_9M-MRO_-_MSN_28420_404_(9272090094).jpg)
Boeing_777-200ER_Malaysia_AL_(MAS)_9M-MRO
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (also known as MH370 or MAS370) was a scheduled international passenger flight operated by Malaysia Airlines that disappeared on 8th March 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to its planned destination, Beijing Capital International Airport.
Kuala Lumper International Airport - Passenger Terminal today.
Kuala Lumper International Airport
Beijing Capital International Airport
Beijing Capital International Airport
The crew of the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft last communicated with air traffic control (ATC) around 38 minutes after takeoff when the flight was over the South China Sea. The aircraft was lost from ATC radar screens minutes later, but was tracked by military radar for another hour, deviating westwards from its planned flight path, crossing the Malay Peninsula and Andaman Sea. It left radar range 200 nautical miles (370 km) northwest of Penang Island in northwestern Peninsular Malaysia.
This diagram shows MH370 veer off course from it's designated destination of Beijing International Airport.
Secondary surveillance radar (SSR) returns around Kuala Lumpur International Airport, from a recording shown on the AAT stand at the LIMA show. Air traffic controllers have little experience of tracking aircraft from primary radar returns. (Photo: Chris Pocock)
The contention that MH370 "turned back" over the South China Sea (SCS), crossed the Malaysian peninsula, turned again over Penang and headed over the Andaman Sea, is based mostly on the analysis of primary radar recordings from the civilian ATC radars at the Kuala Lumpur (KUL) Area Control Centre (ACC) and at Kota Bahru on the east coast of Malaysia; plus (apparently) the air defense radars operated by the RMAF south of Kota Bahru at Jerteh, and on Penang Island off the west coast. It was not until these primary radar recordings were analyzed that a second search area to the west and northwest of the Malaysian peninsula was created, four days after the disappearance. After a further three days, the Inmarsat "handshake" calculations caused the search focus for MH370 to shift again, to an area of the Indian Ocean thousands of miles from Malaysia. Secondary surveillance radar (SSR) reporting from MH370 ceased shortly after it crossed from Malaysian into Vietnamese airspace over the SCS. Three radar industry and ATC sources in southeast Asia consulted by AIN confirmed that air traffic controllers rely almost exclusively on SSR and receive little or no refresher training on the use of primary radar after their initial qualification. Military radar controllers also rely on SSR to identify civilian air traffic.
The Andaman Sea Basin extends approximately 1,250 km from Myanmar to Sumatra and was formed by the oblique converging plate boundaries of the Indian Oceanic and Southeast Asia tectonic plates, which was initiated in the early Cretaceous and has continued to the present day. The effects of the easterly subduction of the Indian Ocean Plate beneath the Southeast Asia plate created a classic island arc system with the formation of six discreet geotectonic units, which include (from west to east through the Andaman area) the foredeep (Andaman Trench), inner slope/accretionary prism, island arc/outer structural high, fore-arc basin, volcanic-arc and back-arc basin.
The Andaman–Nicobar subduction system is the northwestern segment of the Sunda subduction system, where the Indian Plate subducts beneath the Sunda Plate in a nearly arc-parallel direction. The entire segment ruptured during the 2004 great Andaman–Sumatra earthquake (Mw=9.3).
With all 227 passengers and 12 crew aboard presumed dead, the disappearance of Flight 370 was the deadliest incident involving a Boeing 777 and the deadliest in Malaysia Airlines' history until it was surpassed in both regards by Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down while flying over conflict-stricken Eastern Ukraine four months later. The combined loss caused significant financial problems for Malaysia Airlines, which was renationalised by the Malaysian government in August 2014.
Just some of the passengers and crew who were on the flight that vanished into thin air..
The search for the missing airplane, which became the most expensive in aviation history, focused initially on the South China Sea and Andaman Sea, before analysis of the aircraft's automated communications with an inmarsat satellite indicated a possible crash site somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean. The lack of official information in the days immediately after the disappearance prompted fierce criticism from the Chinese public, particularly from relatives of the passengers, as most people on board Flight 370 were of Chinese origin. Several pieces of marine debris confirmed to be from the aircraft washed ashore in the western Indian Ocean during 2015 and 2016. After a three-year search across 120,000 km2 (46,000 sq mi) of ocean failed to locate the aircraft, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre heading the operation suspended its activities in January 2017. A second search launched in January 2018 by private contractor Ocean Infinity also ended without success after six months.
French gendarmes and police inspect a large piece of plane debris which was found on the beach in Saint-Andre, on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, July 29, 2015. French prosecutor announced on Thursday that we can say with certainty that the wing part found on Saint-Andre beach was from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
Prisca Bigot | STR | Reuters
French police officers carried a piece of airplane debris on the island of Réunion last year. The debris later proved to have been from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.Credit...Lucas Marie/Associated Press
Ocean Infinity
Seabed Constructor will shortly arrive in the Port of Fremantle for resupply and crew rotation. After a brief stop it will head straight back to site for a final phase before the weather limits Ocean Infinity’s ability to continue working this year.
Since operations commenced at the end of January 2018, the Ocean Infinity team has searched nearly 80,000 km², covering up to 1,300 km² per day.
Oliver Plunkett, Ocean Infinity’s CEO, said:
“As the team head in to port after another six weeks’ hard work, I am pleased to say our technology has performed exceptionally well throughout the search and that we have collected significant amounts of high quality data in which we have full confidence. The results from the highly challenging Broken Ridge feature are particularly impressive.
Whilst it’s disappointing there has been no sign of MH370 in the Australian Transport Safety Bureau search area and further north, there is still some search time remaining. Everyone at Ocean Infinity remains absolutely determined for the remainder of the search.”
Black box technology that automatically sends flight data for storage in the cloud will end the need for air crash investigators to search for wreckages to find out what happened.
The technology, which has been developed by satellite company Inmarsat, is to be installed by Airbus in the wake of a series of aircraft vanishing while flying over the ocean.
By beaming real-time data via a satellite to the airline's control centre, it will mean investigators will be able to find out what happened on board an aircraft within moments of an incident. Currently it can take days and sometimes weeks before a black box flight recorder is recovered from a crash site and downloaded if they occur over the ocean or in remote areas.
In the case of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared 8th March 2014 while enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing along with 239 passengers and crew, the black box has not been recovered.
Data from Inmarsat revealed that aircraft had flown south over the Indian Ocean for almost six hours after it vanished from radar over the Andaman Sea.
Although black box flight recorders carry beacons to help search teams close in on their location, they only have enough battery power to last a month before they run out.
In the wake of the disappearance of MH370, the aviation industry faced calls to back its black box information in the cloud.
Oliver McGee, a former scientific adviser to Bill Clinton, said storing flight information on the internet would mean key data would not be lost.
Captain McMillan said the technology could also allow staff on the ground to intervene to prevent an accident if they were to spot something starting to go wrong in the data sent back.
She added: 'We are delighted that Airbus has selected SwiftBroadband-Safety for tis A320 and A330 aircraft families.
'This is testament to SwiftBroadband-Safety's ability to deliver an always-on, always-secure cockpit solution for the digital age, with expanded connectivity and reliability.'
Relying mostly on analysis of data from the Inmarsat satellite with which the aircraft last communicated, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) proposed initially that a hypoxia event was the most likely cause given the available evidence, although no consensus has been reached concerning this theory among investigators. At various stages of the investigation, possible hijacking scenarios were considered, including crew involvement, and suspicion of the airplane's cargo manifest; many theories have also been proposed by the media. The Malaysian Ministry of Transport's final report from July 2018 was inconclusive, but highlighted Malaysian ATC's failures to attempt to communicate with the aircraft shortly after its disappearance. In the absence of a definitive cause of disappearance, air transport industry safety recommendations and regulations citing Flight 370 have been intended mostly to prevent a repetition of the circumstances associated with the loss. These include increased battery life on underwater locator beacons, lengthening of recording times on flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders, and new standards for aircraft position reporting over the open ocean.
