updated 6:30 PM EDT, Fri March 21, 2014

(CNN) -- No struggle. No panic. No clues.

A purported transcript of the final 54 minutes of communication withMalaysia Airlines Flight 370 reveals nothing to suggest a problem -- either mechanical or man-made.

Britain's The Telegraph obtained what it reported to be the transcript of exchanges between copilot Fariq Abdul Hamid and air traffic controllers from before the flight took off until the final transmission.

"MH370, please contact Ho Chi Minh City 120.9, good night," is the last message from Kuala Lumpur air traffic control to the flight, according to a translated page of the document posted online by The Telegraph.

"All right, good night," was the response at 1:19 a.m. local time. That was the last communication before the plane's transponder stopped working.

CNN was unable to immediately verify the authenticity of the transcript. The Telegraph reported that the Malaysian government declined to release it.

No sign of airliner after day 2 of search in southern Indian Ocean

ccording to The Telegraph's report, nothing in the purported transcript suggests that anything unusual or untoward occurred before communications with the Boeing 777 ended.

It said Hamid signed in at 12:36 a.m. on the flight fromKuala Lumpur to Beijing. At 1:07 a.m., Hamid says the plane was flying at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, which repeated information provided six minutes earlier, The Telegraph reported.

A former British Airways pilot who flew the same kind of aircraft found nothing suspicious about that exchange.

"It could be as simple as the pilot forgetting or not being sure that he had told air traffic controllers he had reached the altitude," the former pilot, Steve Landells, told The Telegraph. "He might be reconfirming he was at 350 (35,000 feet). It is not unusual. I wouldn't read anything into it."

Nothing unusual appears in the purported transcript around the plane's final transmission, which came two minutes before the transponder halted, The Telegraph reported.

Biggest questions about Flight 370

Difficulties presented in 'remote corner of planet' may hamper Flight 370 search

 

(CNN) -- Satellite imagery that may show debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is raising hopes that investigators can narrow what has been a needle-in-a-haystack search operation.

The images, obtained and analyzed by the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation as "a possible indication of debris south of the search area that has been the focus of the search operation," according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, were taken above a remote part of ocean thousands of kilometers south-east of Australia.

Two objects, one of approximately 24 meters (78.7 ft) in length and another around five meters (16.4 ft) long have been spotted, leading to hopes that more information regarding the missing airliner has come to light.

Beforehand, search corridors had extended both through central Asia and as far south as the depths of the Indian Ocean. The new find gives cause that the search operations can zero in on a much more focused field.

However, the area of southern Indian Ocean, 2,350 kilometers (1,460 miles) to the southeast of Perth inwestern Australia is a remote, potentially inhospitable area of sea which will not necessarily aid search operations -- Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott described the search area Friday as the "about the most inaccessible spot you could imagine on the face of the earth."

New Day's Chris Cuomo illustrated the difficulty of the task ahead. "They are saying it's the most challenging of things. It's far, it's remote, it's very deep and you're in the storm season so it's inclement there as well... it's a tough set of constraints," he told Richard Quest.

The distance from Australia means that the search time of aircraft "on station" -- within the reduced search zone -- will be limited to only a couple of hours.

Weather will also potentially be an issue. Already, the first aircraft on the scene which was dispatched early Thursday to assess the site, has reported "poor visibility," despite "moderate weather conditions," according to the AMSA's John Young, who spoke at a media briefingThursday. "This will hamper both air and satellite efforts," he said.

CNN meteorologist Pedram Javaheri says that weather in the region, especially at this time of year, can be unpredictable. "Today marks the first day of autumn down under, so it's not unusual to see the weather in this part of the world start to pick up in intensity.

"We have very limited (weather) info in this remote corner of the planet. In fact, it is so remote that (weather) satellites are even a bit choppy that far south."

A key to the search is the height of the waves and whether there are whitecaps present, former flight commander Rick Burgess told CNN's Becky Anderson. "Those high waves... are very disruptive on your search pattern when you're trying to look for objects in the water."

He estimated that the search crews would have a window of three to four days. "Then from there I don't see much hope in finding anything in the near term."

The average depth in that area of the ocean is around 13,000 feet, which is slightly less than the average depth worldwide. The area's depth could still present significant problems for retrieving wreckage -- should the objects seen on satellite be confirmed as part of the missing plane. There are volcanic ridges underwater which rise up from the ocean floor, which can reduce the depth to 3,000 feet.

