Malaysia misled search allies over MH370 crash search
See Second Update
Confirmation that Malaysia’s military knew exactly where Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was until the minute is disappeared near a rocky outcrop in the northern approaches to the Straits of Malacca on Saturday morning would mean it mislead 10 allies, including Australia, into participating in a farcical and costly search for the missing Boeing 777-200.
Australia, China, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore and the United States were among the countries that deployed significant resources into efforts to find the jet which had 239 people on board, and vanished from civilian air traffic control radar screens about 42 minutes after it departed Kuala Lumpur for Beijing at 12.40 am on 8 March.
But MH370, which had its identifying transponder switched off, was according to national media tracked all the way to a low altitude location near Pulau Perak (Silver Island) by Malaysia’s military radar.
What is even more reprehensible about such a search circus is that one of the speakers at the daily press conference was Malaysia’s defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein, who must surely, as the responsible member of government, have known what the military openly revealed to the media in Malaysia yesterday.
The minister absented himself from yesterday’s search update conference in Kuala Lumpur to participate in a flight to western Malaysia in the newly expanded search area, which had actually been extended no later than sometime early on Monday.
It is possible that Hishammuddin Hussein flew to the site of the crash yesterday on that flight.
Why the minister allowed the massive, and pointless participation in a widespread search area by Malaysia’s allies, when its defence forces knew with precision where the 777 actually disappeared from military radar last Saturday morning, is a question which goes to the integrity and competency of the country’s leadership.
If the government didn’t know what its military knew, the same military that would have been liaising with its counterparts who had volunteered their search support, just how disconnected from reality is it?
The obvious question is was it protecting, with the resources of its allies, the reputation of the government owned carrier Malaysia Airlines, while efforts were made to devise a management program for a crash in which Malaysia’s police are investigating the mental health and personal problems of crew members as well as passengers on MH370?
The defence minister made very detailed statements about passengers with false or stolen passports who boarded the flight, as well as claiming that five people who did not board the flight had their luggage offloaded. At yesterday’s media conference national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar repudiated those claims.
Today could be somewhat intense, as the fate of MH370, its final resting place, and the extent to which Malaysia misled its allies, are revealed.
Update
The Royal Malaysia Air Force has rejected the media reports that it tracked the 777 after it turned west in a statement posted on its Facebook page and reproduced in full below.
(This statement could be read as confirming the substance of the reports, that the RMAF did in fact follow MH370 as reported.)
OFFICIAL STATEMENT BY CHIEF OF ROYAL MALAYSIAN AIR FORCE ON
BERITA HARIAN NEWS ARTICLE DATED 11th MARCH 2014 ON SEARCH AND RESCUE OPERATIONS IN THE STRAITS OF MALACCA
1. I refer to the Berita Harian news article dated 11th March 2014 on Search and Rescue Operations in the Straits of Malacca which (in Bahasa Malaysia) referred to me as making the following statements:
The RMAF Chief confirmed that RMAF Butterworth airbase detected the location signal of the airliner as indicating that it turned back from its original heading to the direction of Kota Bahru, Kelantan, and was believed to have pass through the airspace of the East Coast of and Northern Peninsular Malaysia.
The last time the plane was detected by the air control tower was in the vicinity of Pulau Perak in the Straits of Malacca at 2.40 in the morning before the signal disappeared without any trace, he said.
2. I wish to state that I did not make any such statements as above, what occurred was that the Berita Harian journalist asked me if such an incident occurred as detailed in their story, however I did not give any answer to the question, instead what I said to the journalist was “Please refer to the statement which I have already made on 9 March 2014, during the press conference with the Chief of Defence Force at the Sama-Sama Hotel, Kuala Lumpur International Airport”.
3. What I stated during that press conference was,
The RMAF has not ruled out the possibility of an air turn back on a reciprocal heading before the aircraft vanished from the radar and this resulted in the Search and Rescue Operations being widen to the vicinity of the waters of Pulau Pinang.
4. I request this misreporting be amended and corrected to prevent further misinterpretations of what is clearly an inaccurate and incorrect report.
