Malaysia seeks India's help in search for missing airliner

[Vikrant]

I hope this plane is found soon so that we can put the mystery behind.

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New Delhi: Malaysia has sought India's help to locate a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner, foreign ministry said on Wednesday, as the search expanded to cover an area stretching from China to the Andaman Sea. (Malaysia searching Andaman Sea for missing plane: official)

"Malaysia and India are in contact on this since yesterday and contact points are being discussed. These contact points will ascertain what assistance is required and what India can offer," a spokesman at the ministry said.

The spokesman said it had not yet been decided what area India would search in. India has a large military command in its Andaman and Nicobar islands and its navy patrols in the straits of Malacca.
© Thomson Reuters 2014

Malaysia seeks India's help in search for missing airliner | NDTV.com

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says mebbe one o' dem meteors dem space aliens been flingin' at us hit it...

Search planes checking China satellite report on missing airliner
Thu Mar 13, 2014 - Search planes were flying on Thursday to an area where a Chinese satellite has seen objects that could be debris from the Malaysian airliner missing for almost six days, but those waters had been checked before and nothing found, officials said.

At the same time, China heaped pressure on Malaysia to improve its coordination over the search for the Malaysia Airlines plane, which disappeared early on Saturday on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Of the 239 people on board, up to 154 were Chinese. Premier Li Keqiang, speaking at a news conference in Beijing, demanded that the "relevant party" step up coordination while China's civil aviation chief said he wanted a "smoother" flow of information from Malaysia, which has come under heavy criticism for its handling of the disaster. Vietnamese and Malaysian planes would scan waters where a Chinese government agency website said a satellite had photographed three "suspicious floating objects" on Sunday. The location was close to where the plane lost contact with air traffic control. "We are aware and we sent planes to cover that area over the past three days," Vietnamese Deputy Transport Minister Pham Quy Tieu told Reuters. "Today a CASA plane will search the area again," he said, referring to a twin-turboprop military aircraft.

Deputy Commander of Vietnam 918 Air Brigade, Senior Lieutenant Nguyen Tri Thuc (R) looks for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, that disappeared from radar screens in the early hours of Saturday, off Con Dao island

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said on his Twitter feed: "Malaysia Maritime Enforcement Agency Bombardier has already been dispatched to investigate alleged claims of debris being found by Chinese satellite imagery." China's civil aviation chief, Li Jiaxiang, said there was no proof that the objects in the South China Sea were connected to the missing aircraft. One U.S. official close to the plane investigation also said the Chinese satellite report was a "red herring." It was the latest in scores of often confusing leads for a multi-national search team that has been combing 27,000 square nautical miles (93,000 square km), an area the size of Hungary, for the Boeing 777-200ER. On Wednesday, Malaysia's air force chief said military radar had traced what could have been the jetliner to an area south of the Thai holiday island of Phuket, hundreds of miles to the west of its last known position. His statement followed a series of conflicting accounts of the flight path of the plane, which left authorities uncertain even which ocean to search in for Flight MH370.

The last definitive sighting on civilian radar screens came shortly before 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, less than an hour after the plane took off from Kuala Lumpur, as it flew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand. What happened next remains one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation history and the differing accounts put out by various Malaysian officials have drawn criticism of their handling of the crisis. "The Malaysians deserve to be criticized - their handling of this has been atrocious," said Ernest Bower, a Southeast Asia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Rodzali Daud, the Malaysian air force chief, told a news conference on Wednesday that an aircraft was plotted on military radar at 2:15 a.m., 200 miles northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia's west coast at the northern tip of the Strait of Malacca. But there has been no confirmation that the unidentified plane was Flight MH370, Rodzali said, and Malaysia was sharing the data with international civilian and military authorities, including those from the United States. "We are corroborating this," he added. "We are still working with the experts."

AGONISING WAIT

See also:

777 mystery sharpens hunt for black-box alternatives
- The search for Malaysia's missing jet could speed development of new ways of locating wreckage, but such technology is unlikely to replace the traditional "black box" any time soon, France's top crash investigator said on Wednesday.