Hypoxia, by definition, is the lack of sufficient oxygen in the blood, tissues, and/or cells to maintain normal physiological function. Many different factors can cause this state of oxygen deficiency. Breathing air at reduced barometric pressure, malfunctioning oxygen equipment at altitude, drowning, pneumonia, extremes of environmental temperatures, and carbon monoxide are just a few of the causes of oxygen deficiency in the body that results in hypoxia. The most common causes of hypoxia in aviation are: flying, non-pressurized aircraft above 10,000 ft without supplemental oxygen, rapid decompression during flight, pressurization system malfunction, or oxygen system malfunction.
Hypoxic Hypoxia
This is the most common form of hypoxia encountered in aviation and occurs at the lung level. This type of hypoxia is commonly called altitude hypoxia. Pilots may experience hypoxic hypoxia when flying at altitude in an unpressurized aircraft. With increasing altitude, the molecules of oxygen in ambient air get farther apart and exert less pressure per square inch. The percentage of oxygen does not change as we ascend; however, the partial pressure of oxygen in ambient air decreases as we go to altitude. In other words, with increasing altitude, the partial pressure of oxygen gets lower and the lungs cannot effectively transfer oxygen from the ambient air to the blood to be carried to all tissues in the body.
Hypemic Hypoxia
This type of hypoxia is caused by the reduced ability of the blood to carry oxygen. To the pilot, this means that, even though there is an adequate supply of oxygen to breathe, the blood's capacity to carry the oxygen to the cells has been impaired. There are a variety of reasons for this to happen. Anemia, hemorrhage, hemoglobin abnormalities, sulfa drugs, nitrites, and carbon monoxide interfere with the ability of the blood to carry oxygen, reducing the amount of oxygen the blood can carry to the cells. The most common cause for hypemic hypoxia in aviation is when carbon monoxide is inhaled because of aircraft heater malfunctions, engine manifold leaks, or cockpit contamination with exhaust from other aircraft. Hemoglobin bonds with carbon monoxide 200 times more readily than it bonds with oxygen.
Stagnant Hypoxia
This type of hypoxia occurs at the circulatory level. If the blood flow is compromised for any reason, then sufficient oxygen cannot get to the body tissues. To the pilot, this means, that even though there is an adequate supply of oxygen to breathe, it is not getting to the cells of the body tissues to support their metabolism. Decreased blood flow can result from the heart failing to pump effectively, arterial constriction pooling of the blood such as occurs during neurologic shock or from enlarged veins in the lower extremities. Stagnant hypoxia also occurs when the body is exposed to cold temperatures because the blood flow is decreased to the extremities. This may happen following a rapid decompression during flight or while operating an aircraft in cold weather conditions without cabin heating.
Histoxic Hypoxia
This type of hypoxia happens at the cell level. This means that the cell expecting and needing the oxygen is impaired and cannot use the oxygen to support metabolism. To the pilot, this means that even though there is an adequate supply of oxygen to breathe and that oxygen is being circulated by the blood, the cells are unable to accept or use the oxygen. Alcohol, narcotics, and cyanide are three primary factors that can cause histoxic hypoxia. Cyanide is one of the byproducts during the combustion of plastics. Hypoxia is easy to succumb to because the human body does not have an effective warning system against the threat. Many incidents and some accidents are "officially" attributed to the pilot's inability to detect hypoxic conditions, with the result that the pilot becomes unsafe because of compromised skills and judgment.
Hypoxia is a constant and dangerous companion while flying. The insidious nature of hypoxia means that you must constantly be suspicious of how you and your passengers feel. Once hypoxia is recognized, quick and decisive action means recovery is only seconds away. The key, then, to flying safely at altitude is to be able to: identify the flight condition in which you may become hypoxic, recognize your personal hypoxia symptoms, and to recover from hypoxia before you have gone beyond your ability or desire to help yourself.
Any failure of cabin pressurization above 10,000 feet (3,000 m) requires an emergency descent to 8,000 feet (2,400 m) or the closest to that while maintaining the Minimum Sector Altitude (MSA), and the deployment of an oxygen mask for each seat. The oxygen systems have sufficient oxygen for all on board and give the pilots adequate time to descend to below 8,000 ft (2,400 m). Without emergency oxygen, hypoxia may lead to loss of consciousness and a subsequent loss of control of the aircraft. Modern airliners include a pressurized pure oxygen tank in the cockpit, giving the pilots more time to bring the aircraft to a safe altitude.
Cabin pressurization is a process in which conditioned air is pumped into the cabin of an aircraft in order to create a safe and comfortable environment for passengers and crew flying at high altitudes. For aircraft, this air is usually bled off from the gas turbine engines at the compressor stage. The air is cooled, humidified, and mixed with recirculated air if necessary before it is distributed to the cabin by one or more environmental control systems, The cabin pressure is regulated by the outflow valve.
Crew
All 12 crew members—two pilots and 10 cabin staff—were Malaysian citizens.
The pilot in command was 53-year-old Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah from Penang. He joined Malaysia Airlines as a cadet pilot in 1981 and, after training and receiving his commercial pilot's licence, he became a second officer with the airline in 1983. He was promoted to captain of Boeing 737-400 airliners in 1991, captain of Airbus A330-300 in 1996, and captain of Boeing 777-200 in 1998. He had been a type rating instructor and a type rating examiner since 2007. Zaharie had a total of 18,365 hours of flying experience.
Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah
The co-pilot was 27-year-old First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid. He joined Malaysia Airlines as a cadet pilot in 2007; after becoming a second officer of Boeing 737-400 airliners, he was promoted to first officer of the Boeing 737-400 in 2010 and then transitioned to the Airbus A330-300 in 2012. In November 2013, he began training as first officer of Boeing 777-200 aircraft. Flight 370 was his final training flight and he was scheduled to be examined on his next flight. Fariq had accumulated 2,763 hours of flying experience.
Passengers
Of the 227 passengers, 153 were Chinese citizens, including a group of 19 artists with six family members and four staff returning from a calligraphy exhibition of their work in Kuala Lumper: 38 passengers were Malaysian. The remaining passengers were from 12 different countries. Twenty passengers, 12 of whom were from Malaysia and eight from China, were employees of Freescale Semiconductor. The passenger list was later modified to include two Iranian passengers travelling on stolen Austrian and Italian passports.
Calligraphy is a visual art relating to writing, it is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument: A contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious, and skillful manner"
Flight 370 was a scheduled flight in the early morning of 8th March 2014 from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China. It was one of two daily flights operated by Malaysia Airlines from its hub at Kuala Lumper International Airport (KLIA) to Beijing Capital International Airport scheduled to depart at 00:35 local time (MYT; UTC+08:00) and arrive at 06:30 local time (CST; UTC+08:00). On board were two pilots, 10 cabin crew, 227 passengers, and 14,296 kg (31,517 lb) of cargo. The planned flight duration was 5 hours and 34 minutes, which would consume an estimated 37,200 kg (82,000 lb) of jet fuel. The aircraft carried 49,100 kilograms (108,200 lb) of fuel, including reserves, allowing an endurance of 7 hours and 31 minutes. The extra fuel was enough to divert to alternate airports--Jinan Yaoqiang International Airport and Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport--which would require 4,800 kg (10,600 lb) or 10,700 kg (23,600 lb), respectively, to reach from Beijing.
Read the full transcript of the communication:
12:25:53 (MAS 370) Delivery MAS 370, good morning.
