts to link the captain's political affiliations to the plane's disappearance 10 days ago.
He also said China's condemnation of Malaysia's handling of the search for the Boeing 777 was "absolutely justified".
Flight MH370 lost contact and disappeared from civilian radar screens less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8 under the command of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah. There were 239 passengers and crew on board, including 154 Chinese.
"I don't recollect the name, but when the photographs were shown I remembered I had seen him at party meetings," Anwar said of Zaharie at the headquarters of his People's Justice Party outside Kuala Lumpur. "He doesn't hold positions in the party, but is an active member in the sense that he has been seen with the party's parliamentary leaders, taking photographs with them," Anwar added.
He said they had had no personal contact, but said Zaharie was a follower of his Twitter account. Hours before the plane took off on its doomed flight to Beijing, Anwar was sentenced to five years in jail after a Malaysian court overturned his 2012 acquittal on a sodomy charge.
But there is no evidence to suggest Zaharie was responsible for the plane disappearing in reaction to the ruling.
Malaysia says "deliberate action" in the cockpit led to the flight's disappearance and police have searched the homes of Zaharie and First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid. But little has emerged to implicate either man.
Attention on Zaharie has focused on his support for Malaysia's opposition and the flight simulator he built in his home.
Initial investigations showed it was Fariq who spoke the last words - "All right, good night" - to Malaysian air traffic controllers, acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said yesterday. He also said both pilots had passed psychological tests.
Anwar said he thought the government was deploying its media to associate the missing plane with him. He said "they really should be focusing on carrying out transparent and objective investigations, instead of aligning it with me".
Beijing has demanded that Malaysia increases its efforts to find the missing plane and said there was "too much confusion" in the information released.
Anwar said Chinese officials he had met were all "extremely polite". But he added: "In this case, they lost their patience and came out with a stinging statement against the Malaysian government's lack of transparency.
"It is absolutely understandable for the Chinese to express anger and even disgust."
He added that Beijing spent millions of dollars on a search of the South China Sea when the plane had turned the other way.
"Feeling angry is absolutely justified, especially with so many of its nationals on board."
'Tens of thousands' of sites where missing Malaysian Airlines jet could have been landed
PUBLISHED : Monday, 17 March, 2014, 11:41pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 18 March, 2014, 4:54am
Stephen Chen in Beijing [email protected]
Based on the Boeing 777's potential flight time, one popular list shared on the internet showed the locations of 634 airfields in 26 countries where the missing MH370 could have touched down.
The number of suitable landing sites that could have been used by a pilot to touch down the missing Malaysia Airlines flight could far exceed estimates of 600 quoted in foreign media, Chinese engineering and aviation experts said last night.
Based on the Boeing 777's potential flight time, one popular list shared on the internet showed the locations of 634 airfields in 26 countries where the plane could have touched down, in an area stretching from Pakistan to Japan and Australia.
But within that vast area, there could be tens of thousands more locations suitable for landing a jet, if pilot expertise and wide open spaces were taken into account, experts said.
Speculation that the plane is still intact and landed safely has been swirling in the absence of any evidence that it crashed, despite a 10-day hunt.
The WNYC radio station compiled the list of airstrips which was quickly picked up online.
Professor Gao Peiwei, who studies rapid construction and repairing technology for runways at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said a Boeing 777 could be put down in various environments - even on highways and dirt strips - if the pilots had "knowledge and training for the specific location".
To receive an inbound 777 in a state of emergency, an airstrip would normally need to meet several requirements, he said.
The surface of the runway, be it cement or dirt, must be hardened to take the weight of the jet's wheels and be long enough to allow for adequate braking.
"But of course, you can also land on a relatively soft surface and brace yourself for big bumps, if you don't care whether the landing gear or the plane can fly again," Gao said.
Any relatively large and flat area without high hills or tall buildings immediately in front of it could be used as a landing area, potentially adding tens of thousands more locations to the list.
"Large airports are equipped with sophisticated communications systems and supportive facilities such as lighting to make sure that every take-off and landing would be successful. If the purpose was to land the plane once and for all, most facilities are not necessary," Gao said.
One possibility to explain the disappearance of flight MH370 is that it landed at a private airstrip or on a military base and for political or other reasons, its arrival has not been made public.
"This is a wild guess, but with the information released by Malaysian authorities, anything is possible," Gao added.
Yang Xiaoguang, an aeronautics scientist at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, agreed with Gao that it was feasible the plane had landed on a small or temporary airstrip.
But he said it would take at least six months of work on the ground to prepare a suitable strip that could safely take such a huge aircraft. "You would need quite a few workers and machines to even the ground, if the site was chosen at a remote area," he said.
"To carry out such a task without it being detected is hard to believe, but that's the best we can hope for the passengers on board and their families."
Yang said contradictions between the Malaysians' early statements on the plane's disappearance and their more recent comments had made the Chinese aviation community suspicious that not all relevant information had been made public.
"We have a strong feeling that some information has been held back," he said.
Insight - Planning could hold key to disappearance of Flight MH370
Reuters
March 18, 2014, 2:15 am
A Japan Coast Guard takes photos out of a window of the Gulfstream V Jet aircraft, customized for search and rescue operations, during a search for the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 plane over the waters of the South China Sea March 15, 2014. REUTERS/Edgar Su
Whether by accident or design, whoever reached across the dimly lit cockpit of a Malaysia Airlines jet and clicked off a transponder to make Flight MH370 vanish from controllers' radars flew into a navigational and technical black hole.
By choosing one place and time to vanish into radar darkness with 238 others on board, the person - presumed to be a pilot or a passenger with advanced knowledge - may have acted only after meticulous planning, according to aviation experts.
Understanding the sequence that led to the unprecedented plane hunt widening across two vast tracts of territory north and south of the Equator is key to grasping the motives of what Malaysian authorities suspect was hijacking or sabotage.
