Two brands of Malaysian unity: moderation versus bigotry

by Elizabeth Zachariah

The Malaysian Insider

March 06, 2014

Malay rights group Perkasa’s Datuk Ibrahim Ali has only one reason for setting up his own unity council – he wants to keep the Malays happy.

Ibrahim feels that by keeping the Malays happy and united, only then will unity be possible in Malaysia, a country where over half of the 30 million population are Malays.

“The happiness and the unity of the Malays and the Bumiputera are the core of unity in Malaysia because we are the majority at 67%,” the Perkasa president told The Malaysian Insider.

“The government cannot satisfy everyone, so it is best if they keep the majority happy because they are the ones who can determine and foster unity.”

Hence, the formation of his baby, the National Unity Front, which Perkasa has presented as an alternative to Putrajaya’s newly formed National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC).

He said the council was not fit to advise Putrajaya on race and religious issues because the majority of its members were non-Muslims, and some of them had an “anti-nationalist” bent and were partisan.

Contrast Perkasa’s stand on unity with NUCC chairman Tan Sri Samsudin Osman’s take on it. Samsudin believes it stems from elements of respect, democracy and freedom of speech.

“Unity is a state of mind where people respect one another and there is no enmity between the races,” the retired senior civil servant told The Malaysian Insider.

Samsudin said that the council would serve as bridge builders in society towards unity and called for more “mature discussions” in order to restore relationships.

“It should be a situation where people can discuss many issues, taking into account religious sensitivities, without feeling threatened or scared,” he added.

This, he said, was demonstrated at the first of a series of unity dialogues the NUCC organised two weekends ago in Kuala Lumpur, to which Perkasa rebuffed an invitation because it did not “recognise” the council.

Among the issues brought up at the dialogue were the need to put an end to race-based politics and an overhaul of the education system to make it more inclusive.

As far as Ibrahim is concerned, non-Muslims should not bring up issues that have been agreed in the Social Contract as stipulated in Article 153 of the Federal Constitution which talks about the special rights and privileges of the Bumiputera and the Malays.

“They cannot bring these things up… why are Malays Bumiputera, why Islam is the religion of the federation and why other religions are not, and more.

“They (non-Malays) wanted to be citizens and we took them in so they, in turn, have to accept Article 153.

“If everyone follows this, then there will be unity,” the stout Kelantanese politician said.

Perkasa has also listed three factors which could restore unity in the country: one, the nation’s economy should not be monopolised by one race; two, schools should be of one medium only; and three, stern action should be taken against those who question the constitution, insult the religions of the people in the country, insult the royalty and cause tension among races.

Perkasa said it was confident that NUCC would not be able to ensure that these three points are realised.

For espousing his brand of national unity, Ibrahim has been dubbed a “traitor” by DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang, who also described Samsudin as a “patriot” for advocating an inclusive approach to harmony.

Samsudin recently hit out at Perkasa and Ibrahim for their barrage of criticism of the NUCC, saying his colleagues are patriots fighting to stem racial and religious discord.

“We’ve had five meetings so far and what showed up at these meetings is that all of us love the country so much and want to see a solution to what’s happening now,” the NUCC chief had said.

He was referring to the escalating racial and religious tension in the country, brought on by a series of attacks and threats by extremist groups.

The NUCC was formed in the aftermath of the 13th general election, when racial harmony was put to the test several times, affecting the sensitivities of various communities in the country.

The NUCC came under fire from Perkasa and other Malay NGOs after it had condemned the Selangor Islamic Religious Department for its raid on The Bible Society of Malaysia and the seizure of more than 300 Bibles in January, and said it was  a “blatant disregard” of Putrajaya’s 10-point solution.

On the other hand, Ibrahim had called on Muslims to seize and burn copies of Bibles which contain the word Allah or other Arabic religious words, insisting that it was the only way to stop non-Muslims from stirring the sensitivities and sentiments of the majority of the Malaysian population.

It appears the unity council and some Malay rights groups are facing off over how best to foster “real” national harmony and ease racial and religious tension.

Amid this are ordinary Malaysians pushing for national healing by holding peace walks and reaching out to one another.

In the words of social activist Azrul Mohd Khalib, leader of The Malaysians for Malaysia movement which is credited with initiating the peace walks: “We want to be one of the voices that speak about moderation. Speaking about it and having dialogues are great but it is equally important to show the people what moderation looks like.” – March 6, 2014.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 15 March 2014, 9:18 am and is filed under
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US ship, plane to search Bay of Bengal for missing jet

The Malay Mail Online

March 15, 2014

WASHINGTON, March 15 ― A US naval ship and surveillance plane are heading to the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal to search for a missing Malaysian airliner that vanished a week ago, officials said yesterday.

US media reports, meanwhile, suggested the plane experienced marked changes in altitude after it lost contact with ground control, and altered its course more than once as if still under the command of a pilot.

A P-8 Poseidon aircraft and a guided missile destroyer, the USS Kidd, were due to aid the international hunt for the jet as the search effort extended further west, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said.

“At Malaysia’s request, the USS Kidd is north of the Straits of Malacca in what we’re calling the western search area,” Warren told reporters in Washington.

The Kidd was preparing to search the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal for the Malaysia Airlines plane.

“The P-8 will be searching a much larger search area… the southern portion of the Bay of Bengal and the northern portion of the Indian Ocean,” Warren said, adding that final orders had yet to be issued.

The Boeing 777 vanished off the radar early Saturday over the South China Sea with 239 people on board, after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.

The plane’s fate has vexed investigators and Malaysian authorities have dramatically expanded the scope of the search operation.

In the latest twist, The New York Times, citing a preliminary assessment by a person familiar with the data, said radar signals recorded by the Malaysian military appeared to show the jet climbing to 45,000 feet (13,700 metres) ― above the approved altitude limit for a Boeing 777-200.

The radar track then shows the missing plane descending unevenly to an altitude of 23,000 feet, below normal cruising levels, as it approached the densely populated Malaysian island of Penang, the report said.

Then it turned from a southwest-bound course, climbed to a higher altitude and flew northwest toward the Indian Ocean.

The hunt had initially focused on the South China Sea east of Malaysia ― along the intended route of the jet.

But Malaysia’s government was now looking at a vast area, extending to the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, with 13 countries now involved in the desperate search.

The Pentagon said a second naval destroyer, the USS Pinckney, which had assisted the search effort this week, was due to depart for Singapore for scheduled maintenance.

The P-8 aircraft now in the area was replacing a P-3 Orion surveillance plane that had taken part in the initial hunt for the airliner.

After flying over the Gulf of Thailand on Thursday looking for signs of plane debris, the P-3 reported “nothing found,” Warren said. ― AFP

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Highly regrettable on 6th day of MH 370 tragedy, while Malaysians prayed  hard for  safety of 239 passengers and crew members on board, Mahathir was only interested in spewing lies and communal poison

This is the ninth day of the MHI 370 tragedy.

It is highly regrettable that while Malaysians, regardless of race, religion or politics, are praying hard for the safety of the 239 passengers and crew members on board the Malaysian airline, there are people like the former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir who seemed more interested in continuing to spew lies and communal poison to pit race against race and religion against religion in Malaysia to further  their petty political agenda.

This is what Mahathir did on Thursday, 13th March, the sixth day of the MH 370 tragedy, in his blog campaigning  for the MCA candidate in the Kajang by-election – a most irresponsible and reckless act as it is such incessant spewing of lies and communal poison which had been the major cause of the worst racial and religious polarization in the nation’s history.

In his blog-post on Thursday, Mahathir continued to make baseless accusations against the DAP and the Pakatan Rakyat, alleging that DAP wanted “complete” Chinese political and economic dominance in Malaysia.

I am reminded of Mahathir’s lies and communal poison during the last general elections when he alleged that I was contesting in Gelang Patah to cause a confrontation between the Malays and Chinese in Johore on the ground that I wanted the Chinese in Johore “to dislike and hate the Malays” and the preposterous allegation that the DAP rejected the concept of Malay-Chinese-Indian power-sharing as the Chinese wanted to oust the political power of the Malays.

But Mahathir suffered a major setback when thanks to the Malay voters who did not succumb to his lies and falsehoods I was able to win the Gelang Patah parliamentary seat with a majority of over 14,000 votes in the 13th General Elections.

Now, Mahathir is back to his old trick and trying  his worst to disseminate lies and communal poison to aid the MCA candidate in the Kajang by-election, completely insensitive about the national and international tragedy of the missing MH 370 entering its ninth day.

I would advise Mahathir  to be more sensitive and  have greater regard to his role as having been Prime Minister of Malaysia for over two decades and to stop spreading lies and pumping communal poison trying to pit race against race and religion against religion for his selfish and petty political agenda and calculations.

Would the MCA national leadership dare to speak up and ask Mahathir to stop his lies and communal poison which can only  aggravate the racial and religious polarization in the country, or would the MCA leadership like Mahathir to continue with his irresponsible and reckless communal politicking hoping to gain political advantage from it – especially in the current Kajang by-election campaign?

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MAS jet couldn’t have flown over our airspace, says India’s military

The Malaysian Insider

March 16, 2014

Indian military authorities have dismissed the possibility that the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370, which mysteriously disappeared eight days ago en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, could have flown over India on its way to Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan in Central Asia, the Times of India reported.

