Relatives of passengers and crew have been informed of the 'heartbreaking' news that Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean, the Malaysian Prime Minister has announced.
Najib Razak told a press conference new analysis by the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch and tracking firm Inmarsat indicated the flight ended in the southern Indian Ocean.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after take-off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 people on board on March 8.
No confirmed sighting of the plane has been made since, but much debris has been found in remote waters off Australia which might be part of the missing plane
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Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak today said a new analysis of satellite data shows that the missing Malaysia Airlines plane plunged into the southern Indian Ocean
Relatives of passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have been informed the plane ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean
The announcement was made as an Australian navy ship was on its way today to retrieve two new objects spotted by military aircraft and marked by flares in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet
Dressed in a black suit, Najib announced the news in a brief statement to reporters today, saying the information was based on an unprecedented analysis of satellite data from Inmarsat.
He said the data indicated the plane flew 'to a remote location, far from any possible landing sites'.
He said: 'It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.'
Relatives of passengers in Beijing had been called to a hotel near the airport to hear the news, and some 50 of them gathered there. Afterward, they filed out of a conference room in heart-wrenching grief.
One woman collapsed and fell on her knees, crying 'My son! My son!'
Medical teams arrived at the Lido hotel with several stretchers and one elderly man was carried out of the conference room on one of them, his face covered by a jacket. Minutes later, a middle-aged woman was taken out on another stretcher, her face ashen and her blank eyes seemingly staring off into a distance.
Most of them refused to speak to gathered reporters and some of them lashed out in anger, urging journalists not to film the scene.
Security guards restrained a man with close-cropped hair as he kicked a TV cameraman and shouted, 'Don't film. I'll beat you to death!'
Wang Zhen, whose father and mother, Wang Linshi and Xiong Yunming, were aboard the flight as part of a group of Chinese artists touring Malaysia, heard the announcement on television from another hotel where he had been staying.
He said some of the relatives had received a text message in English from the airliner advising of the findings to be announced in a late-night news conference by the Malaysian Prime Minister.
Relatives of passengers in Beijing had been called to a hotel near the airport to hear the news, and some 50 of them gathered there
Medical teams arrived at the Lido hotel with several stretchers and one elderly man was carried out of the conference room on one of them, his face covered by a jacket
Nan Jinyan, whose brother-in-law Yan Ling, a medical company engineer, was aboard the flight on a business trip, said she was prepared for the worst when she heard the Malaysian prime minister would hold a news conference.
INMARSAT: THE UK FIRM INVOLVED IN THE SEARCH FOR MH370
The Prime Minister of Malaysia made the announcement today based on new analysis by the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch and UK tracking firm Inmarsat.
The company has been involved in the search since the plane disappeared - despite the communication system on the jet being switched off, one of Inmarsat's satellites continued to pick up faint 'pings'.
The pings did not include any location information, but an initial analysis showed that the location of the last ping was probably along one of two vast arcs running north and south.
Najib today said Inmarsat had done further calculations 'using a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort,' and had concluded that the plane's last position was 'in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth'.
According to The Telegraph, Inmarsat carried out further analysis of the pings before passing on the relevant information to the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch.
The AAIB is a part of the Department for Transport which probes serious civil aircraft incidents.
'This is a blow to us, and it is beyond description,' Nan said.
In Kuala Lumpur, screaming could be heard from inside the Hotel Bangi Putrajaya, where some of the families of passengers had been given rooms.
Selamat Omar, father of a 29-year-old aviation engineer aboard the flight, said in a telephone interview that Malaysia Airlines had not yet briefed the families on whether they will be taken to Australia. He said they expected more details Tuesday.
'We accept the news of the tragedy. It is fate,' Selamat said.
Mr Selamat said the airline has not told the families yet whether they will be taken to Australia, which is co-ordinating the search for the plane. He said they expect more details on Tuesday.
A multinational force has searched a wide swath of Asia trying to find the plane.
Mr Razak said that British firm Inmarsat had employed 'a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort'.
The new data revealed that MH370 flew along the southern corridor where investigators had said the plane could have travelled along, based on pings sent several hours after it disappeared on March 8.
