The ManicaPost
THE search for the missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft MH370 will now only resume in August. Till then, relatives of 238 passengers and crew on board have to make do with the facts and analysis as contained in an Australian Transport Safety Bureau report. The report, after analysis by aviation experts, seems to expose gaping holes in any simplistic crash explanation.
The Malaysia Airlines plane went missing on March 8, sparking an international search for the wreckage. Search in a new zone, a 60 000-square-kilometre area of the sea floor about 1 800km west of Perth, will begin in August.
Here are three key, likely theories that have so far emerged from books (already) written, analysis of what the report says and interviews with relatives:
Diego Garcia still alive
The wife of one of the pilots on board the missing MH370 flight has reportedly confirmed that her husband spoke to her from the cockpit, according to a report in the Independent.
That and other “on-flight” activity, or lack of it, has kept the conspiracy theorists favourite bogeyman — Diego Garcia — still on a slow boil.
Spectre of hijacking
According to aviation experts quoted by the UK’s The Telegraph, analysing the report suggests hijackers may have tampered with vital cockpit equipment in a bid to avoid radar detection.
The report details evidence of a “not common” power outage on the plane less than 90 minutes after take-off from Kuala Lumpur. The interruption of electrical power on board the Beijing-bound plane could have been the result of a hijacking attempt, aviation expert Peter Marosszeky from the University of New South Wales told The Telegraph.
In the report, crash investigators reveal that the missing Boeing 777’s satellite data unit had unexpectedly tried to log on to a satellite, around an hour and a half after the flight left from Kuala Lumpur on March 8.
This request, known as a “handshake”, was likely to have been caused by a power failure on board, the 55-page report says.
The 4-hour communication gap
Every time investigators probing the disappearance of MH370 seek some sort of closure on the mystery — a new angle emerges to blow the conspiracy angle wide open. Against the backdrop of the 55-page report released by the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) — narrowing down the possible final resting place from thousands of possible routes, while noting the absence of communications and the steady flight path and a number of other key abnormalities in the course of the ill-fated flight, an interview with the wife whose husband was on the plane has emerged.
Excerpts from the interview, which is the cover story of Australian New Idea magazine, raise a pertinent question that is haunting surviving relatives of the tragedy. “There’s a four-hour gap between when communication with the plane was lost, before a search team was activated. And no mention of what was in two tonnes of cargo,” the exclusive interview quotes Danica Weeks as saying.
Weeks’ husband and father of her two sons, Paul, was among the 238 passengers and crew on MH370.
“I’ll never stop pushing for answers. I want to know what happened to my husband,” Danica goes on to say.
The “no-hope” passengers and crew theory
The passengers and crew of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 most likely died from suffocation and coasted lifelessly into the ocean on autopilot, a new report released by Australian officials said.
A 55-page report released by the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) outlined how investigators had arrived at this conclusion after comparing the conditions on the flight with previous disasters, although it contained no new evidence from within the jet-liner.
The report narrowed down the possible final resting place from thousands of possible routes, while noting the absence of communications and the steady flight path and a number of other key abnormalities in the course of the ill-fated flight.
“Given these observations, the final stages of the unresponsive crew, hypoxia event type appeared to best fit the available evidence for the final period of MH370’s flight when it was heading in a generally southerly direction,” the ATSB report said.
All of that suggested that the plane most likely crashed farther south into the Indian Ocean than previously thought, Australian officials also said, leading them to announce a shift farther south within the prior search area.
The new analysis comes more than 100 days after the Boeing 777, carrying 239 passengers and crew, disappeared on March 8 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.
Investigators say what little evidence they have to work with suggests the plane was deliberately diverted thousands of kilometres from its scheduled route before eventually plunging into the Indian Ocean.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was almost certainly on autopilot when it ran out of fuel and crashed, with the crew likely “unresponsive”, Australian officials said on Thursday, announcing the search for wreckage would shift further south.
An expert group has reviewed all the existing information and Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said it was now “highly, highly likely that the aircraft was on autopilot” when it went down.
“Otherwise it could not have followed the orderly path that has been identified through the satellite sightings,” he told reporters. Martin Dolan, commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading the search, agreed.
“Certainly for its path across the Indian Ocean we are confident that the aircraft was operating on autopilot until it ran out of fuel,” he said. He quantified this by saying the experts assessed that the plane flew in a straight line, according to the electronic “handshakes” it periodically exchanged with satellites.
“If you look at our detailed report, you will see there are seven arcs that we are looking at and we’re saying the path the aircraft took to intercept each of those arcs was a straight path,” he said. Australia’s Deputy PM says it is ‘‘highly likely’’ that the missing flight MH370 was flying on autopilot when it flew into the southern Indian Ocean and disappeared more than 100 days ago. — Emirates 24/7 News.