“If the jetliner had tried to cross the Indian mainland, our primary radars (which bounce radio signals off targets) would have picked it up despite its transponders being switched off (secondary radars beam signals that request information from a plane’s transponders),” said a top Indian Air Force (IAF) officer.

If an “unidentified” plane had been picked up flouting prescribed procedures or with switched-off transponders or not “squawking” IFF (identification, friend or foe) codes, a series of “air defence measures” would have kicked in – including the scrambling of fighters – to “detect, identify, intercept and destroy” the intruder, the newspaper reported.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak yesterday said the missing plane’s last communication with a satellite suggested it could have been “deliberately diverted” after its transponders were switched off.

Najib also the plane would have diverted into “two possible corridors or arcs”, namely a northern one stretching from northern Thailand to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and a southern one from Indonesia to southern Indian Ocean.

Senior Indian military officers admitted there were “a few gaps” in India’s civil and military radar networks, but stressed it would be “virtually impossible” for a jetliner to fly undetected across the Indian mainland.

“The five Airports Authority of India radars at Delhi, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Mumbai are integrated with IAF’s air defence network. The possibility is far-fetched,” said an officer.

“Why also forget the robust air defence networks of countries like Pakistan, fully-geared towards India, or the US-led forces in Afghanistan or Iran for that matter, all of which would have been on this so-called flight arc,” he added.

Former IAF vice-chief, Air Marshal P K Barbora, in turn, added, “Both India and Pakistan are very wary of any blip that comes up on their radars… it’s very unlikely that a plane could have flown across the vast stretch of land without being detected by one or some other country.

“An aircraft flying low to avoid radars would not be able to go such a long distance.”

Indian officials are of the opinion that MH370, hijacked or otherwise, probably went down in the Bay of Bengal or southern Indian Ocean after being diverted.

And that is precisely where India is concentrating its search as part of the ongoing multi-nation hunt for the missing jetliner, the newspaper reported.

“The Navy, IAF and Coast Guard are scanning an area spanning over 250,000 sq km in the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal with six warships and extensive aerial surveillance by aircraft like P-8I long-range maritime patrol planes, medium-range Dornier-228s and a C-130J Super Hercules with electro-optic and infra-red sensors. But so far, no sighting or detection has been reported,” said an officer. – March 16, 2014.

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Official: Interpol snubbed even as foul play seen in MH370

The Malay Mail Online

March 16, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 16 — Malaysia repeatedly rejected Interpol’s offers to help investigate Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 even as the government now believes the plane went missing due to “deliberate action”, a Western law enforcement agent has alleged.

Speaking to ABC News in the United States, the official who went unnamed accused Malaysia of jealously guarding its information to the point of turning away the aid offered by the intergovernmental police agency.

“It’s the old pre-9/11 approach: close-hold information, don’t share anything,” the anonymous official was quoted as saying by ABC News on its website yesterday, referring to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

ABC News quoted other unidentified law enforcement officials who expressed concern that the alleged refusal by Malaysia to take up Interpol’s offer may have caused leads into the mysterious disappearance of MH370 to grow cold.

The allegations raised the ABC News report that Malaysia was unwilling to share information appeared at odds, however, with Putrajaya’s action in releasing highly-confidential raw data from its military radars to countries assisting in the search, including China and the US.

Such data is often among a country’s most closely-guarded secrets as it can be used to ascertain its defensive strengths and vulnerabilities; no country willingly divulges such information if it can be avoided.

“As I am sure you can understand, we would not ordinarily release raw data from our military radars. But in this case we have put the search effort above our national security,” Acting Transport and Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said in a statement on Thursday.

“Malaysia has nothing to hide … From day one, we have been in regular contact with neighbouring countries, and accepted all international offers of help,” he added.

Yesterday, Malaysian investigators appeared to conclude that the Beijing-bound flight with 239 onboard went missing due to a hijacking.

At a hastily-convened press conference after the news trickled out, however, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said the plane was diverted due to “deliberate action” but stopped short of saying it was hijacked.

Najib also dropped another bombshell when he revealed that the final satellite communication with the plane occurred at 8.11am on March 8, indicating it continued flying after its transponder disabled and the engine performance data link with MAS was severed more than seven hours before.

It was also confirmed that military radar definitively tracked MH370 as it changed course and headed west towards the Indian Ocean.

Shortly after the PM’s announcement, police arrived at the Shah Alam, Selangor home of MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, which they proceeded to search.

Prior to the prime minister’s confirmation of foul play, aviation experts were increasingly concluding that MH370’s disappearance was the result of internal sabotage or hijacking by parties familiar with both the internal workings of the Boeing 777-200ER and air travel waypoints to minimise exposure to radar stations.

Interpol was partially involved in the first days of the investigation of MH370, when it was revealed that at least two people boarded the flight using stolen passports.

But it was later determined that the two Iranians — Pouria  Nour Mohammad Mehrdad and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza — had used passports stolen from Europeans to smuggle themselves into the continent.

After their identities were established, Interpol said it was leaning towards either people smuggling or human trafficking in both cases.

“The more information we get, the more we are inclined to conclude it (MH370) was not a terrorist incident,” Ronald K. Noble, head of Interpol, told reporters in Paris on Tuesday.

Despite its efforts so far, Malaysia has come in repeatedly for criticism over its handling of the MH370 search and investigation, most frequently being labelled slow and disorganised.

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Pakistan says MH370 did not land there

The Malay Mail Online

March 16, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 16 — A Pakistani official today dismissed reports suggesting that missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have landed in the South Asian country.

Pakistan’s Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Aviation Shujaat Azeem told news portal Dawn.com that the country’s military did not observe the Boeing 777-200ER approach or enter its airspace.

“It’s wrong, (the) plane never came towards Pakistan,” he was quoted as saying in the report.

India today similarly discounted the possibility of the plane entering its airspace.

Yesterday, Malaysia revealed that satellite data has allowed investigators to arrive at two “corridors” where the plane could possibly be located: a northern arc from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in central Asia, or a southern one from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

The northern corridor would have brought the plane towards South Asia.

The northern option crosses heavily-militarised zones that made it unlikely that an unidentified aircraft the size of the Boeing 777 could have slipped past unnoticed. A defence industry executive said interceptors would have been deployed immediately once its presence was detected.

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What could have happened to flight MH370?

The Malaysian Insider

March 15, 2014

The week-long search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 took a major new turn today as evidence indicated that its communication systems were manually switched off and the airliner was deliberately diverted.

The first concrete, verified lead as to the possible reason behind the disappearance has fuelled speculation over how and why MH370 might have been commandeered – and its likely fate.

Here are some of the possible scenarios being weighed up by experts.

Theory: Terror attack

Why:
 As the theory that the plane was deliberately taken over gains traction, questions over the involvement of terrorist organisations have come back to the fore.

The presence of two passengers travelling on stolen passports fuelled early fears of a terror link.

Authorities now believe the two Iranian men were simply illegal migrants, but CIA director John Brennan has said a terror attack has not been ruled out.

The search area covers a massive region – a northern corridor from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan through northern Thailand and a southern corridor from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean – with no potential target or destination pinpointed so far.

Expert view:
 The extensive inside information and expertise needed to commandeer a plane for hours without detection would need an unprecedented level of pre-planning, says Gerry Soejatman, a Jakarta-based independent aviation analyst.

“If that was deliberate, we may be dealing with something beyond the mission planning for 9/11,” he said.

While the southern corridor is less monitored, the northern zone would be bristling with radar. Dropping altitude to fly as low as possible would be one way to avoid detection, he said.

But the Malaysia Airlines scenario had too many loose ends for a terror attack, said Adam Dolnik, professor of terrorism studies at the University of Wollongong in Australia.

“Nothing from what I have seen points to that conclusion,” he told AFP.

“For something this big, you would have somebody claiming it.”

Theory: Pilot involvement

Why:
 With Malaysia confirming that communications were likely switched off manually, pilot involvement – whether intentional or under duress – is a possibility, some experts say.

Expert view:
 “For me there are only a few scenarios,” says Paul Yap, aviation lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore.

“First, the people involved in the deliberate actions… are the pilots, one of them or both of them in cahoots.

“Then we have a scenario where terrorists make the pilots change course and switch off the transponders under duress, maybe threatening to kill of the passengers.

“Or, we could have a scenario where the security protocol surrounding the cockpit is compromised.”

Passengers have been prohibited from entering the cockpit during a flight after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

“It’s certainly someone who knew what they were doing,” said Chris De Lavigne, a vice president at business consultancy Frost & Sullivan.

“It could be the pilot, the crew, it could be passengers.”

Malaysia Airlines has said it was “shocked” over a TV report that MH370 co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid had, along with another pilot, allowed two women into the cockpit on a flight in 2011.

Theory: Pilot suicide

Why:
 While rare, there have been cases of pilots crashing planes to take their own lives. In December 1997, a SilkAir Boeing 737 from Jakarta to Singapore plunged into a river in Indonesia with the loss of 104 passengers and crew. US investigators blamed pilot suicide.

Expert view:
 A suicide bid “is possible and if that’s the case there might not be a lot of debris because the plane would have come down in relative structural integrity”, said Terence Fan, aviation expert at Singapore Management University.

“The airplane is not meant to float and if the airplane sinks in the water, water will go inside because the door seals are not meant to seal water.”

