Latest developments:
- AUV Bluefin's effectiveness called into question
Crisis costing China tourism dollars
8.14pm: Bernama reports the crisis has affected the number of Chinese tourist arrivals to Malaysia this year.
Tourism Malaysia chairperson Ng Yen Yen said even forward bookings had yet to reach its annual target of 70 percent.
"In January, the number of Chinese tourist arrivals had increased by 25 percent and many of them had even made hotel reservations and purchased tourism packages to visit Malaysia in middle of this year, but after the MH370 tragedy, most of them cancelled their plans.
"It is estimated that 100,000 tourists from China visit Malaysia each month and each of them would spend RM2,800 while in the country, but following the disappearance of flight MH370, 30 percent of their bookings have been cancelled and it involved a cost RM100 million in just six weeks," she told a press conference after meeting with tourism industry players in Putrajaya.
Ng said the tragedy had also affected travel and tour operators who were now left to handle only five groups of tourists daily compared to 20 groups daily previously.
A total of 1.7 tourists from China visited Malaysia last year.
Ng said China's Southern Airlines had also decided to reduce their Beijing-Kuala Lumpur flights from thrice to once daily starting May due to passenger shortage.
"Xiamen Airlines, which supposed to increase its Beijing-Kuala Lumpur flight frequency to 10 times a week, had also postponed the plan," she said.
Meanwhile, Ng said the Tourism Malaysia MH370 Crisis Committee chaired by Tourism Malaysia director in China had been set up on March 19 to gather information about the cancellation of reservations and forward bookings in Malaysia.
"Apart from that, tourism industry players would also look into new markets, especially in second-tier cities, such as Nanning, Chengdu, Wuhan and Kunming, to reduce the impact of the MH370 tragedy," she said.
Ng said Tourism Malaysia would also emulate the move taken by the Tourism and Culture Ministry in postponing temporarily the road show to promote Visit Malaysia Year 2014 in China following the tragedy.
"We realise and understand the current situation and how people are scared and have lost their confidence. Therefore, we need to restore their confidence. We have to stop temporarily our promotional campaign in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but this doesn't mean that we are not doing anything.
"We are actually in the midst of gathering information and formulating strategies to ascertain the impact of the MH370 tragedy," she said.
Ng said Tourism Malaysia would also propose to Tourism and Culture Minister Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz to abolish visa requirements for tourists from China.
Bluefin 'could not perform reliably'
7.20pm: Several underwater salvage experts have expressed doubts regarding the effectiveness of the Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) used in the MH370 search, according to CNN , quoting an Australian Associated Press report.
“We were very hopeful the Bluefin-21 would be the answer - the way to search for this very hard to find wreckage. What we found was the Bluefin-21 could not perform reliably.
"We had extremely frustrating aborted missions, just as we have seen in the Indian Ocean. We saw malfunctions,” said International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery founder Richard Gellespie of the his attempts to find aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart’s aircraft.
US Navy salvage and diving deputy chief Mike Dean is quoted in the same report offering Australia the use its Orion towed side-scan sonar, which can send its data in real-time instead of waiting for an AUV to resurface first before data can be retrieved.
The report also says that some experts are suggesting using the Remus 6000 AUV, which can dive up to a depth of 6,000 metres and had been used successfully to locate the Air France Flight 447 that crashed in 2009.
The Bluefin-21 had aborted its first two missions due to technical issues, including exceeding its depth limit of 4,500 metres.
Its third missions, however, went without a hitch, and searchers have since relaxed its safety features to enable it to dive deeper at the cost of a “small but acceptable level of risk”.
Initial tests find oil slick not from plane
6.20pm: Preliminary analysis of the sample of the oil slick collected by Australian Defence Vessel (ADV) Ocean Shield on April 13 confirms that it is not aircraft engine oil or hydraulic fluid, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) reveals.
In a statement, it also says initial reports that it could take the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Bluefin-21, loaned from the US Navy, as long as six weeks to two months to complete its search of the sea bed are inaccurate.
“Since the US Navy provided comment some days ago, the underwater search has been significantly narrowed through detailed acoustic analysis conducted on the four signal detections made by the towed pinger locator on ADV Ocean Shield.
“This analysis has allowed the definition of a reduced and more focussed underwater search area. This represents the best lead we have in relation to missing flight MH370 and where the current underwater search efforts are being pursued to their completion so we can either confirm or discount the area as the final resting place of MH370,” the statement reads.
The JACC adds that the company that built the Bluefin, Phoenix International has assessed that there is a “small but acceptable level of risk” in operating the AUV in depths in excess of 4.5kilometres.
“This expansion of the operating parameters allows the Bluefin-21 to search the sea floor within the predicted limits of the current search area.”
Stop speculating and stay on course, Hisham tells press
4.15pm: Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein declines to respond to various speculation on what transpired in MH370’s first moments of going missing, saying that the record can be corrected later by various committees set up to investigate it “when the time comes”.
“There has been a lot of reporting about all sorts of things. We have entertained all kinds of speculation in the past. We have done that at the expense of our search, at the expense of the feelings of the families, at the expense of the feelings of the crew.