Also, this part of the Indian Ocean is the location of the Indian Ocean Gyre, one of five major gyres worldwide. A gyre is an area of circular ocean current where water does not circulate particularly freely. The Indian Ocean Gyre is known to trap large volumes of debris in the southern Indian Ocean as currents here are very weak and show little to no movement over long periods of time, Javaheri said.

However, "at these very high latitudes (where the debris was spotted)... westerly winds are typically very strong and they can certainly impact large-scale debris and move them along," meaning that wind patterns may have influenced the location of the sighted objects.

LIVE: Latest updates on the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner

What can we tell from fresh lead?

If this is the debris, what happens next?

Opinion: Search for MH370 highlights need for trust, unity in Asia

Chinese satellites find large object that could be from MH370

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- While possible clues about the fate of a Malaysia Airlines jet missing for more than two weeks keep coming from satellite images, it has been as frustrating as ever to turn the hints from space into actual sightings.

China on Saturday released a satellite image showing an object floating in a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean near where planes and ships have been crisscrossing since similar images from an Australian satellite emerged earlier in the week. China's image, showing an object that appeared to be 22 meters (72 feet) by 13 meters (43 feet), was taken around noon Tuesday.

"The news that I just received is that the Chinese ambassador received a satellite image of a floating object in the southern corridor and they will be sending ships to verify," Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters.

Australian officials said the location was within the 36,000-square-kilometer (14,000-square-mile) area they searched on Saturday, but the object was not found. Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokeswoman Andrea Hayward-Maher said she did not know whether the precise coordinates of the location had been searched, but added that coordinators will use the information to refine the search area.

The authority, which is overseeing the search in the region, said a civil aircraft reported seeing a number of small objects in the search area, including a wooden pallet, but a New Zealand military plane diverted to the location found only clumps of seaweed. The agency said in a statement that searchers would keep trying to determine whether the objects are related to the lost plane.

Despite the frustrating lack of answers, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Sunday suggested the sightings were a positive development.

"Obviously we have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope - no more than hope, no more than hope - that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft," Abbott told reporters in Papua New Guinea.

The latest satellite image is another clue in the baffling search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which dropped off air traffic control screens March 8 over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 people on board.

After about a week of confusion, Malaysian authorities said pings sent by the Boeing 777-200 for several hours after it disappeared indicated that the plane ended up in one of two huge arcs: a northern corridor stretching from Malaysia to Central Asia, or a southern corridor that stretches toward Antarctica.

The discovery of two objects by the Australian satellite led several countries to send planes and ships to a stretch of the Indian Ocean about 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) southwest of Australia. But three days of searching have produced no confirmed signs of the plane.

One of the objects spotted in the earlier satellite imagery was described as 24 meters (almost 80 feet) in length and the other was 5 meters (15 feet).

The Boeing 777-200 is about 64 meters (209 feet) long with a wingspan of 61 meters (199 feet) and a fuselage about 6.2 meters (20 feet) in diameter, according to Boeing's website.

In a statement on its website announcing China's find, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense did not explain why it took four days to release the information. But there was a similar delay in the release of the Australian satellite images because experts needed time to examine them.

Two military planes from China arrived Saturday in Perth and were expected on Sunday to join Australian, New Zealand and U.S. aircraft in the search. Japanese planes will arrive Sunday and ships were in the area or on their way.

Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said the currents in the area typically move at about one meter (yard) per second but can sometimes move faster.

Based on the typical speed, a current could theoretically move a floating object about 173 kilometers (107 miles) in two days.

But even if both satellites detected the same object, it may be unrelated to the plane. One possibility is that it could have fallen off a cargo vessel.

Warren Truss, Australia's acting prime minister while Abbott is abroad, said before the new satellite data was announced that a complete search could take a long time.

"It is a very remote area, but we intend to continue the search until we're absolutely satisfied that further searching would be futile - and that day is not in sight," he said.

"If there's something there to be found, I'm confident that this search effort will locate it," Truss said from the base near Perth that is serving as a staging area for search aircraft.

Aircraft involved in the search include two ultra-long-range commercial jets and four P3 Orions, the maritime safety authority said.

Because the search area is a four-hour flight from land, the Orions can search for about only two hours before they must fly back. The commercial jets can stay for five hours before heading back to the base.

