Motive remains mystery as hunt draws a blank
Print Edition
AN international land and sea search for the missing Malaysian jetliner is covering an area the size of Australia, authorities said yesterday, but police and intelligence agencies have yet to establish a clear motive to explain its disappearance.
Investigators are convinced that someone with deep knowledge of the Boeing 777 and commercial navigation diverted Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, carrying 12 crew and 227 passengers, 154 of them Chinese, perhaps thousands of miles off its scheduled course.
But intensive background checks of everyone aboard have so far failed to find anyone with a known political or criminal motive to hijack or deliberately crash the plane.
Checks into the background of the Chinese citizens on board have uncovered no links to terrorism, China’s Ambassador to Malaysia Huang Huikang said yesterday.
Malaysian officials say someone deliberately diverted the plane from its route to Beijing less than one hour into the flight from Kuala Lumpur on March 8.
Malaysia’s acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference yesterday that the “unique, unprecedented” search now covered a total area of 7.68 million square kilometers from central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean.
Investigators piecing together patchy data from military radar and satellites believe that someone turned off the aircraft’s identifying transponder and ACARS system, which transmits maintenance data, and turned west, re-crossing the Malay Peninsula and following a commercial aviation route toward India.
Malaysian officials have backtracked on the exact sequence of events — they are now unsure whether the ACARS system was shut down before or after the last radio message was heard from the cockpit — but said that did not make a material difference.
“This does not change our belief, as stated, that up until the point at which it left military primary radar coverage, the aircraft’s movements were consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane,” said Hishammuddin. “That remains the position of the investigating team.”
The New York Times cited senior US officials as saying that the first turn back to the west was likely programmed into the aircraft’s flight computer, rather than being executed manually, by someone knowledgeable about aircraft systems.
Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said yesterday that was “speculation,” but added: “Once you are in the aircraft, anything is possible.”
Suicide by the pilot or co-pilot is a line of inquiry, although Malaysian officials stressed it was only one possibility under investigation.
Malaysian police have searched the homes of the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27. Among items being examined is a flight simulator Zaharie built at his home.
China, which, with Kazakhstan, is leading the search in the northern corridor, said yesterday it had deployed 21 satellites to scour its territory.
Australia, leading the southernmost leg of the search, said it had shrunk its search area based on satellite tracking data, but it still covered 600,000 square kilometers.
The US Navy is sending a P-8A Poseidon, its advanced maritime surveillance aircraft, to Perth, Western Australia, to assist.
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