Table of contents

MH370 vanishes
Missing Malaysian jet: Each time we fly its an act of surrender Missing Malaysian jet: All the key facts you need to know Malaysian Airlines to retire MH370 flight code as mark of respect All right, good night: last words from missing Malaysian jet Twitter drama: Man on Malaysian jet turns out to have missed flight 04 06 08 09 10

Hijacked or crashed? The mystery remains

A pilot explains why the Malaysia Airlines flight is still missing New data shows missing plane was flown towards Andaman Islands What happened to Malaysia jet? Theories get more outlandish Stanford students theory on missing Malaysian airliner goes viral Missing Malaysia Airlines plane: Why was there no distress call? Malaysia Airlines says it has no reason to doubt crew of missing jet 12 14 16 18 19 20

How does a jet simply disappear?

Missing jet: Why losing a plane in the ocean is not that hard Missing Malaysian jet: Explaining the various signals an aircraft emits Not just Malaysian jet: Here are other flights that disappeared Why flying remains the safest form of travelling despite crashes 22 23 24 25

The India angle

Who were the Indians on board the missing Malaysia Airlines jet? Malaysia Airlines confirms 5 Indians were on missing flight Vaastu expert predicts missing jet would be found by Saturday Malaysia asks India for help to trace missing jet 28 29 31 32

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MH370 vanishes

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Missing Malaysian jet: Each time

we fly its an act of surrender

In a world where image is supreme, we expect tragedy to come fully illustrated collapsed buildings, mangled limbs, charred bogies of trains. Flight MH370 has none of that.
Sandip Roy, March 11, 2014

hat has been most astonishing about the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 are the images that have come out of that tragedy. Or rather the images that have not come out of it.

have seen on 24-hour television is the footage of anxious families huddled in Beijing airport, glued to cellphones. We have watched pokerfaced bureaucrats and airline officials addressing press conferences, and seen the deceptively calm waters of the South China Sea and stock footage of some other more fortunate Malaysia Airlines aircraft whizzing into the sky. We can accept that airplanes crash. It is much harder to accept that at a time when Google Earth wants to map every square foot of our planet, airplanes carrying 239 people can just vanish without a trace. At a time when we rebuke the media for its almost ghoulish overzealousness in covering a disaster, this is a disaster that has left the media scrambling for images to make it real. That leaves us with something far more terrifying we can only speculate about the disappearance of MH370, imagine the panic on board as everything slipped horribly out of control. This seems more terrifying even than 9/11 which horrifying as it was, happened in real time, in front of our shocked eyes, images that could be replayed over and over again. That had the solidity of fact at least. This only has the nightmare of imagination. My uncle was a pilot for Indian Airlines. It was all he ever wanted to be. As a child that seemed very glamorous to us, his nephews and nieces. He would fly in with cured meat from Andamans, black grapes from Hyderabad, once even a little hill-breed puppy from Kathmandu tucked into his pocket. But every time he flew and there was a thunderstorm or even monsoon
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In an age when mobile phones with cameras get to disaster zones even before television crews rush in, we have come to expect graphic images of tragedy to fill our TV screens long before the narrative behind the tragedy is fully pieced together. In a world where image is supreme, where television cameras fiercely jostle with each other for that prized shot, where ordinary people with mobile phones become citizen journalists, we expect tragedy, whether its manmade or natural, to come fully illustrated collapsed buildings, mangled limbs, charred bogies of trains, airplanes crashing into skyscrapers in front of our horrified eyes. Flight MH370 has none of that. Days after the tragedy we hear about a "yellow object" floating in the sea. Perhaps an oil slick. But all we

clouds my mother would scan the skies with growing anxiety. In those days there were no mobile phones, no internet. My mother would call his house anxiously a dozen times until he made it back home. He was lucky. Others were not. One of his cousins in the Air Force crashed into the hills of the North East. At least that was what was believed. Nothing was ever found. No wing tip. No mangled seats. His widow refused to give up hope. She lived and dressed as a married woman until she died decades later. Other family members thought of it as a little strange, even unnatural. But perhaps what is truly unnatural is the fact that we fly. We were not meant to fly. But we do, in defiance not of physics but of our nature. Every time we fly it is an act of utter surrender. Perhaps that is why few of us bother to pay attention to those safety drill demonstrations at the beginning of each flight or read that card in our seat pocket telling us about inflatable jackets and oxygen masks. Its not just that we expect our plane will not be the one to fall out of the sky. Its that if we truly thought about it, and how little we can do if it does happen, none of us would be able to fly. A jumbo jet parked on the tarmac looks massive, impregnably solid. But hurtling at 31,000 feet, despite serving up the illusion of normalcy on plastic food trays and piped movies and television shows, it remains utterly vulnerable, a bubble that is far away from real meaningful assistance if anything goes wrong. Thats what makes airplanes such a prime target for terror attacks whether its a hijacker commandeering it or a bomb in a luggage compartment. It is like taking over a self-contained mini-world that has unmoored itself from its natural element. If this flight did crash into the South China Sea, perhaps the images of its end will surface sooner or later as they did with Air Indias Kanishka on the Atlantic Ocean, the first bombing of a 747 jumbo jet. 132 of those bodies were recovered, some showing signs of lack of oxygen, some showing signs of "explosive decompression", many with little or no clothing. That disaster shook us because it was the first jumbo jet downed by sabotage, the horror of that realization compounded by the poignancy of its debris a drowned teddy bear bobbing forlornly in the

sea. Over the years we have become more stringent about checks to prevent those acts of sabotage. We have become used to taking off our shoes and carrying our toiletries in see-through plastic. This latest tragedy, whatever its cause, will probably not make us fly less. We are now too dependent on flying, our families scattered all over the globe. But it reminds us brutally that in a world where we think we are more in control of our lives and destinies than ever before, that control can disappear in an instant. And even if we are buckled to our seats and our tray tables latched as instructed, when that happens, we are as helpless as the mythological Icarus whose wings melted as he flew too close to the sun.