By signing off from Malaysian airspace at 1.19 a.m. on March 8 with a casual "all right, good night," rather than the crisp radio drill advocated in pilot training, a person now believed to be the co-pilot gave no hint of anything unusual.
Two minutes later, at 1.21 a.m. local time, the transponder - a device identifying jets to ground controllers - was turned off in a move that experts say could reveal a careful sequence.
"Every action taken by the person who was piloting the aircraft appears to be a deliberate one. It is almost like a pilot's checklist," said one senior captain from an Asian carrier with experience of jets including the Boeing 777.
There is so far no indication whether the co-pilot was at fault or had anything to do with turning off the transponder. Pilots say the usual industry convention is that the pilot not directly responsible for flying the plane talks on the radio.
Police have searched the premises of both the captain and co-pilot and are checking the backgrounds of all passengers.
Whoever turned the transponder to "off", whether or not the move was deliberate, did so at a vulnerable point between two airspace sectors when Malaysian and Vietnamese controllers could easily assume the airplane was each others' responsibility.
"The predictable effect was to delay the raising of the alarm by either party," David Learmount, operations and safety editor at Flight International, wrote in an industry blog.
That mirrors delays in noticing something was wrong when an Air France jet disappeared over the Atlantic in 2009 with 228 people on board, a gap blamed on confusion between controllers.
Yet whereas the Rio-Paris disaster was later traced to pilot error, the suspected kidnapping of MH370's passengers and crew was carried out with either skill or bizarre coincidences.
Whether or not pilots knew it, the jet was just then in a technically obscure sweet spot, according to a top radar expert.
Air traffic controllers use secondary radar which works by talking to the transponder. Some air traffic control systems also blend in some primary radar, which uses a simple echo.
But primary radar signals fade faster than secondary ones, meaning even a residual blip would have vanished for controllers and even military radar may have found it difficult to identify the 777 from other ghostly blips, said radar expert Hans Weber.
"Turning off the transponder indicates this person was highly trained," said Weber, of consultancy TECOP International.
Not in the manual
The overnight flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur is packed year-round with business people, Chinese tourists and students, attracted in part by code-sharing deals, regular travellers say.
The lockdown of MH370 may have begun as early as 40 minutes into the flight at a point when meals are being hurriedly served in time to get trays cleared and lights dimmed for the night.
"It was a red-eye flight. Most people - the passengers and the crew - just want to rest," a Malaysia Airlines stewardess said. "Unless there was a reason to panic, if someone had taken control of the aircraft, they would not have noticed anything."
At some point between 1.07 a.m. and 1.37 a.m., investigators believe someone switched off another system called ACARS designed to transmit maintenance data back to the ground.
While unusual, this may not necessarily raise alarms at the airline and the passengers would not have known that something was amiss, said some of the six pilots contacted by Reuters, none of whom agreed to be identified because of company rules.
"Occasionally, there are gaps in the communications systems and the guys in ground operations may not think much of it initially. It would be a while before they try to find out what was wrong," said one captain with an Asian carrier.
Cutting the datalink would not have been easy. Instructions are not in the Flight Crew Operating Manual, one pilot said.
Whoever did so may have had to climb through a trap door in full view of cabin crew, people familiar with the jet say.
Circuit-breakers used to disable the system are in a bay reached through a hatch in the floor next to the lefthand front exit, close to a galley used to prepare meals.
Most pilots said it would be impossible to turn off ACARS from inside the cockpit, though two people did not rule it out.
Malaysia Airlines said 14 minutes elapsed between the last ACARS message and the transponder shutdown that - in the growing view of officials - confirmed a fully loaded jet was on the run. The ACARS must have been disabled within 16 minutes after that.
In the meantime a voice believed to be that of the co-pilot issued the last words from MH370 and the transponder went dead.
Hiding in full view?
The northeast-bound jet now took a northwestern route from Kota Bahru in eastern Malaysia to Penang Island. It was last detected on military radar around 200 miles northwest of Penang.
Even that act of going off course may not have caused alarm at first if it was handled gradually, pilots said.
"Nobody pays attention to these things unless they are aware of the direction that the aircraft was heading in," said one first officer who has flown with Malaysia Airlines.
The airline said it had reconstructed the event in a simulator to try to figure out how the jet vanished and kept flying for what may have been more than seven hours.
Pilots say whoever was then in control may have kept the radio on in silent mode to hear what was going on around him, but would have avoided restarting the transponder at all costs.
"That would immediately make the aircraft visible ... like a bright light. Your registration, height, altitude and speed would all become visible," said an airline captain.
After casting off its identity, the aircraft set investigators a puzzle that has yet to be solved. It veered either northwards or southwards, within an hour's flying time of arcs stretching from the Caspian to the southern Indian Ocean.
The best way to avoid the attention of military radars would have been to fly at a fixed altitude, on a recognised flight path and at cruising speed without changing course, pilots say.
Malaysian officials dismissed as speculation reports that the jet may have flown at low altitude to avoid detection.
But pilots said the best chance of feeling its way through the well-defended northern route would have been to hide in full view of military radar inside commercial lanes - raising awkward questions over security in several parts of the Asia-Pacific.
"The military radar controllers would have seen him moving on a fixed line, figured that it was a commercial aircraft at a high altitude, and not really a danger especially if he was on a recognised flight path," said one pilot.
"Some countries would ask you to identify yourself, but you are flying through the night and that is the time when the least attention is being paid to unidentified aircraft. As long as the aircraft is not flying towards a military target or point, they may not bother with you."
Although investigators refused on Monday to be drawn into theories, few in the industry believe a 250-tonne passenger jet could run amok globally without expert skills or preparation.
"Whoever did this must have had lots of aircraft knowledge, would have deliberately planned this, had nerves of steel to be confident enough to get through primary radar without being detected and been confident enough to control an aircraft full of people," a veteran airline captain told Reuters.
