It hung around for a while, but it dipped below radar Sunday and yesterday all has gone quiet, meaning the batteries on the all-important black boxes may have finally died. No new electronic pings have been heard since April 8 -- even as hope remains, the search continues, and the hunt is closing in on the ‘‘final resting place’’ of Flight 370.
"Authorities are confident that a series of underwater signals in the Indian Ocean are coming from a missing Malaysia Airlines plane, Australia’s prime minister said Friday, while warning that those signals are beginning to fade.... racing against time in one of the most confounding aviation mysteries on record."
See: MALAYSIAN AIRLINES MH370 - INSIDE JOB, CIA FALSE FLAG CONSPIRACY.
The sourcing is superb.
The latest potential clue?
"Gunmen seek $11m for Chinese tourist" | Associated Press April 11, 2014
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Gunmen have demanded a ransom of $11.3 million for the release of a Chinese tourist abducted last week from a Malaysian resort off Borneo island, a Malaysian minister said Thursday.
The gunmen, believed to be Abu Sayyaf militants, kidnapped a 28-year-old Shanghai woman and a 40-year-old Filipino woman from the Singamata Reef Resort in the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah on April 2.
Philippine authorities believe the women were taken to the island township of Simunul in Tawi-Tawi, the Philippines’ southernmost province. Sabah, a popular tourist destination, is just a short boat ride from the southern Philippines, home to Muslim militants and kidnap gangs.
I knew the peace prospects would not last.
Also see: Philippine court upholds condom law, aids birth-control push
Must have made the Muslims mad.
‘‘We have sent our team, the police, and the negotiators . . . to negotiate about the reduction of ransoms,’’ said Malaysian Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamid on private television station TV3. No ransom was asked for the Filipino woman, who was working at the resort, he said.
Mohammad Mentek, a senior Sabah security official, said the kidnappers have called the family of Gao Hua Yuan, the Chinese kidnap victim, but declined to say whether a ransom demand has been made.
In carrying out the kidnappings, seven men armed with rifles, four of them masked, came to the resort on a speedboat and fled with the two women, according to Malaysian police. Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim group, has carried out seaborne kidnappings for ransom in the region before.
China’s ties with Malaysia have come under stress recently because of anger among Chinese over the search for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner carrying 153 Chinese passengers.
And then this happens? Who would benefit by causing trouble and division between China and her neighbors?
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What I have noticed missing from all the linked coverage is the Chinese families that lost loved ones. I guess they were making too big a stink.
At least they found the hostages.
"Search for Malaysian jet to be costliest in history" by Kirk Semple | New York Times April 09, 2014
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — As the intensive hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 entered its second month Tuesday, all that was certain was that it would become the most expensive search and recovery effort in aviation history, with an international fleet of ships and planes scouring the Indian Ocean at a cost of millions of dollars a day.
All at a time of government-imposed austerity at home!
For the most part, the dozens of countries that have contributed personnel, equipment, and expertise to the search have borne the costs while declining to disclose them, with officials offering a united front in saying that it would be callous to talk about money while a commercial airliner and the 239 people aboard remained unaccounted for.
But Tuesday, as hopes faded that ships would be able to pick up beacon signals from the missing Boeing 777-200’s data and voice recorders, officials were again facing a vast stretch of open ocean with no fresh leads. Many of the governments involved will soon face a tough decision about whether to keep bearing the extraordinary costs, analysts said.
“Each country will have to ask itself: What are the prospects of further investigation and the cost-benefit of it?” said Ramon Navaratnam, chairman of the Centre for Public Policy Studies at the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute in Kuala Lumpur. “If there’s no prospect, there’s no prospect: We have to be very realistic. But it’s a very difficult to decision to make. It’s like someone on a medical support system and you have to determine whether to pull the wires or not.”
I am about to on this story, with updates to follow below if needed.
Until now, the costliest search and recovery effort ever undertaken followed the crash of Air France Flight 447 hundreds of miles off the coast of Brazil in 2009, reaching roughly $160 million at the time, over the course of two years, according to estimates by experts who participated in that effort.
But the search for Flight 370 is already far more complicated, and may have already topped that total. Some of the ships involved cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a day apiece to use, and some of the aircraft being used can cost thousands of dollars an hour each to operate, officials say.
While there is an international convention that determines responsibility for air accident investigations, there are no protocols or treaties that dictate who pays, specialists said. The most likely case is that the countries and companies participating in the search for Flight 370 will bear their own costs, several analysts predicted.
Even if searchers are able to pinpoint wreckage from the plane soon, it would open another costly chapter, involving undersea exploration and possibly the recovery of parts of the plane, bodies and other evidence from depths of nearly 3 miles.
Related(?): Globe Tells the Truth About TWA 800
Well, half-truth, anyway.
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In the past few weeks, after the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner shifted to the southern Indian Ocean, a seven-nation coalition has largely shouldered the burden of the effort: Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea, and the United States. Those countries together have contributed at least 10 government vessels, 14 military aircraft and five civilian aircraft, officials said. At least seven merchant ships from various nations have also participated, and in recent days, Britain has chipped in a naval survey vessel and a nuclear submarine....
Maybe I am right after all.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Do I know my Boston Globe or what!?
