Military data suggests ‘skilled’ flyer turned Malaysia jet
Mar 15 AFP
Investigators now believe a Malaysian jet that vanished was
commandeered by a “skilled, competent” flyer who piloted the plane for
hours, a senior Malaysian military official said Saturday as Prime
Minister Najib Razak prepared to address the nation. Speaking to AFP on
condition of anonymity, the official cited Malaysian military radar data
that investigators believe indicate the Boeing 777 may have radically
changed course and headed northwest towards the Indian Ocean.“It has to
be a skilled, competent and a current pilot,” the official said.
“He knew how to avoid the civilian radar. He appears to have studied
how to avoid it.”Prime Minister Najib's office said on its Twitter
account that he would address the media at 1:30 pm (0530 GMT).It gave no
further details, but the official's comments and the planned press
briefing raised expectations of a major announcement in the case.
Najib has so far left press briefings in the crisis to lower-ranking
officials.The plane's intended flight path for the Kuala Lumpur-Beijing
journey was to be north over the South China Sea and Vietnam.
The new information, coupled with multiple corroborative but
unconfirmed reports, suggests the investigation into the disappearance
of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is increasingly focusing on something
going wrong in the cockpit.Analysts have said that could include a
sudden loss of cabin pressure or other mechanical event that
incapacitated the pilots, catastrophic pilot error, or more sinister
possibilities such as the plane being commandeered by a hijacker or
rogue member of the flight crew, or pilot suicide.
All signs so far point to a “controlled, deliberate act, not a
mechanical failure”, said Scott Hamilton, managing director of US-based
aviation consultancy Leeham Co.
The mounting reports of an unexplained banking to the west have
coincided with a shift of search and rescue resources towards the Indian
Ocean.A US destroyer and surveillance plane joined expanded search
operations Saturday in the Bay of Bengal.
The international search effort had focused in its early days on the
South China Sea. Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said the USS
Kidd guided missile destroyer and a P-8 Poseidon aircraft had been
deployed to the “western search area” in the Andaman Sea and Bay of
Bengal.
The Boeing 777, with 239 passengers and crew on board, vanished on
March 8 over waters between Malaysia and southern Vietnam. The night was
clear and no distress signal was received.The hunt had initially focused
on the South China Sea but has shifted dramatically given the absence of
any findings, and following the indications the plane altered course.
India's navy said it was doubling, at Malaysia's behest, the number
of ships and planes it had deployed to search the Indian Ocean waters
around its remote Andaman and Nicobar islands.
The six vessels and five planes were concentrating on an area
“designated” by the Malaysian navy in the southern region of the Andaman
Sea, naval spokesman D.K. Sharma told AFP.Close to 60 ships and 50
aircraft from 13 countries have been deployed across the entire search
zone since MH370 went missing.
For distraught relatives of the passengers and crew, the expanded
search offered no immediate relief from the anguished frustration of a
week tainted by false leads and rumours.“Right now, anything is
possible,” said a middle-aged Chinese woman in Beijing who had a
relative on the flight and complained of a lack of information.
“We keep hoping there will be some good news, but it's not going
well.”
Malaysian Transport and Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein on
Friday repeatedly refused to comment on what he termed “unverified”
information, as reports of an altered flight path mounted.Multiple US
media reports also had cited unidentified officials as
saying a satellite continued to detect the plane's automated
communication system for hours after radar contact was lost.
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