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MH370 Day Five yields a new last possible radar fix | Plane Talking
MH370 Day Five yields a new last possible radar fix
BEN SANDILANDS | MAR 12, 2014 10:14PM | EMAIL | PRINT
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After running more than two and a half hours late the day five media briefing in Kuala Lumpur has come up with a new last possible radar trace for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
It was picked up by defence radar at 2.15 am on Saturday morning, 200 nautical miles or 360 kilometres NW of Penang as an unidentified aircraft at 29,500 feet according to the chief of the Royal Malaysia Air Force, Rodzali Daud.
This is almost precisely where Mr Rodzali earlier today denied saying to the Malaysia Media that this was where defence radar saw the missing airliner after it was tracked flying across the Malaysia peninsula to the northern approach to the main Strait of Malacca.
In other words, in this very chaotic media conference, the air force chief confirmed what he denied he said yesterday, although he did not go into as much detail as was reported in the national media.
This time he said “I am not saying it was MH370.” And he also gave the radar trace a new time, 2.15 am local time, not 2.40 am, which was coincidentally or otherwise the time of last contact with the airliner originally given by Malaysia Airlines before it began a process of changing times and event descriptions on a regular and confusing basis.
It was made clear, through the clutter of the media conference, that this radar sighting inspired the original extension of the search area from the Gulf of Thailand to include the western side of the Malaysia peninsula, and today’s further extension much deeper into the Andaman Sea.
MH370 was a 777-200 service carrying 239 passenger and crew on a regular Kuala Lumpur to Beijing service. To recap, it left KL at 12.40 am, it disappeared as a commercial radar trace at 1.22 am close to the area where such radar visibility to the Malaysia air traffic control system drops off, and was never observed as entering Vietnam controlled air space on a path intended to cross that country to the South China Sea and continue past Hong Kong toward its destination.
There are reports of emergency frequency radio contact with MH370 up to 1.30 am, which haven’t been convincingly ruled out, and which was originally the revised time Malaysia Airlines said it had its last contact with the airliner in the same breath that it said it lost the radar trace at 1.22 am.
It is this constant stumbling over what should be precise and unambiguous markers for the progress of MH370 which have helped undermine the credibility of the airline, which seems to be rewriting the basic information every time it opens its mouth.
This Wednesday night’s delayed media conference was a hair tearer for the technical aviation media because for its brief duration the panel reversed the usual definition of primary and secondary radar, referring to the primary radar used by Malaysia defence as being secondary in purpose, and the secondary commercial radar as performing the primary role. Which is both right sounding but wrong.
The commercial radar uses transponders on airliners to identify them by flight number to air traffic controllers. The defence radars primarily records flying objects without using transponder generated identification for commercial flights.
The acting transport minister and minister of defence Hishammuddin Hussein said that apart from looking further into the Andaman Sea, the search would also maintain a dual focus on the South China Sea between Vietnam and Hong Kong.
The air force chief Rodzali Daud said the agencies from other countries were helping Malaysia reconcile the radar traces picked up by defence radar with those recorded by the commercial air traffic control radars as well as enable a better understanding as to what the military radar saw near Pulau Perak, as he didn’t say it did to the Malaysian media yesterday.
If it wasn’t an airliner looking like an airliner at 29,500 feet in Malaysia airspace that was seen by the defence radar, at a point where it should also have been easily discoverable by normal civilian ATC radar that in itself on a ‘normal’ day would be a puzzle that the authorities would presumably try to resolve without delay.
What is so frustrating in the lack of detail given by the Malaysian authorities is their failure to address such obvious questions. It would have known precisely what by way of scheduled airliners was flying over western Malaysia on Saturday morning. It doesn’t need military radar to answer that question.
These evasions or omissions in the briefing last night make it overwhelmingly likely that the original reports attributed to Rodzali Daud were correct, and that there is a cover up of important detail being attempted by the authorities, with less and less success with every day.
If they are in the Andaman or South China Seas, the traces of those who were on board MH370 are rapidly vanishing, and the dispersal of floating items of wreckage will make the location of the crash site and the black box flight data and voice recorders, which would have sunk, that much more difficult to find.