MH 370: Missing Malaysian Airliner

[Lauren Johnson]

March 12

I'm spending a little time looking into the early reporting on the missing Flight 370. Here are a few things I have found.

• Though people like Peter King are going on CNN claiming the Malaysian military didn't share their "turn around" information with the press and the search teams, in reality, they did right from the start. It should be noted Rep. King said very early on it was terrorism and/or an "electrical explosion" a.l.a. TWA Flight 800
  
• Several witnesses seem to support the "turn around" theory having seen the plane or A plane flying low, toward the West, off the east coast of Malaysia in the exact spot at the exact time the military says they tracked Flight 370.
  
• Vietnam offered an interesting set of reports during the early stages of this search. To them it was clear the plane actually went down off their southern coast. An American working on an oil rig in the area says he saw the plane burst into flames at high altitude and "believes he saw it come down"
  
• The Malaysian military official credited with making the "turn around theory" statement has backed off that claim saying it wasn't him who made it. So now the report is only backed by "unnamed Malaysian military sources". But was he the military man who actually made that claim in the first place?
  

It occurs to me that the entire "turn back" story could be misdirection.

If the Malaysian military accidentally shot down Flight 370, they may be deliberately misdirecting the search because they don't want to find themselves in a situation like the FBI and the American government found themselves in after TWA Flight 800 was shot down back in 1996. The best way for them to avoid that is to never find the wreckage.
That would explain why the military official credited with making that claim of the turn back wants to put some distance between himself and that statement.

It would also explain why they spent so much time dismissing the claims of the Vietnamese search and rescue teams and the witness who says he saw Flight 370 "go down".

1. Report that Flight 370 turned around was NOT withheld from the press or the search teams.

"But on Sunday, Malaysia's defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, added a confusing twist, saying the plane might have gone down west of the Malaysian peninsula. "We are looking at the possibility of an aircraft air turnback," he said without elaborating whether the plane might have changed course for mechanical reasons or a hijacking, or why the authorities suspected the plane might have reversed course." March 8 New York Times

You will recall the latest intel explaining the search west of Malaysia has the plane going off the Malaysian Air Force radar at 2:40am local time.

Correction: March 8, 2014
An earlier version of this article misstated, using information from Malaysia Airlines, the time that the Boeing 777-200 disappeared from air traffic control systems in Subang, Malaysia. It was about 1:30 a.m., not 2:40 a.m. The article also misstated the nationality of Riduan Isamuddin, the main planner of the bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali in 2002. He is Indonesian, not Malaysian. March 8 New York Times

So the New York Times got it right and then "corrected" it. It disappeared from air traffic control at 1:30am because that is when the transponder was turned off. But the New York Times was apparently confusing that tracking process with the Malaysian Air Force radar which tracked it an additional hour and ten minutes.

The important thing to remember here is the fact that it was not the Malaysian military leadership that withheld information regarding Flight 370 turning back, but it was in fact the lazy U.S. media who simply missed it. Just for reference, the New York Times article is dated March 8th, the same day Flight 370 disappeared.

Very early on the images of the search areas included the strait west of Malaysia. The only reason for that is if the Malaysian military shared it's info with the search teams and told them where they last saw the blip they thought was Flight 370.

Here is an even earlier graphic showing where the search teams were looking. It's dated Mar. 9th, one day after the plane went missing.

I think it's pretty clear that the Malaysian military didn't withhold their information either from search teams nor the press.

2. Witnesses?

There were a number of witnesses who came forward at the beginning of this story who claimed they think they saw Flight 370. Two that I know of so far claim they saw what appeared to be a commercial airliner flying low off the east coast of Malaysia with their headlights on, heading West.
One of those witnesses, Alif Fathi Abdul Hadi, says he saw it at around 1:45am which fits perfectly with the Malaysian Air Force report which claimed the plane changed course, headed west and ended up in the strait around 2:40am. The location of that witness and where he says he saw the plane fits perfectly with the M.A.F.'s extended flight path.
It would make sense that the pilots of Flight 370 would turn on their headlights usually reserved for landing if their transponder wasn't working. They would want other pilots to be able to see them in the early morning hours.
"The businessman said he had seen a bright white light, similar to those used by planes during night flights, moving towards the sea at about 01:45am local time on the day the Beijing-bound Boeing 777 vanished." Mar. 10, International Business Times
This is where he claims to have seen the flight.