12:26:02 (ATC) MAS 370 standby and Malaysia Six is cleared to Frankfurt via AGOSA Alpha Departure six thousand feet squawk two one zero six [squawk refers to a transponder code assigned to a departing flight by air traffic controllers].
12:26:19 (ATC) ... MAS 370 request level.
12:26:21 (MAS 370) MAS 370, we are ready. Requesting flight level three five zero to Beijing.
12:26:39 (ATC) MAS 370 is cleared to Beijing via PIBOS A departure six thousand feet squawk two one five seven.
12:26:45 (MAS 370) Beijing PIBOS A six thousand squawk two one five seven, MAS 370. Thank you.
12:26:53 (ATC) MAS 370, welcome over to ground.
12:26:55 (MAS 370) Good day.
12:27:27 (MAS 370) Ground MAS 370 good morning, charlie one requesting push and start.
12:27:34 (ATC) MAS 370 Lumpur Ground, morning, push back and start approved runway 32 right exit via Sierra four.
12:27:40 (MAS 370) Push back and start approved 32 right exit via Sierra four POB 239 Mike Romeo Oscar.
12:27:45 (ATC) Copied.
12:32:13 (MAS 370) MAS 377 request taxi.
12:32:26 (ATC) MAS 37..... (garbled) ... standard route. Hold short Bravo.
12:32:30 (MAS 370) Ground, MAS 370. You are unreadable. Say again.
12:32:38 (ATC) MAS 370 taxi to holding point Alfa 11 Runway 32 right via standard route. Hold short of Bravo.
12:32:42 (MAS 370) Alfa 11 standard route, hold short Bravo MAS 370.
12:35:53 (ATC) MAS 370 Tower.
12:36:19 (ATC) (garbled) ... Tower ... (garbled)
(MAS 370) 1188 MAS 370, thank you.
12:36:30 (MAS 370) Tower MAS 370, morning.
12:36:38 (ATC) MAS 370, good morning. Lumpur Tower. Holding point... (garbled)... 10 32 Right.
12:36:50 (MAS 370) Alfa 10 MAS 370.
12:38:43 (ATC) 370 line up 32 Right Alfa 10.
(MAS 370) Line up 32 Right Alfa 10 MAS370.
12:40:38 (ATC) 370 32 Right, cleared for take-off. Good night.
(MAS 370) 32 Right, cleared for take-off MAS 370. Thank you. Bye.
The plane takes off at 12:41 am, and by 12:46 am passes from ground ATC to outbound radar control.
12:42:05 (MAS 370) Departure Malaysian three seven zero.
12:42:10 (ATC) Malaysian three seven zero selamat pagi [good morning] identified. Climb flight level one eight zero cancel SID turn right direct to IGARI.
12:42:48 (MAS 370) OK level one eight zero direct IGARI Malaysian one err three seven zero
12:42:52 (ATC) Malaysian three seven zero contact Lumpur Radar one three two six. Good night.
(MAS 370) Night one three two six. Malaysian three seven zero.
12:46:51 (MAS 370) Lumpur Control, Malaysian three seven zero.
12:46:51 (ATC) Malaysian three seven zero, Lumpur Radar, good morning. Climb flight level two five zero.
12:46:54 (MAS 370) Morning, level two five zero, Malaysian three seven zero.
12:50:06 (ATC) Malaysian three seven zero, climb flight level three five zero.
12:50:09 (MAS 370) Flight level three five zero, Malaysian three seven zero.
01:01:14 (MAS 370) Malaysian three seven zero, maintaining level three five zero.
01:01:19 (ATC) Malaysian three seven zero.
The last transmission by the plane's Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which relays key information on the plane's mechanical condition every 30 minutes, takes place at 1:07am.
01:07:55 (MAS 370) Malaysian... three seven zero maintaining level three five zero.
01:08:00 (ATC) Malaysian three seven zero.
01:19:24 (ATC) Malaysian three seven zero contact Ho Chi Minh 120 decimal nine. Good night.
01:19:29 (MAS 370) Good night, Malaysian three seven zero.
The last transmission from the plane's communication transponder is at 1:21 am, and it vanishes from ATC radar at 1:30am.
On March 24th, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the missing Malaysia Airlines fight, which took off March 8 from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing and hasn’t been heard from since, "ended in the Southern Indian Ocean." The loss of MH370 has for the first time turned the entire world’s attention to this region: Big enough to contain Russia twice, the southern Indian Ocean has been condemned to obscurity by its emptiness and inhospitality. The ongoing search for the wreckage — none of the 239 people on board is believed to have survived — is frustrated by the extreme remoteness and the harsh climate of the presumed crash zone, in the words of Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott, "as close to nowhere as it’s possible to be." Whoever or whatever caused the plane to crash here could not have found a more desolate locale. The southern Indian Ocean is "out of normal shipping lanes, out of any commercial flight patterns, with few fishing boats, and there are no islands. Of all the world’s large bodies of water, this may be the one least explored; to be lost at sea out there is nearly as lethal as being stranded in outer space.
Distance is hampering the search effort. The planes taking part in the search fly out from Perth, Australia, the closest city to a debris field floating in the ocean that may be MH370’s wreckage. But it’s still roughly 1,600 miles away, and the 8-hour round-trip flight from Perth limits the time available for actual reconnaissance. Not that there are other options besides Perth: There simply isn’t anything closer by — let alone inhabited lands. The closest spit of land is the French archipelago of Kerguelen, uninhabited but for a rotating staff of what must be the world’s most bored meteorologists. In the 19th century, the French government even decided against establishing a penal colony on the Delaware-sized island because it would be too cruel on the inmates. The only way off the Kerguelen is via a freighter, which takes 10 days to reach the nearest airport. (Kerguelen is also known, aptly, as Desolation Islands.)
The southern Indian Ocean is not only remote, but it has worse weather than just about any other place on the planet. Storms have hampered the search by grounding flights, reducing the usefulness of the handful of vessels in the area (including an Australian Navy ship and a Chinese icebreaker), and further dispersing and submerging much of the debris floating on the surface.
Storms are the rule rather than the exception in this part of the world, plagued by the Roaring Forties — the never-ending winds that howl around 40 degrees latitude south. The weather, combined with the fact that this zone, just north of Antarctica, is the only place where water can flow around the globe without hitting land, means that the waves are among the highest in the world. (Surfing is inadvisable.) That these are some of the deepest parts of the Indian Ocean, with a rugged and volcanic ocean floor, decreases the likelihood that the black boxes would be retrievable. All of which adds up to an almost impossible race against time: Those black boxes have limited battery life and will likely stop transmitting around April 7.
More than 106,000 sq km of the search area in the southern Indian Ocean have been surveyed. Photograph: Australian Transport Safety Bureau
The Indian Ocean covers 70,560,000 km2 (27,240,000 sq mi), including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf but excluding the Southern Ocean, or 19.5% of the world's oceans; its volume is 264,000,000 km3 (63,000,000 cu mi) or 19.8% of the world's oceans' volume; it has an average depth of 3,741 m (12,274 ft) and a maximum depth of 7,906 m (25,938 ft).
The new maps reveal the "priority" search area in the southern Indian Ocean
The floor of the ocean is dotted with the remains of extinct volcanoes, known as seamounts
There are also depressions on the seabed, some as deep as 1,400 metres
Making sonar maps is vital to ensure the deep-water vehicles into don’t plough into ridges and volcanoes. The equipment is pulled along just above the sea floor by a six-mile long armoured cable. The underwater search is the most complex search in history. They may find clues within months. Or they may never find the aircraft at all, this is the case as the plane is still lost..
