Gale-force winds, large
waves, heavy rain and low clouds forecast for the area "would make any
air and sea search activities hazardous and pose a risk to crew," the
Australian Maritime Safety Authority said. Boats and aircraft will
resume searching Wednesday if weather permits, officials said.
The unexpected delay in a
search that has grabbed global attention came just hours after
Malaysia's Prime Minister confirmed the worst fears of the families of
those aboard Flight 370, announcing that the missing plane went down
somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.
New analysis of satellite
data by a British satellite company and accident investigators led to
that conclusion, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday.
"They have told us all lives are lost," a missing passenger's relative briefed by the airline in Beijing said.
While the last-minute
announcement appeared to end hopes of finding survivors more than two
weeks after the flight vanished, it left many key questions unanswered,
including what went wrong aboard the Beijing-bound airliner and the
location of its wreckage in the deep, wild waters of the Indian Ocean.
Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Families told all lives are lost
Psychologist: Grief is shock, then anger
Experts: Flight ended west of Perth
Families overcome after hearing the news
For families, some of
whom had held out hope their relatives somehow were still alive, the
news appeared to be devastating. At a briefing for relatives in Beijing,
some were overcome and had to be taken from a hotel on stretchers. In
Kuala Lumpur, a woman walked out of a briefing for families in tears.
"My son, my
daughter-in-law and granddaughter were all on board. All three family
members are gone. I am desperate!" a woman said outside the Beijing
briefing.
Another woman came out of the briefing room screaming, expressing doubts about the Malaysian conclusion.
"Where is the proof?" she said. "You haven't confirmed the suspected objects to tell us no one survived."
Sarah Bajc, the partner of one of three Americans aboard the flight, Philip Wood, canceled all media interviews after the announcement.
"I need closure to be
certain, but cannot keep on with public efforts against all odds," she
wrote. "I still feel his presence, so perhaps it was his soul all
along."
A committee representing
some of the families of the 154 Chinese and Taiwanese passengers aboard
the missing aircraft sharply criticized the Malaysian government in a
statement, accusing authorities of deliberate search delays and
cover-ups, China's state-run CCTV reported.
"If our 154 relatives
aboard lost their lives due to such reasons, then Malaysia Airlines, the
Malaysian government and the Malaysian military are the real murderers
that killed them," the statement said, according to CCTV.
Malaysian police have
interviewed more than 50 people in their investigation into the missing
plane, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakal told
Malaysia's national news agency Bernama.
He said police are
focusing on four possibilities about what happened: a potential
hijacking, sabotage, psychological issues or personal problems of the
passengers and/or crew.
"Such cases may take up to a year," Khalid said, "so please don't jump to conclusions that the police are slow."
While investigators have
yet to find even a piece of the plane, the Prime Minister based his
announcement on what he described as unprecedented analysis of satellite
data by British satellite provider Inmarsat and the British Air
Accidents Investigation Branch. He didn't describe the nature of the
analysis.
He said the data, drawn
from satellite pings the ill-fated airliner continued to send throughout
its final flight, made it clear that the plane's last position was in
the middle of the southern Indian Ocean, "far from any possible landing
sites."
He begged reporters to respect the privacy of relatives.
"For them, the past few weeks have been heartbreaking," he said. "I know this news must be harder still."
The Prime Minister's
statement came after the airline sent a text message to relatives saying
it "deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt
that MH370 has been lost and that none of those onboard survived."
The airline said it was making plans to fly families to Australia once wreckage is found.
Are found objects part of MH370?
A look inside the search for MH370
Source: Flight 370 turned, dropped
Two objects located in ocean
Two objects in the Indian Ocean
The announcement came
the same day as Australian officials said they had spotted two objects
in the southern Indian Ocean that could be related to the flight, which
has been missing since March 8 with 239 people aboard.
One object is "a gray or
green circular object," and the other is "an orange rectangular
object," the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
Hishammuddin Hussein,
Malaysia's acting transportation minister, said Monday that Australian
authorities hoped to retrieve the objects by Tuesday morning. The
Australian naval ship HMAS Success was steaming toward the location at
last word Monday evening.
The objects are the
latest in a series of sightings, including "suspicious objects" reported
earlier Monday by a Chinese military plane that was searching in the
same area, authorities said.
A U.S. surveillance
plane sent to follow up was unable to find the objects, and so far, none
of the sightings has been definitively linked to Flight 370.
Ten aircraft -- from Australia, China, the United States and Japan -- searched the area Monday.
