MH370 MYSTERY INTENSIFIES NEED OF REAL-TIME FLIGHT TRACKING SYSTEM
MISSING MALAYSIAN AIRLINES MH370 FLIGHT MYSTERY INTENSIFIES URGENT NEED OF REAL-TIME FLIGHT TRACKING SYSTEM
by Syarif Hidayat*
Malaysia says all commercial flights should be fitted with tracking systems to prevent repeats of missing flight MH370.The report from the Malaysian government said that there had been two occasions in the last five years in which large commercial aircraft had gone missing.
Richard Hartley-Parkinson in his report published in the Mirror.co.uk writes Malaysia released a preliminary report on missing Flight MH370 on Thursday (May 1, 2014) in which it recommended that the U.N. body overseeing global aviation consider introducing a system for tracking commercial aircraft in real time.
In the report dated April 9, but only just made available to the media, the ministry pointed to the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines aircraft and Air France Flight AF447 in 2009 as evidence that such real-time tracking would help to locate missing aircraft more easily in future.
“There have now been two occasions during the last five years when large commercial air transport aircraft have gone missing and their last position was not accurately known,” the Transport Ministry said.
“This uncertainty resulted in significant difficulty in locating the aircraft in a timely manner.”
The report called on the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to “examine the safety benefits of introducing a standard for real-time tracking of commercial air transport aircraft”. Flight MH370, which had 239 passengers and crew on board, disappeared off civilian radars while on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.
The search for the Boeing 777-200ER is already the biggest in aviation history, and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said it had entered a new phase which could take six to eight months to complete.
Families of the missing passengers, the majority of whom are Chinese, have directed their anger largely at Malaysia’s authorities and military for failing to do enough to track the aircraft after it turned back after takeoff.
The report confirmed that military radar tracked a plane as it turned in a westerly direction across the Malaysian peninsula on the morning of March 8, and that it took no further action because the plane was deemed “friendly”.
However, it did not explain why Flight MH370 had been categorised as friendly even through its transponder was switched off by the time it turned back, one of many mysteries surrounding its fate that remain unanswered.
Still unknown is who or what led to MH370 veering off its original flight path and eventually ending up several thousand miles away in the southern Indian Ocean.
A 17-minute delay in querying missing MH370
Air traffic controllers took four hours to launch search and rescue operation, according to files released by Malaysian government.
Tania Branigan in Beijing and Gwyn Topham, transport correspondent in their article titled “MH370 report reveals 17-minute delay in querying missing plane” published in theguardian.com, Thursday 1 May 2014, wrote It took 17 minutes for air traffic controllers to realise that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had disappeared from their screens – and four hours to launch a rescue operation, according to documents issued on Thursday night by the Malaysian government.
The report, which was released with the plane’s cargo manifest, seating plan, and audio recordings of conversations between the pilots and air traffic controllers, also called on the International Civil Aviation Organisation to consider real-time tracking of passenger airplanes.
The timing of the plane’s disappearance was one of the details that first aroused suspicions that it might have been done deliberately: it happened at the boundary of air traffic control zones, two minutes after authorities in Kuala Lumpur told the pilots they should next contact Vietnamese officials. They never did so – prompting workers in Ho Chi Minh city to raise the alarm. Kuala Lumpur has been widely criticised for its handling of the plane’s disappearance.
Doug Maclean, air traffic control consultant at DKM Aviation, said the delay in querying the missing plane was “extraordinary”. He said: “If an aeroplane went missing on a handover between two countries you would expect some kind of action within 3 to 5 minutes maximum. In Europe or America you would be on the phone within three minutes – 17 minutes is quite an extraordinary length of time.”
“We have procedures going over vast oceans where you might wait 30 or 40 minutes for a position report but in a radar environment you can see an aeroplane on the screen – so if you can’t see it, why is it not there?”
MH370 disappeared shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am on 8 March, bound for Beijing, with 239 people on board. Investigators believe it was deliberately diverted but say they have not ruled out any possibility.
Vietnamese air traffic control began asking about the whereabouts of the plane at 1.38am local time, after it disappeared from their radar screens and did not make verbal contact. Nearby aircraft were asked to contact it if they could and Kuala Lumpur air traffic control tried the airline and counterparts in Singapore, Hong Kong and Phnom Penh as it searched for the plane. Malaysian air traffic controllers did not activate the search and rescue operation until 5.30am, and do not appear to have contacted military authorities before activating the rescue – a four-hour period during which military radar showed a plane believed to be MH370 crossing Malaysia.
At 2.03am the Malysian air traffic controllers told their Vietnamese counterparts that, according to Malaysian Airlines, the aircraft was in Cambodian airspace. Only at 3.30am did they clarify that the supposed position was a projection based on the earlier flight path, and not based on any current signal.
Aircraft transponders and Acars systems disabled
Planes normally communicate with the ground via their transponders – which communicate with ground-based radars – and Acars systems. In the case of MH370, both of those systems appear to have been disabled around the time that the plane disappeared; the last Acars message was at 1.07am and the last transponder contact at 1.21am.