Scientists had better maps of Mars than parts of the Southern Indian Ocean before recent search efforts began. The team looking for missing flight MH370 have revealed astonishing images of the seabed which show dramatic underwater terrain for the first time. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has used specialist sonar equipment to map out the new parts of the Southern Indian Ocean which are to be searched. The results have provided 3D pictures of the seabed which has never been seen before. They include extinct volcanoes and a 4,593 feet canyon at the bottom of the ocean. The collection of valuable new data from one of the most secret parts of the world is a by-product of the sombre search for the Boeing 777 which disappeared with 239 people on board. Until now, scientists had better maps of Mars than parts of the Southern Indian Ocean. The Malaysian Airlines plane vanished without trace on 8 March while flying from Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Twenty-six countries have helped look for the passenger jet, but no trace has been found. The team at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading the hunt for the plane, is using sonar to map the new "priority" search area. Then they will deploy two or three deep sea vehicles to begin the painstaking, inch-by-inch seabed search for wreckage. The “priority” area is based on the only piece of hard evidence investigators have, which is a series of brief, electronic “hellos” between the Boeing and a satellite. But the signals don’t give an exact location, just a very rough idea, so the smaller, “priority” area is still 23,200 square miles, about the size of Croatia.
MH370 breakthrough | Richard Godfrey knows where missing plane is | 7NEWS
Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah sat in front of his Microsoft flight simulator equipment..
17 JUL 2019 - French investigators probing the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 have discovered that a 89g (14st) load was added to the cargo list after the plane took off, according to reports.
The claim comes from French engineer Ghyslain Wattrelos, whose wife and two teenage children were among 239 people on board the Beijing-bound flight when it vanished after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on 8 March 2014. France is the only country still conducting a judicial inquiry into the crash, with two investigating magistrates looking into the deaths of Wattrelos' family. “A container was also overloaded, without anyone knowing why. The expert draws no conclusion. It may be incompetence or manipulation. Everything is possible. This will be part of the questions for Malaysians.” Earlier this month, French investigators said that flight data “lends weight” to the theory that “someone was behind the control stick when the plane broke up in the Indian Ocean”.
PDF Below - MH370 Cargo Manifest
The home flight simulator belonging to the pilot of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had a route plotted into it which ended in the Indian Ocean, officials have confirmed. "The MH370 captain's flight simulator showed someone had plotted a course to the southern Indian Ocean," Joint Agency Coordination Center (JACC) spokesman Scott Mashford confirmed to CNN in an email. He did not elaborate on who may have plotted the route. the FBI analyzed hard drives from a flight simulator the pilot had built using Microsoft Flight Simulator X software. The FBI was able to recover data points from the program that pointed to the southern Indian Ocean. Sakinab Shah, the captain's sister, continues to defend him amid the reports that he took the plane down in an elaborate murder-suicide. Even though an investigation by Malaysian police found no evidence that Zaharie Shah, a vastly experienced pilot, was suffering any personal or financial stresses at the time of the incident. Sakinab said that, according to Zaharie's wife and children, the simulator had not been working for at least a year before MH370's final flight.
The daily mail reports on PUBLISHED: 21:06, 28 July 2016 - There has been confusion over what exactly was found on the captain's flight simulator since New York Magazine reported last week that an FBI analysis of the device showed Mr Shah had conducted a simulated flight to the southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane vanished along a similar route. Sakinab stated that the simulator had not been working for at least a year..
Flight 370 was carrying 10,806 kg (23,823 lb) of cargo, of which four ULDs of Mangosteens (total 4,566 kg (10,066 lb)) and 221 kg (487 lb) of lithium-ion batteries are of interest, according to Malaysian investigators. Lithium-ion batteries can cause intense fires if they overheat and ignite, which has led to strict regulations on their transport aboard aircraft. A fire fuelled by lithium-ion batteries caused the crash of UPS Airlines Flight 6, and lithium-ion batteries are suspected to have caused a fire which resulted in the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 991, both were cargo aircraft.
Debris that has washed onto the Jamaique beach in Saint-Denis is seen on the shoreline of French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, August 3, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]
10 September 2018
A Chinese technology company has been using satellites to explore a claim that the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 crashed in a Cambodian jungle. Ian Wilson, a digital video producer from the UK, believes he has spotted the plane on Google Maps. Wilson says the Google Maps object, which lies around 60 miles west of Phnom Penh, is close in size to the Boeing 777-200. “I just thought I’d have a wander through. I work in digital video so I’m on Google Earth all the time,” he said. “So I was on there - a few hours here, a few hours there. If you added it up I spent hours searching for places a plane could have gone down.” Experts from Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co Ltd assembled ten satellites to zoom in on the high-altitude jungle but have found no sign of the plane. Sin Chansereyvutha, spokesman for Cambodia's State Secretariat of Civil Aviation, told Xinhua news agency: “First, there is not any evidence - information or data - to prove that it crashed in Cambodia. “Second, if this news was true, the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia would make a hotline call to us for cooperation, because in ASEAN we have a memorandum of understanding on cooperation and information sharing on search and rescue when there is a plane crash. “But the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia has not contacted us on this issue, so we conclude that this is false news.” Others have pointed out that Cambodia is 4,000 miles away from Reunion Island, where debris from the plane washed up, suggesting it went down in the Indian Ocean after all.
Reunion Island -
A Brief History
Little was known about the island, which was uninhabited prior to the arrival of the Portuguese, who landed here in 1513. In the 1640s, the island was occupied by the French, who claimed it as their own, renaming it Ile Bourbon. The island was renamed Réunion in the 18th century, and became prosperous, along with the nearby island of Mauritius, because it was on the shipping routes between Europe and Asia. Sugar plantations, worked by slaves imported from Africa, formed the major sector of the island’s economy. Slavery was abolished on December 20, 1848 (a date celebrated annually on the island), though indentured workers continued to be brought to Réunion from other places, predominantly South India. The island was a French colony until 1946 when it was granted the status of “Overseas Department.” Réunion is now one of the most far-flung parts of the European Union.
Piton de la Fournaise - One of the most iconic places of Reunion is the Piton de la Fournaise, a volcano located on the eastern side of Reunion. Currently, it’s one of the most active volcanoes in the world : the latest eruption happened on July 29, 2019 ! Don’t worry, it’s still safe to hike on the volcano between eruptions. Most of the time, you can at least hike to the base of the volcano. Because of the weather changes (extreme heat, rain, heavy fog) and the different types of rocks on the path, it can be a difficult hike, so be prepared. And for your safety, stay on the Pas de Bellecombe path!
Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean is an overseas department/region of France. It is located approximately 340 miles east of Madagascar and 109 miles southwest of Mauritius. As of January 2021, Réunion had a population of 858,450.
Réunion Island
Reunion Island is beautiful and untouched in many ways..
.png)
Large aerial panoramic of Langevin Waterfalls in south Reunion island.
The Langevin river is perfect for canyoning initiation, wonderfull sight on Grand Galet falls. An easy canyon with incredible landscape, a good one for discover the activity with friends, children and all the family… The right descent to begin canyoning on Reunion island with serenity!
The Kerguelen Islands
A French territory, this island group (known as Îles de la Desolation in French) is considered to be one of the most isolated places on Earth, being 3,300 km (2,051 mi) from the closest populated area in Madagascar. The islands group, along with Adélie Land, the Crozet Islands and the Amsterdam and Saint Paul Islands, are part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands.
The islands themselves are uninhabited but the main island houses around 45 to 100 scientists, engineers, and researchers as part of a French research effort. Port-aux-Français, a scientific base, is located on the eastern side of Grand Terre. These scientists study a wide range of areas from geology and biology to weather and climate. The island group gets its named from the French explorer Yves Joseph de Kerguelen de Trémarec who discovered the archipelago on February 12, 1772. The largest island in this group is named Grande Terre (French for “large land”) and is 6,675 km2 (2,577 sq mi) in area. Surrounding this large islands are around 300 smaller islands that collectively take the total area of the archipelago to 7,215 square kilometers (2,786 square miles).
