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Conflicting Reports Deepen Malaysia Jet Mystery

Conflicting Reports Deepen Malaysia Jet Mystery

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — The mystery of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 deepened amid allegations that the airplane flew four hours more than originally thought and might have traveled more than one thousand miles away from where search and rescue teams are looking.

Citing U.S. national security sources, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that government personnel were pursuing the possibility that the plane was commandeered “with the intention of using it later for another purpose.” The newspaper also said that data transmitted by an onboard monitoring system to Rolls-Royce Plc., the engine manufacturer, suggested that the plane flew for up to five hours in total after its takeoff from Kuala Lumpur at 12:21 a.m. Saturday morning.

Malaysian officials at a press conference Thursday denied the story and said the last engine data was transmitted at 1:07 a.m., about 20 minutes before the aircraft disappeared from civilian radar screens.

Nevertheless, the Malaysians said they had expanded the search and rescue operation into India and the surrounding waters, the Bay of Bengal, Andaman Sea and Arabian Sea. If in fact the Boeing 777 flew for five hours from Kuala Lumpur, it could have traveled 2,200 nautical miles, as far as the India-Pakistan border.

The latest twist only added to the frustration in a 12-nation search and rescue operation that now involves more than 80 ships, aircraft and satellites searching through much of Southeast Asia.

“The plane vanished in thin air,” said Malaysia’s acting transportation minister Hishamuddin Hussein at the press conference late Thursday in Kuala Lumpur. “We have looked at every lead and in most cases, I believe all the case we pursued, we have not found anything positive.”

Malaysian rescue planes early Thursday rushed to a location over the Gulf of Thailand, roughly halfway between Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh City, where a Chinese satellite detected three large floating objects. However, no sign of the plane or the debris was discovered in the search and Hishamuddin said that the release of the satellite photos by a Chinese defense agency had been “a mistake.”

The flight carried 239 passengers and crew and was headed to Beijing.

With the majority of the passengers Chinese nationals, the Chinese government is expressing increasing frustration at the lack of progress in the search, now in its sixth day.

“All the countries involved must demand that the Malaysians disclose all the information they have. The information they’ve released so far is implausible. It has caused a lot of confusion and has led to people looking in the wrong place,” complained Hu Hongjun, a professor of civil aviation at the University of Tianjin.

Until now, the search effort has focused on the Gulf of Thailand, the original flight path of the missing plane. But the Malaysians have conceded the plane might have made a turn because their military radar detected an unidentified aircraft over the Strait of Malacca, off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, about 330 miles off course. Malaysian military officials said it is unclear whether the unidentified craft was the missing Flight 370.

Among the various hypotheses under investigation are that the pilots attempted to turn back to Kuala Lumpur or find another airport, that they passed out from lack of oxygen after a technical malfunction or sabotage, while the airplane kept heading west.

Or alternately that there was a hijacking attempt by a passenger or one of the crew.

Satellite imagery taken of the area that night detected no flash of light that would indicate a midair explosion.

Rolls-Royce declined to release details about the investigation, except to confirm that its engines do automatically transmit data to a monitoring center in the British city of Derby. The information is transmitted at roughly 30-minute intervals.

“The last transmission of engine data was at 1:07 a.m. It did not go on longer,” said Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, flatly denying the Wall Street Journal report.

Industry executives say that incident shows the urgent need for better systems to keep track of aircraft.

“We can track our cars and our kids’ cell phones, but there is no way of tracking planes as they fly around the world,” said Don Tomas, president and chief executive of Aeron, which is developing a satellite-based surveillance system.

AFP Photo/Malaysian Maritime Enforcement

Passenger On Missing Malaysia Jet With Stolen Passport Identified

Passenger On Missing Malaysia Jet With Stolen Passport Identified

By Barbara Demick and Julie Makinen, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — Malaysian authorities have identified one of the two men who used stolen passports to board the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, the nation’s inspector general of police told local media Monday, as international search teams continued to look — so far unsuccessfully — for wreckage from the jet.

“I can confirm that he is not a Malaysian, but cannot divulge which country he is from yet,” Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar told the Star, a major Malaysian newspaper. He added that the man is also not from Xinjiang, China — a northwestern province of the mainland home to minority Uighurs. Uighur separatists have been blamed for a knifing rampage in southwestern China this month that left 29 dead.

Meanwhile, a Taiwanese official said national security officials received an anonymous tip last week warning that terrorists were targeting Beijing’s international airport. But the official, Cai Desheng, chief of Taiwan’s national security bureau, told Taiwan’s official news agency that the call received last Tuesday was “not likely” to be linked to the mysterious disappearance four days later of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which was headed from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Nevertheless, the anonymous call was one of dozens of possible clues investigators are examining as they struggle to explain how the flight, carrying 239 people, simply vanished. As of Monday evening in Malaysia, investigators have found no confirmed wreckage of the airliner despite an intensive search by more than 40 ships and nearly three dozen aircraft off the southern coast of Vietnam.

Sightings of what appeared to be an airport door and a life raft were later found to be items unrelated to Flight 370, officials said. Malaysian authorities say they have ruled nothing out as a cause of the Boeing 777’s disappearance.

According to the report by Taiwan’s Central News Agency, a man speaking Chinese claimed to have information of planned attacks directed against Beijing’s airport and subway system by the East Turkestan Independence Movement, an Islamic-inspired group seeking independence for the Uighurs. The caller identified himself as a member of a French-based anti-terror network and said he had called Taiwan’s national airline because he couldn’t reach anybody in Beijing.

As a result, Cai said that Taiwan “stepped up security checks at airport, especially for flights destined to Beijing.” Security officials also notified their counterparts in Beijing.

Taiwan, which has been self-ruled since 1949, is considered a breakaway province by Beijing, but today enjoys close economic relations with the mainland.

Chinese authorities blamed Uighur separatists for the brutal knifing rampage March 1 at a train station in the city of Kunming in southwestern China. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Beijing authorities claimed to have foiled amateurish plots by Uighurs to hijack or blow up airplanes.

Shyb via Flickr