KUALA LUMPUR/ SYDNEY: Australia took charge on Monday of scouring the southern Indian Ocean for a missing passenger jet and Malaysia requested radar data from countries stretching as far as central Asia, amid mounting evidence the plane’s disappearance was meticulously planned.
No trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been found since it vanished on March 8 with 239 people aboard. Investigators are increasingly convinced it was diverted perhaps thousands of miles off course by someone with deep knowledge of the Boeing 777-200ER and commercial navigation.
Suspicions of hijacking or sabotage hardened further after it was confirmed the last radio message from the cockpit – an informal “all right, good night” – was spoken after someone had begun disabling one of the plane’s automatic tracking systems.
But police and a multi-national investigation team may never know for sure what happened in the cockpit unless they find the plane, and that in itself is a daunting challenge.
Satellite data suggests the plane could be anywhere in either of two vast corridors that arc through much of Asia: one stretching north from northern Thailand to Kazakhstan, the other south from Indonesia into the Indian Ocean west of Australia.
China, which has been vocal in its impatience with Malaysian efforts to find the plane, called on its smaller neighbor to “immediately” expand and clarify the scope of the search. About two-thirds of the passengers aboard MH370 were Chinese.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he had spoken to Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak by telephone, and had offered more surveillance resources in addition to the two P-3C Orion aircraft his country has already committed.
“He asked that Australia take responsibility for the search in the southern vector, which the Malaysian authorities now think was one possible flight path for this ill-fated aircraft,” Abbott told parliament. “I agreed that we would do so.”
Malaysia’s transport ministry said in a statement on Monday it had sent diplomatic notes to all countries along the northern and southern search corridors, requesting radar and satellite information as well as land, sea and air search operations.
The Malaysian navy and air force was also searching the southern corridor, it said.
HOMES SEARCHED
Police special branch officers searched the homes of the captain, 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and first officer, 27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid, in middle-class suburbs of Kuala Lumpur close to the international airport on Saturday.
Among the items taken for examination was a flight simulator Zaharie had built in his home.
A senior police official familiar with the investigation said the flight simulator programs were closely examined, adding they appeared to be normal ones that allow users to practice flying and landing in different conditions.
A second senior police official with knowledge of the investigation said they had found no evidence of a link between the pilots and any militant group.
“Based on what we have so far, we cannot see the terrorism link here,” he said. “We looked at known terror or extremist groups in Southeast Asia, the links are not there.”
Background checks are also being made on the 227 passengers on the flight, including aviation engineer Mohd Khairul Amri Selamat, a 29-year-old Malaysian who worked for a private jet charter company.
“The focus is on anyone else who might have had aviation skills on that plane,” the second police source told Reuters.
As an engineer specializing in executive jets, Khairul would not necessarily have all the knowledge needed to divert and fly a large jetliner. (Reuters)