‘Jet mystery may never be solved’

 

KUALA LUMPUR, April 2 (AP): A police investigation may never determine the reason why the Malaysia Airlines jetliner disappeared, and search planes scouring the India Ocean for any sign of its wreckage aren’t certain to find anything either, officials said Wednesday.

The assessment by Malaysian and Australian officials underscored the lack of knowledge authorities have about what happened on Flight 370. It also points to a scenario that becomes more likely with every passing day — that the fate of the Boeing 777 and the 239 people on board might remain a mystery forever.

The plane disappeared March 8 on a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur after its transponders, which make the plane visible to commercial radar, were shut off. Military radar picked it up the jet just under an hour later, on the other side of the Malay peninsula. Authorities say until then its “movements were consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane” but have not ruled out anything, including mechanical error.

Police are investigating the pilots and crew for any evidence suggesting they may have hijacked or sabotaged the plane. The backgrounds of the passengers, two-thirds of whom were Chinese, have been checked by local and international investigators and nothing suspicious has been found.

“Investigations may go on and on and on. We have to clear every little thing,” Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar told reporters in Kuala Lumpur. “At the end of the investigations, we may not even know the real cause. We may not even know the reason for this incident.”

Police are also investigating the cargo and the food served on the plane to eliminate possible poisoning of passengers and crew, he said.
The search for the plane began over the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea where the plane’s last communications were, and then shifted west to the Strait of Malacca where it was last spotted by military radar. Experts then analyzed hourly satellite “handshakes” between the plane and a satellite and now believe it crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.

A search there began just over two weeks ago, and now involves at least nine ships and nine planes.
The current search area is a 221,000-square-kilometer (85,000-square-mile) patch of sea roughly a 2½-hour flight from Perth. The focus of the search has moved several times as experts try to estimate where the plane is most likely to have landed based on assumptions on its altitude, speed and fuel. Currents in the sea are also being studied to see where any wreckage is most likely to have drifted.

Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the multinational search effort out of Australia, said no time frame had been set for the search to end, but that a new approach would be needed if nothing showed up.

“Over time, if we don’t find anything on the surface, we’re going to have to think about what we do next, because clearly it’s vitally important for the families, it’s vitally important for the governments involved that we find this airplane,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

With no other data available indicating where the plane went down, spotting wreckage is key to narrowing down the search area and ultimately finding the plane’s flight data recorders, which will provide a wealth of information about the condition the plane was flying under and possibly the communications or sounds in the cockpit.

The data recorders emit a “ping” that can be detected by special equipment towed by a ship in the immediate vicinity. But the battery-powered recorders stop transmitting the “pings” about 30 days after a crash. Locating the data recorders and wreckage after that is possible, but it becomes an even more daunting task.

Houston said that only once wreckage from the plane was found “we will then be able to narrowly focus the search area so that we can start to exploit the underwater technology devices that will hopefully lead to where the aircraft is on the bottom of the ocean.”

Malaysia has been criticized by the relatives of some Chinese passengers on board, who accuse them of not giving them enough information or even lying about what it knows about the final movements of the plane. Some are staying in hotels in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur, courtesy of Malaysia Airlines.

On Wednesday, authorities organized a closed-door briefing in Malaysia for the families with officials and experts involved in the hunt.

It was relayed by video conferencing technologies to the relatives in Beijing. Several relatives interviewed after session said they were still not satisfied.
“The fact is they didn’t give us any convincing information,” said Steve Wang, a representative of some of the Chinese families in Beijing. “They said themselves that there are many different possibilities, but they are judging on the basis of just one of them.”