Two merchant ships were in the area, and the HMAS Success, a navy supply ship, had also joined the search.

A small flotilla of ships from China will also join the hunt, along with a refueling vessel that will allow ships to stay in the search area for a long time, Truss said.

Hishammuddin, the Malaysian defense minister, said conditions in the southern corridor were challenging.

The area where the objects were identified by the Australian authorities is marked by strong currents and rough seas, and the ocean depth varies between 1,150 meters (3,770 feet) and 7,000 meters (23,000 feet). In addition, Hishammuddin said a low-level warning had been declared for Tropical Cyclone Gillian, although that was north of Australia and closer to Indonesia.

The missing plane, which had been bound for Beijing, carried 153 Chinese passengers. In the Chinese capital on Saturday, relatives of the passengers rose up in anger at the end of a brief meeting with Malaysia Airlines and Malaysian government officials.

"You can't leave here! We want to know what the reality is!" they shouted in frustration over what they saw as officials' refusal to answer questions. The relatives gave reporters a statement saying they believe they have been "strung along, kept in the dark and lied to by the Malaysian government."

Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanation for what happened to the jet, but have said the evidence so far suggests it was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next.

Police are considering the possibilities of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or anyone else on board.

Malaysia asked the U.S. for undersea surveillance equipment to help in the search, said Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel promised to assess the availability of the technology and its usefulness in the search, Kirby said. The Pentagon says it has spent $2.5 million to operate ships and aircraft in the search and has budgeted another $1.5 million for the efforts.

---

Griffith reported from Perth, Australia. Associated Press writers Todd Pitman and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Kristen Gelineau in Sydney and Didi Tang and Christopher Bodeen in Beijing contributed to this report.

 

Chinese plane spots objects in Indian Ocean

PERTH, Australia (AP) - A Chinese plane on Monday spotted two white, square-shaped objects in an area identified by satellite imagery as containing possible debris from the missing Malaysian airliner, while theUnited States separately prepared to send a specialized device that can locate black boxes.

The crew aboard an IL-76 plane sighted the object in the southern Indian Ocean and reported the coordinates to the Australian command center, which is coordinating the multinational search, as well as the Chinese icebreaker Snow Dragon, which is en route to the area, China's Xinhua News Agency reported.

The spotters saw two larger floating objects and some smaller, white debris scattered over several square kilometers (miles), the report said. It gave no other details.

Satellite images released by Australia and China had earlier identified possible debris in the area that may be linked to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on March 8 with 239 people aboard.

The U.S. Pacific command said it was sending a black box locator in case a debris field is located. The Towed Pinger Locator, which is pulled behind a vessel at slow speeds, has highly sensitive listening capability so that if the wreck site is located, it can hear the black box pinger down to a depth of about 20,000 feet (6,100 meters), Cmdr. Chris Budde, a U.S. Seventh Fleet operations officer, said in a statement.

"This movement is simply a prudent effort to preposition equipment and trained personnel closer to the search area so that if debris is found we will be able to respond as quickly as possible since the battery life of the black box's pinger is limited," Budde said.

The ocean depth in the search area ranges between 1,150 meters (3,770 feet) and 7,000 meters (23,000 feet).

An Australian defense official said an Australian navy support vessel, the Ocean Shield, was also moving into the search zone and would arrive in three or four days. The ship is equipped with acoustic detection equipment that can search for the missing plane's black box.

There was no sign the moves was linked to any breakthrough in the mystery of the plane, but rather as a preparation.

"The time for the battery life (of the pinger) is potentially only a month," said Jason Middleton, aviation professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. "If debris was found, it would be terrible not have anything on site and waste time" getting a ping detector to the region. "I think they're planning ahead and getting it ready."

The Chinese plane was one of two Ilyushins that joined the search Monday from Perth, increasing the number of aircraft to 10 from eight a day earlier.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said the objects spotted Monday were "within today's search area and attempts will be made to relocate them."

Bad weather was threatening the search efforts in the area, about 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology reported increased winds, low cloud and a reduction in visibility. On Tuesday, a cold front was expected to move through the search area from the west, bringing showers, more low cloud and less visibility. Tropical Cyclone Gillian, which is further to the north, will not impact the area.

The search was given added momentum when a French satellite detected potential debris on Sunday, after Australia and China earlier released satellite images identifying suspect objects.

