MH370 Missing Aircraft Investigation -Search history.

mickmackey1

vicwatson wrote: »

Seems like they've pulled some debris :-(

Quite the opposite :rolleyes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26797866

wil

9 news

The investigation into what happened on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is likely to be based in Australia as it becomes increasingly likely that the ill-fated aircraft crashed in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Perth.

However, Malaysian authorities have said that no inquiry will be established until the plane's black box has been recovered, which could take years.

Black box locator equipment has reportedly been sent to the search zone but it is unclear if the technology has been deployed.

The news that an investigation will not commence without the black box being recovered caused an uproar in Malaysia's Parliament amid criticism of the government's handling of the tragedy.

NST

Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein says there is a need to strengthen Malaysia's military assets, especially after the incident involving the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 aircraft.

He said apart from the radar system, other technological capabilities should also be reviewed to equip the Malaysian Armed Forces with better assets.

"Malaysia made a very courageous decision to talk about our defence capabilities.

"And now, Datuk Seri Najib (Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak) has got to find me the money to change our radar system because the whole world now knows our defence capabilities, in terms of radar," Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister, said in jest.

"We did that, putting aside national interests to find MH370. What more do the people want from the government of Malaysia and from the ATM (Malaysian Armed Forces)?," he asked.

He said this at a media conference with local media on the missing jetliner here today.

Asked if there was a need for Malaysia to have technologies such as sonar system for naval ships and submarines, he said they were needed in the context of national security and military, including its position as Asean member.

Not just Malaysia but many other countries in the world also needed to review their assets and military technological strengths, noted Hishammuddin.

"If you noticed, the information we detected was from commercial satellites, not military. So, the military forces of the world will have to relook at their capabilities. I believe all are doing that now. But my duty here is only to find MH370," he said.

vicwatson

mickmackey1 wrote: »

Quite the opposite :rolleyes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26797866

Was working off this article - should have stated "possible" debris

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/asia-pacific/missing-malaysian-flight-mh370-two-ships-pull-possible-debris-from-the-indian-ocean-in-hunt-for-plane-30137881.html

Iwannahurl

Search for MH370 frustrated by prevalence of ocean garbage.

Sometimes the object spotted in the water is a snarled fishing line. Or a buoy. Or something that might once have been the lid to an ice box. Not once - not yet at least - has it been a clue.

Anticipation has repeatedly turned into frustration in the search for signs of Flight MH370 as objects spotted from planes in a new search area west of Australia have turned out to be garbage. Not only is the rubbish a time-wasting distraction for air and sea crews searching for debris from the Malaysia Airlines flight that vanished March 8, it also points to wider problems in the world's oceans.

Wing Commander Andy Scott, of New Zealand's defence force, said the crew in a P-3 Orion scouring the ocean for Flight 370 on Saturday spotted about 70 objects over four hours.

Three were deemed worthy of further investigation, he said, but none turned out to be from the missing plane. One was probably a fishing line, he said, another was the suspected ice box lid, and a third was some unidentified brown and orange material.

"From my experience, it can be quite a roller coaster," he said. "You sight these search objects, and think you've made a breakthrough, and then you have to get back to your routine."

http://www.theage.com.au/world/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-lost-in-a-sea-of-rubbish-20140401-zqp56.html

wil

IATA pushes for safer aviation industry (full article)

(excerpt below)

IATA OPS Conference, in Kuala Lumpur today
IATA Director General and CEO, Tony Tyler

"We should not jump to any conclusions on probable cause before the investigation into MH370 closes. There are, however, at least two areas of process - aircraft tracking and passenger data - where there are clearly challenges that need to be overcome," said Tyler.

MH370 has highlighted the need to improve our tracking of aircraft in flight. "In a world where our every move seems to be tracked, there is disbelief both that an aircraft could simply disappear and that the flight data and cockpit voice recorders are so difficult to recover. Air France 447 brought similar issues to light a few years ago and some progress was made. But that must be accelerated. We cannot let another aircraft simply vanish," said Tyler.

