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Beijing bound Air Malaysia flight loses contact

Look at the bright side!

There is a possibility that the passengers and crew might still be alive (although it would be cruel to raise relatives' hopes just yet).
 
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Look at the bright side!

There is a possibility that the passengers and crew might still be alive (although it would be cruel to raise relatives' hopes just yet).

That's what I was thinking as well.

Not likely of course, but it would be quite amazing if they really were still alive.

That would be the best news ever.
 
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actually Vietnam can scale down the search as the plane had flied most likely to the West, far away from Vietnam controlled waters.

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Malaysian Official Says Missing Plane Hijacked
By Eileen Ng and Joan Lowy


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A Malaysian investigation into the missing flight 370 has concluded that one or more people with flying experience switched off communications devices and deliberately steered the airliner off-course, a Malaysian government official involved in the investigation said Saturday.

The official called the disappearance a hijacking, though he said no motive has been established and no demands have been made known. It's not yet clear where the plane ended up, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

The official said a deliberate takeover of the plane was no longer a theory. "It is conclusive," he said, indicating that investigators were ruling out mechanical failure or pilot error in the disappearance.

He said evidence that led to the conclusion were signs that the plane's communications were switched off deliberately, data about the flight path and indications the plane was steered in a way to avoid detection by radar.

The Boeing 777's communication with the ground was severed just under one hour into a Malaysia Airlines flight March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian officials previously have said radar data suggest it may have turned back toward and crossed over the Malaysian peninsula after setting out on a northeastern path toward the Chinese capital.

Earlier, an American official told The Associated Press that investigators are examining the possibility of "human intervention" in the plane's disappearance, adding it may have been "an act of piracy."

While other theories are still being examined, the U.S. official said key evidence suggesting human intervention is that contact with the Boeing 777's transponder stopped about a dozen minutes before a messaging system on the jet quit. Such a gap would be unlikely in the case of an in-flight catastrophe.

The Malaysian official said only a skilled aviator could navigate the plane the way it was flown after its last confirmed location over the South China Sea. The official said it had been established with a "more than 50 percent" degree of certainty that military radar had picked up the missing plane after it dropped off civilian radar.

Why anyone would want to do this is unclear. Malaysian authorities and others will be urgently investigating the backgrounds of the two pilots and 10 crew members, as well the 227 passengers on board.

Some experts have said that pilot suicide may be the most likely explanation for the disappearance, as was suspected in a SilkAir crash during a flight from Singapore to Jakarta in 1997 and an EgyptAir flight in 1999.

A massive international search effort began initially in the South China Sea where the plane's transponders stopped transmitting. It has since been expanded onto the other side of the Malay peninsula up into the Andaman Sea and into the Indian Ocean.

Scores of aircraft and ships from 12 countries are involved in the search.

The plane had enough fuel to fly for at least five hours after its last known location, meaning a vast swath of South and Southeast Asia would be within its reach. Investigators are analyzing radar and satellite data from around the region to try and pinpoint its final location, something that will be vital to hopes of finding the plane, and answering the mystery of what happened to it.

The USS Kidd arrived in the Strait of Malacca late Friday afternoon and will be searching in the Andaman Sea, and into the Bay of Bengal. It uses a using a "creeping-line" search method of following a pattern of equally spaced parallel lines in an effort to completely cover the area.

A P-8A Poseidon, the most advanced long range anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare aircraft in the world, will arrive Saturday and be sweeping the southern portion of the Bay of Bengal and the northern portion of the Indian Ocean. It has a nine-member crew and has advanced surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, the department of defense said in a statement.

Another U.S. official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said investigators looking for the plane have run out of clues except for a type of satellite data that has never been used before to find a missing plane, and is very inexact.

The data consists of attempts by an Inmarsat satellite to identify a broad area where the plane might be in case a messaging system aboard the plane should need to connect with the satellite, said the official. The official compared the location attempts, called a "handshake," to someone driving around with their cellphone not in use. As the phone from passes from the range of one cellphone tower to another, the towers note that the phone is in range in case messages need to be sent.