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key facts you need to know

Here is a timeline of events in the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner which vanished from radar screens on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early on Saturday
Reuters, March 12, 2014 ere is a timeline of events in the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner which vanished from radar screens on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early on Saturday:

Missing Malaysian jet: All the

while flying over sea between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City. - Flight tracking website flightaware.com shows plane flew northeast over Malaysia after takeoff and climbed to altitude of 35,000 feet. The flight vanished from website's tracking records a minute later while still climbing. - Malaysia search ships see no sign of wreckage in area where flights last made contact. Vietnam says giant oil slick and column of smoke seen in its waters. - Two men from Austria and Italy, listed among the passengers on a missing Malaysia Airlines flight, are not in fact on board. They say their passports were stolen.

Saturday, 8 March: - Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Flight departs at 1421 GMT Friday, and is due to land in Beijing at 2230 GMT the same day. On board the Boeing 777-200ER are 227 passengers and 12 crew. - Airline loses contact with plane between 1-2 hours after takeoff. No distress signal and weather is clear at the time. - Missing plane last has contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu. - Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam says plane failed to check in as scheduled at 1721 GMT

Sunday, 9 March: - Malaysia Airlines says fears worst and is working with US company that specialises in disaster recovery. - Radar indicates flight may have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing before disappearing. - Interpol says at least two passports recorded as lost or stolen in its database were used by passengers, and it is "examining additional suspect passports". - Investigators narrow focus of inquiries on possibility plane disintegrated in mid-flight, a source who is involved in the investigations in Malaysia tells Reuters.
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Monday, 10 March - The United States review of American spy satellite imagery shows no signs of mid-air explosion. - As dozens of ships and aircraft from seven countries scour the seas around Malaysia and south of Vietnam, questions mounted over whether a bomb or hijacking could have brought down the Boeing airliner. - Hijacking could not be ruled out, said the head of Malaysia's Civil Aviation Authority, Azharuddin Abdul Rahmanthe, adding the missing jet was an "unprecedented aviation mystery". - The disappearance of the Malaysian airliner could dent the national carrier's plan to return to profit by end-2014, equity analysts said. Shares in MAS hit a record low on Monday. Tuesday, 11 March - Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble names the two men who boarded jet with stolen passports as Iranians, aged 18 and 29, who had entered Malaysia using their real passports. "The more information we get, the more we are inclined to conclude it is not a terrorist incident," Noble said. - Malaysian police chief said the younger man appeared to be an illegal immigrant. His mother was waiting for him in Frankfurt and had been in contact with authorities, he said. - Malaysian police say they are investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure. - Malaysia's military believes missing jet turned and flew hundreds of kilometres to the west after it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country's east coast, a senior officer told Reuters. The jet made it into the Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping channels, along Malaysia's west coast, said the officer.

- A Colorado-based company has put "crowdsourcing" to work in search for a missing jet, enlisting Internet users to comb through satellite images of more than 1,200 square miles (3,200 square km) of open seas for any signs of wreckage. Wednesday, 12 March: - The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet expands to an area stretching from China to India, as authorities struggle to answer what had happened to the aircraft that vanished almost five days ago with 239 people on board.

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flight code as mark of respect

The airline says it will no longer be using MH370 and MH371, the same codes used by the Boeing 777 that vanished from radar screens on its way from Kuala Lumpur
Associated Press, March 13, 2014

Malaysian Airlines to retire MH370

alaysia Airlines says it has retired the missing jetliner's flight code as a sign of respect to the 239 passengers and crew on board.

The airline says it will no longer be using MH370 and MH371, the same codes used by the Boeing 777 that vanished from radar screens on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on Saturday. MH370 was used for Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route and MH371 for a return flight. Starting Friday, Malaysia Airlines says it will use flight codes MH318 and MH319 for the same route.

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All right, good night: last words

from missing Malaysian jet

These words were spoken in the last radio transmission from the cockpit of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, Malaysias ambassador to Beijing was quoted saying.
PTI, March 12, 2014

All right, good night", were the last words from the missing Malaysian plane with 239 people aboard before it disappeared from the radar screens.

"

answers to their questions. But after the two hour-long meeting ended with more questions than answers. The plane with 239 people on board, including five Indians and 153 Chinese, vanished over the South China Sea on Friday one hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur. The search for the missing plane entered the fifth day, as 34 planes, 40 ships and teams from ten countries are scouring the waters on the plane's flight path and beyond to find it. While such disappearance from radar screens could be a result of hijacking and the hijackers turning off signals, in such an event, the pilot should still have sent a secret mayday code, a Malaysian civil aviation official was quoted as saying.

These words were spoken in the last radio transmission from the cockpit of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, Malaysia's ambassador to Beijing was quoted by the Singapore-based Strait Times as saying during a meeting with Chinese relatives of those on board. Aviation officials said crew's last-heard words were in response to Malaysian air traffic controllers information that they were entering Vietnamese airspace and that air traffic controllers from Ho Chi Minh city were taking over. Anxious and angry over their loved one's unknown fate and lack of progress in locating the plane, family members on Tuesday requested a meeting with the Malaysian government to seek