Nothing has emerged to suggest any serious psychological problems with either of the pilots who were flying MH370.

Theory:
 The plane landed and is hidden

Why:
The lack of debris and apparent absence of any data indicating impact have led to speculation that the plane may have landed safely and be hidden in a remote location.

Expert view:
 The size of the Boeing 777 and the amount of space needed for it to land make it unlikely that this was the flight’s fate, says Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor at industry publication Flightglobal.

“The triple seven is a very large aircraft that requires a long airport-size runway to land… it’s possible, but I think not probable.”

But Yap believes that if those controlling the flight were skilled enough to evade military radar, “that person should most likely be able to land it safely as well”.

“Evidence of deliberate action does open several new leads – including the possibility that the aircraft is not lost at sea,” said London-based David Kaminski-Morrow, air transport editor for Flight International.

Soejatman added that most flights have enough fuel to cover an additional two hours in the air so, given the latest data, MH370 would have been close to running out.

Theory: Cover up

Why:
 The apparent slowness to reveal key radar data has led to speculation that countries may know more about the plane’s likely whereabouts, but are unwilling to share due to a perceived security risk.

Expert view:
The latest information on the plane’s route poses more questions than it answers over how it remained undetected, says Soejatman.

“If it went through the northern corridor, it would have passed through so many countries. But why hasn’t anybody detected it and said anything?

“It’s extremely different to comprehend that so many countries might have seen it and kept it under wraps.”

A path through the remoter southern corridor would explain a lack of radar coverage, but would bring the motive into doubt, he said.

“It is amazing that an airplane – and not a little airplane – could fly so far, over multiple overlapping jurisdictions, without being detected,” Ajai Sahni, executive director of India’s Institute for Conflict Management, a Delhi-based think-tank, told AFP.

“It makes one wonder, ‘How much are we in control?'” – AFP, March 15, 2014.

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Why didn’t Malaysian military react to MH370 blip on radar screens, ask investigators

The Malaysian Insider

March 16, 2014

Investigators are puzzled over Malaysian military’s inaction in responding to an unidentified blip on their radar screens that was later said to be the missing flight MH370, the New York Times reported today.

It reported that the plane flew past three military radars and over Penang but nothing was done to identify it, which would have helped prevent its disappearance.

“The watch team never noticed the blip, it was as though the airspace was his,” a person with detailed knowledge of the investigation reportedly told the NYT.

Still, the report said that this was not the first, nor would it be the last of the long series of errors the Malaysian government has made, which complicated the task of finding the missing Boeing 777-200ER (9M-MRO) with239 onboard.

Today is the eight day since the plane disappeared from radar and the trail had gotten weaker as the search expands to Kazakhstan to the vast Indian Ocean.

While no one can say with certainty whether the delays had doomed those onboard the jet, mistakes have accumulated at a remarkable pace, NYT said.

The paper highlighted that MH370 flew over the peninsula without the military realising or identifying it – a damning fact, quoting David Learmount, operations and safety editor of Flightglobal, a news and data service for the aviation sector.

It was also reported that senior Malaysian military officers only became aware of the radar data soon after news spread that MH370 had disappeared.

Yet, the government organised and oversaw an expensive and complex international search and rescue effort in the Gulf of Thailand for a full week.

Only yesterday did Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak admit that satellite data had shown the plane continued to fly for six more hours after leaving Malaysian airspace.

According to the NYT report, a four-person air force crew based in Butterworth watching for intrusions into the country’s airspace either did not notice or failed to report a blip on their defensive radar and air traffic radar that was moving steadily across the country from east to west, heading right towards them.

Even the crews at two other radar installations at Kota Baru did not designate the blip as an unknown intruder, while the jetliner continued to fly across the country without anyone watching or alerting a superior or the national defence command, despite the fact that the radar contact’s flight path did not correspond to any filed flight plan.

And as a result, combat aircraft never scrambled to investigate.

Instead the radar contact was only discovered when military officials began going through tapes later on March 8, after the plane failed to land in Beijing.

And as the morning unravelled, it became clear that something had gone wrong.

Malaysian air force chief Gen Tan Sri Rodzali Daud (pic) on Wednesday, openly acknowledged the existence of the radar signals for the first time, five days after the plane went missing.

Still, he had said that further analysis was necessary because the radar plots of the aircraft’s location were stripped of the identifying information given by the plane’s onboard transponders, which someone aboard the aircraft appeared to have switched off.

Given the uncertainty, it is not possible to know yet whether action by the Malaysian government or military could have altered its fate.

The report noted that Najib took pains when he addressed the media yesterday to say that Malaysia had not concealed any information, including military data. – March 16, 2014.

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MH370 throws spotlight on Malaysia’s air force and radar capabilities

BY THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER

March 17, 2014

Even before all question on the lost Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 has been answered, a debate has already started on the state of readiness of the Malaysian air force and the privatisation of military and civilian radar services.

DAP Raub MP Datuk Mohd Ariff Sabri Abdul Aziz today questioned the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) for not checking an aircraft that flew mysteriously across the Malay peninsula the morning that the MAS Boeing 777-200ER disappeared.

The mysterious flight has now been identified as the Beijing-bound flight MH370, which was carrying 239 on board when it vanished from radar screens at 1.30am on March 8. It remains missing.

“At the time that whatever radar captured an intrusion into our space by an unidentified plane, why did TUDM not do anything. Where were our 18 Sukhois, our MIG and all that,” he asked in his popular blog today, referring to the air force by its Bahasa acronym.

The former Umno politician pointed out the Indian military said the response to an unidentified plane in the country’s airspace would be an immediate scramble of its fighter jets to intercept.

“That is how we confirm whether the object is hostile or not – not by waiting for people in the flying object to say – hello general, we are evil people with evil intentions.

“Now in Malaysia’s case, the intrusion was taken lightly or in the worst case of possibilities, our fighter jets were not on standby 24/7.

“That would have important ramifications on our nation’s security,” Ariff Sabri wrote.

He also questioned RMAF chief General Tan Sri Rodzali Daud’s statement that the military radars had detected a possible turn back of flight MH370 hours into the Saturday flight.

“Which radar captured the turn back? The commercial radar at Pengkalan Chepa or the Aerial Surveillance Radar set up by one Zetro Aerospace Corporation. That radar cost us RM72 million and it can’t track the turn back?

“Was that radar capable of continuous tracking or it lost the plane as quickly as it captured it on its system? Was the radar functional at all?” Ariff Sabri asked.

Zetro Aerospace is one of Malaysia’s biggest defence contractors specialising in avionics and has had contracts with RMAF since 1998. It holds three government contracts for maintenance and repair of aircraft radios, airborne radar, air traffic control and air defence communications, radar and navigational aids.

It received a RM43 million contract to modernise the radar systems at two RMAF bases in Kuantan and Butterworth in 2005.

Among its consultants is former RMAF chief Tan Sri Nik Ismail Nik Mohamad, who was helming the air force when the radar systems was modernised.

The new system in Kuantan and Butterworth replaced the “Astrid” monitoring technology which had been used by the RMAF for more than 20 years.

The then Defence Ministry secretary-general Tan Sri Subhan Jasmon said the upgrading works done by Zetro had helped the ministry save more than 70% as a similar system supplied by foreign companies would cost more than RM150 million.

Malaysia’s radar systems came into spotlight in 2011 when Singapore disputed Putrajaya’s claims of 2,058 incidents of airspace violations by the republic’s air force since 2008 – leading to questions about the radar systems maintenance.

Also in 2010, the Defence Ministry finally confirmed at the Dewan Negara that it bought two Czech-made Vera-E passive surveillance radars for RM7.2 million in 2007.

Then Deputy Defence Minister Datuk Dr Abdul Latiff Ahmad said the purchase of the Vera-E, a highly advanced sensor that can detect aircraft, ships and ground vehicles from signals emitted by their radar, communications and other onboard electronic systems, was to protect the country’s air space. – March 17, 2014.

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Denying BN deposit in Kajang by-election an “impossibly tall order” but there is no other more appropriate  occasion than Kajang by-election for  voters to forfeit BN  of election deposit

(Speech at the DAPSY Ceramah for the Kajang by-election held at the Sungei Chua BasketBall Court, Kajang on Sunday, 16th March 2014 at 9.30 pm)

When I first suggested at the fifth Pakatan Rakyat Convention in Shah Alam the previous Saturday (8th March) that the Kajang voters should do the impossible in the by-election by making the Barisan Nasional (BN) candidate lose deposit, I had said that this was a “very tall order” but the occasion warranted going for such an extraordinary result.

I want to repeat my call tonight  to the Kajang voters in the by-election to perform the impossible to make the Barisan Nasional candidate lose the deposit on polling day on March 23.

I would describe this not just a “very tall order” but an “impossibly tall order”, which is not going to be easily achieved as it would need a super-herculean effort by the Kajang voters on polling day.

There are some 40,000 voters in Kajang state assembly seat. In the 13GE in May last year, the voter turnout for the constituency, comprising 48% Malay voters, Chinese 41%, Indian 10% and others 1%, was as high as 87.9%.

Assuming that the voter turnout in the by-election is 90% (which would go against the trend for by-elections), this would mean a voter turn-out of some 36,000 voters. If the Barisan Nasional is to lose its deposit in the by-election on Sunday, it must not get more than one-eighth of the votes cast, i.e. not more than 4,500 votes while the Pakatan Rakyat/PKR, i.e. Datuk Seri Dr. Wan Azizah Wan Ismail must secure more than 31,500 votes.