In the case of the Malaysian plane, there were successful attempts by the satellite to roughly locate the Boeing 777 about once an hour over four to five hours, the official said. "This is all brand new to us," the official said. "We've never had to use satellite handshaking as the best possible source of information."

The handshake does not transmit any data on the plane's altitude, airspeed or other information that might help in locating it, the official said. Instead, searchers are trying to use the handshakes to triangulate the general area of where the plane last was known to have been at the last satellite check, the official said.

"It is telling us the airplane was continuing to operate," the official said, plus enough information on location so that the satellite will know how many degrees to turn to adjust its antenna to pick up any messages from the plane.

The official confirmed prior reports that following the loss of contact with the plane's transponder, the plane turned west. A transponder emits signals that are picked up by radar providing a unique identifier for each plane along with altitude. Malaysian military radar continued to pick up the plane as a whole "paintskin" -- a radar blip that has no unique identifier -- until it traveled beyond the reach of radar, which is about 320 kilometers (200 miles) offshore, the official said.

The New York Times, quoting American officials and others familiar with the investigation, said radar signals recorded by the Malaysian military appear to show the airliner climbing to 45,000 feet (about 13,700 meters), higher than a Boeing 777's approved limit, soon after it disappeared from civilian radar, and making a sharp turn to the west. The radar track then shows the plane descending unevenly to an altitude of 23,000 feet (7,000 meters), below normal cruising levels, before rising again and flying northwest over the Strait of Malacca toward the Indian Ocean, the Times reported.

Lowy reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Ashok Sharma in New Delhi, Jim Gomez in Kuala Lumpur, and Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, contributed to this report.
 
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makes me question few things

1. if malaysian authorities / military knew it went to west why they kept quiet
2. what about resources (time, fuel, human etc) wasted by the rescue teams involved

what ever the case is, in my opinion malaysian government and authorities know more than what they are sharing with others
 
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last signal with the plane is now 8am Saturday, which is 7hrs from when they first lost contact at around 1:30am. the plane had around 7-8 hrs of fuel, so it was running on fumes?
 
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Vietnam & China team you can going home now..... :hitwall:
 
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Vietnam & China team you can going home now..... :hitwall:

Today 03.15 Malaysia government told international media, that MH370 airplane had been hijacked to the border between Kyrghyzstan and China XinJiang . WTF ?! After missing 7 hours, the MH370 flied to Kyrghyzstan ! MH370 in Central Asia !

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【马航客机最新失联位置示意图】CNN刚刚在直播中展示了一张地图,根据马航失联客机与卫星的最后一次联系的数据,飞机的最后失联位置可能是地图中两条红线上的任意一点。另据现在在马来西亚的BBC记者称,马来西亚官员相信飞机最有可能的位置是中国和吉尔吉斯斯坦边境。
 
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Chinese pals ... Just go home ... the Americans would help !!!
cnleio : which Malaysia govt said so ?
 
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Let's look at this backward. Who has emerged the top beneficiary out of this tragedy? Obviously Putin. World's attention is now focused on this rather than Crimea-Ukraine. True to his KGB past,Putin is a ruthless rogue who has no scruples. Could he have organized this "disappearance"?
 
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Malaysia PM: Malaysia Airlines probe refocusing on passengers, crew

Kazakhstan to Indian Ocean

"The plane's last communication with the satellite was in one of two possible corridors: a northern corridor stretching approximately from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, or a southern corridor stretching approximately from Indonesia to the southern Indian ocean," Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday. "The investigation team is working to further refine the information."

(CNN) -- A week after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished, the investigation shifted to passengers and crew after data showed the plane deviated due to deliberate action, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday.

"Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation on crew and passengers aboard," Najib told reporters. "Evidence is consistent with someone acting deliberately from inside the plane."

Najib stopped short of calling it a hijacking, saying investigators have not made a final determination.

"Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, we are investigating all major possibilities on what caused MH370 to deviate," he said.

Kazakhstan to Indian Ocean

In addition to the shift in focus, investigators have expanded search areas exponentially, and are no longer combing the South China Sea, the Prime Minister said.

Crew also searched the Straits of Malacca, the Andaman Sea and the Indian Ocean, but now data point in a different direction.

"The plane's last communication with the satellite was in one of two possible corridors: a northern corridor stretching approximately from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, or a southern corridor stretching approximately from Indonesia to the southern Indian ocean," he said. "The investigation team is working to further refine the information."

The passenger jetliner disappeared on March 8, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 people aboard. It's unclear who took the plane or what the motive was.

"Based on new satellite information, we can say with a high degree of certainty that the aircraft communications ... system was disabled just before the aircraft reached the East Coast of peninsular Malaysia," the Prime Minister said. "Shortly afterward, near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control, the aircraft's transponder was switched off."

Hopes of hijacking

Relatives held out hope that their loved ones will be found.

"It looks like there is increased possibility of a hijacking," said Li, 31, whose husband is among the passengers. "Whatever the reason for the hijacking is, I hope they will not harm the passengers. They're our loved ones."

Though it'd lost communication, military radar showed the jetliner turned back, flew west over the the peninsular in Malaysia, and either turned northwest toward the Bay of Bengal or southwest into the Indian Ocean.

"Up until the point at which it left military primary radar coverage, these movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane," he said.

The plane's last ping to a satellite was on March 8 at 8:11 a.m. Malaysian time, he said. Its precise location at the time was unclear, but it departed from Kuala Lumpur at 12:41 a.m. the same day.

Investigators are using such signals to try to determine how long and far it flew after it went incommunicado.

Intense speculation

Theories on what happened have evolved every day, complete with satellite images with purported wreckage released by a Chinese agency, and later debunked by Beijing.

"There has been intense speculation," Najib said. "We understand the desperate need for information on behalf of the families and those watching around the world. But we have a responsibility to the investigation and the families to only release information that has been corroborated."

Hours before the Prime Minister's announcement, U.S. officials told CNN the flight made drastic changes in altitude and direction after disappearing from civilian radar. The changes raised questions on who was at the controls of the jetliner when it vanished.

The more the United States learns about the flight's pattern, "the more difficult to write off" the idea that some type of human intervention was involved, an official familiar with the investigation said.

Befuddling mystery

CNN has learned that a classified analysis of electronic and satellite data suggests the flight likely crashed either in the Bay of Bengal or elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. The Prime Minister said some those areas have been searched.

Taken together, the data point toward speculation of a dark scenario in which someone took control of the plane for some unknown purpose, perhaps terrorism.

The jetliner was flying "a strange path," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. The details of the radar readings were first reported by The New York Times on Friday.

Malaysian military radar showed the plane climbing to 45,000 feet soon after disappearing from civilian radar screens and then dropping to 23,000 feet before climbing again, the official said.

The question of what happened to the jetliner has turned into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history, befuddling industry experts and government officials.
 
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Chinese pals ... Just go home ... the Americans would help !!!
China is more closer than America to Kazakhstan, Near our home gate it's time to send PLA Army to search MH370. After missing on Gulf of Thailand, the MH370 indeed turn back to West Malaysia, then to Andaman Sea, but fly to North much further than i thought (i thought MH370 to YuNan, now in Kazakhstan close to China XinJiang).


MH370 missing track :
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After MH370 continue flying 8 hours from West Malaysia, then it will arrive:
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Someone want to 'BORROW' that Boeing 777-200 plane, or 200x hostages (Most r Chinese citizens).
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that's a lot of heavy military radar it had to evade if it indeed landed if it indeed landed at the Kyrgyzstan and China borders. Failure by Malaysian officials for taking 7 days, hopefully this wasted time does not affect the safety of passengers and crew/
 
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