Malaysian officials on Thursday denied a newspaper report that suggested the missing Malaysia Airlines plane may have kept flying for four hours after its last reported contact.
The officials acknowledged the search for the jetliner, which disappeared early Saturday, is becoming harder and harder.
The report from The Wall Street Journal said U.S. aviation investigators and national security officials were basing their belief that the missing plane kept flying on data automatically transmitted to the ground from the passenger jet's engines.
But Malaysia's acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference that the report, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter, was "inaccurate."
Malaysian officials said they had consulted with the makers of the plane and its engines, who told them that no transmissions of any kind were received from the plane after air traffic controllers lost contact with it.
The report threatened to open the door to a fresh round of theories about what has become of the plane, which vanished while flying over Southeast Asia on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Four more hours in the air could have put the plane many hundreds of miles beyond the area currently being searched.
But one aviation industry observer expressed skepticism about the report even before the denials by officials.
"I find this very, very difficult to believe," Tom Ballantyne, chief correspondent for the magazine Orient Aviation, told CNN. "That this aircraft could have flown on for four hours after it disappeared and not have been picked up by someone's radar and not have been seen by anyone, it's almost unbelievable."
13/03/14 Jethro Mullen/CNN
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The officials acknowledged the search for the jetliner, which disappeared early Saturday, is becoming harder and harder.
The report from The Wall Street Journal said U.S. aviation investigators and national security officials were basing their belief that the missing plane kept flying on data automatically transmitted to the ground from the passenger jet's engines.
But Malaysia's acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference that the report, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter, was "inaccurate."
Malaysian officials said they had consulted with the makers of the plane and its engines, who told them that no transmissions of any kind were received from the plane after air traffic controllers lost contact with it.
The report threatened to open the door to a fresh round of theories about what has become of the plane, which vanished while flying over Southeast Asia on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Four more hours in the air could have put the plane many hundreds of miles beyond the area currently being searched.
But one aviation industry observer expressed skepticism about the report even before the denials by officials.
"I find this very, very difficult to believe," Tom Ballantyne, chief correspondent for the magazine Orient Aviation, told CNN. "That this aircraft could have flown on for four hours after it disappeared and not have been picked up by someone's radar and not have been seen by anyone, it's almost unbelievable."
13/03/14 Jethro Mullen/CNN