5. Currently the RMAF is examining and analyzing all possibilities as regards to the airliner’s flight paths subsequent to its disappearance. However for the time being, it would not be appropriate for the RMAF to issue any official conclusions as to the aircraft’s flight path until a high amount of certainty and verification is achieved. However all ongoing search operations are at the moment being conducted to cover all possible areas where the aircraft could have gone down in order to ensure no possibility is overlooked.
6. In addition, I would like to state to the media that all information and developments will be released via official statements and press conferences as soon as possible and when appropriate. Our current efforts are focused upon on finding the aircraft as soon as possible.
Thank You
GENERAL TAN SRI DATO’SRI RODZALI BIN DAUD RMAF
Chief of Royal Malaysian Air Force
Released On:
11 March 14
Kuala Lumpur
Second Update 4.30 pm EADT
Vietnam has scaled back its sea searching and has mentioned that it has not had a response from Malaysia as to the new western Malaysia focus. (Further update Vietnam has now restored its full support for the search.)
Malaysia has extended the search area deeper into the Andaman Sea, which is a very deep sea. This extends an earlier designation of part of the nearer Andaman Sea as a search zone. This is despite the extraordinary statement from the Malaysia air force that it didn’t see on its defence radar MH370 moving across the Malaysia Peninsula to the western zone in the Malacca Straits. If it didn’t see the 777 do that, how does it think it got there?
In latest reports the RMAF isn’t repeating its denials that the flight was observed. Instead, it isn’t saying anything in repsonse to queries, maintaining that all comments must come through the official channels which for the media, are in a state of confusion and disrepute.
China has again told Malaysia to get its act together, and has pledged further search support for land areas, which do not appear to have been specified.
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Where do the allies send the bill for wasted time, effort.
I really hope that no one has been waiting and subsequently perished. Would have to amount to a murder charge if that was the case.
A big day ahead indeed for the Malaysian Govt and national airline, with no doubt a number of regional Governments and Allies now asking WTF?? At the cost of millions, the pain and suffering of so many families, these turkey’s will have lost more ‘face’ in the eyes of the world than a frank and honest admission up front would or could have caused. The Asian cultures have much to answer for when a country and a handful of politician’s interests are seen as above that of 240 passengers and those left behind,
Thanks again Ben for your approach to this amazing story (A.net, Avherald and PPRUNE are just off the scale with tripe and bone headed commentary). One if the best forums around and I look forward to the coming days and weeks
TD
How about the possibility that the aircraft was approaching the mainland in an ‘electronically dark’ configuration
& it has been shot down by the Malaysian military.?
Rather like the Iranian airbus the US shot down, it was a serious ‘own goal’ for the US & they took a little while to admit to it.?
Yeah shot down could be correct. Why would a pilot travel so far just to down it?
Anyone familiar with Malaysian politics will be aware that the behaviour of its government has little to do with “Asian culture” and everything to do with cronyism and corruption.
PS, does no one care about the distinction between “misled” and “mislead” anymore?
pritu,
I care a great deal about language usage. When I did my univeristy studies in English Literature and linguistics the discipline was in such a state of turmoil over the Leavisites versus the rest that separate lectures, were held for the feuding factions, with each setting their own papers. I attended both sets of lectures and passed both sets of papers.
As I result, I decided then to treat English as a living language which would continually evolve (and borrow) and that whatever became generally accepted as correct should be considered correct. Thus someone could be misled, by a person or thought set up to mislead them, both words being pronounced with different emphasis representing the action and the tense.
We argued furiously at under graduate level about this. I am both enriched and scarred to this day. Scarred, not scared.
Well, I imagine that many SAR organisations are equally disgusted and bewildered this morning.
Clinging to the notion that the flight path still might have a non-sinister cause,
and trying to reconcile the unconfirmed report of a transmission allegedly received by the USAF at Utapao.
The report transmission was of a cabin disintegrating. Which evokes memories of Aloha Airlines whose 737 suffered a lap joint failure and shed the upper fuselage. Which brings in the recent 777 AD requiring 777 lap joint inspection and repair. Still with me?
The fuselage skin is a common element in VHF #1 radio, ATC transponders and GPS receivers as all of the antennae (antennas?) are located there.