Mystery over the Boeing 777's whereabouts deepened on Wednesday when Malaysia said it was searching an area hundreds of miles from its last known position. As well as scouring the area with ships, planes and satellites, investigators are trying to pick up signals from beacons on the jet's data and cockpit voice recorders. Proposals for helping with future searches include getting the jet to give its location automatically before an accident happens and a new, more widely accessible frequency for transmitting homing signals - expanding archaic transmissions that may be inaudible even to modern military search crews.

A French probe into the crash of an Air France jet in the Atlantic in 2009, which triggered a two-year $50 million search to find its crucial black boxes, led to a series of recommendations from France's BEA crash investigation agency. But some recommendations that could potentially make it easier to track down such aircraft such as the Malaysian jet are bogged down in talks between regulators and the aviation industry, with no timetable for putting them into effect. "It is a subject still under discussion," BEA director Remy Jouty said in an interview, adding last week's disappearance of Flight 370 could focus further attention on the discussions.

Although one proposal, that the minimum battery life on locator beacons attached to the vital recording devices should be tripled to 90 days, has been backed by global regulators, it will not become mandatory until towards the end of the decade. Under current rules, the beacons must be capable of sending out a tracking ping for 30 days before the signals die out. In 2012, the BEA's advice was adopted by the U.N.'s International Civil Aviation Organization, which urged members to make them mandatory from 2018. In the European Union, however, the changes will take effect in 2019, Jouty said.

The Atlantic jet disaster marked a turning point in the way such searches are handled and led to what was - by the standards of complex aviation regulations that must be agreed globally and then translated into national laws - rapid action on batteries. Even before the mandatory regulations come into effect, the longer-life batteries are already available and experts say from next year, only the newer 90-day versions will be produced. "To my knowledge there is no problem of availability of the batteries," Jouty said. But so far only a handful of airlines, including Air France, have voluntarily switched to the longer batteries.

AUTOMATIC TRACKING DATA

 

[Vikrant]

India is concerned due to reports of the plane heading towards Andaman Nicobar Islands where India has significant naval assets.

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India’s navy set up a search zone for the missing Malaysian airliner in the Andaman Sea, hundreds of miles off the course of Flight 370, as evidence mounted that the plane kept flying after controllers lost contact.

The new search, spurred by a tip from Malaysia (MAS)’s navy, covers 35,000 square kilometers (13,514 square miles) off the northern tip of Sumatra, Indonesia’s largest island. That is on the opposite side of Malaysia from the plane’s intended path to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

Aviation specialists investigating last week’s loss of Flight 370 say evidence gathered so far suggests the plane veered off its route and traveled west over Malaysia, beyond the detection limits of the country’s radars, according to two people who asked not to be identified because the probe is active.

Related:

Vietnam Fails to Find Debris After China Satellite Images
Satellite Crowdsourcing Adds 2 Million Searchers
Opinion: Flotsam and False Leads in Flight 370 Search
With no evidence of a mechanical failure or pilot error, U.S. investigators are treating the disappearance as a case of air piracy, though it remains unclear by whom, one person said. The investigation still hasn’t located where the plane may be, the person said.

The comments add a new note of mystery to the March 8 disappearance of the Malaysian Airline System Bhd. plane carrying 239 people. Data compiled so far show no evidence of a crash near the Malaysian peninsula, the people said. The airline has no information on this, a spokeswoman at Malaysian Air said, declining to be identified.

...

India Looking for Malaysian Jet as U.S. Sees Air Piracy - Bloomberg

 

[bianco]

Malaysia would do better to spend less time cane flogging people and execution hanging people and more time implementing airport security measures and pilot behaviour safety meaures.

 

[Vikrant]

Mystery is getting deeper and deeper. There is a possibility is that the aircraft is being hidden somewhere to be used later as a terror target.

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Evidence of a plot by Malaysian Islamists to hijack a passenger jet in a terrorist attack copying 9/11 was being investigated in connection with the disappearance of Flight MH370.
An al-Qaeda supergrass told a court last week that four to five Malaysian men had been planning to take control of a plane, using a bomb hidden in a shoe to blow open the cockpit door.
Security experts said the evidence from a convicted British terrorist was "credible". The supergrass said that he had met the Malaysian jihadists - one of whom was a pilot - in Afghanistan and given them a shoe bomb to use to take control of an aircraft.


