French officials question Malaysia claims on Flight 370

[webfact]

French officials question Malaysia claims on Flight 370
By EILEEN NG

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia's assertion that more debris potentially linked to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had washed up on an Indian Ocean island prompted puzzlement from French officials, adding to criticisms that the international response to one of the most famous aviation mysteries of all time is suffering from an exasperating lack of cohesion.

Ever since the Boeing 777 vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, Malaysian officials have been accused of jumping the gun, giving inaccurate statements and withholding information from families and other countries involved in the investigation.

On Thursday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's statement that a wing fragment found on a French island had been definitively linked to Flight 370 prompted cautious responses from French, U.S. and Australian officials involved in the probe, who would say only that it was likely or probable the part came from the missing plane.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai added to the confusion later Thursday, saying a Malaysian team had found more debris on Reunion Island, including a window and some aluminum foil, and had sent the material to local authorities for French investigators to examine.

"I can only ascertain that it's plane debris," Liow said. "I cannot confirm that it's from MH370."

French officials involved with the investigation in both Paris and Reunion were baffled by Liow's announcement; none were aware of any discovery or material in French custody. The Paris prosecutor's office, which is spearheading a French legal inquiry into the crash, later denied there was any new debris, before French officials — notoriously cautious when it comes to air accident investigations — again retreated into silence.

A spokesman for Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss said in a statement Friday that while a great deal of additional material has been handed to police in Reunion, none appears to have come from the plane.

Meanwhile, Liow sparked further questions when he said that a maintenance seal and the color tone of the paint on the wing part, known as a flaperon, matches the airline's records. On Friday, an Australian government official said that the paint is not a unique identifier for Flight 370; rather, it comes from a batch that Boeing used on all its planes when the missing plane was manufactured. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly.

Liow said Thursday that differences with other countries amounted to "a choice of words." But the dissonant comments prompted frustration from families of those on board the plane, who have waited more than 500 days for solid clues into the fate of their loved ones. Some questioned why the various countries involved couldn't get on the same page before speaking publicly.

In Beijing, about 30 Chinese relatives of Flight 370 passengers marched Friday to the Malaysian Embassy hoping to talk to an official about why Malaysia confirmed the part came from the plane when French investigators had not. They scuffled briefly with police, who blocked the relatives from approaching the mission.

French government officials have not addressed the conflicting information coming from Malaysia either publicly or privately. French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian defended the government's relative silence saying instead. "We have above all mobilized our means" since the plane disappeared. Since the wing fragment washed up on Reunion, he added, the government has added its investigators directly to the case.

"I hope that all of this can be verified, but we have to take it to its end," Le Drian told RTL radio.

Some criticism came from within Malaysia itself. Opposition lawmaker Liew Chin Tong said in a statement that Liow must explain "the haste and hurry" to declare the wreckage came from Flight 370.

"A quick conclusion will not do justice to the next of kin of the victims," he said.

Until the wing flap washed ashore last week, investigators had not found a single physical clue linked to the disappearance of Flight 370, despite a massive air and sea search. Officials believe it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people aboard, but the wreckage and the reason why remain elusive.

The discovery of the wing flap refocused the world's attention on the investigation, which many hope will finally yield clues into the plane's fate. But information from the French, in particular, has been scant. The BEA, as the French agency that investigates air crashes is known, rarely comments publicly, instead eventually releasing the information via its detailed reports. In the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed in the south Atlantic in June 2009, the final report was published in July 2012. The legal investigation was concluded only in July 2014, and the case still has not gone to trial.

That cautious approach was recently derailed in the aftermath of the crash of a Germanwings plane into the Alps that was ultimately blamed on a suicidal co-pilot. In that case, the BEA refused to comment until an account was leaked to The New York Times and the Marseille prosecutor circumvented the usual secrecy rules.

French aviation investigators have tended to be guarded in their conclusions until they gather solid proof. Xavier Tytelman, an air crash expert based in France, said although most experts believe the wing flap is probably from Flight 370, France requires a definitive clue, such a serial number, before it would make that conclusion.

"Malaysian officials — every time there's a clue or some new information that's not been confirmed — announce it as fact," Tytelman said. "They make mistakes. It's happened all the way through. I don't know why they don't have as many precautions, but they've definitely lost credibility."

