As the search for a missing Malaysia Airlines jet entered a fourth
day Tuesday, investigators remained uncertain about its whereabouts.
Here's a summary of what CNN knows and what they don't know about
Flight 370, which was carrying 239 people when it disappeared from radar
screens over Southeast Asia.
THE FLIGHT PATH
What they know: The
Boeing 777-200ER took off from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, at 12:41
a.m. Saturday (12:41 p.m. Friday ET). It was scheduled to arrive in Beijing at
6:30 a.m. the same day, after a roughly 2,700-mile (4,350-kilometer) journey.
But around 1:30 a.m., air traffic controllers in Subang, outside Kuala Lumpur,
lost contact with the plane over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam.
What they don't know: What happened next. The pilots did not indicate any problem
to the tower, and no distress signal was issued. Malaysian military officials
cite radar data as suggesting the plane might have turned back toward Kuala
Lumpur. But the pilots didn't tell air traffic control that they were doing so.
And we don't know why the plane would have turned around.
THE PASSENGERS
What they know: There
were 239 people on board: 227 passengers and 12 crew members. Five of the
passengers were younger than 5 years old. Those on board included a number of painters
and calligraphers, as well as employees of an American semiconductor
company.
According to the airline, the passengers' 14 nationalities spanned
the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and North America. Passengers from China or
Taiwan numbered 154, followed by Malaysians, at 38. There were three U.S.
citizens on the plane. Four passengers had valid booking to travel but did not
show up to for the flight, according to the airline. "As such, the issue
of off-loading unaccompanied baggage did not arise," it added Tuesday in a prepared statement.
What they don't know: Why
two people who boarded the plane were using stolen passports, officials say.
THE PASSPORT MYSTERY
What they know: The
tickets for the two people who used stolen Italian and Austrian passports were
bought Thursday in Thailand, according to ticketing records. Both tickets were
one-way and had itineraries continuing on from Beijing to Amsterdam. One
ticket's final destination was Frankfurt, Germany; the other's was Copenhagen,
Denmark. The passports were stolen in Thailand from the two people to whom they
had been issued -- the Austrian's was taken last year and the Italian's in
2012.
Interpol identified the men using the stolen passports as Pouri
Nourmohammadi, 18, and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, 29, both Iranians.
Malaysian police believe Nourmohammadi was trying to emigrate to Germany using
the stolen Austrian passport. The men entered Malaysia on February 28 using
valid Iranian passports.
What they don't know: Whether
the stolen passports have any connection to the plane's disappearance.
Would-be immigrants have used fake passports to enter Western
countries in the past.
THE SECURITY SCREENING
What they know: Interpol
says the passports were listed as stolen in its database. But they had not been
checked from the time they were entered into the database and the time the
plane departed. Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said it was
"clearly of great concern" that passengers had been able to board an
international flight using passports listed as stolen in the agency's database.
What they don't know: Whether
the passports had been used to travel previously. Interpol says it's
"unable to determine on how many other occasions these passports were used
to board flights or cross borders." Malaysian authorities are
investigating the security process at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, but insisted
it meets international standards.
THE CREW
What they know: The
crew members are Malaysian. The pilot is Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a
53-year-old veteran with 18,365 flying hours who joined Malaysia Airlines in
1981. The first officer, Fariq Ab Hamid, has 2,763 flying hours. Hamid, 27,
started at the airline in 2007. He had been flying another jet and was
transitioning to the Boeing 777-200 after having completed
training in a flight simulator.
What they don't know: What
went on in the cockpit around the time the plane lost contact with air traffic
controllers. The passenger jet was in what is considered the
safest part of a flight, the cruise portion, when it
disappeared. The weather conditions were reported to be good. Aviation experts
say it's particularly puzzling that the pilots didn't report any kind of
problems before contact was lost.
What they know: Thirty-four
planes, 40 ships and search crews from 10 countries are scouring the South
China Sea near where the plane was last detected. Debris in the area has turned
out to be unrelated to the plane. "We have not found anything that appear
to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft," Azharuddin Abdul
Rahman, director general of the Malaysian Civil Aviation Department, said
Monday. Similarly, a slick in the area was determined to be from fuel oil
typically used in cargo ships, not from the plane.
What they don't know: Whether
the search is concentrating on the right place. Authorities initially focused
their efforts around the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand, near the plane's last
known position. But they have expanded efforts westward, off the other coast of
the Malay Peninsula, and northward into the Andaman Sea, part of the Indian
Ocean.
THE CAUSE
What they know: Nothing.
"For the aircraft to go missing just like that ... as far as we are
concerned, we are equally puzzled as well," Rahman said Monday. The
aircraft model in question, the Boeing 777-200ER, has an excellent safety
record.
What they don't know: Until
searchers find the plane and its voice and data recorders, it may be difficult
to figure out what happened. CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen says the range
of possible reasons behind the disappearance can be divided
into three categories: mechanical failure, pilot actions and terrorism. But all
we have are theories.