Read more: Missing Malaysia Airlines plane: Fears of 9/11-style plot

 

[Vikrant]

Interpol is investigating the background of one of the passengers who happens to be Uighur. His profession of flight engineer is quite interesting. Is it just a coincidence?

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As search for MH370 continues, police take close look at Uighur passenger, crew | Malaysia | The Malay Mail Online

 

[Vikrant]

The pilot seemed quite dedicated to flying. He built his own simulator at home that he used to further his flying skills on his own time. Investigators found data on runways in Indian Ocean on his simulators.

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Missing Malaysian plane: Cops find data on Indian Ocean runways in pilot's simulator - The Times of India

 

[Vikrant]

India decided to resume the search and added two more surveillance airplanes to augment the effort. There are 25 airplanes in total from various countries that are doing the search. I hope someone will spot something.

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ndia has deployed two sophisticated surveillance aircraft along the southern corridor in the Indian Ocean to help trace the Malaysian plane that went missing nearly two weeks ago.
Australia informed Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak that two possible objects related to the search for MH370 had been identified in the southern Indian Ocean, as the multination search entered the 13th day on Thursday.
Malaysian Defence and Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said that India has deployed two aircraft along the southern corridor where 25 aircraft from various countries are searching for the Boeing 777-200.
Sources in New Delhi said India has pressed P-8I Poseidon and C-130J Super Hercules into service to help locate the Beijing-bound plane that went missing on March 8 an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysian Prime Minister Razak had spoken to his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh seeking India’s assistance in the search operation for the plane.
The jetliner was carrying 227 passengers, including five Indians and one Indian-Canadian, and 12 crew members.

India deploys two aircraft to search for missing Malaysian jet | The Indian Express

 

[Vikrant]

Also on a separate note ...

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India declines China's request to enter waters around Andaman and Nicobar Islands


NEW DELHI: India has declined China's proposal to allow four of its warships to join the hunt for the MH370 jetliner near the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, even as it is now dispatching two aircraft to Malaysia to join the international search force that is now scanning southern Indian Ocean off Australia for the missing 777-200ER aircraft.

Officials on Thursday said China's request to allow its four warships, including two frigates and a salvage vessel, to enter Indian territorial waters has been "politely turned down" since Indian warships and aircraft are already searching the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea around the 572-island cluster.

While the Chinese warships are free to sail in international waters, Indian forces will obviously be unhappy about their presence anywhere near the strategically-located Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

"The A&N command is our military outpost in the region, which overlooks the Malacca Strait and dominates the Six-Degree Channel. We don't want Chinese warships sniffing around in the area on the pretext of hunting for the missing jetliner or anti-piracy patrols," said an official.

An Indian P-8I long-range maritime reconnaissance plane and a C-130J special operations aircraft, with electro-optic and infra-red sensors, meanwhile will fly to Malaysia on Friday morning to join the international search force there.

The new region off Australia is now on everyone's radar screens after two objects, which could be debris from the missing Malaysian Airlines 777-200ER aircraft, were spotted floating there by a satellite on Thursday.

"Indian Navy already has four warships (INS Satpura, Sahyadari, Saryu and Batti Malv) deployed in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea in continuation of the search for the jetliner. Extensive air searches are also being conducted with three aircraft (P-8I, C-130J and Dornier-228) in the area," said an officer.

"In addition to all this, the P-8I and C-130J will be joining the international force in Malaysia by Friday afternoon. We are in continuous touch with the Royal Malaysian Navy and Air Force from our maritime operations centre at New Delhi to render all possible help," he added.

Malaysia jet search: India declines China's request to enter waters around Andaman and Nicobar Islands - The Times of India

 

[Vikrant]

There is a lot of lessons for India from this disappearance.

---

Late in the summer of 2012, two young men sat at either end of an Internet connection linking Karachi with Kathmandu, weaving online fantasies. Their dreams, unlike those of most people their age, didn’t centre around music, or money, or love. Muhammad Zarar Siddibapa, alleged to have been the operational head of the Indian Mujahideen’s urban bombing campaign against India, wanted to know if his Karachi-based boss, Riyaz Ahmad Shahbandri, could find him a nuclear bomb. The two men, the National Investigation Agency says, discussed attacking Surat “with nuclear warheads if they could be procured.”

