Wreckage Found Off Coast of Borneo May Be That of Missing Air Asia Flight 8501

Searchers combing the waters between Borneo and Sumatra may have found the wreckage of an Air Asia flight that disappeared off of radar screens abruptly early Sunday morning. Prior to losing contact with Air Traffic Control in Indonesia, Air Asia flight QZ8501 took off from Surabaya on the island of Java enroute to Singapore.

While over the Karimata Strait, the crew requested clearance to change altitude from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet to avoid storm clouds. Permission was denied by Indonesian controllers due to already heavy traffic in the area. Less than 45 minutes into its flight, the Airbus A320 disappeared from screens with 162 people on board and no distress signal sent.

Searchers began scouring the area of QZ88501's last known whereabouts with aircraft and sonar within hours of the flight's disappearance. After nearly 48 hours, searchers believed they had spotted debris from the air and bodies were being recovered from the sea by helicopter and warship. Horrified relatives waiting on news regarding their loved ones were reportedly shown images from Indonesian media of a helicopter crew retrieving a dead body floating from the sea.

By early Wednesday, Indonesian officials said that they had obtained what appeared to be sonar images of an airplane upside down on the sea floor. Meanwhile, Air Asia CEO Tony Fernandes sent out a tweet that confirmed the debris spotted by Indonesian searchers was in fact the remnants of QZ8501.

My heart is filled with sadness for all the families involved in QZ 8501. On behalf of AirAsia my condolences ... http://t.co/OJGobL93cR

— Tony Fernandes (@tonyfernandes) December 30, 2014

The A320 used by the Kuala Lumpur-based airline was reportedly purchased new from Airbus in 2008, According to the passenger manifest, all but 7 of QZ8501's passengers and crew were from Indonesia. Other nationalities on board included South Korea, Malaysia, the UK, Singapore and France.

Air Asia was started in 1993 and is widely considered to be southeast Asia's first viable budget airline.

Malaysian Airliner Shot Down Over Eastern Ukraine

At least 298 people are dead after a surface to air missile brought down a Kuala Lumpur-bound Malaysian Airlines flight over Eastern Ukraine on Thursday. The flight- Malaysia Airlines Flight 17- had originated in Amsterdam and was flying more than 32,000 feet over the strife-torn Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

In recent weeks, that part of the Ukraine has seen fighting between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatist militias that are essentially Kremlin proxies along Ukraine's border with Russia. Earlier in the week, separatists boasted that they had shot down a Ukrainian military An-26 transport plane over the eastern city of Lugansk.

After the Ukrainian 'Maidan' uprising ousted Kremlin allied president Viktor Yanukovych earlier this year, Russia responded by annexing the strategically important Crimea peninsula- part of the Ukraine, but home to a number of strategic Russian naval facilities. After a hastily put together 'referendum' in which Moscow claimed the populace of the Crimea wanted to become part of Russia, masked fighters claiming to be pro-Russian separatists began seizing public buildings in key cities in the eastern Ukraine. However, it's widely believed these 'separatists' are acting on direct orders from the Kremlin. In May, shortly after candy tycoon Petro Poroshenko won a special election called after Yanukovych fled the country, the Ukrainian military launched a series of counterattacks culminating in a raid on Donetsk's international airport in late May that killed dozens of pro-Russian separatists who were using the buildings as headquarters.

The 'rebels' retaliated by shooting down Ukrainian military aircraft over eastern Ukraine- the deadliest of which was when a Ukrainian Defense Ministry Il-76 transport was shot down while on approach over the eastern city of Lugansk on June 14th, killing all 49 on board. Just days prior to the downing of Flight MH17, two Ukrainian military aircraft were shot down over the restive eastern part of the country.

An hour before news broke of Flight MH17 going down, pro Russian separatist leader Igor Strelkov boasted of shooting down an aircraft on Russian social media site Vkontakte [similar to Facebook- NANESB!] complete with the ominous line 'We warned them not to fly in our skies'. Although it was quickly deleted after news of MH17 being shot down broke internationally, several online observers were able to obtain screencaps of the damning message. In addition to the Russian government caught editing the Wikipedia entry on Flight MH17 on Friday, Ukraine's SBU intelligence agency released what they claim is a telephone conversation between separatist commanders and Russian officers, with the separatists notifying them they had just shot down a civilian airliner.

It appears to capture the chaotic moments after the plane was shot down — and the realization that it was a passenger plane rather than a Ukrainian transport plane, which had been targeted in recent days by the Russia-backed separatists.

"We have just shot down a plane," says a man the SBU identified as Igor Bezler, a Russian military intelligence officer and leading commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.

