Mystery surrounds the
disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Here's a rundown of what is
known about the flight, its disappearance and the passengers who used stolen
passports.
1. Was there any sign of trouble?
No distress signals were received before the plane disappeared, and there were no reports of bad weather. Royal Malaysian Air Force chief Rodzali Daud says radar data shows the aircraft may have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing.
“We looked back at the recording and there is an indication, a possible indication, that the aircraft made a turn-back and we are trying to make sense of this," he said.
2. Are there any suspicious circumstances?
Two passengers on the plane were travelling on stolen passports, which added to the mystery surrounding the plane's disappearance. However, Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble says he does not believe the disappearance of the plane was a terrorist incident.
"The more information we get, the more we are inclined to conclude it is not a terrorist incident," he said.
3. Who was travelling on the stolen passports?
One of the men travelling on the stolen passports has been identified as Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad, an Iranian who Malaysian police say was trying to migrate to Germany. Authorities say he is not likely to have been a member of a terrorist group; they have spoken to his mother, who was expecting him in Frankfurt. They say both men travelling with stolen passports arrived in Malaysia on February 28.
The head of Interpol, Ronald Noble, said the other man was also Iranian; identified as 29-year-old Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza. The BBC has reported that the men using the false passports purchased tickets together and were due to fly on to Europe from Beijing, meaning they did not have to apply for a Chinese visa and undergo further checks. An employee at a travel agency in Pattaya, Thailand, told Reuters the two had purchased the tickets there.
4. Have any traces of the plane been found?
Malaysian investigators say they have not found anything that could be parts of the missing plane, despite earlier reports that debris had been found in the sea off Vietnam. They say Vietnamese authorities have not confirmed sighting any debris from the plane.
Two large oil slicks, which authorities suspected may have been caused by jet fuel, were detected off the coast of Vietnam but tests have shown the oil was a type used by ships. Dozens of military and civilian vessels have been criss-crossing waters beneath the aircraft's flight path, and Australia has committed two RAAF P-3C maritime surveillance aircraft to help with the search.
5. How can a modern plane just disappear?
Aviation lawyer and former Inspector General of the US Department of Transportation Mary Schiavo says it is very unusual that a Boeing 777 would just disappear without a hint of what went wrong.
"This is a great plane," she said. "The 777 is very much like the Airbus 340 in that the plane itself gives off information and they're called system status checks and the plane sends this information back to the airline's base all the time.
"It's kind of like the plane taking its own temperature. But here, at least according to reports so far, there was no information. And that's very odd because this is a very sophisticated plane and it has triple redundancies. It doesn't have just one radio or two, it doesn't have one set of wiring, it has lots of redundancies.
"So whatever made it impossible to transmit was a pretty significant event, because otherwise there would be transmissions and of course there was no - or at least according to what we've heard so far - no mayday call. And it doesn't have to be a radio call. There are transponder codes - they call it squawking transponder codes - and you can also put it through a computer system called an ACARS."
6. Has anything like this happened before?
The disappearance of the plane is a chilling echo of an Air France flight that crashed into the South Atlantic on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board. Searchers spotted debris from Air France Flight 447 within a day - but it took nearly two years to find the black box flight recorders and the remains of the fuselage. A 2009 story on ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent raised questions about why airlines still relied on black boxes on board planes to record flight data.
"It's highly desirable that data is streamed live from the aircraft to the maintenance base," aviation lawyer James Healy-Pratt told Foreign Correspondent in 2009, when AF447's flight recorders had not yet been recovered.
"It is absurd that air safety depends on black boxes, which sometimes cannot be recovered - or if they are recovered, then the data cannot be properly transcribed because the boxes are damaged beyond analysis. And that's happened in many aircraft crashes that we've been involved in."
7. What do we know about the plane and crew?
The missing plane is an 11-year-old Boeing 777-200ER, powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent engines. The Boeing 777 is the plane maker's most popular wide-body aircraft, and has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year, when Asiana Airlines flight 214 struck a seawall on landing in San Francisco, killing three people.
Malaysia Airlines says the pilot was captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a Malaysian aged 53. He has a total of 18,365 flying hours and joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981. First officer Fariq Ab Hamid, a Malaysian, is aged 27. He has a total of 2,763 flying hours and joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007.
8. Who was on board?
Passengers on flight MH370. China/Taiwan (153), Malaysia (38), Indonesia (7), Australia (6), India (5), France (4), USA (3), New Zealand (2), Ukraine (2), Canada (2), Russia (1), Netherlands (1), Italy (1 stolen passport), Austria (1 stolen passport).
There were 227 passengers and 12 crew on board flight MH370, according to the complete passenger list that Malaysia Airlines released. The BBC reports 19 artists and calligraphers who were "very famous in China" were among the passengers.
