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  • I mentioned quite a few weeks ago that the additional technology to assist in the new searches would come from the resources sector and private industry

    confirmation that this is now happening:

    Malaysia Airlines MH370: Officials consider using underwater vehicles provided by Petronas - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
    Linkeden:
    http://au.linkedin.com/pub/gary-fairlie/1/28a/2a2
    http://cofda.wordpress.com/

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    • Relatives of those missing on board flight MH370 are hoping to raise $5m (£3m) to reward any "whistleblower" who can offer information which leads to the discovery of the lost plane.
      Many of the families believe there has been a cover up and they are hoping the money will tempt someone to come forward, for example an insider from the world of commercial aviation or the military.
      The money will be collected from donations through the fundraising website Indiegogo.
      Part of it will also go to funding private investigators to follow up on any leads.
      The Malaysia Airlines jet lost contact on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard - about two-thirds of them Chinese.
      The Boeing 777 is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, but an extensive search has turned up no sign of wreckage so far, leaving families increasingly frustrated.
      Sarah Bajc's partner, American Philip Wood, was on the plane.
      She told Sky News: "I am certain there's been a cover-up.
      "I'm not sure who is doing it or why they're doing it, whether it was an intentional act that's being obscured or whether there was a genuine bad thing that happened and people are trying not to let that come to life.
      "But we do honestly believe that somewhere there is a person who knows something that will allow us to find the plane and find our loved ones."
      Ethan Hunt, leader of the project, said: "This mystery is unprecedented in the history of aviation, and we need to work as a collective community with one goal of finding the truth, the plane and the passengers.
      “Utilising the immense potential of the crowd we believe we can achieve our primary goal of recovering the flight where others methods have failed in the past.
      "We are convinced that somewhere, someone knows something, and we hope this reward will entice him or her to come forward."
      The search for the aircraft remains focused on the Indian Ocean but is to be expanded after "pings", or signals, thought to be from the plane's black box flight recorders did not lead to any wreckage being found.
      The new search zone of up to 60,000 square kilometres (24,000 square miles) is in the "southern corridor" and is based on where the aircraft last communicated with an Inmarsat satellite.
      Commercial contractors and deep sea search experts are now in negotiations with the Australian search co-ordinators and should begin work on the latest phase in August.
      Meanwhile, a thorough review of all the data and evidence gathered so far is being carried out, the results of which should be released in coming weeks.

      Comment


      • "But we do honestly believe that somewhere there is a person who knows something that will allow us to find the plane and find our loved ones."

        Attached Files

        Comment


        • {quote]Ethan Hunt, leader of the project, said: "This mystery is unprecedented in the history of aviation,[/quote]

          I guess he doesn't know much aviation history.


          But the Malaysian Police are still hard on the job. No stone unturned, Usual suspects.....:whome:


          Police Question USS Vincennes Over MH370 Disappearance

          KUALA LUMPUR — As the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 enters its second week, the Royal Malaysian Police have identified another person — or in this case, ship — of interest in the case of the missing plane, and have asked the public for help in locating the USS Vincennes (CG-49).

          “Based on its track record of being near other passenger airliners that have suddenly vanished without a trace, we think it is only prudent that we sit down with the USS Vincennes and establish its nautical whereabouts on the night in question,” explained Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar at a press conference.

          Bakar took care to stress that the Vincennes was not considered a suspect in the airline’s disappearance, but added that it should be considered “armed and extremely dangerous.” He advised members of the public not to approach the warship “in anything less than carrier battle group strength.”

          Speaking via a conference call from Bremerton, Wash., longtime acquaintance USS Sides (FFG-14) admitted it hadn’t actually heard from the Vincennes in four years, but insisted “this has its fingerprints all over it: the plane’s sudden disappearance from radar, the suspicious Iranian passengers, the giggling over the radio, you name it.”

          The Vincennes‘ last known location was in a crate of razor blades near the cash register at a Costco in Philadelphia (ROFLMAO).

          Comment


          • And the plot thickens

            More than £20,000 has been stolen from the bank accounts of four passengers who disappeared aboard the doomed MH370 flight.
            Flight MH370 vanished in March 2014, with 239 people on board, after diverting from its planned route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
            A bank in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia has now reported that mysterious withdrawals, totalling 111,000 RM (£20,916), have been recorded from the accounts of four passengers, five months after the flight disappeared without trace.
            According to reports, the transactions were made on July 18, when money from the accounts of three passengers was transferred to the account of a fourth passenger.
            Izany Abdul Ghany, Assistant Commissioner to the crime investigation department said: "We are investigating the case as unauthorised access with intent to commit an offence. We are getting CCTV footage from the bank to identify the suspects involved."
            A source told the New Straits Times: "We believe the suspect withdrew the money through the fourth victim's account via several automated teller machines (ATMs) in the Klang Valley."
            The news of the unauthorised bank transactions adds further to the mystery of the missing plane, which disappeared off the radar with 239 passengers and crew on board.
            So far, all efforts to locate Flight MH370 have failed and officials are no closer to establishing what happened to the Boeing 777.
            Conspiracy theories have focused on a suicide plot by 53-year-old Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and a possible terrorist attack, after it was revealed that two of the passengers were travelling with false passports.
            With the international community joining forces to continue the hunt for the missing airline, a deep-water search across 60,000 square kilometres of the Indian Ocean is planned for September.
            Despite facing criticism for the lack of any findings, during what has been the most expensive search operation in aviation history, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre has claimed the rescue operation is making 'good progress'.
            Malaysia Airlines are still reeling after suffering two major disasters within months, after Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 passengers.
            Airline officials are now considering rebranding the airline and restructuring the business.

