#MalaysiaAirlines, #MH370, #PrayForMH370
Malaysia PM: Malaysia Airlines probe refocusing on passengers, crew
A week after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished, the investigation
shifted to passengers and crew after data showed the plane deviated due
to deliberate action, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday.
"Malaysian authorities
have refocused their investigation on crew and passengers aboard," Najib
told reporters. "Evidence is consistent with someone acting
deliberately from inside the plane."
Najib stopped short of calling it a hijacking, saying investigators have not made a final determination.
"Despite media reports
that the plane was hijacked, we are investigating all major
possibilities on what caused MH370 to deviate," he said.
Kazakhstan to Indian Ocean
In addition to the shift
in focus, investigators have expanded search areas exponentially, and
are no longer combing the South China Sea, the Prime Minister said.
Crew also searched the Straits of Malacca, the Andaman Sea and the Indian Ocean, but now data point in a different direction.
"The plane's last
communication with the satellite was in one of two possible corridors: a
northern corridor stretching approximately from the border of
Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, or a southern corridor
stretching approximately from Indonesia to the southern Indian ocean,"
he said.
The passenger jetliner
disappeared on March 8, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239
people aboard. It's unclear who took the plane or what the motive was.
"Based on new satellite
information, we can say with a high degree of certainty that the
aircraft communications ... system was disabled just before the aircraft
reached the East Coast of peninsular Malaysia," the Prime Minister
said. "Shortly afterward, near the border between Malaysian and
Vietnamese air traffic control, the aircraft's transponder was switched
off."
Hopes of hijacking
Relatives held out hope that their loved ones will be found.
"It looks like there is
increased possibility of a hijacking," said Li, 31, whose husband is
among the passengers. "Whatever the reason for the hijacking is, I hope
they will not harm the passengers. They're our loved ones."
Though it'd lost
communication, military radar showed the jetliner turned back, flew west
over the the peninsular in Malaysia, and either turned northwest toward
the Bay of Bengal or southwest into the Indian Ocean.
"Up until the point at
which it left military primary radar coverage, these movements are
consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane," he said.
Air traffic controllers
outside Kuala Lumpur said they lost contact with the plane on March 8 at
1:30 a.m. local time, about 45 minutes after takeoff. The Prime
Minister said its last communication with a satellite was at 8:11 a.m.
the same day, but its precise location at the time was unclear.
Investigators are using such signals to determine how long and far it flew after it went incommunicado.
Police at pilot's home
Shortly after the Prime Minister's address, a van full of police arrived at the gated community home of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53. The van later drove off.
Earlier Saturday, there was no police presence at the residence of his co-pilot, Fariq Ab Hamid, 27.
Intense speculation
Theories and conspiracy theories have raged on what happened.
"There has been intense
speculation," Najib said. "We understand the desperate need for
information on behalf of the families and those watching around the
world. But we have a responsibility to the investigation and the
families to only release information that has been corroborated."
Hours before the Prime
Minister's announcement, U.S. officials told CNN the flight made drastic
changes in altitude and direction after disappearing from civilian
radar. The changes raised questions on who was at the controls of the
jetliner when it vanished.
The more the United
States learns about the flight's pattern, "the more difficult to write
off" the idea that some type of human intervention was involved, an
official familiar with the investigation said.
Befuddling mystery
CNN has learned that a
classified analysis of electronic and satellite data suggests the flight
likely crashed either in the Bay of Bengal or elsewhere in the Indian
Ocean. The Prime Minister said some those areas have been searched.
Taken together, the data
point toward speculation of a dark scenario in which someone took
control of the plane for some unknown purpose, perhaps terrorism.
The jetliner was flying
"a strange path," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. The
details of the radar readings were first reported by The New York Times on Friday.
Malaysian military radar
showed the plane climbing to 45,000 feet soon after disappearing from
civilian radar screens and then dropping to 23,000 feet before climbing
again, the official said.
International effort
The question of what
happened to the jetliner has turned into one of the biggest mysteries in
aviation history, befuddling industry experts and government officials.
Fourteen countries, 43 ships and 58 aircraft are involved in the search, the Prime Minister said.
Shortly after he
addressed reporters, China demanded that Malaysia provide more
information on the investigation. China is sending technical experts to
join the investigation.
Most of the passengers aboard are Chinese.
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