If this happens, we are not talking about a majority of 6,824 votes which the former PKR Assemblyman Lee Chin Chen won in the six-cornered contest in the 13GE last May, but a humongous, unprecedented and unimaginable  majority of some 27,000 votes for Kajang.

In the 13GE in May last year, the PKR candidate won 80 per cent of the Chinese votes, 60% of the Indian votes and 35% of the Malay votes.

Is it possible in the Kajang by-election for Pakatan Rakyat to better on last year’s performance, raising the result to  support of 90% of Chinese votes, 70% of Indian votes and 75% of Malay votes?

I am told that BN candidate is sure of getting a “rock bottom” of 8,000 votes – a measure of how difficult and even impossible to get the BN candidate to lose deposit in the Kajang by-election.

But there is no more appropriate occasion in the history of Malaysian elections for over half-a-century than in the Kajang by-election for voters to forfeit the election candidate of the ruling coalition of Barisan Nasional.

When I called on the Kajang voters to forfeit the election deposit of the Barisan Nasional on polling day on March 23, I am not thinking of the official BN candidate from MCA, Chew Mai Fun. I think MCA is quite irrelevant in the Kajang by-election.

Three persons should be the target of the Kajang voters to deny the BN the election deposit on Sunday. Chew Mei Fun is not one of them.

These three persons are led by none other than the former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir, who had not only endorsed the MCA candidate in the by-election but continued to act in a most irresponsible, reckless and unstatesmanlike manner in continuing to spew lies and communal poison to pit race against race and religion against religion in Malaysia to further his petty political agenda.

I call on Kajang voters to vote on behalf of 30 million Malaysian voters to perform the “impossibly tall order” of denying the Barisan Nasional candidate of the election deposit in the by-election on Sunday because of  the following four noble objectives:

*To save Parliamentary Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim from the injustice of a five-year jail sentence which would also have disqualified him as Member of Parliament for Permatang Pauh;

*To save DAP National Chairman Karpal Singh from the injustice of a RM4,000 fine for sedition which would have disqualified him as Member of Parliament for Bukit Gelugor when he should not have been charged in the first place, as he was offering his opinion as the leading constitutional lawyer in the country and senior political leader during the developments of the Perak political coup d’etat in February 2009;

*To save the Malaysian judiciary and system of justice from relapsing into the “Dark Age of Justice” in the late eighties and nineties, when there was complete lack of national and international confidence in a truly independent judiciary and a just rule of law in Malaysia; and

*As patriots, to save Malaysia from the sextuplet of national crisis confronting the Malaysian people and nation since the 13GE last May – nation-building, economic, educational, security, anti-corruption and the system of justice.

I myself have grave doubts that we can achieve a “miracle” in the Kajang by-election where the voters can rise as one to deny the BN the election deposit, but this is the “impossibly tall order” which I am setting  before the Kajang voters as a great historic challenge, especially as there is no other more appropriate  occasion than the  Kajang by-election for  voters to forfeit BN  of election deposit.

If this can be achieved on polling day, it would be a political earthquake not only of national but also international proportion,  as it would be  an un-excelled expression of supreme patriotism and nationalism by the Malaysian electorate to love and save Malaysia from extremism, corruption and injustices and to point the way forward for the country towards justice, freedom, prosperity and progress for all Malaysians.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 17 March 2014, 1:46 pm and is filed under
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Final MH370 radio contact made after data link killed

The Malay Mail Online

March 17, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 17 — Investigators initially took the words “Good night” — the last words sent from Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 — to mean all had then been well aboard the plane.

But a revelation now shows that the final transmission was made after someone onboard disabled the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) that conveyed the plane’s health to MAS is raising questions about who was in control of the Beijing-bound plane that is missing along with its 239 passengers.

The chronology indicates that the person who last contacted Subang Air Traffic Control (ATC) was aware that the critical communications system was no longer functional at the time, the Guardian reported yesterday.

Moments after the ACARS link was lost, the plane’s transponder was switched off at 1.22am on March 8, rendering it invisible to commercial radar as it turned around off the coast of Kelantan and made its way back—as military radar has confirmed—across the peninsula and into the Straits of Malacca.

The sequence is reinforcing the hypothesis that MH370 went missing due to possible hijacking, after the Malaysian government said on Saturday that it was all but certain that the plane was diverted from its flight path to Beijing through “deliberate action”.

The government said it was now directing its investigation towards the two pilots, 10 crew members and 227 passengers onboard the flight.

On Saturday, police searched the Shah Alam homes of MH370 pilots Zaharie Ahmad Shah and Fariq Abdul Hamid, taking a flight simulator the former hand-built to mimic that of the Boeing 777-200ER that is now the subject of an international hunt by 25 countries.

But investigators refused to say if they were narrowing down the probe to the two aviators, even as more law enforcement voices across the globe conclude that the technical knowledge of the Boeing and the “tactical evasive manoeuvres” it made after it went dark was likely available only to one or both men at the helm.

During yesterday’s press conference at the Sama Sama Hotel in Sepang, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar appeared to suggest that investigators were ready to discount foul play on the part of the passengers, saying that all 227 were cleared by “some” security agencies, notably those from India and China.

Khalid also said the investigation was now classified under Section 130C of the Penal Code that deals with hijacking, sabotage, and other acts of terrorism.

As pressure grew on detectives to focus their attention on the pilots, however, Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein volunteered a possibly crucial fact: Malaysia Airlines said the two men did not request to fly on MH370.

Colleagues of both pilots also vehemently protest their innocence, rejecting outright any possibility that either man may have anything to do with the plane’s disappearance.

As investigations into the motive for the plane’s disappearance accelerated, so did the search for the aircraft now gone for more than a week.

Already an “unprecedented” undertaking before yesterday, Hishammuddin announced that search and rescue efforts — as the operation remains — now encompassed 25 countries and were headed by Malaysia.

The size and scope of the search promises to be a diplomatic challenge that will put Malaysia’s leadership and mettle to the test.

On Saturday, Malaysia revealed that satellite data indicated that the plane could be in one of two corridors: a northern arc from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in central Asia, or a southern one from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

Commercial satellite firm Inmarsat confirmed that one of its satellites was pinged approximately once an hour by MH370 between the time it severed communications with ATC and the final “electronic handshake” at 8.11am on March 8.

MAS yesterday confirmed that MH370 was fuelled to stay in the air until the time of the final time MH370 pinged Inmarsat’s satellite.

Following the discovery, SAR operations in the South China Sea that had been the site of much of the initial search was terminated, with the assets redeployed to the Indian Ocean.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 17 March 2014, 7:24 am and is filed under
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India troops seeking jet rest at island base as Malaysia silent

The Malay Mail Online

March 17, 2014

PORT BLAIR (India), March 17 — As the sun set over Port Blair in the Andaman Sea during the past week, runway lights glowed to guide Indian aircraft searching for the missing Malaysian passenger jet back to land.

For the past two days, however, the headquarters of India’s search operations for the plane in the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been quiet as officials await new coordinates from Malaysia. Many of the 2,000 military officers stationed on the islands stayed home to celebrate the holiday of Holi, which marks the start of spring, by smearing coloured powder on each other’s faces.

“Our hands are tied until the Malaysians come back to us with coordinates,” Harmit Singh, spokesman for the Indian military in Port Blair, said today. “Until then, we just sit, wait and try to enjoy Holi.”

Indian officials had deployed ships and long-range aircraft from the island chain to search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 across 250,000 square kilometres (96,500 square miles), an area about the size of the UK Shifting the search further into the Indian Ocean may prove much more difficult.

“The Indian Ocean is daunting,” V.S.R. Murthy, the coast guard’s commander for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, said in an interview on March 15. “There is a massive amount of sea that will need to be searched, which will require many more planes, ships.”

British prison

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands were used by British rulers to hold and hang criminals in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and later to imprison Indian freedom fighters. The islands officially became an Indian union territory in 1947 when the country won independence from the British.

India maintains a military presence in the island chain, seeking to counter Chinese maritime power as well as prevent attacks by pirates in key shipping routes. The archipelago of about 527 islands not far from Thailand, Myanmar and Indonesia also attracts tourists seeking pristine beaches.

India is among 25 countries that Malaysia is asking to help find the 777-200 wide-body Boeing Co aircraft carrying 239 people that disappeared on March 8. Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said it’s possible the plane might’ve travelled in a corridor reaching into the southern Indian Ocean as it continued flying for almost seven hours after its last contact with air-traffic controllers.

Southern assets

The Indian search fleet includes P8I long-range maritime patrol, C-130J Hercules and Dornier planes, according to the nation’s government. Naval warships INS Saryu and INS Kesari were also assigned to the task, it said in a March 15 statement.

India has no naval assets permanently stationed near or below the equator, the area where the new search may take place, according to Pradeep Kaushiva, a former Indian vice admiral who spent 40 years in the navy and specialises in electronic warfare.