Tytelman also said Australia had developed trust issues by changing the search area of the plane "without explaining why."

Ghislain Wattrelos, who lost his wife and two of his children when Flight 370 disappeared, said he was baffled by the comments by Malaysian authorities.

"We are delighted that the debris ended up in France," Wattrelos told BFM television in France on Thursday. "I have a lot more confidence in my country than in Malaysia and Australia, who have lied to us since the beginning."

Australia's credibility as search leader suffered a battering thanks to a series of false leads that were oversold by its government, which was eager to boast success after the hunt shifted to its search and rescue zone in the southern Indian Ocean after the plane disappeared.

Two apparent large objects spotted in satellite imagery off the west Australian coast in March 2014 were declared the "best lead" yet, before they turned out to be unrelated. The next month, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said officials were confident that a series of underwater signals search crews had detected were coming from the plane's coveted black box data recorders. That was also wrong.

The failure to find a single piece of Flight 370-related debris in a surface search covering 4.6 million square kilometers (1.8 million square miles) over six weeks raised serious questions about whether they were looking in the right place. And the search area has been altered many times.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan denied his agency, which is leading the search, had misled anyone or withheld information. And though the search area was changed several times as officials revised the scant data available, it has been the same since October, he said.

"As soon as new or changed information comes to light, we make it available," Dolan told The Associated Press on Friday.

The ATSB has also faced criticism for making a mistake in its original drift modeling, which initially predicted debris would wash ashore in Indonesia, rather than the area east of Africa where the flaperon turned up. The bureau issued a statement this week saying a revised analysis showed that, in fact, debris could be carried by currents to the area near Reunion Island.

Dolan said the ATSB didn't withhold that error, and instead had been working with Australia's national science agency, CSIRO, to recalculate the drift area after noticing flaws in the model in November.

"We had to work with CSIRO to check the facts and as soon as we had something that was checked, we published it," Dolan said. "We were in the process with CSIRO of publishing that revised drift modeling when the flaperon turned up at Reunion."

France said it is deploying a search plane, helicopters and boats around Reunion in hopes of spotting more debris that might be from the missing jet.

It is not known why Flight 370 — less than an hour into its journey — turned back from its original flight path and headed in an opposite direction before turning again and flying south over the Indian Ocean for hours.

Malaysian officials have said the plane's movements were consistent with deliberate actions by someone on the plane.
___

Associated Press writers Kristen Gelineau in Sydney, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, Paul Joshua in Kuala Lumpur, and Thomas Adamson and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.


-- (c) Associated Press 2015-08-07

[ukrules]

On Friday, an Australian government official said that the paint is not a unique identifier for Flight 370; rather, it comes from a batch that Boeing used on all its planes when the missing plane was manufactured.

Just one Boeing 777 has ever been acknowledged as crashing into the sea.

This Boeing 777 part washed up on a beach...need I say any more.

[KIWIBATCH]

Malaysian officials are just as bigger liars as are Thai officials

[smedly]

so the French are now searching all the local airports for an active in-service 777 with a missing flaperon

Ok I understand the French and the rest are being very precise about what they are telling to the press but lets be realistic, some amount of sensible deduction make this highly probable if not certain of belonging to 370

[fxe1200]

At this moment, nobody knows nothing. The flaperon might even have deliberately thrown into the sea, just to bring the search to an end.

[Doc46]

If they haven't got 100 5% proof shut the hell up until they do,Get proof before stirring shit!

[lap82]

I can't understand why they are careful about that. I really can't remember about any other 777 being searched everywhere.

There's one that disappeared in 1979 that was flying from Tokyo to Rio de Janeiro, but it was 707 and it disappeared inbetween Japan and the USA.

[fish fingers]

If other parts are found on the same island i can't help but feel the plane didn't crash in the south Indian ocean.. even if the current does go in that directions its a half circle of many thousands of miles. Much more likely it crashed closer to Reunion from the north east, esp when u look at the last known movements of the plane on radar before they lost contact it was actually traveling north.

To land off the coast of Oz it would have needed to do another complete U turn - both scenarios i.e. pilot hijack or pilots unconscious/fire - it doesn't add up

Edited August 7, 2015 by fish fingers

[SOTIRIOS]

...the charade....prolonged....