New timeline places doubt on hijack theory
AFP
March 18, 2014, 6:19 am
Officials revealed a new timeline Monday suggesting the final voice transmission from the cockpit of the missing Malaysian plane may have occurred before any of its communications systems were disabled, adding more uncertainty about who aboard might have been to blame.
The search for Flight 370, which vanished early March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, has now been expanded deep into the northern and southern hemispheres. Australian vessels scoured the southern Indian Ocean and China offered 21 of its satellites to help Malaysia in the unprecedented hunt.
With no wreckage found in one of the most puzzling aviation mysteries of all time, relatives of those on the Boeing 777 have been left in an agonizing limbo.
Investigators say the plane was deliberately diverted during its overnight flight and flew off-course for hours. They haven't ruled out hijacking, sabotage, or pilot suicide, and they are checking the backgrounds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members, as well as the ground crew, to see if links to terrorists, personal problems or psychological issues could be factors.
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said finding the plane was still the main focus, and he did not rule out that it might be discovered intact.
"The fact that there was no distress signal, no ransom notes, no parties claiming responsibility, there is always hope," Hishammuddin said at a news conference.
Malaysia's acting Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein shows the map of northern search corridor. Photo: AP
Malaysian Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said an initial investigation indicated that the last words heard from the plane by ground controllers — "All right, good night" — were spoken by the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid. Had it been a voice other than that of Fariq or the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, it would have clearest indication yet of something amiss in the cockpit before the flight went off-course.
Clarification that the voice was most likely that of First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid came during a press conference at which Malaysian officials hit back at "irresponsible" suggestions that they had misled the public -- and passenger's relatives -- over what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid have become a primary focus of the investigation, with one of the key questions being who was in control of the aircraft when it veered off course about an hour into its flight to Beijing.
The nonchalant-sounding last message from the cockpit -- "All right, good night" -- came around the time that two of the plane's crucial signalling systems were manually disabled.
"Initial investigations indicate it was the co-pilot who basically spoke," said Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.
The last signal from the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) was received 12 minutes before the co-pilot's final words.
The plane's transponder -- which relays the plane's location -- was switched off just two minutes after he spoke, and a few minutes later the aircraft turned back on its flight path.
Yahya said it was not clear precisely when the ACARS system, which sends a signal every 30 minutes, was disabled. Officials had previously maintained it was manually turned off before the final cockpit message.
The new information opened the possibility that both ACARS and the plane's transponders, which make the plane visible to civilian air traffic controllers, were turned off at about the same time. It also suggests that the message delivered from the cockpit could have preceded any of the severed communications.
The Malaysian authorities have stressed that the backgrounds of all the passengers and crew were being checked, as well as engineers who may have worked on the plane before take-off.
'Contradictory information'
But Michael McCaul, chair of the US House Homeland Security Committee, said US intelligence briefings had seemed to lead "towards the cockpit, with the pilot himself, and co-pilot".
The plane went missing early on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew aboard, spawning a massive international search across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean that has turned up no trace of wreckage.
A girl writes a message for passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane, at a shopping mall in Petaling Jaya, near Kuala Lumpur. Photo: AP
China's damning assessments of Malaysia's crisis management continued Monday.
Premier Li Keqiang in a phone call asked his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak to provide more detailed data and information about the missing flight "in a timely, accurate and comprehensive manner", state news agency Xinhua reported.
The state-controlled China Daily said the "contradictory and piecemeal information Malaysia Airlines and its government have provided has made search efforts difficult and the entire incident even more mysterious".
Relatives of the Chinese passengers also voiced anger and frustration after a meeting with airline officials in Beijing.
"Only the Malaysia government knows the truth. They've been talking nonsense since the beginning," said Wen Wancheng, whose son was on Flight 370.
At Monday's press briefing, Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein reacted angrily when a foreign journalist suggested Malaysia should apologise for its handling of the crisis.
"I think it is very irresponsible of you to say that," he shot back.
Twenty-six countries are now involved in searching for the jet after satellite and military radar data projected two dauntingly large corridors the plane might have flown through.
The northern corridor stretches in an arc over south and central Asia, while the other swoops deep into the southern Indian Ocean towards Australia.
Satellite and radar data from countries in the northern corridor should allow investigators to confirm within "two or three days" whether it crashed in that area, a foreign member of the investigative team told AFP.
Malaysia announced that it was deploying its navy and air force to the southern corridor, where Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said his country would take the lead in searching a vast area off its west coast.
Three officials from France's civil aviation accident investigation agency arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Monday to share their experiences of the search for Air France Flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.
Political dimension?
The "black boxes" from that crash were eventually recovered nearly two years later from a depth of more than 3,800 meters (12,500 feet).
Malaysian police have searched both pilots' homes and are examining a flight simulator that Captain Zaharie, 53, had assembled at his home.
Associates say Zaharie was an active supporter of Malaysia's political opposition headed by veteran politician Anwar Ibrahim.
In a highly controversial case, Anwar was convicted of sodomy -- illegal in Muslim Malaysia -- just hours before MH370 took off.
But friends said Zaharie exhibited no extreme views.
Fariq, meanwhile, was accused in an Australian television report of allowing two young South African women into the cockpit of a plane he piloted in 2011, breaching security rules imposed after the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
But acquaintances have attested to his good character, and reports said he planned to wed his flight-school sweetheart.
Missing Malaysia Airlines jet could have landed on any large flat area, say experts
PUBLISHED : Monday, 17 March, 2014, 11:41pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 18 March, 2014, 8:16am
Stephen Chen in Beijing [email protected]
The number of suitable landing sites that could have been used by a pilot to touch down the missing Malaysia Airlines flight could far exceed estimates of 600 quoted in foreign media, Chinese engineering and aviation experts said last night.
Based on the Boeing 777's potential flight time, one popular list shared on the internet showed the locations of 634 airfields in 26 countries where the plane could have touched down, in an area stretching from Pakistan to Japan and Australia.
But within that vast area, there could be tens of thousands more locations suitable for landing a jet, if pilot expertise and wide open spaces were taken into account, experts said.