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Twitter drama: Man on Malaysian jet turns out to have missed flight
Twitter user @KaidenDL missed his Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing flight, which then vanished and is presumed to have crashed with 239 people aboard.
Reuters, March 11, 2014 ours before Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was scheduled to depart on Saturday, a U.S. woman tweeted to her co-worker who was on a business trip that she was feeling ill and overworked. He agreed to pick up the slack and missed his Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing flight, which then vanished and is presumed to have crashed with 239 people aboard. The anguish and relief played out live on Twitter. Reuters could not independently confirm whether the man, who goes by the Twitter name @KaidenDL, was indeed booked on the flight. Cylithria Dubois, in an emailed response to Reuters, said Kaiden was her "love and business partner". "I am deeply chagrined by the attention that Kaiden and I drew upon ourselves with our tweets," Dubois wrote in the email. "At a time when the focus should be upon those aboard the ill-fated flight and their loved ones, I feel rather dumb speaking at all." Dubois, whose Twitter handle is @cylithria, sent out a series of anguished messages on Saturday about the missing plane and how she couldn't contact Kaiden. About 90 minutes later, he replied. "@Cylithria can't reach you by phone. We missed the flight. Rory and I are OKAY Ria. I'm NOT ON THE FLIGHT RIA. I'M OK." Kaiden did not respond to requests for comCopyright 2012 Firstpost

ment. In his Twitter postings, he said he was angry at his girlfriend because "she'd gotten sick and I had to cover her. I was working on that, missed my flight to China. Grew angrier. "But for the grace of God we'd be on that flight. Damn my ego. Instead of updating her, the office, I stewed," he wrote.

Hijacked or crashed? The mystery remains

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Airlines flight is still missing

A former pilot explains possible outcomes of the Malaysia Airlines flight still being untraced and why it is still missing.
Captain Cor Blokzijl, March 11, 2014 here are various reasons why an aircraft could disappear so completely: - Hijack - Cataclysmic event leading to aircraft falling out of the sky - Serious malfunction ending in crash

A pilot explains why the Malaysia

a) mechanical b) bomb explosion. As you know the air pressure inside an aircraft is much higher (about around an equivalent altitude of 2000 mtr) than outside (around 1112000 mtr) all depending on the temperature. Therefore a) & b) will cause a so called explosive decompression, which would have shattered the aircraft in either many big and small pieces, but most likely in thousands of small pieces. 3. Serious malfunction (or like AF 447 pilot induced error). This means that the crew could be so busy that they could have no time for an emergency call. Even that I doubt when we know how experienced the cockpit crew is. The emergency signal on their so called transponder (identifies aircraft on the ATC radar) is relatively early on the emergency checklist and one sees in training that pilots tend to do this instinctively. In such case the aircraft might hit the water in one piece (like AF 447). Unfortunately when the speed of the object is greater than 80 km/hr, water is harder than concrete, albeit the pieces of the aircraft will be bigger than in case 2. One should not forget that the first piece of debris of AF 447 was found on day 5 of the Search and Rescue (SAR) operation. I am not a pathologist but if my memory is correct, bodies or larger body parts do not come up before day 6-8 and let's not forget that those waters are infested with sharks. As far as the SAR operation is concerned, from an aircraft the sight on a person in the water (even with a life-vest) is max 0.5 NM (nautical miles) when the sea is relatively calm. As soon
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1. Hijack: I would consider this very unlikely because should they have gone anywhere towards the mainland, the air defense radar system will pick up the plane. These are real radar and not an air traffic control (ATC) radar which is a radar producing signals on a TV screen produced by the aircraft itself. Should they fly elsewhere or below the radar, it's hardly possible that a 200 x 209 feet aircraft goes unnoticed. Of course nothing is impossible nowadays, but it must have been a very sophisticated terrorist group. Wouldn't they have claimed to do so to achieve maximum publicity? 2. Falling out of the sky: This can have two reasons:

as the sea is a bit choppy the distance reduces, as does the radar picture of an object in the water. With the current and the wind, in short time objects might be out of the search area which is only based on the last know position. Do not forget that an aircraft at 35,000 ft in case 3 can still cover 60-100 NM depending if they have engine power or not. Many people ask, with the AF 447 crash in memory, why did Malaysian Airlines not receive the technical data from the aircraft. This could have two reasons. Having a continuous stream of technical data from an aircraft is expensive. Therefore often airlines program the computer which the data send in such a way that these are send when approaching the airport of destination (and these are fully downloaded after each landing) or in case of emergency. I do not know what MAS has chosen to do with the data. Also it is well known that there are several so called black spots on the earth where reception of signals is limited at the best, and the area between Malaysia and Vietnam is one of these. What is remarkable is the fact that the satellites from the world wide emergency system have not picked up any of the Emergency Locator Beacon systems of the aircraft, but again we don't know the force of decompression and/or impact.

Captain Cor Blokzijl, is a senior pilot with over 20,000 hours of flying. He started his career with 16 years in the Royal Netherlands Navy in various roles, including Search and Rescue, flight instruction, long-range maritime patrol and carrier-operations. He later worked for UNDP/ICAO and has served in several airlines world-wide including as the Vice-President Flight Operations in Air Deccan from 2006-till the take over by KingFisher.

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New data shows missing plane was

flown towards Andaman Islands

Two sources said an unidentified aircraft that investigators believe was Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints - indicating it was being flown by someone with aviation training.
Reuters, March 14, 2014

uala Lumpur: Military radar-tracking evidence suggests the Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown across the Malay peninsula towards the Andaman Islands, sources familiar with the investigation told Reuters on Friday.

said inquiries were focusing increasingly on the theory that someone who knew how to fly a plane deliberately diverted the flight, with 239 people on board, hundreds of miles off its intended course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. "What we can say is we are looking at sabotage, with hijack still on the cards," said that source, a senior Malaysian police official. All three sources declined to be identified because they were not authorised to speak to the media and due to the sensitivity of the investigation. Officials at Malaysia's Ministry of Transport, the official point of contact for information on the investigation, did not return calls seeking comment. Malaysian police have previously said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure. The comments by the three sources are the first clear indication that foul play is the main focus of official suspicions in the Boeing 777's disappearance. As a result of the new evidence, the sources said, multinational search efforts were being stepped up in the Andaman Sea and also the Indian Ocean. Last Sighting
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Two sources said an unidentified aircraft that investigators believe was Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints - indicating it was being flown by someone with aviation training - when it was last plotted on military radar off the country's northwest coast. The last plot on the military radar's tracking suggested the plane was flying toward India's Andaman Islands, a chain of isles between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, they said. Waypoints are geographic locations, worked out by calculating longitude and latitude, that help pilots navigate along established air corridors. A third source familiar with the investigation

