March 25, 2014 -- Updated 1422 GMT (2222 HKT)
Malaysian officials stop looking for missing Flight 370 everywhere
except a remote portion of the southern Indian Ocean as relatives of
passengers express their anger. FULL STORY
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PILOTS TO BLAME?
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OCEAN RECOVERY
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OCEAN RECOVERY
Uncertainty haunts Flight 370 relatives as weather delays search
March 25, 2014 -- Updated 1326 GMT (2126 HKT)
Flight MH370: 'All lives are lost'
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Indian Ocean search to resume Wednesday, Australian officials announce
- The search off Australia is put on hold because of bad weather
- Search called off in northern corridor, Malaysia's transport minister says
- Families of passengers march to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing
They can tell you when it
probably happened -- on March 8, sometime between 8:11 and 9:15 a.m.
(7:11 to 8:15 p.m. ET), handing you a sheet with extraordinarily
technical details about satellite communications technology.
What they still can't tell you is why, or precisely where, or show you a piece of the wreckage.
All those uncertainties
are too much for relatives of the 239 people aboard the plane, some of
whom marched to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing to denounce the
airline, the country and just about everything involved with an
investigation that has transfixed the world and vexed experts.
"I'm so mad," one upset
family member told reporters. He said he felt there was "no evidence"
that the passenger jet crashed in the Indian Ocean.
Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Ships forced to leave search zone
'Eventually something will come to light'
How Inmarsat found MH370's path
"If you find something: OK, we accept," he said. "But nothing -- just from the data, just from analysis."
Malaysian authorities say
they know the news is hard to take. But Tuesday, acting Malaysian
Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein defended the decision to
release the analysis, and the heartbreaking conclusions that flowed from
it.
"It was released out of a
commitment to openness and respect for the relatives, two principles
which have guided the investigation," he said.
That investigation now
focuses on an area of the southern Indian Ocean off Australia's west
coast, where authorities believe the plane went down after a long, odd,
unexplained flight that should have ended hours before in Beijing.
On a day when rough
weather held up any efforts to find the plane, Hishammuddin said
authorities have stopped searching for the plane altogether along a
northern arc that stretched from Vietnam to Kazakhstan. Analysis of data
by British satellite company Inmarsat and British accident
investigators show the Boeing 777-200ER was heading south at last
contact, he said.
Commercial satellite
data from a U.S. company, first analyzed by Australian officials, as
well as satellite imagery from China and France, have turned up evidence
of debris bobbing in the general area where authorities believe the
plane went down.
Australian and Chinese
surveillance planes have both reported seeing debris on the water, but
so far nothing has been recovered or definitively linked to the missing
flight.
Authorities cautioned
that despite the narrowing the search area, it could still be some time
before crews find any sign of the airplane.
"We're not searching for
a needle in a haystack," Mark Binskin, vice chief of the Australian
Defence Force, told reporters. "We're still trying to define where the
haystack is."
Bad weather blocks search
Source: Flight 370 turned, dropped
Flight 370 relative: This is a cover-up
Families told all lives are lost
The deep sea robot search for 370
Tuesday's search was called off on account of weather, Australian officials said.
Gale-force winds, large
waves, heavy rain and low clouds were lashing the search area, making it
impossible to dispatch surveillance planes to the scene and making it
all but impossible to spot anything from ships.
The search is expected
to resume Wednesday with 12 aircraft. Four Chinese vessels are also
expected to join the search. And equipment to locate the plane's locator
beacon is expected to arrive Wednesday from the United States.
But even with more searchers and equipment and calmer weather, the effort will still face severe challenges.
The area is
extraordinarily remote -- some 1,500 miles from Perth, Australia, where
military surveillance planes capable of searching the site are being
based. It is also astoundingly large --- some 400,000 to 500,000 square
miles of ocean.
"With eight hours of
flying to and from the search region, the fleet of P-3 Orion aircraft
and other military aircraft have only a precious few hours to scour the
search tracks they have been given," Australian Defence Minister David
Johnston said.
To complicate matters,
debris that may have been floating days ago, when some of the satellite
images were taken, could have sunk by now. Other debris may have drifted
hundreds of miles.
And time is running out to find the flight data recorder, whose locator beacon is expected to stop working sometime around April 7.
More than half a million square kilometers (193,000 square miles) have been searched to date, Australian authorities said.
Crash conclusion explained
Hishammuddin spent part of Tuesday's briefing explaining how investigators came to the conclusion that the plane must have gone into the southern Indian Ocean.