Investigators had drawn up two huge search areas in two large arcs - a northern corridor stretching from Malaysia to Central Asia and a southern corridor extending down towards Antartica.
So far, ships in the international search effort have been unable to locate several 'suspicious' objects spotted by satellites in grainy images or by fast-flying aircraft over a vast search area in the remote southern Indian Ocean
Selamat Omar, the father of a 29-year-old aviation engineer who was on the flight, said some members of families of other passengers broke down in tears at the news
The families of the passengers on the missing plane are due to be booked on to flights to take them to Australia
Inmarsat was not immediately available for comment, while the AAIB referred any inquiries to the Malaysian authorities, who they referred to as the 'lead investigators'.
The announcement was made as an Australian navy ship was on its way today to retrieve two new objects spotted by military aircraft in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.
HMAS Success was expected to reach the two objects by tomorrow morning at the latest, Malaysia's government said, as a mounting number of sightings of floating objects raised hopes wreckage of the plane may soon be found.
So far, ships in the international search effort have been unable to locate several 'suspicious' objects spotted by satellites in grainy images or by fast-flying aircraft over a vast search area in the remote southern Indian Ocean.
'HMAS Success is on scene and is attempting to locate and recover these objects,' Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who called his Malaysia counterpart Najib Razak to inform him of the sighting, said in a statement to parliament.
The objects, described as a 'grey or green circular object' and an 'orange rectangular object', were spotted about 2,500 km west of Perth on Monday afternoon, said Abbott, adding that three planes were also en route to the area.
View from a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion from RAAF base Pearce on assignment to the southern Indian Ocean to search for possible debris from the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
Crew on an Australian military aircraft have spotted two new objects in the southern Indian Ocean. Pictured is Flt Lieutenant Adam Francki and Warrant Officer Brenton Bell in the cockpit of a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion
Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 people on board on March 8. No confirmed sighting of the plane has been made since and there is no clue what went wrong.
Attention and resources in the search for the Boeing 777 have shifted from an initial focus north of the Equator to an increasingly narrowed stretch of rough sea in the southern Indian Ocean, thousands of miles from the original flight path.
Earlier on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency said a Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 aircraft spotted two 'relatively big' floating objects and several smaller white ones dispersed over several kilometres.
Beijing responded cautiously to the find. 'At present, we cannot yet confirm that the floating objects are connected with the missing plane,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a news briefing in Beijing.
Australia said that a U.S. Navy plane searching the area on Monday had been unable to locate the objects.
China has diverted its icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, toward the location where the debris was spotted. A flotilla of other Chinese ships are also steadily making their way south. The ships will start to arrive in the area on Tuesday.
Over 150 of the passengers on board the missing plane were Chinese.
Aircrew look out of a window of a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion from RAAF base Pearce on an assignment to the southern Indian Ocean to search for possible debris from the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370
Flt Lieutenant Gavin Oakley on board a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion searching for the missing plane
The latest sighting followed reports by an Australian crew over the weekend of a floating wooden pallet and strapping belts in an area of the icy southern Indian Ocean that was identified after satellites recorded images of potential debris.
In a further sign the search may be bearing fruit, the U.S. Navy is flying in its high-tech black box detector to the area.
The so-called black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder - record what happens on board planes in flight. At crash sites, finding the black boxes soon is crucial because the locator beacons they carry fade out after 30 days.
'If debris is found we will be able to respond as quickly as possible since the battery life of the black box's pinger is limited,' Commander Chris Budde, U.S. Seventh Fleet Operations Officer, said in an emailed statement.
Budde stressed that bringing in the black box detector, which is towed behind a vessel at slow speeds and can pick up 'pings' from a black box to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet, was a precautionary measure.
The Chinese aircraft that spotted the objects was one of two IL-76s searching on Monday. Another eight aircraft, from Australia, the United States and Japan, were scheduled to make flights throughout the day to the search site, some 1,550 miles southwest of Perth.
A view of the southern Indian Ocean from a Chinese IL-76 plane in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
New sighting: A Chinese military plane dispatched to join the search for MH370 has reportedly spotted 'suspicious objects' in the Indian Ocean target zone
Source: Daily Mail
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