Australian authorities had sent planes and a ship to try to locate a wooden pallet that was spotted on Saturday from a search plane, but the spotters were unable to take photos of it.

Wooden pallets are most commonly used by ships but are also used in airplane cargo holds, and an official with Malaysia Airlines said Sunday night that the flight was, in fact, carrying wooden pallets. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with company policy.

In Paris, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said in an interview with The Associated Press that the satellite radar echoes "identified some debris that could be from the Malaysian Airlines plane."

The spokesman said that these echoes "are not images with a definition like a photograph, but they do allow us to identify the nature of an object and to localize it."

Gathering satellite echo data involves sending a beam of energy to the Earth and then analyzing it when it bounces back, according to Joseph Bermudez Jr., chief analytics officer at AllSource Analysis, a commercial satellite intelligence firm.

Satellite radar echoes can be converted into an image that would look similar to a black-and-white photo, though not as clear, he said. "You'd have to know what you're looking at," Bermudez said.

Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss said the French radar data located the objects about 850 kilometers (520 miles) north of the current search area, and that "we need to check that out as well."

The southern Indian Ocean is thought to be a potential area to find the jet because Malaysian authorities have said pings sent by the Boeing 777-200 for several hours after it disappeared indicated that the plane ended up in one of two huge arcs: a northern corridor stretching from Malaysia to Central Asia, or a southern corridor that stretches toward Antarctica.

Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanation for what happened to the jet, but have said the evidence so far suggests it was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next.

Authorities are considering the possibilities of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or someone else on board.

Malaysia's police chief, Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar reiterated at a news conference Monday that all the passengers had been cleared of suspicion.

But he said that the pilots and crew were still being investigated. He would not comment on whether investigators had recovered the files that were deleted a month earlier from the home flight simulator of the chief pilot.

In the U.S., Tony Blinken, President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, said on CNN: "There is no prevailing theory."

"Publicly or privately, we don't know," he said. "We're chasing down every theory."

 

PASSENGERS

Lives, not numbers: Snapshots of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 passengers

(CNN) -- Amid the void of information on their fates, it seems at times that the passengers and crew of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have been reduced to a number.

Two hundred and thirty-nine.

Yet, as their families and others who love and miss them can attest through their anguish, they are so much more. Hailing from at least a dozen nations, they represent a vast gamut of humanity.

The youngest is 2, the oldest 76. Five passengers haven't seen their fifth birthdays.

They are engineers, an artist and a stunt man, along with Buddhist pilgrims, vacationers and commuters. To those who wait for them, they are fathers, mothers, children, soulmates and the dearest of friends.

Days pass: No word of loved ones

As could be said of any large, random group, they are many things, individuals with 239 unique backgrounds, idiosyncrasies and lives.

Here are a few of their stories:

Moheng Wang, Rui "Rory" Wang and Weiwei "Vivia" Jiao

Two-year-old Moheng was the youngest passenger on the flight. He was traveling with his parents, Rory Wang and Vivia Jiao, both in their early 30s, back to Beijing. The family had been in Malaysia on a vacation.

Just a week before Rory boarded the plane that would go missing, he sent an e-mail to former classmates telling them about the vacation he was taking before returning to Beijing to work on a project. He regularly sends e-mails about his travel experiences and shares photos that he took with the latest cameras, his MBA classmate Saleel Limaye said.

"The pictures he would send in the e-mails were just fantastic pictures," he said.

A friend of Vivia's, Weina Shi, said the two instantly connected when they met.

"She's just so warm, very sweet, so caring, that we just immediately connected and became pretty good friends," she said.

The pair would hang out and shop together as well, Shi said. Vivia was a caring wife, the kind who leaves a note for her husband when she goes out to run errands, she said.

Dai Shuling and Jiao Wenxue

Dai and Jiao are Vivia's parents and the grandparents of Wang Moheng.

They had joined their daughter and son-in-law in Malaysia for vacation.

Both are 58 years old.

Wen Yongsheng

Wen is a 34-year-old businessman.

His father has been one of the family members who has spoken with the media about what the relatives are going through.

"Come back quickly. You have made everyone in the family very nervous," Wen's father says he would like to tell his son. "Everyone in the family is waiting for you to return. He has to come back, everyone on board. He can't come back by himself."

Puspanahtan Subramaniam

The 34-year-old information technology specialist and father was leaving his home to board Flight 370 when his two young children clung to his legs and didn't want him to go. He had to promise them to bring chocolates and presents when he returned from his trip to Beijing, said his father, Gurusami Subramaniam.

