Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost
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Anything to add? Anybody? Please feel free!
I'm sure most of us ("real" ppruners) recognized a long time ago: this topic is going around and around circles without anything valuable added for a long time now. Obviously, nobody takes the nuisance to read previous posts.
So: Anybody to come up with a timeline again... and again? More self made maps? More wild ideas? Conspiration theories repeated dozen times? Something again on "PINGS" ( oh, God I learned to hate this tiny world)? Something technical again on transponders? And you, search and rescue experts, want to repeat your opinion on awashed containers? Preconceptions on poor pilots experimenting with flight simulators at home (I know a couple of them, including myself) just for fun and because they love their jobs, addicted to aviation? I just hope we are not terrorists.. eeer.. I have to double check that...
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO POST THE SAME RUBISH AGAIN and AGAIN! We could barely wait to read the same thing again. Hey, PPRUNE hase a huge server, they can cope with it I'm sure.
PPRUNE (and us, "real experts") wasted 350 plus pages of this topic for nothing. Nothing new, nothing to learn, no knowledge to share, absolutely nothing.
Only one consolation: It seems that most of the professional ppruners left this topic for good reason...and I will do the same.
So: Anybody to come up with a timeline again... and again? More self made maps? More wild ideas? Conspiration theories repeated dozen times? Something again on "PINGS" ( oh, God I learned to hate this tiny world)? Something technical again on transponders? And you, search and rescue experts, want to repeat your opinion on awashed containers? Preconceptions on poor pilots experimenting with flight simulators at home (I know a couple of them, including myself) just for fun and because they love their jobs, addicted to aviation? I just hope we are not terrorists.. eeer.. I have to double check that...
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO POST THE SAME RUBISH AGAIN and AGAIN! We could barely wait to read the same thing again. Hey, PPRUNE hase a huge server, they can cope with it I'm sure.
PPRUNE (and us, "real experts") wasted 350 plus pages of this topic for nothing. Nothing new, nothing to learn, no knowledge to share, absolutely nothing.
Only one consolation: It seems that most of the professional ppruners left this topic for good reason...and I will do the same.
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Hoegh St. Petersburg should have been in the area for a while now and no news from them. Perhaps the only way to find MH370 is if the US Navy sends a sub into the area. They would have the technology to hear the pinger a long ways off.
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Timing "pings" and accuracy
My first post on this site 
– please be gentle! 
I am a telecoms engineer, nothing to do with aviation.
Pings – let’s see if we can sort this out.
The satellite is always transmitting. Think of it as a steady “tick” from above. The receiver, not the ACARS system, or any other similar higher function in the plane, just the receiver is always listening to the tick. IN fact the receivers on all the planes and boats are listening to the "tick". By clever encoding the “tick” carries information to say “this is the start of my sequence of messages” at defined intervals, and then it sends data intended for specific receivers in various time slots. Of course, all receivers "hear" all the messages, but they only actually “listen” to the ones intended for them. But the background “tick” keeps going all the time, so every receiver can synchronise itself all the time, keeping track of where the sequence of messages starts, just listening and waiting for a message from them. When a receiver recognises a message is for that particular receiver (i.e. plane), of course it “listens” to the message and acts accordingly, passing the message on to the appropriate unit where necessary. But one of these messages it watches for is a message saying “are you still there”. When it gets that message the receiver has to reply in the correct “slot” to say “still here”. So now the sat system on the plane has to transmit to reply. In this case the reply is effectively an automatic response from within the satellite receiver – nothing else needs to be involved.
But notice the response to the “are you still there” message has to be sent in the correct time slot. Remember the receiver is listening to the “ticks” from the satellite all the time – not just when there is data to exchange. All the time, so the plane has a “clock” ticking at the same rate as the satellite’s clock. But, the plane’s clock is running late all the time as it takes time for the “tick” sent out by the satellite to travel the 35,000 km to the receiver. The equipment on the plane then has to reply in the correct slot after it has received the “are you there” message and so it replies. Now, the satellite has a problem. Because it does not know how far the plane is away, it actually does not know when the reply to its message is going to arrive. It cannot do what the plane has done and keep a “copy” of the plane’s clock ticking away because, firstly, the plane is not transmitting its own “tick” for the satellite to follow, and in any case it would need to have a similar clock running for every plane and ship using the service. In any case it does not need to.
