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tonyh29

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/12/mh370-co-pilot-phonecall-malaysia

 

 

The co-pilot of the missing Malaysian airliner MH370 tried to make a mid-flight call from his mobile phone just before the plane vanished from radar screens, according to Malaysian newspaper reports.

The call ended abruptly possibly "because the aircraft was fast moving away from the [telecommunications] tower," the New Straits Times quoted a source as saying.

However, the Malaysian daily also quoted another source saying that while Fariq Abdul Hamid's "line was reattached", there was no certainty that a call was made from the Boeing 777 which vanished on 8 March.

The report - titled a "desperate call for help" - did not say who the co-pilot was trying to contact.

Fariq and Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah have come under intense scrutiny after the plane mysteriously vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

Investigators indicated last month that the flight was deliberately diverted and its communication systems manually switched off as it was leaving Malaysian airspace, triggering a criminal investigation by police that has revealed little of substance so far.

A number of theories have been put forward concerning the fate of MH370, including a hijacking, a terrorist attack or a rogue pilot.

There have been unconfirmed reports in the Malaysian media of calls made by the captain before or during the flight but so far no details have been released.

The NST report said that after turning off course MH370 flew low enough near Penang island on Malaysia's west coast for a telecom tower to pick up the co-pilot's phone signal.

The phone line was "reattached" between the time the plane veered off course and blipped off the radar, the government-controlled paper quoted the second source as saying.

"A 'reattachment' does not necessarily mean that a call was made. It can also be the result of the phone being switched on again."

Malaysia's transport ministry said it was examining the NST report and would issue a response.

Meanwhile, the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, said signals picked up during the search in the remote southern Indian Ocean, believed to be "pings" from the black box recorders, were "rapidly fading".

"While we do have a high degree of confidence that the transmissions that we've been picking up are from flight MH370's black box recorder, no one would underestimate the difficulties of the task still ahead of us," Abbott told a news conference in Beijing.

Search officials say they are confident they know the approximate position of the black box recorder, although they have determined that the latest "ping', picked up by searchers on Thursday, was not from the missing aircraft.

Batteries in the black box recorder have already exceeded their normal 30-day life, making the search to find it on the murky seabed all the more urgent. Once they are confident they have located it, searchers then plan to deploy a small unmanned "robot", known as an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle.

"Work continues in an effort to narrow the underwater search area for when the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is deployed," the Australian agency co-ordinating the search said on Saturday. "There have been no confirmed acoustic detections over the past 24 hours," it said in a statement.

The black box records data from the cockpit and conversations among flight crew and may provide answers about what happened to the plane, which flew thousands of miles off course after taking off.

The mystery has prompted the most expensive search and rescue operation in aviation history.

Malaysia's government has begun investigating civil aviation and military authorities to determine why opportunities to identify and track the flight were missed in the chaotic hours after it vanished.

Analysis of satellite data has led investigators to conclude the Boeing 777 crashed into the ocean somewhere west of Perth. So far, four "ping" signals, which could be from the plane's black box recorders, have been detected in the search area in recent days by a US Navy "Towed Pinger Locator".

"We are now getting to the stage where the signal, from what we are very confident is the black box, is starting to fade and we are hoping to get as much information as we can before the signal finally expires," Abbott said on Friday.

The US supply ship USNS Cesar Chavez has joined the Australian-led taskforce to provide logistics support and replenish Australian navy ships, a Pentagon spokesman said.

Up to nine military aircraft, one civil aircraft and 14 ships were scouring a 25,720 sq mile patch of desolate ocean some 1,445 miles northwest of Perth.

The extensive search and rescue operation has so far included assets from 26 countries.

Australia's Ocean Shield, which has the towed pinger locator on board, is operating in a smaller zone, just 230 sq miles about 1,040 miles north-west of Perth. That is near where it picked up the acoustic signals and where dozens of sonobuoys capable of transmitting data to search aircraft via radio signals were dropped on Wednesday.

Experts say the process of teasing out the signals from the cacophony of background noise in the sea is slow and exhausting.

An unmanned submarine named Bluefin-21 is on board the Ocean Shield and could be deployed to look for wreckage on the sea floor around 2.8 miles below the surface once a final search area has been identified.

 

 

article-2603075-1D0C06D800000578-650_634

I took the photo from the Mail.

Edited by Avfc96
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Sounds like it was tracked by military radar flying at 4000 feet and was being deliberalty controlled

Guess it's the pilot or co-pilot .. Or both

Said goodbye to KL air traffic took out anyone on the flight deck , disabled the transponders and oxygen , plugged in his oxygen , went up to 42000 feet and killed everyone (??? ) and then flew the plane for 7 hours until it crashed in the ocean ....

It still seems daft even as I type it but can't see how else it could have played out at the moment

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I was just watching the BBC news, they had a pretty little picture of a yellow submarine scanning the ocean floor, just incase you're unable to grasp the concept of what a submarine scanning the ocean floor is. I was hoping John, Paul, George and Ringo were going to jump out and send the whole thing psychedelic. That would liven up the news. Alas the report ended with the usual piece to camera by a reporter doing that politician thing of being all serious yet strangely waving his hands about like he's conducting an orchestra.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

Rumours of a Malaysian Airline crashing near Ukraine

 

might be the end of Malaysian airlines with 2 crashes in a few months , passenger numbers were already in decline after the MH370 flight

 

 

the location is interesting , hope it wasn't shot down by the Ruskies / Ukrainians by mistake

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Sources saying a BUK suffice to air missile

 

it's a soviet missile but could easily be used by either side .. Sky saying they think it was the Ukrainians that shot it down

Edited by tonyh29
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What are the possible consequences to this?

was just wondering the same thing  ... I doubt the airline will survive this (on top of MH370 ) so could be a huge payment made to the airline by someone

 

Radar 24 is interesting as all the other planes appear to have deliberately given the area a wide berth but MH17 went straight through the zone

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What are the possible consequences to this?

 

Russia shot down a Korean 747 30 years ago.

 

Cold war tensions rose, but bugger all happened.

 

It had wandered off course, and the US had been poking the Russki defences around then.

 

They're still guessing at what happened, though one of the theories is that the autopilot had been set incorrectly, and the pilots dozed off :o

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