Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian authorities expanded their search for the missing jetliner into the Andaman Sea and beyond on Thursday even as confusion reigned over whether the plane was flying hours after it went missing.
The Associated Press reported Malaysian authorities as saying it could have flown for several hours after its last contact with the ground, while Reuters said that there was no evidence to suggest that.
If the jetliner did fly, it would make it a vastly more difficult task to find it, and raises the possibility that searchers are currently looking in the wrong place for the Boeing 777 and its 229 passengers and crew.
In the latest in a series of false leads, planes were sent on Thursday to search an area where Chinese satellite images published on a Chinese government website reportedly showed three suspected floating objects off the southern tip of Vietnam.
They saw only ocean.
“There is nothing. We went there, there is nothing,” said acting Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussain.
Compounding the frustration, he later said the Chinese Embassy had notified the government that the images were released by mistake and did not show any debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
The Wall Street Journal said that US aviation investigators and national security officials believed the Boeing 777 flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from its Rolls-Royce Trent engines as part of a standard monitoring programme.
“Those reports are inaccurate,” Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussain told a news conference. “As far as both Rolls-Royce and Boeing are concerned, those reports are inaccurate. The last (data) transmission from the aircraft was at 1.07am (local time) which indicated that everything was normal.”
Boeing and Rolls-Royce have yet to comment.
Reuters has previously reported that the plane’s transmission of the so-called ACARS technical data ceased after it lost contact with air traffic control.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, dropped off air traffic control screens at about 1.30am on Saturday, less than an hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. There were no reports of bad weather or mechanical problems.
It is one of the most baffling mysteries in the history of modern aviation — there has been no trace of the plane since nor any sign of wreckage despite a search by the navies and military aircraft of over a dozen countries across Southeast Asia.
“It’s extraordinary that with all the (satellite and telecommunication) technology that we’ve got that an aircraft can disappear like this,” Tony Tyler, the head of the International Air Transport Association that links over 90 per cent of the world’s airlines, told reporters in London.
“It will trigger a desire to see how can we avoid this from happening again ... I wouldn’t be surprised that the technology did exist already but is not being used.”
The last definitive sighting of MH370 on civilian radar screens came as the plane flew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand.
On Wednesday, Malaysia’s air force chief said military radar had traced what could have been the jetliner to an area south of the Thai holiday island of Phuket in the Malacca Strait, hundreds of miles to the west of its last known position.
However, he stressed the plotting had not been corroborated.
The multinational search team is combing both bodies of water, which total 27,000 square nautical miles (93,000 square km), an area the size of Hungary.
The plane was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early on Saturday when it lost contact with ground controllers and civilian radar.
An international search effort is sweeping the South China Sea and also the Strait of Malacca because of unconfirmed military radar sightings that might indicate the plane changed course and headed west after its last contact.
The Wall Street Journal newspaper quoted US investigators on Thursday as saying they suspected the plane remained in the air for about four hours after its last confirmed contact, citing data from the plane’s engines that are automatically transmitted to the ground as part of a routine maintenance programme.
Hishammuddin said the government had contacted Boeing and Rolls-Royce, the engine manufacturer, and both said the last engine data was received at 1.07am, around 23 minutes before the plane lost contact.
But asked if it were possible that the plane kept flying for several hours, Hishammuddin said: “Of course, we can’t rule anything out. This is why we have extended the search.”
He said the search had been widened into the Andaman Sea and Malaysia was asking for radar data from neighbouring countries. India plans to deploy air and sea assets in the southern section of the sea, a senior official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
Investigators have not ruled out any possible cause for the disappearance of the plane.
Experts say a massive failure knocking out its electrical systems, while unlikely, could explain why its transponders, which identify it to civilian radar systems and other planes nearby, were not working. Another possibility is that the pilot, or a passenger, likely one with some technical knowledge, switched off the transponders in the hope of flying undetected.
The jet had enough fuel to reach deep into the Indian Ocean.
Dozens of ships and aircraft from 12 nations have been searching the Gulf of Thailand and the strait, but no confirmed trace has been found.
Experts say that if the plane crashed into the ocean then some debris should be floating on the surface even if most of the jet is submerged. Past experience shows that finding the wreckage can take weeks or even longer, especially if the location of the plane is in doubt.
Malaysia’s air force chief said on Wednesday that an unidentified object appeared on military radar records about 200 miles (320 kilometres) northwest of Penang, Malaysia, and experts are analysing the data in an attempt to determine whether the blip is the missing plane.
Hishammuddin however said the focus was on the Gulf of Thailand and the nearby South China Sea, where the plane lost contact. The United States will send the world’s most advanced maritime surveillance aircraft, the P-8A Poseidon, to join the search later this week.
Frustration
As frustration mounted over the failure to find any trace of the plane, China heaped pressure on Malaysia to improve coordination in the search. Around two-thirds of the people aboard the lost plane were Chinese.
Premier Li Keqiang, speaking at a news conference in Beijing, demanded that the “relevant party” step up coordination while China’s civil aviation chief said he wanted a “smoother” flow of information from Malaysia, which has come under heavy criticism for its handling of the disaster.
If the military radar signal cited by air force chief Rodzali Daud was the missing plane, the aircraft would have flown for 45 minutes and dropped only about 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) in altitude since its sighting on civilian radar in the Gulf of Thailand.
That would mean the plane had turned sharply west from its original course, travelling hundreds of miles over the Malay Peninsula to a point roughly south of Phuket and east of the tip of Indonesia’s Aceh province and India’s Nicobar island chain.
Indonesia and Thailand have said their militaries detected no sign of any unusual aircraft in their airspace. Malaysia has asked India for help in tracing the aircraft and New Delhi’s coastguard planes have joined the search.
US experts assisting
The US National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement that its experts in air traffic control and radar who travelled to Kuala Lumpur over the weekend were giving the Malaysians technical help.
A US official in Washington said the experts were shown two sets of radar records, military and civilian, and they both appeared to show the plane turning to the west across the Malay peninsula.
But the official stressed the records were raw data returns that were not definitive.
Malaysian police have said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.
Hishammuddin however said media reports that police had searched the homes of the missing aircraft’s crew were false.
Two of the passengers on board were discovered by investigators to have false passports, but they were apparently seeking to emigrate illegally to the West.
The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 struck a seawall with its undercarriage on landing in San Francisco, killing three people.
