· No sign of MH370 at China site
· Missing plane flew on for hours
Almost a week after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared, the world remains baffled by the loss of an aircraft carrying 239 people.
On Thursday, reports of wreckage spotted days earlier by Chinese satellite kindled hopes of a breakthrough. But it was another false lead, with Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, reporting no signs of the missing jet had been found at the location.
It was the latest instance of a possible breakthrough that fell short of a result.
Reeling from a storm of criticism about its handling of the crisis, Malaysia also sent an aircraft to investigate the reported sighting in the South China Sea, pledging to pursue all “concrete clues”, but again the efforts revealed no clues on the whereabouts of the Boeing 777.
“Nil sighting,” the Malaysian air force’s director-general of operations, Affendi Buang, said.
The search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 – which entered a sixth day on Thursday – has been blighted by false alarms, swirling rumours and contradictory statements about its fate.
“Every day it just seems like it’s an eternity,” Danica Weeks, whose husband Paul was on board, told CNN from their home in the Australian city of Perth.
Fighting back tears, she described how Paul had left his wedding ring and watch with her for safekeeping before starting his journey to a mining venture in Mongolia.
Late on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published a report suggesting the plane may have flown on for four hours after its last confirmed contact, suggesting someone may have intentionally turned off the aircraft’s transponders to avoid radar detection and diverted to another location entirely.
However, Malaysian transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein has denied those reports, saying the last transmission from the aircraft was at 1:07am, and that it indicated everything was operating normally.
“Those reports are inaccurate,” he said.
To help make sense of the latest developments, The New Daily has created a timeline of events in the search for the missing plane, which continues to puzzle the globe.
Saturday, 8 March, 3:41 AM
3.15am: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 takes off in good weather from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA).
The Boeing 777-200 was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew on board, with an expected trip length of roughly 4350 kilometers.
4:30am: Air traffic controllers in Subang (outside Kuala Lumpur) lose contact with the plane 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu. Saturday, 8 March,
7:13pm: Malaysia Airlines confirms the worst on Twitter – that Flight MH370 is lost.
MEDIA STATEMENT released at 7.24am/8 Mar 2014 – MH370 Incident – http://t.co/z8YfOEPlja
— Malaysia Airlines (@MAS) March 8, 2014
9:30am: Flight MH370 was scheduled to arrive at Beijing Capital International Airport at this time.
10.00am: An international search and rescue team from Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam is mobilised.
Around 3pm: Vietnam confirms the plane went missing while in its airspace. Reports that the plane’s signal had been picked up are denied.
5:30pm: Malaysia Airlines says it is in the process of calling family members of passengers to keep them updated on the situation.
7:20pm: The plane’s last known position before it disappeared from radar is confirmed as 065515 North and 1033443 East.
10:20pm: Malaysia Airlines releases passenger list, revealing the nationalities of the missing: 154 people from China and Taiwan, 38 from Malaysia, seven from Indonesia, five from India, six from Australia, and three from the USA, amongst others.
5:24pm: Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade releases a statement saying it “fears the worst”.
Sunday, 9 March
12am: Two large oil slicks (pictured right) are spotted in the ocean by Vietnamese air force planes, and thought to be linked to MH370.
4am: The terror attack theory surfaces as two “missing” passengers, an Italian and an Austrian, reveal that their passports were stolen last year in Thailand.
10am: FBI sends agents to Malaysia to investigate the terror angle.
2:40pm: The sister of a missing Chinese man calls his mobile phone and hears a ringtone, sparking speculation that the plane may not have crashed into the ocean. Later, experts clarified that a ringtone doesn’t indicate that mobiles are reachable.
5.00pm: Malaysia’s aviation chief says that investigators are examining airport CCTV footage of two passengers with stolen passports who boarded the plane.
5:15pm: Authorities confirm the search area has been widened after information suggesting the plan could have turned back before disappearing is released. Malaysia’s air force chief says that the flight may have turned back.
Monday, 10 March
12pm: Malaysian share market opens, with shares in Malaysia Airlines falling as much as 20 per cent during morning trading.
1:00pm: Malaysia Airlines confirms that search and rescue teams from Australia, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines and the USA “have come forward to assist”.
Soldiers from The Philippines examine maps. Photo: AAP
3.15pm: Authorities double the search radius to 100 nautical miles (equivalent to 185 kilometres) around the point where MH370 disappeared from radar. Malaysia sends ships to investigate the possible sighting of a yellow life raft, but a Vietnamese vessel that gets there first finds only moss-covered rubbish.
12am: China deploys 10 orbiting satellites to scour the ocean for signs of debris.
Tuesday, 11 March
2:15am: Oil slick is debunked by Malaysia Airlines. Chemical analysis disproves any link between oil found at sea and flight MH370.
9.00am: Interpol identifies two Iranian men as the passengers travelling on stolen passports as Pouria Nourmohammadi, 18, and Seyed Mohammed Reza Delavar, 29.
3.00pm: China Airlines reveals that a terror threat was made against the Beijing Capital International Airport days prior to the disappearance of flight MH370.
8.29pm: Heightening fears of a terror link, Malaysia Airlines clarifies that four passengers failed to show up for check-in on flight MH370. Their baggage was never loaded onto the plan.
Wednesday, 12 March
2:30am: Malaysia Airlines responds to allegations that First Officer Fariq Ab Hamid had in the past invited two South African women into the cockpit, and was seen smoking during previous flights. It says it is “shocked” by the allegations and takes them “very seriously”, but cannot confirm validity.
9:24am: New Zealand man Mike McKay, working on an oil rig of the coast of Vietnam, sends email to Vietnamese authorities saying that he “saw the Malaysian Airlines plane come down” and that it was “burning”.
Oil rig worker claims in employer confirmed letter-he saw the plane go down. Vietnamese say they found nothing @ABC pic.twitter.com/k8y02se9aZ
— Bob Woodruff (@BobWoodruff) March 12, 2014
6.00pm: China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence releases satellite images of three objects floating in the South China Sea along the plane’s intended route. The images were snapped on 9 March, a day after the flight disappeared. The delayed release of the images is reportedly due to a lack of staff. The pieces measure 13m x 18m, 14m x 19m and 24m x 22m.
6:47pm: Agence France-Presse tweets infographic showing the area of debris spotted by Chinese satellites.
#INFOGRAPHIC Map showing the area of debris spotted by Chinese satellites in the search for missing MH370 @AFP http://t.co/176jxzti2O
— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) March 13, 2014
Thursday, 13 March
10am: The Malaysian air force is sent to investigate area where new satellite images were taken.
1.00pm: Vietnamese authorities say they already searched the area where the Chinese satellites photographed possible debris, but will search there again.
1:30pm: Commercial director of Malaysia Airlines, Hugh Dunleavy, defends the pilot of MH370 as “a very seasoned pilot… who has a track record of excellent service”. “There have been no indications as far as we are aware that there was anything untoward in either his behaviour or attitude,” he says.
2.00pm: Chinese premier Li Keqiang tells press conference that “as long as there is a glimmer of hope we will not stop searching.”
5.00pm: Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, says planes searching the location of the China debris found “nothing”, again dashing hopes of a breakthrough.
Monday, 7 April
The last day of the 30-day optimum window to find the black box of flight MH370.