It was a meaningless, idle daydream — the kernel from which all hideous nightmares are born. The surreal disappearance of Malaysia Airlines MH370 is a good occasion for Indians to start thinking about what might happen if we are ever compelled to live those nightmares.

Bar online speculation as idle as the Indian Mujahideen’s Internet chatter, there’s no reason to think that MH370 was hijacked to stage a 9/11-type attack on an Indian city or nuclear installation. There’s even less reason to think the aircraft might have been fitted with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Yet, on the morning of September 11, 2001, there was no good reason at all to believe a terrorist attack involving hijacked jets might bring down the Twin Towers in New York.

Threats from the air
The fact is, however, that speculation is a useful intellectual tool. MH370, which succeeded in evading detection during its suspected flight across multiple countries, was in range of Indian cities, industrial sites housing toxic chemicals and nuclear facilities — which necessitates asking the question, “what if”?

Fighting terrorism involves imagining and preparing for the unimaginable: and India has a dangerously poor record of doing either.

Though the prospect of a terrorist group acquiring nuclear weapons or radiological assets remains small, Indian nuclear installations remain at risk from aircraft used as weapons. Though newer nuclear reactors have double-domed concrete structures, in theory capable of withstanding a direct hit, there are obvious reasons to avoid testing the engineering in the real world. In the wake of 9/11, New Delhi promulgated no-fly regulations around several nuclear facilities. However, the scholar, Sitakanta Mishra noted in a 2009 paper for the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, the rules “have not been strictly implemented.” “Surprisingly,” he wrote, “even today, aircrafts can fly over the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.”

It isn’t only nuclear installations that are at risk. There have, government sources say, been repeated restricted air space violations over New Delhi, each a potential threat to critical targets like Parliament, defence and intelligence complexes, the President’s estate and the Prime Minister’s home and office. None reached crisis-point — but there is little clarity on what would happen if they did.

Air Force sources familiar with air-defence systems at these facilities say one key problem is pre-delegation — instructions for when commanders on the ground can use lethal force against a potential threat. Had MH370 appeared on radar screens guarding Indian nuclear installations, officials up the chain of command would have had minutes to make a decision — knowing all the while that it might be the wrong one. There has never been an explicit political mandate for the exact circumstances in which these choices could be made.

For military planners, the dilemmas involved in such decisions are significant. In 1983, the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Airlines Boeing 747 flying from New York to Seoul. The flight’s malfunctioning autopilot system had, subsequent international investigations revealed, led it into the strategically crucial Kamchatka Peninsula, raising Soviet fears that it might be a hostile aircraft.

Declassified Soviet documents show that the commander of the Soviet Far East District Air Defense Forces, General Valery Kamensky, wanted the aircraft destroyed — but only after it was positively identified not to be civilian. His subordinate, General Anatoly Kornukov, commander of Sokol Air base, disagreed. “What civilian,” the documents show him exclaiming, “[It] has flown over Kamchatka! It [came] from the ocean without identification. I am giving the order to attack if it crosses the State border.”

Minutes later, a Sukhoi 15 interceptor fired Kaliningrad K-8 air-to-air missiles at the Korean Airlines jet: 246 passengers and 23 crew died.

During the run-up to the New Delhi Commonwealth Games, intelligence officials repeatedly discussed the prospect of an attack on a high-profile target using either hijacked aircraft or a remotely-piloted drone fitted with explosives. The Air Force took charge of surveillance, but no firm decision was taken on precisely what events would trigger an armed intervention.

Flailing on the seas
To this day, India does not have a central command centre, where military, intelligence and civilian officials can observe and liaise on real time threats — and take a decision when needed. In emergencies, power rests with the Crisis Management Group, chaired by the Cabinet Secretary. This mechanism allows for effective decision-making after a crisis — but is useless when there are minutes, not hours, to take a call.

In the summer of 2011, a rusting ship floated gently towards Mumbai’s Juhu beach, unnoticed almost until it nudged the shore. The Pavit, a 1,000-tonne Panama-flagged merchant ship that had been abandoned by its crew and reported sunk, had drifted through Indian waters for more than a hundred hours, undetected by the Navy, the Coast Guard and spanking-new police patrol boats purchased after 26/11.