What it does is allow a window for the return message to arrive. It has a petty good idea since it knows the earth is 35,000 Km away as a minimum, less the altitude of a plane, of course. It knows that the “receiver” has to respond so many ticks after receipt of the request. It knows the receiver has a good clock tick signal – it is the very signal the satellite is transmitting. So it has a time window when a response can be expected. The reply will arrive at the early end of the window if the message is from a transmitter directly under the satellite, later from one at the edge of the coverage, earlier from a plane than from a ship etc.
Now, here is the bit I have not seen mentioned before. The “tick” is related to the frequency of the satellite’s radio band. It has little to do with the relatively slow rate at which data can be sent over the communications channel. The frequency of Inmarsat C is around 1600 MHz. That is 1,600,000,000 “ticks” a second. So the timing resolution the satellite can see is to an accuracy of 1/1600000000 of a second. Light is fast. But the amazing speed of electronics we now have is such that we can measure time with astonishing precision. Just think about those laser tape measures you can buy. You can measure a distance to a millimeter, and they work by timing pulses effectively, all in something you can buy for a few £/$/Eu. Think about a GPS set. An ordinary GPS set will give you a position with in a few metres, limited not by the ability of measure time, but by various vagaries in the transmission of the signals. A “pro” surveying GPS set does clever things to reduce the vagaries, and while it may take a few minutes to give a good “fix” they can give your position to typically 15mm accuracy. Given longer to analyse and process the signals, weeks in some cases, to an accuracy of considerably less than 1mm. Note, accuracy, not resolution. Absolute accuracy, and all without a fantastically expensive atomic clock at the “user end” though there are several in each orbiting GPS satellite.
So, back to our satellite. It was expecting a response at “tick” number XYZ and it actually arrives at “tick” number XYZ + whatever. It knows, because it is in the standard, that the receiver on the plane is obliged to reply exactly N ticks after receipt of the request, so by subtracting N from XYZ + whatever it knows how long the message has taken to transit to the receiver and back again in “ticks”. Halve that and you have how many ticks away the plane is. One “tick” is 1/1600000000 of a second. In a vacuum- and remember part of this journey is not in a vacuum – 3 x 10 to the eight metres. So, divide this by 1600000000 i.e. by 1.6 times 10 to the nine and you get about half a metre as the potential accuracy (the satellite will have a VERY accurate clock onboard) and resolution of ths measurement. In principle the satellite could determine how far away the responding receiver/transmitter was to a precision in the order of a metre. In practice there would be no point in measuring this accurately and in any case the presence of the atmosphere and variations in the precise timing in the receiver makes this rather “optimistic”. These are, after all, communications systems not navigation systems. The satellite does not need to know to this level anyway, it can work with signals arriving in the allocated window.
This is a very simplified explanation, not always desperately accurate, but basically shows how it works. For example the frequency used for the plane to reply is actually slightly lower, but it will be locked to the satellite’s transmission clock tick.
As a further explanation, think of a lighthouse flashing away constantly with a constant beat. It flashes white. You sit and watch holding a torch. You watch and watch and tap your foot to the beat of the white light. You are told that if the light flashes red you MUST flash your torch back three beats later. And you do exactly that, exactly three beats later. The man at the lighthouse is watching and from his point of view he sees a torch flash back not three beats later, but three and a bit beats later. The three beats if the time you have been allowed to wake up, get your finger on the flash button, the “and a bit” is the time it has taken the light to get from his lighthouse to you plus the time it has taken your torch light to get back. Clearly in this case you could not measure the distance in this way, but you can see the principle.
As has already been shown, the satellites are at a very precisely known height over the earth, so equal distances from the satellite are where concentric cones intersect with the earth – circles on the earth’s surface representing equal elevations of the satellite.
My suspicion is, and I say no more than a suspicion, that the satellite’s system can also measure the frequency of the reply accurately and so have some estimate of the relative velocity of the plane relative to the satellite, but the geometry will limit how much use this would be. Clearly the plane’s altitude when transmitting is relevant; you would not be able to differentiate between a low plane nearer the point the satellite sits over and a higher plane further away.
I also suspect that the satellite would keep a log noting that it had received a response the “are you there” messages at such and such times, but it would only keep the technical details of the latest transaction, as this would help in allocating its time slots efficiently. Remember, while memory to hold this sort of data is cheap, on a satellite power is the limiting factor all the time, and weight adds to the “delivery” cost of getting these things up there. So the commercial birds would not want to retain data that they did not need to hold for longer than necessary. The logs may be downloaded to the ground too, but even downloading takes power.