"He was responsible for everything, these clothes I'm wearing, even. Whatever country he was in, he would call. Once a week, he would come see us with the whole family. He really took care of us."

Gurusami Subramaniam says he worked 20 years as a security guard to put his only son through college.

Ju Kun

Ju's social media account has been flooded with well-wishers praying for his safe return. Many know the 35-year-old martial arts expert from his stand-ins as a stunt man in films like "The Grandmaster" and "The Forbidden Kingdom." The latter starred genre luminaries Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Ju was slated to begin filming on the Netflix series "Marco Polo" in coming weeks.

Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi wrote on Weibo that Ju "is a sincere, kind and hardworking man," while Netflix said he is "an integral part of our production team and a tremendous talent."

Chandrika Sharma

K.S. Narendran considered going to Kuala Lampur for more information on his wife, but ultimately, he didn't see the point. No information in Chennai, India, is the same as no information in Kuala Lampur, so he'd prefer to be "surrounded by family and friends."

Sharma, the executive secretary of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, was en route to Mongolia for a U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization conference. Narendran says he's received little information from authorities and, like most of the world, has relied on news reports, which "thus far amounted to nothing," he said.

Paul Weeks

Weeks left his wedding ring and watch at home when he took a mining job in Mongolia. The New Zealander instructed his wife, Danica, to pass them on to his two sons "should anything happen."

Danica clutched her husband's wedding ring and fought back tears as she explained to CNN that her husband was aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, en route to Mongolia. She describes him as "the most amazing husband and the most amazing father," who always spends time with his boys. She says the hardest part is the cruel mystery: not knowing what happened to the plane.

"He had strength, character. He's just so much. He's my best friend and my soulmate, and I just can't wait for him to come back. I hope. I hope."

Weeks' brother Paul also called him a best friend.

"He's definitely a leader. He's a leader in the family. He has so many friends, more than you could count. People love Paul. And in general, he's just a wonderful man," he said.

Zaharie Ahmad Shah

Zaharie is the airline captain who was piloting the plane. He is a central figure in the investigation. He is under scrutiny, as investigators searched his home, but nonetheless he is among the missing.

Malaysia's main opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, knows the captain and said "he is against any form of extremism."

The captain attended political meetings and is quite passionate about justice and democracy, Zaharie said.

Some media outlets have reported that the plane's pilot had attended the court hearing for Ibrahim and speculated that the flight's disappearance may have been a political act in response to the verdict.

"But he's known to be a great professional pilot, a great family man, and I don't see him to be in any way controversial or taking any radical stance," Ibrahim said. "And I have great difficulty in understanding why they are casting aspersions against him purely because I'm known to him."

Mohammed Khairul Amri Selamat

The 29-year-old Malaysian civil aviation engineer works for a private jet charter company. Police are investigating all passengers and crew, but he is likely to be of particular interest because of his aviation knowledge. "I am confident that he is not involved," his father said. "They're welcome to investigate me and my family."

Pouria Nourmohammadi and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza

The two Iranians initially came under suspicion because both were traveling on stolen passports, one Austrian and the other Italian. But Interpol says it believes this to be a human trafficking issue.

Nourmohammadi, 18, posted on Facebook on March 4 that he was "feeling excited," along with a picture of him standing in front of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. A few days earlier, he'd checked in at the city's airport with a post saying, "For everyone that said a prayer for me, thank you so much. I am safe and well."

Malaysian police believe Nourmohammadi was trying to emigrate to Germany using the stolen Austrian passport. He and Reza, 29, entered Malaysia on February 28 using valid Iranian passports, Interpol said.

Mohammed Mallaeibasir, an 18-year-old Iranian student who sent CNN iReport a picture of himself with the two men, said he knows Nourmohammadi from high school, having met him a few years ago in Tehran. Nourmohammadi told him his mother lived in Frankfurt, Germany.

He'd met Reza only on the day the pair were flying from Malaysia, Mallaeibasir said. They all went for dinner and then he dropped them off at the airport for the flight, he said.

