Missing Malaysia Airlines flight may have skirted Indonesian airspace, says Malaysian official

[Omaha Steve]

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Nick Perry

Perth: The search for the missing Flight MH370 took another unlikely turn on Sunday with a Malaysian government source revealing the plane avoided Indonesian airspace after leaving Malaysia.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media, said Indonesian authorities confirmed that the plane did not show up on their military radar. The plane could have deliberately flown around Indonesian airspace to avoid detection, or may have coincidentally travelled out of radar range, he said.

The revelation came as searchers hunting for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet raced toward a patch of the southern Indian Ocean to determine whether a few brief sounds picked up by underwater equipment came from the plane's black boxes, whose battery-powered pingers are on the verge of dying out.

Ships scouring a remote stretch of water for the plane that vanished nearly a month ago detected three separate sounds over three days. A Chinese ship picked up an electronic pulsing signal on Friday and again on Saturday, and an Australian ship carrying sophisticated deep-sea acoustic equipment detected a signal in a different area on Sunday, the head of the multinational search said.

FULL story and video at link.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-may-have-skirted-indonesian-airspace-says-malaysian-official-20140407-zqrmw.html

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[JI7]

1. and wouldn't something like this add to it being intentional

[customerserviceguy]

4. It's either intentional

Or one of the safest aircraft ever developed managed to have such a complete catastrophic failure that no one on the plane was able to make any kind of call for help for many hours after that problem developed.

I'm going with "intentional".

[LuckyLib]

2. Between China and Malaysia both trying to save face, this has turned into a

mess of incompetence. No doubt resulting in a failure to ever locate that airplane in the ocean.

[groundloop]

3. This is totally not news

From the story "The plane could have deliberately flown around Indonesian airspace to avoid detection, or may have coincidentally travelled out of radar range, he said."

In other words, maybe if didn't go into Indonesian airspace on purpose, or maybe not.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. 'Unlikely'? 'Revelation'? I thought everyone was already assuming this

The plane was last seen on radar heading north west from the Malacca Strait (ie past the north west tip of Sumatra), and it eventually ended up south of Sumatra. Surely no-one thought Indonesia had been sitting on radar sightings for weeks?

[rafeh1]

6. dont think plane flew around indonesian radar

more likely Indonesian radar has holes or operators were drunk and sleeping. so they came up with story to claim flew around their radar. The MIC in third world is just as dominant as here if not more so.

[maddezmom]

7. Agree and even CNN is now doing a segment on this issue

CNN has been awful on this story.

[defacto7]

8. Again, another

..."official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media" sticks his/her head out and sings the same tune trying to make it into a hijack or pilot issue to steer away from their own responsibility. It's getting old and trite. I'm getting skeptical.