In one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation, no trace of the plane nor any sign of wreckage has been found despite a search by the navies and military aircraft of more than a dozen countries. The last sighting of the aircraft on civilian radar screens came shortly before 1:30 am Malaysian time last Saturday, less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur, as the plane flew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand. That put the plane on Malaysia's east coast. Malaysia's air force chief said on Wednesday an aircraft that could have been the missing plane was plotted on military radar at 2:15 am, 200 miles (320 km) northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia's west coast. This position marks the limit of Malaysia's military radar in that part of the country, a fourth source familiar with the investigation said. When asked about the range of military radar at a news conference on Thursday, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said it was "a sensitive issue" that he was not going to reveal. "Even if it doesn't extend beyond that, we can get the cooperation of the neighbouring countries," he said. The fact that the aircraft - if it was MH370 had lost contact with air traffic control and was invisible to civilian radar suggested someone aboard had turned its communication systems off, the first two sources said. They also gave new details on the direction in which the unidentified aircraft was heading following aviation corridors identified on maps used by pilots as N571 and P628. These routes are taken by commercial planes flying from Southeast Asia to the Middle East or Europe and can be found in public documents issued by regional aviation authorities. In a far more detailed description of the military radar plotting than has been publicly revealed, the first two sources said the last confirmed position of MH370 was at 35,000 feet about 90

miles (144 km) off the east coast of Malaysia, heading towards Vietnam, near a navigational waypoint called "Igari". The time was 1:21 am. The military track suggests it then turned sharply westwards, heading towards a waypoint called "Vampi", northeast of Indonesia's Aceh province and a navigational point used for planes following route N571 to the Middle East. From there, the plot indicates the plane flew towards a waypoint called "Gival", south of the Thai island of Phuket, and was last plotted heading northwest towards another waypoint called "Igrex", on route P628 that would take it over the Andaman Islands and which carriers use to fly towards Europe. The time then was 2:15 am. That's the same time given by the air force chief on Wednesday, who gave no information on that plane's possible direction. The sources said Malaysia was requesting raw radar data from neighbours Thailand, Indonesia and India, which has a naval base in the Andaman Islands.

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Theories get more outlandish

With the search for the missing Boeing 777 entering its seventh day, the passengers families are left without closure while the intrigue and hypotheses continue to grow for the rest of us.
Scott Mayerowitz/AP, March 14, 2014

What happened to Malaysia jet?

The answers to most questions, it seems, can be found using Google or Twitter. So, maybe that's why the world is captivated by the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and why it has created a legion of armchair sleuths, spouting theories in some cases so strange they belong in science-fiction films.

here aren't supposed to be any mysteries in the Digital Age.

DiScala, who runs the travel advice site JohnnyJet.com. "People want an answer and the suspense is killing them." Normally, travelers turn to DiScala for the latest deals on flights. But this week, he says, a page on his website dedicated to the latest news about the flight has received most of the attention. The pros are just as perplexed. On TV and in online forums, aviation experts are more measured and analytical than the amateurs but in the end can't say with any certainty what happened. With no distress call, no sign of wreckage and very few answers, the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines plane is turning into one of the biggest aviation mysteries since Amelia Earhart vanished over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. "Anybody who travels is intrigued with this story. How can a plane disappear? We've got satellites beaming down on everybody ..." says Andrea Richard, a French-American in Paris who travels widely, including to Asia.

Casual conversations in supermarket aisles, barbershop chairs and office building cafeterias have centered on the mystery and how much we don't know. With the search for the missing Boeing 777 entering its seventh day, the passengers' families are left without closure while the intrigue and hypotheses continue to grow for the rest of us. "We're fascinated by it. We don't know what happened and we hope for a miracle," says John

Theories abound. Some are serious: there was a catastrophic failure in the airframe or engines or there might have been a pilot error. Other ideas are the kinds to be found in science fiction movies: a new Bermuda Triangle, an alien abduction or something out of the Twilight Zone. Terrorism isn't suspected but hasn't been ruled out either. But some people have come up with elaborate plots worthy of a James Bond villain where the plane is hijacked and lands on a
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remote island, undetected by radar. Others have sat in their homes or offices scouring new commercial satellite images of the ocean, looking for any debris from the plane. False leads and conflicting information have only added to the mystery, the speculation and the frustration. It's still unclear how far the plane may have flown after losing contact with civilian radar and in which direction. On Thursday, planes were sent to search an area off the southern tip of Vietnam where Chinese satellite images released by the Chinese government reportedly showed floating objects believed to be part of the plane. Nothing turned up. Even if the plane is found soon, the speculation likely won't fade. It can take months, if not years, after a plane crash to learn definitively what happened. That's an anomaly in an age of instant answers. If something isn't known, we just Google it. If we are lost, we use the GPS on our smartphones to find our location. And if our flight is delayed, even five minutes, the airline sends us a text message. In this situation to everybody's frustration we still don't have a conclusion. Popular TV shows like "Lost," or movies like "Alive" or "Castaway," where people survive a plane crash only to have the rest of the world give up on them, just feed the curiosity. (Note: It was a Boeing 777 that disappeared over the Pacific in "Lost.") "This feeds into everyone's fear of flying. It's one thing for people to have a fear of dying in a plane crash. It's another one to die in a plane crash and never be found," says Phil Derner, founder of the aviation enthusiast website NYC Aviation. Those within the aviation industry are enthralled with the mystery too, but from a much more methodical, scientific viewpoint. "There's a lot of head scratching going on," says Daniel O. Rose, a partner with the aviation

