Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: ‘Alright, Good Night’ – Last Words From Cockpit, Iran Blames U.S. (Video Update)

By Josey Wales

With todays technology it is hard to imagine a commercial flight could just disappear out of thin air, yet here are the last words from the captain and it seems that is exactly what happened.

The last radio transmission from the cockpit of missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 was ‘Alright, good night’ as the plane switched from Malaysian to Vietnamese airspace. Malaysian civil aviation officials revealed the comment while speaking to passengers’ relatives and friends at a Beijing hotel, The Straits Times has reported.

Malaysia’s acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, confirms the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been extended to two areas in the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea. The parents of Australian passengers on the flight say they feel helpless, while relatives of Chinese passengers say the airline has agreed to brief them three times a day

The last words transmitted from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet to air traffic controllers were “Alright, good night”, according to an official.

Kuala Lumpur’s ambassador to Beijing, Iskandar Sarudin, reportedly told Chinese relatives about the final message relayed from the cockpit to authorities before flight MH370 was due to enter Vietnamese airspace.

Mr Sarudin was speaking to the friends and relatives of some of the 153 Chinese nationals missing, feared dead after the Boeing 777 went missing en route to Beijing more than four days ago.

Today, authorities have admitted they do not know which direction the plane, carrying 239 passengers, was heading when it disappeared – greatly complicating the ongoing search mission.

Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old Malaysian, who was one of the pilots of the Malaysia Airlines plane that remains missing

Amid the intensifying confusion and in the wake of at times contradictory statements, the Malaysia’s civil aviation authorities and military said the plane may have turned back from its last known position between Malaysia and Vietnam, possibly as far as the Strait of Malacca, a busy shipping lane west of Malaysia.

How it might have done this without being clearly detected remains a mystery, raising questions over whether its electrical systems, including transponders allowing it to be identified by radar, were either knocked out or turned off. If it did manage to fly on, it would challenge earlier theories that the plane may have suffered a catastrophic incident, initially thought reasonable because it didn’t send out any distress signals. 

Vietnamese officials gave conflicting accounts of whether the search effort there was being scaled back as a result of the confusion.

Authorities have not ruled out any possible cause, including mechanical failure, pilot error, sabotage or terrorism. Both the Boeing 777 and Malaysia Airlines have excellent safety records. Until wreckage or debris is found and examined, it will be very hard to say what happened.

The search for the missing aircraft was begun from the spot it was last reported to be over the ocean between Malaysia and Vietnam. But Malaysian authorities have said search operations were ongoing in the Strait of Malacca. Scores of planes and aircraft have been scouring waters in both locations.

The country’s air force chief, Gen. Rodzali Daud, released a statement denying remarks attributed to him in a local media report saying that military radar had managed to track the aircraft turning back from its original course, crossing the country and making it to the Malacca strait.

Rodzali referred to a statement he said he made on 9March in which he said the air force has “not ruled out the possibility of an air turn back” and said search and rescue efforts had been expanded to the waters around Penang Island, in the northern section of the strait.

 “There is a possibility of an air turn back. We are still investigating and looking at the radar readings,” the country’s civilian aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said on Wednesday.

Updated Video, more controversy.

Google has reportedly urged have-a-go investigators not to use its Maps to try and search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

With the search for the jet entering its fourth day, with no confirmed sightings of wreckage, dozens of concerned web users have apparently taken matters into their own hands.

Unfortunately, there is no chance they are of the lost flight. The images on Google Maps are often years old, and are not live images.

A spokesperson from Google Malaysia told the paper:

“Yes, the images may be there, but it is not real time satellite images as the images may have provided to us several weeks or months ago,” he said.

“These images which are captured would sometimes contain images of airplanes usually on its flight path and cannot be presumed as a possible crash site.”

 

THE search and rescue effort for missing flight MH370 is now focusing on two areas – the South China Sea and Straits of Malacca.

Malaysia’s acting Transport Minister Hussein Hishammuddin said 49 ships and 32 aircraft were divided between the two areas covering more than 27,000 square nautical miles – 12,000-plus in the Straits of Malacca and 14,000 in the South China Sea.

The search now involves 12 countries with India, Japan and Brunei the latest to come on board.

The Minister said “the way forward” was to bring more experts, noting Malaysia was now working with Boeing, the US Federal Aviation and US National Transport Safety Board.

“We fear the search and rescue will become just a search, but we will never give up hope. This we owe to the families,” he said at the latest media update.

He reiterated the immediate focus is to find the MH370 plane, and unless the black box was found, they were unlikely to have answers.

UPDATE II: Just Released Video, the search for MH370 has expanded.

  The country’s transport minister says the focus of the search will be on South China sea and Straits of Malacca.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, an influential Iranian lawmaker accused the United States of having “kidnapped” Flight 370, saying it was an attempt to “sabotage the relationship between Iran and China and South East Asia.”

The parliamentarian, Hossein Naghavi Hosseini, who is the spokesman for the foreign policy committee, responded to the news on Tuesday that two Iranian nationals had been traveling on the missing flight holding stolen passports. This accusation was a “plot,” Mr. Naghavi Hosseini said, according to the Tasnim news agency.

“Documents published by the Western media about two Iranians getting on the plane without passports is psychological warfare. Americans recruit some people for such kinds of operations so they can throw the blame on other countries, especially Muslim countries,” he said.

Thousands of Iranians, if not more, wait in Asian countries with friendly visa rules to make journeys to the West and to Australia. Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia in particular are popular springboards for middle-class Iranians who enter on tourist visas and are then helped by local travel agents and human smugglers to travel to Western countries.

Interpol had confirmed on Sunday that two passports, an Austrian and an Italian, were recorded in its Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (S.L.T.D.) database and were used by passengers on board Flight 370.

Critical Reads: More News Mainstream Media Chooses To Ignore By Josey Wales, Click Here!