Iranian Lawmaker Blames U.S. for Plane Disappearance

[Sally]

There is always something or other that the crazies in Iran will blame the U.S. for, and now they are blaming the U.S. for "kidnapping" the missing Malaysian plane.


Iranian Lawmaker Blames U.S. for Plane Disappearance
By THOMAS ERDBRINK


With the fate and location of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet still unexplained on Tuesday, the police were investigating the possibilities of hijacking, sabotage and possible psychological or personal problems among the crew and passengers, while other agencies in Malaysia continued to investigate noncriminal explanations, as Thomas Fuller, Jane Perlez and Alan Cowell reported.

On Tuesday, an influential Iranian lawmaker accused the United States of having “kidnapped” Flight 370, saying it was an attempt to “sabotage the relationship between Iran and China and South East Asia.”

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[aris2chat]

boogeyman did it

 

[Mr. H.]

I would (respectfully) submit that Israel may have possibly had something to do with the disappearance of this airline.

Their motive being that blame would ultimately be directed at Iran.

 

[waltky]

Zeroing in on missing jetliner...

Satellite Photos Send Jet Hunt to Southern Indian Ocean
MARCH 20, 2014 — Aircraft and ships rushed to scour a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean on Thursday after satellite photographs showed tantalizing glimpses of two large floating objects that might be pieces of the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner. But the first searchers on the scene could not find the objects.

A P-3 Orion aircraft dispatched by the Royal Australian Air Force was “unable to locate debris — cloud and rain limited visibility,” according to a Twitter message posted by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is managing the search in that part of the ocean. A United States Navy P-8A Poseidon also searched in the area and returned to a base near Perth, Australia, after finding “nothing of significance to report,” according to a message from the Seventh Fleet, which is overseeing the American military contribution to the search. The Maritime Safety Authority said Friday’s search of the area, which is 2,500 kilometers, or 1,500 miles, southwest of Perth on Australia’s west coast, would include four military aircraft, including two Royal Australian Air Force Orion planes. “A total of six merchant ships have assisted in the search,” the authority said.

The stretch of ocean where the objects were spotted is remote and little traveled. But a cargo ship that happened to be relatively close, bound for Melbourne, Australia, from the island of Mauritius, was diverted south from its usual route two days ago at the request of the Australian authorities. It reached the area of the satellite sighting late on Wednesday, the first ship to arrive there, but it also saw nothing on Thursday. An Australian naval vessel dispatched to the area, the Success, was still several days away. Executives of Hoegh Autoliners, the Norwegian owners of the cargo ship, said at a news conference in Oslo on Thursday that the ship and its crew of 19 were at the authorities’ disposal and would remain in the area as long as needed. Ingar Skiaker, the company’s chief executive, and Sebjorn Dahl, its head of human resources, said the vessel, a car carrier named the St. Petersburg, had radar equipment and powerful searchlights that would be used to scan the ocean surface around the clock.

This handout from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority shows the satellite images of the two objects that officials say could possibly be related to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The plane, Flight 370, with 227 passengers and a crew of 12, took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in the early hours of March 8 bound for Beijing, and stopped communicating with ground controllers about 40 minutes later. For more than an hour, military radar tracked a plane that was probably Flight 370, veering sharply off the original course and flying west toward the Indian Ocean; automatic satellite signals emitted by the plane suggested that it kept flying for hours after that, with the last signal detected about a half-hour before it would have exhausted its fuel. By that point, the signals indicated, the plane was probably somewhere along a broad arc sweeping from Central Asia through Southeast Asia and out into the ocean; officials are concentrating on the southern portion of the arc as the most likely area, and that is roughly where the floating objects were seen.

John Young, the general manager of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s emergency response division, sought on Thursday to moderate any hopes that parts of the jet might finally have been found after 12 days. He said the southern Indian Ocean was liable to contain some large pieces of debris, like containers lost overboard from merchant vessels. One of the floating objects, he said, appeared to be around 24 meters (79 feet) long, but he could not say what shape it was or whether it had markings on it that would identify it. The other appeared to be about 5 meters (16 feet) long, he said. “The fact there are a number located in the same area makes it worth looking at,” Mr. Young said at a news conference in Canberra, calling the sighting “probably the best lead we have right now.”

