Malaysia Airlines plane may have been flown deliberately towards Andaman Islands. Inquiries focus on the theory that someone who knew how to fly a plane deliberately diverted the flight hundreds of kilometres off its intended course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.In one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation, no trace of the plane nor any sign of wreckage has been found despite a search by the navies and military aircraft of more than a dozen countries. Someone on board missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 may have shut down communications systems deliberately, providing further evidence the plane flew on for several hours. Sources close to the investigation said the two communications systems on board the Malaysia Airlines jet were shut down separately, more than 10 minutes apart, according to an American ABC News report. A data reporting system had been turned off at 1.07am while a –transponder was shut down at 1.21am. The source said this information –indicated the plane had continued to fly and had reached the Indian Ocean. The US Navy has sent the USS Kidd from the Gulf of Thailand to the Malacca Strait on the western side of the Malay Peninsula to an area hundreds of kilometres away from where the plane dropped off civilian radar. If the plane flew on for hours, it raises the likelihood of foul play. US officials said someone in the cockpit could have turned off the transponder and radio before flying on. The fact that a modern aeroplane with a huge amount of redundancy appeared to change course at the same time that the transponder was turned off, that suggests that someone unauthorised took control of that – aeroplane, like an intruder or one of the pilots, said a US air-crash expert who spoke to Bloomberg on the condition of anonymity because they were not directly involved in the investigation. All other communication with the plane ended by 1.30am on Saturday. Around that point, the pilot signed off with Malaysian air-traffic controllers with a casual, all right, good night, according to news reports. Then the transponder signal the plane was sending to ground-based radar stations went silent. Other US officials said their information did not reveal what direction the plane flew or whether it simply circled during those four hours. That much additional flight time could have put the plane somewhere over the Indian Ocean, far from its Beijing destination. Malaysian authorities have said they are investigating all passengers and crew aboard, but denied local media reports on Thursday they searched a home of one of the pilots. Planes send a steady stream of information to their owner or the companies that built them. In the final minutes before Air France Flight 477 plunged into the Atlantic almost five years ago, it sent 29 automatic error messages to the airline’s home base in France. Representatives of Boeing and engine maker Rolls-Royce have been in Kuala Lumpur working with the airline, and say neither received data after 1.07am. Earlier, satellites reportedly received intermittent data pings from the missing jet, identifying the plane’s location, speed and altitude for at least five hours after it disappeared from radar contact. The last ping was sent from over water at what was described as normal altitude, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The automatic pings occurred a number of times after Malaysia –Airlines Flight 370s last verified position, the report said, indicating that during those hours the plane carrying 239 people was still intact. Malaysian Airlines System said it hadnt received any such data. Indias navy has set up its own search mission into the Andaman Sea. It is searching primarily in waters just north of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, but we are also searching the Andaman and Nicobar island areas north to south tomorrow, said Harmit Singh, an Indian navy spokesman. The areas of search are being given by Malaysia.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 10:37:03 +0000
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