Gu Naijun and Li Yuan

Gu, 31, uses her Weibo account to keep her oft-traveling husband, Li, 32, apprised of the goings-on of their two "princesses," whether the daughters are swimming, playing on the slide, dressing in frilly costumes or just enjoying a lunch outing, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The Chinese couple fell in love in Sydney and moved to its suburbs. They had recently sold their Sylvania home and were spending most of their time in China, the paper reported. Li, who went by Carlos, is a partner with Beijing Landysoft Technology, where one longtime employee said he and his coworkers were shocked. "He's a good boss, kind, and extremely hard-working,'' the employee said.

Muktesh Mukherjee and Xiaomo Bai

Mukherjee, 42, is vice president of China operations for Xcoal Energy & Resources. He and his wife, Xiaomo Bai, 37, whom broadcaster CTV identified as Canadians who once lived in Montreal, left their two young boys with Bai's mom in Beijing while they went on vacation in Vietnam, according to Bai's Facebook page.

Matthew McConkey, a friend of the couple, said Mukherjee "was very much in love with" Bai, and "as parents, nothing was more important to them than those kids."

Mao Tugui

Hu Xianquan last spoke to her husband, Mao, a painter, March 2 as he was boarding a plane to attend an exhibition for his work. Like Danica Weeks, she finds the dearth of information frustrating, and her grief has morphed to agonizing frustration.

Mohd Sofuan Ibrahim and Ch'ng Mei Ling

Hasif Nazri, 33, was doubly sad upon learning of the plane's disappearance. Not only did he live in the same dorm as 33-year-old Ibrahim during their school days in Malaysia, but Mei Ling, also 33, is another former classmate.

While Nazri acknowledges losing hope as the days drag on, he has fond memories of his old friends. Ibrahim, who posted a Facebook photo before boarding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, was traveling to Beijing to begin work for Malaysia's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. A good student and speaker, Ibrahim is also "a good, kind-hearted friend, very helpful, cheerful and definitely no wallflower," Nazri said.

Nazri remembers Mei Ling, meanwhile, as a funny woman with an infectious laugh. She's a "very cheerful girl." Mei Ling works for Flexsys America LP, an Ohio-based manufacturer of chemicals for the rubber industry, and has lived in Pennsylvania since 2010. She "was very adaptable," Nazri recalled from his days doing coursework with her.

Li Yuchen

Li, 27, is a Ph.D. engineering student at Britain's prestigious Cambridge University, according to the Cambridge News. He recently married Mingfei Ma, the report said, but she was not traveling with him.

"Heartbreaking news this morning -- Yuchen Li (alum) was on the missing Malaysian flight. Our thoughts are with Mingfei Ma, his friends and family," his college is quoted as saying.

Swawand Kolekar

In Mumbai, India, Archit Joshi, 23, desperately sought information on his classmate, Kolekar, whose family in Beijing was also desperate for any information on his whereabouts.

Joshi described Kolekar as "very reserved but very, very intelligent ... a bit of a techno-freak and he made a lot of circuits and projects at engineering college."

"He didn't have many friends -- he was a bit of a loner -- but he had all the attributes a good friend should have."

Li Yan

Li's aunt, Zhang Guizhi, traveled from central China to Beijing and was hoping to obtain a passport to travel to wherever the plane is found. She wasn't sure how to go about the process and began weeping when she explained that Li, 31, had traveled with her husband and four friends to Malaysia for vacation.

Philip Wood

The 51-year-old father of two graduated from Oklahoma Christian University in 1985 with a Bachelor of Science in math and computer science, said school spokeswoman Risa Forrester. On the school's Facebook page, a man wrote that Wood, an IBM executive, is "gentle, kind, had great taste in music and was a wonderful artist."

"His word was gold," his family said in a statement. "Incredibly generous, creative and intelligent, Phil cared about people, his family, and above all, Christ."

Mary and Rodney Burrows

Neighbors Mandy Watt and Don Stoke say the Burrowses are the hard-working parents of three "successful, all happy" adult children: two daughters and a son. Rodney Burrows had planned his trip to China after being laid off last year, the Australian Associated Press reported.

Watt further said of the Middle Park, Australia, couple, "I hate to use the cliche, but they were soulmates."

Catherine and Robert Lawton

The Lawtons, a Springfield Lakes, Australia, couple, in their mid-50s, are passionate travelers, parents to three daughters and doting grandparents, according to the Australian Associated Press.

Robert's brother, David, described him as a "very good father, such a good person." Robert's sister-in-law said the Lawtons had planned their trip with their good friends, the Burrowses. Cathy's last Facebook post before leaving was, "Off to China."

