FLIGHT MH370 CONFUSION AND MISINFORMATION

12 March 2014

After day 4 of the search for the ill-fated Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 the world is little closer to find out just what happened and more significantly right now, just where is it.

This mystery continues to deepen as friends and family of the missing grow ever more angry and frustrated.

The entire world is wondering just how a plane the size of a Boeing 777 goes missing in the year 2014?

Several countries are scouring the seas for signs of the missing plane

According to the Sydney Morning Herald today  the mystery surrounding the fate of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet that vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing is baffling enough.

But contradictory and inaccurate information released by officials at the centre of the investigation in Malaysia has made an already bewildering situation even more confusing.

Conflicting reports have emerged about when air traffic controllers lost contact with the Boeing 777 on Saturday morning, and in which direction the plane was heading at the time.

The BBC described the confusion thus:

Malaysia’s air force chief has denied remarks attributed to him that a missing Malaysia Airlines plane was tracked by military radar to the Strait of Malacca, far from its planned route.

Rodzali Daud said such reports in local media were untrue, but it was possible the plane had turned back.

Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing went missing on Saturday, after taking off with 239 people on board.

Meanwhile, Vietnam said it was scaling back some of its search activities.

“We’ve decided to temporarily suspend some search and rescue activities, pending information from Malaysia,” Vietnam’s deputy minister of transport Pham Quy Tieu said on Wednesday. 

Earlier this week, Malaysia widened the search for the missing plane amid conflicting reports on its last known position. Early search efforts focussed on waters between Malaysia and Vietnam.

The Malaysian authorities initially said flight MH370 disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, as it flew over the South China Sea, south of Vietnam’s Ca Mau peninsula. No distress signal or message was sent.

On Tuesday, a local media report quoted Gen Rodzali Daud as saying that the flight was last detected by military radar at the Strait of Malacca, off Malaysia’s west coast.

On Wednesday, Gen Rodzali Daud said he “did not make any such statements”, but the air force had “not ruled out the possibility of an air turn-back”.

Meanwhile, AFP news agency reported that the search had been expanded into the Andaman Sea, north of the Strait of Malacca, citing Malaysian civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman.

“We are not going to leave any chance. We have to look at every possibility,” he said, without indicating why the search was expanded north.

The Voice of Russia said  Malaysian Air Force command has dismissed media reports saying that the Boeing 777-200, before it disappeared, had been located by military radars over the Strait of Malacca March 7. Reuters news agency reported about the disproof statement on Wednesday.

“I would like to stress that I had not made such statements,” the news agency quoted Malaysian air force chief Rodzali Daud as saying.

Earlier, local media reported with reference to the commander that the plane, before it disappeared, changed the route and flew towards the Strait of Malacca. Malaysian air force radars allegedly located the plane in hundreds of kilometers from the place, where it was located for the last time by civil aviation services.

Boeing 777-200 with 227 passengers and 12 crewmembers departed from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on Friday, March 7. Nearly two hours after the departure, the plane unexpectedly disappeared from the radar screens and the crew stopped to establish communication. In this moment, it was supposed to be over the South China Sea in 120 km from the city of Kota Bharu.

The frustration is growing and perhaps the world needs to take one giant collective breath and resign itself to the simple fact that this search may take weeks or months, perhaps even years before we find answers to this ever deepening mystery.