Missing Jet Probe Turns to Pilots. See Link
Scrutiny is turning to those aboard the vanished Malaysia Airlines flight as officials say the plane was most likely deliberately diverted.
The wide-ranging search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight
370 has spread from the open sea to dry land, as the investigation
recalibrates on the plane’s pilots and those who were aboard for clues
in the flight’s mysterious disappearance.
The plane was most likely deliberately diverted by
at least one person on board and flown far off its intended route from
Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, Malaysian officials concluded on Saturday, and
attention has turned to a criminal investigation
that includes the vanished crew and passengers, even as the search of
miles of ocean continues. The investigation will now involve picking
apart details about each passenger and crew member’s background, and
expanding a physical search for the plane that now includes a huge swath
of land, after investigators found on Friday that a satellite picked up
signals from the plane that would place it anywhere on a path from the
mountains of Central Asia to the vast oceans west of Australia. Police are looking at the personal, political and religious backgrounds of the crew members, as well as ground staff, Reuters reports.
The number of nations involved in the search for the Boeing 777, which disappeared on March 8 with 239 people aboard, has grown from 14 to 25, and now includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, Burma,
Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, France, the U.K. and the
U.S., CNN reports.
U.S. officials have said the dramatic maneuvers the plane made after losing contact with ground control
indicate an experienced pilot was likely at the controls, and that the
plane performed “tactical aviation maneuvers” after it disappeared from
radar, ABC reports. Investigators discovered that a pilot spoke to
Malaysian air-traffic control after a signaling system on the jet was
disabled, the New York Times reports, and did not indicate there was anything wrong with the signals system or the plane when he communicated with ground control.
Malaysian police
on Saturday searched the Kuala Lumpur homes of the flight’s captain
Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, and took a flight simulator from Shah’s home to examine, the Associated Press reports. The possibility of a hijacking has not been ruled out.
The new conclusions in the investigation
— that an experienced pilot is likely responsible for the flight’s
disappearance, and that satellite data shows a broad possible flight
route — have significantly widened the scope of the search. But officials said that it was unlikely the plane flew over Central Asia, which is studded with military and high-tech radars that could detect the plane, the Times reports. That means the plane’s more likely path was a southern corridor to the west of Australia
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