The Kerguelen Islands
Kerguelen Islands
Approximately 2660 mi (4380 km) southwest of Perth, Australia, a group of small volcanic islands break the surface of the South Indian Ocean. Known as the Kerguelen Islands, the islands lie in what has been called one of the remotest areas in the world - a lonely bit of ocean roughly equidistant from Australia, Antarctica, and southern Africa.
Beaten by the winds of the �Furious Fifties�, a belt of westerly winds that whips around the Southern Hemisphere, the frigid, rocky islands are uninhabited, except for a handful of people who man research stations. There is no airport, although the islands are home to astronomical scanners and radar. The islands provide vital resting spots for migrating birds, and are home to several sensitive species, including fur and elephant seals and a variety of penguins.
On March 18, 2014 the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA�s Terra satellite passed over the South Indian Ocean and captured a rare cloud-free view of the Kerguelen Islands.
On that same date, a multinational team searched the waters roughly half way between Kerguelen and Perth for debris from Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370. The flight departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia heading for Beijing Capital International Airport on March 8. About an hour later it made contact with air traffic control before it was lost, with 227 passengers and 12 crew members aboard.
According to news reports, close scrutiny of images captured by multiple satellites have located up to 122 objects that could � potentially � be debris from the missing flight. As of March 26, however, a squadron made up of a dozen planes and five ships from multiple nations has been unable to definitively locate a single piece of wreckage attributable to that aircraft.
Details are seen for a liquid soap container label, marked Jakarta - Indonesia, that was part of newly-discovered debris washed onto the beach at Saint-Andre on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, July 31, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]
PUBLISHED: 10:24, 20 June 2016 - A child's Angry Birds bag and a Mensa laptop case believed to belong to the missing passengers of flight MH370 have been found on a beach in Madagascar. US lawyer Blaine Gibson has now found a series of other items on the same beach, which he believes are form the missing plane.
.jpg)
A single sandal (pictured) was also among the items found believed to belong to any of the 239 passengers. A number of bags have been discovered on the Nosy Boraha island this year and pictures have now been passed to Air Crash Support Australia
This appears to be a battered suitcase and is one of a series of bags found which suggests these are more than occasional items which have washed up by chance
The debris was found on Riake beach on the island of Nosy Boraha, off the coast of Madagascar in Africa
US officials believe the most likely explanation to be that someone in the cockpit of Flight 370 re-programmed the aircraft's autopilot to travel south across the Indian Ocean. Police searched the homes of the pilots and seized financial records for all 12 crew members, including bank statements, credit card bills and mortgage documents. On 2nd April 2014, Malaysia's Police Inspector-General said that more than 170 interviews had been conducted as part of Malaysia's criminal investigation, including interviews with family members of the pilots and crew. Media reports claimed that Malaysian police had identified Captain Zaharie as the prime suspect, if human intervention were eventually proven to be the cause of Flight 370's disappearance.
Mr Gibson said: 'I found them on the same 11-mile stretch of beach where I found suspected aircraft parts so it is important that they are investigated properly,' reports the BBC. He has given the pictured to campaign group Air Crash Support Australia in the hope that friends and relatives may come forward and identify them if they belong to any of the 239 passengers. Among the items was a tattered Angry Birds bag, stained after what would have been more than a year in the sea. There is a frayed laptop case, inscribed with the Mensa logo - an organisation joined by the world's most intelligent people. Also found was a white ladies handbag, the plastic outer cracked in various places. A series of other bags are also included in the recovered items, including a brown chequered satchel which is stained by salt which has dried and congealed on the outside.
Family members of passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines MH370 shout slogans as they march toward the Malaysian embassy in Beijing
(Reuters)
In the days following the disappearance of Flight 370, relatives of those on board became increasingly frustrated at the lack of news. On 25 March 2014, around two hundred family members of the Chinese passengers protested outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing. Relatives who had arrived in Kuala Lumpur after the announcement continued with their protest, accusing Malaysia of hiding the truth and harbouring a murderer. They also wanted an apology from the Malaysian government for its poor initial handling of the disaster and its "premature" conclusion of total loss, drawn without any physical evidence.
.jpg)
The mother of a passenger missing on flight MH370 holds a photograph of her grandson during the protest. Photo: Reuters
PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia - Chinese relatives of MH370 passengers gathered outside the Malaysian prime minister's office Wednesday to demand his government rescind its declaration that all on board the plane were presumed dead.
"We want an explanation from (Prime Minister Najib Razak). And we want him to cancel the declaration that the incident was an accident," said Kelly Wen, a Chinese national whose husband was on the Malaysia Airlines flight.
Malaysian authorities last month declared the plane's unexplained disappearance an "accident" under global aviation conventions, saying for the first time that all 239 passengers and crew were presumed dead.
That set off howls of protest from next of kin in Malaysia and China, many of whom have sharply criticised the airline and Malaysian government over the plane's disappearance.
A group of 21 relatives from China, where criticism from families has been especially intense, came to Malaysia last week to demand the declaration be cancelled and press for information on the plane's fate.
They said they plan to stay through the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, which begins on Thursday, and until they get answers.
"We want to tell Prime Minister Najib that we want our families back for the Spring Festival," said Wen, using the Chinese term for the holiday.
"They have said our relatives are dead but have given no proof. This is unacceptable."
The next of kin then presented a representative from the prime minister's office with Chinese calligraphy scrolls calling for their relatives' return.
They later held an emotional Lunar New Year prayer session at a nearby square, with some wailing loudly and calling out "Come home!" Two-thirds of the plane's passengers were Chinese.
The plane vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing last March 8 in one of history's great aviation mysteries. The Chinese next of kin said the onset of their culture's most important holiday had worsened their pain and suffering, as the festival is normally a joyous time of family gatherings.
"Bringing our families together for Spring Festival is the most important thing to Chinese people," said Wang Rongxuan, 60, whose son Hou Bo, 37, was on the plane.
"Now, how can we celebrate? I have been dreading this - passing the holiday without our son."
The group held a protest at Malaysia Airlines' headquarters last weekend.
Malaysia's government says satellite data indicates the plane inexplicably detoured to the remote southern Indian Ocean, which they suspect was due to "deliberate" action onboard.
But no evidence has turned up despite an intensive search there, and Malaysian authorities still have released no findings from their various investigations into what happened.
Some relatives accuse Malaysia and the airline of a bungled response to the disaster and possible cover-up, charges that are denied.
Malaysian authorities say last month's declaration allows families to move on and seek compensation.
But many relatives angrily reject the suggestion, saying they fear the move is an attempt by Malaysia to wash its hands of MH370 and leave it unsolved.
Christopher__Harriot210126-060157.jpg)
State of Penang - Malaysia
One disturbing piece of evidence finds Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah deviated slightly over Penang, his childhood home. Now aviation experts feel an overwhelming consensus that the terrible disaster was no accident but a long planned and staged suicide.. Five aviation experts from around the globe gathered together to discuss the strange disapperance of flight MH 370 as they debate and attempt to discover a sensible conclusion.. Did the experienced pilot with over 18,000 hours of flight time fly the doomed aircraft off course purposely and then ditch the stricken craft into the far reaches of the southern Indian ocean knowing fine well that the craft would not be found nor would the passengers and crew on board.. The experts point to the way that the plane’s communications systems were manually cut before the plane quietly traversed Thai and Malaysian airspace, heading south. There was no communication with any air traffic controllers in the hours after, and no emergency distress calls. All ready this strange behaviour rings bells as a mysterious unknown problem was stopping the crew from communicating with Air Traffic Control.. A particularly affecting piece of evidence came from senior pilot and instructor Simon Hardy, who noted that MH370 had made an odd detour over the Malaysian region of Penang, which happens to be the pilot’s homestate. In the same way that pilots will dip their wing over famous landmarks to give passengers a better look, Hardy believes that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah wanted to wish his childhood home one final goodbye.