He said the analysis was
based on sophisticated mathematics calculating how long it took signals
from a transmitter on the plane to reach an orbiting Inmarsat
communications satellite.
Much like the horn from a
passing car whose pitch rises as it approaches and then falls as it
races away, engineers were able examine the satellite's signal and
determine it had to be moving south, he said.
Engineers checked their
calculations against data from other Boeing 777 flights that day and
found their technique was sound, he said.
One mystery remains in the data: The plane's transmitter and satellite tried to make one final connection at 8:19 a.m.
"At this time this transmission is not understood and is subject to further ongoing work," he said.
The analysis shows that
the plane didn't answer a ping from the satellite ground station at 9:15
a.m. (8:15 p.m. ET), leading investigators to conclude the plane's
satellite transmitter stopped working sometime between 8:11 and 9:15
a.m.
"This," Hishammuddin said, "is consistent with the maximum endurance of the aircraft."
Malaysia has convened an
international working group to help further narrow the search area. It
involves agencies with "expertise in satellite communications and
aircraft performance," he said.
It will build on the existing analysis of satellite data in hopes of pinpointing a more exact location for the plane's location.
What happened to cause
the plane to veer off course and presumably crash into the Indian Ocean
hours after it was supposed to arrive in Beijing remains unknown.
Authorities and analysts have speculated anything from mechanical
failure to terrorism to pilot suicide could have played a role.
Police have interviewed
scores of people, and the Royal Malaysian Air Force is conducting its
own inquiry into the disappearance, authorities say.
Anguished families react
Tuesday's announcement
was met with anger by relatives, many of whom said it was premature to
declare their loved ones dead before locating any wreckage or bodies.
Others accused Malaysian officials of lying or concealing facts.
Passengers first learned
of the conclusion that the plane had crashed via a text message sent to
their cell phones. Malaysian authorities followed up with briefings for
families in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
"They have told us all lives are lost," a missing passenger's relative briefed by the airline in Beijing said Monday.
In Beijing, hundreds of
friends and family members of missing passengers marched to the
Malaysian Embassy to express their anger and frustration.
Uniformed police blocked
journalists from joining the protesters as they approached the gates of
the embassy. One woman in the crowd, overcome by stress and emotion,
was carried to a nearby ambulance on a stretcher.
James Wood, whose
brother Philip was one of three American passengers on the plane, said
the announcement, followed by the suspension of the search because of
weather, "almost felt like a miniature roller coaster within the day."
Families are stuck in a "holding pattern," he told CNN's "AC360°."
"We're just waiting and waiting," he said, "and not getting any answers one way or another."
Malaysian officials said they are doing all they can.
Prime Minister Najib
Razak explained Tuesday that he decided to make his official
announcement Monday because he did not want the government to be seen as
hiding information on purpose from the families of the missing
passengers.
In an address to Parliament in Kuala Lumpur, he said his statement was based on "the most conclusive information we have."
Malaysia Airlines said
Tuesday it has offered family members financial support of $5,000 for
each passenger aboard the ill-fated flight and was preparing to make
additional payments as the prolonged search continues.
CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told reporters the airline shares in the families' grief.
"We all feel enormous
sorrow and pain," he said Tuesday. "Sorrow that all those who boarded
Flight MH370 on Saturday 8th March, will not see their families again.
And that those families will now have to live on without those they
love."
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Experts, relatives ask: Where's the proof that MH370 fell into ocean?
March 25, 2014 -- Updated 1223 GMT (2023 HKT)
Outrage over missing plane search
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Relatives of passengers express doubts about the Malaysian announcement
- They say they want to see tangible evidence of what happened to the plane
- "This isn't enough evidence to change the grieving process," a grief expert says
- The Chinese government calls on Malaysia to release "further evidence"
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has said the missing plane's journey ended in the southern Indian Ocean, and that the conclusion was based on an analysis of satellite data by a British company and aviation investigation agency.
"We have to assume beyond
any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on
board survived," Malaysian Airlines told family members of the missing
passengers.
The announcement drew howls of grief. But it also provoked skepticism.
MH370 families still holding out hope
Missing plane: 'Unprecedented event'
Airline: 'We extend our prayers'
Australia: 'This is a major operation'
Hundreds of friends and
family members of passengers marched to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing
Tuesday to express their anger and frustration.
They claimed they weren't
being told the truth by the Malaysian government about what happened to
the plane after it disappeared from radar on March 8.