(You can search for 777 antenna array for illustrations)
I promised myself that I would not advance any wacko ideas, and I almost don’t care anymore given the Malaysian SAR coordination efforts. “Marco Polo” anyone?
I should learn to proof read before I press ‘submit’
Malaysia is a dictatorship.
It’s officially a democracy, but it trumps up charges about its opposition leaders being gay, and then uses draconian anti-gay laws to send them to prison. People were talking about boycotting Putin’s Russia because of its anti-gay stance. What about Malaysia?
The international media is still generally going soft on Malaysia over the missing 777. I wonder when they’ll come down hard and be scathing of the Malaysian regime.
The main problem that arises from the Utapao message is that if is true it should have caused the US to ‘modify’ its reponse to the search, rather urgently by way of direct advice to Malaysia authorities, and I can think of channels that would have made this a major story within hours on the Saturday morning before the general media stories broke.
That said, we have to keep it in mind in my opinion.
They’ve talked a lot about the passengers, has there been any mention of what may have been the cargo. I’ve carried freight on passenger aircraft that far outweighs the value of the airframe.
An important question. Not being there I have asked someone who is there to ask for disclosure of the hazardous or dangerous cargos that may have been listed, and which would be perfectly legal if various rules are followed. No answer yet.
Like John, I too have carried sometimes up to five tonnes of gold, which often as not lends itself to an interesting discussion of how we offload the pax and get away with the loot. The correct answer is that you don’t.
Back in the TAA days there was an inflight attempt to transfer the valuables from one container to another on an A300. Perpetrators were baggage handlers stowed away in the hold.
Recent events do make the comments of the Chinese government seem prescient. Maybe too much so to be accidental (although I’m not suggesting a conspiracy beyond “it wasn’t on our military’s long-range radar, so get real”).
A bunch of crooks … but we knew that, as per comet’s comment.
However, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
The test is “adequately explained”. Are they stupid enough to have taken several days to figure out how to recover digital military radar recordings, interpret those, and report through the chain of command? Possible.
BTW, are they “clever” enough to actually shoot something down, on short notice, and without prior alert. Unlikely.
Also, ABC radio’s 10am bulletin made no mention of the crash after days of mentioning the slightest news. They’re obviously re-evaluating their coverage.
If the latest reports, such as yours, are correct then who would by a passenger on Malaysian Airlines? For that matter, who would fly to Malaysia in any airline?
“Like John, I too have carried sometimes up to five tonnes of gold, which often as not lends itself to an interesting discussion of how we offload the pax and get away with the loot.”
Maybe you could turn off the transponders, turn the plane around and bring it back at low level….
Yeah but then you just end up back in Kalgoorlie! Where five tonnes of gold won’t last long.
Seriously, it was just mentioned as an aside. No mention has been made of gold transiting through KL. China is a huge importer of gold, especially in the last few years. Is KL a node in the world’s precious metals markets?
Oh, and if there was anything precious on board the authorities would certainly keep THAT quiet. Every man-jack salvage operator would be angling for a couple of days on a crash site before making anything public.
“The defence forces knew with precision…?” That is conjecture at best. How can one be so sure? Could it be that they were still checking radar records over the weekend to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak? I cannot think of any good reason why the authorities would have any malicious intent as to “mislead” the search operation. What were they supposed to do, call off all oeprations in the East and move them to the West since someone thought they knew with “precision” that the plane was flying in a general westerly direction?
Now we know why the Australian Orions which may have arrived a day later than the rest were tasked to search the Straits of Malacca and people thought it was odd but it turned out to be on he money. I wonder what they knew
Malaysia’s air force chief has just denied it tracked the flight to the Malacca Strait. ABC 24 at 12.29 pm. What cluster*&^% this is.
If there were some funny business within the military, it is quite possible that the top ranks, who report to the government, might not have been informed by those personnel who had the knowledge. Organisations, societies and systems that avoid transparency are prone to such information blockages.
Patrick, I understand the NZ P3 was also sent to the Malacca Strait.Interesting indeed.
More interesting now is that they deny radar tracked it to Malacca at all!
The denial was just an obvious backtrack.
They don’t want you to know. It is now obvious that they don’t want the plane to be found.