He also urged all to follow the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) process to move this forward.

wil

British sub arrives in search area, etc
(excerpts below)

The protracted search for missing Flight MH370 was boosted by the arrival of a British submarine in the Indian Ocean ahead of a visit to Australia by Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak

The personal jet of Oscar-winning New Zealand movie director Peter Jackson is also now reportedly being used in the multinational hunt for the plane that vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board.
......
Britain’s Royal Navy said submarine HMS Tireless has arrived in the area and “with her advanced underwater search capability will be able to contribute to the attempts to locate the missing plane”.
Britain’s HMS Echo is also due in the search zone shortly to assist Australia’s Ocean Shield naval vessel, which is fitted with a US-supplied “black box” detector and is expected to arrive on Friday.
.......

Malaysia’s authoritarian government — which muzzles its own pliant mainstream press — revealed it was compiling a dossier of “false” media reports over the crisis and would consider filing lawsuits.

Transport and Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said on his Twitter feed that the country’s attorney general had been instructed to “compile evidence and advise” on possible legal action

Mick55

The underwater search for the black boxes of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has begun as the window for detecting the locator beacon’s transmission grows closer to expiring, according to the head of Australia’s search co-ordination centre.

“The towed pinger has been deployed today from the Ocean Shield. The search is currently ongoing,” he said. Houston added that the underwater search area has been narrowed to an area of 240 sq kmm, and said that time was running out to detect the beacon.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/04/mh370-black-box-search-begins-as-detection-window-gets-smaller

Thrill

Malaysia missing plane search: China ship 'picks up signal'

A Chinese ship searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the southern Indian Ocean has picked up a pulse signal, Chinese media say.
They say the signal has a frequency of 37.5kHz per second - the same as those emitted by the flight recorders.

However there is no evidence so far that it is linked to MH370

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26902127

Area where the signal was detected

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BkdVQHVCEAEEZ3g.jpg:large


.

Wanderer2010

http://news.sky.com/story/1237827/missing-plane-three-acoustic-signals-detected

Two signals hundreds of miles apart have now been detected by Chinese and Australian ships. The signal picked up yesterday is currently being verified and a triangulation method will then begin to locate source of signal..

wil

Missing Malaysia Airlines jet: signal not yet verified as MH370 'pinger', says China's Xinhua
full article below


Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported it had not yet been determined whether the signal was related to the missing plane, citing the China Maritime Search and Rescue Centre.
Xinhua said a black box detector deployed by the ship, Haixun 01, picked up a signal at 37.5 kilohertz (cycles per second), the same frequency emitted by flight data recorders.
Malaysia's civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, confirmed that the frequency emitted by Flight 370's black boxes were 37.5 kilohertz and said authorities were verifying the report

There are many clicks, buzzes and other sounds in the ocean from animals, but the 37.5 kilohertz pulse was selected for underwater locator beacons on black boxes because there is nothing else in the sea that would naturally make that sound, said William Waldock, an expert on search and rescue who teaches accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.

"They picked that (frequency) so there wouldn't be false alarms from other things in the ocean," he said.
Waldock cautioned that "it's possible it could be an aberrant signal" from a nuclear submarine if there was one in the vicinity.
If the sounds can be verified, it would reduce the search area to about 10 square kilometres, Waldock said.
Unmanned robot subs with sidescan sonar would then be sent into the water to try to locate the wreckage, he said.

John Goglia, a former US National Transportation Safety Board member, called the report "exciting," but cautioned that "there is an awful lot of noise in the ocean."

"One ship, one ping doesn't make a success story," he said. "It will have to be explored. I guarantee you there are other resources being moved into the area to see if it can be verified."
The overall current search area is a 217,000-square-kilomete zone in the southern Indian Ocean, about 1700 kilometres northwest of Perth.

Thrill

British ship HMS Echo arrives in area where pings heard during MH370 search.

