Flight 370 passenger's relative: 'All lives are lost'
March 24, 2014 -- Updated 1455 GMT (2255 HKT)
Flight 'ended in southern Indian Ocean'
(CNN) -- Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went down over
the southern Indian Ocean, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said
Monday, citing a new analysis of satellite data by a British satellite
company and accident investigators, and apparently ending hopes that
anyone survived.
A relative of a missing passenger briefed by the airline in Beijing said, "They have told us all lives are lost."
Razak based his
announcement on what he described as unprecedented analysis of satellite
data sent by the plane by British satellite provider Inmarsat and the
British Air Accidents Investigation Branch. He didn't describe the
nature of the analysis.
But he said it made it
clear that the plane's last position was in the middle of the remote
southern Indian Ocean, "far from any possible landing sites."
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He begged reporters to respect the privacy of relatives.
"For them, the past few weeks have been heartbreaking," he said. "I know this news must be harder still."
Razak's statement came
after the airline sent a text message to relatives saying it "deeply
regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH 370
has been lost and that none of those onboard survived."
Reporters could hear
wailing coming from a briefing for relatives of missing passenger in
Beijing. A woman walked out of a briefing for relatives near Kuala
Lumpur crying.
A Facebook page dedicated
to the only American aboard the flight, Philip Wood, said of relatives
that "our collective hearts are hurting now."
"Please lift all the loved ones of MH370 with your good thoughts and prayers," a post on the page said.
Debris spotted in Indian Ocean
The announcement came
the same day as Australian officials said they had spotted two objects
in the southern Indian Ocean that could be related to the flight, which
has been missing since March 8 with 239 people aboard.
One object is "a grey or
green circular object," and the other is "an orange rectangular
object," the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
The objects are the
latest in a series of sightings, including "suspicious objects" reported
earlier Monday by a Chinese military plane that was involved in search
efforts in the same region, authorities said.
So far, nothing has been definitively linked to Flight 370.
Earlier, Hishammuddin
Hussein, Malaysia's acting transportation minister, said only that "at
the moment, there are new leads but nothing conclusive."
A reporter on board the
Chinese plane for China's official Xinhua news agency said the search
team saw "two relatively big floating objects with many white smaller
ones scattered within a radius of several kilometers," the agency
reported Monday.
The Chinese plane was
flying at 33,000 feet on its way back to Australia's west coast when it
made the sighting, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
Source: Flight 370 turned, dropped
Two objects located in ocean
But a U.S. Navy P-8
Poseidon aircraft, one of the military's most sophisticated
reconnaissance planes, that was tasked to investigate the objects was
unable to find them, the authority said.
With the search in its
third week, authorities have so far been unable to establish where
exactly the missing plane is or why it flew off course from its planned
journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
China has a particularly
large stake in the search: Its citizens made up about two-thirds of the
227 passengers on the missing Boeing 777. Beijing has repeatedly called
on Malaysian authorities, who are in charge of the overall search, to
step up efforts to find the plane.
Malaysian and Australian
authorities appeared to be more interested Monday in the two objects
spotted by a Royal Australian Air Force P-3 Orion aircraft.
The Australian's navy's
HMAS Success "is on scene and is attempting to locate the objects," the
Australian maritime authority said.
Hishammuddin said
Australian authorities had said the objects could be retrieved "within
the next few hours, or by tomorrow morning at the latest."
Satellites focus search
Recent information from
satellites identifying objects in the water that could be related to the
plane has focused search efforts on an area roughly 1,500 miles
southwest of the Australian city of Perth.
A total of 10 aircraft -- from Australia, China the United States and Japan -- were tasked with combing the search area Monday.
The aerial searches have
been trained on the isolated part of ocean since last week, when
Australia first announced that satellite imagery had detected possible
objects that could be connected to the search.
Since then, China and
France have said they also have satellite information pointing to
floating debris in a similar area. The Chinese information came from
images, and the French data came from satellite radar.
But Australian officials
have repeatedly warned that the objects detected in satellite images
may not turn out to be from the missing plane -- they could be
containers that have fallen off cargo ships, for example.