[smedly]

At this moment, nobody knows nothing. The flaperon might even have deliberately thrown into the sea, just to bring the search to an end.

a fair point but it's not something you can just purchase on ebay, a company like Boeing will have very exact records of every part they manufacture and supply, in saying that reading between the lines, there does seem to be something very wrong that is not being made clear by relevant agencies (governments), it seems sinister - information being withheld ? That is the impression I am now getting, it's a shame the relatives and friends of those that lost their lives have to go through this.

[Carmine6]

At this moment, nobody knows nothing. The flaperon might even have deliberately thrown into the sea, just to bring the search to an end.

a fair point but it's not something you can just purchase on ebay, a company like Boeing will have very exact records of every part they manufacture and supply, in saying that reading between the lines, there does seem to be something very wrong that is not being made clear by relevant agencies (governments), it seems sinister - information being withheld ? That is the impression I am now getting, it's a shame the relatives and friends of those that lost their lives have to go through this.

I posted this in one of the other threads. Pretty much everything seems to match, except there was some repair or modification done to the MH370 plane's flaperon and noted in maintenance logs. What was described appears to be a bit different than what is seen on the found flaperon. So they are probably just being careful. Taking a bit more time to figure out the discrepancy, and find some other consistent info, like hopefully some manufacturers date codes, or lot numbers, or something.

I personally wouldn't doubt it was a bad description in the maintenance log given the weak language precision we've seen from the Maysian government and airline in the past. But inconsistent is still inconsistent.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/06/world/asia/mh370-wing-reunion.html?referrer=&_r=0

A person involved in the investigation said, however, that experts from Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board who had seen the object, a piece of what is known as a flaperon, were not yet fully satisfied, and called for further analysis.

Their doubts were based on a modification to the flaperon part that did not appear to exactly match what they would expect from airline maintenance records, according to the person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and requested anonymity. ...

...

...said representatives from Boeing had confirmed that it came from a Boeing 777, based on its size, color, joint structure and other technical characteristics. He also said that “technical documentation” provided by Malaysia Airlines had enabled experts to establish “common technical characteristics” between the debris and Flight 370’s flaperons.

[hawker9000]

A bit too soon to be jumping on this ... It sounds like the French are being very meticulous with their analysis and very circumspect with their public statements. 'Don't see why that's a bad thing: it's good to have an adult in the room. Everyone's waited this long - a little longer won't matter, esp. if the result is certainty.

Edited August 7, 2015 by hawker9000

[fxe1200]

At this moment, nobody knows nothing. The flaperon might even have deliberately thrown into the sea, just to bring the search to an end.

a fair point but it's not something you can just purchase on ebay, a company like Boeing will have very exact records of every part they manufacture and supply, in saying that reading between the lines, there does seem to be something very wrong that is not being made clear by relevant agencies (governments), it seems sinister - information being withheld ? That is the impression I am now getting, it's a shame the relatives and friends of those that lost their lives have to go through this.

The flaperon might be even one from the MH 370, this is not in contradiction to my post above. An while all of us are waiting for more results, I want to remind everybody, besides all the other secret-mongering, that someone exactly knows what had happened to the MH 370, but the public is definitely being held in the dark.

I suppose, the secret services of Britain, The US, and may be the Mossad, do not want to reveal the truth. Mr Dugain, a former airline manager, cited witnesses in the Maldives as evidence, who reportedly told him they had seen a “huge plane flying at a really low altitude, bearing the Malaysia Airlines colours". Mr Dugain claimed he had been warned by a British intelligence officer of taking “risks” by looking into the fate of MH370. The definitely off course plane must have been spotted by the American satellite supported surveillance system installed on D.G.. Otherwise the system is completely useless. Ask the Americans, but they will lie to the world, just in the same way they lied about the WMD in Iraq. But they surely know where the plane has landed or went down, or landed and later went down.

Edited August 8, 2015 by fxe1200

[IAMHERE]

At this moment, nobody knows nothing. The flaperon might even have deliberately thrown into the sea, just to bring the search to an end.

Yep, made using a 3-D printer.

[JakeSully]

Malaysia has been handling these investigations like a hot potato in their hands.. they can't wait to get rid of them.. like they can't be bothered to deal with the intricacies of their own citizen's deaths, bodies and funerals.

They should take a lesson from France (Air France 447), India (Air India 182), if they won't the USA's.