That call came just 20 minutes after the crash and was placed to a person identified by Ukraine’s SBU as a colonel in the main intelligence department of the general headquarters of the armed forces of the Russian Federation Vasili Geranin, according to Ukraine security officials.

But in a second tape released by the agency, two men identified as "The Greek" and "Major" discuss the debris field and the fact the the plane was a civilian aircraft.


“It’s 100 percent a passenger [civilian] aircraft,” Major is recorded as saying, as he admitted to seeing no weapons on site. “Absolutely nothing. Civilian items, medicinal stuff, towels, toilet paper.”

The Boeing 777 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down by what U.S. intelligence sources confirm was a surface-to-air missile near the village of Chornukhine, Luhansk Oblast, some 30 miles inside the the border with Russia.

The second conversation, if verified as authentic, could dispel Russian separatist claims that it was the Ukrainian military that shot the plane down. According to the transpcript:

Major: "These are Chernukhin folks who shot down the plane. From the Chernukhin check point. Those cossacks who are based in Chernukhino."

Grek: "Yes, Major."

Major: "The plane fell apart in the air. In the area of Petropavlovskaya mine. The first '200' [code word for dead person]. We have found the first '200.' A Civilian."

Greek: "Well, what do you have there?"

Major: "In short, it was 100 percent a passenger [civilian] aircraft."

Greek: "Are many people there?"

Major: "Holy [expletive]! The debris fell right into the yards [of homes]."

In a third intercepted conversation released by the SBU — which the agency says took place about 40 minutes after insurgents seemed to realize they had shot down a civilian plane — Cossack commander Nikolay Kozitsin tells an unidentified separatist that the fact the Malaysia Airlines plane was flying over the combat zone likely meant it was carrying spies.

"That means they were carrying spies," Kozitsin allegedly says. "They shouldn’t be [expletive] flying. There is a war going on."

At this point, the most likely scenario is that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by pro-Russian separatists who misidentified the aircraft as a Ukrainian ministry of Defense transport plane and opened fire with a surface to air missile system known as the 'Buk' SA-11 or an updated variant. The 'Buk' is a complex, crew serviced weapons platform that is mounted on a tracked or wheeled vehicle. Both Russia and the Ukraine militaries have the SA-11 Buk in their inventory, but pro-Russian separatists from the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic boasted of seizing heavy weapons- including an SA-11 launcher- from a Ukrainian air defense facility in late June. On Friday, the Ukrainian government released a brief video of a Buk missile system with at least one missile missing on a flatbed trailer purportedly heading towards Russian territory. For its part, Russia has lobbed accusations that Kiev downed the airliner [a civilian aircraft that was within moments of leaving it's airspace at an altitude of 32,000 feet, no less- NANESB], prompting one English-language RT correspondent to abruptly resign.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the flight data recorder for MH17 is almost certainly in territory controlled by the pro-Russian Donetsk militia. Should it be recovered and sent to Moscow, international aviation experts claim it will most likely be doctored and anything that incriminates Russia or their proxies in Donetsk will be removed. There is also the likelihood that MH17's descent was so abrupt and catastrophic that they black box flight recorders may yield little in the way of data. Even so, heavily armed militiamen had prevented international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe from examining the crash scene on Friday. 193 of Flight MH17's passengers were Dutch- including an American who held dual citizenship with Holland and 22 schoolchildren from the town of Roosendaal, and amid reports of militiamen compromising the crash site, pickpocketing the scattered bodies and dumping dozens of bodies from the crash site by the side of a road, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said Putin has one 'last chance' to show he's serious about helping recover the bodies and personal effects

Despite the ongoing conflict on the ground, the skies above the eastern Ukraine weren't off-limits to commercial airliners. According to online aviation tracking website FlightAware.com, other commercial carriers such as Lufthansa and Air India were routinely flying through eastern Ukraine airspace prior to the downing of Flight MH17.

Search for Missing Malaysian Jetliner Focuses on Southern Indian Ocean

Searchers attempting to track down Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are focusing their efforts on a remote stretch of the Indian Ocean thousands of miles off the coast of Western Australia ever since satellite imagery showed what appeared to be large metal debris churning on the ocean's surface.



Vessels and aircraft from Australia, China and the UK are combing the seas some 2000 km off the coast of Perth, WA are reportedly tracking down the most promising lead on the missing airliner since the Malaysia Airlines 777 vanished from radar tracking a month ago. Over the weekend, searchers have confirmed they've detected an unidentified 'Ping' that is reportedly consistent with a plane's black box.

Angus Houston, who is coordinating the multinational search, said an Australian navy ship had detected two sets of pulse signals which sounded "just like an emergency locator beacon". The development was, he said, a "promising lead".