Speculation that the plane is still intact and landed safely has been swirling in the absence of any evidence that it crashed, despite a 10-day hunt.
The WNYC radio station compiled the list of airstrips which was quickly picked up online.
Professor Gao Peiwei, who studies rapid construction and repairing technology for runways at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said a Boeing 777 could be put down in various environments - even on highways and dirt strips - if the pilots had "knowledge and training for the specific location".
Based on the Boeing 777's potential flight time, one popular list shared on the internet showed the locations of 634 airfields in 26 countries where the missing MH370 could have touched down.
To receive an inbound 777 in a state of emergency, an airstrip would normally need to meet several requirements, he said.
The surface of the runway, be it cement or dirt, must be hardened to take the weight of the jet's wheels and be long enough to allow for adequate braking.
"But of course, you can also land on a relatively soft surface and brace yourself for big bumps, if you don't care whether the landing gear or the plane can fly again," Gao said.
Any relatively large and flat area without high hills or tall buildings immediately in front of it could be used as a landing area, potentially adding tens of thousands more locations to the list.
"Large airports are equipped with sophisticated communications systems and supportive facilities such as lighting to make sure that every take-off and landing would be successful. If the purpose was to land the plane once and for all, most facilities are not necessary," Gao said.
One possibility to explain the disappearance of flight MH370 is that it landed at a private airstrip or on a military base and for political or other reasons, its arrival has not been made public.
"This is a wild guess, but with the information released by Malaysian authorities, anything is possible," Gao added.
Yang Xiaoguang, an aeronautics scientist at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, agreed with Gao that it was feasible the plane had landed on a small or temporary airstrip.
But he said it would take at least six months of work on the ground to prepare a suitable strip that could safely take such a huge aircraft. "You would need quite a few workers and machines to even the ground, if the site was chosen at a remote area," he said.
"To carry out such a task without it being detected is hard to believe, but that's the best we can hope for the passengers on board and their families."
Yang said contradictions between the Malaysians' early statements on the plane's disappearance and their more recent comments had made the Chinese aviation community suspicious that not all relevant information had been made public.
"We have a strong feeling that some information has been held back," he said.
Fresh confusion over Malaysia Airlines jet as authorities reveal new possible timeline of cockpit events
Hunt expands deep into northern and southern hemispheres
PUBLISHED : Monday, 17 March, 2014, 11:42pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 18 March, 2014, 11:14am
Angela Meng [email protected]
Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein shows two maps with the search corridors for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet. The areas stretch from Kazakhstan to the southern Indian Ocean. Photo: Reuters
The last words heard from missing Malaysia Airlines jet may have been uttered before any of the plane's communication systems were disabled officials said last night, revealing a new possible timeline of events in the cockpit and casting further doubt about who may be to blame for the jet's disappearance.
Malaysian Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said yesterday the last communication from the plane - "All right, good night" - had been uttered by co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid.
Attempts to piece together exactly what happened in the final known moments of the aircraft came as the hunt for flight MH370 was expanded deep into the northern and southern hemispheres.
Investigators say the Boeing 777 was deliberately diverted during its overnight flight and flew off-course for hours. Investigators have refused to rule out hijacking, sabotage or pilot suicide for the plane's disappearance and were last night continuing to check the backgrounds of all 227 passengers and 12 crew members - in addition to the ground crew - for personal problems, psychological issues or links to terrorists.
Despite the ongoing probe, the Chinese ambassador to Malaysia Huang Huikang this morning told a press conference that China can "rule out the suspicion of any Chinese passengers engaging in terrorist or sabotage activities on board the MH370 flight".
China "conducted meticulous investigation into all the (Chinese) passengers, and did not find any evidence for sabotaging activity," Chinese state broadcaster CCTV quoted Huang as saying.
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said last night that finding the plane was still the main focus, and he did not rule out that it might be discovered intact.
“The fact that there was no distress signal, no ransom notes, no parties claiming responsibility, there is always hope,” Hishammuddin said at a news conference.
Malaysian Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said yesterday that an initial investigation indicated that the last words ground controllers heard from the plane - “All right, good night” - were spoken by the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid.
A voice other than that of Fariq or the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, would have been clearest indication yet of something amiss in the cockpit before the flight went off-course.
Malaysian officials had earlier said that the words came after one of the jetliner’s data communications systems — the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) — had been switched off, suggesting the voice from the cockpit may have been trying to deceive ground controllers.
However, Ahmad said that while the last data transmission from ACARS — which transmits plane performance and maintenance information — came before that, it was still unclear at what point the system was switched off, making any implications of the timing murkier.
The new information opened the possibility that both ACARS and the plane’s transponders, which make the plane visible to civilian air traffic controllers, were turned off at about the same time. It also suggests that the message delivered from the cockpit could have preceded any of the severed communications.
Malaysia yesterday appealed for help from countries with radar and satellite data, as Australia, China, Indonesia and Kazakhstan deployed military and civilian resources.
Twenty-six countries were scouring sea and land for the Boeing 777 aircraft that disappeared 10 days ago with 239 people, 154 of them Chinese, on board.
"For countries in search corridors, we are requesting radar and satellite information, as well as specific assets for the search and rescue operation," Malaysia's acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said. "We are asking them to share their land, sea and aerial search and rescue action plans with the Rescue Coordination Centre here in Malaysia, so that we can coordinate the search effort."
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang asked during a phone call with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak that Malaysian officials provide more detailed and accurate information and better coordinate with all parties, according to the Chinese government website.
China has merchant ships, as well as other vessels, involved in the search and has mobilised additional planes and 21 satellites. Australia has dispatched three additional military aircraft, and the US has sent one more aircraft to join the search. French investigators joined Chinese aviation officials to work with Malaysia Airlines and the nation's Department of Civil Aviation.
At least one aviation expert called the scope of the search without equal in terms of area, the number of personnel and equipment deployed, and the number of countries directly or indirectly involved.