“I think that is not fair. I think we have done enough to say to the people, ‘Look, let’s focus on what Malaysia has done to the best capacity we can to verify and corroborate and stay the course’,” he tells reporters today after closing the Defence Services Asia (DSA) exhibition.
Hishammuddin, who is also acting transport minister, was asked about speculations on whether MH370 had repeatedly changed altitude, and when did civilian air controllers informed the military that the aircraft had gone missing.
Hishammuddin he also explains that cabinet had to defer its decision on the international panel meant to investigate the MH370 incident by a week, because relevant cabinet papers were delivered late.
“That was my mistake, I was caught up with DSA. The paper is ready and I expected the cabinet to discuss it yesterday.
“We could not distribute the paper to all the relevant ministries for their comments in time, so I will table the paper again to the cabinet, and I just hope people will not speculate on the status of that panel of experts until the cabinet decides,” he says.
Other salient points from the press conference are:
- Joint Agency Coordination Centre chief (JACC) Angus Houston informs Hishammuddin this afternoon that the sonar images from the Bluefin-21 underwater drone has been very clear, but has yet to find anything of interest.
MH370 search can cause 'minor environmental damage'
1pm: The MH370 incident and efforts to find it will all cause minor environmental damage, says Museum Victoria marine sciences deputy chief Timothy O’Hara.
However, O’Hara gave his assurance that there is no cause for concern.
He tells the Wall Street Journal that while the plane crash, ship noises and the extensive use of sonar will all have an impact on marine life, it is nothing compared to thousands of ships already in the Indian Ocean and the vastness of the sea.
“I’m not going to say that this doesn’t have any effect at all but on the other hand, it’s really just one of many, many incidents we’ve had over the past 100 years,” O’Hara says.
Chinese families list questions
11.10am: Relatives of Chinese passengers on board Flight MH370 yesterday posted a list of questions on their official blog that they want answers to.
The list of 26 questions are largely technical in nature, asking about the missing aircraft’s emergency locator transmitter (ELT), black box and protocols in the event of a missing aircraft.
Among others, they demand to know whether the ELT can survive impact, the black box’s serial number, whether the pings detected by ADV Ocean Shield are specific to MH370 or could be from any pinger, and voice recordings from air traffic controllers.
The questions were published via a verified account on the China-based blog service Sina .
Some 200 of the family members yesterday stormed out in anger from a glitchy and long-delayed video conference briefing with Malaysian officials.
Boss says flight instructor shamed Canadia ns
10.15am: A Canadian flight instructor featured prominently in CNN ’s MH370 coverage has been sacked for missing work and for dressing casually in a flight simulator, according to the Associated Press .
"Even though I let him (Mitchell Casado) be on TV, he shamed us Canadians and shamed my company with the way he was dressed, like he was 15 years old.
“People were complaining that it wasn't professional at all... If you go to any plane you don't see them (pilots) in shorts and sandals,” said UFly company owner Claudio Teixeira.
Casado and a CNN reporter have reportedly spent many long hours in the company’s Boeing 777 simulator to show what might have happened to an aircraft in various scenarios.
Is gov't trying to conceal black box info?
10am: PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim says Attorney-Heneral Abdul Gani Patail’s trip to the United Kingdom to discuss custody issues regarding the MH370 black box is suspicious.
"They are worried about protecting the black box. This is interesting…
"To me, in this case, anyone should be able to read the black box... So you can sense this concealing of information, but protecting what?” he asks.
Under an international treaty, when an air accident or incident takes place in international waters, the country where the aircraft is registered is in charge of the investigation, although it can delegate this responsibility to another country, upon mutual consent.
Read the full story here .
Oil slick, pings remain only leads
9.45am: To recap, the sonar-equipped Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) went on its maiden MH370 mission on April 14, but this was cut short when it exceeded its depth limit of 4.5 kilometres and was forced to resurface.
A second mission on the Tuesday night was also aborted the next morning to rectify a technical problem, before being sent into the depths of the South Indian Ocean once more.
The AUV is fitted with side-scan sonar to map the ocean floor for signs of wreckage. It can also be fitted with a camera to help verify any suspicious objects.
Meanwhile, Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) chief Angus Houston had earlier spoke of discontinuing the surface search later this week since it has not yielded any results, but will consult with search partners first.
Thus far, the four underwater pings detected in the vicinity of Bluefin-21’s search area and an oil slick found nearby are the only leads to where MH370 might be.
Third dive completed without a hitch
7.06am: After two aborted attempts to find MH370, the Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) succeeds in completing its third mission without a hitch. Planning for its next mission is underway.
“Bluefin-21 has searched approximately 90 square kilometres to date and the data from its latest mission is being analysed,” says the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) in a statement this morning.
Meanwhile, an oil sample collected by the Australian vessel ADV Ocean Shield on April 13 has arrived in Perth for testing to verify whether it is related to the missing aircraft.
The visual search will also be continuing today, involving 12 aircraft, 11 ships, and 40,309 square kilometres of ocean.
Background:
- The Beijing-bound Boeing 777-200ER aircraft went missing not long after taking off from KL International Airport in the early hours of March 8, with 12 crew members and 227 passengers.
