Malaysia disputes report that missing plane flew on for hours
Malaysia disputes report that missing plane flew on for hours
(about 3 hours later)
KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia’s government categorically denied a report on Thursday suggesting a missing passenger jet flew on for four hours after vanishing from air traffic control systems, as the search entered a sixth day and speculation and theories about the plane’s fate continued to mount.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysian authorities said they’ve made little progress in the search for a passenger jet that went missing nearly a week ago over the Gulf of Thailand in a case that has become more difficult by the day.
Earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. investigators now believe Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 remained in the air four hours after its last confirmed location. That report, quoting two unnamed sources familiar with the U.S. investigation, cited evidence from flight data from the Boeing 777’s engines that are automatically transmitted to the ground.
In a press conference, Malaysia’s defense minister and a Malaysia Airlines chief executive played down or dismissed a series of leads that had led to frenzied speculation about the plane’s fate. In what officials here describe as an unprecedented aviation mystery, it remains unknown whether the plane is on land or in water, on the east of the country or west, or even somewhere far beyond.
But the Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines said this was not true.
“We have looked at every lead. In many cases, in fact all the cases, we have not found anything positive,” said Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s defense minister and acting transport minister. “Without debris, we can’t feel we are making any progress.”
“These reports are inaccurate,” Malaysia’s acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference. “The last transmission was at 01:07, which indicated that everything was normal.”
Though the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has at times felt chaotic — a mix of rumors and red herrings — it felt on Thursday for the first time like the trail had gone cold.
He said officials from Rolls Royce and Boeing had been in Kulala Lumpur working with Malaysia Airlines since the start of the investigation. “These issues have never been raised,” he said.
Earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. investigators now believe that MH370 remained in the air four hours after its last confirmed location. That report, quoting two unnamed sources familiar with the U.S. investigation, cited evidence from flight data from the Boeing 777’s engines that are automatically transmitted to the ground.
But Malaysian authorities categorically denied that report, and said engine data was unavailable after the plane disappeared from civilian radar at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, six days ago. The last transmission from the engines came at 1:07 a.m., Malaysia Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said — 26 minutes after take-off from Kuala Lumpur.
During all commercial flights, engines send bursts of data back to the ground at key intervals — during takeoff, for instance, and once reaching cruising altitude. Both Boeing and engine maker Rolls Royce have been in Kuala Lumpur working with the airline, and neither received data after 1:07 a.m., Ahmad said.
Similarly, the New Scientist reported on Tuesday that the engines transmitted just two packets of data, one while it was on the ground in Kuala Lumpur and one while it was climbing on its way to Beijing.
Similarly, the New Scientist reported on Tuesday that the engines transmitted just two packets of data, one while it was on the ground in Kuala Lumpur and one while it was climbing on its way to Beijing.
“Rolls Royce and Boeing did not receive any further transmissions after the last transmission at 01:07,” said Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, chief executive of Malaysia Airlines.
“The last transmission was received at 1:07,” Ahmad told reporters. “It said everything is operating normally.”
Flight MH370 was initially supposed to follow a northern path to Beijing. Search teams from as many as 12 nations have been searching waters to the east and west of Malaysia. Earlier Thursday, attention focused on satellite images from a Chinese agency that showed three large objects in the water south of Vietnam. But by midday, Malaysian authorities were downplaying the likelihood that those objects belonged to the plane.
A Rolls-Royce spokeswoman refused to comment on any aspect of data, saying only, “We continue to monitor the situation and offer Malaysia Airlines our support.”
“There is nothing,” Malaysia’s civil aviation chief told reporters in Kuala Lumpur, according to the Associated Press. “We went there, there is nothing.” Vietnamese officials said they’d already searched that area thoroughly as well.
Flight MH370 was initially supposed to follow a northern path to Beijing. Search teams from as many as 12 nations have been scouring the waters to the east and west of Malaysia. Earlier Thursday, attention focused on satellite images from a Chinese agency that showed three large objects in the water south of Vietnam. But by midday, Malaysian authorities were dismissing the likelihood that those objects belonged to the plane.