 

 

The Associated Press
Malaysian authorities on Tuesday released their full transcript of the audio communications between Flight 370’s cockpit and air traffic controllers before the plane disappeared March 8. The conversation, heavy with aviation shorthand, is in English with the one Indonesian comment meaning, “Good morning.” The conversation, as it was released, between the cockpit and various units of air traffic control, Delivery, Ground, Tower, Approach and Radar, the time the audio was recorded, and what was spoken:
Cockpit at 12:25:53: Delivery MAS 370 Good Morning
Delivery at 12:26:02: MAS 370 Standby and Malaysia Six is cleared to Frankfurt via AGOSA Alpha Departure six thousand feet squawk two one zero six
Delivery at 12:26:19: ... MAS 370 request level
Cockpit at 12:26:21: MAS 370 we are ready requesting flight level three five zero to Beijing
Delivery at 12:26:39: MAS 370 is cleared to Beijing via PIBOS A Departure Six Thousand Feet squawk two one five seven
Cockpit at 12:26:45: Beijing PIBOS A Six Thousand Squawk two one five seven MAS 370 Thank You
Delivery at 12:26:53: MAS 370 Welcome over to ground
Cockpit at 12:26:55: Good Day
Cockpit at 12:27:27: Ground MAS370 Good morning Charlie One Requesting push and start
Ground at 12:27:34: MAS370 Lumpur Ground Morning Push back and start approved Runway 32 Right Exit via Sierra 4
Cockpit at 12:27:40: Push back and start approved 32 Right Exit via Sierra 4 POB 239 Mike Romeo Oscar
Ground at 12:27:45: Copied
Cockpit at 12:32:13: MAS377 request taxi.
Ground at 12:32:26: MAS37..... (garbled) ... standard route. Hold short Bravo
Ground at 12:32:30: Ground, MAS370. You are unreadable. Say again.
Ground at 12:32:38: MAS370 taxi to holding point Alfa 11 Runway 32 Right via standard route. Hold short of Bravo.
Cockpit at 12:32:42: Alfa 11 Standard route Hold short Bravo MAS370.
Ground at 12:35:53: MAS 370 Tower
Ground at 12:36:19: (garbled) ... Tower ... (garbled)
Cockpit (no time given): 1188 MAS370 Thank you
Cockpit at 12:36:30: Tower MAS370 Morning
Tower at 12:36:38: MAS370 good morning. Lumpur Tower. Holding point.. (garbled)..10 32 Right
Cockpit at 12:36:50: Alfa 10 MAS370
Tower at 12:38:43: 370 line up 32 Right Alfa 10.
Cockpit (no time given): Line up 32 Right Alfa 10 MAS370.
Tower at 12:40:38: 370 32 Right Cleared for take-off. Good night.
Cockpit (no time given): 32 Right Cleared for take-off MAS370. Thank you Bye.
Cockpit at 12:42:05: Departure Malaysian Three Seven Zero
Approach at 12:42:10: Malaysian Three Seven Zero selamat pagi identified. Climb flight level one eight zero cancel SID turn right direct to IGARI
Cockpit at 12:42:48: Okay level one eight zero direct IGARI Malaysian one err Three Seven Zero
Approach at 12:42:52: Malaysian Three Seven Zero contact Lumpur Radar One Three Two Six good night
Cockpit (no time given): Night One Three Two Six Malaysian Three Seven Zero
Cockpit at 12:46:51: Lumpur Control Malaysian Three Seven Zero
Radar at 12:46:51: Malaysian Three Seven Zero Lumpur radar Good Morning climb flight level two five zero
Cockpit at 12:46:54: Morning level two five zero Malaysian Three Seven Zero
Radar at 12:50:06: Malaysian Three Seven Zero climb flight level three five zero
Cockpit at 12:50:09: Flight level three five zero Malaysian Three Seven Zero
Cockpit at 01:01:14: Malaysian Three Seven Zero maintaining level three five zero
Radar at 01:01:19: Malaysian Three Seven Zero
Cockpit at 01:07:55: Malaysian...Three Seven Zero maintaining level three five zero
Radar at 01:08:00 Malaysian Three Seven Zero
Radar at 01:19:24: Malaysian Three Seven Zero contact Ho Chi Minh 120 decimal 9 Good Night
Cockpit at 01:19:29: Good Night Malaysian Three Seven Zero