Search expands amid confusion over fate of Malaysian airliner

Malaysia denies report that Boeing 777 was airborne for four hours after going missing.

Indonesian air force officers examine a map showing their operation area over the Strait of Malacca in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, at Suwondo air base in Medan, North Sumatra, Show more

New York // Nearly a week since Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared, the authorities seem no closer to solving the mystery of its whereabouts and what might have happened.

The confusion over its last known position has hampered the search operation and placed Malaysian authorities under severe criticism, particularly from China, which had 153 citizens among the 239 people on board.

Yesterday, the airline denied a report in the Wall Street Jounal that information sent from the Boeing 777’s engines indicated that the aircraft flew for another four hours after its last contact with air traffic controllers at about 1.30am on Saturday.

“That was the last transmission,” Malaysian Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said at a news conference in Sepang. “It did not run beyond that.”

But sources told the newspaper that US aviation investigators and national security officials based their calculations on live performance data that the Rolls-Royce engines automatically transmitted over the course of the flight to the company for analysis.

If the report that the missing aircraft flew for a total of five hours is accurate, it could mean that it travelled more than 3,000 kilometres beyond the point where civil aviation authorities lost track of it, off the coast of Vietnam, with the potential to have flown as far as the Arabian Sea.

The new revelations have also raised questions among US counterterrorism officials about whether the aircraft’s radar transponders were intentionally turned off before it was directed off its course to an unknown location “with the intention of using it later for another purpose”, according to an anonymous source quoted by the paper.

US officials had ruled out earlier terrorism concerns after it was discovered that two young Iranian men had boarded the flight using stolen passports.

Rolls-Royce declined to comment on whether the jet transmitted data to the company after dropping off the radar. Malaysian officials said Rolls-Royce technicians had told them that no engine data was received by them after the last transmission at 1.07am, about 23 minutes before the plane dispappeared.

The White House yesterday announced that a new search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean.

“It’s my understanding that based on some new information that’s not necessarily conclusive – but new information – an additional search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

He did not say what the new information might be, though a senior Pentagon official told ABC News that “we have an indication the plane went down in the Indian Ocean”.

The search for the aircraft was expanded from the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea to Malaysia’s west coast on Wednesday after military radar data suggested it could have veered hundreds of kilometres west off its original course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

India yesterday joined the search force of more than 50 ships and 40 aircraft from 12 countries scouring more than 70,000 square kilometres to both the east and west of the Malaysian peninsula.

An Indian navy spokesman said it was searching primarily in waters just north of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, “but we are also searching the Andaman and Nicobar island areas north to south tomorrow”.

“With every passing day the task becomes more difficult,” Malaysia’s acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said yesterday.

Much of the blame for the still fruitless search has fallen on Malaysian authorities, who have been criticised, particularly by China, for their handling of the investigation, which has included a number of contradictory statements regarding radar data and where the search should be focused.

Vietnam on Wednesday even temporarily suspended its search after Malaysian military officials said they had picked up radar blips of an unknown aircraft flying westward over the country toward the Indian Ocean at around the time that flight 370 vanished.

After days of deflecting questions, military officials finally admitted the record of the unknown aircraft and that they had decided not to take any action at the time to investigate.

An editorial in the Chinese state-run Global Times called on Malaysia to cooperate more closely with China and questioned whether the Malaysian military “was hiding anything on purpose”.

Perhaps to head off a diplomatic crisis that could further endanger the search, Chinese officials met with Malaysian counterparts in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.

Hopes were raised temporarily on Wednesday after satellite images were posted on a Chinese government website showing what it claimed were three large floating objects off the southern coast of Vietnam, corresponding to flight 370’s original flight path.

But Vietnamese and Chinese search crews reported that they found nothing after reaching the location.

Mr Hishammuddin said Chinese officials later told Malaysian authorities that the images were “released by mistake and did not show any debris”.

* With additional reporting by Bloomberg News and Reuters