accident law firm Kreindler & Kreindler LLP, which is representing the survivors and victims' families of July's Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco. "It becomes like a murder mystery almost, these clues that you're getting and trying to piece it together in a way that makes technical and logical sense." Airlines and their employees don't like to talk about crashes. It's not in their nature. Instead, they defer to the crash investigators. Part of it is that they have nothing to gain by speaking and part of it is superstition. Jason Rabinowitz, a self-proclaimed aviation geek whose hobby includes snapping photographs of airplanes taking off and landing, said those within the industry are bringing up previous incidents and previous searches "rather than clinging to straws." Normally, aviation experts have their theories and stick to their guns. This time, he said, people are throwing out theories left and right only to have other experts shoot them down. "The aviation community is more puzzled than the general population because we know more of what would cause an accident and we still have no clue," Rabinowitz says. "I keep going to sleep every night and hoping that I wake up with some shred of good news but it isn't happening."

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Stanford students theory on missing

Malaysian airliner goes viral

Based on a FAA directive, he theorised that the missing MH370, a Boeing 777, might have experienced a breakdown in all satellite communications
IANS, March 13, 2014

n undergraduate from Stanford University, California has come up with a new theory on the missing Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines plane which has gone viral on the internet.

unconscious and pilots disoriented leading to their failure to put on the oxygen masks until it was too late. He also said that the Boeing 777 does not deploy oxygen masks until it reaches an altitude of 13,500 feet. As it was a late night flight, the passengers would already have been sleeping and therefore may not have realised the mounting oxygen deprivation. He added that the autopilot function would have ensured that the plane maintained its course and altitude before crashing into the East China Sea, Pacific Ocean or the Sea of Japan. All these are miles away from the South China sea where the search for the missing plane is being conducted. He concluded his theory by saying that "this was likely not an explosive decompression or inflight disintegration". Aude also wrote: "After discovering the United States' Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Airworthiness Directive on Professional Pilots Rumour Network (aviation website for airline pilots and aviation buffs PPRUNE) forums. In the same forum, I discovered how some of the 777s radar systems depend on satcom and GPS. I considered these facts alongside the mobile phones ringing and the mumbling pilots, and I had come up with the proposed explanation."

Andrew Aude, 20, a student of computer science, in his Tumblr post mentioned a 2013 US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) Airworthiness Directive for the Boeing 777, talked of a weakness in the plane, The Strait Times reported on Wednesday. Quoted on his post, the directive said that there had been a report of "cracking in the fuselage skin underneath the satellite communication (satcom) antenna adapter". Based on this directive, he told the Singaporean daily that he theorised that the missing MH370, a Boeing 777, might have experienced the same issue leading to a breakdown in all satellite communications. The aircraft may have experienced a slow decompression leaving passengers

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Missing Malaysia Airlines plane: Why was there no distress call?

In a CNN article, Bill Palmer, a pilot, sheds some light on the reasons why sometimes, a distress call cannot be made.
FP Staff, March 10, 2014 he world is watching as the search for the missing Malaysian airliner continues, which disappeared with more than 200 people on board.

Essential to investigation like this one is the recovery of the aircraft's flight data and cockpit voice recorders, says the article. Palmer says that flight data recorders keep tab of more than 1,000 aircraft parameters, while the cockpit voice recorder archives onboard inter-airplane communications and cockpit voices. So far, the airline carrying passengers from Malaysia to China is nowhere to be found. As newer facts emerge, the search for the location of the now-assumed debris continues in South China sea continues, with little hope that any one on board may have survived. Read the complete article here.

The search for the crash site has complicated matters further for investigators who are grappling with inconsistencies like the lack of a distress call. The discovery that two passengers were carrying fake passports has led to the belief that it may have been terror attack. However, in a CNN article, Bill Palmer, a pilot sheds some light on the reasons why sometimes, a distress call cannot be made: This lack of a call, however, is not particularly perplexing. An aviator's priorities are to maintain control of the airplane above all else. An emergency could easily consume 100% of a crew's efforts. To an airline pilot, the absence of radio calls to personnel on the ground that could do little to help the immediate situation is no surprise.

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reason to doubt crew of missing jet

The search for the jetliner expanded on Wednesday to cover an area stretching from China to the Andaman Sea.
Reuters, March 12, 2014 eijing: A senior Malaysia Airlines' executive said on Wednesday that the airline has "no reason to believe" that any actions by the crew caused the disappearance of a jetliner over the weekend.

Malaysia Airlines says it has no

Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director of Malaysia Airlines, told Reuters in an interview that "we have no reason to believe that there was anything, any actions, internally by the crew that caused the disappearance of this aircraft." The search for the jetliner expanded on Wednesday to cover an area stretching from China to the Andaman Sea, with authorities no closer to explaining what happened to the plane or the 239 people on board.

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How does a jet simply disappear?

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in the ocean is not that hard