"As far as we know the scale of the search for MH370 is indeed unprecedented,'' said Harro Ranter, president of Aviation Safety Network, a non-profit group that tracks aircraft accidents. "Searches may have lasted a long period of time - like Air France 447 [in 2009] and an Adam Air B737 in 2007 - but search parties did have a broad idea of where to look since debris had been located."
After more than a week of anger and confusion voiced by passengers' families who have faulted the accuracy of information shared by officials, Malaysian authorities said the country had been co-operating with the FBI, Interpol, and other international law-enforcement agencies since day one.
"Our priority has always been to find the aircraft," Hishammuddin said. "But we also have a responsibility not to release information until it has been verified by the international investigations team. It would be irresponsible to deploy substantial assets merely on the basis of unverified and uncorroborated information."
On Sunday, Najib called off the week-long search for wreckage in the South China Sea and other areas on MH370's scheduled flight path after satellite data showed that the plane had turned sharply westward. Najib called the plane's disappearance a "deliberate act".
Suspicion has fallen on the pilots because of their aviation experience. Investigators have not ruled out hijacking, sabotage, pilot suicide or mass murder, and are checking the backgrounds of all 227 passengers and 12 crew members, as well as the ground crew, to see if links to terrorists, personal problems or psychological issues could be factors.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
__________________________________________________________
Hands on the deck
Twenty-six countries are now involved in the massive international search for the Malaysia Airlines jet that disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board. They include not just military assets on land, at sea and in the air, but also investigators and the specific support and assistance requested by Malaysia, such as radar and satellite information.
Here’s a look at major countries and their response:
MALAYSIA
Malaysia, which is co-ordinating the search, has deployed about 18 aircraft and 27 ships, including the submarine support vessel MV Mega Bakti, which can detect objects at a depth of up to 1,000 metres.
AUSTRALIA
Australia has sent two AP-3C Orion aircraft, one of which is searching the waters to the north and west of the Cocos Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, and plans to deploy two more. Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that all Australian agencies “are scouring their data to see if there’s anything they can add to the understanding of this mystery”.
CHINA
An official with the Chinese Civil Aviation Authority says the missing plane did not enter Chinese airspace. The Chinese defence ministry and foreign ministry didn’t immediately respond to questions on radar information. China has deployed nine navy ships and civilian patrol vessels and a variety of fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, along with a team of experts dispatched to Malaysia.
UNITED STATES
A P-8A Poseidon, the most advanced long-range antisubmarine and anti-surface warfare aircraft in the world, has been searching the Indian Ocean. The US Navy has also deployed the destroyer USS Kidd with two MH-60R helicopters.
INDONESIA
Indonesian Air Force spokesman Hadi Tjahjanto says military radars on Sumatra Island found no trace of the jet and that data requested by the Malaysian government has been handed over. He says that search efforts have shifted from the Strait of Malacca to the corridor stretching from northern Sumatra to the Indian Ocean.
PAKISTAN
The head of the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authoritysays radar recordings shared with Malaysia found no sign of the jet.
INDIA
India put its search operations in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal on hold at weekend but continues to coordinate with Malaysia about possible new search areas.
OTHERS
Other nations involved are Thailand, Bangladesh, Brunei, France, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Britain, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
Associated Press
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Three million people join crowdsourcing satellite hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines jet
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 18 March, 2014, 11:48am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 18 March, 2014, 12:13pm
Agence France-Presse in Washington
Students walk past a giant mural featuring missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 displayed on the grounds of their school in Manila. Three million people have joined an effort led by a satellite operator to locate the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. Photo: AFP
Three million people have joined an effort led by a satellite operator to locate the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, in what may be the largest crowdsourcing project of its kind.
The satellite firm DigitalGlobe said on Monday that its search area now has some 24,000 square kilometres and that more images are being added daily, including a new area in the Indian Ocean.
The company said more than three million people have participated in the programme, with some 257 million “map views” and 2.9 million areas “tagged” by participants.
The plane went missing early on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew aboard, spawning a massive international search across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean that has turned up no trace of wreckage.
Malaysia's acting Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein shows maps of the northern search corridor. Photo: AP
DigitalGlobe activated its crowdsourcing platform called Tomnod on March 11, inviting the public to look at the imagery from its five high-definition satellites to help in the search.
The response was so great it overloaded the system’s computers for a time last week.
The company uses an algorithm called CrowdRank to determine the most promising leads, paying close attention to overlap where people tagged the same location.
“DigitalGlobe’s expert analysts will examine the tags to identify the top 10 or so most notable areas and share the information with customers and authorities,” a statement said.
“DigitalGlobe has direct contact with the US government and there is close and continuous coordination on this and many other world events.”
Largest in history?
Although no definitive records are kept on crowdsourcing, this effort is likely one of the largest in history, and Digital Globe said it was bigger than the relief effort for Typhoon Haiyan last November in the Philippines.
“There are projects with as many people but perhaps not in as short a time span as this,” said Lea Shanley, a researcher who studies crowdsourcing at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars.
“While this crowdsourced effort is unlikely to find the missing Malaysia Flight 370, it may help to identify where the aircraft is not located, thus saving critical time for the professional image analysts and responders.”
The search turned up no definitive evidence, but conversation among the volunteer searchers was robust. Several claimed to have located a plane.
“Looks like a plane shape, but i doubt. Similar shape in map-tile 112075, also near by river..think this is drowned trees,” wrote one person identified as Rasande Tyskar Youness Mikou.
Another using the moniker Alice von Malice responded, “Youness, it looks a bit too small, but definitely shaped like a plane.”
Several people tagged an area that appeared to have floating seats and debris.
Other searchers said they located what appeared to be a plane, a boat, oil slicks and even “a Jesus statue.” Some pointed to what appeared to be large numbers of oil slicks.
