Live report on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
(chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2014-03-11 23:15Day 7
21:30 March 14
A Chinese patrol ship is heading for the Strait of Malacca to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, authorities said on Friday.
21:00 March 14
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China's Yongxingdao warship arrived at Gulf of Thailand at 3 pm on Friday to help in the search for missing Malaysian airplane.
The rescue vessle, the fifth from China in the search, departed on March 12 with 48 divers and 25 technicians onboard and 18 sets of deep diving equipment, 30 sets of light diving equipment, one underwater robot, three sets of underwater sonar equipment, and eight rescue boats.
Earlier, China had dispatched five vessels, including Mianyang and Jinggangshan, Kunlun, Haikou and Qiandaohu. Qiandaohu is expected to arrive at search area on March 17 morning.
20:30 March 14
China on Friday again urged Malaysia to take the lead in coordinating international search efforts for missing flight MH370.
"We hope Malaysia can enhance collection and analysis of information and help all forces search more efficiently," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a regular news briefing.
20:00 March 14
Malaysia will expand its search and rescue for the missing aircraft, acting Minister of Transport Hishamuddin Hussein said here Friday.
"The aircraft is still missing, and the search area is expanding," he told a press conference near Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), adding "we are now pushing further into the South China Sea, and further into Indian Sea."
Hussein said there are currently 57 ships and 48 aircraft in the search, which involves 13 countries. "Our priority remains finding the plane," he added.
19:00 March 14
Vietnam said its aircraft have carried out 52 flights as of Friday noon in an effort to locate the Malaysian airplane that vanished since March 8.
18:00 March 14
Military radar data suggests a Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown hundreds of miles off course, heightening suspicions of foul play among investigators, sources told Reuters on Friday.
16:30 March 14
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak prayed for the passengers and crew on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in a mosque near Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Friday.
16:20 March 14
South Korea has decided to send two military aircraft to take part in the expanding international search and rescue operations for the missing Malaysian airplane, South Korea's foreign ministry said on Friday.
15:32 March 14
A Malaysian Airlines representative said at a meeting in Beijing on Friday with relatives of Chinese passengers on flight MH730, that the jet – with 239 people on board - was equipped with four life rafts that could carry a total of 290 people.
The representative also said that the rafts contained flashlights which could help any survivors attract attention, and first-aid kits as well as enough water and food to sustain people for one week – assuming the plane did not end up at the bottom of the sea.
The Malaysian military is sending representatives to Beijing to meet the families of the passengers who are anxiously waiting for news of their loves ones, according to the company.
14:37 March 14
Vietnam says it has downgraded but not stopped its search for the missing jetliner in the South China Sea and has been asked by Malaysian authorities to consider sending planes and ships to the Strait of Malacca.
The statement Friday is a sign that the focus of the search effort is switching to the west of Malaysia, to the strait and further west into the Indian Ocean, AP reported.
14:35 March 14
Chinese search teams had searched 45,763 square kilometers as of 12 am (0400 GMT) Thursday, but no solid clues were located, according to China Maritime Search and Rescue Center.
11:06 March 14
Chinese navy vessels are carrying out a 24-hour search for the missing Malaysian plane, but no possible leads have been discovered, Duan Zhaoxian, leader of a special task force was quoted as saying.
"The search area covered 34,000 square kilometers since March 10," Duan said.
11:03 March 14
Chinese experts say they have detected a subsea incident in the maritime border area between Malaysia and Vietnam which occurred at 2:55:06 am local time on March 8, an hour and a half after the last contact with flight MH370.
The research group of Professor Wen Lianxing of the Earthquakes and Earth Interior Physics Laboratory of the University of Science and Technology of China also said the incident happened 116 km (72 miles) northeast from the last known location of the missing plane.
The findings could mean that the plane crashed - as the sea area where the experts said the incident happened is a non-seismic region.
10:25 March 14
More than half of pilots have fallen asleep in the cockpit of a passenger plane, according to a study conducted last September by the British Airline Pilots Association, a union that represents three-quarters of pilots in the UK.
09:00 March 14
India's defence ministry has already ordered the deployment of ships, aircraft and helicopters from the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 1,190 km (740 miles) east of Chennai, at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, Reuters reported.
An Indian P8I Poseidon surveillance plane was sent to the Andaman islands on Thursday, ready to join the search once cleared, the head of India's Andaman and Nicobar air force command, Air Marshal P.K Roy, said on Thursday.
05:31 March 14
Satellites picked up faint electronic pulses from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 after it went missing on Saturday, but the signals gave no information about where the stray jet was heading and little else about its fate, two sources close to the investigation told Reuters on Thursday.But the "pings" indicated that the aircraft's maintenance troubleshooting systems were switched on and ready to communicate with satellites, showing the aircraft, with 239 people on board, was at least capable of communicating after the jet lost touch with Malaysian air traffic controllers.
The system transmits such pings about once an hour, according to the sources, who said five or six were heard. However, the pings alone are not proof that the plane was in the air or on the ground, the sources said.
02:35 March 14
A new search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean as authorities try to determine what happened to a missing Malaysian airliner, the White House said on Thursday.
"It's my understanding that based on some new information that's not necessarily conclusive - but new information - an additional search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. "And we are consulting with international partners about the appropriate assets to deploy."
Carney did not specify the nature of the "new information." The United States has been helping in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, including the deployment of US Navy vessels.
00:43 March 14
No solid clue over the whereabouts of a missing Malaysian airplane has been found after six days of an intensive search, which involved a dozen of countries.
More than 80 ships and planes from Malaysia, China, Vietnam, and the United States among others have been scouring the waters off Vietnam and on both sides of the Malaysian peninsula to locate the missing plane since it lost contact with ground on March 8.