CNN's Jessica King, Catherine E. Shoichet, Atika Shubert, Ray Sanchez, Steven Jiang, Bharati Naik, Mariano Castillo, Laura Smith-Spark, Peter Shadbolt, Dayu Zhang, Serena Dong, Sophie Brown, Anjali Tsui, Euan McKirdy, Piers Morgan and Anderson Cooper contributed to this report.

Passengers

Two-thirds of the 227 passengers were Chinese citizens, including a group of 19 artists with six family members and four staff returning from a calligraphy exhibition of their work in Kuala Lumpur; 38 passengers were Malaysian. The remaining passengers were from 13 different countries. Of the total, 20 were employees of Freescale Semiconductor, a company based in Austin, Texas – 12 were from Malaysia and 8 from China.

Under a 2007 agreement with Malaysia Airlines, Tzu Chi – a foreign Buddhist organisation – immediately sent specially-trained teams to Beijing and Malaysia to give emotional support to passengers' families. The airline also sent its own team of caregivers and volunteers and agreed to bear the expenses of bringing family members of the passengers to Kuala Lumpur and providing them with accommodation, medical care, and counselling. Altogether, 115 family members of the Chinese passengers flew to Kuala Lumpur. Some other family members chose to remain in China, fearing they would feel too isolated in Malaysia. The airline offered an ex gratia condolence payment of US$5,000 to the family of each passenger, but relatives considered the conditions unacceptable and asked the airline to review them.

Crew

All the crew members were Malaysian citizens. The flight's captain was 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah of Penang; he joined MAS in 1981 and had 18,365 hours of flying experience. Zaharie was also an examiner qualified to conduct simulator tests for pilots.

The first officer was 27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid, an employee of MAS since 2007, with 2,763 flying hours. Fariq was transitioning to the Boeing 777-200 after having completed his simulator training.

3-26-14

Malaysia plane crash: Satellite spots 122 objects in ocean that could be plane debris

A dozen planes and five ships are searching an estimated 1.6 million square kilometres in the Indian Ocean.

 

was it suicide?

The captain of the doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was heartbroken after separating from his wife and may have taken the plane on a "last joyride" before crashing it into the Indian Ocean, a friend and fellow pilot told a New Zealand newspaper.

Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was not in the right state of mind to fly the Boeing 777 the day it vanished, due to the devastating breakup of his marriage and relationship problems with a new girlfriend, said the longtime associate who wished to remain anonymous.

He told The New Zealand Herald that Zaharie was "terribly upset" when his wife,
Faiza Khanum Mustafa Khan, told him she was moving out of the family home, and the friend believed he may have decided to take the aircraft to a part of the world he’d never flown in before and fly risky maneuvers. 

"He's one of the finest pilots around, and I'm no medical expert, but with all that was happening in his life, Zaharie was probably in no state of mind to be flying," said the friend. 

His shocking claims came as a French satellite scanning the Indian Ocean for remnants of a missing jetliner found a field of possible plane debris containing 122 objects. 

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the objects were more than 1,550 miles southwest of Australia, in the area where a desperate, multinational hunthas been going on since other satellites detected possible jet debris.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has said that satellite data showed the plane, carrying 239 people, crashed into the southern Indian Ocean on March 8 eight hours after leaving Kuala Lumpur. With nowhere to land, the jet is presumed to have crashed, killing everyone on board. 

The friend told the newspaper that he’d had several conversations with Zaharie after meeting him through work and said the pilot was a fanatic for "the three Fs" — food, family, and flying.

He said Zaharie spent countless hours cooking and using his homemade flight simulator while practicing conditions he could face at the helm of a commercial airliner, such as flying at high or low altitudes. The simulator was seized by authorities, and is being examined by the FBI.

According to reports, the aircraft made a sharp turn soon after the co-pilot had told Malaysian air traffic controllers, "All right, good night." Military radar has since shown that it flew as high as 45,000 feet and as low as 12,000 feet before vanishing and starting a worldwide mystery.

The associate also told the Herald that he believed that somehow the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, other members of the crew, and the passengers may have been prevented from entering the cockpit.

"It is very possible that neither the passengers nor the other crew onboard knew what was happening until it was too late," added the friend.

He also pointed out that the troubled captain may have taken Flight 370 on a joyride while trying high-risk maneuvers he'd perfected on his flight simulator, according to theDaily Mail.