Air crash investigator Larry Vance
An example of an underwater volcano..
Medical records for the captain indicate that he had no mental illness or serious physical or mental problems that would affect his judgement when operating the aircraft..“The simplicity of the disappearance of MH370 comes down to this: either it was a criminal act or it was not,” writes Vance. “The evidence confirms it was a criminal act, committed by one individual who, as a pilot in the airplane, had a simple means to carry it out.” Sadly the black box has still not been recovered so no one knows what really happened on that fateful day 8th March 2014..
For air crash investigator Larry Vance, the most damning piece of evidence washed up on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion in 2015. This was the infamous “flaperon,” which is a movable part of the wing controlling the plane’s roll and bank. Surprisingly for Vance, the flaperon was found almost completely intact, indicating that the plane had hit the water slowly and in a controlled landing. Vance explained that in previous crash investigations, planes that crash into water are usually reduced to tiny fragments. “When Swissair 111 hit the ocean at high speed off Nova Scotia, it exploded due to the hydrodynamic pressure of impacting with the water and came apart into some two million pieces,” Vance wrote. “In the case of MH370, essentially, the entire right-wing flaperon was recovered… there should have remained little doubt that a pilot was controlling MH370 at the end of its flight.” Did the captain deliberately depressurize the plane knocking all passengers and staff unconscious, and then piloted the plane on a suicide mission to a predetermined remote location where he knew there was little chance the plane would be found. The area the plane is presumed to of crashed has a maximum water depth of over 25,000 feet. Even a submarine would implode at that depth from the increidble pressure the water would create. It is dark and very cold, the area has massive ridges and active volcanoes including huge mountain ranges that would simply evaporate the aircraft and make it almost impossible to find..
Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah with his daughter Aishah Zaharie.
MH370 pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah with his wife Faizah Khan and children. Faizah is in hiding having fled the family home in Kuala Lumpur - PUBLISHED: 15:21, 8 March 2016
The daughter of the MH370 pilot has raised some alarming questions about the state of his mind in the weeks leading up to the plane's disappearance. Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was in emotional turmoil over the impending break-up of his marriage, his family say. But the 53-year-old's wife and daughter said he was distracted and withdrawn in the weeks leading up to the planes disappearance..Zaharie had refused pleas to attend marriage counselling sessions to improve the relationship, and is said to have had extramarital affairs. The pilot's wife, Faizah Khanum Mustafa Khan, told investigators he had stopped speaking to her in the weeks leading up to the flight on March 8, 2014. He is said to have spent time alone in his room with a flight simulator he had built. She said: "He just retreated into a shell".
Unsolved: Grace Subathirai Nathan, 28, daughter of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 passenger Anne Daisy, holds up a picture of her mother on the two-year anniversary
And his daughter Aishah Zaharie, said during her final conversation with her dad she barely recognised him. She said: "He wasn’t the father I knew. He seemed disturbed and lost in a world of his own." Faizah and Aishah, along with other family members, were interviewed in detail by police in Kuala Lumpur in 2019.. They don't think he was responsible for the plane's disappearance, despite his unusual behaviour.
Faizah, who was just 16 when she first met Zaharie, broke down repeatedly during two lengthy interviews with police, the family source said. One of the interviews lasted more than four hours. She was initially reluctant to discuss the breakdown of her marriage, and refused to accept her husband might be involved in the flight’s disappearance, protesting: "It’s unfair to blame my husband." But over the course of the interviews she told police how her husband became increasingly distracted in the months leading up to the flight. She said: "I found him distant and difficult to understand." She told investigators that although they continued to live in the same house, Zaharie spent his time alone. Faizah said her husband was so withdrawn he hardly spoke to his sons and was not close to them.
She said: "He just retreated into a shell". Aishah said her father spoke to her about his marital problems and told her he didn’t think they could reconcile. In their conversations, he asked her how she would feel if her parents divorced. Aishah said she tried to persuade her father to seek the help of Islamic elders to try to mend the relationship but he refused. The daughter told investigators she did not know if there was another woman in her father’s life. She insisted to investigators: "I don’t believe he would ever intentionally endanger the lives of his crew and passengers".
The house of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah the pilot of the missing Malaysian airliner lived in a gated community outside of Kuala LumpurCredit: Polaris
Feeling Suicidal:
1737, Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor
Lifeline – 0800 543 354 or (09) 5222 999 within Auckland
Youthline – 0800 376 633, free text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz or online chat
Samaritans – 0800 726 666
Suicide Crisis Helpline – 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO)
What's Up – 0800 942 8787 (for 5–18 year olds). Phone counselling is available Monday to Friday, midday–11pm and weekends, 3pm–11pm. Online chat is available 7pm–10pm daily.
thelowdown.co.nz – or email team@thelowdown.co.nz or free text 5626
Supporting Families in Mental Illness - 0800 732 825.
If it is an emergency or you, or someone you know, is at risk call 111.
Did passengers and crew attempt to call out during flight MH 370..
Friends of Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who was the captain of MH370, told The Atlantic that the 53-year-old pilot was depressed and lonely, engaged in one-sided flirting with young women on Facebook, and spent much of his non-flying time pacing empty rooms inside his home. One close friend of Shah even said he believed the pilot crashed the plane. William Langewiesche, a former national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, gives credence to that theory, Such a sudden deviation would have been noticed by the plane's 200-plus passengers. Langewiesche reported that Shah likely depressurised the cabin to subdue any rebellion. "An intentional depressurisation would have been an obvious way – and probably the only way – to subdue a potentially unruly cabin in an aeroplane that was going to remain in flight for hours to come," Langewiesche, who is also a pilot, wrote. The cabin masks have about 15 minutes of supply at altitudes below 13,000 feet, according to The Atlantic, but MH370 stayed at a cruising altitude of 40,000 feet for at least an hour. Meanwhile, Shah could simply have put on one of the four oxygen masks available, which have hours of supply, available in the cockpit. In the final minutes for MH370's passengers, they likely put on the oxygen masks and were asphyxiated. "The cabin occupants would have become incapacitated within a couple of minutes, lost consciousness, and gently died without any choking or gasping for air," Langewiesche wrote. "The scene would have been dimly lit by the emergency lights, with the dead belted into their seats, their faces nestled in the worthless oxygen masks dangling on tubes from the ceiling."
The co-pilot of flight MH370 may have tried to use his mobile during the flight before the airplane mysteriously vanished, a review of a secret report suggests. A police investigation has now emerged claiming a Malaysian telecom tower detected a mobile number registered to Fariq Abdul Hamid a few minutes before the plane dropped off the radar. There have been a whole host of theories speculating what happened to the flight. The latest alleged evidence about the mobile would appear to support the idea the plane was crashed into the sea in a mass murder-suicide, former Easyjet chief pilot Mike Keane has suggested. According to the theory, the captain may have told Fariq to go to the cabin before locking himself in the cockpit. Fariq though would have had his mobile after takeoff, so the theory goes, and tried to make an emergency call when he realised what was happening and the plane was being depressurised. Keane said: “The first officer would have been skilled in responding to depressurisation due to regular training. “If Fariq had his mobile phone with him, he would have grabbed an oxygen bottle before taking his phone off flight mode or switching it on.” Authorities in Malaysia had previously dismissed reports of the phone detection, which were first made in April 2014.
Many recall that when United Flight 93 was hijacked on September 11, 2001, passengers were able to make two cell phone calls during the flight's final moments. Several other calls were made using airphones.