But the Acars system continued to make contact with satellites, and data shows that the plane flew on for several hours, with the last “handshake” at 8.19am. Specialist analysis of those contacts led Malaysia Airlines to announce weeks ago that it believed the flight ended in the southern Indian Ocean with the loss of all lives.
The preliminary report states: “While commercial air transport aircraft spend considerable amounts of time operating over remote areas, there is currently no requirement for real-time tracking of these aircraft. There have now been two occasions during the last five years when large commercial air transport aircraft have gone missing and their last position was not accurately known. This uncertainty resulted in significant difficulty in locating the aircraft in a timely manner.
“Therefore, the Malaysian Air Accident Investigation Bureau makes the following safety recommendation to ICAO: it is recommended that the International Civil Aviation Organisation examine the safety benefits of introducing a standard for real time tracking of commercial air transport aircraft.”
Some experts have suggested that flight data and cockpit voice recorders should stream information during flights. Others have asked whether it should be made impossible to disable transponders.
Malaysia’s acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said Malaysian military radar tracked an aircraft – now known to be MH370 – turning back across the Malay peninsula, but the operator categorised it as friendly so took no further action.
The radar data was reviewed at 8.30am on 8 March and within hours the prime minister ordered search and rescue operations to begin in the Straits of Malacca, off the west coast, in addition to the South China Sea search that had already begun. But news of a possible turn-back was not revealed until the following day, and even then no detail was offered.
The report was issued as the airline announced it will close the family support centres it has set up in hotels in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing within the week and urged relatives to await further news “within the comfort of their own homes, with the support and care of their families and friends”.
Its CEO, Ahmed Jauhari Yahya, said the company was “acutely conscious of, and deeply sympathetic to the continuing unimaginable anguish, distress and hardship suffered by those with loved ones on board the flight”.
It also said it would make advanced compensation payments to the relatives, which would not affect their rights to claim compensation at a later stage. Search teams picked up signals they believe came from the aircraft’s black boxes last month, far off the west coast of Australia. But the flight data and cockpit voice recorders have yet to be found.
Earlier in the week, the aerial search for wreckage was called off on the assumption that any debris from the plane would have sunk already and the head of the Australian centre overseeing operations warned that they would be “doing well” if they completed an expanded search of the seabed within eight months.
A round-up of the best conspiracy theories
Flight MH370 conspiracy theories: what happened to the missing plane?
Was Flight MH370 captured by aliens? Stolen by Israeli agents? Or turned invisible? In the absence of any firm evidence about the fate of missing flight MH370, the world’s conspiracy theorists have weighed in with explanations of their own for the Malaysian Airlines plane’s disappearance.
A lack of clarity from official has allowed rumours to flourish. Even the Malaysian opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, has accused his country’s government of withholding “missing bits of information” about the investigation. He asked how a country with “one of the most sophisticated” radar systems in the world could simply lose track of an aeroplane.
The recent suggestion that the rescue operation may still be looking in the wrong place, and the claim that investigators can’t rule out the possibility that Flight MH370 landed rather than crashed after all, are only fuelling the debate. Far away from the scene of the search, on the internet’s more excitable fringes, individuals have been working on theories of their own to plug the information gaps. Here are some of the best (and weirdest):
The plane had cloaking technology
Due to the plane transporting 20 employees from Texas based technology firm Freescale Semiconductor, theories have arisen that the plane was being used to test “cloaking technology”, hence the disappearance from the radar.
Apparently, this technology would make the plane invisible to radar and almost impossible to spot with the naked eye. There are two main theories here: One is that the Chinese got wind of the technology on board and diverted the plane to get their hands on it, the other is that the US realised the Chinese may get hold of it and shot the plane down to stop that from happening.
Edward Snowden
There were early suggestions 20 employees from the Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor were on board the flight. So Reddit user Dark Spectre has put two and two together and come up with, well, you decide.
“So we have the American IBM Technical Storage Executive for Malaysia, a man working in mass storage aggregation for the company implicated by the Snowden papers for providing their services to assist the National Security Agency in surveilling the Chinese,” he wrote.
“And now this bunch of US chip guys working for a global leader in embedded processing solutions (embedded smart phone tech and defense contracting) all together..on a plane..And disappeared.. Coincidence??”
He goes on to that the plane itself was kidnapped by Chinese authorities to uncover more about Snowden’s revelations.
Invisibility
According to reports, 20 employees of Freescale Semiconductor, a company that develops “cloaking” technology were onboard the MH370 when it went missing. Some, such as the writers of WorthyToShare.com, have speculated that the plane may have been turned invisible and landed somewhere, possibly at the US Air Force base in Diego Garcia.
US military conspiracy
Missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have flown into tiny island called Diego Garcia. Diego Garcia is a remotely located atoll in the Indian Ocean. The lonely island in the middle of the Indian Ocean is home to a U.S. Naval base and is now speculated to have answers to the MH370 mystery, according to News.com.au.
This conspiracy theory is the latest addition to several other theories concerning different locations. Propagators of this theory believe that the little island maybe the actual location where MH370 landed after being hijacked and can now be found in. The island is said to be “one of the world’s most remote locations,” which allegedly has a “secret prison.”