The second pulse signal was detected less than 2 km (1.2 miles) from the original



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26912064#TWEET1092758

wil

Thrill wrote: »

British ship HMS Echo arrives in area where pings heard during MH370 search.

The second pulse signal was detected less than 2 km (1.2 miles) from the original

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26912064#TWEET1092758

(excerpt - bolded for clarity and context)

Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said China's Haixan 01 had redetected a signal for about 90 seconds on Saturday, within hours of it being heard earlier.

Up to a dozen military aircraft and 13 ships were to help with the search on Sunday
He said the latest discovery was about 2km (1.2 miles) away from the original pulse, and that China had also reported spotting white objects on the surface of the water about 90km away.

"The fact that we have two detections - two acoustic events - in that location provides some promise," he said.

However he said these signals were "fleeting encounters" that could not be verified until the arrival of British naval ship HMS Echo and Australian defence vessel Ocean Shield.

Both vessels have technology able to detect underwater signals emitted by "black box" data recorders.

HMS Echo arrived around 15:45 GMT on Sunday. The depth of the water in this zone is said to be about 4.5km (2.8 miles).

Ocean Shield - described by officials as the best equipped vessel taking part in the search - will head there once it has investigated a third acoustic detection about 300 nautical miles away (560km).

It is not expected to reach the southern area for over a day.

fits

Australian ship, ocean shield picks up signals.


Has detected signals like those omitted by Black boxes.

1st signal held for 2 hrs and 20 minutes

2nd detection held for 13 minutes but more important two "distinct" signals were heard.

They haven't found the aircraft yet and he stressed this so to use the info sensibly
until the signals could be verified.

Depth here is 4,500 metres !


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26917934

This is very promising folks.

fits

Ocean Shield has detected the pings another two times. "strongly" believed to be from mh370. Not deploying the submersible just yet.

Signal has now been detected four times in same area.
http://stream.wsj.com/story/malaysia-airlines-flight-370/SS-2-475558/SS-2-503692/

SYDNEY—Search crews have regained contact with underwater pings detected over the weekend that were consistent with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370′s “black boxes,” increasing the chances that they have located the missing jet.

Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who is leading the multinational search in the southern Indian Ocean, said Wednesday they have now detected signals on four separate occasions in the same area. The latest signals were weaker than the initial pings, suggesting the jet’s flight recorders were close to running out of batteries, he said.

The signals, picked up twice—on Tuesday afternoon and late Tuesday, local time—were held for five and seven minutes, respectively: much shorter than an initial two hour transmission on Saturday. An analysis of the initial signals found that they were consistent with the kind of electronic pings that would be emitted by locator beacons attached to the jet’s flight recorders, the former Australian defense chief said.

Beacons on the two flight recorders aboard the plane have an estimated battery life of about 30 days before they stop emitting signals. It has been longer than that since the plane vanished March 8 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

“What we’re picking up is a great lead,” Air Chief Marshal Houston said, adding that search crews still needed a visual confirmation of the wreckage before declaring the final resting place of Flight 370. “I have confidence that we’re in the right area. I’m not prepared to confirm anything until such time as someone has laid eyes on the wreckage.”

The Australian naval ship Ocean Shield—a hand-me-down from Norway’s oil and gas industry—has been sweeping a 7-mile strip of the southern Indian Ocean since April 4. It is towing a U.S. Navy device nearly 2 miles beneath the ocean surface, listening for sounds from the black boxes’ locator beacons.

To avoid interfering with the delicate search for signals, authorities said Wednesday they are still holding back on deploying any other ships or underwater vehicles to the search zone. Choosing to deploy the Bluefin-21, a torpedo-shaped submersible drone currently strapped to the ship’s deck, would mark another switch in the search, effectively signaling an end to hopes of further signals from the black boxes.

“The more effort we put into location of where the transmission is coming from, the more certainty we will have that we will find something on the bottom of the ocean,” Air Chief Marshal Houston said

Complicating the effort, the area of ocean where the signals were detected is some 2.8 miles deep. Those depths are at the absolute limit of the undersea vehicle aboard the Ocean Shield, which might mean that crews would have to use other submersibles or drop cameras to the ocean floor to investigate.

