‘There is always hope,’ says defense minister
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The search for the missing Malaysian jet pushed deep into the northern and southern hemispheres yesterday as Australia scoured the southern Indian Ocean and Kazakhstan — more than 10,000 kilometers to the northwest — answered Malaysia’s call for help in the unprecedented hunt.
French investigators arriving in Kuala Lumpur to lend expertise from their two-year search for an Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 said they were able to rely on distress signals. But that vital tool is missing in the Malaysia Airlines mystery because flight MH370’s communications were deliberately severed ahead of its disappearance more than a week ago, investigators say.
Malaysian authorities say the jet carrying 239 people was intentionally diverted during an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 and flew off-course for several hours.
Investigators haven’t ruled out hijacking, sabotage, suicide or mass murder, and are checking the backgrounds of passengers and crew.
For now, though, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said finding the plane was still the main focus, and he did not rule out finding it intact.
“The fact that there was no distress signal, no ransom notes, no parties claiming responsibility, there is always hope,” Hishammuddin told reporters yesterday.
Although Malaysian authorities requested that all nations with citizens on board the flight conduct background checks on them, it wasn’t clear how thoroughly they were conducting such checks at home.
Malaysia’s government in the meantime sent out diplomatic cables to all countries in the search area, seeking more planes and ships for the search, as well as to ask for any radar data that might prove useful.
Some 26 countries are involved in the search, which initially focused on seas on either side of peninsular Malaysia, in the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca.
Over the weekend, however, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said investigators determined that a satellite picked up a faint signal from the aircraft about seven hours after takeoff. The signal indicated the plane would have been somewhere on a vast arc stretching from Kazakhstan down to the southern Indian Ocean.
Hishammuddin said yesterday that searches in both the northern and southern stretches of the arc had begun.
Had the plane gone northwest to Central Asia, it would have crossed over countries with busy airspace, and some experts believe it more likely would have gone south, although Malaysian authorities are not ruling out the northern corridor and are eager for radar data to confirm or rule out that path.
The northern corridor crosses through countries including China, India and Pakistan — all of which have said they have seen no sign of the plane.
To the south, Indonesia focused on Indian Ocean waters west of Sumatra, while Australia agreed to scour the southern Indian Ocean with aircraft that would also be joined by New Zealand and US planes.
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