On Saturday, searchers
found a wooden pallet as well as strapping belts, Australian authorities
said. The use of wooden pallets is common in the airline industry, but
also in the shipping industry.
Hishammuddin said Monday
that Flight 370 was carrying wooden pallets, but that there was so far
no evidence they are related to the ones sighted in the search area.
The investigation into
the passenger jet's disappearance has already produced a wealth of false
leads and speculative theories. Previously, when the hunt was focused
on the South China Sea near where the plane dropped off civilian radar, a
number of sightings of debris proved to be unrelated to the search.
Plane said to have flown low
The sighting of the
objects of interest by the Chinese plane came after a weekend during
which other nuggets of information emerged about the movements of the
errant jetliner on the night it vanished.
Military radar tracking
shows that after making a sharp turn over the South China Sea, the plane
changed altitude as it headed toward the Strait of Malacca, an official
close to the investigation into the missing flight told CNN.
The plane flew as low as
12,000 feet at some point before it disappeared from radar, according
to the official. It had reportedly been flying at a cruising altitude of
35,000 feet when contact was lost with air traffic control.
The sharp turn seemed to
be intentional, the official said, because executing it would have
taken the Boeing 777 two minutes -- a time period during which the pilot
or co-pilot could have sent an emergency signal if there had been a
fire or other emergency on board.
Authorities say the
plane didn't send any emergency signals, though some analysts say it's
still unclear whether the pilots tried but weren't able to communicate
because of a catastrophic failure of the aircraft's systems.
The official, who is not
authorized to speak to the media, told CNN that the area the plane flew
in after the turn is a heavily trafficked air corridor and that flying
at 12,000 feet would have kept the jet well out of the way of that
traffic.
Malaysia disputes reprogramming
Also over the weekend,
Malaysian authorities said the last transmission from the missing
aircraft's reporting system showed it heading to Beijing -- a revelation
that appears to undercut the theory that someone reprogrammed the
plane's flight path before the co-pilot signed off with air traffic
controllers for the last time.
That reduces, but doesn't rule out, suspicions about foul play in the cockpit.
Last week, CNN and other
news organizations, citing unnamed sources, reported that authorities
believed someone had reprogrammed the aircraft's flight computer before
the sign-off.
CNN cited sources who
believed the plane's flight computer must have been reprogrammed because
it flew directly over navigational way points. A plane controlled by a
human probably would not have been so precise, the sources said.
Malaysian authorities
never confirmed that account, saying last week that the plane's
"documented flight path" had not been altered.
On Sunday, they
clarified that statement further, saying the plane's automated data
reporting system included no route changes in its last burst, sent at
1:07 a.m. -- 12 minutes before the last voice communication with flight
controllers.
Analysts are divided
about what the latest information could mean. Some argue it's a sign
that mechanical failure sent the plane suddenly off course. Others say
there are still too many unknowns to eliminate any possibilities.
CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien called the fresh details about the flight a "game changer."
"Now we have no evidence
the crew did anything wrong," he said. "And in fact, now, we should be
operating with the primary assumption being that something bad happened
to that plane shortly after they said good night."
If a crisis on board
caused the plane to lose pressure, he said, pilots could have chosen to
deliberately fly lower to save passengers.
"You want to get down to
10,000 feet, because that is when you don't have to worry about
pressurization. You have enough air in the atmosphere naturally to keep
everybody alive," he said. "So part of the procedure for a rapid
decompression ... it's called a high dive, and you go as quickly as you
can down that to that altitude."
Authorities have said
pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah was highly experienced. On Monday, Malaysian
authorities said Flight 370 was co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's sixth
flight in a Boeing 777, and the first time when he was not traveling
with an instructor pilot shadowing him.
"We do not see any problem with him," said Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.
- Whole world listens for slowly fading pings
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- Ocean search has many challenges
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- Clues lead to new theories
-
- CNN's Sara Sidner, Catherine E. Shoichet, Evan Perez, Kyung Lah and Jaime A. FlorCruz contributed to this report.