[hawker9000]

At this moment, nobody knows nothing. The flaperon might even have deliberately thrown into the sea, just to bring the search to an end.

a fair point but it's not something you can just purchase on ebay, a company like Boeing will have very exact records of every part they manufacture and supply, in saying that reading between the lines, there does seem to be something very wrong that is not being made clear by relevant agencies (governments), it seems sinister - information being withheld ? That is the impression I am now getting, it's a shame the relatives and friends of those that lost their lives have to go through this.

The flaperon might be even one from the MH 370, this is not in contradiction to my post above. An while all of us are waiting for more results, I want to remind everybody, besides all the other secret-mongering, that someone exactly knows what had happened to the MH 370, but the public is definitely being held in the dark.

I suppose, the secret services of Britain, The US, and may be the Mossad, do not want to reveal the truth. Mr Dugain, a former airline manager, cited witnesses in the Maldives as evidence, who reportedly told him they had seen a “huge plane flying at a really low altitude, bearing the Malaysia Airlines colours". Mr Dugain claimed he had been warned by a British intelligence officer of taking “risks” by looking into the fate of MH370. The definitely off course plane must have been spotted by the American satellite supported surveillance system installed on D.G.. Otherwise the system is completely useless. Ask the Americans, but they will lie to the world, just in the same way they lied about the WMD in Iraq. But they surely know where the plane has landed or went down, or landed and later went down.

"I want to remind everybody ..."

^^^^ Yeah. LOL. The Oracle speaks!

A conspiracy-monger AND an America-hater! A real 2-fer for ya', eh?

[fxe1200]

At this moment, nobody knows nothing. The flaperon might even have deliberately thrown into the sea, just to bring the search to an end.

a fair point but it's not something you can just purchase on ebay, a company like Boeing will have very exact records of every part they manufacture and supply, in saying that reading between the lines, there does seem to be something very wrong that is not being made clear by relevant agencies (governments), it seems sinister - information being withheld ? That is the impression I am now getting, it's a shame the relatives and friends of those that lost their lives have to go through this.

The flaperon might be even one from the MH 370, this is not in contradiction to my post above. An while all of us are waiting for more results, I want to remind everybody, besides all the other secret-mongering, that someone exactly knows what had happened to the MH 370, but the public is definitely being held in the dark.

I suppose, the secret services of Britain, The US, and may be the Mossad, do not want to reveal the truth. Mr Dugain, a former airline manager, cited witnesses in the Maldives as evidence, who reportedly told him they had seen a “huge plane flying at a really low altitude, bearing the Malaysia Airlines colours". Mr Dugain claimed he had been warned by a British intelligence officer of taking “risks” by looking into the fate of MH370. The definitely off course plane must have been spotted by the American satellite supported surveillance system installed on D.G.. Otherwise the system is completely useless. Ask the Americans, but they will lie to the world, just in the same way they lied about the WMD in Iraq. But they surely know where the plane has landed or went down, or landed and later went down.

"I want to remind everybody ..."

^^^^ Yeah. LOL. The Oracle speaks!

A conspiracy-monger AND an America-hater! A real 2-fer for ya', eh?

Truly an argument resulting from an in depth study of the subject, and presented from a highly intellectual viewpoint.

(BTW, I spend my winter holiday in California)

Edited August 8, 2015 by fxe1200

[Nigeone]

There really is something that doesn't add up on this sad situation. I'm with the other posters that I can't get my head around the masses of very hi tech satellites around that this plane really went undetected. It doesn't make sense. There's a story here but not sure we will ever get it!

[hawker9000]

The flaperon might be even one from the MH 370, this is not in contradiction to my post above. An while all of us are waiting for more results, I want to remind everybody, besides all the other secret-mongering, that someone exactly knows what had happened to the MH 370, but the public is definitely being held in the dark.

I suppose, the secret services of Britain, The US, and may be the Mossad, do not want to reveal the truth. Mr Dugain, a former airline manager, cited witnesses in the Maldives as evidence, who reportedly told him they had seen a “huge plane flying at a really low altitude, bearing the Malaysia Airlines colours". Mr Dugain claimed he had been warned by a British intelligence officer of taking “risks” by looking into the fate of MH370. The definitely off course plane must have been spotted by the American satellite supported surveillance system installed on D.G.. Otherwise the system is completely useless. Ask the Americans, but they will lie to the world, just in the same way they lied about the WMD in Iraq. But they surely know where the plane has landed or went down, or landed and later went down.