Hope that helps. I have been reading all the posts since this thread opened. There are some on here that simply waste effort – and show complete disrespect, but there are some incredibly insightful and helpful posts here conveying real information. Not all are “hard” facts, but many are fascinating, like the description of what it is really like in a search plane. Many thanks to the posters.
– please be gentle! I am a telecoms engineer, nothing to do with aviation.
Pings – let’s see if we can sort this out.
The satellite is always transmitting. Think of it as a steady “tick” from above. The receiver, not the ACARS system, or any other similar higher function in the plane, just the receiver is always listening to the tick. IN fact the receivers on all the planes and boats are listening to the "tick". By clever encoding the “tick” carries information to say “this is the start of my sequence of messages” at defined intervals, and then it sends data intended for specific receivers in various time slots. Of course, all receivers "hear" all the messages, but they only actually “listen” to the ones intended for them. But the background “tick” keeps going all the time, so every receiver can synchronise itself all the time, keeping track of where the sequence of messages starts, just listening and waiting for a message from them. When a receiver recognises a message is for that particular receiver (i.e. plane), of course it “listens” to the message and acts accordingly, passing the message on to the appropriate unit where necessary. But one of these messages it watches for is a message saying “are you still there”. When it gets that message the receiver has to reply in the correct “slot” to say “still here”. So now the sat system on the plane has to transmit to reply. In this case the reply is effectively an automatic response from within the satellite receiver – nothing else needs to be involved.
But notice the response to the “are you still there” message has to be sent in the correct time slot. Remember the receiver is listening to the “ticks” from the satellite all the time – not just when there is data to exchange. All the time, so the plane has a “clock” ticking at the same rate as the satellite’s clock. But, the plane’s clock is running late all the time as it takes time for the “tick” sent out by the satellite to travel the 35,000 km to the receiver. The equipment on the plane then has to reply in the correct slot after it has received the “are you there” message and so it replies. Now, the satellite has a problem. Because it does not know how far the plane is away, it actually does not know when the reply to its message is going to arrive. It cannot do what the plane has done and keep a “copy” of the plane’s clock ticking away because, firstly, the plane is not transmitting its own “tick” for the satellite to follow, and in any case it would need to have a similar clock running for every plane and ship using the service. In any case it does not need to.
What it does is allow a window for the return message to arrive. It has a petty good idea since it knows the earth is 35,000 Km away as a minimum, less the altitude of a plane, of course. It knows that the “receiver” has to respond so many ticks after receipt of the request. It knows the receiver has a good clock tick signal – it is the very signal the satellite is transmitting. So it has a time window when a response can be expected. The reply will arrive at the early end of the window if the message is from a transmitter directly under the satellite, later from one at the edge of the coverage, earlier from a plane than from a ship etc.
Now, here is the bit I have not seen mentioned before. The “tick” is related to the frequency of the satellite’s radio band. It has little to do with the relatively slow rate at which data can be sent over the communications channel. The frequency of Inmarsat C is around 1600 MHz. That is 1,600,000,000 “ticks” a second. So the timing resolution the satellite can see is to an accuracy of 1/1600000000 of a second. Light is fast. But the amazing speed of electronics we now have is such that we can measure time with astonishing precision. Just think about those laser tape measures you can buy. You can measure a distance to a millimeter, and they work by timing pulses effectively, all in something you can buy for a few £/$/Eu. Think about a GPS set. An ordinary GPS set will give you a position with in a few metres, limited not by the ability of measure time, but by various vagaries in the transmission of the signals. A “pro” surveying GPS set does clever things to reduce the vagaries, and while it may take a few minutes to give a good “fix” they can give your position to typically 15mm accuracy. Given longer to analyse and process the signals, weeks in some cases, to an accuracy of considerably less than 1mm. Note, accuracy, not resolution. Absolute accuracy, and all without a fantastically expensive atomic clock at the “user end” though there are several in each orbiting GPS satellite.