“We are entering a new more daunting, more difficult search for something that we don’t even know is there,” he said. “It’s very much a search for a needle in the haystack.” — Bloomberg

                This entry was posted on Monday, 17 March 2014, 5:10 pm and is filed under
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No facts to blame pilots of MH370 yet, says report

The Malaysian Insider

March 17, 2014

The investigation into the lost Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 has yet to throw up a persuasive fact that the pilots could have deliberately taken the Boeing 777-200ER to an unknown destination, the Daily Beast reported today.

In an article headlined “The baseless rush to blame the pilots of Flight 370”, the online portal’s journalist Clive Irving noted that “what little evidence there is has been contaminated by the performance of the Malaysian authorities”.

“They resemble a bunch of dumb cops blundering over a crime scene, arguing over what it reveals and what it does not and competing for attention.

“In a sadly familiar ploy of the pursued, the prime minister himself was put up to float a theory so far lacking in any persuasive facts: the pilots did it. Dead men have no defense,” he wrote today in the online portal.

US intelligence officials and the Malaysian government have said that someone in the cockpit had deliberately changed the flight’s course after it vanished from radar screens early March 8 when the passenger jet with 239 people on board was bound for Beijing.

It never arrived and is still missing for the past 10 days.

Irving noted that there were two “apparently solid facts that condition everything else” in the wide-body jet’s disappearance.

“After their last routine exchange with controllers the pilots never sent any Mayday or distress message. The captain’s last reported words were calm and normal: ‘All right, good night.’

“The transponders – the airplane’s continual link with the outside world, receiving and sending information about its position, were turned off.

“Essentially, these two triggers ensured that the Boeing 777 would disappear. That could be either by design, by deliberate human intervention, or as a result of a technical failure,” Irving wrote.

The article also said there were two other ways for the plane to automatically report its progress and one of them was through the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS).

“In the case of Flight 370, no messages sent to Boeing and engine-maker Rolls Royce indicated a problem.

He said it was discovered a week later that the Boeing 777 was also linked to a satellite system operated from London by Inmarsat.

“For some hours after all other communications stopped, the airplane was sending a ‘ping’ recording its presence to a satellite,” he wrote, nothing that the Financial Times reported that MAS had not paid for the service, and the pinging was “an empty signal” – the minimum remaining after a deactivated automatic data link.

Irving pointed out that the ability of the airplane to monitor and report its health, or otherwise, was the same for all planes, but the volume and quality of information would be different if MH370 was an Airbus jet and not a Boeing plane.

“The cockpits of Boeing and Airbus airliners reflect a fundamental difference in the philosophy of how an airplane is commanded. Boeing, in designing the 777, held to its traditional idea that a pilot should always have the ultimate authority over the machine.

“Airbus, on the other hand, believes that more authority should be placed in the computerised flight management system because it is less likely to make mistakes than a human.

“There is nothing in the safety record of either company to claim that one is better than the other,” he said.

But he wrote that when Air France flight 447 disappeared over the South Atlantic in 2009, investigators had telling clues to its condition within hours as the Airbus A330 had sent 24 so-called fault messages via satellite to a maintenance base in Paris.

He said this was due to the A330’s Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitoring system (ECAM), which itself reflects the precedence given by Airbus to automated flight controls.

In investigations into the Air France crash, he said it turned out the messages described an incremental shutdown of the airplane’s flight control computers, requiring the pilots to take over.

“The computers were being fed anomalous data because of a failed air speed gauge. The pilots, poorly trained, bungled the hand over, and lost control.

“Had the Malaysian 777 been able to transmit such a detailed record of its behavior before disappearing, we would have been more able to discount or pursue possible and imminent mechanical failure – like, for example, any gradual loss of cabin pressure because of a leak in the fuselage structure or a problem in the cargo hold,” Irving wrote.

But what was happening in the cockpit of flight MH370, he asked.

“Turning off the transponders was a simple step for the crew, just a matter of a few twists to the left of a dial placed between the two pilots — not accessing some circuit breaker above. That would be a very strange thing for them to do. It would, however, be the first thing a hijacker who got access to the cockpit would want to do.

“Yet why would any hijacker direct an airplane out into the great void beyond surveillance and without making demands for the safe release of the passengers?” he asked again.

Irving also noted that there was speculation of a suicide pact, but in the two most recent suicidal crashes, the pilots pushed down the nose and dived to the water instantly.

“This was the case with an Egypt Air Boeing 767 soon after leaving JFK airport in 1999 and a Silk Air Boeing 737 flying from Jakarta to Singapore in 1997. A suicidal pilot does not prolong the agony,” he wrote.

The Daily Beast journalist also pointed out that on the psychological behaviour of pilots, “the Malaysians are doing the reverse of what the Egyptian and Indonesian authorities did in those two crashes”.

“In each case the idea of suicide was anathema to the national cultures. The authorities contested the verdicts of the crash investigators and, instead, asserted (without credibility) that the crashes were caused by mechanical failure.

“The Malaysian authorities are doing the opposite: impugning the aircrew without any tangible evidence. First with the prime minister’s assertions of deliberate actions, and then by staging police raids on the captain’s home,” he said.

Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his flight simulator, as seen on a YouTube video he posted. Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his flight simulator, as seen on a YouTube video he posted. He also criticised a “so-called analyst” on TV who extrapolated from the fact that the captain had a self-built flight simulator in his home that he might have been practising left turns.

“Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was one of the airline’s longest serving pilots, logging 18,000 hours in the cockpit. He didn’t need to rehearse any turns; he had made many thousands of them.

“The simulator was probably used to keep him current with software updates to the 777’s systems. Pilots often use simulators to keep their airmanship sharp – in these days of automated flight decks there is a danger of losing some of the old ‘seat of the pants’ reflexes that can be crucial in an emergency,” he said.

He also said some sources have reported with a straight face that the Boeing 777 soared to a height of 45,000 feet as whoever was in control deliberately sought to disable passengers.

“First, at that height the airplane would be way beyond its operational ceiling and uncontrollable. Second, at this early stage in its flight it was loaded with fuel that would have made it a struggle to reach even 38,000 feet,” he said.

Irving noted that commercial aviation had never faced a crisis as grave as the one presented by MAS’s flight MH370.

“At a time when flying has never been safer airplanes just don’t go missing without trace. And yet one has, taking 239 people with it. Vanished.

“Public confidence in the governance of international air travel is shaken. The reputation of two world-esteemed companies, Boeing and Rolls Royce, is at stake,” he wrote in the article.

Irving said the flight’s disappearance had been compounded by “an engulfing fog of speculation, frequently reaching a tone of hysteria”.

“People are spooked. They want information that nobody is able to provide. We have come to expect quick enlightenment. That isn’t possible. We demand transparency and coherence. They’re not happening,” he wrote.

He pointed out that the Boeing 777’s safety record was exceptional but asked if there was an issue in the cargo hold of the missing MAS plane.

“Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board discovered that there was an unusually large consignment of lithium-ion batteries on the cargo manifest.

“This technology is more recently known as the cause of fires that led to the grounding of the Boeing 787 fleet, but lithium-ion batteries for personal electronic devices have been a frequent cause of emergencies in cargo holds and baggage handling,” he said.

Irving wrote that the batteries were prone to overheating and combustion and that the FAA’s Office of Security and Hazardous Materials Safety recorded many of these incidents in the US, including a fire caused by a battery on a self-propelled surf board on a FedEx airplane.

But he said the pilots would have had time to report an emergency if there was a battery induced fire in the cargo hold of MH370.

“There is, however, a relevant example of a large airplane being lost over the Indian Ocean after a cargo fire. In 1987, a South African Airways 747 with a 159 people aboard suffered an uncontrollable cargo fire that began with computers packed in polystyrene. The airplane fell into a deep part of the ocean east of Mauritius.

“Although the searchers had what they regard as the single most important aid to an undersea mission — a starting point based on the airplane’s last known position — it took two years to recover the flight recorder from depths as great as 15,000 feet,” Irving wrote.

He noted that it would take years before the investigation reaches an outcome about flight MH370.

“Right now it requires a skillful combination of dedicated people working with many different disciplines, scientific, forensic, managerial, informational, humanitarian, military, legal, and political. It will involve different languages and cultures. Commercial interests have to be reconciled with the public need for clarity and integrity.

“So far the way this task has been handled is not encouraging,” he wrote.

He pointed out that Putrajaya had asked for the help of 25 countries in the expanded search.

“Now nations are being asked to check their radar records, which is strange since if anything as large as a 777 had been flying rogue through busy international air corridors and over militarily sensitive sites would have triggered alarms instantly,” he wrote. – March 17, 2014.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 17 March 2014, 9:32 am and is filed under
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EXCLUSIVE: Did MH370 crew succumb to fire catastrophe?

by Aimee Turner

Air Traffic Management

March 17, 2014

The former head of security for the United States’ Federal Aviation Administration insists that rather than portraying the crew of the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 as saboteurs, the pilots struggled heroically to save their aircraft until overcome by smoke from a catastrophic cargo fire.

Billie Vincent who served as the FAA’s civil aviation security chief played a key policy and crisis management role in the handling of all hijackings of US aircraft in the 1980s. He was also in charge of the agency’s armed Federal Air Marshals and served as an expert witness in the trial of the Pan Am 103 terrorist bombing.

After leaving the FAA he led an international consulting firm which was contracted in the 1990s to design and implement the security system of Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport where Flight 370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, started its journey at 12.41 am on March 8 before disappearing from civilian radar en route to Beijing at 1.21 am.