Their efforts are significantly complicated by the fact that the images were taken on Sunday, the day after the plane disappeared. Given the time elapsed, it is possible the objects could have since sank or drifted far from where they were spotted.
Both Malaysian and Vietnamese teams returned Thursday to the coordinates of the large objects but found nothing.
For such big news, the pictures were released with little fanfare. It was posted on the website of a relatively unknown Chinese agency called the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, and went unnoticed by many for several hours.
Even as viewed by satellite, the objects didn’t seem to match that of a plane wreck. The largest of the objects was roughly the size of a basketball court, with no smaller debris around. The Chinese embassy in Malaysia notified the Malaysian government on Thursday saying the images — released by a relatively unknown Chinese agency — were made public by mistake and did not relate to MH370.
There was no immediate confirmation that the unidentified pieces were part of the plane’s wreckage, and a Malaysian military spokesman said he wasn’t aware of the report.
“We are pretty much back at square one,” said Richard Aboulafia, a vice president of analysis at the Teal Group Corporation in Fairfax, Va.
It is possible the objects could have since drifted far from where they were spotted, complicating the search.
Aboulafia said the combination of transponder and communications failure, together with the lack of debris and the possibility the plane turned around, suggested some kind of hostile takeover by passengers or crew.
No one yet knows if the little white blobs in images are in fact the debris. Malaysian authorities say they have vessels on the way to check out the site, according to news outlets, but their efforts will be significantly complicated by the fact that the images were taken way back on Sunday, the day after the plane disappeared.
Malaysia said it intended to again expand the search field for the missing plane. But it remains unclear whether the search is best focused to the east or west of the Malay peninsula. The plane vanished over the eastern side, above the Gulf of Thailand, but Malaysia later found a military radar blip suggesting an unidentified aircraft tacking west. The radar information has since been handed to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board for analysis, a process that is not yet completed.
Since the short statement was posted with the pictures late Wednesday night, the Chinese government has said little further. China’s civil aviation chief, Li Jiaxiang, told reporters Wednesday morning that there was no confirmation the floating objects came from the missing aircraft.
Hishammuddin said it remained a possibility the plane had turned around, diverting to the west after disappearing from radar. But he added that the search was still focused around the location where the plane vanished. Of 46 ships involved in the search, 26 are in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, and 17 on the western side, in the Strait of Malacca and Andaman Sea.
Chinese officials did not explain why the information was not posted to the agency’s Web site until Wednesday, nor did it explain the poor quality of images.
“Our main effort has always been in South China Sea,” Hishammuddin said.
Chinese investigators have been limited by the images available from their satellites, said Chi Tianhe, a Chinese satellite researcher at a government-affialiated institute analyzing the images.
Malaysia has been criticized for at times releasing partial or contradictory information about the flight and search. The criticism has been most pointed from China, which had 153 citizens on the flight. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said Thursday that Beijing had “asked the relevant party to enhance coordination” and find the plane as quickly as possible.
Analysts found the three possible debris objects on images taken at 11 a.m., March 9, but so far have not had access to earlier images, according to Chi, who works at the government-affiliated thinktank Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“First this situation is unprecedented,” Hishammuddin said, in deflecting the criticism. “MH370 went completely silent while over the open ocean. We are in the middle of a multi-national search involving many countries. This is a crisis situation. It is a very complex operation. And it has not always been easy.”
More sharing and cooperation between countries is needed to make further progress, Chi said. Chinese satellites only captured images after they were pointed at the area and their images are limited to set intervals during which they passed overhead during orbit, but other countries may have captured images of other areas from other times, he said. NASA and the U.S. government in particular, he pointed out, have considerable satellite assets to draw on.
But, he added, “We have not done anything that could jeopardize this search effort.”
Chi said it took Chinese investigators roughly one full day to finish analyzing images taken from the 120,000 square kilometers area.