The first set was heard on Saturday and lasted for two hours and twenty minutes. The Ocean Shield ship then lost contact with the "pings" but turned around and later heard further signals for 13 minutes. It has since lost contact again and was last night trying to relocate the signals.

Significantly, Mr Houston said, the second set included two distinct sounds which would be consistent with transmissions from separate pingers attached to the black box's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.

The new signals are not believed to be related to those detected by a Chinese ship about 345 miles to the south.

Adding to the urgency of the search, the black box pinger has passed the 30 day point at which its battery life is expected to end – though it could last a further two weeks. The aircraft and its 239 people on board disappeared on March 8.

"We're already one day past the advertised shelf life," said Mr Houston. "We hope that it keeps going for a little bit longer."

Mr Houston said it would probably take days to confirm whether the plane has been found and a potential recovery of the aircraft would take a "long time", possibly months.

"What I'd like to see now is us find some wreckage because that will basically help solve the mystery."

Mr Houston said the area in the Indian Ocean where the plane is believed to be located is 14,800 feet deep. An underwater autonomous vehicle will be dispatched to comb the ocean bed for possible wreckage but its depth limit is also 14,800 feet.

Relatives of some of the passengers as well as investigators have been critical of Malaysia's handling of the missing airliner with officials alternately withholding information from searchers or issuing contradictory statements. Recently, one Malaysian official speaking on the condition of anonymity speculated that the aircraft may have deliberately avoided Indonesian airspace after Indonesian military officials told him the missing airliner was never detected on Indonesia's military or civilian radar.

Ten Days Later, Still No Answers on Whereabouts of Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370

More than ten days after a Malaysian Airlines 777-200 vanished from radar, investigators are no closer to finding the missing airliner than they were the weekend Kuala Lumpur to Beijing Flight MH370 disappeared. Apparently the first three days were spent looking for signs of the downed airliner in the wrong ocean, as both the Malaysian and Thai military radar tracked an unidentified aircraft on a westward trajectory across the Malay peninsula shortly after air traffic controllers in Malaysia and Vietnam had lost track of MH370.

Since the March 8th disappearance, every new development has seemingly been a false lead or raised more questions than answers. Theoretically the aircraft could be on the bottom of the Indian Ocean or at a remote landing strip anywhere between Kazakhstan and the Australian Outback, but there have been no signs of the missing flight since March 8th. My pet theory about the plane being hijacked or intentionally crashed by Islamists working on behalf of Uighurs in western China seems to be not farfetched enough.


However, searchers were erroneously directed to a debris field in the South China Sea after media reports began circulating that a Chinese satellite had snapped images of what appeared to be wreckage and debris on the water- presumably from MH370. Investigators are now convinced that the missing flight banked left and continued westward in an erratic pattern long after the transponder was disabled, heading in the direction of India's remote Nicobar Islands when it was last tracked by radar. According to avionics data that was sent to the engine's manufacturer via satellite, the missing airliner was aloft for at least another four hours. However, the signals sent via satellite could not be used to pinpoint the aircraft's exact location.

Over the weekend, Malaysian officials ruled that Flight MH370's disappearance was due to a deliberate act and was treating the disappearance as a hijacking. Aviation officials believe that the aircraft flew as high as 45,000 feet- beyond the manufacturer's recommended cruising altitude- and at times as low as 4900 feet once it pivoted west.

Villagers along Malaysia's eastern coast reported to local police that they had heard what sounded like a low-flying jet the same night MH370 went missing. Authorities in the Maldives are also investigating a report that fishermen on the southern island of Kuda Huvadhoo saw a white 'jumbo jet' with red stripes flying overhead at a low altitude shortly after dawn- colors consistent with the Malaysia Airlines paint scheme.

Currently, 26 nations- including the USA- are involved in the search for the missing airliner. More than 150 of the 239 passengers and crew on board the vanished airliner were from China and that country has undertaken a search of their western territories in the event that MH370 resumed a northbound trajectory after vanishing.

Investigators are also looking at both the pilot and co-pilot. Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had more than 30 years flight experience and had built a home-made flight simulator at his suburban Kuala Lumpur residence. On Monday, police raided Shah's residence and were combing through the flight simulator for any possible clues. Shortly after the plane's disappearance, an Australian TV report claimed that MH370's co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, had allowed an Australian woman and her friend into the cockpit during a December 2011 flight from Phuket, Thailand to Kuala Lumpur, representing a major security breach.

China-Bound Malaysia Airlines Flight Goes Missing- All 239 On Board Feared Dead

A Boeing 777 carrying passengers from Kuala Lumpur to Bejing vanished while flying off the southern tip of Vietnam and has triggered a frantic search effort in international waters to find any trace of the aircraft. Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was last detected by Vietnamese air traffic controllers some 125 nautical miles southwest off the coast of southernmost Ca Mau province.