Authorities think the sea bed is covered with silt several meters thick that might be distorting the signals and could also handicap any submersible that would look for plane wreckage using sonar initially and later video cameras. The silt also may cover debris from Flight 370 that likely scattered over a wide area as it sank to the ocean floor, officials said.

The submersibles travel at walking pace, meaning it could be weeks rather than days for any plane wreckage to be found.

The two-year underwater hunt for the black boxes of Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, provides some sobering lessons for the investigation of Flight 370.

The ocean floor in the Air France crash was nearly 2.5 miles deep, with forbidding peaks and valleys. It took small robotic submarines provided by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution nearly 60 trips under the surface before the black boxes were discovered.

–David Winning, Andy Pasztor and Jon Ostrower contributed to this article.

fits

Map of detections here

http://www.jacc.gov.au/media/releases/2014/april/mr014.aspx

Thrill

Australian leader Tony Abbott says authorities are confident that signals heard in the Indian Ocean are coming from the "black box" flight recorders of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26984162

Iwannahurl

The first deployment of a robotic submarine terminated early when it exceeded its maximum operating depth of 4500 metres.

http://www.onenewspage.com.au/n/World/750ebivok/Search-for-MH370-Indian-Ocean-too-deep.htm

wil

Thrill wrote: »

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26984162

11 April 2014
==============================

15 April 2014 BBC News
excerpt
No signals have been detected since 8 April, however, leading to fears that the recorders' batteries - which last about a month - have run out.

MH370 sub search cut short by 'programming oversight'
An "oversight in the programming" has been blamed after the robotic submarine deployed to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane had its first mission cut short.
The Bluefin-21 was sent to search the sea floor of the southern Indian Ocean - but exceeded its operating limit of 4,500m (15,000ft).
US Navy Captain Mark Matthews said "there was no evidence of aircraft" so far and the drone would be adapted and relaunched

mbur

Oil slick in MH370 search zone

An oil slick has been detected in the Indian Ocean search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane as hopes of picking up more acoustic signals from its black box are abandoned

Co-pilot made call during flight: report

Malaysia has rejected claims that phone calls were made from missing flight MH370 before it vanished, but refused to rule out any possibility in a so far fruitless investigation over the cause of the jet's disappearance.

The New Straits Times, quoting an anonymous source, had reported Saturday that co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid made a call which ended abruptly, possibly "because the aircraft was fast moving away from the (telecommunications) tower".

There had also been unconfirmed reports of calls by the Malaysia Airlines plane's captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah before or during the flight.

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters Sunday that authorities had no knowledge of any calls made from the jet's cockpit.

"As far as I know, no," he said when asked if any calls had been made.

However, he added that he did not want to speculate on "the realm of the police and other international agencies" investigating the case.

"I do not want to disrupt the investigations that are being done now, not only by the Malaysian police but the FBI, MI6, Chinese intelligence and other intelligence agencies," he said at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur.

Alt source

stuar

MH370 Did Not Crash? Investigation Team Now Says Plane Possibly Landed Somewhere Else Instead of Ending in Ocean.

Now the investigating officials have said that they might ultimately give up looking at the ocean and possibly scrap the entire idea that it ever crashed into the ocean.
What this means is that, the International team will now focus its attention to and take seriously, the various theories and rumors doing its rounds in the Internet that the plane could have been actually hijacked and landed somewhere.

http://www.ibtimes.co.in/articles/54...here-crash.htm

MH370 probe team may be forced to ‘start again’

He said this included the aid of the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap, located in Alice Springs in Australia's Northern Territory.
The facility is jointly run by Australia and the US, including its Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and National Reconnaissance Office.
Malaysian authorities had also requested aid from the Australian and US governments, focusing on the Jindalee Operational Radar Network satellite. The over-the-horizon radar is able to monitor both air and sea movements across 37,000 sq km.

