Today, 29 planes and 11 ships are scouring a search area of about 217,000 square kilometres 1,700 kilometres north west of Perth in a desperate race against time to retrieve the missing MH370-200 Boeing 777-200 aircraft’s blackbox before its batteries run out.

The CNN report that the aircraft’s black box battery life may be shorter than expected, lasting only 20 to 25 days, as flight MH370’s black box pingers have not been replaced in 2012, is most shocking news.

Monday in two days’ time will be the full month of the tragedy of the missing Malaysian Airlines (MAS) MH370 Boeing 777-200 aircraft which took off from the KLIA on March 8 at 12.41 am for a six-hour flight to Beijing but which disappeared within the first hour with no clue discovered so far as to its whereabouts despite the longest and largest-ever multi-national air-sea-undersea-satellite search. Read the rest of this entry »

By Ross Kelly in Perth, David Winning in Sydney
Wall Street Journal
April 3, 2014

The Australian head of the international search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has called the operation one of the “most challenging” he has ever seen.

As the chances dim for finding Malaysia Airlines 370’s “black box” flight recorders before the batteries in their locator beacons run out, Malaysian and Australian leaders sought to inject new momentum into a search of the southern Indian Ocean that has yet to find plane wreckage.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak met aircrews involved in the multinational search for Flight 370 at Pearce air base, near Perth, on Thursday. The visit is Mr. Najib’s first to Australia since the focus of the search swung abruptly to the southern Indian Ocean on March 20, based on satellite images of possible plane debris. So far, nothing related to the missing plane has been found. Read the rest of this entry »

Kathy Marks
Sydney
The Independent
03 April 2014

With as little as two days left in which to recover the black box of Flight MH370, Malaysian police have warned that the mystery of the plane’s disappearance nearly four weeks ago may never be solved.

The country’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak, who visited the headquarters of the multinational search in Perth today, promised relatives of the 239 passengers and crew that “we will not rest until answers are… found”. However, batteries in the locator beacons of flight recorders only last about 30 days, which means MH370’s will die next Monday, or even this weekend.

The hunt for wreckage of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 continued in the Indian Ocean, with two British Royal Navy vessels joining seven other ships and eight planes. But since the search switched to the remote waters a fortnight ago, not a single piece of debris linked to the doomed flight has been found, despite exhaustive efforts. Read the rest of this entry »

By Mary-Ann Russon
International Business Times
April 2, 2014

Unmanned robot submarines will need to be brought in to locate wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the Indian Ocean once the search zone has been narrowed down.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur Ifor Beijing with 239 people onboard on 8 March but lost contact with air traffic control 50 minutes later.

After 26 days of searching there continues to be no sign of the wreckage. It is now assumed that the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean without survivors and the search for the plane has now been classified as a criminal investigation.

Unmanned submarines, which are known as Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), were crucial in finding the black box recorders from Air France Flight 447 after it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, killing all 228 people onboard.

Although some major wreckage was removed from the sea within five days of the crash, it took another two years and €32m spent on four deep water search missions before the black boxes were located at roughly 12,800 feet below sea level. Read the rest of this entry »

By TODD PITMAN
Associated Press
April 3, 2014

Bangkok: At the time — the evening of March 24 — it seemed like the breakthrough the world was waiting for.

In a hastily called speech, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that an unprecedented analysis of satellite signals concluded that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 “ended” deep in the Indian Ocean, far from any possible refuge for the 239 souls aboard.

Finally, there was a solid explanation for what happened to the aircraft. A much more focused search could begin, and so perhaps could the grieving process for families from 14 countries. Najib’s announcement quieted wild speculation about desert islands and terrorists and covert operations.

But four weeks after the plane disappeared, the apparent pivot in the search is proving to be not much of a pivot at all.

Not a single piece of wreckage from the lost plane has been found, not even after a new analysis led investigators to change the focus of their search yet again. The latest search area is based on extremely limited satellite data combined with radar data taken some five hours before the plane is believed to have gone down. It is, as one search official said, “a very inexact science.”

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whose country is coordinating the current search effort, spoke of “very credible leads” and “increasing hope” a day before Najib’s announcement. But on Thursday he said the search has become “the most difficult in human history.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Ludovica Iaccino
International Business Times
March 12, 2014

Missing Malaysian airlines flight crash

Saturday 8 March

Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 takes off at 12:21am local time (16:21 GMT) from Kuala Lumpur with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board.

Flight MH370 was supposed to arrive at Beijing Capital International Airport at 6:30am but two hours after takeoff, air traffic control loses contact with the plane. It is last heard of 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu.

No panic call is received from the crew and weather in the flight path is clear.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) confirms the jetliner never registered entering the airspace between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City.

Fear of a crash grow as Malaysia and Vietnam launch a search and rescue operation in the South China Sea. China dispatches two maritime rescue ships.

Terrorist plot, engine failure, disintegration, hijacking and pilot suicide all under consideration as the cause of the disappearance.

Malaysia Airlines releases the passenger list which includes 154 people from China and Taiwan, 38 from Malaysia, seven from Indonesia and six from Australia

Chinese premier Li Keqiang appeals to the Malaysian government to speed up the search operation.

Vietnam confirms seeing a giant oil slick and column of smoke in its waters. The slick is not connected to the missing aircraft, it is discovered.

Terror attack theory strengthens when two “missing” passengers of the flight MH370 reveal that their passports were stolen last year in Thailand. Read the rest of this entry »

The Malaysian Insider
April 03, 2014

As the search continues in the Indian Ocean for signs of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the staggering amount of rubbish in the sea is hampering efforts to find possible debris from the missing aircraft.

Among those who had highlighted this problem is Fairfax writer Greg Ray whose article “The Ocean is Broken”, written last year went viral on social media, reported The Maitland Mercury.

In the article, Ray had quoted Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen who had sailed from Melbourne to Osaka and from there to San Francisco who expressed his sadness and horror at the astounding volume of garbage he encountered in the ocean during his journey.

Ivan told Ray that one of the things he noticed was the absence of the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.

The birds were missing because the fish were missing.

Instead, in its place was a huge amount of garbage floating in the ocean. Read the rest of this entry »

Danny Lee in Kuala Lumpur
South China Morning Post
03 April, 2014

The first pieces of evidence that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 crashed into the ocean may come to light when they are washed up on a beach, possibly within weeks, experts said yesterday.

Oceanographers said that currents and prevailing winds would likely push any floating debris towards Australia’s vast west coast.

In the event that the huge ongoing Indian Ocean search turns up nothing, small, buoyant items could appear before the wreckage of the plane itself is located.

An assortment of aircraft and ships scouring the ocean some 2,000 kilometres off the coast of Perth have so far found no sign of the missing Boeing 777. Read the rest of this entry »

By Bill Neely
NBC News
April 1, 2014

PERTH, Australia – The signs aren’t good. The search coordinators aren’t optimistic. And the chief of the new group heading the search for missing Flight MH370 is warning that the days of intensive searching might be numbered.

“Inevitably, if we don’t find any wreckage on the surface we are eventually going to have to, probably in consultation with everybody who has a stake in this, review what to do next,” retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said.

That day may come soon.

The new search zone is yielding no results after more than 500 hours of searching by dozens of aircraft. Read the rest of this entry »

By Justin Ong
The Malay Mail Online
April 2, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, April 2 — It is nearly a month since the words “missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370” were seared into our consciousness on March 8.

Along the way, we have learned the word “unprecedented” and all its other variations, but not the actual answers to what happened to MH370 and the 239 souls on board.

Here are three things that we gleaned from the story so far. Read the rest of this entry »