The island reportedly has no indigenous inhabitants as they were forcibly removed and were asked to relocate on other locations such as Chagos Archipelago, Seychelles and Mauritius in the year 1971.
Diego Garcia is located 4700 km northwest of the Australia and has 1700 military personnel and 1500 civilian contractors residing there.
The lonely island reportedly has a runway that can accommodate a plane as big as Boeing 777. Therefore, Diego Garcia is now considered to be the potential location where missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 can be found, according to the conspiracy theory.
The theory became the subject of speculation when it was figured that MH370’s pilot Captain Zaharie Shah’s flight simulator had Diego Garcia’s runway location stored in it. Earlier, FBI reported that there was “nothing sinister” about the homemade flight simulator and files stored in it. But reports claiming that the plane was “deliberately” taken off the radar detection have drawn attention towards the pilot of MH370 yet again.
Furthermore, an American freelance journalist Jim Stone is advocating the theory that claims MH370 may have landed in Diego Garcia island. In his blog, Jim Stone has reportedly presented “a bewildering array of theories about major news events.”
The blogger claims that Philip Wood an American passenger travelling in the now missing flight MH370 did manage to send a message. The text contained information including GPS coordinates that presented a location that is just few kilometers away from the Indian Ocean island Diego Garcia. The text revealed that Philip Wood has been held hostage by some unknown military personnel, according to News.com.au.
MH370 passenger Philip Wood is said to be an IBM engineer. Examiner further explains Jim Stone’s Diego Garcia conspiracy theory. The theory states that the intention behind taking the plane is concerning 20 top employees of Freescale Semiconductor Inc. on the flight. These people reportedly worked on the development of semiconductor and were soon going to get it patented. But if rest of the people who worked on the project are gone, the patent can be owned by one person named Jacob Rothschild.
Another reason behind the plane’s disappearance could be that “some government wanted to get their hands on the knowledge held by the 20 top employees to have this microchip built for some reason,” as per the report.
However, Metabunk report suggests that it is not difficult to “fake a mobile phone’s GPS coordinates,” and denies the truth behind the Diego Garcia conspiracy theory. News.com.au notes that the information of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 suggests that the plane ended in the southern Indian Ocean.
The United States have been forced to flatly deny claims that the plane landed at its military base on the remote island of Diego Garcia.
There were strong rumours that the jetliner could have headed for the small coral atoll in the Indian Ocean, which sits around 3,500km from Malaysia.
However, a spokesman for the US embassy in the Malaysian capital said there was no truth in this speculation. He told Malaysia’s Star newspaper by email: “There was no indication that MH370 flew anywhere near the Maldives or Diego Garcia. “MH370 did not land in Diego Garcia.”
Electronic warfare experiment
A theory suggesting the plane was hidden as part of an experiment has circulated. Citizens news site Beforeitsnews.com reported: “It is conceivable that the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 plane is ‘cloaked’, hiding with hi-tech electronic warfare weaponry that exists and is used.
“In fact, this type of technology is precisely the expertise of Freescale, that has 20 employees on board the missing flight.”
It was orchestrated to obtain patent rights
One theory that has come to light is that, similar to the life insurance scam, the plane was deliberately destroyed to get hold of patent rights. Apparently, a patent was approved four days after the disappearance of the flight, and it’s being reported that the right to the patent were split five ways – 20% to Freescale Semiconductor and 20% each to four employees, all of whom were passengers on the plane. With them out of the way, Freescale Semiconductor have complete control of the patent (reportedly #8671381).
A weapon of unimaginable power
Conspiracy theory and scientific site Natural News, run by Mike Adams, has another theory. Writing for NaturalNews.com, Mike Adams says that the plane’s disappearance shows that “some entirely new, mysterious and powerful force is at work on our planet which can pluck airplanes out of the sky without leaving behind even a shred of evidence”.
Adams said: “If we never find the debris, it means some entirely new, mysterious and powerful force is at work on our planet, which can pluck airplanes out of the sky without leaving behind even a shred of evidence.”
He added: “If there does exist a weapon with such capabilities, whoever controls it already has the ability to dominate all of Earth’s nations with a fearsome military weapon of unimaginable power.” Quite concerning.
He believes the plane fell into an area “outside the search zone” and could lead to a very dark end for Earth.
A 9/11-style false-flag hijack mission
No conspiracy is complete without Israeli involvement, and MH370 is no exception. According to this theory, Israeli agents planned to crash the Malaysia Airways plane into a building, as in the September 11 attacks, and then blame the atrocity on Iran.
Proponents point to the quick identification of two Iranian nationals travelling on forged passports, and claims that CCTV images released of the pair had been doctored. More extravagantly, some have claimed that a Malaysia Airways Boeing 777 identical to the one that went missing “had been stored in a hangar in Tel Aviv since November 2013.” (T/E01/IR)
Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)
*Senior Editor of MINA (He can be contacted via emails: [email protected] and [email protected] )
Bibliotheque:
2. http://www.theguardian.com/