William Wan in Beijing contributed to this report.
Liu Shaochuang, confirmed their organization has been tapped to analyze the satellite images and said leaders at the institute sent out a request at 2 p.m., March 11 to other researchers at the Institute asking for additional manpower to help look through the images. He also recommended that his and other agencies should publish publicly the satellite work they have done so far so investigators can pinpoint more quickly the possible debris.
Additional clues about the Chinese satellite effort existed in the archived statements of the second Chinese organization, CRESDA, an obscure center within the government that is in charge of satellite imagery. On Tuesday, a full day before the satellite images were released, the center posted a short explanation of its work in support of the search.
Of note, the exact satellite, Gaofen-1, which took the pictures of the possible debris is mentioned in the statement.
The center said the quality of images they had received so far were “pretty good,” and raises questions about why the photos released Wednesday night are so grainy. In recent days, Chinese and other countries have harshly criticized Malaysia for withholding information during the search. But China has also been guarded in the past about revealing the extent of defense capabilities such as satellite surveillance.
In the Tuesday statement, CRESDA said it began tapping eight satellites on March 8, the day after the plane disappeared, for the search effort and received a large amount of data and images in the three ensuing days.
The satellites were focused on the area of last known coordinates — over the South China Sea, south of Vietnam’s Ca Mau peninsula — and the images were taken before reports emerged from the Malaysian military that the airplane may have turned headed toward the Strait of of Malacca.
From March 8 until noon of March 11, the center said, “We received data from Gaofen-1, Shijian-9, Ziyuan-3, etc, covering 120,000 square kilometers. The quality of the images is pretty good and is being prepared to be inspected further.”
Those inspections appear to have led to Wednesday night’s release of satellite images of possible debris taken at 11 a.m., March 9 at the coordinates “105.63 E, 6.7 N.” The three floating objects spotted are of three different sizes: 79 feet by 72 feet, 46 by 62 feet, and 43 by 59 feet.
The pieces are fairly big but not implausible in comparison to the overall size of the plane. (Here are precise dimensions for the the Boeing 777-200: Wing span 200 feet; length 209 ft; tail height 61 ft; interior cabin width 19 feet; diameter 20 feet.)
Out of the 239 passengers onboard, 154 were from China or Taiwan, and China has received much criticism from its public in recent years for not doing enough to protect its citizens abroad.
China, which has expressed mounting frustration with the Malaysia-led investigation, had announced Monday night on its Defense Ministry Web site that it had deployed a total of 10 satellites to help in the search, purging them of their original commands.
Meanwhile, the new radar information divulged by Malaysia prompted its officials to ask India to join the search on the theory that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 might have flown west toward the Indian Ocean after it vanished from civilian air-traffic control systems at 1:30 a.m Saturday en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Hussein, Malaysia’s defense minister and acting transport minister, said 43 ships and 40 aircraft were scouring more than 35,000 square miles to the east and west of the Malay Peninsula for the aircraft.
Malaysia’s air force chief, Gen. Rodzali Daud, said Wednesday an “unidentified plot” was seen on military radar intermittently for about 45 minutes after the plane disappeared. He said the radar trail ended at a point over the sea 200 miles northwest of Penang, on Malaysia’s west coast.
“It’s a plot. An unidentified plot,” Rodzali said. “I’m not saying it’s MH370.”
However, aviation experts are questioning the quality of the radar data, which would indicate that the plane made a sharp left turn and flew hundreds of miles in the wrong direction.
“There are issues about the quality of this information,” Steven B. Wallace, former director of the Office of Accident Investigation at the Federal Aviation Administration, said when asked whether the turnaround scenario was plausible. He referred to the fact that the military radar did not pick up the specific information about the flying object that a functioning transponder would have provided.
If the information is accurate, Wallace said, it could suggest an unauthorized takeover of the plane’s controls.