Apart from the resources of other nations involved in the search, we’re talking about the lives of more than 200 people. Families. Children. And the Malaysian government does not want them found because it is more worried about loss of face.
I did read one rumour of US$50 million of gold being on board.
When the Malaysian Defence radar lost the tracking (assuming they did have a track of it heading west), was that island the limit of their radar penetration? Or was it a defined crash point? The fact that the plane rose from 1000 feet back up to 29000 feet could have been to preserve fuel for a longer journey, maybe?
$50 million. That’s only a bit under a ton. I have often wondered when carrying valuable cargo (also up to 5 ton of gold $200+million worth) what lengths someone or group would go to to acquire it if they were aware it was on board.
discus: No, they denied that they answered the question about that, either in the affirmative or the negative.
Regardless of flight track, if you rule out the use of logic in someone intent on suicide, then the disappearance has all the classic indicators of that.
There are at least two actions that taken together are deliberate (3 including the aircraft maneuvering as it obviously did not go straight down)
Turning off the transponder and shutting down the Air Maint Data system would not be actions hi-jacker would do let alone the aircraft track (its out of area or there would be debris and found day 1)
It did not go down gently into Jungle or the ELTs would go. violently would be a huge fireball.
Near shore all sorts of debris.
So, its been stuffed in out in the Adaman sea where depths of 6000 feet are easy flight distance.
Go due West or S.W. and depths of 4500 feet are quickly reached.
And at this point even a debris find is 5 days of wind and current drift, its looking possible it will never be found (short of luck and subs or anti sub patrol picking up a pinger)
Amend the West or S.W. to EAST or S.E. out into the South China sea.
Someone else should use the edit.
Rule out the Malaysia military statement/retraction etc and the logic holds
Caf, upon reading the transcript you are correct. I was commenting on what was reported on abc news 24.
I do not trust them. It is a disgrace and so cruel.
Endeavour Paul…
Can you cite a source for the story that the altitude went from 1000′ to FL290? I must have missed that.
If its true then its indicative of intentions to fly on into the night somewhere.
Also. At no stage have I heard an official dispatch fuel quantity, just Pprune assumptions. If a pilot was planning a criminal diversion he could have ordered extra discretionary fuel to add to his range.
For obvious reasons I have never had advance advice that my flight was carrying valuables. Or any advance advice about anything, really.
There are too many rumors flying around, so let’s stick to the facts. I watched the news conference and it is true the Air Force Chief did not mention any radar tracking across to the Malacca Straits. Reuters quotes a military spokesman who said that radar tracked the plane to the Straits but never identified exactly who said this or when/where. It may very well be another useless rumor. It may very well be true but not according to the General. Or perhaps he wanted to make sure without any reasonable doubt that the object seen was MH370 itself, hence the widening search radius. I wouldn’t discount the South China Sea just yet
More likely a stuff-up than a conspiracy. The complexities of all these systems leaves plenty of room for error.
Ace Space Trucker,
Vietnam has just discounted the South China Sea. It has also told media how displeased it is with a lack of response from Malaysia as to its query which could be summarised as WTF is going on?
Further update. Vietnam has now restored its full support for the search effort, both at sea and over land.
so what does than mean Ben? Vietnam have been fully briefed and understand why they need to continue searching ? Appearances? Or real searching? The Thais were also reported as scaling back their search. The whole thing is bizarre and I am a Malaysian Enrich Frequent flyer and flew on a B777 to Melb to KL last Thursday ..
I say everyone boycott Malaysia then? This is just so weirdoooo. If the plane kept going west south west they will never ever find it.
I’ve been in aviation for 30+ years and can’t remember a f#&*up that comes even close.
I can’t think of any past airline disaster where a government has tried to mislead the public, the media, and even rescue teams, as to the whereabouts of the plane.
It’s utterly immoral. Unconscionable. Depraved.
The next press conference is at 8pm tonight. 7pm qld time. Expect nothing new?
George Glass, I too have been in aviation well over 35 years and concur with you. Never seen anything like it.It is a disgrace.
I now take anything they say with a grain of salt because as sure as night follows day the statement will be retracted or denied the next day.
