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Post by Admin on Apr 6, 2014 2:03:27 GMT
Crews searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet launched a targeted underwater hunt on Friday for the plane's black boxes along a stretch of remote ocean, with just days left before the devices' batteries are expected to run out. The Australian navy ship Ocean Shield, which is dragging a towed pinger locator from the U.S. Navy, and the British navy's HMS Echo, which has underwater search gear on board, will converge along a 150-mile track in a desolate patch of the southern Indian Ocean, said Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the search. A black box recorder similar to that on MH370 The plane's data recorders emit a ping that can be detected by the equipment on board the ships. But the battery-powered devices stop transmitting the pings about 30 days after a crash - meaning searchers have little time left before the batteries on Flight 370's black boxes die out. Locating the data recorders and wreckage after that is possible, but incredibly difficult. Houston acknowledged that the clock was ticking for search crews. "The locater beacon will last about a month before it ceases its transmissions - so we're now getting pretty close to the time when it might expire," he said. Because the U.S. Navy's pinger locator can pick up black box signals up to a depth of 20,000 feet, it should be able to hear the devices even if they are lying in the deepest part of the search zone - about 19,000 feet below the surface. But that's only if the locator gets within range of the black boxes - a tough task, given the size of the search area and the fact the pinger locator must be dragged slowly through the water at just 1 to 5 knots, or 1 to 6 miles per hour. Finding floating wreckage is key to narrowing the search area, as officials can then use data on ocean currents to try and backtrack to the spot where the Boeing 777 entered the water - and where the coveted data recorders may be. Those devices would provide crucial information about what condition the plane was flying under and any communications or sounds in the cockpit.
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Post by Admin on Apr 13, 2014 21:41:43 GMT
The batteries that power the beacons attached to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's black boxes are "most likely" dead or almost depleted, an official with the company that designs and builds the pingers told CNN on Sunday. The batteries that power the beacons attached to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's black boxes are "most likely" dead or almost depleted, an official with the company that designs and builds the pingers told CNN on Sunday. Densmore, director of engineering for Dukane Seacom, said his company has been helping search officials interpret the data from recent audio signals in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is thought to have been when it reached the end of its fuel supply. The signals were definitely man-made, he said, but there is no way to be 100% sure they came from the flight data recorder in the tail of the plane or the cockpit voice recorder until wreckage or the so-called black boxes are found on the ocean floor. A top Malaysian official on Sunday reaffirmed the importance of finding the black boxes from the Boeing 777 if the mystery of the missing airliner is ultimately to be solved. For instance, it would be difficult for investigators to clear crew or passengers until the two recorders are located, Malaysia's acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said at a news conference in Kuala Lumpur. The inspector general of police has found nothing suspicious about the passenger manifest, Hishammuddin said, but "he did not say that they all had been cleared on the four issues that the police are still investigating, which is the possible hijacking, issues of terrorism, psychological and personal problems. "That is an ongoing thing, and I don't think the IGP would have meant that they have all been cleared, because unless we find more information, specifically on data in the black box, I don't think any chief of police would be in the position" to declare the cases cleared, he said.
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Post by Admin on Aug 29, 2014 15:33:09 GMT
Malaysia Airlines has cut 6,000 jobs as part of a wide-ranging overhaul that follows the loss of two aircraft earlier this year. State investor Khazanah, which owns nearly 70% of the carrier, revealed the 30% workforce reduction on Friday. Khazanah also announced the creation of a new corporation that will absorb the majority of the carrier's assets. Khazanah plans to buy out minority shareholders and de-list the current Malaysia Airlines. Assets will then be shifted to the new company, which the fund said could be ready to go public in three to five years. Azman Mokhtar, the managing director of Khazanah, said that the changes were necessary to help the airline compete in the rough-and-tumble airline industry. "The combination of measures announced today will enable our national airline to be revived," Mokhtar said. "While funds have been made available, they come with strict conditions, so as to ensure that Malaysia Airlines truly resets its business model and cost structures." The airline reported on Thursday that it lost $97.4 million in the second quarter, as it reeled from its second aircraft disaster of 2014 -- the loss of MH17 over Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines was once a symbol of national pride. But the airline was in big financial trouble before the twin disasters of Flight 370 and Flight 17 claimed the lives of 537 people. The carrier hadn't turned a profit in years, efforts to compete with low-cost carriers had failed, and the need for yet another government bailout was growing. Analysts say that Malaysia Airlines had been hindered by uncompetitive supplier contracts, and a bloated workforce. Labor unions are sure to oppose the restructuring efforts. MH17 was shot out of the sky in July, over territory that's controlled by pro-Russian militants battling the Ukraine government. The United States says a surface-to-air missile took down the plane. In March, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared with 239 people on board. No trace of the plane has been found.