http://www.nst.com.my/nation/general/mh370-probe-team-may-be-forced-to-start-again-1.574277

Missing Flight 370 search: Plane landing revisited, ocean search may go to land.
One of the countries that refused the Malaysian government access to a satellite was the United States.
The Jindalee Operational Radar Network satellite has over-the-horizon radar and monitors both air and sea movements across 230,000 square miles.
The Malaysian authorities were told by U.S. representatives that they could not view that information and that the satellite did not pick up any information on Flight 370. The source said “that was the end of it.”
http://www.examiner.com/article/missing-flight-370-search-plane-landing-revisited-as-ocean-search-may-turn-land

the_monkey

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/23/mh370-more-powerful-sonar-needed-in-plane-search-says-australia


MH370: more powerful sonar needed in plane search, says Australia



The Bluefin-21 submersible, which is scanning the bottom of the Indian Ocean for wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Photograph: Xinhua/Landov/Barcroft Media

Australian authorities searching for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are gearing up to send in much more powerful sonar equipment to scan for debris on the seabed.
Search co-ordinators said on Wednesday that nothing had been found by the US navy robotic submarine Bluefin 21, which has covered more than 80% of a zone off the Australian west coast.
The area of 310 square kilometres (120 square miles) is thought to be where the plane is most likely to have gone down, based on "ping" signals that match those from an airliner's black box. Those signals were picked up by search vessels but are thought to have ceased when the beacons' batteries ran out.

Australia's defence minister, David Johnston, said more powerful towed side-scan commercial sonar equipment would probably be deployed, similar to the system that found the Titanic 3,800m (12,500f) under the Atlantic Ocean in 1985 and the Australian second world war wreck HMAS Sydney in the Indian Ocean, north of the current search area, in 2008.
"The next phase, I think, is that we step up with potentially a more powerful, more capable side-scan sonar to do deeper water," Johnston said.
Australia was consulting with Malaysia, China and the US on the next phase of the search for the plane, which went missing on 8 March after veering off course between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, Johnston said

The search area is a circle 20km (12 miles) wide around an area where sonar equipment picked up a signal on 8 April consistent with a plane's black box.

The Bluefin had less than one-fifth of the search area left to complete but that could take another two weeks, the minister said. "We want to be very thorough."
The Bluefin's first 16-hour seafloor mission last week was aborted because the water depth exceeded its 4.5km safety limit. Johnston said it was possible wreckage had been missed in that deep water.
Analysis was continuing of flight data and the apparent black box beacon signals, Johnston said. "We are currently gathering all of the facts together to mount a further assault on the most likely location, given all the facts," he said.
"A lot of this seabed has not even been hydrographically surveyed before ... we're flying blind," he said, adding that there were waters 7km deep in the area.
The air search for debris would likely continue until the announcement of a new search phase next week, Johnston said.
Radar and satellite signals have shown the jet carrying 239 passengers and crew veered far off course for unknown reasons during its flight from Malaysia to China. Analysis indicates it would have run out of fuel in the remote section of ocean where the search has been focused, but no debris has yet been recovered.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

the_monkey

I posted on the other thread too ...


http://news.sky.com/story/1247611/mi...s-ashore-in-oz

Missing Plane: Material Washes Ashore In Oz


Investigators hope the discovery of objects six miles off the coast will help unravel the mystery of flight MH370.

11:19am UK, Wednesday 23 April 2014
The undersea drone is near the end of its first mission