I cannot imagine what the relatives of those on board are going through.
There is also the issue of the mobile phones still ringing indicating they were within range of a tower and not cooked or drowned
The sequence of events doesn’t exactly fit the profile of pilot suicide.
Yes, communications went out.
But previous pilot-induced crashes have happened quickly, such as EgyptAir and SilkAir, where the aircraft was placed into a sudden nose dive into the ocean or terrain.
Why on earth would a pilot with nefarious intent fly back over densely populated cities in Malaysia, and then onward over the island of Pulau Perak? Is there any motive here?
If he wanted to avoid detection he would have gone the other way past the southern Philippines where detection ability is less sophisticated.
We don’t know what happened. But at least as far as motive goes, the movement of the aircraft fits more closely with the PPRUNE theory of decompression knocking out communications. In that case, turning back towards Malaysia would be the obvious thing to do.
Helios Airways Flight 522 comes to mind.
I would subscribe to Comet’s theory. That seems most likely. The pilot probably tried to find a landing zone in the dark without proper electronics (relying on steam gauges) but failed in the process. If this were true then Boeing/NTSB may have their work cut out for them to find possible reasons for this decompression.
I’ve been reading all the posts and the comments here in the last few days, mostly because although I’ve found ABC radio news sometimes useful (and some news sites – the Grauniad particularly), they either lack detail (radio news) or the analysis is lacking (or buried under layers of reports in the Graudain’s case). Without wanting to inflate egos, PT is the place I come to to try and make some sense of this tragic affair. A couple of posts back there were several cryptic comments about what the Malaysian govt. *wasn’t* saying and when I heard on AM this morning a much lengthier piece about the possibility MH370 had turned back it twigged what all the cryptic stuff was about. It struck me as strange that there had been mention of a possible radical alteration in course in initial reports, but later PCs had not mentioned this (or if they did it wasn’t given much attention). And then today it looks like there was indeed a big deviation off course.
Leaving aside the machinations of the Malaysian government and its officials, and the half-truths and smokescreens:
1) in its first leg (when still on-track for Beijing) it seems MH370 got to the edge of the radar and then disappeared off the map. Did someone on board know how exactly far away they had to be to successfully “disappear”?
2) If there is some sort of deliberate plan that involves “disappearing” the plane before ditching in deep water, why turn west at all, given there is plenty of open water in the South China Sea *and* given the much greater likelihood of being detected on radar when west flying over northern Malaysia? (I have NFI what radar fields extend into the Gulf or the S China Sea)
3) If the purpose is to be as invisible as possible while still in the air (transponder etc. off), and aside from the question of why fly over land at all, why descend to as low as 3000ft where someone will see you (even in the small hours on the west coast of Malaysia)?
4) I heard someone on the radio comment that they found it odd that Malaysian military planes weren’t scrambled – even at dawn – when one of their national carrier’s planes had apparently gone missing at sea. If true, I find that more than a bit peculiar too, especially given it now seems the military had picked it up on their radar.
There is one other thing I am wary of – it’s much too easy to become involved in and excited by speculation. I remind myself that hundreds of passengers and crew died last Saturday as a result of several acts made by someone they had no reason to suspect. If it turns out that Malaysian government officials are either implicated or have deliberately obfuscated to save face, then I hope they live with suffocating guilt and shame for a very long time.
Helios was a specific event caused by a flaw in the design of the B737 airconditioning control panel. It was possible to depart in a configuration that was pontentially lethal IF you ignored the (dual purpose) warning horn. The B777 is totally different.
Perhaps the aircraft was under the control of only one of the pilots, or another person, for part of the time after secondary radar contact was lost, and then passed for whatever reason to a second person for the final stage.
We may be seeing evidence of a struggle for control, or a passing of control, and perhaps in abnormal circumstances for one or both pilots to troubleshoot and correct in the time available. There are so many scenarios, none conclusively favoured by evidence.
I mentioned Helios as an example of passengers and crew becoming incapacitated.
The theory (made by others before me) is that part of the B777 aircraft skin may have come off (along the lines of Aloha Airlines Flight 243, but not as severe), causing slow decompression and knocking out antennas.
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