MH370 pilot made call mid-flight

The co-pilot of missing airliner MH370 tried to make a mid-flight call just before the plane vanished.

Narrowing in ... US Navy Airman 2nd Class Karl Shinn keeps watch out a window while flying in a P-8A Poseidon aircraft during a search mission looking for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Source: AP

THE co-pilot of missing Malaysia Airlines plane made a desperate call from his mobile phone moments before the jet went off the radar.

The call from co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's phone ended abruptly, but not before contact was established with a telecommunications sub-station in Penang state, the New Straits Times reports.

The call was made as the jet was flying low near Penang island on Malaysia's west coast, the morning it went missing.

"The telco's (telecommunications company's) tower established the call that he was trying to make. On why the call was cut off, it was likely because the aircraft was fast moving away from the tower and had not come under the coverage of the next one," the paper said, citing unnamed sources.

Mystery call ... from the co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid. Picture: Supplied Source: News Corp Australia

It is unknown who he was trying to call as sources would not release more information.

Investigators are still trying to work out what had happened moments before the Boeing 777 went off the radar.

His last communication through WhatsApp was logged at 11.30pm on March 7, just before he boarded the jet for his six-hour flight to Beijing.

The paper said checks on the co-pilot's phone history showed the last person he spoke to was "one of his regular contacts (a number that frequently appears on his outgoing phone logs)". This call was made no more than two hours before the flight took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Checks on his phone showed that connection to the phone had been "detached" before the plane took off. "This is usually the result of the phone being switched off. At one point, however, when the airplane was airborne, between waypoint Igari and the spot near Penang (just before it went missing from radar), the line was 'reattached'.

"A 'reattachment' does not necessarily mean that a call was made. It can also be the result of the phone being switched on again," the sources said. He and Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah have come under intense scrutiny after the plane mysteriously vanished.

Fariq's cousin Nursyafiqah Kamarudin, 18, told the New Strait Times on Monday that Fariq, who would have turned 28 on April 1, was very close to his mother.

"If Fariq could make one call before the plane disappeared, it would have been to her."

Before he boarded MH370 ... Co-pilot Fariq Hamid being searched before he walked on to the plane. Source: YouTube

SEARCH CONTINUES FOR ACOUSTIC SIGNALS

NO new acoustic signals have been detected in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

Hopes of recovering the aircraft's black box have risen significantly in the past week after the Australian vessel Ocean Shield detected four signals believed to have come from the jet's flight recorder.

However, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre says no new signals have been detected in the past 24 hours.

Nine military aircraft, one civil aircraft and 14 ships will continue the hunt for MH370 today, searching an area of more than 41,000 square km about 23,000km northwest of Perth.

That large search area again appears to contradict Prime Minister Tony Abbott's recent suggestion that the search area in the Indian Ocean has very much narrowed.

Chinese briefing. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, right, chats with his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak. Source: AP

Mr Abbott yesterday told his Chinese counterpart that search teams have narrowed the area where they believe MH370's black box is to within 10km.

Speaking from Beijing today, Mr Abbott said:

"While we do have a high degree of confidence that the transmissions are from MH370s recorder, no-one should underestimate the difficulty of the task ahead of us," the PM said.

"Yes we have narrowed down the search area ... but trying to locate anything 4.5km beneath the surface of the ocean ... is a massive, massive task and it is likely to continue for a long time to come."

He said search teams would continue to conduct sonar tests to narrow the search area further.

"Given that the signal is now fading we are trying to get as many signals as possible so we can narrow the (search) area," he said.

"Once that has been done it is our intention to then deploy the submersible to conduct a sonar search of the sea bed and then, based on the sonar search, attempt to get a visual of the base of the sea bed."

The PM gave Chinese President Xi Jinping a private and detailed briefing in Beijing about the latest on the search for the missing Boeing 777-200ER aircraft which had 154 Chinese people on board.

ANGUS HOUSTON: Man charged with finding flight MH370 rejected by RAF

FLIGHT MH370: What lies beneath the southern Indian Ocean

He told the President before a State dinner with the Australian premiers at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing — an unprecedented audience — that search teams led by the Australian ship Ocean Shield had narrowed down the area in the Indian Ocean where pings from the flight recorders are being received to a grid of around 10km by 10km.

He told President Xi that there is now a high degree of confidence that the signals were the black boxes from the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight.

The PM then personally invited President Xi to address the Australian parliament later this year. President Xi will be only the second Chinese leader to be invited to address Parliament since Hu Jintao visited in 2007.

The Australian vessel Ocean Shield towing a US Navy device that detects black box signals has to date recorded four signals that are believed to have come from at least a black box flight recorder.

The Ocean Shield was today in an area about 2200km northwest of Perth continuing sweeps of its pinger locator to detect further signals.

Diving deep ... Leading Seaman Aircrewman (LSA) Daniel Colbert assisting LSA Joel Young back into HMAS Toowoomba's, S-70B-2 Seahawk helicopter, Tiger 75, after retrieving debris in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. Source: AFP

Orion aircraft were also continuing acoustic searches.

The plane's black boxes, or flight data and cockpit voice recorders, may hold the answers to why the aeroplane lost communications and veered so far off course when it vanished on Saturday, March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board.

Search crews are racing against time because the batteries powering the devices' locator beacons last only about a month — and more than a month has passed since the plane disappeared.

Finding the black boxes after the batteries fail will be extremely difficult because the water in the area is 4500 metres deep.

The PM had described the loss of Malaysian flight MH370 as one of the "great mysteries of our time".

"It is probably the most difficult search in human history," Mr Abbott said in a speech to 1800 people at the official launch of Australia in China week.

"I thank the government and people of China for the help that they have given to Australia as we lead this search and recovery effort.

Search continues ... Able Seaman Communications and Information Systems Noel O'Brien keeping a look out from the port flag bin of HMAS Toowoomba during the search for missing Malaysia Airways Flight MH370. Source: AFP

SCAMMERS TARGET MH370 RELATIVES

Scammers are targeting relatives of those aboard missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370.

A bogus email has been sent to the families of missing passengers suggesting compensation claims are possible even though the aircraft hasn't yet been found.

"At a minimum, an international aviation treaty allows the next-of-kin of the plane's MH370 passengers to seek up to US$175,000 equivalent in your local currency," it says.

This purports to come from Allen Helter of Malaysia Airlines and urges those claiming to contact Mohamed Bin Abd Wahab of the Eon Bank in Kuala Lumpur.

However, the email originates from a Yahoo account in Hong Kong. It appears to be a standard advance fee fraud, with those seeking compensation first required to pay administrative charges before funds can be released

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