Jet Fell Into Ocean With All Lost, Premier Says. Malaysia Releases Details of Last Contact With Missing Plane

Hishamuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s defense minister, said satellite data analysis has led officials to concentrate the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean.

N.Y. TIMES

In Beijing on Monday, relatives of passengers on the missing Malaysian plane after Malaysian officials said all on board died. Credit Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 A British satellite company has solved one crucial aspect of the mystery surrounding the Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared on March 8, using a complex mathematical process to determine that it ended its journey in the middle of the southern Indian Ocean.
 The first definitive news of the fate of the Boeing 777 jet brought heartbreak to the families of those on board as Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, announced on Monday that no one is believed to have survived the flight.

 Guided by a principle of physics called the Doppler effect, the company, Inmarsat, analyzed tiny shifts in the frequency of the plane’s signals to infer the plane’s flight path and likely final location. The method had never before been used to investigate an air disaster, officials said.

Credit Edgar Su/Reuters     Malaysia Says Flight Ended in Ocean

The path of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean, Prime Minister Najib Razak said at a news conference in Kuala Lumpur.

Mr. Najib appeared eager to bring some finality to the families of the passengers, who had complained for more than two weeks about the incomplete and sometimes contradictory information they were getting. Two-thirds of the plane’s passengers were Chinese citizens, and the flight was bound for Beijing when it took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, after midnight on March 8.

But many furious Chinese relatives and friends of passengers refused to believe it, wailing with anguish and screaming that the Malaysians were lying and hiding what they knew.

 The announcement did little to solve the deeper mystery of the plane’s disappearance, shedding no light on why someone with detailed knowledge of the plane’s navigation and flight systems diverted it radically from its course. Investigators said they have looked into the backgrounds of the 239 people on board, including the two pilots and the crew, and have so far found no answers to that central question.

Relatives of passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight protested outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing on Tuesday. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

N.Y. TIMES

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The Malaysian authorities released new details on Tuesday of the last satellite communications by Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, even as furious family members and friends of the plane’s passengers broke through police lines in Beijing and marched to the Malaysian Embassy.

Hishammuddin Hussein, the defense minister and acting transport minister, said that the plane appeared to have sent a last, partial satellite signal eight minutes after a previously disclosed electronic “handshake” between the plane and a satellite at 8:11 a.m. on March 8. The incomplete signal represented a “partial handshake,” he said.

 “At this time, this transmission is not understood and is subject to further ongoing work,” Mr. Hishammuddin said.

The next signal from the aircraft was due at 9:15 a.m. but never came. Mr. Hishammuddin referred delicately to the likelihood that the cessation of signals came after the plane ran out of fuel, saying that the timing “is consistent with the maximum endurance of the aircraft.”

----

 

In the midafternoon, a man who said his surname was Wang spoke at the hotel where the families were staying, saying he represented them. He said the Malaysian government had so far failed to provide any evidence for its conclusion that the plane had ended up crashing in the Indian Ocean, killing everyone on board. He said most of the families did not believe the Malaysian government’s narrative about the loss of the plane.
--------

 Mr. Hishammuddin’s office subsequently released calculations from Inmarsat, a British satellite company, showing a wide area of sea in the southern Indian Ocean where the plane could have ended up, depending on whether its ground speed was 400 knots or 450 knots or somewhere in between. The area to be searched measures 469,407 square nautical miles — equivalent to 621,600 square miles or 1.61 million square kilometers.

That is a fifth of the combined area of the northern and southern arcs that were identified as search areas on March 18. But it is still an enormous area, greater in size than California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington State combined.

----

David Johnston, Australia’s defense minister, described the search as taking place in “probably one of the most remote parts of the planet” and one that “has shipwrecked many sailors.” He said an Australian vessel, which on Monday was scouring for possible debris spotted by an aircraft, was forced to deploy 75 miles to the south because of weather conditions.

Lost Jet’s Path Seen as Altered via Computer

A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER, flight 318 to Beijing, sat on the tarmac Monday at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Flight 318 replaces 370, retired out of respect to the passengers and crew of the missing plane. Credit Edgar Su/Reuters

N.Y. TIMES

 The first turn to the west that diverted the missing Malaysia Airlines plane from its planned flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was carried out through a computer system that was most likely programmed by someone in the plane’s cockpit who was knowledgeable about airplane systems, according to senior American officials.

 Instead of manually operating the plane’s controls, whoever altered Flight 370’s path typed seven or eight keystrokes into a computer on a knee-high pedestal between the captain and the first officer, according to officials. The Flight Management System, as the computer is known, directs the plane from point to point specified in the flight plan submitted before a flight. It is not clear whether the plane’s path was reprogrammed before or after it took off.

 The fact that the turn away from Beijing was programmed into the computer has reinforced the belief of investigators — first voiced by Malaysian officials — that the plane was deliberately diverted and that foul play was involved. It has also increased their focus on the plane’s captain and first officer.