MH370

SATURDAY, 8 MARCH 2014

-          MH370 Departure From KLIA to Beijing China

-          The aircraft disappeared from the DCA’s radar at 1.30 am about 120 nautical miles east off Kota Baharu, Kelantan

-          A search and rescue operation (SAR) for the missing plane was launched at 5.30 am involving 15 Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) aircraft, including four Hercules C130, a CN 235, four EC 725 and two Augusta helicopters, and nine ships, namely six from the Royal Malaysian Navy and three from the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA).

-          MAS group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya confirmed the disappearance of the aircraft at 7.30 am. The passengers were made up of 38 Malaysians, Chinese (153), Indonesians (12), Australians (7), French (three), Americans (three), New Zealanders (two), Ukrainians (two), Canadians (two), Russia (one), Italian (one), Taiwanese (one), Dutch (one), and Austrian (one).

-          Prime Minister Datuk Seri NajibTunRazak and Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin visited family members of those on board the plane.

SUNDAY, 9 MARCH 2014

·         Malaysia received assistance from China, Thailand, Vietnam, the United States, Australia, Indonesia and Singapore for the sea and aerial search. The operation was beefed up by 34 aircraft and 40 ships.

·          Armed Forces chief Tan Sri Zulkifeli Mohd Zin said the search area was extended from the South China Sea to the Straits of Melaka.

·         DCA director-general Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman confirmed that two passengers boarded the aircraft with fake passports under the guise of an Italian and an Austrian who had reported that their passports had been stolen.

·         MMEA sent samples of an oil slick found in the South China Sea, some 100 nautical miles off Tok Bali, Kota Baharu, Kelantan to the Chemistry Department for analysis.

MONDAY, 10 MARCH 2014

§  Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the government had accepted New Zealand Prime Minister John Key’s offer of a P-3C Orion aircraft that specialises in maritime surveillance to be used in the search-and-rescue operation.

§   MMEA confirmed that an oil slick found off Tok Bali, Kota Baharu was bunker oil used by ships, not aircraft.

§   Meteorological Department National Weather Centre meteorological officer Khairul Najib Ibrahim said there were no noticeable changes in the weather over the area where the plane was reported missing.

WEDNESDAY, 12 MARCH 2014

ü  MH370 Aircraft Operations Expanded Search From 120 to 200 Nautical Miles Nautical Miles

THURSDAY, 13 MARCH 2014

 o   China Satellite Successfully Detects 3 Business Objects Found In Waters Still Standing MH370 Aircraft Delivered To Fail After Location About

FRIDAY, 14 MARCH 2014

-  A resource of the United States Report MH370 Aircraft Probably Are On The Indian Ocean

ISSUE OF MH370

       In a region often fraught with tensions over territory and shifting power, the sight of 13 countries co-operating for a common goal is rare and welcome. Yet questions over the use and sharing of information during the hunt for MH370 have revealed the continuing suspicions between them.

The extraordinary revelation that US investigators believe the plane could have flown for up to five hours emerged only via a Wall Street Journal article based on unnamed sources. In public, officials are saying little. How much they are disclosing to Malaysia– and to China, which had more than 200 passengers aboard the flight – is unclear.

      China is deeply suspicious of the US role in the region. Some wondered if the reports on the US findings, with their unnamed sources, were designed to allow the US to avoid explaining too much about its technical knowhow.

Others suggested it might be, rather, an issue of discretion: "There's no sense reminding everyone – especially China – how much better you are at this than everyone else," said James Manicom, a research fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Canada. "Better to be modest and constructive than turn up and remind everyone how overwhelming your technical and military advantages are."

       Elsewhere, patience appears to be fraying as the days go by. China, under pressure to show it can protect its citizens overseas, has repeatedly urged Malaysia "to report what they have … in an accurate and timely fashion".

       Malaysia has criticized China for releasing satellite images which it had not passed to Kuala Lumpur. Vietnam at one stage scaled back its search, complaining of insufficient information. Malaysia reportedly chided Vietnam for announcing possible discoveries of debris prematurely.

"We should be cheered by the intentions they have of working together [but] their ability to work together has been proved to be wanting," said Taylor Fravel of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – though a large part of the problem, he noted, "is that it seems the Malaysians internally are not talking very well to each other".

        As Malaysia sought to confirm whether radar sightings were, as it thought, of MH370, one obvious question was whether neighboring countries could help. But asked whether the plane had suddenly disappeared off the radar screen, or flown out of Malaysian radar range, the transport minister said the information was "too sensitive". It was not until Friday that he said Malaysia would share raw radar data with US investigators.

      "Given existing tensions in the Asia-Pacific region and strained communications between several key regional countries, it is hard to imagine meaningful co-operation or military transparency between them on information such as radar readings in the effort to locate the Malaysian Airlines flight," said Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, director of the Asia-Pacific program at the Institute of Peace. Christopher Hughes, an expert on relations in the region at the London School of Economics, added: "This has been the problem since the end of the Cold War and really since the end of world war two … They have entrenched rivalries over so many issues – territorial, historical and so on – that it is almost impossible to get them to move toward any meaningful multilateral system.

              "They are so hung up on issues of sovereignty and non-intervention and suspicion of each other that it stops them working on the issues that really matter."

              The South China Sea – one of the main areas of the search – is at the heart of a complex six-party territorial row; "Malaysia was supposed to be the country getting along with China among the claimants in the South China Sea, but even that relationship has deteriorated [recently]," noted Manicom.

               Despite the frictions, analysts see positive signs: "What's remarkable is that Vietnam has allowed two Chinese electronic surveillance planes to fly through its airspace," said Fravel.

              "Actually, this is not a multinational search; each country has searched by themselves," added Hong Nong, a professor at China's National Institute for South China Sea Studies.

             "In my opinion, through this event, it will be good if every country could increase the possibility of co-operation in undisputed areas."