Tuesday, Mar 11, 2014

A Boeing 777, one of the world’s most reliable types of airliners, is missing, and no one knows why. Was it a bomb? Mechanical failure? A hijacking gone awry? What happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

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TIMELINE

SATURDAY MARCH 8

*Malaysia Airlines says the plane lost contact with air traffic control at around 1.30am, about an hour after take-off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Initially, authorities had put the last contact time at 2.40am.

*Vietnam says the plane went missing in its airspace. It launches a search operation that expands into a huge international hunt in the South China Sea — now involving 41 ships and 36 aircraft from Southeast Asian countries, Australia, China, New Zealand and the United States.

*Tearful relatives of the 153 Chinese passengers gather at a Beijing hotel, criticising Malaysia Airlines over a lack of information.

*Late evening, Vietnam says its planes have spotted two large oil slicks near the plane’s last known location and sends boats to the area, but they find no sign of the plane.

*It also emerges that two passengers on board were travelling on EU passports that were stolen in Thailand, fuelling speculation of a terrorist attack.

SUNDAY MARCH 9

* Malaysia says it is probing a possible terror link to the jet’s disappearance. The US sends FBI agents to assist in the investigation.

*Malaysia says the plane may have turned back towards Kuala Lumpur, for no apparent reason.

* Late Sunday, a Vietnamese plane spots possible debris in the sea near Tho Chu island, part of a small archipelago off southwest Vietnam. It proves a false alarm.

MONDAY MARCH 10

*Authorities double the search radius to 100 nautical miles (equivalent to 185 kilometres) around the point where MH370 disappeared from radar.

*China lashes out at Malaysia, saying it needs to speed up the investigation.

*Shares in Malaysia Airlines lose up to 18 per cent on the first trading day since the plane went missing, before closing down four per cent.

*In the afternoon Malaysia sends ships to investigate a sighting of a possible life raft — but a Vietnamese vessel that gets there first finds only flotsam.

*Chemical analysis by Malaysia disproves any link between oil found at sea and the missing plane.

*The US Navy sends a second destroyer to join the operation.

*Boeing experts join the investigation. The US aircraft maker says it is giving technical advice to a team from the US National Transportation Safety Board that is already in Southeast Asia to offer assistance.

TUESDAY MARCH 11

*Chinese state media report that Beijing is deploying as many as 10 satellites in the hope of finding the jet.

*The search area now includes land on the Malaysian peninsula itself, the waters off its west coast, and an area to the north of Indonesia’s Sumatra island — all far removed from the flight’s scheduled route.

*Vietnam asks fishing boats off its southern coast — where the flight dropped off radar — for help in the effort but says it now holds “little hope of a positive outcome”.

*Malaysian police say one of the passengers using a stolen passport on a missing jetliner was an Iranian asylum seeker. Police chief Tan Sri Khalid Tan Sri said that the man was not believed to be a member of a terrorist group.

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THEORY 1

MH370 was brought down by a bomb

Pro theory: Two stolen passports have been linked to people who held tickets for the flight.

Analysis: This points to the possibility that someone on a terrorism watch list may have boarded the plane and blown it up. However, the stolen passports don’t necessarily mean the plane was an actual target. It’s possible, says former US Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo, that terrorists may have been performing a “dry run” for a future attack. Or, Schiavo said, “it could be just criminal business as usual,” because “there are lots of stolen passports” used by travellers around the world.

Contra theory: So far, no debris field of plane wreckage has been linked to the 777, which would indicate a bomb blast.

Analysis: When Robert Francis, former vice-chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board, heard about the missing plane, his immediate thought was: “For some reason the aircraft blew up and there was no signal, there was nothing.” The fact that the plane disappeared from radar without warning indicated to Francis “there was something unprecedented that hasn’t happened before.”