The dangers were unmistakable: the ship could have been carrying terrorists or explosive or toxic chemicals, each with the potential to kill thousands. It isn’t only in the air, the story shows, that India’s borders remain vulnerable.

No official investigation of the failures that enabled the Pavit to drift ashore undetected — or a similar incident involving the merchant ship, Wisdom earlier that month — has ever been made public. In private, though, naval and intelligence sources admit the failures of coordination and technology, like a coastal surveillance radar.

Few of those problems seem to have been addressed: just last year, it transpired that the Seaman Guard Ohio,a 394-tonne floating armoury serving anti-piracy mercenaries, had been operated in Indian waters for 45 days, evading multiple Coast Guard patrols as well as a port search at Kochi. The mercenaries on board were in fact protecting Indian sailors — but could just as easily have been terrorists.

India’s fishing fleet still hasn’t been fitted with a satellite-based tracking and identification system, necessary to stop attacks coming in from across the high seas. Last year, the Comptroller and Auditor General said that “72 per cent of the fast patrol vessels (FPVs)/inshore patrol vessels (IPVs), 47 per cent of the advanced offshore patrol vessels (AOPVs) and 37 per cent of interceptor boats (IBs) were either on extended life or their extended life had expired.” It recorded that 36 of 50 coastal police outposts remained non-functional, since no police were posted there.

The Ministry of Home Affairs’ annual reports have dutifully recorded its determination to act — and then nothing has been done. In 2011-12, the Home Ministry’s annual report said it had asked all States to “carry out vulnerability/gap analysis in consultation with Coast Guard to firm up their additional requirements.” However, its 2010-2011 report, had said they had already “carried out vulnerability/gap analysis in consultation with Coast Guard to firm up their additional requirements.” The 2009-2010 report had said the Ministry had “carried out vulnerability/gap analysis in consultation with Coast Guard to firm up their additional requirements.” Little changed except the page numbers on to which the text was cut-and-pasted.

India’s security system must do better. The resources needed to combat future terrorism will also make the everyday lives of Indians safer: infrastructure for a terrorist chemical weapons attack, for example, will save lives during a catastrophic industrial accident.

It isn’t that nothing is being done: the Central Industrial Security Force now has United States-trained units specialising in guarding nuclear installations; the Border Security Force has at least one battalion with expertise in operating in a nuclear, chemical or bacteriological environment. The Defence Research and Development Organisation has made extensive efforts to train police, while the National Disaster Management Authority has worked to build the rudiments of a proper emergency-response force.

These efforts are too little, though — and too focussed on the catastrophes of the past, not the ones which might confront us tomorrow. Local administrators, moreover, have lacked the resolve needed to give them meaning at the level of cities and towns: not one Indian urban centre regularly rehearses its disaster responses. MH370 might yet go down as one more wake-up call India’s counter-terrorism system slept through.

MH370: India?s wake-up call - The Hindu

 

[Book of Jeremiah]

Great story, Vikrant. I believe the plane is designated for the USA. Not India. Israelis are on high alert now in case it is sent there way. A 777 can fly for approximately 18 hours without refueling. Right? That's why they needed a 777. - J.

http://www.happyzebra.com/distance-calculator/USA-and-Pakistan.phpHappy Zebra > Distance calculator > From USA to Pakistan
Distance from USA to Pakistan is: 7109.4 Miles

( 11441.4 Kilometers / 6173.8 Nautical Miles )

Approximate flight duration time from Washington DC, USA to Islamabad, Pakistan is 14 hrs, 46 mins


Please note: this page displays the approximate flight duration times from Washington DC. The actual flight times may differ depending on the type and speed of aircraft.

Time difference between USA and Pakistan
Distance from:

Distance from Washington DC (capital of USA) to cities in Pakistan are displayed in kilometers and miles in the table below. It also displays the approximate flight duration time from Washington DC to cities in Pakistan.
Distances and flight duration time from Washington DC, USA to cities in Pakistan:
Country / City Distance (miles) / Distance (km) / Flight duration

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[Book of Jeremiah]

We need to be praying that plane is found immediately.