Free Republic

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The head of the organization that monitors the nuclear test ban treaty said Monday he has asked its experts to see if they detected an explosion at high altitude of the missing Malaysian Airlines plane. Lassina Zerbo, executive director of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization told a news conference that the CTBTO uses "infrasound" - or infrasonic sensors - to monitor the earth mainly for atmospheric nuclear explosions....

How difficult is it to board a plane with a stolen passport? Not as hard as you might think. In any major international airport, it's not uncommon to have your passport checked four times or more between check-in and boarding the aircraft. But if passenger documents aren't checked against Interpol's database of Stolen and Lost Travel Documents, travelers using those documents can slip through layers of security. Investigators don't yet know if the travelers with stolen passports had anything to do with the plane's disappearance. On any given day, many people travel using stolen or fake passports for reasons that...

Last November, I flew out of Kuala Lumpur on a flight to China on a Boeing 777. It was a smooth, uneventful flight that left on time — a delightfully common occurrence in this part of the world. It was dark, and I recall gazing out my window at the dazzling image of Kuala Lumpur below. I particularly remember seeing the massive, 88-floor Petronas Twin Towers glowing amidst the landscape of the city. This memory came back to me when I heard about the disappearance of Malaysian Airways flight MH370, and subsequent reports that the missing Beijing-bound jet may have...

An Iranian businessman known only as Mr Ali is understood to have booked the tickets for the two passengers using the stolen passports of the missing Malaysian Airlines plane, it has emerged.... A Thai travel agent who arranged the tickets for the two passengers has now said she had booked them on the flight via Beijing because they were the cheapest tickets, it has been reported. The travel agent in the resort of Pattaya said an Iranian business contact she knew only as 'Mr Ali' had asked her to book tickets for the two men on March 1. She had...

EXCERPT Discussed for many years but never implemented, the concept of automatically transmitting data would involve using satellite links to send critical safety information from an airliner to the ground during extreme emergencies or just before a plane goes down. The information may highlight, among other things, engine and system performance, flight commands by pilots and possible problems with cockpit automation. The direct transmissions would serve as real-time substitutes when traditional "black boxes" containing digital flight data and recordings of cockpit conversations are damaged or lost, whether temporarily or permanently. "Such a solution is long overdue, considering the state of...

Reuters) - Officials investigating the disappearance of a Malaysian airliner with 239 people on board are narrowing the focus of their inquiries on the possibility that it disintegrated mid-flight, a senior source said on Sunday. Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished after climbing to a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing in the early hours of Saturday. Search teams have not been able to make any confirmed discovery of wreckage in seas beneath the plane's flight path almost 48 hours after it took off. "The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears...

KUALA LUMPUR—A Vietnamese search aircraft located fragments Sunday floating in waters off southern Vietnam that are suspected of coming from a Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU 0.00% jetliner that went missing a day earlier with 239 people on board. The fragments were believed to be a composite inner door and a piece of the tail, Vietnam's ministry of information and communication said in a posting on its website. They were located about 50 miles south-southwest of Tho Chu island. Officials released photograph of one fragment floating in the water. Malaysia Airlines said it had received no confirmation regarding the suspected debris. Flight...

Twenty-four hours after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared over the South China Sea, the only clue to the fate of its 239 passengers and crew was the revelation that at least two people on board were using stolen passports. The disclosure raised fears that terrorists could have used the passport to board the craft, which vanished with no prior signals of trouble to air traffic controllers. Those fears increased when Malaysian authorities said they were investigating the identities of two other passengers on board the aircraft. The four under suspicion had all bought their flight tickets through China Southern Airlines,...

'INTERFERENCE': Pilot in another plane was flying 30 minutes ahead of MH370 SEPANG: A BOEING 777 pilot, who was flying 30 minutes ahead of the missing Malaysia Airlines     aircraft, said he established contact with    MH370  minutes  after  he   was    asked to do so by  Vietnamese air traffic control. The captain, who asked to not be named, said his plane, which was bound for Narita, Japan, was far into Vietnamese airspace when he was asked to relay, using his plane's emergency frequency, to MH370 for the latter to establish its position, as the authorities could not contact the aircraft. "We managed...

UPDATE [12:37]: Tuoi Tre, a leading daily in Vietnam, reports that the Vietnamese Navy has confirmed the plane crashed into the ocean. According to Navy Admiral Ngo Van Phat, Commander of the Region 5, military radar recorded that the plane crashed into the sea at a location 153 miles South of Phu Quoc island. When contacted, Malaysia Airlines declined to confirm or deny the reports, saying that the Malaysian authorities are working together with the Vietnamese government on the matter. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that China has dispatched two maritime rescue ships to help locate the missing plane.

-excerpt- Louis Maraldi, 37, from Cesena, was named as one of the passengers on board the plane. However, reports in Italy have confirmed that he was NOT on board and that he had reported his passport stolen last August.

A military plane crashed in eastern Algeria Tuesday afternoon local time, Feb. 11, 2014, killing more than 100. Traveling from Ouargla to Constantine, the plane crashed in the mountains of the Oum al-Bouaghi province, a few hundred miles from the capital of the country, according to Reuters.

A month after a small plane crash in Hawaii, a surviving passenger shows GoPro footage and even a selfie taken during the ordeal. Would you have done the same? Ferdinand Puentes was one of nine passengers in a 2002 Cessna Grand Caravan which suddenly suffered engine failure off Kalaupapa, Molokai in Hawaii last month. As he heard the engine fail and saw the plane heading for the water, one of his first instincts was to turn on his GoPro camera and film what might have been his own demise. As KHON-TV reports, Puentes knew the danger he was in, yet...

One person died and two others were injured when a small plane crashed at the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport in Colorado on Sunday, the Pitkin County Sheriff's office said.

HONOLULU (AP) — The pilot of the plane that crashed off Molokai said he broadcast a mayday call once he realized he wouldn't be able to sustain a glide long enough to reach land after his engine lost power. [....] However, NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss has said the agency is not preventing the county from releasing findings from Fuddy's autopsy, which was conducted Friday.

New video of Hawaii sea plane crash

Two survivors of the plane crash off Molokai were sitting directly behind Hawaii Department of Health Director Loretta Fuddy when the aircraft went down Wednesday afternoon. Fuddy died in the crash.

Six American soldiers have died in a crash involving an aircraft in southern Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) says. The cause of the crash in Zabul is unknown and an investigation is under way, Isaf said. Initial reports indicated there was "no enemy activity in the area" at the time of the incident, a short statement said. US defence department officials confirmed the victims´ nationalities. The deputy governor of Zabul province told the Associated Press news agency that a Nato helicopter had crashed in the remote district of Shajau. It was not clear if he was referring to...

HONOLULU -- Crews will try to salvage the plane that crashed off the Hawaiian island of Molokai.... Hawaii Health Director Loretta Fuddy was the sole fatality.... A 200-foot recovery vessel will leave Honolulu Harbor on Tuesday night and crews will attempt to pull the plane out of the water Thursday morning, Weiss said, adding that the effort will be paid for by an insurance company....