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is hardly the first reminder of how big the seas are, and of how agonizing it can be to try to find something lost in them.
Associated Press, March 11, 2014 uala Lumpur: In an age when people assume that any bit of information is just a click away, the thought that a jetliner could simply disappear over the ocean for more than two days is staggering. But Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is hardly the first reminder of how big the seas are, and of how agonizing it can be to try to find something lost in them. It took two years to find the main wreckage of an Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009. Closer to the area between Malaysia and Vietnam where Saturday's flight vanished, it took a week for debris from an Indonesian jet to be spotted in 2007. Today, the mostly intact fuselage still sits on the bottom of the ocean. "The world is a big place," said Michael Smart, professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Queensland in Australia. "If it happens to come down in the middle of the ocean and it's not near a shipping lane or something, who knows how long it could take them to find?" Amid the confusion, officials involved in the search say the Malaysian jet may have made a U-turn, adding one more level of uncertainty to the effort to find it. They even suggest that the plane could be hundreds of kilometers from where it was last detected. Aviation experts say the plane will be found eventually. Since the start of the jet age in 1958, only a
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Missing jet: Why losing a plane

handful of jets have gone missing and not been found. "I'm absolutely confident that we will find this airplane," said Capt John M. Cox, who spent 25 years flying for US Airways and is now CEO of Safety Operating Systems. The modern pace of communications, where GPS features in our cars and smartphones tell us our location at any given moment, has set unreal expectations. "This is not the first time we have had to wait a few days to find the wreckage." Based on what he's heard, Cox believes it's increasingly clear that the plane somehow veered from its normal flight path. He said that after the plane disappeared from radar, it must have been "intact and flown for some period of time. Beyond that, it's all speculation." If it had exploded midair along its normal flight path, "we would have found it by now." Malaysian civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, whose agency is leading a multinational effort to find the Boeing 777, said more than 1,000 people and at least 34 planes and 40 ships were searching a radius of 100 nautical miles around the last known location of Flight MH370. No signal has been detected since early Saturday morning, when the plane was at its cruising altitude and showed no sign of trouble.

Missing Malaysian jet: Explaining

the various signals an aircraft emits
The missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 sent signals to a satellite for four hours after the aircraft went missing, an indication that it was still flying for hundreds of miles (kilometers) or more, according to a US official briefed on the search for the jet.
Associated Press, March 14, 2014 uala Lumpur: The missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 sent signals to a satellite for four hours after the aircraft went missing, an indication that it was still flying for hundreds of miles (kilometers) or more, according to a US official briefed on the search for the jet. This raises the possibility that the plane may have flown far from the current search areas.

The missing jet's transponder last communicated with Malaysian civilian radar about an hour after takeoff, when the plane was above the Gulf of Thailand between Malaysia and southern Vietnam. ACARS: ACARS or Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System is a data link system used to transmit short messages such as weather updates and status reports between aircraft and ground stations via radio or satellite. According to the US official, ACARS messages sent by the missing plane continued after its transponder went silent, although he wasn't certain for how long. OPERATING DATA SENT VIA SATELLITE: Boeing offers a satellite service that can receive data during a flight on how the aircraft is functioning and relay the information to the plane's home base. The idea is to provide information before the plane lands on whether maintenance work or repairs are needed. Even if an airline does not subscribe to the service, planes still periodically send automated signals or pings to the satellite seeking to establish contact. Malaysia Airlines did not subscribe to the satellite service. The US official said automated pings were received from the jetliner for four hours after it went missing, indicating it probably flew for hundreds of miles (kilometers) beyond its last confirmed sighting on radar.
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A look at three types of signals planes give off, and how they relate to the missing jetliner: TRANSPONDERS: Transponders are electronic devices that automatically identify commercial aircraft within air traffic control radar range and transmit information on the plane's identity, location and altitude to ground radar stations. Beyond radar range, they enable planes to be identified and tracked anywhere in the world by satellite. Transponders can be turned off by pilots.

Not just Malaysian jet: Here are other flights that disappeared
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is the latest example of a very rare event in aviation: a plane that vanishes.
Flight Safety Foundation, AP archives/Associated Press, March 14, 2014

alaysia Airlines Flight 370 is the latest example of a very rare event in aviation: a plane that vanishes.

With radar, radio traffic and other technology, planes that crash are usually found quickly. But sometimes searches can take days or weeks if the plane disappears over open ocean or remote and rugged land areas.

on Jan. 1, 2007. Parts of the tail and other debris were found several days later, but it would take nearly nine months for the flight-data and cockpit recorders to be recovered. The fuselage is still on the ocean floor. Merpati Nusantara Airlines: In 1995, a flight operated by the Indonesia-based airline disappeared over open water while flying between islands in the archipelago nation. The de Havilland Twin Otter 300 with 14 crew and passengers was never found. Faucett Airlines: In 1990, a Miami-bound Boeing 727 owned by the Peruvian airline crashed into the North Atlantic after running out of fuel. There were 18 airline employees and relatives on board. The wreckage was never recovered. Uruguay air force: In 1972, a Fairchild FH227 turboprop carrying a rugby team and others crashed in the Andes mountains. More than a dozen occupants died. After waiting to be rescued, some survivors hiked out and found help, and other survivors were airlifted to safety. Before being found, they resorted to cannibalism. The crash became the subject of books, documentaries and a feature film. Flying Tiger Line: In 1962, a Lockheed L1049H Super Constellation propeller plane chartered by the US military failed to arrive in the Philippines en route to Vietnam. It was carrying 107 passengers and crew. Dozens of planes and several ships searched the western Pacific for the wreckage, but it was never found.

Since the dawn of the jet age in 1958, here are some other notable disappearances (not all were jets): Air France Flight 447: After the 2009 crash of the Airbus A330 jet, debris was found within a few days but it took two years to find the main wreckage on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The jet had flown into a fierce storm over the Atlantic after leaving Rio de Janeiro for Paris. All 228 people on board died. Adam Air: A Boeing 737 operated by the Indonesian airline and carrying 102 people vanished

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form of travelling despite crashes

Whenever there is an air crash, questions are raised on how safe it is to fly. Given this, it is not surprising that the same seems to be happening at this point of time, with the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which was on its way fromKuala LumpurtoBeijing.
Vivek Kaul, March 11, 2014 he Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared on 8 March, 2014 with 227 passengers and 12 crew members, around 40 minutes after taking off. Whenever there is an air crash, questions are raised on how safe it is to fly. Given this, it is not surprising that the same seems to be happening at this point of time, with the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which was on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Why flying remains the safest