"If you find something:
OK, we accept," said one relative of a passenger. "But nothing -- just
from the data, just from analysis."
'Something from the seas'
"I suppose I want to see
something from the seas," said Bimal Sharma, an Indian man whose sister
Chandrika was on the plane. "I don't know why I just want to see some
debris off the aircraft and the black box to know what exactly happened
because there are too many unanswered questions."
Sharma, who has worked
for a long time in the Indian merchant navy, told CNN's Jim Sciutto that
he had "sailed those oceans several times myself."
Australian authorities
coordinating the search for the plane in a remote area of the Indian
Ocean suspended efforts on Tuesday because of stormy weather.
Sharma said he hoped the
search would continue. "Just for the relatives to see that there was
something -- and it's conclusive evidence," he said.
Sarah Bajc, whose
partner of two years, Philip Wood, was on the passenger jet, said in an
e-mailed statement that, without confirmed wreckage, the announcement
gave her "no real closure."
"I STILL feel his presence, so perhaps it was his soul all along," she said of Wood, one of three Americans on the plane.
The tools searching for Flight 370
Remembering those aboard MH 370
Analyzing Flight 370's satellite data
'Still holding onto hope'
The reactions are
understandable, said Heidi Snow, the founder of ACCESS, an organization
that provides grief support to people affected by or involved in air
disasters.
"I think that what we
have been hearing is that basically this isn't enough evidence to change
the grieving process," she told CNN's Erin Burnett. "Some people are
still holding on to hope and really need more than these words."
"They need to see actual
parts of the plane and really learn that their loved ones were actually
on board by getting some remains back," said Snow, who lost her fiancé
on TWA Flight 800, which crashed in 1996.
"I am so glad there is
some new information coming to them," she said of the Malaysian
announcement. "But really, without anything tangible, they are still
going back and forth."
Malaysian Acting
Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Tuesday he understood
that relatives found it difficult to accept the news without hard
evidence.
"Until we can find the
debris, and then we can confirm the debris is from MH370, it is very
difficult for me to have closure for the families," he said.
'Tantalizingly unsatisfying'
Aviation experts also expressed dissatisfaction and frustration with the information.
"We've been waiting for
the shoe to drop for more than two weeks now. And what we got was the
most tantalizingly unsatisfying thread of a resolution," Jeff Wise, a
private pilot and aviation writer, told CNN.
CNN Aviation Analyst
Miles O'Brien said he wanted to see more information about what was
behind Malaysian authorities' announcement.
"There is a saying in science: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," he said. "Show me. Show me the evidence."
The Chinese government, whose citizens made up about two thirds of the passengers on the plane, says it also wants to know more.
"We called on the
Malaysian side to provide further evidence and all the information,"
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hong Lei said at a news briefing
Tuesday.
'Nothing is final'
An executive from
Inmarsat, the British company that carried out the satellite analysis,
said the route into the southern Indian Ocean was the "best fit" with
the pings received from the plane.
"The most likely route
is the south, and the most likely ending in roughly the area where
they're looking now," Chris McLaughlin, a senior vice president at the
company, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
"But, of course, nothing
is final," he said. "We're not earth observation satellites, we're data
satellites. So it will require a lot of different skills, a lot of
different people, not least the naked eye, to finally confirm what
happened to 370."
McLaughlin said the mathematics-based process
used by Inmarsat and Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch was
"groundbreaking." The new calculations underwent a peer review process
with space agency experts and contributions by Boeing, he said.
Arthur Rosenberg, an
aviation attorney, said he was troubled by the different language used
by the satellite company and Malaysian officials.
"On the one hand, you
have the executive from Inmarsat saying 'most likely' and somehow that
got booted up to 'beyond reasonable doubt.' I don't agree with that,"
Rosenberg said.
"I am not convinced that
they are certain where this airplane is," he said. "I think they have
fine-tuned it to a general area, but to say beyond a reasonable doubt
this plane went down where they are saying is a stretch."
Malaysia defends announcement
Prime Minister Najib on
Tuesday defended the decision to make the announcement, saying it was
based on "the most conclusive information we have."
He told Parliament he
didn't want the government to be seen as hiding information on purpose
from the families of the missing passengers -- an accusation Malaysian
authorities faced earlier in the investigation into the plane's
disappearance.
He noted that more answers would only come to light with the discovery of the plane's flight data recorder.
"We cannot verify any theories until the black box is found," he said.
CNN's Steven Jiang and journalist Ivy Sam contributed to this report.
COPY http://edition.cnn.com/
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