And here is a graphic of the Malaysian Air Force track of Flight 370.

I don't think I would call that a coincidence.

The witness claims to have seen the plane descending toward the ocean and thought it might have gone down there but didn't see it hit. Could very easily have been the pilot dropping altitude to compensate for cabin pressure.

Another witness, a fisherman, says he saw a bright light flashing through the sky north of him flying low and heading west just some time before the time the first witness reported seeing the same thing. He was very specific about the plane's headlights being turned on.

There was an early report from Vietnam that stated the plane definitely went down off their southern coast. This report seemed to be backed up by another witness who claimed with a lot of detail that he saw the plane go down in that same area. He is an oil worker stationed on a rig in the area.

Another pilot flying a plane that was on a similar route recalled making contact with Flight 370 just after 1:30am when it supposedly entered Vietnam airspace. He was asked by air traffic control to contact Flight 370 in order to verify their position. The pilot was quite clear on the fact that he knows he spoke to the co-pilot. His report on the conversation is very telling.

A BOEING 777 pilot, who was flying 30 minutes ahead of the missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft, said he established contact with MH370 minutes after he was asked to do so by Vietnamese air traffic control.

The captain, who asked to not be named, said his plane, which was bound for Narita, Japan, was far into Vietnamese airspace when he was asked to relay, using his plane's emergency frequency, to MH370 for the latter to establish its position, as the authorities could not contact the aircraft.

"We managed to establish contact with MH370 just after 1.30am and asked them if they have transferred into Vietnamese airspace.

"The voice on the other side could have been either Captain Zaharie (Ahmad Shah, 53,) or Fariq (Abdul Hamid, 27), but I was sure it was the co-pilot.
"There were a lot of interference… static… but I heard mumbling from the other end.
"That was the last time we heard from them, as we lost the connection," he told the New Sunday Times. New Straits Times

3. Vietnam reported Flight 370 crashed

Early in the investigation, Vietnam was quite sure that Flight 370 went down just south of their coast. A Navy official said the flight crashed and Vietnamese papers repeated the claim. Remember, not only was the oil rig witness Vietnamese, but all that talk early on about oil slicks and parts of debris found in the water, that all came from Vietnamese search and rescue efforts. In fact, a Vietnamese rescue team reportedly photographed a piece of the plane, a part of a door or interior window frame, and reported they saw part of Flight 370′s tail section.

Vietnam has scaled back their efforts claiming they were receiving conflicting and scant information from Malaysian officials.

Vietnam briefly scaled down search operations in waters off its southern coast, saying it was receiving scanty and confusing information from Malaysia over where the aircraft may have headed after it lost contact with air traffic control.

4. Malaysian Military Changes Story? Or Did They?

According to the latest reports, the military leader who claimed Flight 370 turned and headed back to Malaysia is now changing his tune. But, from my research, he wasn't the first to make the claim.

Malaysia's air force chief, Rodzali Daud, denied saying military radar had tracked MH370 flying over the Strait of Malacca off the country's west coast, about 500 km (310 miles) from the point ,roughly midway between the east coast town of Kota Bharu and Vietnam, where it was last seen by air traffic control. Chicago Tribune

His statement stands in direct conflict with earlier reports.

Local newspaper Berita Harian quoted Malaysian air force chief Gen. Rodzali Daud as saying radar at a military base had detected the airliner at 2:40 a.m. near Pulau Perak at the northern approach to the strait, a busy waterway that separates the western coast of Malaysia and Indonesia's Sumatra island.
"After that, the signal from the plane was lost," he was quoted as saying.
A high-ranking military official involved in the investigation confirmed the report and also said the plane was believed to be flying low. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. AP

For those of you who are actually reading the material I quote in this article, you might recall the first quote I used:

"But on Sunday, Malaysia's defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, added a confusing twist, saying the plane might have gone down west of the Malaysian peninsula. "We are looking at the possibility of an aircraft air turnback," he said without elaborating whether the plane might have changed course for mechanical reasons or a hijacking, or why the authorities suspected the plane might have reversed course." March 8 New York Times

There is no question that it was the defense minister who made the claim initially, not air force chief Daud. And he made it several days prior to the Berita Harian article.
Conclusion?

It's hard to say what all of this means. It could be that the military are attempting to derail the search for their own interests. It could also mean that the witnesses did in fact see Flight 370 heading west back over Malaysia under extreme duress.


Just thought I would post this info up before it's lost down the memory hole.