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Post by Admin on Sept 10, 2014 6:11:58 GMT
Dutch experts say Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 broke up in mid-air after being hit by "objects" that "pierced the plane at high velocity" in July. The new report also said there was "no evidence of technical or human error". Correspondents say this matches claims that MH17 was hit by missile shrapnel. Investigators relied on cockpit data, air traffic control and images, as the crash site in eastern Ukraine remains too dangerous to access amid fighting between government troops and rebels. The plane was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed in rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine. All 298 people on board, most of them from the Netherlands, died when the plane came down, amid reports it was shot down by pro-Russian rebels. The report made no comment on who might have fired the missile. Both sides in this conflict use the same weapon, reports the BBC's transport correspondent Richard Westcott, and to find out who was responsible investigators would need to determine where the missile was launched. One expert said they should eventually be able to work that out with a combination of radar data and evidence from the scene, our correspondent reports.A sobering fact highlighted in this report was that three other, very large commercial airliners flew over the same area at around the same time, he adds. The report from Dutch experts says the plane "broke up in the air probably as the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-velocity objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside". The investigators have not visited the crash site because of fighting in the area but they said photographic evidence of the wreckage suggests the plane split into pieces during "an in-flight break up". Maintenance history showed the aircraft was airworthy and had no known technical problems when it took off from Amsterdam, the report added. Experts said it was manned by "a qualified and experienced crew" and that engines were running normally at a speed of 915km/h (567mph) at 33,000ft (cruise altitude). www.onderzoeksraad.nl/uploads/phase-docs/701/b3923acad0ceprem-rapport-mh-17-en-interactief.pdf
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Post by Admin on Nov 23, 2014 22:42:11 GMT
These are happy days for the once-downtrodden airline industry: Profits are high and costs are low, particularly the price of oil, which is the industry’s biggest expense. But that’s no consolation to flyers. Despite assurances from the industry that cost savings are on the way, the average airline ticket is getting more expensive, due in no small part to fuel surcharges that can cost more than the actual flights. One-way domestic US coach fares are up 1.7% in the year to September, according to Bloomberg. Jet fuel prices have fallen by about 15% over the same period. Here’s a round-trip flight on Delta from Los Angeles to London (Dec. 5-12), with a fuel surcharge of $458, nearly half of the $947.10 total fare. The data comes from Google’s ITA software; fuel surcharges are coded as “YR.” A similar trip from New York to London, which would presumably burn less fuel since it’s about 2,000 miles shorter, has the exact same fuel surcharge: What’s going on here? The short answer is that fuel surcharges, introduced by many airlines in the early 2000s as the price of oil was on the rise, don’t bear much relation to how much fuel actually costs. Put another way, they are arbitrary numbers that the industry adjusts to maximize their profits while staying competitive with other carriers. After all, fuel is an inherent part of any airline’s operations: It might as well charge you a “surcharge” for the costs of the captain and flight attendants. The made-up nature of the fuel surcharge is reflected by the way it is applied—different customers may pay different fees depending on what class they’re traveling in or seemingly arbitrary combinations of connections. Most travelers will never even see the fuel surcharge unless they use a ninja-level airline booking tool like Google’s ITA Software. What’s going on here is that the airline industry—notorious for racking up billions of dollars in losses—has found itself in an ideal situation, albeit one that probably won’t last. Oil prices typically fall only during downturns, causing a drop-off in big-spending business clients, but not this time: Especially in the United States, business is booming at the same time as oil prices are plummeting—a lucrative combination that airlines are eager to cash in on.
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