Kuala Lumpur: The Malaysian authorities insisted Tuesday that “someone on the plane” was responsible for disabling Flight MH370's communications and deliberately turning it westward above the Gulf of Thailand.
Their insistence came as it emerged Malaysia Airlines has introduced new security measures including an extra crew member inside the cockpit when one of the plane’s two pilots takes a lavatory break.
The plane disappeared March 8 on a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur after its transponders, which make the plane visible to commercial radar, were shut off. Military radar picked up the jet just under an hour later, on the other side of the Malay Peninsula.
Authorities say that until then its “movements were consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane.”
Two official sources, who are close to the investigation but not authorized to comment publicly, said there were three main reasons that investigators believe the plane’s manoeuvres before it vanished from military radar on March 8 were intentional:
• The communications were disabled during the handover between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic controllers, the moment at which the jet’s disappearance from radars was least likely to be noticed. “That is the precise moment to disappear an aircraft – that was what was exploited,” a source told The Daily Telegraph;
• MH370’s unusual flight path – though little is known about speed and altitude – appears to have been programmed deliberately;
• According to the source, “all the investigators are saying the same thing – there is no precedent in the history of commercial aviation where the sat-com [satellite communications] and the transponder have been knocked out and the plane continued to fly”.
02/04/14 Jonathan Pearlman/The Telegraph/National Post
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Their insistence came as it emerged Malaysia Airlines has introduced new security measures including an extra crew member inside the cockpit when one of the plane’s two pilots takes a lavatory break.
The plane disappeared March 8 on a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur after its transponders, which make the plane visible to commercial radar, were shut off. Military radar picked up the jet just under an hour later, on the other side of the Malay Peninsula.
Authorities say that until then its “movements were consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane.”
Two official sources, who are close to the investigation but not authorized to comment publicly, said there were three main reasons that investigators believe the plane’s manoeuvres before it vanished from military radar on March 8 were intentional:
• The communications were disabled during the handover between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic controllers, the moment at which the jet’s disappearance from radars was least likely to be noticed. “That is the precise moment to disappear an aircraft – that was what was exploited,” a source told The Daily Telegraph;
• MH370’s unusual flight path – though little is known about speed and altitude – appears to have been programmed deliberately;
• According to the source, “all the investigators are saying the same thing – there is no precedent in the history of commercial aviation where the sat-com [satellite communications] and the transponder have been knocked out and the plane continued to fly”.
02/04/14 Jonathan Pearlman/The Telegraph/National Post