Officials in Malaysia claim that, based on ‘pings’ sent from the aircraft to an Inmarsat satellite, the aircraft was deliberately diverted and may have flown as far north as Central Asia or south over the Indian Ocean. They suspect that someone on board the aircraft first disabled one of its communications systems – the Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) around 40 minutes after takeoff before switching off the aircraft’s transponder in a systematic effort to render the aircraft invisible to air traffic surveillance.

Speaking exclusively to Air Traffic Management, Vincent dismisses the likelihood of a bomb being detonated on board which would have ruptured the pressure hull of the aircraft citing the fact that the aircraft was tracked by a series of satellite ‘pings’. That would indicate that Flight MH370 flew for up to seven more hours which would not have been possible if it had been compromised.

“The data released thus far most likely points to a problem with hazardous materials. This scenario begins with the eruption of hazardous materials within the cargo hold – either improperly packaged or illegally shipped – or both,” says Vincent.

In his view, a fire which started in the cargo hold progressively and serially destroyed the aircraft’s communications systems; toxic fumes quickly overwhelmed the passenger cabin and the cockpit where at least one of the flight crew managed to don an oxygen mask allowing them to turn the aircraft back to Kuala Lumpur.

Flight 370 is reported to have climbed to 45,000ft which Vincent believes could have been due simply to the inability of the flight crew to clearly see and set the controls for a return to Kuala Lumpur.

Vincent guesses that control could have been regained and the aircraft sent back to a lower altitude of around 23,000 ft – which is a diversion altitude set by manufacturers of large transport aircraft to prevent a fire taking further hold and which both allows better survivability for those on board and vents the avionics bays.

The final report of a UPS B747 crash in Dubai in 2010, details how that crew similarly attempted to depressurise the freighter aircraft to slow down the fire 30 seconds after the loss of aircraft systems and flight controls. In that accident, the time interval between fire detection and the onset of aircraft system failures was around two and a half minutes.

The last verbal communication from Flight 370 was issued at 1.19 am as the aircraft left Malaysian airspace. It then disappeared from air traffic controllers’ screens at 1.21 am whilst flying over the South China Sea.

Vincent guesses that the crew did manage to stabilise the aircraft and set it on a new course before once again succumbing to either a loss of oxygen or the remaining toxic fumes.

“The airplane then continues flying until no fuel remains and crashes – most likely into the ocean as there has been no report of any Emergency Locater Transmitter (ELT) signal which can be received by satellite if the crash were on land,” says Vincent.

Vincent insists other scenarios involving hijacking and sabotage are improbable. “For instance, there is no indication that either of the pilots was criminally involved in the disappearance of this airplane. Neither has Malaysia released any data indicating anything amiss in the security clearance of the passengers for this flight. The one question raised about the two passengers travelling on stolen passports has been cleared indicating that they were planning on illegally claiming refugee status in another country, probably Germany.”

“I have yet to see anything released about the nature and content of the cargo carried in the cargo hold of Flight 370. Hazardous cargo can be legally carried on passenger aircraft. However, the amount and type of such hazardous materials are strictly controlled,” says Vincent.

While all hazardous materials must be properly contained and labelled – and declared to the airline transporting it, Vincent notes that hazardous materials have been – knowingly and unknowingly – labelled improperly for carriage on passenger aircraft in addition to having been carried on board unlawfully by passengers.

Though entirely within the law, a 2013 report by the UK’s Royal Aeronautical Society warned that passengers flying on a typical single aisle jet could be bringing more than 500 potentially lethal batteries on board – both in the cabin and the hold – to power personal gadgets.

The report documents how a fire occurred in April 2012 on a flight from Toronto to Minneapolis at 28,000ft when the battery from a passenger’s air purifier device combusted. A cabin crew member wet paper towels to put out the fire before submerging the smouldering battery in a cup of water. On the flight deck, meanwhile, the captain, smelling a strong burning electrical odour, declared an emergency and diverted to Michigan.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 18 March 2014, 10:43 pm and is filed under
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Flip-flop over ACARS switch off time, FBI help, adding to MH370 muddle, say reports

The Malaysian Insider

March 18, 2014

The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has taken another confusing twist, after authorities backtracked on when a crucial communications system on the aircraft was switched off.

The airline’s group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told a news conference yesterday that it was unclear exactly when one of the plane’s automatic tracking systems had been disabled and the last words from the cockpit, believed to be from the co-pilot, could have been done before the communication system was switched off.

This contradicts an earlier statement by Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein that the communications system had been “disabled” at 1.07am on March 8 – before the verbal sign-off was given to air traffic controllers at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, said a report in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Jauhari told yesterday’s press conference that the communications system, known as the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), had worked normally at 1.07am but then failed to send its next regularly scheduled update at 1.37am.

“We don’t know when the Acars system was switched off,” he said.

Jauhari said that the verbal signoff was given by radio from the aircraft at 1.19am which was between the two scheduled transmission times for the ACARS system.

A second communications system, a transponder that communicates with ground-based radar, then ceased working at 1.21am.

Following Jauhari’s statement, Hishammuddin had brushed off questions from the media about why he had said a day earlier that the ACARS had been disabled at 1.07am.

“What I said yesterday was based on fact, corroborated and verified,” he said, adding that the uncertainty about the chronology further underlined the need to locate aircraft and its data recorders.

The timing issue, however, is not the only confusing bit about the investigation so far.

While Putrajaya denied reports that Malaysia had refused help from international law agencies and was working with FBI and Interpol since day one in the search for the missing aircraft, Reuters reported that some US officials have expressed frustration at Malaysia’s handling of the investigation.

The report quoted two US security officials as saying that the Malaysian government still had not invited the FBI to send a team to Kuala Lumpur.

Reuters said the FBI, which has extensive experience in investigating airplane crashes, and other US law enforcement agencies have indicated they are eager to send teams to Kuala Lumpur, but will not do so unless formally invited.

“Malaysia has been working with international investigators and aviation authorities since day one,” Hishammudin said at yesterday’s press conference.

PKR vice-president N. Surendran said the contradiction by the Malaysian authorities, which was played up by foreign media such as CNN, was embarrassing.

“Whereas Najib had suggested that the ACARS had been turned off at 1.07am, MAS CEO Ahmad Jauhari has said that the ACARS was not due to report for another 30 minutes.

“This is crucial in determining whether there had been deliberate action in turning off the ACARS, bearing in mind that the co-pilot said at 1.19am, ‘All right, goodnight’ and did not report any ACARS malfunction at that time,” he said.

Putrajaya had also been criticised by Chinese media for conflicting information on missing flight MH370.

For instance, an editorial by China Daily questioned why only after a week flight MH370 had vanished that  Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said the flight’s disappearance may be have been “deliberate” and that the aeroplane flew several hours after leaving its intended flight path.

The newspaper also asked whether Malaysia was sharing all of the information it had gathered.

“The contradictory and piecemeal information Malaysia Airlines and its government have provided has made search efforts difficult and the entire incident even more mysterious,” it said.

“What else is known that has not been shared with the world?”– March 18, 2014.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 18 March 2014, 11:33 am and is filed under
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Hishammuddin’s “For BN MPs only” briefing on MH370 very negative and divisive, inimical to Parliament’s role to conduct full investigations into MH 370 tragedy after SAR operation

Today is the 11th day of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

What is traumatic and excruciating for the families, relatives and friends of the 239 passengers and crew on board as well as an international community united in their prayer for their safety is that despite spawning the largest-ever multi-national air-sea search – involving over a hundred ships and aircrafts from 26 countries – there is nothing to indicate the whereabouts of the aircraft or the people on board.

This is the time for everyone regardless of race, religion, politics or nationality to continue to unite  as one to pray and hope for the safety of the 239 people on board the missing MH370.

As I said in my speech in Parliament last Thursday (the sixth day of the missing MH370):

“With each  passing day, our  hopes and prayers that the 239 passengers and crew of MH 370 can survive safely through their ordeal become more and more tenuous, but even so, we must not give up hope and must continue to pray for a miracle for MH 370.

“All Malaysians, in fact all humanity, regardless of race, religion, politics or nationality,  have come together as one to pray for the safety of the 239 passengers and crew on board MH 370.

“We cannot pretend that many questions are not being asked, whether by the aggrieved families, relatives and friends or by the humanity at large, whether  in Malaysia or internationally, and which increase with each passing day, about the MH 370 tragedy, but the answers to  these questions will have to wait as the  sole focus and priority  must be to  find the aircraft.

“Malaysians and the world, however,  must be assured that at the right time and place, answers to all the questions that are being asked in the country and worldwide will be found.”

I had suggested that the Malaysian Parliament,  which represents all Malaysians,  must play its role in this MH 370 tragedy, not only giving full support to all the efforts in the “search and rescue” efforts by the government and the various agencies but also subsequently to conduct full investigations into the MH 370 tragedy and  its  various controversies and confusions, referring to six such controversies.

This was why I called  for the  immediate formation of a Parliamentary Select Committee on Disasters to give full support to MH 370 “search and rescue” operation and to  hold itself in readiness to conduct investigations after SAR ops to address all queries on the MH 370 tragedy.

I regret that up to now, there has been no response from either the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak or Hishammuddin to this proposal for a Parliamentary Select Committee.

In the past six days, while the “search and rescue” operations have expanded to involve  a larger expanse of land and sea, we are still without a clue as to  what actually happened or where is the final location of the aircraft.

