Latest update: Seven months into the disappearance of the Malaysian flight MH370, people are questioning the accuracy of information given so far.
The company Inmarsat, which has been giving officials information about the whereabouts of the plane, says in a latest report that it is not completely convinced that the plane is in the ocean…there are too many factors at play to know for sure, according to a report in The Epoch Times.
The aircraft remained operational for at least seven hours after the loss of contact as the satellite terminal continued to transmit messages during this period, it said.
Meanwhile, Aron Gingis, head of the Australian environmental consultancy company Management Consolidated, believes that it is possible to find the missing plane by using ‘contrails’ [condensation trails] techcnology - examining cloud changes for evidence of vapour trails that form behind aircraft. This process has previously been used to locate shipwrecks in the northern Pacific Ocean, reported ibtimes.
Wife holds on to hope; believes husband is still alive
GO Phoenix 'clueless' at 670 sqkm
Latest update: Australian authorities released their first update on the latest underwater probe for missing flight MH370 Wednesday, saying more than 670 square km had been searched without success.
The Boeing 777, which is believed to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean after inexplicably veering off course, is now the subject of a renewed underwater hunt far off western Australia.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading the search, said the Malaysian-contracted vessel GO Phoenix was continuing to conduct underwater search operations.
The underwater search began on October 6 and followed a survey to map the seabed. About 127,000 square kilometres of the search zone has been mapped so far.
Sophisticated vehicles attached to the ship by tow cables have been programmed to detect the biggest parts of the aircraft likely to be in one piece, such as engines and fuselage.
"GO Phoenix continues to conduct underwater search operations," the ATSB said.
"At one point, operations were halted in order to recover the deep tow vehicle and rectify a cable connection fault. Operations were quickly recommenced."
GO Phoenix is searching the area considered the most likely final resting place of the plane, based on detailed analysis of the aircraft's satellite communications.
A second ship, the Fugro Discovery, is conducting sea trials and is expected to join the search mid next week in the second most likely area, officials have said. [AFP]
Why wife of missing plane passenger refuses $64,000
The wife of a New Zealand-born passenger onboard the missing MH370 has refused to accept the compensation extended to her by the Malaysian Airlines.
Danica Weeks’ husband Paul was one among the 239 people on board the ill-fated Boing 777 that has been missing since March 8.
According to a report in ibtimes.com, Malaysian Airlines offered her $64,000 [Dh235,091] as compensation, which she has rejected.
Weeks, who lives in Australia with her two children, told ‘Perth Now’ that she received legal advice not to accept the money. Reportedly, she was offered the amount on the condition that she completes a detailed questionnaire, which she surmises “will go to their insurance company so the insurance company knows what they’re up for”.
Voice370 – a group that Weeks helped set up for the families of the missing plane’s passengers - have also criticized the offer, stating “no amount of money could compensate for the families’ losses’.
Emirates President Tim Clark raises doubts about satellite handshakes
The head of Emirates Airlines, one of the world's largest carriers, said there was no need to improve modern aircraft tracking systems even after a commercial jet disappeared earlier this year, according to ‘Spiegel’ magazine.
The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 on a Boeing 777 jet in March has led to calls for real-time tracking of aircraft, and an airline-industry-led task force is looking at ways of improving tracking.
Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airline, told the German online magazine that modern planes already had the necessary equipment but measures should be taken to ensure pilots can't turn off tracking devices.
"The Boeing 777 is already one of the most advanced planes in the world, with the most modern communications systems," Clark was quoted as saying in an interview published on Thursday.
He said it was already difficult to turn off current tracking systems such as transponders and the ACARS system, which some suspect may have occurred in the case with MH370, but that plane manufacturers should work to make them impossible to switch off.
"We have to ensure that ACARS runs continuously. If that happens, then we can monitor planes over the seas, and then we wouldn't need extra tracking systems."
The task force looking at plane tracking, due to give recommendations in September, said draft proposals would be delayed, possibly until December.
International search efforts have centred around the plane's suspected crash site in a remote part of the Indian Ocean, identified via vague satellite signals, have so far failed to find any trace of the plane. Clark said this was unusual.
"Experience shows that when a plane crashes into water, you can always find something. But in this instance, we haven't found a single scrap of evidence that the plane is there. Just the satellite handshakes, and even those I have my doubts about," he said.
A report published by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau on Wednesday suggested that the underwater search should be prioritised further south within the wide search area it had previously identified.
Clark said Malaysia Airlines faced an uphill struggle in restoring its fortunes after the twin tragedies of MH370 and MH17, which was shot down over eastern Ukraine in June.
"As an industry we have to help the company get back on its feet. But with such a damaged brand, it will be incredibly tough."
Slow left, spiralling
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 took a slow left turn as it spiraled into the Indian Ocean after its fuel ran out. That is the conclusion of an interim report concluded Wednesday, pointing investigators towards the southern section the current search zone.
Investigators on Wednesday confirmed that the priority search area for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has moved further south as end-of-flight scenarios indicated it may have spiralled into the Indian Ocean.
Seven months after the Boeing jet disappeared with 239 people onboard, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, leading the hunt for the jet, said ongoing analysis had helped refine the zone where an underwater search began this week.
"The latest analyses indicates that the underwater search should be prioritised further south within the wide search area for the next phase of the search," it said.
Despite an extensive hunt for the plane, which was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it mysteriously turned southwards on March 8, no sign of it has been found.
Aviation experts had little to go on besides the satellite communications from the plane, information they have used to pinpoint a search area in the vast ocean off western Australia.