So, back to our satellite. It was expecting a response at “tick” number XYZ and it actually arrives at “tick” number XYZ + whatever. It knows, because it is in the standard, that the receiver on the plane is obliged to reply exactly N ticks after receipt of the request, so by subtracting N from XYZ + whatever it knows how long the message has taken to transit to the receiver and back again in “ticks”. Halve that and you have how many ticks away the plane is. One “tick” is 1/1600000000 of a second. In a vacuum- and remember part of this journey is not in a vacuum – 3 x 10 to the eight metres. So, divide this by 1600000000 i.e. by 1.6 times 10 to the nine and you get about half a metre as the potential accuracy (the satellite will have a VERY accurate clock onboard) and resolution of ths measurement. In principle the satellite could determine how far away the responding receiver/transmitter was to a precision in the order of a metre. In practice there would be no point in measuring this accurately and in any case the presence of the atmosphere and variations in the precise timing in the receiver makes this rather “optimistic”. These are, after all, communications systems not navigation systems. The satellite does not need to know to this level anyway, it can work with signals arriving in the allocated window.
This is a very simplified explanation, not always desperately accurate, but basically shows how it works. For example the frequency used for the plane to reply is actually slightly lower, but it will be locked to the satellite’s transmission clock tick.
As a further explanation, think of a lighthouse flashing away constantly with a constant beat. It flashes white. You sit and watch holding a torch. You watch and watch and tap your foot to the beat of the white light. You are told that if the light flashes red you MUST flash your torch back three beats later. And you do exactly that, exactly three beats later. The man at the lighthouse is watching and from his point of view he sees a torch flash back not three beats later, but three and a bit beats later. The three beats if the time you have been allowed to wake up, get your finger on the flash button, the “and a bit” is the time it has taken the light to get from his lighthouse to you plus the time it has taken your torch light to get back. Clearly in this case you could not measure the distance in this way, but you can see the principle.
As has already been shown, the satellites are at a very precisely known height over the earth, so equal distances from the satellite are where concentric cones intersect with the earth – circles on the earth’s surface representing equal elevations of the satellite.
My suspicion is, and I say no more than a suspicion, that the satellite’s system can also measure the frequency of the reply accurately and so have some estimate of the relative velocity of the plane relative to the satellite, but the geometry will limit how much use this would be. Clearly the plane’s altitude when transmitting is relevant; you would not be able to differentiate between a low plane nearer the point the satellite sits over and a higher plane further away.
I also suspect that the satellite would keep a log noting that it had received a response the “are you there” messages at such and such times, but it would only keep the technical details of the latest transaction, as this would help in allocating its time slots efficiently. Remember, while memory to hold this sort of data is cheap, on a satellite power is the limiting factor all the time, and weight adds to the “delivery” cost of getting these things up there. So the commercial birds would not want to retain data that they did not need to hold for longer than necessary. The logs may be downloaded to the ground too, but even downloading takes power.
Hope that helps. I have been reading all the posts since this thread opened. There are some on here that simply waste effort – and show complete disrespect, but there are some incredibly insightful and helpful posts here conveying real information. Not all are “hard” facts, but many are fascinating, like the description of what it is really like in a search plane. Many thanks to the posters.
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Sure they will: it is called a transponder, Mode 3/C.
"IFF" is a term used for transponder. Most mil transponders I worked with had modes I, II, III/C, and IV. The kit someone was painting your with would determine what part of the system responded to you.
Mode III/C interacted with standard air traffic control radar systems. A mil operator can refer to a standard civil transponder's response as an IFF (Mode III/C) reply to his interrogation. The advantage of this is that you only need one piece of kit to send out replies to interrogations via the antenna.
"IFF" is a term used for transponder. Most mil transponders I worked with had modes I, II, III/C, and IV. The kit someone was painting your with would determine what part of the system responded to you.
Mode III/C interacted with standard air traffic control radar systems. A mil operator can refer to a standard civil transponder's response as an IFF (Mode III/C) reply to his interrogation. The advantage of this is that you only need one piece of kit to send out replies to interrogations via the antenna.
IFF NO
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
If a aircraft spotted something they would drop a sonobuoy to mark on top and then direct the ship to the spot while remaining on top until either relieved by the ship or another aircraft.
And Balaton, some of us are trying to fill gaps or correct media comment while trying to avoid feeding parrots and trolls.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
Ozlander, the OP concerned how military radar could identify an aircraft without IFF. Lonewolf beat me to it so I deleted my post but
is contextually correct.
