As more details continue to emerge about MH370, which vanished over 10 days ago, search efforts are being ramped up find out what happened to that plane.
Twenty-six countries have been requested to assist in the hunt for the plane – A Boeing 777-200ER with 239 people aboard at the time contact was lost.
The search patterns spread both north and south – however searches are concentrating in the southern corridor.
With such a wide search area (and the search area increased to 3,200km since the last point of contact, there’s a lot of area to cover), the use of aircraft in the search has become more important – with the USA deploying a P-8A Poseidon (a militarised Boeing 737 used in Submarine hunting) and P3 Orion to assist in the search, whilst the Navy ships are pulled back. New Zealand are sending P3 Orion (based on the Lockheed L-188 Electra), with Australia contributing two P3 Orion aircraft to assist in the effort.
Meanwhile, the final words spoken from the cockpit of MH370 were from First Officer – Fariq Abdul Hamid – according to Malaysia Airlines. Police searches have been carried out both at the first officer’s house and the captain – Zaharie Ahmad Shah. In addition, Malaysian police are going through the background of the pilots, flight and ground staff to see if there are any clues in what Police are treating as a criminal investigation.
More confusion also has emerged with the timings of when ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) when it was switched off, with the system could had been switched off from 01:07Local, up to 30 minutes when it was next due to make a report.
Confusion is one of the things that is really making this incident stand out – as there are sadly very few definitive answers for the families affected by this.
All this hunting hopefully will yield a result – however, there is a sobering point. The last wide-bodied airplane lost – Air France AF447, operated by an Airbus A330 – the wreckage was found five days after the incident. The black box data recorder wasn’t found for almost two years after the incident.
Considering the depths of the Indian Ocean, the challenges remain high to find this aircraft.
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