Meanwhile, more questions have surfaced. The latest question, for instance,  arises from the backtrack on a key statement in the daily press conferences regarding the sequence of events leading up to the disappearance of the missing aircraft.

On the ninth day of the MH 370 SAR, Hishammuddin stated that one of the plane’s communication systems, ACARS, had been switched off at 1.07 am, minutes before someone in the cockpit verbally signed off, “all right, good night” at 1.19 to air traffic controllers – which seemed to clearly confirm foul play and even implicate the pilot who spoke those final words.

But yesterday, on the 10th day, Malaysia Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya stated that the ACARS system, which communicates every 30 minutes, was still active at 1:07 a.m., but failed to send its next scheduled update at 1:37 a.m.

Thus, the system could have been disabled at any point within the 30 minute window. As a refresher, the plane’s other communication system, its transponder, failed at 1:21 a.m.

The new information opens up the possibility that the plane’s two communication systems were disabled at the same time, rather than successively, which had been previoulsy reported as a clue the systems were intentionally shut off rather than cut off by a mechanical or electrical failure.

With the increase in questions, confusions and controversies surrounding  the MHY370 crisis, it is most unfortunate and regrettable that the Acting Transport Minister is holding a “For BN MPs only” briefing on the MH370 crisis in a Kuala Lumpur hotel at 8.30 pm tonight.

This is a very negative and divisive development as well as inimical to Parliament’s role to conduct full investigations into the MH370 tragedy after the SAR operation.

Hishammuddin must be reminded that there was an independent Japanese parliamentary inquiry on the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster – the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl – which caused the evacuation of some 150,000 people.  The six-month inquiry of the Japanese parliamentary commission concluded that  the disaster of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident was “man-made” and that “the direct causes of the accident were all foreseeable”.

I would urge Hishammuddin to respect and not to compromise in any way Parliament’s special interests, rights and  responsibility to conduct full and comprehensive inquiry into the MH370 crisis after the SAR operation and to ensure that his  briefing is given to all MPs and not just a section of MPs, and that such briefing should be given immediately without any delay.

(Media Statement in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday, 18th March 2014)

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Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan says detected no unidentified planes when flight MH370 vanished

The Malaysian Insider

March 17, 2014

Central Asian neighbours Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan said on Monday no unidentified planes had crossed their air space on March 8, making it unlikely that a missing Malaysia Arlines jetliner could have been diverted along a northern route via Thailand.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished with 239 people aboard, could hypothetically have reached Kazakhstan’s air space, but it would have been detected there, the Kazakh Civil Aviation Committee said in a detailed statement sent to Reuters.

“Even if all on-board equipment is switched off, it is impossible to fly through in a silent mode,” said the statement signed by the committee’s deputy head Serik Mukhtybayev. “There are also military bodies monitoring the country’s air space.”

Malaysia Airlines planes had made nine regular flights to and from Europe over Kazakhstan’s territory on March 8, Mukhtybayev said.

“Even hypothetically thinking, before reaching Kazakhstan’s territory this plane would have had to fly over other countries along its route, where the flight zone is also closely monitored, so we would have received information from these countries,” he added.

Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak on Monday called Almazbek Atambayev, the president of Kazakhstan’s neighbour Kyrgyzstan, saying the route of the diverted plane could have crossed his country as well, Atambayev’s press service said.

Najib asked the Kyrgyz leader to provide any information that could help the investigation, it added.

Kyrgyz civil aviation authorities ruled out any possibility of the airliner disappearing in or near Kyrgyzstan.

“No, this plane did not fly over Kyrgyzstan’s territory,” Dair Tokobayev, vice-president of Kyrgyzstan’s main civilian airport Manas near the capital Bishkek, told Reuters.

“We have two military air bases – a US and a Russian one – deployed in our country and equipped with pretty serious radar equipment, so they would have detected this plane.”

Malaysia Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said on Monday that it was unclear exactly when one of the plane’s automatic tracking systems had been disabled, appearing to contradict the weekend comments of government ministers.

Suspicions of hijacking or sabotage had hardened further when officials said on Sunday that the last radio message from the plane – an informal “all right, good night” – was spoken after the system, known as ACARS, was shut down. – Reuters, March 17, 2014.

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Malaysia under scrutiny as plane mystery drags on

The Malaysian Insider

March 18, 2014

Malaysia vehemently denies mishandling crucial information on the fate of missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370, but questions persist as to whether early missteps and secrecy contributed to the disappearance of a huge passenger plane on a clear night.

Foreign media reports, especially those in China’s state media, have accused the Malaysian authorities of incompetence, misleading the public and exacerbating the suffering of the relatives of those missing.

Two-thirds of the passengers on the Boeing-777 that effectively vanished 11 days ago were Chinese nationals.

The Malaysian government has pleaded for patience and understanding, arguing it has no choice but to hold back information that has not been painstakingly verified.

Critics say the lack of progress in the search for the plane is symptomatic of an inefficient ruling elite unused to tough questioning.

“The Malaysian leadership is not used to being held to account on anything,” Michael Barr, an Asian politics expert at Flinders University in Australia, told AFP.

“They are more used to controlling the press and silencing critics,” he said.

The authoritarian Barisan Nasional government has been in power since independence from colonial rulers Britain in 1957.

It has overseen decades of growth that have seen Malaysia emerge as Southeast Asia’s third largest economy, posting a healthy GDP expansion of 4.7% last year.

But analysts say unchallenged power has also bred apathy and inefficiency.

The stumbles over the missing plane search show that the government “lacks the ability to handle many technical matters with assurance and to communicate its purposes globally with clarity and agility,” said Clive Kessler, emeritus professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of New South Wales.

Malaysian opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim who, along with right groups, has routinely accused the government of civil liberties abuses and corruption, was even more scathing.

“The mysterious disappearance of MH370 reflects not only an incompetent regime ruling the country but an irresponsible government,” Anwar told AFP.

He was speaking in response to speculation that the captain of this airliner – a member of Anwar’s party – may have been driven by political motives to sabotage the plane.

Anwar said he was “disgusted” by what he saw as an attempt to smear the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and somehow implicate the opposition leadership in the March 8 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Among the most glaring questions being asked is why the Malaysian military failed to react to the aircraft re-routing across the Malay peninsula shortly after it dropped out of civilian radar contact.

Malaysian officials said military radars had picked up the plane – travelling unidentified on an unscheduled route – but no action was taken as it did not appear “hostile”.

They also said it had taken time to verify that the radar blip being tracked was indeed MH370 because its main automated signalling systems had been disabled.

The military “clearly knew more about what happened to MH370 than any other Malaysian agency,” said David Learmount, safety and operations editor of aviation industry magazine Flightglobal.

“But the authorities do not seem to have tapped into this expertise, and the military may have been slow to volunteer it.”

Daily press briefings by government, aviation and security officials have been tainted by contradictory statements that have created confusion and frustration.

In the latest example on Monday, Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya revealed information on the crucial sequence of events in the plane’s cockpit before it veered off course that totally contradicted the version provided the previous day by Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein.

Earlier examples included discrepancies about the number and ethnicities of passengers using stolen passports, and whether some passengers booked on the flight had failed to board or not.

At a meeting with airline officials in Beijing on Monday, relatives of the Chinese passengers accused Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his ministers of “talking nonsense” and intentionally masking negative details about the search effort.

Premier Li Keqiang also entered the fray, asking Najib to provide more details about the missing flight “in a timely, accurate and comprehensive manner.”

Cleary annoyed by the constant criticism, Hishammuddin, a cousin of Najib’s, reacted angrily when a foreign journalist suggested Malaysia should apologise for its handling of the crisis.

“I think it is very irresponsible of you to say that,” he shot back.

Stressing the “unprecedented” nature of the mystery surrounding the airliner’s disappearance, Hishammuddin said the authorities would not be bullied into behaving irresponsibly.

If the government disseminates information before it has been properly verified “the people who are going to suffer the most are these very families that we are trying to protect,” he said. – AFP, March 18, 2014.

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Mechanical v human: Why do planes crash?

By Finlo Rohrer & Tom de Castella

BBC News Magazine

14 March 2014

Mystery still surrounds the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370 but the speculation going on reveals something about lay people’s assumptions of air crashes.

What is likely to be the main cause of a passenger plane crashing?

Mechanical failure? Or human error?

There are many people whose first assumption – after terrorism or hijacking is discounted – when a plane is lost is that some physical part has failed catastrophically. But mechanical failures alone account for only a small proportion of airliner crashes.

For fatal accidents, one calculation puts the primary cause as “pilot error” in 50% of all cases.

One of the most common scenarios for a plane crash (more than a fifth of all fatal accidents between 2006-11, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization) is known as “controlled flight into terrain” (CFIT), referring to aircraft that were piloted into the ground, water, mountains or other terrain.

The cause could be bad weather leading to poor visibility, a navigation mistake or a more fundamental pilot error. CFIT was coined by aircraft manufacturer Boeing, which argued that pilot error was the most common cause.

The most recent confirmed example was the Sukhoi Superjet 100 that crashed into Mount Salak in Indonesia in 2012. The aircraft, which was on a demonstration flight for potential buyers and journalists, had a terrain awareness and warning system (TAWS) but this had been switched off by the pilots who assumed the computer was malfunctioning. Unaware that they were near the mountain, the crew were also distracted by conversations with potential buyers in the cockpit. All 45 people on board died.