            Comment


            • Attached Files
              No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

              To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

              Comment


              • Some of that news has been misreported

                eg the current suspects are believed to be bank staff
                in addition, the issue of false passports had been established prev - they tracked down and interviewed the two people holding them

                as an aside, the Bluefin 21 prev used to try and find remnants has been used successfully in recent times to find an F15 lost off the sea of japan
                Linkeden:
                http://au.linkedin.com/pub/gary-fairlie/1/28a/2a2
                http://cofda.wordpress.com/

                Comment


                • They are using drone subs to speed up the search. These autnomous drones cover ten times the area per hour compared to the last attempt

                  A fantastical ship has set out to seek Malaysian Airlines flight 370 | Economist | Jan 02 2018

                  A swarm of submarine drones will scour the depths for the plane




                  ON JANUARY 2nd, at 8pm local time, a strange vessel cast off and sailed out of the Port of Durban, in South Africa, heading east. Her hull was orange. Her superstructure bristled with antennae—some long and pointy, some sleek, white and domed. Her stern sported a crane and also a strange gantry, known to her crew as the “stinger”. Her bow looked so huge and ungainly as to be on the point of tipping her, nose first, into the depths. And below deck, invisible to those on shore, she carried eight autonomous submarines called HUGINs, each six metres long, weighing 1,800kg, and containing a titanium sphere to protect the sensitive electronics therein from the pressure of the ocean’s depths.

                  The strange ship’s name is Seabed Constructor. She is a Norwegian research vessel, built in 2014 and owned by Swire Seabed, a dredging and surveying firm in Bergen. At the moment, though, she is leased to Ocean Infinity, a company based in Houston, Texas. And the task Ocean Infinity has hired her for is a hard one: to find whatever is left of flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER that left Kuala Lumpur on March 8th 2014 with 239 people on board and vanished over the Indian Ocean.

                  The disappearance of MH370 is one of the great mysteries of modern civil aviation. The aircraft was bound for Beijing, but changed course suddenly over the South China Sea and broke off radio contact. It was last detected by radar near the northern tip of Sumatra, heading west-north-west into the open ocean. Subsequent transmissions to a communications satellite suggested that it crashed somewhere along an arc between 1,500km and 2,700km west of Australia.

                  The search that followed was the largest in aviation history. It was mounted by Fugro, a Dutch firm, and paid for by the Malaysian, Chinese and Australian governments. Over the course of three years Fugro managed to scan 120,000 square kilometres of seabed. But it found nothing. The plan is for Ocean Infinity’s search to be paid for, on a “no find, no fee” basis, by Malaysia alone. Contracts have yet to be signed, but Oliver Plunkett, Ocean Infinity’s boss, has decided to go ahead anyway, to take advantage of the window of good weather that opens in the southern Indian Ocean in January and February.

                  Ocean Infinity aims to cover the ground much faster than Fugro did. In prior cruises in the Atlantic, the firm has, according to Josh Broussard, its technical director, managed to scan 890 square kilometres a day using six autonomous submarines. With eight, Mr Broussard thinks that the new mission will be able to manage 1,200 a day—enough to have covered the original search area in just 100 days.

                  The new search area, 25,000 square kilometres of sea floor chosen by investigators from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), is just north of the old one (see map). Fugro could infer MH370’s crash site only from its final, rather shaky, satellite signals. Ocean Infinity’s effort has been guided as well by wreckage washed ashore on the coasts of Africa and several islands in the Indian Ocean—hence the more northerly starting point. Seabed Constructor will reach that starting-point, which is about 35°S, and 2,200km off the coast of Western Australia, on or about January 17th, her crew having conducted a few final tests and calibrations of the HUGIN system en route, using remote-controlled robots to place dummy debris on the sea floor in order to see if the subs can find it. If searching the patch of ocean designated by the ATSB reveals nothing, then the ship will head farther north, towards the 30th parallel, which some independent experts believe is a better bet.