If metadata was detected from cell phones on Flight 370, surely it would shed more light on the missing plane's flight path? The plane may have been flying too high or too fast to register with cell towers, according to telecoms experts, but careful analysis of the passengers' cell phone records will need to be completed to be certain. "So far, we have not had any evidence of any telephone company of any member trying to contact," said Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.. Radar analysis indicates the stricken liner was flying at altitudes of 45,000 feet and as low as 23,000 feet. But even this lower altitude is too high to register with mobile towers, experts say. "If you look at the data in this case, the altitude at which the planes were traveling is too high," Vincent Lau, wireless communications specialist and professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, told CNN.
"Even on the ground it wouldn't be easy to pick up from that distance, and if you are flying it's even more difficult because at those angles you are only picking up what we call leakage from the side loops of the antennas, which are substantially weaker than the signals from the main loops of the base stations."
VINCENT KIN NANG
LAU
劉 堅 能
PhD (Cantab) in Electrical Engineering
Chair Professor
Fellows of IEEE and HKIE
Director and Founder, Huawei-HKUST Joint Innovation Lab
Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya
While business class seats on the aircraft are known to have been equipped with phones that worked via satellite, it would be easy to strike down that system from inside the plane, said Lau.
Reports on Monday that the plane flew as low as 5,000 feet or less over mountainous terrain -- possibly in order to evade radar detection -- haven't been confirmed.
"In terms of the altitude it would have to be no higher than around 10,000 feet. Anything higher ... would be problematic," according to Bill Rojas, director of telecom research at IDC Asia Pacific.
Unlike in urban areas, where cell phone antennae are typically pointed down toward the ground, cell towers in rural areas are up to 30-45 meters high and are often pointed at an angle meant to cover wider distances.
So if you're up in the sky, you can receive the signal as well, Rojas said.
"If the airplane were flying over northern Malaysia or southern Thailand -- basically the rural area -- then it's very possible that a cell tower could register the signal from the phones, assuming they were on," said Rojas.
"Technically it is possible."
If smartphones had been on and registered with a cell tower, the records would be relatively easy to retrieve.
"The registrations would typically be logged and depending on the operator they will be kept for hours, days or months," said Rojas.
The telecom expert said that he'd place particular focus on the phone numbers of passengers from Thailand or Malaysia.
"I would assume that the authorities are checking with the mobile operators by comparing known passenger cell numbers to see if there were any pings or attempted or successful network registrations in northern Malaysia or southern Thailand or possibly even Indonesia," said Rojas. "Any passenger who had roaming capabilities or a local Malaysian number -- if the plane were over Malaysia -- could in theory have been registered on the network if their phone was on.
"If a passenger does not have international roaming then their access would be rejected by the network and for a period of time that metadata might be stored by the network."
If the metadata records were erased automatically after a few days or a few hours, could they be retrieved?
"Each mobile operator will have its own guidelines for the duration of metadata storage and would not normally be made public for obvious national security and law enforcement reasons."
Rojas said as far as speed was concerned, the aircraft would need to have been flying at speeds below 250 kilometers per hour (155 mph) in order for passengers to make or receive calls.
Passengers on high-speed trains in Japan and other countries can make calls via 3G networks at speeds of up to 240 kilometers per hour, but cell towers aren't able to register a signal beyond those speeds, Rojas said.
27-year-old co-pilot, Fariq Hamid
A lifelong friend of the captain of ill fated flight MH 370 has claimed he is likely to have locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit before deliberately crashing into the sea. Reports claim that the friend, a fellow Boeing 777 pilot, said he believes Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah is guilty of an atrocity and "it’s the necessary conclusion" to one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries. The unnamed friend, speaking to the Atlantic, said: “It’s hard to reconcile with the man I knew. But it’s the necessary conclusion.” The friend said Shah likely tricked his inexperienced 27-year-old co-pilot, Fariq Hamid, who was on his final training flight, into leaving the cockpit and locked him out. He said: “Zaharie was an examiner. All he had to say was ‘Go check something in the cabin', and the guy would have been gone.” It is suspected the plane's passenger cabin was deliberately depressurised by Shah to kill everyone on board hours before the crash. Before doing so, he could have put on an oxygen mask in the cockpit so he could continue to fly the aircraft for hours. At around the same time the cabin was depressurised the electrical system was deliberately turned off, making the plane impossible to track by satellite. In the years since the Malaysia Airlines plane vanished, the leading theory is Shah, 57, deliberately took the plane off course on a carefully planned murder-suicide mission. Unconfirmed speculation is that Shah - who flew a similar path on his flight simulator at home - was clinically depressed.
Nadira Ramli, fiancee of missing co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid.
In an odd twist to an already twisted situation, a worrying lapse of protocol was revealed after photos surfaced depicting Co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid and his colleague fraternizing with a pair of young women while on duty. The women were pictured hugging the pilots in secured areas of the plane. The men even allowed the giddy girls to wear their official garb in the series of candid snaps.
Can cell phone data reveal MH370 mystery?
More than 30 bits of aircraft debris have been collected from various places around the world but only three wing fragments that washed up along the Indian Ocean coast have been confirmed to be from MH370. The pieces of debris, found in Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, have now been officially presented to the Malaysian government. Another report taht is 495 pages long states that the plane's controls were likely deliberately manipulated to take it off course but investigators were not able to determine who was responsible.
If the aircraft had a relatively soft landing into the Southern Indian ocean it may have sunk almost intact if the pilot had the necessary skill to carry out such a bizarre manouvere..If the plane hit the water hard it would of broken into many thousands of pieces, these debris pieces in theory would then float across the Indian ocean and could have reached islands as far away as Île Saint-Paul, Île Amsterdam, Prince Edward Islands, Crozet Islands, Heart Island and Mcdonald Island, and French Southern and Antartic Islands.. No bodies have ever been found and could still be inside the sunken aircrafts shell, THE bodies inside missing Malaysia MH370 aircraft will most likely be perfectly preserved “like a time capsule” when they are found. US oceanographer David Gallo said that because of the depth, temperature and stillness of the southern Indian Ocean – believed to be where it went down– the passengers' corpses will not have deteriorated. Dr Gallo led the search for Air France 447, which went down in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, killing all 228 people on board. The ocean expert believes if MH370 has hit the seabed, all of the bodies will be preserved – offering vital clues as to why the plane went down. Dr Gallo also believes black box cockpit recorder information will still be able to be retrieved, despite the sheer amount of time it will have spent underwater. "Even if water gets in there they have ways of getting bits of information off," Dr Gallo said. "Say you get into the cockpit, look at the settings. You could look at the actual airframe itself – about how pieces are bent or torn or scarred or burnt."
Île Saint-Paul
He added: "It's just like a crime scene… an underwater crime scene. We did this with Air France. We took 85,000 single images of that plane so that the forensic team could actually see it the same way it would be on land. "So they could point to something and say: 'That's an engine, that's a landing gear. What does that tell us when we see that the landing gear is bent or the flap is up or down?'"
Dr Gallo said that despite the Air France plane being ripped into pieces upon making impact with the ocean, all the bodies on board were intact. He explained: "In some places bodies don't last very long at all, and even the sea water dissolves bones so that there's nothing that remains. "In Air France, there were bodies that were, in a way, preserved. Normal processes of decomposition don't happen.
Île Saint-Paul (not to be confused with Saint Paul Island near Alaska) is a small, volcanic outcrop in the deep Indian Ocean, located at approximately 38'42" and 77'32", about 85 km south-west of Île Amsterdam. It is notable for being a rare example of a "volcanic lagoon" - an almost totally submerged volcanic caldera, thereby allowing small landing craft to travel into the crater of the volcano. One side of the caldera of the volcano collapsed in 1780, creating a gap which is large enough for small craft to navigate and enter. Bear in mind, the gap is shallow and highly variable, being sometimes only a few metres deep. It is also located on the east of the island, whereas the very strong winds typically come from the west, making it impossible as well as very dangerous to approach under sail. Approach by motor only and with extreme caution. For larger vessels, there is anchorage off the east of the island. You should not leave a vessel unattended. For small vessels, it is possible to anchor inside the caldera, particularly towards the south.
