A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 239 people en route to Beijing has gone missing. The Boeing 777-200 aircraft, which was headed from Kuala Lumpur, had 227 passengers — including two infants — and 12 crew members on board, the airline said in a statement released by CBS News. The passengers were of 13 different nationalities. “Our team is currently calling the next-of-kin of passengers and crew,” the airlines’ group chief executive officer, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, said in a statement. “Focus of the airline is to work with the emergency responders and authorities and mobilize its full support. Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members.” Flight MH370 departed from Kuala Lumpur at 12:41 a.m. Saturday local time – or 11:41 a.m. Friday Eastern time, according to a statement from the airline, CBS News reported. Air traffic control in Subang lost contact with it two hours later. It was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m. Saturday local time, or 5:30 p.m. Friday Eastern time the same day, CBS News reported. The airline said it was working with authorities who activated their search and rescue team to locate the aircraft. The route would take the aircraft from Malaysia across to Vietnam and China. China’s CCTV said 160 Chinese nationals were on board the flight, according to microblogging website Weibo. Chinese state TV also reported there had not been any reports received yet about any aircraft crashed in Chinese waters, CBS News reported. State news agency Xinhua reported radar contact with the flight was lost while it was in Vietnamese airspace, according to CBS News. Malaysia Airlines has 15 Boeing 777-200 jets in its fleet of about 100 planes. The state-owned carrier last month reported its fourth straight quarterly loss. The 777 has not had a fatal crash in its 20 year history until the Asiana crash in San Francisco in July 2013. credits: cbs
Still no sign of any wreckage... only some oil in the ocean but nothing other than that... Right now some sources are saying it might be terrorism -shrug
To elaborate on this, there are also sources that state that two of the passengers' passports were lost/stolen in the last two years. There are others that said that the air craft experienced a drastic loss in altitude before disappearing. The cause of such a drastic drop can be attributed to cabin depressurization, which could be caused by either maintenance issues which caused weaknesses in the structural integrity (similar to a few more incidents in the past). Or, like RTH said, terrorism, causing the explosion to depressurize the cabin. Either way, for a Boeing 777, a plane slated to be the safest in the industry with only 2 major incidents in under 20 years (both of which were human error), it is not likely that it was a design flaw. I'm thinking this is either bad maintenance, or hopefully not, terrorism.
Even bad maintenance would be tough sell, given the stellar record of this type of aircraft. The fact too, of two (or maybe even four) phony passengers being listed on the flight manifest is a worrisome sign; people forget, or perhaps don't want to think about that the Pacific is also a political hotbed for radical religious based extremism on a par with those that brought us 911. Given that the eleven year old air frame is considered "new" by commercial air standards, with an excellent mechanical safety and flight record, on a flight path across what was described by officials as clear skies with no inclement weather, and literally disappeared from contact on such short notice, one has to assume that something quite quick and catastrophic occurred. Whether the final analysis is one based on criminality or mechanical deficiency, one is reminded that routine air travel, even in this day and age, is never quite as routine as we'd like. ADDENDUM: Viet officials may have found debris which they suspect are from that flight. IMHO, we should bring back the airship; it'll be a bit slower, but a lot safer as those aren't as Bernoulli dependent to stay in the air.
Missing Malaysia Airlines flight may have turned around before it vanished http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ia-airlines-flight-mh370-turned-around-search
Everyone just want to know what happened, something major happened up there very quickly cause to not even have a "mayday" and just vanish/crash in the sea just doesn't seem to happen in today's world. So many questions need to be answer.
Things are getting stranger as it's back to square one for investigators. It seems that the oil slicks found in the water is now suspected to be of a the kind commonly discharged by cargo ships and have nothing to do with aviation use. Moreover, the "debris" or "life raft" that was sighted also didn't pan out. Considering the electronic surveillance coverage of the world, it seems amazing that something as large as a commercial flight can literally "disappear" from the face of the earth.
At this point, we all hooe it's a hijacked. But wth is he malay gov't doing, they seem so confused and lost.
They are wasting the other country rescue team's time, Malaysia goverment should just tell the truth so the rescue team could really focus on a real objective In my opinion, the plane got hijacked and Malaysia combat aircraft shot it down by mistake because the plane wont respond and they trying to find the best moment to announce it
So, what did we know about the disappearance of the triple 7 now, really? I guess its not much after more than a week of investigation, at least not until we can find the wreckage or some sort of debris from the aircraft to solve the mystery .
This is very crazy. Perhaps we should invent a plane where passengers could override the pilots control and send signal for assistance. SAD for the passengers and their families yet little could be done now ... little leads and incompetent Malaysian gov ...
I can think of so many cases where this system would be abused. Imagine if even just 5% of passengers of each flight misuse this system. You're going to have a lot of flights calling for Mayday, daily.
Sexy white female terrorists take note; Asian pilots can be easily bedazzled by white women to the point they will bypass all security protocols for you.
^ Indeed, she definitely got what it takes to do just that from her pretty face. :naughty: ''All lives are lost'" I cant believe why they have concluded this now without seeing/finding the aircraft wreckage. How is this felt again by the grieving relatives....more devastation. They just cant seems to handle this situation left and right imo...:(
If I understand the Malaysian government's new position, it is based on technical appraisal of the timing and location of signal loss, occurring within an area known NOT to have any possible safe harbor. That is, the plane was in an area that was known to have zero possible landing sites when it ran out of fuel. So, one would have to surmise that it crashed into the ocean and that all were killed. Of course, that does NOT eliminate the slim chance possibility that the plane did a water landing and that some people were able to get out into the water. Having said that, even if that were the case; the probability of survival, floating in a life raft in those waters at this time of year is a few hours at best. Anyone in the water and not in a life raft would be dead from hypothermia in a matter of minutes. And this happened more than a week ago. Hence, one can see why the Malaysian government is telling people that the flight and all aboard, for all intents and purposes, at this point, is dead. It's the same situation with submarines; you may never find the actual wreckage, Of course, if this were a Hollywood movie, they would have all been rescued by a fishing trawler whose radio was knocked out of commission by an earlier storm and as such was held incommunicado for a week. But sadly, that only happens in movies, not real life.
What I don't understand is why essential safety devices, specifically the transponder, would have an off switch. It relays information about the planes location and altitude to air traffic control so the plane can be tracked to prevent mid air collisions. Why on earth would you ever want to turn that off?