Another egregious example was Eastern Airlines flight 401 which smashed into the Florida Everglades in 1972. The crash happened after all three members of the crew became obsessed with finding why a single indicator light had not come on when the landing gear was lowered. While they investigated, and not noticing that the autopilot had been accidentally switched to a setting that allowed a steady descent, they did not realise they were heading for disaster until it was too late.

Another incident in 1978, the crashing of United Airlines flight 173, led to a fundamental change in the way pilots were trained. The captain allowed it to run out of fuel while circling Portland, Oregon. It crashed with the loss of 10 lives. As the fuel was running down, the crew was investigating whether the landing gear had deployed properly after a noticeable jolt and the plane turning to the right.

The aftermath led to a heightened recognition of the need for crews to properly communicate and interact as a team, known as Crew Resource Management. If a subordinate notices that fuel is running dangerously low, but for whatever reason does not communicate that to the captain, there is a problem. If the captain ignores a warning from a subordinate about drifting off course, that is a problem.

American Airlines crash 1979 The rescue effort following the American Airlines crash in 1979

Passengers might think of pilot error as a single person’s mistakes, but in a team of two or three (and occasionally even four) flyers, errors are compounded within the structure of a team.

These team problems can be exacerbated by cultural factors. This was blamed for Korean Air’s appalling safety record during the 1980s and 1990s. An excessively hierarchical culture left captains ignoring their subordinates, and the subordinates sometimes afraid to speak up when they had noticed something was wrong. The result was a string of incidents. When Korean Air tackled the cultural issues, improvement was dramatic.

In 2010 a Qantas Airbus 380 faced disaster over western Indonesia. One of the engines failed, a wing and the landing gear were both damaged, there was a problem with the fuel system. The plane’s computerised system began bombarding the cockpit with misleading error messages. The pilots had to cheat the computers. Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny managed to land the plane in Singapore with no loss of life.

There have been CFIT accidents caused by human errors back on the ground. Aeroperu flight 603 crashed into the sea off Peru in 1996 after the instruments stopped working and the computer bombarded the crew with a series of baffling emergency messages. A maintenance worker had forgotten to remove tape from “static ports” needed to feed data to the instruments. At night over the sea, it was impossible for the crew to know their altitude and a wing hit the water. All 70 people on board died.

There are other crashes that investigators have laid firmly at the door of mechanical or material failure. The deadliest single-plane crash was in 1985 when a Boeing 747, Japan Airlines flight 123, crashed into a mountain, killing 520 people. It was caused by mechanical problems – a badly repaired rear pressure bulkhead ruptured leading to total loss of control.

Wreckage in Tenerife, 1977 The aftermath of the Tenerife runway accident in 1977

But while there are crashes that are manifestly pilot error or manifestly mechanical failure, most experts emphasise that there’s usually a range of interconnected and complicated factors that contribute to any crash.

The deadliest ever incident happened when two Boeing 747s collided on the runway in Tenerife. The 1977 accident in which 583 people perished occurred in thick fog with limited communication between the control tower and the two planes. It shows the chain of events that leads to accidents, says Graham Braithwaite, professor of safety and accident investigation at Cranfield University.

In 2009, after leaving New York’s La Guardia airport, US Airlines’ Airbus A320 reported a double bird strike. Both engines were disabled. Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III – a former US Air Force fighter pilot – decided to ditch into the Hudson River. Amid the skyscrapers of Manhattan, Sullenberger managed to land the plane on water with no loss of life.

If there hadn’t been a bomb attack at nearby Gran Canaria, planes would not have been diverted there, crowding the runway. The airport was built in a place that was prone to sea fog, he notes. The communication system from the control tower to the planes was poor. Sometimes the best people can make the worst mistakes, Braithwaite suggests.

The air accident most commonly linked to the current Malaysia Airlines situation happened in June 2009. Air France flight 447, an Airbus A330-200 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean. It took days for the wreckage to be found and three years for the mystery to be solved.

The plane had stalled after pilot error. A transcript of the pilots’ conversation shows just how confused they had become.

But it’s possible to see it another way. There was a violent storm which iced over the pitot tubes, or speed sensors, in the build-up to the accident. The autopilot switched itself off, but the pilot – the most junior member of the flight crew – reacted inappropriately to the turbulence the plane was going through.

The search for wreckage after the Air France crash of 2009 The search for wreckage after the Air France crash of 2009

Although pilot error was clearly the main factor, bad weather and momentary instrument failure contributed to the panic. And what resulted was a failure in crew resource management, the plane stalling and the death of all 228 on board. Critics have pointed to design, and particularly to the feedback from the control sticks as a major factor.

The relationship between the pilot and the plane has changed. Computer involvement has steadily increased, automated systems have come to the fore, and the array of sensors has multiplied.

It is perhaps understandable that when part of that system is not functioning normally, pilots can be disproportionately unsettled. “Catastrophic failures don’t happen as often but they are more catastrophic when they do. If something went wrong in the 1970s there was a chance you could land it,” says Joe Pappalardo, senior editor at Popular Mechanics magazine.

In 1982, a British Airways 747 flying from London to Auckland hit a cloud of volcanic ash near Jakarta. Captain Eric Moody’s announcement has passed into folklore: “We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get it under control.” Capt Moody put the plane into a nose dive to an altitude where the air was breathable. In the process three of the engines restarted. The pilots had to land it manually at Singapore, without help from the ground, and with a damaged windscreen.

The pilots in the Air France accident did not do what they should have in the circumstances, particularly with regard to communication between them. But one also has to recognise the bafflement at the situation they found themselves in.

Pilots are extremely well-trained and immensely experienced people by the time they find themselves controlling an airliner, but they are not infallible.

It’s all too easy to blame pilot error when things go wrong, says aviation writer and light aircraft pilot Sylvia Wrigley, author of Why Planes Crash. “It’s a really, really easy scapegoat. The pilot is either dead or fired. The real problem is a dozen different things have gone wrong.”

But Andrew Brookes, a former RAF pilot who has written about flight safety, says the technology is so good today that pilots are not really necessary. “The technology exists now for an airliner to fly without a pilot from London to Beijing. Today planes hardly ever fail – I can’t think of a [recent] accident caused by engines failing or wings dropping off.”

A passenger managed to land a plane after its pilot fell ill. How difficult is it to bring an aircraft down safely without training?

There’s a reason people continue to hold pilots in such an exalted position. “It goes back to daring young men in their flying machines,” says Brookes. Pilots look and sound authoritative.

Some experts disregard the term “pilot error” completely, regarding it to be nebulous to the point of uselessness.

But the most important thing is that flying is getting safer. In 1985 – the worst year for aviation deaths – there were more than 1,900 fatalities involving airliners. In 2012 there were nine fatal accidents involving airliners causing 372 deaths, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization.

But every single accident that is successfully investigated provides data that can be used to improve planes, notes Pappalardo. “Aviation is still on a learning curve. It is important to find out what happened – there are always so many variables.”

The result is improvement for both planes and pilots.

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MH370 was programmed to turn around, investigators claim

The Malay Mail Online

March 18, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 18 — The “air turnback” made by Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was executed using the plane’s navigational computer inside the cockpit, the New York Times reported.

Citing unnamed US law enforcement officials, the newspaper said the plane was not piloted manually as initially believed, adding to the mounting evidence that the person or persons behind the “deliberate action” to divert the plane from its Beijing-bound route was intimately familiar with the Boeing 777-200ER.

Malaysia on Saturday said it was now refocusing its investigations on the 12 crew and 227 passengers of the missing plane.

According to the US officials, the crucial piece of information was contained in the final transmission of the plane’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) at 1.07am on March 8.

Previous information by Malaysian authorities that the ACARS was shut off prior to the plane’s last broadcast of “All right, good night” by co-pilot Fariq Ab Hamid at 1.17am, had led to suspicion falling on the two aviators at the helm.

Yesterday, MAS cleared up confusion over when the ACARS aboard MH370 was switched off, saying it could have taken place any time between 1.07am and 1.37am, when it was due to make its next transmission but never did.

But the revelation from the US investigators that the plane’s path was altered via the Flight Management System prior to the final ACARS transmission indicates that the plan to divert the plane may have been set in motion even before then.

The plane also threaded established navigational waypoints — Igari, Vampi, Gival and Igrex — that further suggest the plane was piloted by the computer.

In its report, the NYT said a plane flown using waypoints would have altered its bearings in a manner gentle enough to not alert those onboard to the change.

The new suggestion, however, pushes investigators away from the theory of pilot suicide.

With terrorism only a remote possibility and a hijack similarly unlikely given the absence of demands, the new discovery is likely to worsen the mystery of MH370.

The microscope has been on the two pilots, Fariq and the captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, since Malaysia concluded on Saturday the plane’s disappearance was due to “deliberate action”.

Police searched the homes of both men the same day, taking a flight simulator Zaharie hand-built to mimic the cockpit of the 777-200ER.

Today, local daily Berita Harian cited unnamed local investigators as saying five practice runways in the Indian Ocean were contained in the simulator.

On Saturday, Malaysia confirmed that satellite data indicated that the plane could be in one of two corridors: a northern arc from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in central Asia, or a southern one from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

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