Some volunteers pointed out that the satellites are not like surveillance cameras with a constant video feed of the Earth’s surface but only take snapshots of segments, meaning they would have to get lucky to find the missing Boeing 777.
Science by crowdsourcing
While crowdsourcing is seen as a means for hotel and restaurant reviews on sites like Yelp, scientists have found ways to use the power of many sets of eyes and ears.
A study released last week found volunteer counters who examined Nasa lunar images did just as well in identifying individual craters as scientists with five to 50 years of experience.
Stuart Robbins of the University of Colorado, who led the study, said it provides “evidence that we can use the power of crowdsourcing to gather more reliable data from the moon than we ever thought was possible before.”
Shanley said that while crowdsourcing was used mainly in the commercial sector, it has come into wider use for public efforts such as disasters.
Crowdsourcing may have helped responders in 2012 after Superstorm Sandy in the eastern US and was also used during the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake. But crowdsourcing also pointed in the wrong direction after last year’s Boston Marathon bombings.
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In a crisis response, Shanley said, “you’re dealing with very big data sets, and there’s a lot of noise that needs to be filtered out.”
She said effective use of crowdsourcing needs hefty computing power which can separate good leads from bad ones, and that this is improving.
Shanley noted that crowdsourcing in the public sector is evolving from simply reporting data - such as the US Geological Survey’s “did you feel it?” campaign for earthquakes - to more analytics by the crowd.
“As technology improves we are seeing people moving to get volunteers helping with data analysis, and with problem solving,” she said.
Beijing rules out sabotage by MH370's Chinese passengers, sends ships to Indian Ocean locations
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 18 March, 2014, 11:27am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 18 March, 2014, 2:14pm
Adrian Wan in Kuala Lumpur and Stephen Chen in Beijing
Chinese ambassador to Malaysia Huang Huikang, inset against a picture of Chinese Navy's missile frigate "Mianyang". Photo: Xinhua
No individuals or groups had raised any political demands over the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, said China's ambassador to Malaysia on Tuesday.
Ambassador Huang Huikang also said that China had ruled out the possibility of terrorist or sabotage activity by any of its 153 nationals on board the Boeing 777-200ER, which cut off communication with controllers and fell off civilian radar screens in the early hours of March 8 while en route from Kualua Lumpur to Beijing.
China had "conducted meticulous investigation into all the (Chinese) passengers, and did not find any evidence of sabotage activity," Huang told a press briefing in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday morning.
As the search enters its 10th day, China is focusing on eliminating one of the possible "corridors" where the missing plane might have flown to and landed, Huang said.
"The key now is to narrow the search area and eliminate one of the two corridors," Huang said, adding that China had started searching the areas where the northern corridor falls within Chinese territory.
A helicopter takes off from Chinese Navy's warship Jinggangshan to search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in this March 11, 2014 photo. Photo: Reuters/China News Service
Malaysian authorities said on Sunday that the plane's last satellite contact - at 8.11am on March 8 - revealed it flew more than seven hours after dropping off civilian radar. Two flight corridors are now the focus of the search - one from northern Thailand to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and a southern corridor from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.
Meanwhile, China said it was dispatching its military and civilian ships taking part in the maritime search to two suspected locations in the Indian Ocean as of 8am on Tuesday morning.
“There are major changes in our search strategy and plans due to the change of situations. The forces will head in two opposite directions, one northward and the other southward, starting today," a press official at the China Maritime Search and Rescue Centre in Beijing told the Post on Tuesday morning.
But she declined to reveal further details, saying "the intelligence is constantly changing, so is the arrangement."
A story in the PLA Daily, official newspaper of the Chinese military, said the Chinese military and civilian ships searching the Bay of Thailand in the past week had ended a standby and were heading to Singapore for regrouping and preparation before they sail to the two new search locations in the Indian Ocean.
A map by China Communication News shows the two new search areas for Chinese vessels in the operation to locate the missing MH370. Photo: China Communication News
China Communication News said on Tuesday that four Chinese ships and three helicopters from the fleet were charged with searching a 120,000-square-kilometre area in the Bay of Bengal, west of the Andaman Islands, and another five ships and three helicopters would focus on a 180,000-square-kilometre, narrow stretch of waters southwest of Indonesia's Sumatra and Java islands.
Huang trod carefully while commenting on the investigation and search efforts led by Malaysia so far. He repeated China's frustration with the Malaysian authorities' insufficient response and information releases over the missing flight, but also praised them for their efforts.
"The Malaysian government has insufficient capabilities, technologies and experience in responding to the MH370 incident, but they did their best," Huang said at the press briefing.
"Our main problem now is that there is a chaos of information. All sorts of speculation, even rumours, are flying around, making it impossible for one to think," Huang said.
The chaos arises partly from the unprecedented mysteries surrounding the missing flight, and partly from the inexperience on the part of Malaysian authorities, he said.
Scammers try to make money selling Malaysia Airlines jet ‘information’ to journalists
Sketchy characters have been reported selling dubious photos and information
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 18 March, 2014, 3:39pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 18 March, 2014, 4:14pm
Satish Cheney in Kuala Lumpur
Journalists pose questions to Malaysian Defence Minister and Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein (2nd from right) at Sunday's news conference in a Kuala Lumpur hotel. Photo: AFP
Selling anything from air traffic radar photos to accident litigation advice, some unscrupulous individuals have been attempting to make a quick buck from journalists covering the Malaysia Airlines flight 370 story in Kuala Lumpur.
Outside the media centre at Sama Sama Hotel near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, a special correspondent working for the South China Morning Post was approached by a woman, claiming to be Indonesian, who said she could introduce an American lawyer with experience in dealing with aviation accidents.
“You pay money, he talk,” said the woman, who looked to be in her mid-40s.
She said the US lawyer was in town to represent some of the families of the 227 missing MH370 passengers. The airplane also had 12 crew.
A man claiming to be the “Indonesian” woman’s brother, who was more conversant in English, soon joined the conversation and said he could arrange a meeting.
