AirAsia QZ8501: Missing flight is 3rd Malaysia-linked air incident - The disappearance on Sunday of AirAsia Flight 8501 was the third air incident this year involving Malaysia, where budget carrier AirAsia in based. Here’s a look at the two other disasters, as well as the latest missing flight, which went missing with 162 people aboard less than an hour after taking off from Surabaya, Indonesia, for Singapore. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 The disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on March 8 triggered one of modern aviation’s most perplexing mysteries. Flight 370, carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, vanished without a trace, sending searchers across vast areas of the Indian Ocean. An initial multi-national operation to locate the wreckage far off Australia’s west coast turned up empty, without a single piece of debris found. After a four-month hiatus, the hunt resumed Oct. 4 with new, more sophisticated equipment, including sonar, video cameras and jet fuel sensors aboard three ships that will spend up to a year in a desolate stretch of the sea, about 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) west of Australia. The 60,000-square-kilometer (23,000-square-mile) search area lies along what is known as the “seventh arc” _ a stretch of ocean where investigators believe the aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed, based largely on an analysis of transmissions between the plane and a satellite. Officials initially ruled out terrorism, but conspiracy theories have endured. Until the wreckage is found and examined, it will be impossible to say for sure what happened to the plane.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 14:01:12 +0000
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