3:28 PM UTC / 11:28 PM MYT
New profiles of Zaharie Ahmad Shah and Fariq Abdul Hamid, the pilot and co-pilot of MH370 have been published by Reuters & New York Times. The story is the same: nothing about these men or the lives they led seems to point to likely complicity in a plot to divert the plane.
Reuters article,
NYT article
3:13 PM UTC / 11:13 PM MYT
Thailand’s military announced Tuesday that it had radar data that seems to corroborate Malaysian military radar data tracking a plane likely to be MH370 flying west over the Malacca Strait.
Why didn’t Thailand release the data before Tuesday? Because it wasn’t specifically asked for it, military officials says.
AP via ABC
10:21 AM UTC / 6:21 PM MYT
Search area of 2.24 million sq nautical miles, putting that into perspective would be:
- Looking for 1 faulty pixel in a photo of 2067 megapixels.
- Searching in an area larger than Australia. Source
8:44 AM UTC / 4:44 PM MYT
Relatives of some of the missing Chinese passengers are threatening to go on hunger strike in an effort to get more information from the Malaysian authorities.
AFP via The Guardian
8:30 AM UTC / 4:30 PM MYT
China says it has started searching its territory and deployed 21 satellites to help with the search.
BBC
7:15 AM UTC / 3:15 PM MYT
China finds no terrorism link among its passengers on MaH370.
CNN,
The Guardian
6:27 AM UTC / 2:30 PM MYT
Australian authority admits MH370 search in Indian Ocean may take weeks. Four Australian planes, with one each from the US and New Zealand, will search an area of 600,000 square kilometres.
Video of the press conference
Map shows where the Australian Maritime Safety Authority plans to search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on March 18, 2014.
The Guardian
4:34 AM UTC / 12:33 PM MYT
Aircraft from the US and New Zealand will start hunting for MH 370 in a new search area 3,000 kilometers southwest of Perth, Australia.
ABC News
3:33 AM UTC / 11:33 AM MYT
Citing "senior American officials,"
New York Times claims that the divergent turn on MH 370 was preprogrammed into the aircraft's computer.
Their sources are unnamed. They do not provide an explanation as to how they know that the route was programmed rather than flown manually. Thus, we advice you to take this report with a pinch of salt until we receive official confirmation.
Comment from MrGandW: Aircraft fly routes which are programmed into their FMS (flight management system) via autopilot. Thus, NYT may be trying to report that the aircraft was on autopilot when its route was changed.