“What happened here, if you believe this information [from the Malaysian military], was that the changing of course appeared to happen pretty much concurrently with the loss of the transponder,” Wallace said. “That has to suggest that control of the airplane was taken over by someone unauthorized.”
Malaysia’s uncertainty about the data largely explains why the search for evidence has been so chaotic. Authorities here still don’t know whether the plane carrying 227 passengers and nine crew members crashed soon after 1:30 a.m. or went on a ghost flight across the country and perhaps beyond.
The final words heard by air-traffic controllers from the cockpit before the plane vanished were “All right, good night,” relatives of the passengers were told Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. The routine transmission shed no light on what happened to the Boeing 777.
Malaysian authorities have faced mounting criticism about their transparency and their handling of the case, and they struggled Wednesday to say why they were only now revealing the military data. A day earlier, Malaysian military officials gave a series of conflicting statements about whether the plane had indeed tacked west.
Malaysia’s military said it noticed the recorded data only after the fact, not in real time.
Malaysia is hoping for U.S. assistance in determining whether the radar plot is that of Flight 370. On Wednesday, Malaysia shared both its civilian and military data with the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board.
Both military and civilian authorities track aircraft using radar, but all radar has a limited range. In this case, land- or ship-based military radar may have been better positioned to pick up a plane that went off course.
One reason the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines jet is so mysterious is that its transponders stopped communicating when it was east of the Malaysian peninsula. Transponders send signals that identify the plane.
The radar “plot” cited by Malaysian authorities is essentially a chart showing the course of the flying object.
The search has turned into one of the most difficult on record for a downed airliner, sparking rumors and conspiracy theories. In the aftermath of a comparable aviation disaster — the 2009 disappearance of an Air France flight over the Atlantic — the first baggage and bodies were found after five days.
Some aviation experts say that even Malaysia’s current search area is not large enough. If the plane indeed tacked west, it would have had enough fuel to make it to India.
India’s coast guard joined the effort Wednesday, dispatching an aircraft based in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to look for the missing plane, officials said. Nothing has been found, they said.
“Right now it’s like a murder mystery with no body,” said David Gallo, director of special projects at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who co-led the search for Air France Flight 447. “They should calculate how far the plane could have gone with the fuel it had, and that is the radius for the search. Because that is the realm of possibility, absurd as it sounds.”
The Malaysia Airlines red-eye flight bound for Beijing disappeared from civilian radar about one hour after takeoff, while over the Gulf of Thailand. Both the gulf and the Malacca Strait to the west are heavily trafficked sea lanes and are relatively shallow. If the plane traveled farther west, though, it could have ended up in the Andaman Sea or Bay of Bengal, where depths can reach nearly three miles.
“Unless we get the aircraft and the black box, it is unlikely we are able to answer a lot of speculative issues,” Hishammuddin, the defense minister, said Wednesday, referring to the cockpit recorders.
With India, Japan and Brunei now involved, Hishammuddin said 12 countries were searching for the plane.
Hishammuddin rejected criticism of Malaysia’s coordination of the search, which he said was an “overwhelming” and “unwavering” operation.
China, which had 153 passengers on board, has been the most vocal critic of Malaysia’s response, and an editorial Wednesday in the state-run Global Times asked whether the Malaysian military “was hiding anything on purpose.”
“We hope Malaysia can face its own shortcomings, and cooperate with China with a more open and candid attitude,” the editorial said.
At a hotel in Beijing, Malaysia’s ambassador to China and several officials from Malaysia’s civil aviation department met with relatives of passengers on the flight. The officials faced a barrage of questions about why they have struggled to pinpoint the last known location of the aircraft.
“We are here for five days, you see our situation, and we are here only for one thing,” one of the relatives said. “We wait for the information, and we wait for a miracle.”
Wan and Denyer reported from Beijing. Harlan in Kuala Lumpur. William Branigin and Ashley Halsey III in Washington and Xu Jing, Liu Liu and Gu Jinglu in Beijing contributed to this report.