He gave an Indonesian mobile number and kept pressing for this reporter’s contact details. When dialled later on, the number was not in service.
The pair were vague as to why they were in Malaysia. The woman seemed to indicate she had business in the country, while the man seemed to think he was on holiday with his sister.
Both initially said they were at the hotel waiting for their driver to pick them up, but eventually said goodbye and simply walked off.
A local fixer in Kuala Lumpur said that in recent days there had been many con men trying to sell “information” and even radar pictures. “There are many of them here. Be careful, don’t talk to them,” he said.
A cameraman and a correspondent from a news agency in based in Europe said they had been approached by such scammers as well.
One con man was allegedly selling a photo of a radar scan for US$1,000 and planned to hand it to the highest bidder among television networks.
A hotel security guard, who refused to be named, said: “They are just trying their luck because they don’t know that most of the good media from overseas won’t buy from them.”
Reporters and their news crews were only issued media passes almost a week after the media centre had opened. However the media passes have no attached photos or names on them.
The lack of security at the media centre has already led to theft, with some journalists losing their cameras and other devices. The Malaysian authorities have advised the press to be vigilant.
Missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370: Hunt for missing jet hampered by lack of international cooperation
Background checks on all 154 Chinese nationals did not uncover any evidence suggesting they were involved in hijacking or an act of terrorism, officials say
Andrew Buncombe
Kuala Lumpur
Tuesday 18 March 2014
Fears are growing that the hunt for missing Flight MH370 is being hampered by failures by many of the countries involved to work together on the search.
10 days after the aircraft disappeared, Thailand's military said yesterday that its radar detected a plane that may have been the Malaysia Airlines jet, minutes after its communications went down, but did not share the data earlier because officials “did not pay any attention to it” and were not specifically asked for it.
Air Vice Marshal Montol Suchookorn admitted Thai authorities could not be sure the aircraft picked up by the radar was the missing plane carrying 239 passengers and crew, but the new information raised further questions about the effectiveness of search efforts, which are being coordinated by Malaysian authorities.
Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.40am Malaysian time on 8 March, destination Beijing. The plane’s transponder, which allows air traffic controllers to identify and track it, stopped communicating at 1.20am.
At 1.28am, Thai military radar “was able to detect a signal, which was not a normal signal, of a plane flying in the direction opposite from the MH370 plane,” back toward Kuala Lumpur, Montol said. The plane later turned right, towards the Malacca strait.
When asked why it took so long to release the information, Montol said "…we did not pay any attention to it. The Royal Thai Air Force only looks after any threats against our country," adding that Malaysia's initial request for information in the early days of the search was not specific.
Relatives desperate for information on the fate of loved ones on board the missing jet have reportedly threatened to go on hunger strike if the authorities in Kuala Lumpur are not more forthcoming.
“What we want is the truth,” one woman said, after a meeting with Malaysian authorities, according to the BBC. “Don’t let the passengers become the victims of a political fight.”
Speaking yesterday, the official leading the hunt for missing Flight MH370 dismissed criticism voiced by officials in China and the US that Malaysia had itself been reluctant to share information with foreign governments. He said such was the desire to find the plane, that Malaysia had shared information with other countries that could potentially weaken its national security.
“The entire search area is now 2.24 million square nautical miles. This is an enormous search area,” said Malaysia’s Transport Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein. “And it is something that Malaysia cannot possibly search on its own. I am therefore very pleased that so many countries have come forward to offer assistance and support to the search and rescue operation.”
The search now covers more than 2.2 million nautical square miles – an area the size of Australia. At least 25 countries are involved in the operation. Yet there still remains not a single physical trace of the plane or the people who boarded eleven days ago.
Officials were last night still searching along two arcs that cut north and south through swathes of Asia. It is believed that it was from somewhere along this line that the final “ping” satellite signal from the plane was sent. Amid speculation about which way the plane might have turned, officials say both areas remain equally important to investigators.
Mr Hussein spoke as investigators continued to focus attention on both the passengers and crew of the plane, searching for any clues as to who may have been responsible for diverting the jet off course. Over the weekend, officials said they believed the actions of the plane as it veered from its planned route and turned sharply West, were consistent with the intentional action of someone onboard.
Mr Hussein said Aust ralia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea were sending additional hardware to search in the massive southern Indian ocean. He said he had also spoken with US defence secretary Chuck Hagel, given the US’s search and rescue capabilities. He said he had also spoken with his counterparts in China, which had also vowed to help search in China itself and along the so-called southern corridor.
Meanwhile, checks into the background of the more than 150 Chinese citizens on board the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner have uncovered no links to terrorism, the Chinese ambassador in Kuala Lumpur said.
The remarks will dampen speculation that Uighur Muslim separatists in far western Xinjiang province might have been involved with the disappearance of the jet.
At least 26 countries are now assisting in the search for the plane, intensifying challenges of co-ordinating ground, sea and aerial efforts.
Additional reporting by agencies
Families threaten hunger strike unless more information is released about missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
Tuesday 18 Mar 2014 8:31 am
A relative of a missing Chinese passenger shows journalists in Beijing a piece of paper with the words ‘Hunger strike protest, Respect life, Return my relative, Don’t want become victim of politics, Tell the truth’ (Picture: AP)
Family members of Chinese passengers who were travelling on the missing MH370 flight have said they will go on hunger strike if more information is not released by Malaysian officials.
The majority of those on the Malaysia Airlines plane, which went missing 11 days ago, were from China and many relatives in the country have now grown tired of waiting for answers.
‘Relatives are very unsatisfied. So you hear them saying “hunger strike”,’ said Wen Wancheng, whose son was on the flight, which had 239 people on board.
‘Now we have no news, and everyone is understandably worried. The relatives say they will go to the (Malaysian) embassy to find the ambassador.’
A widespread search is underway to find the wreckage of the missing plane (Picture: MME/Getty)
The families have been meeting Malaysia Airlines officials on a regular basis in Beijing but have grown frustrated with the lack of progress.