                  An ocean of interest

                  Fugro’s search used but a single autonomous submarine, and this was unable to dive below 4,000 metres, meaning it was not always close to the seabed. The HUGINs carried by Seabed Constructor can, however, go as deep as 6,000 metres. That permits them to reach most of the sea floor comfortably. And the fact that there are eight of them means different areas can be searched in parallel, and that some submarines will always be at sea.

                  The HUGINs will be launched by the stinger, which extends out over the ship’s stern. Once underwater, the robot craft will communicate with the ship using an acoustic modem. The ship’s own modem, which will receive these signals, is fixed to the end of a long pole that extends down through her hull into the water.

                  Each HUGIN comes with a 300kg lithium-polymer battery pack, good for a tour of duty lasting up to 60 hours. A downward-pointing sonar will map the contours of the seabed beneath the craft, but most of the searching will be done by side-mounted sonars scanning the bed on either side of the craft. These send out pings and measure the intensity with which they are reflected. Sand reflects less sound than metal does, meaning metal objects such as aircraft debris are easy to distinguish. And if something apparently metallic is detected, its nature can be confirmed using an on-board magnetometer.

                  The HUGINs’ search patterns are set by people, but the craft will actually navigate with little reference to their mother ship. Every so often, the ship will send out a corrective ping to keep them on course. Mostly, however, they will employ dead reckoning, based on data from accelerometers, to steer themselves autonomously. They are also capable of picking their way without assistance over sheer underwater cliffs and mountains, and past crevices and gullies, using on-board cameras and machine-vision software.

                  After its tour of duty, a HUGIN will be lifted back on-board ship and the data it has collected (up to two terabytes, recorded on a waterproof hard drive) downloaded into the ship’s data centre and turned into human-readable maps, a process that takes six hours. The HUGIN’s battery will be replaced with a fully charged one, any necessary repairs made, and the craft then sent back out into the ocean.

                  A team of geologists and hydrographers will then pore over the maps, looking for signs of the missing plane. Surprisingly, for such a high-tech operation, this stage of the search will be entirely manual. Every block of sea floor that the HUGINs map will be examined by three sets of human eyes. Together, this survey team will come up with a list of possible targets, ranked from “E” to “A” (“nothing” to “that’s it”), to present to their bosses. If the data look good, a HUGIN will be sent down for a second, closer look, cameras at the ready.

                  What happens next, if Ocean Infinity does locate what is left of the missing aircraft, is unclear. Friends and relatives of those aboard it will doubtless derive relief from knowing where the flight ended up. But merely finding the wreckage will not explain what happened on board the plane. That will require the discovery of the aircraft’s flight recorder.

                  That object is therefore Ocean Infinity’s ultimate target. If it is found on this mission, Mr Broussard says the firm plans to bring it to the surface and then deliver it for analysis to the Australian authorities, who have the technical competence to assess it. A follow-up trip to examine the wreckage, and even bring it to the surface, would require further authorisation from the Malaysian government.

                  Seabed Constructor is the most advanced civilian survey vessel on the planet today. If its array of technology cannot find MH370, then it is likely that nothing will, and that the mystery of MH370 will remain unsolved. Either way, though, the advance of technology may mean that it is the last such mystery. As the oceans are watched with ever closer scrutiny, from space and the depths, it is increasingly difficult for anything to get lost in the first place.

                  This article appeared in the Science and technology section of the print edition under the headline "Many scanners, very deep"

                  Comment


                  • Fantastic. Thanks for posting it.

                    Comment


                    • Oh bugger!

                      ‘Search Ops in Final Week’: Malaysia Govt Tells Pune Man Whose Wife Was on ‘Missing’ MH370 | News 18 | May 25 2018

                      The 90-day search for MH370 by Ocean Infinity which started in January ended in April without any finding. It was extended till May 29 on the Malaysian government's request
                      Last edited by Double Edge; 26 May 18,, 01:22.

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                      • I watched the 60minutes episode about the missing flight. According to the show the current search area is based on the scenario where all were assumed dead or incapacitated and the 777 flew on autopilot until its fuel was exhausted. Once out of fuel the 777 simply dove into miles after at supersonic speed with the panel of experts agreeing that it would have smashed into smithereens 9 miles from the tanks being emptied. The discovery of the flaperon and its condition kind of disproves the smashing into smithereens part but this seems to have been ignored.

                        A couple of the experts suggested that there was another theory that had the pilot in control until the end including a controlled ditching. The key difference with regards to the search area is that if the 777 was under control it was capable of covering an additional 100 miles in the glide putting its final resting place well south of the current search area. For me, if the flaperon is indeed from the aircraft, I'd be going with the ditching theory and looking south. There's no way that the discovered flaperon came from an aircraft that dived from 30000+ feet uncontrolled. Now I've never seen or inspected a 777 that has dived into the ocean from 30000+ feet but I've seen a 777 and I've seen an ocean so I'm pretty much an expert.

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                        • They're going to have another crack at it

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