They believe the best hope of finding the plane is within the seventh arc, or the final satellite "handshake" from the plane, estimated to be when it was in descent.
The ATSB said Wednesday that when all elements of the analysis so far were taken into account, it indicated that the aircraft "may be located within relatively close proximity to the arc", although further south than initially thought.
An ATSB report in June had put the priority search zone above an underwater feature named Broken Ridge, more than 2,000km west of Perth. But the new analysis puts it south of this feature, confirming earlier suggestions.
Analysis of the satellite data and end-of-flight simulations was ongoing, and this work could result in further changes to where the search was conducted, the ATSB added.
"The simulator activities involved fuel exhaustion of the right engine followed by flameout of the left engine with no control inputs," it said in an update on the flight path analysis.
"This scenario resulted in the aircraft entering a descending spiralling low bank angle left turn and the aircraft entering the water in a relatively short distance after the last engine flameout."
The analysis of communications and flight data has been used to determine the first underwater areas to be scoured, with the first ship starting its scan of the ocean depths this week.
The Malaysia contracted GO Phoenix is using sophisticated sonar technology experts hope will detect large pieces of debris such as an engines or fuselage. It will be joined two other ships in the weeks ahead.
Black-box alert... What Airbus, Boeing say
The world's two largest commercial aircraft manufacturers are at odds over equipping airliners with black boxes that eject in the event of a crash, making them easier to find.
Questions about whether airliners should be equipped with deployable black boxes arose after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared in March. The Boeing 777 with 239 people on board still has not been found. The purpose of the safety board's forum was to explore new technologies that would better enable planes like Flight 370 to be tracked and found.
Airbus is nearly ready to equip airliners with data and cockpit voice recorders that eject so that they can float to the ocean's surface instead of becoming trapped in wreckage, Pascal Andrei, the French aircraft maker's chief product security officer, told a forum of the US National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday.
Boeing, Airbus' chief rival, has no plans to include such recorders in its planes, Mark Smith, an accident investigator for the aircraft maker, told the safety board. Such recorders are prone to ejecting accidentally and creating a safety risk, he warned.
Black boxes are equipped with an emergency locator transmitter that would be easier to detect if they are floating on the water's surface.
"We can say today that we are quite confident on this solution," Andrei said Tuesday. Airbus is working with its suppliers, he said.
"Something would come very soon after some more studies and assessments," he said.
A slide presentation provided by Andrei indicated Airbus plans to include the deployable recorders in its A350 and A380 airliners, which are designed for long-haul flights over ocean.
Earlier report
The hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 entered a new phase on Monday with the resumption of the underwater search for the aircraft, officials said.
Until now experts had been concentrating on mapping the seabed in the southern Indian Ocean search zone where the plane carrying 239 people is thought to have crashed in March.
The Malaysian-contracted GO Phoenix vessel has now arrived in the area and begun its work scanning the ocean floor for the jet, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said.
"The vessel GO Phoenix, with equipment and experts provided by Phoenix International, has arrived in the search area in the southern Indian Ocean, and commenced underwater search operations," the bureau said in a statement.
The GO Phoenix will tow sensitive underwater equipment over the seabed in the hunt for irregularities, such as large parts of the aircraft that could still be in intact like the engines and fuselage, the ATSB has said.
"With this system, detailed high resolution images of the search area will be collected and analyzed in real time... in an effort to locate the wreckage of MH370," Phoenix International said in a statement late last month.[AFP]
EARLIER REPORTS:
Follow search in underwater world 'live'
The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 resumes today, with the search vessel GO Phoenix is expected to arrive at its designated search area in the southern Indian Ocean.
Having completed an extensive mapping of the sea bed – with startling discoveries, the investigators believe it is now finally a matter of time before the wreckage of MH370 and clues to what happened are revealed.
Investigators hunting the wreckage will scan the ocean floor in waters as much as 6.4km deep in the southern Indian Ocean today.
To follow the search ‘live’: Click here
City under the sea
Remnants of volcanoes, towering ridges and deep trenches have been discovered on the seabed of the southern Indian Ocean by experts mapping the underwater terrain as part of the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.
Australian authorities released the three-dimensional images on Friday, revealing for the first time details about the seafloor where efforts are being concentrated to find the jet, which is presumed to have crashed into the sea on March 8.
The area in which the plane is thought to have gone down is remote and largely unexplored, and officials are conducting an intensive survey of the seabed before the underwater probe for the plane can begin.
"The recently acquired high-resolution bathymetry (underwater survey) data has revealed many of these seabed features for the first time," the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the agency leading the search, said in a statement.
"It is also revealing finer-scale seabed features that were not visible in the previous low-resolution, satellite-derived bathymetry data."
The MH370 search area far off Western Australia includes the seabed on and around an extensive, mountainous ridge that once formed the margin between two geological plates.
The expanse has many of the features typically found in such areas, with the tectonic movements having created now-extinct volcanoes, rugged ridges up to 300 metres high and trenches some 1,400 metres deep compared to the surrounding sea floor, the ATSB said.
The bureau said the identification of these features would assist in navigation during the underwater search phase for the Boeing 777, which is due to begin next month.
Australia has vowed to do all it can to find the last resting place of MH370, which was carrying 239 people, many of them Chinese passengers, when it went missing during a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
The plane is believed to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean far off the west coast of Australia after mysteriously diverting off-course, but a massive air, sea and underwater search has failed to find any wreckage.
Experts have used technical data to finalise its most likely resting place ahead of next month's underwater search.
For the complete theory click here: Diego Garcia and MH370 conspiracy of 'lost' island in middle of it all