Third RMAF C-130 Hercules Aircraft Arrives At Pearce Airbase Sunday

The third Royal Malaysia Air Force (RMAF) C-130 Hercules aircraft has arrived on Sunday at the Royal Australian Air Force Pearce base to assist the search of the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370.

The additional third military aircraft is part of the Malaysian programme to intensify the search for the jetliner after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak announced the plan to send more military assets during his two-day visit to Australia last Thursday.

The RMAF 20th Squadron chief, Major Muhammad Jafri Suboh said the C-130 aircraft arrived at 12.30 pm along with 33 military personnel.

"We already have two C-130s which have been involved in the search mission since March 29 and the additional aircraft will complement our team," he told reporters when met at the Pearce air base today.

Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, left the KL International Airport at 12.41am on March 8 and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later, while over the South China Sea. It was to have arrived in Beijing at 6.30am on the same day.

A multinational search was mounted for the aircraft, first in the South China Sea and then, after it was learned that the plane had veered off course, along two corridors - the northern corridor stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, and the southern corridor, from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

Following an unprecedented type of analysis of satellite data, United Kingdom satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) concluded that Flight MH370 flew along the southern corridor and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth, Australia.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak then announced on March 24, seventeen days after the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, that (the flight path of) Flight MH370 "ended in the southern Indian Ocean".

The search was a race against time, given the box's low-frequency acoustic beacon has a limited battery life, from an estimated 30 days to roughly 45 days.