Tag Archives: Malaysian Flight

Teams searching for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have likely been looking in the wrong place – Reports

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Teams searching for missing aircraft Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have very likely been looking in the wrong place, a new Australian government report confirmed.

“Given the high confidence in the search undertaken to date, the experts agreed that the previously defined (search) area is unlikely to contain the missing aircraft,” a spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said in a statement.
The report recommended that, based on new analysis, a new area to the northeast of the current search area should be searched, approximately 25,000 square kilometers.
However, Australian Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester said the search would not be extended without new evidence.
“The information in the ATSB report … does not give a specific location of the missing aircraft,” he said. “We are very close to completing the 120,000 square kilometer underwater search area, and we remain hopeful that we will locate the aircraft.”
The ATSB’s report, released on Tuesday, is the result of a “First Principles Review” meeting which took place in Canberra, Australia, between 2 to 4 November.
Report: MH370 spiraled into sea
It said there was a more than 95% likelihood the plane was not in the vast area — the 110,000 square kilometers — which had already been searched.
Extending the search area another 25,000 square kilometers to the north would give an even better chance of finding the plane, the November meeting agreed.
“Based on the analysis to date, completion of this area would exhaust all prospective areas for the presence of MH370,” the report said.
The new search area was determined by analysis of new debris, flight simulations and MH370’s last satellite communications.

More than 20 pieces of debris found

It has been almost three years since Malaysian Airlines 370 vanished during a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, in March 2014.
Although many questions remain around its disappearance, its final fate has been more or less confirmed — new satellite analysis in November described how MH370 was spiraling fast towards the sea in its final moments.
Two more pieces of debris, found in March 2016, were also deemed to have "almost certainly" come from MH370, according to the ATSB.
Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014. As of October 2016, authorities have definitively linked three pieces of debris to the plane, while four other pieces are believed to "almost certainly" come from the missing aircraft. A flaperon from a Boeing 777 was found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean in July 2015. Authorities later confirmed the debris came from MH370.
Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014. As of October 2016, authorities have definitively linked three pieces of debris to the plane, while four other pieces are believed to “almost certainly” come from the missing aircraft. A flaperon from a Boeing 777 was found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean in July 2015. Authorities later confirmed the debris came from MH370.
Since 2014, more than 20 pieces of debris which are likely or confirmed to come from the plane have been found, mostly on African beaches and islands.
The search for MH370 is due to finish in January or February 2017, after the original 120,000 square kilometers has been searched.
But the families of the plane’s passengers have called for the investigation to continue, with some traveling to Madagascar and Mauritius to encourage locals to search for debris.

Investigators begin final sweep of MH370 search area

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Investigators looking for debris of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 are making their last sweep of the search area in the Indian Ocean, Australian authorities have said.

Flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board.

Most of the crew were Chinese enroute to Beijing from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

The whereabouts of the missing plane had become one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

In a statement issued to journalists on Wednesday in Sydney, Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), said the search was set to be wrapped up in January.

Malaysia, Australia and China agreed in July to suspend the search if the plane was not found or new evidence uncovered once the search area had been scoured.

Australia is leading the search for the plane at the request of the Malaysian government.

The JACC said the search vessel Fugro Equator, on Monday left Fremantle in Western Australia for its last journey to the 120,000-sq-km patch of sea floor that had been the focus of the 1,000-day hunt for the vanished Boeing 777.

The vessel would revisit sites of previous sonar contact to examine them more closely with a submersible drone.

Chinese involvement in the search diminished this week, as the country’s sonar-equipped vessel ended its role in the hunt and returned to Shanghai.

The Dong Hai Jiu 101 joined the search in February, initially contributing deep-sea sonar scans before being reconfigured in October to conduct dive missions with its own remotely operated submersible.

A spokesperson for the search team, Dan O’Malley, said China continues to take part in “regular consultation and briefings” for the missing plane.

The undersea search had found no trace of the plane, although three pieces of debris found on the beaches of Mauritius, Tanzania and the French island of Reunion had been confirmed to be from MH370.

Investigators are also examining several other pieces found in Mozambique and South Africa.

Frustrated relatives of missing passengers have demanded that the search be extended to the coastline of east Africa.