Missing Malaysian plane: Did it land? By Michael Pearson and Jethro Mullen, CNN (CNN) - Yet another theory is taking shape about what might have happened to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Maybe it landed in a remote Indian Ocean island chain. The suggestion -- and its only that at this point -- is based on analysis of radar data revealed Friday by Reuters suggesting that the plane wasnt just blindly flying northwest from Malaysia. And its just one of untold theories floating around about what might have happened to the airliner, which disappeared a week ago Friday without leaving much of a trace of where it had gone or why. Reuters, citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, reported that whoever was piloting the vanished jet was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands. The radar data dont show the plane over the Andaman Islands but only on a known route that would take it there, Reuters cited its sources as saying. The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. U.S. investigators concluded that the pings didnt come from other planes, leading some investigators to think the plane flew on for hours before truly disappearing. Taken together, the data point toward speculation in a dark scenario in which someone took the plane for some unknown purpose, perhaps terrorism. The movie-plot theory seems more complicated and unlikely than one in which the plane -- its flight crew perhaps incapacitated -- simply flew on until it ran out of fuel or faced some other problem. But its one that law enforcement has to check out, former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom said. You draw that arc, and you look at countries like Pakistan, you know, and you get into your Superman novels, and you see the plane landing somewhere and (people) repurposing it for some dastardly deed down the road, he told CNNs Jake Tapper on Thursday. Aviation experts say its possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have hijacked and landed the giant Boeing 777 undetected. The international airport in Port Blair, the regional capital of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, has a runway that is long enough to accommodate a 777, according to publicly available data.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 20:09:40 +0000
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