Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is Missing

Release Date: 3/23/2014 10:31:00 PM

From U.S. 7th Fleet Public Affairs

PHILIPPINE SEA (NNS) -- The U.S. Navy is continuing efforts to search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. As a precautionary measure in case a debris field is located, U.S. Pacific Command has ordered U.S. Pacific Fleet to move a black box locator into the region, March 24.

If a debris field is confirmed, The Navy's Towed Pinger Locator 25 will add a significant advantage in locating the missing Malaysian aircraft's black box.

The TPL-25 Towed Pinger Locator System is able to locate black boxes on downed Navy and commercial aircraft down to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet anywhere in the world. Commercial aircraft pingers are mounted directly on the flight recorder, the recovery of which is critical to an accident investigation.

The Pinger Locator is towed behind a vessel at slow speeds, generally 1-5 knots, depending on the depth. The tow array carries a passive listening device for detecting pingers that automatically transmit an acoustic pulse.

"In the event a debris field is located, we're moving some specialized locator equipment into the area. The Towed Pinger Locator has some highly sensitive listening capability so that if the wreck site is located, we can hear the black box pinger down to a depth of about 20,000 feet. Basically, this super-sensitive hydrophone gets towed behind a commercial vessel very slowly and listens for black box pings," said Cmdr. Chris Budde, U.S. Seventh Fleet Operations Officer.

"This movement is simply a prudent effort to preposition equipment and trained personnel closer to the search area so that if debris is found we will be able to respond as quickly as possible since the battery life of the black box's pinger is limited," said Budde.

If found, the acoustic signal of the pinger is transmitted up the cable and is presented audibly, and can be output to either an oscilloscope or a signal processing computer. The operator monitors the greatest signal strength and records the navigation coordinates. This procedure is repeated on multiple track lines until the final position is triangulated.

The system consists of the tow fish, tow cable, winch, hydraulic power unit, generator, and topside control console.

Most pingers transmit every second at 37.5 kHz, although the TPL can detect any pinger transmitting between 3.5 kHz and 50 kHz at any repetition rate.

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24 March 2014 Last updated at 14:26 GMT

Missing plane lost, Malaysia says

Malaysia's prime minister has announced on the basis of new analysis it must be concluded that missing flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.

He said Malaysia Airlines had told the families of the 239 people on board.

Earlier the BBC saw a text message sent to families saying it had to be assumed "beyond reasonable doubt" that the plane was lost and there were no survivors.

Flight MH370 went missing after taking off on 8 March.

The announcement by PM Najib Razak came on the fifth day of an international search effort in the southern Indian Ocean.

Based on new analysis the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch and Inmarsat, the UK company that provided satellite data, "have concluded that MH370 flew along the southern corridor, and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth," he said.

"This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean."

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Blackstone said:

The Malaysian government has made so many MH370 claims, some of which contradict each other, that unless we see proof positive, we should be skeptical of anything Malaysian officials say on the missing flight.

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Kurt said:

This is a strange story. A plane from Kuala Lumpur to Bejing ends up in the ocean between Australia and Antarctica. There's no terrorist group posing as actors. In the South China Sea, after chatting with the Vietnamese control, it goes of course and ends up in an ocean far away from any land.
Can it be a software failure?
Any pilot must have noticed that China is not an ocean and tried to communicate problems.
Was it hijacked?
Could be a suicide hijacker, but these have always been glory seekers. Amok is a Malay word and someone might have tried a new way of doing old things.
Is it possible to modify a plane to fly without human input?
Is there a software backdoor to re-hijack hijacked planes from outside since the 9/11 events?
If I was a hired assassin, I would evaluate the idea of taking software control of a plane and cutting the human on board out of the loop. Disable communications and punch a hole in the hull with a height triggered bomb to disable human interference by killing everyone on board via decompression. Afterwards, steer it via software control in a region where the evidence will be most difficult to retrieve.
This incident will likely remain a mystery. If more incidents of this type happen, one might be able to discover the reasons.

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Quickie said:

"The prime minister said his conclusion was based on work by the U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch and satellite firm Inmarsat, which had been "performing further calculations on the data, using a type of analysis, never before used in an investigation of this sort."

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