• Email

Officials searching for the missing Malaysian Airlines plane say material has washed ashore off the coast of Western Australia.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is now examining photographs of the objects, which have been secured by police in the region, to establish whether they are linked to flight MH370.
Authorities said the images had also been passed to investigators in Malaysia.
Relatives are urging governments not to give up the search The development came after Australia pledged to keep searching for the plane despite no sign of wreckage after almost seven weeks.
Bad weather is continuing to hamper the search with aircraft grounded for the second day due to heavy rain, low clouds and rough seas.
An undersea drone is nearing the end of its first full mission and Australian PM Tony Abbott says the search strategy may change if seabed scans taken by the US Navy drone fails to find a trace of MH370, which vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board.
The deep search covers an area where sonar equipment picked up a signal "We may well re-think the search but we will not rest until we have done everything we can to solve this mystery," he said.
"The only way we can get to the bottom of this is to keep searching the probable impact zone until we find something or until we have searched it as thoroughly as human ingenuity allows at this time."
The Bluefin-21 drone is a key component in the search after the detection of audio signals, or "pings", believed to be from the plane's black box flight .
Relatives are asking Mr Hussein to investigate old media reports The search co-ordination centre said the robotic submarine had so far covered more than 80% of the 120 square mile (310 square kilometres) seabed search zone off the Australian west coast, creating a three-dimensional sonar map of the ocean floor, but failing to find anything of interest.
The 2.8 mile (4.5-kilometre) deep search area is a circle 12 miles (20 km) wide around an area where sonar equipment picked up a signal on April 8 consistent with a plane's black boxes. The batteries powering those signals are now dead.
Both Australia and Malaysia are under growing pressure to show what lengths they are prepared to go to in order to give closure to the grieving families of those on board.
In a sign of the families' growing desperation for answers, a group purporting to be relatives of the missing flight's passengers wrote a letter to Malaysian defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein, urging the government to investigate old media reports that the plane landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
"It is high time that the government should start thinking out of the box by exploring and re-examining all leads, new and old," said the letter, published on Facebook on Wednesday.

Mick55

DEBRIS washed up on a West Australian beach is being examined and photographed in a bid to find out if it has anything to do with missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370.

The debris was found washed ashore on a beach 10km east of Augusta and was reported to police.

Authorities say it is now at Bussellton police station where it has been photographed.

The images have been sent to Malaysian officials and to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

Investigators are urging people to be cautious of the debris and its origin, saying the more they look at it, the “less excited” they are.

Nine News reports three objects have washed up, one is believed to be the length of a car with “distinct rivets”.








Full story: http://www.themercury.com.au/news/world/malaysia-airlines-plane-missing-debris-washes-up-as-tony-abbott-says-search-wont-be-abandoned/story-fnj3ty5y-1226892871899

Jack1985

ATSB Chief: ''I am confident that debris picked up on a beach in Western Australia did not come from MH370.''

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0423/610441-malaysia/

mbur

Malaysia Airlines has asked relatives of passengers on board flight MH370 to leave the hotel accommodation it is providing and return to their homes. bbc


Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein also released for the first time the recordings of conversations between MH370's pilots and air traffic controllers. A transcript was published earlier this month.

The plane's cargo manifest and seating plan was also published by Mr Hussein, along with a summary of events from the disappearance of the plane's radar blip until activation of the Rescue Co-ordination Centre.

There are some maps as well on his facebook pages

MuffinsDa

Two interesting pieces of news:

Experts are to look again at the flight path calculations of flight MH370.

The data from satellites and radars was examined, first giving a huge arc that stretched from Kazakhstan all the way down to the southern Indian Ocean.

That was later narrowed down to the current search area which has already seen 4.6million square kilometres of ocean scoured.

Angus Houston, head of the search, said: "We've got to this stage of the process where it's very sensible to go back and have a look at all of the data that has been gathered, all of the analysis that has been done and and make sure there's no flaws in it, the assumptions are right, the analysis is right, and the deductions and conclusions are right."



http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/missing-flight-mh370-live-updates-3506557#ixzz316odSt3V
Follow us: @DailyMirror on Twitter | DailyMirror on Facebook

and

Archaeologist and writer William Meacham pointed out one significant point why the Australian led search was returning zero results.

In essence, Mr Meacham thinks that the pings on which Australia based its decisions on MH370 were coming from satellite trackers tagged to marine animals found in Australia.

"For several decades, pingers with frequencies of 30 to 50kHz have been commonly used to track large, deep ocean animals. Location and other data is transmitted to receivers in the ocean or to satellites whenever the animal surfaces. Acoustic pingers are also widely used as fishing net protectors, to drive away predators that would steal fish," he wrote.