The plane was a Boeing 777-200- the average age of such aircraft in Malaysia's fleet is just over 14 years. Both Malaysia Airlines and the Boeing have a pretty good safety record- the only fatal accident involving a 777 was in July 2013 at San Francisco International Airport when an Asiana flight crash-landed and three people were killed. Malaysia Airlines hasn't had a fatal accident since a 1995 plane crash in the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah where 34 people were killed after a Fokker 50 crashed on approach.

More ominously, Malaysian officials have begun examining a potential terrorism angle in MH370's disappearance.

Malaysia’s director general of civil aviation told a news conference Saturday night that authorities had reviewed closed-circuit TV footage of passengers and their luggage and hadn’t seen anything of concern. But Prime Minister Najib Razak cautioned that it was "too early" to come to any conclusions, and other officials said nothing was being ruled out of consideration at this point.

At least two of the passengers listed on MH370's manifest boarded using stolen passports from Austria and Italy.

One passenger was traveling with a stolen Austrian passport, Austria's Foreign Ministry said Saturday. A 30-year-old Austrian whose name was on the passenger list for the flight wasn't on board. His passport was stolen in Thailand in 2012, a ministry spokesman said, confirming a report in German newspaper Die Welt.

Another passenger on the list, Italian Luigi Maraldi, was also not on the plane, Italy's Foreign Ministry said Saturday. Mr. Maraldi's passport was stolen in Thailand a year and a half ago, his father said.

Malaysia Airlines had no confirmation from Malaysian authorities that stolen passports were used to board the flight, said Ignatius Ong, a member of the airline's crisis-management team. One European security official said it wasn't uncommon for passengers to board flights using stolen passports.

At least 153 passengers on Flight MH370 are Chinese nationals. The flight went missing less than a week after 29 people were killed in a mass stabbing by knife wielding assailants at a train station in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming. Local police shot dead five of the suspected assailants and Chinese officials called the attack a well-organized 'premeditated, violent terrorist attack'- although the state-run media didn't identify the assailants and some social-media accounts of the attack were censored.

On late Saturday afternoon, the Vietnamese Air Force reported that an oil slick between six and nine miles long had been spotted off the southern coast. While there was no independent confirmation that the slick was that of flight MH370, it is consistent with an airliner crashing at sea. Malaysian civil aviation officials said that there was no distress signal or other signs of trouble from the flight, leading them to believe that whatever had happened to flight MH370 was quick and catastrophic.

The USS Pinckney and a P3-C Orion aircraft have also been searching for signs of the aircraft and naval assets from Singapore, Philippines and China have also been deployed.

UPDATE 3/9- According to a Malaysia Airlines spokesperson, the tickets for the two unidentified people travelling on the stolen EU passports had consecutive numbers, indicating the tickets were booked together. The tickets were also paid for using Thai Baht and booked through the China Southern Airlines website. The Italian passport was reported stolen in the Thai city of Phuket last year. China Southern [NYSE: ZNH] is a code-share partner with Malaysia Airlines, among others.

Happy Valentine's Day From 'Not Another New England Sports Blog!

Wouldn't you know it? Valentine's Day is upon us once again upon us. And while some of us aren't sold on it as a holiday, more than enough couples take this opportunity to lavish that special someone with gifts like roses, chocolates, jewelry, a trip to the spa or even naming a roach after their sweetie.

Granted I'm somewhat cynical about Valentine's Day, but apparently nowhere near as cynical as the Malaysian government.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Malaysian Muslims debated Sunday whether to shun Valentine's Day after the government warned that the celebration was a "trap" that could trigger indecent behavior.

Although no laws prevent Malaysia's Muslim majority from marking the occasion with dinner dates and roses, officials have mounted a campaign insisting that such romantic gestures might tempt young people into having premarital sex.

Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said late Saturday that the government was not trying to demean Valentine's Day, but stressed that it was "not suitable" for Muslims, who comprise nearly two-thirds of Malaysia's 28 million people

In recent years, authorities have sometimes searched hotel rooms on the night of Feb. 14 to catch Muslim couples having premarital sex. According to Malaysia's Islamic Shariah laws, unmarried Muslims who meet in private can be charged with "khalwat," or "close proximity," which carries fines and prison sentences of several months.

Hmm- I choose to be a cynic when it comes to this particular holiday. Elsewhere in the world, I guess governments take it upon themselves to decide for the people. Guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

This vintage cutie shown above (appropriately enough from a 1958 Al Buell work titled Real Cute) decked out in red and clasping a rose seems to have no such compunctions that the Malaysians do.