China said Monday after the Prime Minister's announcement that it would be sending more ships to help.
China has a particularly large stake: Its citizens made up about two-thirds of the passengers on the missing Boeing 777.
Satellites helped focused the search
Amid a vast regional
search that at one point spanned nearly 3 million square miles,
searchers homed in on the southern Indian Ocean in recent days after
satellite images spotted a variety of unknown objects in an area roughly
1,500 miles southwest of Perth, Australia.
Australia reported the first images in the area, followed by China and France.
The area also lies on a
projected flight path for the aircraft calculated in part from the
satellite pings sent by the plane after other communications systems had
shut down.
Australian officials
have repeatedly warned that the objects may not be from the missing
plane. They could be containers that have fallen off cargo ships, for
example.
On Saturday, searchers
found a wooden pallet as well as strapping belts, Australian authorities
said. Hishammuddin said Monday that wooden pallets were among the items
on Flight 370. But such pallets are also common in the ocean shipping
industry, so it they may be unrelated to the flight.
The investigation into
the passenger jet's disappearance has already produced a wealth of false
leads and speculative theories. Previously, when the hunt was focused
on the South China Sea near where the plane dropped off civilian radar, a
number of sightings of debris proved to be unrelated to the search.
Plane said to have flown low
Monday's dramatic
developments came after a weekend during which other nuggets of
information emerged about the movements of the errant jetliner on the
night it vanished.
Military radar tracking
shows that after making a sharp turn over the South China Sea, the plane
changed altitude as it headed toward the Strait of Malacca, an official
close to the investigation into the missing flight told CNN.
The plane flew as low as
12,000 feet at some point before it disappeared from radar, according
to the official. It had reportedly been flying at a cruising altitude of
35,000 feet when contact was lost with air traffic control.
The sharp turn seemed to
be intentional, the official said, because executing it would have
taken the Boeing 777 two minutes -- a period during which the pilot or
co-pilot could have sent an emergency signal if there had been a fire or
other emergency.
Authorities say the
plane didn't send any emergency signals, though some analysts say it's
still unclear whether the pilots tried but weren't able to communicate
because of a catastrophic failure of the aircraft's systems.
The official, who is not
authorized to speak to the media, told CNN that the area the plane flew
in after the turn is a heavily trafficked air corridor and that flying
at 12,000 feet would have kept the jet well out of the way of that
traffic.
Was plane's route reprogrammed?
Also over the weekend,
Malaysian authorities said the last transmission from the missing
aircraft's reporting system showed it heading to Beijing -- a revelation
that appears to undercut the theory that someone reprogrammed the
plane's flight path before the co-pilot signed off with air traffic
controllers for the last time.
That reduces, but doesn't rule out, suspicions about foul play in the cockpit.
Last week, CNN and other
news organizations, citing unnamed sources, reported that authorities
believed someone had reprogrammed the aircraft's flight computer before
the sign-off.
CNN cited sources who
believed the plane's flight computer must have been reprogrammed because
it flew directly over navigational way points. A plane controlled by a
human probably would not have been so precise, the sources said.
Malaysian authorities
never confirmed that account, saying last week that the plane's
"documented flight path" had not been altered.
On Sunday, they
clarified that statement further, saying the plane's automated data
reporting system included no route changes in its last burst, sent at
1:07 a.m. -- 12 minutes before the last voice communication with flight
controllers.
Analysts are divided
about what the latest information could mean. Some argue it's a sign
that mechanical failure sent the plane suddenly off course. Others say
there are still too many unknowns to eliminate any possibilities.
CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien called the fresh details about the flight a "game changer."
"Now we have no evidence
the crew did anything wrong," he said. "And in fact, now, we should be
operating with the primary assumption being that something bad happened
to that plane shortly after they said good night."
If a crisis onboard
caused the plane to lose pressure, he said, pilots could have chosen to
deliberately fly lower to save passengers.
"You want to get down to
10,000 feet, because that is when you don't have to worry about
pressurization. You have enough air in the atmosphere naturally to keep
everybody alive," he said. "So part of the procedure for a rapid
decompression ... it's called a high dive, and you go as quickly as you
can down that to that altitude."
Authorities have said
pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah was highly experienced. On Monday, Malaysian
authorities said Flight 370 was co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's sixth
flight in a Boeing 777, and the first time when he was not traveling
with an instructor pilot shadowing him.
"We do not see any problem with him," said Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.
Link to source: http://edition.cnn.com
No comments:
Post a Comment