Various governmental projects in Australia had employed tagging marine animals with satellite trackers.

The 'pings' thought to have emanated from missing Flight MH370's black box recorders might actually have come from satellite tracking devices tagged to marine animals such as sharks and turtles, it has been claimed.

The suggestion, put forward by archaeologist and writer William Meacham, raises the prospect that search authorities are looking in the wrong place for the plabe, which disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board.

Writing in the Malaysian Insider, Mr Meacham, who is affiliated with the University of Hong Kong, said: "For several decades, pingers with frequencies of 30 to 50kHz have been commonly used to track large, deep ocean animals.

"Location and other data is transmitted to receivers in the ocean or to satellites whenever the animal surfaces.

"Acoustic pingers are also widely used as fishing net protectors, to drive away predators that would steal fish."


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/missing-flight-mh370-live-updates-3506557#ixzz316p1zm9X
Follow us: @DailyMirror on Twitter | DailyMirror on Facebook

the_monkey

search suspended for 2 months :

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/28/world/asia/malaysia-missing-plane/

Duiske

Navy official: Pings not thought to be from Flight 370's black boxes

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/28/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-pinging/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- The four acoustic pings at the center of the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 for the past seven weeks are no longer believed to have come from the plane's black boxes, a U.S. Navy official told CNN.

The_Wanderer

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/malaysia-airlines-mh370-british-sailor-katherine-tee-saw-094337496.html#V5rVT8U

Malaysia Airlines MH370: British Sailor Katherine Tee 'Saw Burning Plane' Over Indian Ocean

A British sailor has filed a report with Australian authorities stating she saw a burning Boeing 777 near Thailand on the morning Malaysia Airlines MH370 disappeared.

Katherine Tee, who was sailing across the Indian Ocean from Cochin, India, to Phuket with her husband Marc Horn, said she saw what looked like an aircraft on fire crossing the night sky, with a plume of black smoke trailing behind it.

Tee, 41, was alone on the deck of the couple's yacht in the early hours of 8 March.

"I was on a night watch. My husband was asleep below deck and our one other crew member was asleep on deck," she told Thailand's Phuket Gazette.

"I saw something that looked like a plane on fire. That's what I thought it was. Then, I thought I must be mad. It caught my attention because I had never seen a plane with orange lights before, so I wondered what they were."

"I could see the outline of the plane, it looked longer than planes usually do. There was what appeared to be black smoke streaming from behind it."

Posting on the sailing website Cruisers' Forum, Tee said the aircraft passed from port to starboard, which would have been approximately north to south.

"Since that's not something you see every day, I questioned my mind. I was looking at what appeared to be an elongated plane glowing bright orange, with a trail of black smoke behind it."

According to Tee, two other aircraft were flying in the opposite direction above the burning jet.

"There were two other planes well above it -- moving the other way -- at the time. They had normal navigation lights. I remember thinking that if it was a plane on fire that I was seeing, the other aircraft would report it."

She filed a report on Sunday to the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), the Australian government agency running the search for the missing airliner.

Although the couple arrived in Phuket on 10 March, Tee did not alert authorities to the sighting at the time as she had been experiencing marital problems and feared being mistaken.

"So when we hit land everyone was talking about the missing plane and asking if we'd seen anything," she explained. "Since I doubted what I saw and was emotionally in a bad way, I brushed over what I thought I'd seen."

However after seeing a report last weekend that a Chinese ship involved in the ongoing search for the jet in the southern Indian Ocean had developed technical problems, she and her husband began to review their sailing logs.

"That is when we checked our GPS log and realised that perhaps I really did see it," Tee said, as quoted by the Times.

The couple discovered that their yacht was in the vicinity of one of MH370's projected flight paths on the night it disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

"This is what convinced me to file a report with the full track data for our voyage to the relevant authorities," Tee said.

Jack1985

And she's only coming forward with this now because???