MAS370/MH370.

[Lyndon Teng]

On a more sombre note...

I expect many of us may have heard by now, but it is probably worth mentioning here.

My thoughts and prayers are with the friends and relatives of those on MAS370, and I'll keep my fingers crossed for any new developments.

Here is an article, along with MAS' current (0200z) official statement.

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Saturday, March 08, 07:30 AM MYT +0800 Media Statement - MH370 Incident released at 7.24am

Sepang, 8 March 2014: Malaysia Airlines confirms that flight MH370 has lost contact with Subang Air Traffic Control at 2.40am, today (8 March 2014).

Flight MH370, operated on the B777-200 aircraft, departed Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am on 8 March 2014. MH370 was expected to land in Beijing at 6.30am the same day. The flight was carrying a total number of 227 passengers (including 2 infants), 12 crew members.

Malaysia Airlines is currently working with the authorities who have activated their Search and Rescue team to locate the aircraft.

The airline will provide regular updates on the situation. Meanwhile, the public may contact +603 7884 1234 for further info.

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[Rafal Zielinski]

Hi

They confirmed that it has crashed 2 hours after takeoff on the sea near Vietnam .

 

[Zeljko Budovic]

For now, it's confirmed that is 777-200 with 227 people on board. ATC lost contact with them and search and rescue teams are looking for the plane

 

[Szymon Kurzacz]

For now only confirmed thing is that this plane is missing. They and we do not know if it desintegrated on high altitude (FL350), ditched or even landed or crash-landed somwhere.

ATC lost contact when transponder was "turned off" around FL350, after that they had no other radar or radio contact with plane (report of pilot of 30minutes ahead flying liner is dismissed [not true]).

At the moment they do not have any thing they can confirm as wreckage.

Vietnamese report regarding a floating door is verified as not related to 9M-MRO.

Search radius was 50 NM from last point of contact has been conducted/complete.d

The search North of Malacca straights was done because of the chance the plane may have begun to turn, no other reason.

40 ships searching 24hours per day and 34 aircraft 7am to 7pm. Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, China, Malaysia, Philippines Thailand USA involved in search.

FAA arrived this morning (10th march).

All bags on the flight were X-rayed

Offered to fly 5 next of kin from each passenger to KL.

They are looking at all angles.

No signals detected from the aircraft after the initial lost contact.

Oil slick amples sent to lab. Results are found that's oil from ship not airplane.

Report of a tail was found to be logs tied together on a pontoon.

Orange object found and identified as possible life-raft from airplane is also not related to 9M-MRO

They are puzzled and perplexed.

They are 3 reports of ground witnesses that potentialy saw low-flying airplane near Thai-Malaysia border, one is inaccurate and discarded, oother two are not confirmed.

US make fast sattelite image archives search in terms of in-air explosion in that area and found nothing.

One of relatives told, that they managed to call into mobile of one of passengers, but nobody answered.

'Hong Kong's Air Traffic Control Center reported on Mar 10th 2014 around 17:30L (09:30Z) that an airliner enroute on airway L642 reported via HF radio that they saw a large field of debris at position N9.72 E107.42 about 80nm southeast of Ho Chi Minh City, about 50nm off the south-eastern coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea and about 281nm northeast of the last known radar position. Ships have been dispatched to the reported debris field.'

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[Szymon Kurzacz]

You can also help in search...

Actual links to site with maps are available in article linked below.

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DENVER – As the mystery of what happened to the 239 people on board Malaysia flight 370 deepens, a Colorado satellite imaging company is launching an effort to crowdsource the search, asking the public for help analyzing high-resolution images for any sign of the missing airliner.

Longmont, Colo.-based DigitalGlobe trained cameras from its five orbiting satellites Saturday on the Gulf of Thailand region where Malaysia flight 370 was last heard from, said Luke Barrington, senior manager of Geospatial Big Data for DigitalGlobe.

The images being gathered will be made available for free to the public on a website called Tomnod. Anyone can click on the link and begin searching the images, tagging anything that looks suspicious. Each pixel on a computer screen represents half a meter on the ocean’s surface, Barrington told ABC News.

“For people who aren’t able to drive a boat through the Pacific Ocean to get to the Malaysian peninsula, or who can’t fly airplanes to look there, this is a way that they can contribute and try to help out,” Barrington said.

DigitalGlobe will use a computer algorithm to determine whether users start tagging certain regions more than others. In-house satellite imaging experts will follow up on leads, Barrington said.
“We’ll say, ‘Here are our top ten suspicious or interesting locations,’” Barrington said. “Is it really an aircraft wing that’s been chopped in half or is this some other debris floating on the ocean? We may not be 100 percent sure, but if this is where I had to go pick a location to go looking for needles in this big haystack, this is where I’d start.”

The company runs a fee-based First Look Event Service that can compare before-and-after images for clients. In the past month, the company activated the service to observe wildfires in Australia, violence in Ukraine and the aftermath of ice storms in Atlanta, Ga.

In November, the company launched a similar crowdsourcing campaign after Typhoon Haiyan devastated Southeast Asia. The company says users placed more than 400,000 tags, identifying 38,000 damaged buildings and 101,000 damaged homes.