THE PRECEDENT
What they know: It's
rare, but not unprecedented, for a commercial airliner to disappear in
midflight. In June 2009, Air France Flight 447 was en route from Rio de Janeiro
to Paris when communications ended suddenly from the Airbus A330, another
state-of-the-art aircraft, with 228 people on board. It took four searches over
nearly two years to find the bulk of Flight 447's wreckage and most of the
bodies in a mountain range deep in the Atlantic Ocean. It took even longer to
establish the cause of the disaster.
What they don't know: Whether
what happened to the missing Malaysia Airlines plane is similar to what
happened to the Air France flight. Investigators attributed the Flight 447
crash to a series of errors by the pilots and their failure to react effectively
to technical problems.
Here are four possible scenarios experts
have been talking about and the related facts:
1.
Scenario: Mechanical failure?
Fact: The absence of a debris field suggests the
possibility that pilots were forced to ditch the plane and it landed on water
without breaking up, finally sinking to the ocean floor.
Analysis: But if that were the case, then why no
emergency signal? These planes are able to perform a "miracle on the
Hudson" maneuver. They have the ability to glide more than 100 miles and
belly land on the water with both engines out, says former 777 pilot Keith
Wolzinger, now a civil aviation consultant with The Spectrum Group. During the
time it would take for a plane to glide 100 miles, it seems likely that pilots
would be able able to send an SOS.
Fact: The missing plane had suffered a clipped wing
tip in the past, but Boeing repaired it, and the jet was safe to fly, said Malaysia
Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya on Sunday.
Analysis: "Anytime there's been previous damage to
an airplane, even though it's been repaired, and repaired within standards ...
it kind of sends a warning flag," says Wolzinger. Experts agree the Boeing
777 is one of the world's most reliable aircraft. During its development it was
subject to some of the most rigorous testing in commercial aviation history.
"I've been talking with colleagues," Wolzinger says. "We're all
baffled by this." The 777 boasts some of the most powerful and well-tested
engines in the world, he says. "The reliability of airliner engines in
general is impeccable these days," he says. "This is a safe
plane."
2.
Scenario: Pilot error
Fact: So far, there are no known indications that
pilot error contributed to the aircraft going missing.
Analysis: Some aviation experts have compared Flight
370 to the crash of Air France Flight 447 in 2009. All 228 passengers and crew
died when the plane went down in a storm in the Atlantic en route from Brazil
to Paris. After an expensive, nearly two-year search across the deep ocean
floor, the twin-engine Airbus A330's wreckage was finally found and the voice
and data recorders recovered. A French investigation blamed flight crew for failing to
understand "they were in a stall situation and therefore never undertook
any recovery maneuvers." But unlike Flight 447, weather was reported as good along Flight 370's scheduled
route and didn't appear to present a threat.
Asiana Airlines Flight 217 -- a
Boeing 777 -- fell short during a runway approach last July at San Francisco
International Airport. Three people were killed and more than 180 others hurt.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators have focused on pilot
reliance on automated
flight systems as a possible contributor to the crash, but a final report has
not yet been released.
3.
Scenario: Bomb? Or 'dry run'?
Fact: Two stolen passports have been linked to
people who held tickets for the flight.
Analysis: This points to the possibility that someone
on a terrorism watch list may have boarded the plane and blown it up. However,
the stolen passports don't necessarily mean the plane was an actual target.
It's possible, says former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General
Mary Schiavo, that terrorists may have been performing a "dry run"
for a future attack. Or, Schiavo said, "it could be just criminal business
as usual," because "there are lots of stolen passports" used by
travelers around the world.
Fact: So far, no debris field of plane wreckage has
been linked to the 777, which would indicate a bomb blast.
Analysis: When Robert Francis, former vice chairman of
the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, heard about the missing plane,
his immediate thought was: "For some reason the aircraft blew up and there
was no signal, there was nothing." The fact that the plane disappeared
from radar without warning indicated to Francis "there was something
unprecedented that hasn't happened before."
What about satellite technology?
Is it possible that data from orbiting satellites might show a flash or
infrared heat signature from an explosion? Very unlikely, says satellite expert
Brian Weeden, who spent years tracking space junk in orbit for the U.S. Air
Force. Dozens of government and private satellites orbit the earth, looking
down from distances from 300 kilometers to 1,500 kilometers (185 to 930 miles).
It's a long shot that one of them coincidentally floated over at the exact
right time and location to capture a flash from an explosion.
However, there's an "off
chance," Weeden says, that a super secret U.S. government satellite
orbiting 22,000 miles in space might have grabbed evidence. These satellites
are in geosynchronous orbit. As a group, they can observe virtually the entire
globe. "We know that their mission is to detect ballistic missile launches
via heat," says Weeden, now a technical adviser for Secure World
Foundation. "We don't know if they're sensitive enough to track something
like a bomb blast, even if that's what happened."
Then there's another unanswerable
question: Would the government hesitate to release such an image for fear of
revealing the satellite system's ultraclassified capability.
4.
Scenario: Hijacking?
Fact: Before it disappeared, radar data indicated
the plane may have turned around to head back to Kuala Lumpur. Is that a clue
that a hijacker had ordered the plane to change course?
Analysis: So far, there have been no reports that the
flight crew sent any signals that a hijacking had occurred.
No comments:
Post a Comment