A mil operator can refer to a standard civil transponder's response as an IFF (Mode III/C) reply to his interrogation
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ukwomble: extremely unlikely for complex electronic systems to be damaged in such a way as to have such specific failures.
Last edited by Coagie; 21st Mar 2014 at 22:03. Reason: Changed some wording
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Lazier dog
10 minutes ago was listening to the owner of the ship who gave an update on what the ship was doing, weather etc. he also said the ship was taking instructions from AMSA and all communication was with or via them and they were following their instructions.
Mk 1 eyeball was being used with binos. Weather ok, sea fog was a problem yesterday.
10 minutes ago was listening to the owner of the ship who gave an update on what the ship was doing, weather etc. he also said the ship was taking instructions from AMSA and all communication was with or via them and they were following their instructions.
Mk 1 eyeball was being used with binos. Weather ok, sea fog was a problem yesterday.
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A backtracking exercise from the 40° arc positions supplied to AMSA using 470 kts ground speed, leads to a likely position outside PSR range west of Banda Aceh. The hourly positions have the appropriate SAT elevation circle drawn through them, though the actual elevation is not shown.
A previous post has been updated.
Note the comments about the projection used.
A previous post has been updated.
Note the comments about the projection used.
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Who wants to find it?
Insurer?
Airline?
Boeing?
Government?
Aircrew
Other operators
Relatives of missing
Public
Other governments
Airline?
Boeing?
Government?
Aircrew
Other operators
Relatives of missing
Public
Other governments
Last edited by autoflight; 23rd Mar 2014 at 02:10.
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Hoegh St. Petersburg should have been in the area for a while now and no news from them.
I only caught the end of it but the owners said something like " Do not expect any further information from us as all findings will be passed to the SAR team"
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Quick question
The pace of this thread has finally got ahead of me, I awake each morning with pages and pages of posts having racked up. Hidden amongst all the repeats, regurgitations, speculations and phishing media posts exist a very small group with some really insightful and knowledgable posts. Addressing this latter group, can I ask if any evidence has ever emerged to indicate MH 370's final 08:11hrs ping was emitted from a point on the southern arc rather than the northern arc?
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Lazerdog spake, "Perhaps the only way to find MH370 is if the US Navy sends a sub into the area. They would have the technology to hear the pinger a long ways off. "
No, they wouldn't. Manned submarine and air launch sonobuoys are designed to listen for much lower frequencies from submarine and ship machinery that travel much further in water.
The FDR/CVR pinger operates at 37.5kHz with a maximum detectable range of about 3 nautical miles (18200'). Given a water depth of 12000' a surface listening device would have to be within about 13400' (2.2 nautical miles) laterally to have a chance of hearing it. Put a manned sub at, say, 1000 feet under an you increase that lateral range to 14500' (2.4 nautical miles). Even then you'd only "hear" it if ocean conditions were favourable. The oceans loves to bend and distort sound waves.
A deeply submerged ROV (say at 10000 feet) with appropriate equipment is the best option only when they have a good idea of the location.
BTW: In a past life I was the engineer overseeing software development for the AP-3C acoustic processing systems.
No, they wouldn't. Manned submarine and air launch sonobuoys are designed to listen for much lower frequencies from submarine and ship machinery that travel much further in water.
The FDR/CVR pinger operates at 37.5kHz with a maximum detectable range of about 3 nautical miles (18200'). Given a water depth of 12000' a surface listening device would have to be within about 13400' (2.2 nautical miles) laterally to have a chance of hearing it. Put a manned sub at, say, 1000 feet under an you increase that lateral range to 14500' (2.4 nautical miles). Even then you'd only "hear" it if ocean conditions were favourable. The oceans loves to bend and distort sound waves.
A deeply submerged ROV (say at 10000 feet) with appropriate equipment is the best option only when they have a good idea of the location.
BTW: In a past life I was the engineer overseeing software development for the AP-3C acoustic processing systems.
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can I ask if any evidence has ever emerged to indicate MH 370's final 08:11hrs ping was emitted from a point on the southern arc rather than the northern arc?
The problem is, no one starts a thread like this and expects it to go this long. I've seen this on every site I've been on.
If people really want to keep discussing certain aspects, such as the Inmarsat pings, I would suggest you break up the topic in different threads. It's been working on other sites, and it tends to break up the clutter of regurgitated theories and questions.