‘Since they haven’t given us the truth about those people’s lives, all of us are protesting,’ said an unnamed woman standing outside the hotel room where the meeting was held.
‘All the relatives are facing mental breakdowns.’
The investigation into the missing plane has now turned its attention to the pilots of the jet, and yesterday it was revealed that the search area now covers about 15 per cent of the planet’s surface.
US military base, South Asian airports in MH370 pilot’s simulator: reports
Yahoo! and agencies March 18, 2014, 6:40 pm
A Malaysian newspaper is reporting that investigations into the flight simulator, seized from the home of one of MH370's missing pilots, included software for five practice runways around the Indian Ocean, where the desperate search for the plane is continuing.
The Berita Harian is reporting that five runways were programmed into Captain Zaharie Shah's homemade flight simulator that was taken by police for analysis last Saturday.
The simulator was reassembled at the federal police headquarters in Bukit Aman, where experts conducted the checks.
"Among the software we checked so far is the Male International Airport in Maldives, three airports in India and Sri Lanka, and one belonging to the US military base in Diego Garcia. All have a runway length of 1,000 metres," a source told the Malay daily.
After 10 days of searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, investigators have now conducting extensive background checks on the 239 people on board the plane, including the pilots, crew and passengers.
Investigators are looking into the possibility that the plane could have landed at an airport where control might have been lax, or that it landed on sea, hills or an open space.
China finds no terror link to nationals on Malaysia plane
Intelligence checks on the 153 Chinese passengers aboard a missing Malaysian airliner produced no red flags, China said Tuesday, as investigators struggled to clarify events that led to the plane's dramatic disappearance.
Eleven days after contact was lost with Flight 370 and its 239 passengers and crew, there has been minimal progress in determining what transpired when the Boeing 777 was deliberately diverted off its flight path and where it might have gone.
Two thirds of those on board were Chinese, and Malaysia had asked the authorities in Beijing to run an exhaustive background check on all their nationals.
Particular attention had been paid to one passenger from China's Muslim ethnic Uighur minority, separatist elements of which have become increasingly militant in their struggle against Chinese rule.
On Tuesday, China's ambassador to Malaysia Huang Huikang said no evidence had been found that would link anyone to a possible hijacking or terrorist attack on the jet, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Huang also said China had begun searching for the aircraft in its own territory but gave no further details.
The potential search area, which was only properly identified after a week of fruitlessly scouring the South China Sea, is enormous -- stretching from the depths of the southern Indian Ocean, up and over the Himalaya and into central Asia.
A pilot of a Royal Malaysian Air Force CN-235 aircraft shows a map during a search and rescue operation for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane over the waters at Malacca straits. Photo: AP.
China's state media has been vocally critical of Malaysia's handling of the missing plane investigation, saying valuable time and resources were wasted in the hours and days immediately after the aircraft disappeared on March 8.
On Monday, Premier Li Keqiang asked his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak to provide more detailed information about the missing flight "in a timely, accurate and comprehensive manner".
Malaysian officials insist they are investigating all the passengers and crew, but for the moment the focus is clearly on the two pilots -- Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid.
- A confusing timeline -
On Monday the head of Malaysia Airlines, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, revealed that initial investigations indicated the last recorded words from the cockpit -- "All right, good night" -- were spoken by the co-pilot, Fariq.
Identifying the voice had been deemed crucial because officials initially said the words were spoken after one of the Boeing's two automated signalling systems -- Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) -- had been manually disabled.
But Ahmad Jauhari contradicted that chronology, saying that the ACARS could have been switched off before or after Fariq spoke.
It could even have been disabled at the same time as the plane's transponder, which might possibly point back towards a general mechanical malfunction rather than human intervention.
The confusion is likely to fuel frustration with Malaysia's investigation, which has repeatedly stumbled in presenting contradictory information.
According to unidentified US officials cited by the New York Times on Tuesday, investigators believe the first turn the plane made away from its intended flight path was not effected manually but by a computer system that was most likely programmed by a person in the cockpit.
Use of the Flight Management System, which directs the plane from point to point according to the pre-submitted flight plan, would reinforce the theory that the plane was deliberately diverted by one of the pilots.
Twenty-six countries are now involved in searching for the jet after satellite and military radar data projected two dauntingly large corridors the plane might have flown through.
The northern corridor stretches in an arc over south and central Asia, while the other swoops deep into the southern Indian Ocean towards Australia.
At the far northern end of the arc, the central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan said there had been no sightings of the jet in their airspace.
Malaysia has deployed its navy and air force to the southern corridor, where Australia is taking the lead in scouring a vast section of ocean off its west coast.
A Vietnam Air Force search and rescue aircraft have yet to find any sign of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. Photo: Reuters.
-- An impossible search --
In a reflection of the enormity of the task, the US Pacific Fleet said it was withdrawing a guided missile destroyer from the search, because the area was simply too big for such a vessel to make an effective contribution.
Two long-range patrol aircraft -- a P-8A Poseidon and P-3C Orion -- would shoulder the main operational burden from now on, said Fleet spokesman Commander William Marks.
"The Indian Ocean goes so far, there probably aren't enough ships and aircraft in the world to search every inch of it," Marks told CNN.
"If you take a map of the United States ... it's kind of like saying, all right, I want to find a person somewhere between New York and California. I just don't know where they are," he said.
Malaysian police have searched both pilots' homes and are examining a flight simulator that Captain Zaharie, 53, had assembled at his home.
Associates say Zaharie was an active supporter of Malaysia's political opposition headed by veteran politician Anwar Ibrahim.
In a highly controversial case, Anwar was convicted of sodomy -- illegal in Muslim Malaysia -- just hours before MH370 took off.
Friends say Zaharie exhibited no extreme views, and Anwar said Tuesday he was "disgusted" by the suggestion that the captain may have sabotaged the plane as an act of political revenge.
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