MH370:Malaysia PM: Malaysia Airlines probe refocusing on passengers, crew (CNN) -- A week after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished, investigators are refocusing on passengers and crew on board after data indicated the plane deviated because of deliberate action, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday. Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation on crew and passengers aboard, Najib told reporters. Evidence is consistent with someone acting deliberately from inside the plane. He said investigators have not pinpointed a specific explanation, but have widened the search to two corridors, including the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan border area and a swath from Indonesia to southern India. Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, we are investigating all major possibilities on what caused MH370 to deviate, Najib said. The passenger jetliner disappeared March 8, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard. Its unclear who took the plane or what the motive was, but initial speculation focused on a catastrophic end in the South China Sea. Based on new satellite information, we can say with a high degree of certainty that the aircraft communications addressing and reporting system was disabled just before the aircraft reached the East coast of peninsular Malaysia, the Prime Minister said. Shortly afterward, near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control, the aircrafts transponder was switched off. Theories on what happened have evolved every day, complete with satellite images with purported wreckage released by a Chinese agency, and later debunked by Beijing. Hours before the Prime Ministers announcement, U.S. officials told CNN that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 made drastic changes in altitude and direction after disappearing from civilian radar, raising questions about who was at the controls of the jetliner when it vanished. The more the United States learns about the flights pattern, the more difficult to write off the idea that some type of human intervention was involved, one of the officials familiar with the investigation said. CNN has learned that a classified analysis of electronic and satellite data suggests the flight likely crashed either in the Bay of Bengal or elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. The analysis by the United States and Malaysian governments may have narrowed the search area for the jetliner that vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, leaving little trace of where it went or why. The analysis used radar data and satellite pings to calculate that the plane diverted to the west, across the Malayan peninsula, and then either flew in a northwest direction toward the Bay of Bengal or southwest into the Indian Ocean. The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for up to five hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. Inmarsat, a satellite communications company, confirmed to CNN that automated signals were registered on its network. Taken together, the data point toward speculation of a dark scenario in which someone took control of the plane for some unknown purpose, perhaps terrorism. That theory is buoyed by word from a senior U.S. official familiar with the investigation that the Malaysia Airlines plane made several significant altitude changes and altered its course more than once after losing contact with flight towers. The jetliner was flying a strange path, the official said on condition of anonymity. The details of the radar readings were first reported by The New York Times on Friday. Malaysian military radar showed the plane climbing to 45,000 feet soon after disappearing from civilian radar screens and then dropping to 23,000 feet before climbing again, the official said. The question of what happened to the jetliner has turned into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history, befuddling industry experts and government officials.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 07:25:14 +0000
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