Many Americans took to driving long distances instead of flying. But was that the right thing to do? As Spyros Makridakis, Robin Hograth and Anil Gaba write in Dance with Chance Making Your Luck Work for You In 2001, there were 483 deaths among commercial airline passengers in the USA, about half of them on 9/11. Interestingly in 2002, there wasnt a single one. And in 2003 and 2004 there were only nineteen and eleven fatalities respectively. This means that during these three years, a total of thirty airline passengers in America were killed in accidents. In the same period, however, 128,525 people died in US car accidents. The authors point out that close to 1600 deaths could have been avoided if people had flown instead of deciding to drive. So, why did so many people take to driving in the aftermath of 9/11? The answer lies in what psychologists call the illusion of control. As the authors point out The simple explanation is that, behind the wheel of your own automobile, it is natural to feel in control. Try telling drivers that they have no influence over the skills of other road users, the weather, the condition of the road, mechanical problems, or any other common causes of accidents they will agree. But they still feel in control of their destiny when they drive. They can't help it. Put them on a plane, and they think their life is in the hands of the airline pilot or, worse, a bunch of terrorists. In fact, in the case of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, pilot suicide is also one of the theories being bandied around and that definitely adds to the illusion of control.
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It increases the fear for people who are already afraid of flying. It temporarily makes people who may not be phobic about flying uneasy about flying. And people who already really have difficulty flying it stops them from flying for a while, Martin Seif, a clinical psychologist, told nbcnews.com. Let's take the case of what happened in the United States in the aftermath of two aeroplanes colliding into the two towers of the World Trade Centre on 11 September, 2001.

The media plays a huge part in magnifying the illusion of control. Plane crashes are turned into video images of twisted wreckage and dead bodies, then beamed into every home on television screens, write the authors. The images of the crash lead people to conclude that flying is risky. In case of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 there have been no images of the wreck till now, but there has been constant news coverage all over the world. What people don't take into account is the fact that many aeroplanes make safe landing almost every minute. None of this makes for news, though. The thousands of airplanes which arrive safely at their destination every day hold no media interest. This isn't news. So even the most logical of us are led to believe that the chance of a passenger dying in an airplane accident is much, much higher than it really is, write the authors. Also, car crashes rarely get talked about. Car crashes, on the other hand, rarely make the headlines... Smaller-scale road accidents occur in large numbers with horrifying regularity, killing hundreds and thousands of people each year worldwide... We just dont hear about them. What psychologists call the availability heuristic is also at work here. Daniel Kahneman defines the availability heuristic in Thinking, Fast and Slow as We defined the availability heuristic as the process of judging frequency by the ease with which instances come to mind.

And given that more air crashes make it to the news than car accidents, it is easier to recall air crashes and deem air travel to be riskier. But driving remains much more risky than flying. As Kahneman puts it Even in countries that have been targets of intensive terror campaigns, such as Israel, the weekly number of casualties almost never came close to the number of traffic deaths. In fact, flying has become more safe over the years. Data suggests that fatal accidents on commercial airplanes happened once in every 140 million miles flown. Now the number stands at once for every 1.4 billion miles flown. Also, there have been improvements on other fronts as well. As Christian Wolmar points out in The Guardian While extremes of weather and bird strikes continue to pose a risk, modern planes are far more resilient than in the past. Hijacking, a cause of several accidents in the 1970s and 1980s and of course 9/11 has been made very difficult thanks to the security passengers have to go through to get on a plane. Given these reasons, air travel remains the safest form of travelling, notwithstanding the air crashes that happen now and then.

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The India angle

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Who were the Indians on board the missing Malaysia Airlines jet?
Details of the five Indians on board.
FP Staff, March 10, 2014

ive Indians and at least one person of Indian origin were on board the Malaysia Airlines flight that remains missing. Here is who they were:

PhD in astrophysics recently. It was Chetana's first time in a flight, according to reports. Vinod is a former employee of an automobile major in Mumbai. Kranti Shirsat, 44: A resident of Bhugaon near Pune, Kranti is a mother of two and was headed to North Korea where her husband Prahlad heads an NGO. An MSc graduate from Beed, Kranti is a former college teacher in Pune. The family lived in Tajikistan for a couple of years where Prahlad was posted, returning to Bhugaon when he was took up a posting in North Korea.

Muktesh Mukherjee: Aged 42, he is a Canadian resident and vice-president of the China operations of Xcoal Energy and Resources. He and his wife Xiaomo Bai, of Chinese descent, were on the missing flight. According to reports, Muktesh is the grandson of Mohan Kumaramangalam, a minister in Indira Gandhi's Cabinet, who incidentally died in an air crash in May 1973.

Chandrika Sharma: Aged 51, Chandrika is is a social activist was headed to Mongolia for a regional conference on food and agriculture organised by the FAO. An alumnus of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Chandrika is a Chennai resident. Vinod Kolekar, 63; Chetana Kolekar, 59 and Swanand Kolekar (23): This family of three belong to Mumbai and were travelling to Beijing to attend the convocation ceremony of their older son Samved (29) who completed his
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Indians were on missing flight

Malaysian Airlines has now confirmed that five Indian nationals were on board a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared from air traffic control screens over waters between Malaysia and Vietnam
Associated Press, March 8, 2014

Malaysia Airlines confirms 5

alaysian Airlines has now confirmed that five Indian nationals were on board a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared from air traffic control screens over waters between Malaysia and Vietnam early that morning, leaving the fates of the 239 people aboard in doubt.

