UPDATE 2: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Posted by Sean Broderick 3:59 AM on Mar 08, 2014 Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has confirmed that it lost contact with Flight 370, a Boeing 777-200 with 227 passengers and 12 crewmembers onboard. The airline originally said it was informed of the flights disappearance at 0240 Kuala Lumpur time on March 8, but in a subsequent media statement, noted that the flight was last heard from at 0130, which seems to be the time that ATC reported losing contact. The time differences suggest the airline was not informed immediately of the aircrafts status. Here is our first-take story. From the carrier: Our team is currently calling the next-of-kin of passengers and crew. The flight was piloted by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a Malaysian aged 53. He has a total flying hours of 18,365 hours. He joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981. First officer, Fariq Ab.Hamid, a Malaysian, is aged 27. He has a total flying hours of 2,763 hours. He joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007. UPDATE: MAS says the aircrafts last known position before it disappeared off the radar was 065515 North (longitude) and 1033443 East (latitude). Next-of-kin of all onboard are being informed and the passenger manifest was released at 1920 Kuala Lumpur time March 8. Boeing says is dispatching a team to assist investigators. UPDATE 2: As of 0200 March 9 Sepang time, MAS said search teams have failed to find evidence of any wreckage and airline executives are dispatching all information as and when we receive it. More updates from the carrier here. The aircraft involved is 9M-MRO, which Aviation Weeks Fleets database shows is c/n 28420, line no. 404, delivered in May 2002. It was powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 800s. That airframe was involved in at least one notable previous incident--an airfield incursion at Shanghai Pudong in 2012. Founded in 1972, MAS has one fatal accident (excluding a 1977 hijacking) on record--a 1995 Fokker 50 crash that killed 34 of 53 onboard, the Aviation Safety Network (ASN) shows. Two Boeing 777 hulls have been lost--the 2008 British Airways (BA) crash landing at Heathrow, later pegged to a fuel system icing issue, and last years Asiana Airlines crash landing at San Francisco, which NTSB is still probing. Both were 777-200s; the BA aircraft had Rolls-Royce Trent 800 powerplants, while the Asiana aircraft had Pratt & Whitney PW4090s. A third--the EgyptAir 777-200 that suffered a cockpit fire in July 2011--was damaged beyond repair and written off. A second BA 777-200, this one powered by GE90s, was involved in a fatal incident in Denver in September 2001 when a fire broke out during refueling, killing a ground service worker. The aircraft suffered minimal thermal damage. NOTE: Post updates include two revisions to reported elapsed time betweeen flights departure and disappearance, reflecting information released by the carrier.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 03:25:16 +0000
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