Malaysian airplane investigators look at suicide as possible motive
By Anshuman Daga and Yantoultra Ngui.
The co-pilot of a missing Malaysian jetliner spoke the last words heard from the cockpit, the airline’s chief executive said on Monday, as investigators consider suicide by the captain or first officer as one possible explanation for the disappearance.
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.
A search unprecedented in its scale is now under way for the plane, covering an area stretching from the shores of the Caspian Sea in the north to deep in the southern Indian Ocean.
Airline chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya also told a news conference that it was unclear exactly when one of the plane’s automatic tracking systems had been disabled, appearing to contradict the weekend comments of government ministers.
Suspicions of hijacking or sabotage had hardened further when officials said on Sunday that the last radio message from the plane – an informal “all right, good night” – was spoken after the tracking system, known as “ACARS”, was shut down.
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By Fox News .Missing Malaysia flight’s path reportedly diverted through computer system
By Fox News.
The mysterious turn that diverted the missing Malaysia Airlines flight off of its scheduled route to Beijing was programmed into a computer system on board, the New York Times reported Monday, meaning it was not executed manually by one of the pilots at the controls.
The revelation lends more credence to a theory by investigators searching for the jet that the Boeing 777 was deliberately diverted. The Times reports it is unclear if the change in course was reprogrammed before or after the plane took off, but the change was likely made by someone in the cockpit with knowledge of airplane systems.
The search for Flight 370, which vanished early March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, has now been expanded deep into the northern and southern hemispheres. Australian vessels scoured the southern Indian Ocean and China offered 21 of its satellites to help Malaysia in the unprecedented hunt, but no trace of the plane has been found.
Investigators say the jet flew off-course for hours. They haven’t ruled out hijacking, sabotage, or pilot suicide, and are checking the backgrounds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members — as well as the ground crew — for personal problems, psychological issues or links to terrorists.
China’s state news agency reported Tuesday that background checks on all its nationals on board the missing Malaysian jetliner uncovered no links to terrorism. Xinhua said the Chinese ambassador to Malaysia made the announcement to media in Kuala Lumpur.
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Photo Credit: Edgar Su/ReutersThe Tripwire on Flight 370
By Olive Irving.
The fate of Flight MH370 could have been decided in three minutes.
The Malaysians changed more than the clock when they backtracked Monday from their original statement that the last voice contact from the airplane (“All right, good night”) was received at 1:30 a.m., putting it instead at 1:19 a.m.
The need for an absolutely accurate timeline of the Boeing 777’s flight path has always been essential to investigators. It’s the first thing that they request and normally would be instantly retrievable from air traffic control radars and transmissions between the airplane and the ground. It has been severely lacking in this case.
The timeline has big implications for those trying to understand not just the correct sequence of events but what may lay behind them. Critically, it would mean that with the transponder turned off at 1:22 a.m.—three minutes after the final words from the cockpit, the number of suspects grows suddenly larger.
The transponder is really the tripwire for whatever began to unfold on that jet. It identifies the airplane to traffic controllers and confirms its position. As long as it appeared that the transponder was de-activated before the final voice report, it left open the possibility that the pilots lied to air traffic control and were themselves already embarked upon a pre-planned series of actions that would allow the flight to vanish (however bizarre that scenario seemed).
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Rep. King on Flight 370: ‘Nothing Out There Indicating It’s Terrorists’
By Melanie Hunter.
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous” that there have been “no terrorist connections” to missing Malaysia Air flight 370, although he expressed concern about the two Iranian passengers, who used stolen passports to board the plane, as well as the pilot and co-pilot.
“No there’s been no terrorist connections whatsoever. There’s been no terrorist chatter. There’s nothing out there indicating it’s terrorists. It doesn’t mean it’s not, but so far nothing has been picked up the intelligence community from day one. I still have questions about the two Iranians who were on the plane, but again that could be a side issue. The fact is nothing has come up indicating a terrorist connection,” King said.
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