1. Was there any sign of trouble?
No distress signals were received before the plane disappeared, and there were no reports of bad weather. Royal Malaysian Air Force chief Rodzali Daud says radar data shows the aircraft may have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing.
“We looked back at the recording and there is an indication, a possible indication, that the aircraft made a turn-back and we are trying to make sense of this," he said.
2. Are there any suspicious circumstances?
Two passengers on the plane were travelling on stolen passports, which added to the mystery surrounding the plane's disappearance. However, Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble says he does not believe the disappearance of the plane was a terrorist incident.
"The more information we get, the more we are inclined to conclude it is not a terrorist incident," he said.
3. Who was travelling on the stolen passports?
One of the men travelling on the stolen passports has been identified as Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad, an Iranian who Malaysian police say was trying to migrate to Germany. Authorities say he is not likely to have been a member of a terrorist group; they have spoken to his mother, who was expecting him in Frankfurt. They say both men travelling with stolen passports arrived in Malaysia on February 28.
The head of Interpol, Ronald Noble, said the other man was also Iranian; identified as 29-year-old Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza. The BBC has reported that the men using the false passports purchased tickets together and were due to fly on to Europe from Beijing, meaning they did not have to apply for a Chinese visa and undergo further checks. An employee at a travel agency in Pattaya, Thailand, told Reuters the two had purchased the tickets there.
4. Have any traces of the plane been found?
Malaysian investigators say they have not found anything that could be parts of the missing plane, despite earlier reports that debris had been found in the sea off Vietnam. They say Vietnamese authorities have not confirmed sighting any debris from the plane.
Two large oil slicks, which authorities suspected may have been caused by jet fuel, were detected off the coast of Vietnam but tests have shown the oil was a type used by ships. Dozens of military and civilian vessels have been criss-crossing waters beneath the aircraft's flight path, and Australia has committed two RAAF P-3C maritime surveillance aircraft to help with the search.
5. How can a modern plane just disappear?
Aviation lawyer and former Inspector General of the US Department of Transportation Mary Schiavo says it is very unusual that a Boeing 777 would just disappear without a hint of what went wrong.
"This is a great plane," she said. "The 777 is very much like the Airbus 340 in that the plane itself gives off information and they're called system status checks and the plane sends this information back to the airline's base all the time.
"It's kind of like the plane taking its own temperature. But here, at least according to reports so far, there was no information. And that's very odd because this is a very sophisticated plane and it has triple redundancies. It doesn't have just one radio or two, it doesn't have one set of wiring, it has lots of redundancies.
"So whatever made it impossible to transmit was a pretty significant event, because otherwise there would be transmissions and of course there was no - or at least according to what we've heard so far - no mayday call. And it doesn't have to be a radio call. There are transponder codes - they call it squawking transponder codes - and you can also put it through a computer system called an ACARS."
6. Has anything like this happened before?
The disappearance of the plane is a chilling echo of an Air France flight that crashed into the South Atlantic on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board. Searchers spotted debris from Air France Flight 447 within a day - but it took nearly two years to find the black box flight recorders and the remains of the fuselage. A 2009 story on ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent raised questions about why airlines still relied on black boxes on board planes to record flight data.
"It's highly desirable that data is streamed live from the aircraft to the maintenance base," aviation lawyer James Healy-Pratt told Foreign Correspondent in 2009, when AF447's flight recorders had not yet been recovered.
"It is absurd that air safety depends on black boxes, which sometimes cannot be recovered - or if they are recovered, then the data cannot be properly transcribed because the boxes are damaged beyond analysis. And that's happened in many aircraft crashes that we've been involved in."
7. What do we know about the plane and crew?
The missing plane is an 11-year-old Boeing 777-200ER, powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent engines. The Boeing 777 is the plane maker's most popular wide-body aircraft, and has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year, when Asiana Airlines flight 214 struck a seawall on landing in San Francisco, killing three people.
Malaysia Airlines says the pilot was captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a Malaysian aged 53. He has a total of 18,365 flying hours and joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981. First officer Fariq Ab Hamid, a Malaysian, is aged 27. He has a total of 2,763 flying hours and joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007.
8. Who was on board?
Passengers on flight MH370. China/Taiwan (153), Malaysia (38), Indonesia (7), Australia (6), India (5), France (4), USA (3), New Zealand (2), Ukraine (2), Canada (2), Russia (1), Netherlands (1), Italy (1 stolen passport), Austria (1 stolen passport).
There were 227 passengers and 12 crew on board flight MH370, according to the complete passenger list that Malaysia Airlines released. The BBC reports 19 artists and calligraphers who were "very famous in China" were among the passengers.
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