What about satellite technology? Is it possible that data from orbiting satellites might show a flash or infrared heat signature from an explosion? Very unlikely, says satellite expert Brian Weeden, who spent years tracking space junk in orbit for the US Air Force. Dozens of government and private satellites orbit the earth, looking down from distances from 300 kilometres to 1,500 kilometres. It’s a long shot that one of them coincidentally floated over at the exact right time and location to capture a flash from an explosion. However, there’s an “off chance,” Weeden says, that a super secret US government satellite orbiting 22,000 miles in space might have grabbed evidence. These satellites are in geosynchronous orbit. As a group, they can observe virtually the entire globe. “We know that their mission is to detect ballistic missile launches via heat,” says Weeden, now a technical adviser for Secure World Foundation. “We don’t know if they’re sensitive enough to track something like a bomb blast, even if that’s what happened.” Then there’s another unanswerable question: Would the US government hesitate to release such an image for fear of revealing the satellite system’s ultra-classified capability?

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THEORY 2

MH370 was hijacked

Pro theory: Before it disappeared, radar data indicated the plane may have turned around to head back to Kuala Lumpur. Is that a clue that a hijacker had ordered the plane to change course?

Analysis: So far, there have been no reports that the flight crew sent any signals that a hijacking had occurred.

Contra theory: A hijacking still doesn’t explain what the plane would essentially vanish without a trace or any electronic signal.

Analysis: Voice data recorders, if ever recovered, might provide some insight — but the wreckage has to be found first.

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THEORY 3

MH370 suffered mechanical failure

Pro theory: The absence of a debris field suggests the possibility that pilots were forced to ditch the plane and it landed on water without breaking up, finally sinking to the ocean floor.

Analysis: But if that were the case, then why no emergency signal? These planes are able to perform a “miracle on the Hudson” maneuver. They have the ability to glide more than 100 miles and belly land on the water with both engines out, says former 777 pilot Keith Wolzinger, now a civil aviation consultant with The Spectrum Group. During the time it would take for a plane to glide 100 miles, it seems likely that pilots would be able to send an SOS.

Contra theory: The missing plane had suffered a clipped wing tip in the past, but Boeing repaired it, and the jet was safe to fly, said Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya on Sunday.

Analysis: “Anytime there’s been previous damage to an aeroplane, even though it’s been repaired, and repaired within standards ... it kind of sends a warning flag,” says Wolzinger. Experts agree the Boeing 777 is one of the world’s most reliable aircraft. During its development it was subject to some of the most rigorous testing in commercial aviation history. “I’ve been talking with colleagues,” Wolzinger says. “We’re all baffled by this.” The 777 boasts some of the most powerful and well-tested engines in the world, he says. “The reliability of airliner engines in general is impeccable these days,” he says. “This is a safe plane.”

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THEORY 4

MH370 crashed due to pilot error

Pro theory: The Boeing 777 has an extremely good record. It must be the pilot’s fault.

Analysis: Some aviation experts have compared Flight 370 to the crash of Air France Flight 447 in 2009. All 228 passengers and crew died when the plane went down in a storm in the Atlantic en route from Brazil to Paris. After an expensive, nearly two-year search across the deep ocean floor, the twin-engined Airbus A330’s wreckage was finally found and the voice and data recorders recovered. A French investigation blamed flight crew for failing to understand “they were in a stall situation and therefore never undertook any recovery maneuvers.” But unlike Flight 447, weather was reported as good along Flight 370’s scheduled route and didn’t appear to present a threat.

Contra theory:

MH370’s pilot was Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old who had been flying for 33 years.

Analysis: Information released about Shah shows that he was a professional veteran with 18,365 hours of experience under his belt, making human error unlikely but possible.

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OTHER QUESTIONS

Could the plane have run out of fuel?

Malaysia Airlines has confirmed that MH370 was fuelled for at least eight hours of flight, and the aircraft’s Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route typically lasts only six hours. Furthermore, aircrafts generally carry about two hours’ worth of fuel on top of what is needed. “If there was a fuel loss, the pilot would have enough time to call for distress signal, and to turn around and glide back to land,” said Ravi Madavaram, an aviation analyst with Frost & Sullivan.