"I want to remind everybody ..."

^^^^ Yeah. LOL. The Oracle speaks!

A conspiracy-monger AND an America-hater! A real 2-fer for ya', eh?

Truly an argument resulting from an in depth study of the subject, and presented from a highly intellectual viewpoint.

(BTW, I spend my winter holiday in California)

Yeah. Not really much into the lipstick on pigs thing ...

"(BTW, I spend my winter holiday in California)"

How nice for you. I'm sure there's an obscure point there somewhere ...

[Richard W]

At this moment, nobody knows nothing. The flaperon might even have deliberately thrown into the sea, just to bring the search to an end.

Yep, made using a 3-D printer.

No. The Chinese shot the plane down on the northern arc, tried to plant some non-incriminating fragments off NW Australia, but lost them. At least, I don't see a flaw in that hypothesis.

[Somtamnication]

Nice to finally find out who graduated from the Thai National Subterfuge Diplomatic Public Relations University in Bangkok.

[Carmine6]

There really is something that doesn't add up on this sad situation. I'm with the other posters that I can't get my head around the masses of very hi tech satellites around that this plane really went undetected. It doesn't make sense. There's a story here but not sure we will ever get it!

First thing is this was a night flight, so only wreckage would have shown up on satellite photos. Probably satellites that could do more, but they would have to be pointed at the right areas, and the middle of the Indian Ocean is probably not a high priority place to be pointing. Flight would have ended in daylight since it flew 8 hours, but again, satellite has to be pointed where it ended up.

From recollection, for about two weeks, it was said to have gone down very near Malaysia. Satellites and planes were somewhat concentrated around there, both on the east and west, and even near Vietnam. Then maybe 3 or 4 weeks in they started thinking further south. So the focus wasn't in the right area.

There were some satellite findings of large items actually relatively near where they ended up searching. One said to be wing sized. A satellite company put their pictures of the Indian Ocean up on some website where people were to help find anything. But that seems to have gone nowhere.

Those large items spotted completely vanished from the media. Planes and then ships were sent out, but when asked about those later, whoever was doing the press conferences at the time in Australia had a vague answer about them. I think it was something like, we haven't found anything from the plane. Not that those items were found and they were junk. About that time, they just suddenly moved the entire search hundreds of miles away and those large items were never explained. They would obviously have been really far from where the plane went in 3 weeks later. So while moving the search might have made sense in terms of trying to find the black boxes, finding some floating stuff would have been helpful as well.

Edited August 11, 2015 by Carmine6

[Chicog]

KUALA LUMPUR: Finally, the Australian Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) has confirmed that an aircraft wing part known as flaperon found in the French Reunion Island is from the vanished Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

"Subsequent examination has indicated that in all probability, the wreckage, a wing part known as a flaperon, was from MH370," said JACC in a statement on Wednesday.

On July 29, a piece of the aeroplane wing was discovered on the Reunion Island coast and was sent to France for further analysis.

On Aug 6, Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak confirmed that part of the flaperon found on Reunion Island was part of the aircraft.

Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, last year after its departure from Kuala Lumpur with 239 passengers on board, among them 154 Chinese nationals.

On the search operation development, JACC said Fugro Discovery, the search and recovery vessel for MH370, had arrived in the Indian Ocean and commenced operations earlier Wednesday.

"Fugro Equator arrived in Fremantle, Australia this morning for routine re-supply and will depart for the search area Thursday," it said.

Meanwhile, The Maldivian minister attached to the president’s office, Mohamed Shareef was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) said three Malaysian aviation experts had began examining debris found in the island on Wednesday to determine if it could be wreckage from MH370.

Mohamed Shareef said the three, led by Malaysian Civil Aviation Department director-general Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman had met up with local authorities and inspected the debris after arriving on the honeymoon islands on Tuesday night.

Shareef told the news agency in a phone conversation that the experts would return to Malaysia later Wednesday before reporting to Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai.

http://english.astroawani.com/malaysia-news/jacc-confirms-flaperon-mh370-69568

http://jacc.gov.au/families/operational_reports/opsearch-update-20150812.aspx

Edited August 12, 2015 by Chicog