A crewman of a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) AP-3C Orion aircraft looks at a screen while searching for the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 over the southern Indian Ocean March 24, 2014. (Reuters/Richard Wainwright)
Malaysian airlines have announced beyond any reasonable doubt that flight MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board have survived.
The airline has informed the relatives of those on board the doomed flight that the plane is “lost” with no survivors.
The text msg Malaysia Airlines sent to inform Chinese #MH370
families about flight's fate ending in S Indian Ocean pic.twitter.com/Ys3azWL7WB
— Adrienne Mong (@adriennemong) March
24, 2014
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has made an announcement,
saying “It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that
according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern
Indian Ocean."
The Boeing 777-200 disappeared from civilian radar screens on the night of the March 8 after taking off from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board, en route for Beijing.
There were reports that military radar picked up an unidentified plane, after the stricken jet lost contact with air traffic controllers, which had made a sharp turn as well as descending to a much lower altitude before heading out into the Indian Ocean.
There have been no confirmed sightings of the plane or any debris that can be conclusively linked to it after an international search that has lasted two weeks. The search over the Indian Ocean entered its fifth day on Monday.
The UK Air Accidents Investigations Branch told the Malaysian authorities that the planes final location was above the southern Indian Ocean.
By this he meant satellite data automatically sent by the stricken plane, concluded that the flight ended in an air corridor over the southern Indian Ocean.
"Using a type of analysis never before used in an investigation
of this sort,they have been able to shed more light on MH370’s
flight path."
— Mohd Najib Tun Razak (@NajibRazak) March
24, 2014
"Based on their new analysis, Inmarsat & the AAIB concluded
that the last position of #MH370
was in the middle of the Indian Ocean."
— Mohd Najib Tun Razak (@NajibRazak) March
24, 2014
“We share this information out of a commitment to openness
and respect for the families, two principles guiding this
information.”
His somber announcement comes just a few hours after the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot said that an Australian navy plane searching the area had spotted debris floating in the sea and that a ship from the Australian navy, HMAS Success, was just a few hours away and would hopefully be able to identify the floating objects.
Many theories have been put forward by a range of experts on what could have happened to the missing plane. One of the most convincing was by a Canadian pilot, Christopher Goodfellow, who said there may have been an electrical fire on board, which would have disabled many of the plane systems, although not all of them.
The pilots would have dropped altitude quickly and changed course to try and land the crippled plane at the nearest available airport, but before they could do this they and everybody else on board would have been overcome by smoke inhalation, while the plane flew on auto pilot before running out of fuel over the Indian Ocean.
Also earlier today a Chinese plane sighted objects in the search area, but different to those seen by the Australian air crew.
Three areas were identified for operations on Monday, totaling 20,000 square nautical miles with 10 aircraft being used.
While Australia is currently the only country to have a ship in the area, a number of Chinese vessels will arrive on Tuesday together with a further three aircraft - two from Japan and one from the UAE.
While 6 Malaysian ships are in the north part of the southern corridor and HMS Echo, a British survey ship, is in the Maldives refueling and will sail to the southern corridor on Monday evening.
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