The hunt for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has taken a dramatic turn after the country’s prime minister confirmed that communications on board had been deliberately disabled and that the jet had flown off course for more than six hours after it lost contact with air traffic control.
The revelation came as police raided the home of the missing flight’s pilot, sparking intense speculation that someone on the plane had been responsible for its disappearance or hijack.
No group has claimed responsibility, but the Malaysian authorities confirmed foul play was now the most likely theory to explain the plane’s fate.
The Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, said his country’s air force defence radar had picked up traces of the plane turning back westward, crossing over Peninsular Malaysia before heading into the northern stretches of the Strait of Malacca.
He said investigators had a “high degree of certainty” that the plane’s Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System (Acars), had been disabled before the aircraft reached the east coast of Malaysia. Soon after, someone on board switched off the aircraft’s transponder, the device that communicates the plane’s location to the civilian air traffic controllers.
“These movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane,” Najib said. “In view of this latest development, the Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation into the crew and passengers on board.”
Tracing what happened to the Boeing 777, which disappeared from civilian radar last Saturday with 239 passengers and crew on board as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, has now become an international effort. Fourteen countries, 43 ships and 58 aircraft are already involved in the search, which is expanding rapidly as information on the plane’s potential routes emerges.
On Saturday the UK-based satellite operator, Inmarsat, whose technology has helped to identify possible routes taken by the plane, confirmed that it was now working with the UK authorities in the search.
“Inmarsat has been appointed as a technical adviser to the UK Air Accident Investigation Branch on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 so that we may fully support the Malaysia investigation,” the company said in a short statement.
The Malaysian authorities said satellite data indicated that the aircraft had last made contact with a satellite more than seven hours after it took off. They said the signals had indicated that it was flown along one of two standard flight corridors: either north, towards an area stretching from northern Thailand to Kazakhstan, or south, towards airspace over Indonesia, out towards the southern Indian Ocean.
A source familiar with US assessments of the plane’s electronic signals said the most likely explanation was that it had turned south over the Indian Ocean, where it is likely to have run out of fuel and crashed into the sea.
There are claims that Malaysian military radar last identified the plane in the Strait of Malacca, 1,000 miles west of Perth in Australia. There were reports on Saturday that, after Malaysia air traffic control had recognised it had lost the flight, it had repeatedly tried to contact the jet for more than two hours before issuing a red alert.
If the plane continued north towards Central Asia, it is unclear how it would have avoided detection by Indian air control or by other radars in the vicinity, including the US military airbase in Bagram, Afghanistan.
Investigators are combing passenger and crew records but American authorities have said they do not believe that anyone on board had links to extremist groups.
Experts said that whoever disabled the plane’s communication systems and then flew the jet must have had a high degree of technical knowledge and flying experience. One possibility is that one of the pilots was intent on suicide.
On Saturday police began searching 53-year-old captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s home on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. It was not clear if the home of co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, was also being investigated. Shah joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981 and was considered by colleagues to be an “aviation tech geek” who had clocked in 18,365 flight hours. The grandfather was considered “very friendly and safety-conscious” and enjoyed flying miniature planes and playing with a flight simulator he had built in his home.
The hunt for the plane has led to tensions between Malaysia and China, which had 153 of its citizens on board. The Chinese government’s Xinhua news agency accused Malaysia of dragging its feet in releasing information. “Given today’s technology, the delay smacks of either dereliction of duty or reluctance to share information in a full and timely manner,” Xinhua said.
GUARDIAN(UK)
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