.jpg)
The French Government lays claim to the island and there is a cabin on the shores of the lagoon which is occasionally visited by their weather scientists from Ile Amsterdam. This is infrequent, and in the event you end up stuck on the island you should not count on seeing anyone for quite some time. For such a lonely place, Saint-Paul has acquired a surprisingly eventful history. The HMS Megaera was wrecked at Saint-Paul (more accurately, its crew gave up in disgust at the poor quality hull of the ship and scuttled it in the lagoon). An ill-fated lobster cannery was started on the island and then abandoned. Its employees were stuck on the island and all but two of them starved before they could be rescued. The ruins of the old stone cottages are still there.
You can see evidence of this human activity as well as the rock with the original French inscription laying claim to the island on the shores of the lagoon.
There are always seals and seabirds about. Penguins can also be found.
Île Amsterdam
Gentoo Penguin
_jfif.jpg)
Great Skua
New Amsterdam, Amsterdam Island, or Île Amsterdam is a French island in the Indian Ocean and is part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands. The volcanic island is a potentially active volcano which last erupted in 1792. It has an area of 55 km2 (21 sq mi), measuring about 10 km (6.2 mi) on its longest side, and reaches as high as 867 m (2,844 ft) at the Mont de la Dives. The high central area of the island, at an altude of over 500 m, containing its peaks and caldera, is known as the Plateau des Tourbières (in English the Plateau of Bogs). The island is a part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (Terres australes et antarctiques françaises; TAAF), and together with neighboring Île Saint-Paul (85 km/53 mi to the South) forms one of the five districts of the territory. Its base, Martin-de-Viviès, formerly called La Roche Godon, is the capital of the territory. Île Amsterdam is one of only three land antipodes of the continental United States. It corresponds to an area about 20 miles (32 km) southeast of Lamar, Colorado. (The other two land antipodes of the U.S. are île Saint-Paul and Kerguelen Island.) The only human habitation is at the Martin-de-Viviès base with about 30 inhabitants related to the study of fauna, weather, the atmosphere and geomagnetism. Île Amsterdam has a mild, oceanic climate, with a mean annual temperature of 13 °C (55.4 °F), rainfall of 1,100 mm (43.3 in), persistent westerly winds and high levels of humidity. The island is home to the endemic Amsterdam Albatross, which breeds only on the Plateau des Tourbières. Other rare species are the Great Skua, Antarctic Tern and Gentoo Penguin.
Amsterdam Albatross
There are no native land mammals. Subantarctic fur seals and southern elephant seals breed on the island. Introduced mammals include the house mouse and brown rat. Feral cats are present. A distinct breed of wild cattle also inhabits the island. They originate from the introduction of five animals by Heurtin after his brief attempt at settlement of the island in 1871, and by 1988 had increased to an estimated 2,000. Following recognition that the cattle were damaging the island ecosystems, a fence was built restricting them to only part of the island. This island was discovered by the Basque explorer Juan Sebastián Elcano on March 18, 1522, along his first world circumnavigation. Elcano did not name the island, however. Having found the island unnamed, the Dutch captain Anthonie van Diemen named it Nieuw Amsterdam (Dutch for New Amsterdam) after his ship in 1633.
Marion Island, South Africa
Marion Island located in the Prince Edward Islands archipelago..
A dusting of ice graced the summit of Marion Island in early May 2009 as waves breaking against the island’s shore formed a broken perimeter of white. Like its smaller neighbor, Prince Edward Island, An uninhabited and inhospitable sub-Antarctic volcano island in the south Indian Ocean, belongs to South Africa since 1947. Marion Island is volcanic, rising above the waves of the Indian Ocean off the southern coast of Africa. Prince Edward and Marion are part of South Africa’s Western Cape Province. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite acquired this natural-color image on May 5, 2009. Sunlight illuminates the northern slopes of the volcanic island, leaving southern slopes in shadow. More than 100 small, reddish volcanic cones dot the island, some of the most conspicuous in the north and east. The island reaches its highest elevation, 1,230 meters (4,040 feet), near the center. Vegetation is generally sparse on Marion Island. Lichens live near the summit, and mosses and ferns grow elsewhere on the boggy surface, but trees don’t grow on the island.
Occurring at the juncture between the African Continental Plate and the Antarctic Plate, Marion Island has been volcanically active for 18,000 years. The first historical eruption was recorded in November 1980 when researchers recorded two new volcanic hills and three lava flows. Researchers observed another small eruption in 2004. Besides volcanic cones, Marion Island is home to Marion Base, part of the South African National Antarctic Programme. Focusing on biological, environmental, and meteorological research, the base is situated on the island’s northeastern coast.
A colony of King penguins live on Crozet Islands
The Crozet Islands are home to four species of penguins. Most abundant are the macaroni penguin, of which some 2 million pairs breed on the islands, and the king penguin species, home to 700,000 breeding pairs; half the world's population. The eastern rockhopper penguin also can be found, and there is a small colony of gentoo penguins. There is also an endemic subspecies of the duck Eaton's pintail. Other birds include black-faced sheathbills, petrels, and albatross, including the wandering albatross. Mammals living on the Crozet Islands include fur seals and southern elephant seals. Killer whales have been observed preying upon the seals. The transient killer whales of the Crozet Islands are famous for intentionally beaching (and later un-stranding) themselves while actively hunting the islands' breeding seal population. This is a very rare behaviour, most often seen in the Patagonia region of Argentina, and is thought to be a learned skill passed down through generations of individual orca families. These killer whales also seem to stay around the Crozet Islands year-round, feeding on mostly seals during the summer, and then feeding on penguins for the winter.
_jfif.jpg)
King Penguin
Macaroni Penguin
Black Faced Sheathbill
Southern Elephant Seal
Southern Elephant Seal
The Crozet Islands were discovered on 24th January 1772, by the expedition of French explorer Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne. aboard Le Mascarin. His second-in-command Jules (Julien-Marie) Crozet landed on Île de la Possession, claiming the archipelago for France. The expedition continued east and landed in New Zealand, where Captain Marion and much of his crew were killed and cannibalized by Maori. Crozet survived the disaster, and successfully led the survivors back to their base in Mauritius. In 1776, Crozet met James Cook at Cape Town, at the start of Cook's third voyage. Crozet shared the charts of his ill-fated expedition, and as Cook sailed eastward, he stopped at the islands, naming the western group Marion and the eastern group Crozet. In the following years, sealers visiting the islands referred to both the eastern and western groups as the Crozet Islands, and Marion Island became the name of the larger of the two Prine Edward Islands, which had been discovered by Captain Marion on the same expedition.
In the early 19th century, the islands were often visited by sealers, and the seals had been nearly exterminated by 1835. Between 1804 and 1911, 153 vessels visited the island for seals, seven of which wrecked on the coast. Subsequently, whaling was the main activity around the islands, especially by the whalers from Massachusetts. In 1841, there were a dozen whaleships around the islands. Within a couple of years, this had increased to twenty from the United States alone. Such exploitation was short-lived, and the islands were rarely visited for the rest of the century. There were many shipwrecks on the Crozet Islands. The British sealer, Princess of Wales, sank in 1821, and the survivors spent two years on the islands. The Strathmore was wrecked in 1875. In 1887, the French Tamaris was wrecked and her crew stranded on Île des Cochons. They tied a note to the leg of an albatross, which was found seven months later in Fremantle, but the crew was never recovered. For some time, the Royal Navy dispatched a ship every few years to look for stranded survivors. The steamship Australasian also checked for survivors en route to Australia.