Hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 continues: the latest news and updates – The Verge

More pieces of missing Malaysian airplane MH370 are identified

2016-04-19T15:02:28-04:00

The Australian government confirmed today that two items of debris recovered on a beach in Mozambique are from Malaysian Airlines 370, the airplane that mysteriously disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board. It is only the second time that a piece from the missing aircraft was positively identified by an official government source.

The two items were found on a beach in Mozambique about 137 miles apart. One, later identified as a segment from the right wing of the plane, was found in December 2015. The other, a piece of the horizontal stabilizer from the tail section, was found in February 2016. The latter piece is stenciled with …

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UN announces real-time flight tracking rules on anniversary of MH370 disappearance

2016-03-09T03:42:22-05:00

The UN's aviation agency has announced new regulations that will allow for airplanes to be tracked in real-time, two years after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. The International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) governing council adopted the measures on Tuesday, with ICAO council president Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu saying they will help "ensure that similar disappearances never occur again."

MH370 vanished from radar shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8th, 2014. The Beijing-bound plane had 239 passengers and crew members on board. A piece of wreckage from the aircraft was found off the coast of Réunion …

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The UN agrees to create a global flight tracking system after disappearance of MH370

2015-11-11T17:14:48-05:00

The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 with 239 people onboard last year spurred a worldwide effort to create a better system to track civilian flights. On Wednesday, some of that effort bore fruit. A UN committee agreed to allocate a portion of the radio spectrum for global flight tracking to prevent future disappearances.

The agreement was reached at the World Radiocommunication Conference in Geneva. The UN International Telecommunication Union, which sets global standards for communication technology, agreed to dedicate the frequency band 1087.7-1092.3 MHz for satellites and space stations to receive Automatic Dependent Sur …

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Recovered plane debris is from MH370, officials confirm

2015-08-05T13:58:25-04:00

Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has confirmed that the plane debris discovered last week on Réunion Island is indeed from Malaysia Airlines 370, the flight that disappeared mysteriously last year with 239 people onboard. Razak also said that he was committed to doing whatever was necessary to find out what happened to the flight. The announcement was made today following analysis of the recovered plane wing part at a military laboratory.

As reported by Bloomberg, the debris is the first physical evidence of the aircraft that went missing in March of 2014. A stenciled number on the piece of wreckage also corresponds to a Boeing 777 comp …

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Debris found near Madagascar may be from long-missing MH370 airliner

2015-07-29T18:59:33-04:00

Multiple reports now indicate that a weather-battered aircraft section found earlier today on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean is part of a flaperon - a control surface that acts both as a flap and an aileron - from a Boeing 777. The only Boeing 777 that is presently unaccounted for is Malaysia Airlines 370, which has been missing since it disappeared from radar in March of 2014 with 239 people aboard. Today's news appears to be the strongest evidence yet of the airliner's fate.

The debris was found far west of officials' original search zones for MH370's wreckage that had been guided by satellite data transmitted from the aircraft before …

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MH370 report reveals black box battery expired a year before flight

2015-03-08T12:14:29-04:00

Precisely a year ago, on March 8th, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 mysteriously disappeared over the Straits of Malacca. There's still no trace of the Boeing 777-200 or its 239 passengers and crew, but an exhaustive 584-page report released today reveals that the battery powering one black box's locator beacon expired over a year before the incident.

The old battery means that crews searching the southern Indian Ocean likely wouldn't have picked up a signal from the black box even if they were floating right over it. In the weeks after the disappearance, crews searched hastily to try and find a black box before the batteries ran out of …

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After mapping ocean floor, crews renew search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370

2014-10-04T19:32:02-04:00

Six months ago, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared with 239 passengers on board after departing from Kuala Lumpur. After an initial frantic search to find the Boeing 777's black boxes before their batteries petered out, rescue crews called off efforts and began a major undertaking to map the seafloor. Now, four months later, those maps are complete, and the search is beginning anew this month as three ships plan to scour the search area for debris by dragging a sensor device just 330 feet (100 meters) above the seabed at a speed of seven miles per hour, according to the Associated Press.

The device, known as a towfish, is equipped wit …

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MH370 satellite data is now available to amateur sleuths

2014-05-27T01:54:22-04:00

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The Malaysian government today published a 47-page report detailing the final automated communications of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. According to Australian air-accident analysts, the report - which shows the automatic "pings" of information that travelled between the aircraft and a satellite belonging to British firm Inmarsat - suggests that the aircraft had likely run out of fuel and was descending at the time it sent its last update. The raw data was published by Malaysia's department of civil aviation after families of the jet's missing passengers pressured the country's government for greater transparency in its investigation.

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Europe proposes improvements to airplane black boxes in response to MH370 disaster

2014-05-06T09:15:48-04:00

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The notoriously cost-sensitive air travel industry will have to upgrade its standard flight recorder equipment if new rules proposed in Europe are adopted. Published today by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), these require an extension of the minimum signal broadcasting time of Underwater Locating Devices (ULDs) from 30 to 90 days, giving search and rescue teams more time to do their jobs, as well as a longer locating range. Additionally, the current minimum of two hours of cockpit audio recording would be extended to 20 hours, covering the full duration of most flights in and out of the continent. The Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) …

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Malaysia recommends new real-time plane tracking system in MH370 report

2014-05-01T09:23:55-04:00

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Malaysia's Transportation Ministry has published a preliminary report on flight MH370, reiterating that the plane that went missing in early March is believed to have crashed into the Indian Ocean after disappearing from communication systems and veering far off course shortly into its journey. The report concludes with a recommendation for avoiding such situations in the future: implementing a tracking system that could follow planes in real time.

The ministry isn't actually about to implement this, however. It's instead recommending that the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization - an agency that helps to develop aviati …

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