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China ship hears `signal'; unclear if jet-related

 

4-14-14

PERTH, Australia (AP) — Search crews will for the first time send a robotic submarine deep into the Indian Ocean on Monday to try to determine whether underwater signals detected by sound-locating equipment are from the missing Malaysian jet's black boxes, the leader of the search effort said.

The crew on board the Australian navy's Ocean Shield will launch the unmanned underwater vehicle Monday evening, said Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the search off Australia's west coast. The Bluefin 21 autonomous sub can create a three-dimensional sonar map of the area to chart any debris on the seafloor.

The move comes after crews picked up a series of underwater sounds over the past two weeks that were consistent with an aircraft's black boxes, which contain flight data and cockpit voice recordings. The devices have beacons that emit "pings" so they can be more easily found, but the beacons' batteries last only about a month, and it has been more than a month since the plane vanished.

"We haven't had a single detection in six days, so I guess it's time to go under water," Houston said.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised hopes last week when he said authorities were "very confident" the four underwater signals that have been detected are coming from the black boxes on Flight 370, which disappeared March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.

But Houston warned that while the signals are a promising lead, the public needs to be realistic about the challenges facing search crews, who are contending with an extremely remote, deep patch of ocean — an area he dubbed "new to man."

"I would caution you against raising hopes that the deployment of the autonomous underwater vehicle will result in the detection of the aircraft wreckage. It may not," Houston said. "However, this is the best lead we have, and it must be pursued vigorously. Again, I emphasize that this will be a slow and painstaking process."

The Ocean Shield has been dragging a U.S. Navy device called a towed pinger locator through the water to listen for any sounds from the black boxes' beacons. Over the past 10 days, the equipment has picked up four separate signals.

The Bluefin sub takes six times longer to cover the same area as the ping locator, and the two devices can't be used at the same time. Crews were hoping to detect additional signals before sending down the sub, so they could triangulate the source and zero in on where exactly the black boxes may be.

But it has been 38 days since the plane disappeared, and search crews haven't picked up any new sounds since Tuesday, suggesting that the devices' batteries may now be dead. That is why officials will now begin using the Bluefin, Houston said.

The submarine will take 24 hours to complete each mission: two hours to dive to the bottom, 16 hours to search the seafloor, two hours to return to the surface, and four hours to download the data, Houston said. In its first deployment, it will search a 40-square-kilometer (15-square-mile) section of seafloor.

The black boxes could contain the key to unraveling the mystery of what happened to Flight 370 after it disappeared with 239 people on board. Investigators believe the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean based on a flight path calculated from its contacts with a satellite and analysis of its speed and fuel capacity. But they still don't know why.

Meanwhile, officials were investigating an oil slick not far from the area where the underwater sounds were detected, Houston said. Crews have collected a sample of the oil and are sending it back to Australia for analysis, a process that will take several days.

The oil does not appear to be from any of the ships in the area, but Houston cautioned against jumping to conclusions about its source.

A visual search for debris on the ocean surface was continuing on Monday over 47,600 square kilometers (18,400 square miles) of water about 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of the west coast city of Perth. A total of 12 planes and 15 ships would join the two searches.

But Houston said that the visual search operation would be ending in the next two to three days. Officials haven't found a single piece of debris linked to the plane, and Houston said the chances that any would be have "greatly diminished."

"We've got no visual objects," he said. "The only thing we have left at this stage is the four transmissions and an oil slick in the same vicinity, so we will investigate those to their conclusion."

Complicating matters further is the depth of the ocean in the search area. The seafloor is about 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) below the surface, which is the deepest the Bluefin can dive. Officials are looking for other vehicles that could help to retrieve any wreckage, should the Bluefin find any.

Searchers are also contending with a thick layer of silt on the bottom that is tens of meters deep in places, which could hide debris that has sunk.

U.S. Navy Capt. Mark Matthews said the silt may not have hidden everything, however.

"Our experience shows that there will be some debris on top of the silt and you should be able to see indications of a debris field," Matthews said. "But every search is different."

A British vessel, the HMS Echo, has equipment on board that can help to map the seafloor, which is more flat than mountainous, Houston said.

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Associated Press writer Kristen Gelineau in Sydney, and Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, contributed to this report. Follow Margie Mason on Twitter: twitter.com/MargieMasonAP