Malaysian air traffic control at 18:40 GMT Friday, about two hours after it had taken off from Kuala Lumpur. The plane, which carried passengers mostly from China but also from other Asian countries, North America and Europe, had been expected to land in Beijing at 22:30 GMT Friday. Pham Hien, a Vietnamese search and rescue official, said the last signal detected from the plane was 120 nautical miles (140 miles; 225 kilometers) southwest of Vietnam's southernmost Ca Mau province, which is close to where the South China Sea meets the Gulf of Thailand. Lai Xuan Thanh, director of Vietnam's civil aviation authority, said air traffic officials in the country never made contact with the plane. The plane "lost all contact and radar signal one minute before it entered Vietnam's air traffic control," Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese army, said in a statement issued by the government. The South China Sea is a tense region with competing territorial claims that have led to several low-level conflicts, particularly between China and the Philippines. That antipathy briefly faded as nations of the region rushed to aid in the search, with China dispatching two maritime rescue ships and the Philippines deploying three air force planes and three navy patrol ships to help. "In times of emergencies like this, we have to show unity of efforts that transcends boundaries and issues," said Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda, commander of the Philippine military's Western
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The Malaysian Airlines plane was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members, the airline said. It said there were 153 passengers from China, 38 from Malaysia, seven each from Indonesia and Australia, five from India, four from the U.S. and others from Indonesia, France, New Zealand, Canada, Ukraine, Russia, Italy, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Austria. Search and rescue crews across Southeast Asia scrambled on Saturday in a bid to find the plane. CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said at a news conference that Flight MH370 lost contact with

Command. At Beijing's airport, authorities posted a notice asking relatives and friends of passengers to gather to a hotel about 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the airport to wait for further information, and provided a shuttle bus service. A woman wept aboard the shuttle bus while saying on a mobile phone, "They want us to go to the hotel. It cannot be good!" In Kuala Lumpur, family members gathered at the airport but were kept away from reporters. "Our team is currently calling the next-of-kin of passengers and crew. Focus of the airline is to work with the emergency responders and authorities and mobilize its full support," Yahya, the airline CEO, said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members." Fuad Sharuji, Malaysian Airlines' vice president of operations control, told CNN that the plane was flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet (10,670 meters) and that the pilots had reported no problem. Finding planes that disappear over the ocean can be very difficult. Airliner "black boxes" the flight data and cockpit voice recorders are equipped with "pingers" that emit ultrasonic signals that can be detected underwater. Under good conditions, the signals can be detected from several hundred miles away, said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. If the boxes are trapped inside the wreckage, the sound may not travel as far, he said. If the boxes are at the bottom of a deep in an underwater trench, that also hinders how far the sound can travel. The signals also weaken over time. Malaysia Airlines said the 53-year-old pilot of Flight MH370, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, has more than 18,000 flying hours and has been flying for the airline since 1981. The first officer, 27-yearold Fariq Hamid, has about 2,800 hours of experience and has flown for the airline since 2007. The tip of the wing of the same Malaysian Air-

lines Boeing 777-200 broke off Aug. 9, 2012, as it was taxiing at Pudong International Airport outside Shanghai. The wingtip collided with the tail of a China Eastern Airlines A340 plane. No one was injured. Malaysia Airlines' last fatal incident was in 1995, when one its planes crashed near the Malaysian city of Tawau, killing 34 people. The deadliest crash in its history occurred in 1977, when a domestic Malaysian flight crashed after being hijacked, killing 100. In August 2005, a Malaysian Airlines 777 flying from Perth, Australia, to Kuala Lumpur suddenly shot up 3,000 feet before the pilot disengaged the autopilot and landed safely. The plane's software had incorrectly measured speed and acceleration, and the software was quickly updated on planes around the world. Malaysia Airlines has 15 Boeing 777-200s in its fleet of about 100 planes. The state-owned carrier last month reported its fourth straight quarterly loss and warned of tougher times. The 777 had not had a fatal crash in its 19-year history until an Asiana Airlines plane crashed in San Francisco in July 2013. All 16 crew members survived, but three of the 291 passengers, all teenage girls from China, were killed.

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Vaastu expert predicts missing jet would be found by Saturday

According to Sowma, a seventh generation astrologer, the aircraft went missing on an inauspicious day Saturday - which was an Ashtami, the eighth day of the Hindu lunar calendar.
IANS, March 13, 2014 hile scores of vessels and aircraft are still scouring the seas of southeast Asia for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, a Vasthu Shastra expert has claimed the aircraft will be found on or before Saturday.

cess starting tomorrow (Thursday). Thursday is governed by the planet Jupiter, which gives out positive vibrations and is the best day in the week, he said. Sowma said in India people often refer to their astrology reading to pick an auspicious period based on their moon sign to determine their travel date, and not on their gut feelings. He was also of the view that that an indivi duals horoscope became inapplicable once he or she was not in touch with earth energy or off the ground. He called for global prayers in all faiths to enhance the chances of finding the aircraft.

Yuvaraj Sowma, a Chennai-based astrologer and Vasthu Shastra expert, told the Malaysian Star on Wednesday that he was making the prediction based on the current alignment of the planets, the sun and stars. According to Sowma, a seventh generation astrologer, the aircraft went missing on an inauspicious day - Saturday - which was an Ashtami, the eighth day of the Hindu lunar calendar. Based on scriptures, days are numbered according to the state of the moon and the eighth day after the new moon is regarded as unfavour able, the report quoted him as saying. All the energy and efforts put in by people in the search for the aircraft will see some sucCopyright 2012 Firstpost

Malaysia asks India for help to trace missing jet

Indian official says Malaysia has asked for Indias assistance in searching for a missing Malaysian jetliner, widening the search to an area near the Andaman Sea.
IANS, March 12, 2014

ew Delhi: Indian official says Malaysia has asked for India's assistance in searching for a missing Malaysian jetliner, widening the search to an area near the Andaman Sea.

Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said Wednesday that Malaysian authorities had contacted their Indian counterparts seeking help in searching areas near the Andaman Sea. The Malaysian Airline jet carrying 239 passengers was headed from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it went missing Saturday. Akbaruddin did not say what has been decided yet. "This is a new development. The two sides were working out what specifics they want, and what we can assist in," he said.

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