Could engine failure have occurred?

Flight MH370 was a Boeing 777-200 — an aircraft rated as one of the safest jets in the world. Experts have said that a total structural breakdown that might lead to an explosion or a loss of cabin pressure is extremely unlikely considering the plane’s reliability, particularly when there have only been four accidents involving the Boeing 777 since 1994. Furthermore, based on the MH370’s maintenance records, the plane was structurally sound and had “nothing that would jump straight out of the page,” according to reviews by Indonesia-based aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman. Despite this, the failure of the plane’s twin engines is technically possible. In January 2008, a British Airways Boeing 777 crashed 300 metres short of a runway at London’s Heathrow Airport. Ice accumulation in the aircraft’s fuel system had caused the engines to lose thrust. However, in the case of flight MH370, a mid-air engine failure would have still given the plane about 20 minutes of glide time before descending — more than enough time for pilots to make an emergency call.

Could pilot suicide have occurred?

If a pilot planned to commit suicide by crashing a plane, he could theoretically lock himself in the cockpit alone when his co-pilot visited the toilet. It would then be simple to disengage autopilot and take control of the aircraft. Silk Air Flight 185 from Jakarta to Singapore, flow by Captain Tsu Wai Ming entered a “rapid decent” at 35,500ft, crashing mid-flight on December 17, 1997. All 97 passenger and seven crew died on-board the Boeing 737. The National Transportation Safety Board was among the investigators who concluded evidence pointed towards deliberate interference of the controls, inferring that one of the pilots caused the plane to crash.

How can a plane go missing with absolutely no sign of wreckage?

It is not unprecedented for wreckage recovery to take a long time, particularly if the plane disappears in an area outside of radar contact — which may be the case with flight MH370. Air France flight 447 disappeared in the middle of the evening outside of radar contact, and while Brazilian authorities were able to uncover portions of wreckage about five days after the incident, it took a full two years before the aircraft’s flight recorder was finally recovered from the ocean floor.

Why was no distress signal sent?

The absence of a distress signal suggests something unexpected and catastrophic occurred on the aircraft, giving the pilots no time to react. However, if something is wrong with the plane, pilots can radio for help. But it’s not uncommon for modern aircraft to fail to send a distress signal. Aviation, security and counter-terrorism expert Chris Yates said: “The fact of the matter is from time to time aeroplanes do literally disappear off the normal communication channels and it’s not necessarily a problem with the aircraft going down but normally a fault with the aircraft itself.” However, the ill-fated Air France crash in 2011, pilots did not send a distress signal because they realised they were about to crash moments from impact.

Is the plane fitted with a tracking system?

Modern aircraft are equipped with all sorts of tracking devices, but both Malaysia Airlines and Boeing have refused to confirm if the missing Flight 370 had a transponder or other radar-detecting equipment installed. Rolls Royce, manufacturer of the two Trent 800 engines supplied to the missing jetliner, confirmed it tracks all of its engines at its control centre in Britain. Asked if Rolls Royce would know if there was a change in power, a spokeswoman for Rolls Royce replied: “We know first hand if there is something wrong with the engine, yes ... any kind of problem.” Asked if other parties were made aware of the information from its control centre, the spokeswoman said the information would be passed to Malaysia Airlines and Malaysian authorities. It is believed Boeing has the ability to track all of its aircraft anywhere in the world in real time.

What about the aircraft’s black boxes?

If the aircraft has crashed on water, then the “black box” flight data recorders — actually coloured orange — should send out a signal. In the event of an aircraft being lost at sea, the beacon, triggered by contact with water, will ping for at least 30 days. However, investigators are searching a vast expanse of water, meaning locating the black box will not be a straightforward process.

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