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Search for Malaysia plane resumes off Australia
March 20, 2014 ~ The objects seen in the satellite photos are "of reasonable size"; Other aircraft and ships are traveling to the area to try to locate and examine the objects

A freighter and planes searched the rough seas of one of the remotest places on Earth for a missing Malaysia plane, following up on what Malaysia authorities said was the "best lead" thus far for the location of the jet. Australian satellite images detected large pieces of debris floating about 1,000 miles off the coast of Australia and halfway to the desolate islands of the Antarctic. A search in the southern Indian Ocean was halted Thursday because of bad weather and nightfall. China said Friday it is sending three warships to join the search. It gave no indication when they might arrive at the site west of Australia.

The objects seen in the satellite photos are "of reasonable size and probably awash with water," John Young, general manager of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, said at a press conference in Canberra, Australia's capital, on Thursday. "This is a lead, it's probably the best lead we have right now," Young said. He cautioned that the objects could be seaborne debris along a shipping route where containers can fall off cargo vessels, although the larger object is longer than a container. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing early March 8 with 239 passengers and crew aboard a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

A handout from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority shows a map of the search area for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

But another analyst said the debris is most likely not pieces of the missing Boeing 777 jetliner, and that this could be the latest in a string of false leads since the plane disappeared. "The chances of it being debris from the airplane are probably small, and the chances of it being debris from other shipping are probably large," said Jason Middleton, an aviation professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. A Norwegian merchant ship was the first vessel on the scene in a tight, 16-nautical- mile area 1,550 miles southwest of Perth, Australia, where authorities believe the possible debris was floating. Search planes were also sent to the vicinity and other ships were en route.

Australian authorities asked the St. Petersburg merchant ship, which was en route to Perth, to take a more southerly approach two days ago to the search site, officials of the Norwegian shipping company Höegh Autoliners told the Norwegian newspaper VG. "Our mission is to be the eyes and ears in the area and to look for things in the water," said Olva Sollie, a vice president for the company. "We are doing this from the ship with our crews using binoculars and radars. This is coordinated with the Australian authorities and aircraft in the area."

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[waltky]

Garbage gettin' in the way of search for missing jetliner...

OCEAN GARBAGE FRUSTRATES SEARCH FOR FLIGHT 370
Mar 31,`14 ) -- Sometimes the object spotted in the water is a snarled fishing line. Or a buoy. Or something that might once have been the lid to an ice box. Not once - not yet at least - has it been a clue.

Anticipation has repeatedly turned into frustration in the search for signs of Flight 370 as objects spotted from planes in a new search area west of Australia have turned out to be garbage. It's a time-wasting distraction for air and sea crews searching for debris from the Malaysia Airlines flight that vanished March 8. It also points to wider problems in the world's oceans. "The ocean is like a plastic soup, bulked up with the croutons of these larger items," said Los Angeles captain Charles Moore, an environmental advocate credited with bringing attention to an ocean gyre between Hawaii and California known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which by some accounts is about the size of Texas.

The world's oceans have four more of these flotsam-collecting vortexes, Moore said, and the searchers, in an area about 1,850 kilometers (1,150 miles) west of Perth, have stumbled onto the eastern edge of a gyre in the Indian Ocean. "It's like a toilet bowl that swirls but doesn't flush," said Moore. The garbage patches are nothing like a typical city dump. In fact, most of the trash can't even be seen: It's composed of tiny bits of plastic bobbing just below the surface.

The larger items also tend to be plastic and are often fishing-related, Moore said. Though, he added, he has come across light bulbs, a toilet seat, and, bobbing off the California coast, a refrigerator, complete with defrosted orange juice. Seattle oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been studying the phenomena of ocean debris for years. He said there are smaller collections of garbage within the gyres. "If you go into a house you'll find dust bunnies," he said. "The ocean has a mass of dust bunnies, each moving about 10 miles a day."

Ebbesmeyer said he's fascinated by what happens to the trash that spews from the hundreds of shipping containers lost overboard from cargo ships each year. He said there's one that keeps belching out Lego pieces onto the beaches of Cornwall, England. Another spilled 2,000 computer monitors. Another released thousands of pairs of Nike sneakers. Sometimes, he said, the containers themselves can become hazards as they float around for months, buoyed by plastic objects inside or the air trapped behind watertight doors. Trash also gets into the ocean after being washed down rivers or swept up in tsunamis, Ebbesmeyer said.

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[Hossfly]

I would (respectfully) submit that Israel may have possibly had something to do with the disappearance of this airline.

Their motive being that blame would ultimately be directed at Iran.

Good point. There's a 7000 ft runway in Shangri La that would have been within range. Israel has a good relationship with Shangri La.

 

[aris2chat]

What are they putting in their water?

 

[Hossfly]

What are they putting in their water?

Angel dust.