#MalaysiaAirlines, #MH370,
#PrayForMH370
Missing Jet's U-Turn Programmed Before Signoff, Sources Say
The missing Malaysia Airlines jet's
abrupt U-turn was programmed into the on-board computer well before the
co-pilot calmly signed off with air traffic controllers, sources tell
NBC News.
The change in
direction was made at least 12 minutes before co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid
said "All right, good night," to controllers on the ground, the sources
said.
The revelation further
indicates that the aircraft's mysterious turnaround was planned and
executed in the cockpit before controllers lost contact with Flight 370.
But it doesn't necessarily indicate an ulterior motive.
"Some
pilots program an alternate flight plan in the event of an emergency,"
cautioned Greg Feith, a former National Transportation Safety Board
crash investigator and NBC News analyst.
"We
don't know if this was an alternate plan to go back to Kuala Lumpur or
if this was to take the plane from some place other than Beijing," the
doomed flight's intended destination, Feith said.
Malaysian military radar last
detected Flight 370 in the northern mouth of the Strait of Malacca,
south of Phuket Island, Thailand, and west of the Malaysian peninsula —
hundreds of miles off course.
Authorities
said for the first time Saturday that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
veered sharply off its flight plan because of “deliberate action by
someone on the plane.”
The course of the
flight was changed by entering navigational instructions into the Flight
Management System (FMS), the cockpit computer that directs the plane
along a flight plan chosen by pilots.
Information
from the FMS is among the data transmitted by the Aircraft
Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) which sends
information back to the airline’s maintenance base.
That
system later stopped working. It is not clear whether it shut off
before or after Flight 370’s last verbal contact with the ground,
Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told reporters Monday.
Sources tell NBC News that whoever turned the plane around programmed the FMS and knew exactly what they were doing.
"This
would be a very elaborate scheme," said Ross Aimer, a retired United
Airlines pilot who few the Boeing 777. They would've needed "very, very
extensive training to pull this off," he added.
Meanwhile, authorities continued to scour for the vanished aircraft.
The
search area has grown to a massive 2.24 million square nautical miles,
Malaysian officials said Tuesday. It has been divided into a 14-section
grid, with Australia, China, Indonesia and Kazakhstan spearheading
efforts in those areas to which they are closest.
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