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JAMES7 -There is no way the aircraft flew for 5 hours or so without the crew doing something.
Investigation: AO-2009-044 - Air system event - Beechcraft King Air C90 aircraft, VH-TAM, 74 km NE of Perth Airport, WA, 16 July 2009
5 hour flight
Investigation: 200003771 - Beech Aircraft Corp 200, VH-SKC
There may be a significant uncertainty regarding the efforts 2000 nm west of Oz ... but these efforts are quite possibly based on best possible information.
Grateful I am not the guy trying to coordinate this search effort. Nightmare.
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Im still baffled there isn't a single piece of debris located. AF447 wasn't exactly a heavy impact and this still left some traces albeit 50 passengers or so, a tail section and other objects. I cant believe a single body has not been found? Nothing....im not insinuitating conspiracy theories here, but there must be something floating, i can't believe it sank in one piece with nothing floating to the surface?!
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Only one person in cockpit?
Another puzzle is it would be assumed only one person has gone a bit crazy when the other pilot left the cockpit. However top of the climb is a bit soon to need a nature break.
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Bearing in mind the note, 'Transcript based on Mandarin version of English language transcript. Some wording may not be exact.'
Unfortunately liveatc.net only has a receiver on 132.8 and the NE sector is 132.6 so there is no MH370 traffic available to listen to.
The Telegraph has repeatedly asked Malaysia Airlines, Malaysia’s Civil Aviation Authority and the office of Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak to confirm the communications record; only the prime minister’s office responded, saying it would not release this data.
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Hoegh joins MH370 search -Tradewindsnews.com
Plus ...( from 19 Mar ?)
Here's a full report on the press conference with the Norwegian ship's owners:
The owner of a Norwegian car carrier said it planned to search through the night for two large objects sighted off Australia that could be debris from a missing Malaysian jetliner, despite the official search being suspended because it was too dark.
The Hoegh St. Petersburg was the first ship to arrive in the area where the two objects were spotted by satellite four days ago in one of the remotest parts of the globe, around 2,500 km (1,500 miles) southwest of Perth.
"We will continue searching during the night at reduced speed and with all spotlights available, and we will increase the speed again when the light comes back (around 2300 GMT)."
Ingar Skiaker, Chief Executive of Hoegh Autoliners, told a news conference in Oslo.
"We have not had any report of any finds, but if or when they find something... the captain will report to the Australian authorities first," he said.
Hoegh Autoliners said as far as they knew theirs was still the only ship in the area in the southern Indian Ocean, with other ships on their way and expected to arrive tomorrow.
The Hoegh St. Petersburg would stay to help in the search for as long as it was needed, a company spokesman said.
"We are thinking about those who are waiting for news. We are thinking of the relatives," Skiaker said.
The car carrier was on its way from Madagascar to Melbourne when it got a request from Australian authorities to assist in looking for the objects.
The above source -
Missing Malaysia Airlines flight live: Search team finds suspected fragments of plane believed to be door and tail - Mirror Online
Plus ...( from 19 Mar ?)
Here's a full report on the press conference with the Norwegian ship's owners:
The owner of a Norwegian car carrier said it planned to search through the night for two large objects sighted off Australia that could be debris from a missing Malaysian jetliner, despite the official search being suspended because it was too dark.
The Hoegh St. Petersburg was the first ship to arrive in the area where the two objects were spotted by satellite four days ago in one of the remotest parts of the globe, around 2,500 km (1,500 miles) southwest of Perth.
"We will continue searching during the night at reduced speed and with all spotlights available, and we will increase the speed again when the light comes back (around 2300 GMT)."
Ingar Skiaker, Chief Executive of Hoegh Autoliners, told a news conference in Oslo.
"We have not had any report of any finds, but if or when they find something... the captain will report to the Australian authorities first," he said.
Hoegh Autoliners said as far as they knew theirs was still the only ship in the area in the southern Indian Ocean, with other ships on their way and expected to arrive tomorrow.
The Hoegh St. Petersburg would stay to help in the search for as long as it was needed, a company spokesman said.
"We are thinking about those who are waiting for news. We are thinking of the relatives," Skiaker said.
The car carrier was on its way from Madagascar to Melbourne when it got a request from Australian authorities to assist in looking for the objects.
The above source -
Missing Malaysia Airlines flight live: Search team finds suspected fragments of plane believed to be door and tail - Mirror Online