Missing jet may have strayed toward Andaman Sea: Malaysian air force

Malaysia's military has traced what could have been the jetliner missing for almost five days to an area south of the Thai holiday island of Phuket, hundreds of miles from its last known position, the country's air force chief said on Wednesday.

After a series of at times conflicting statements, the latest revelation underlined that authorities remain uncertain even where to look for the plane, and no closer to explaining what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 or the 239 people on board.

The flight disappeared from civilian radar screens shortly before 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, as it flew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand bound for Beijing. What happened next is one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation history.

Malaysian air force chief Rodzali Daud told a news conference that an aircraft was plotted on military radar at 2:15 a.m., 200 miles (320 km) northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia's west coast.

Coastguards from India's remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands joined the airborne search on Wednesday for a missing Malaysian airliner, a senior official told Reuters.

A Dornier aircraft belonging to the coastguard set off at 2.30 p.m. local time to search the eastern side of the Andaman islands, on orders from New Delhi, said VSR Murthy, the inspector general of the coastguard service on the islands.

The airliner, which had 239 people on board, vanished from air traffic control screens midway between Malaysia's east coast and Vietnam.

Malaysia's military radar has detected what could have been the jetliner in the northern Malacca Strait, a stretch of water that flows into the Andaman Sea, Malaysia's air force chief said earlier on Wednesday. He stressed that the information needed to be corroborated.



China says its aircraft not conducting overland searches for missing plane

China's foreign ministry said on Wednesday that its aircraft are not conducting searches over land for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner but that it was expanding searches at sea.

Ministry spokesman Qin Gang made the statement at a regular press briefing. Earlier in the day the chief of China's civil aviation authority said that searches would be broadened to include land areas.

In one of the most baffling mysteries in recent aviation history, a massive search operation has so far found no trace of the aircraft days after it disappeared carrying 239 passengers and crew.



Malaysia seeks India's help in search for missing airliner A map on an iPad showing the path of the Vietnam Air Force search and rescue AN-26 aircraft, during a mission to find Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that disappeared from radar screens in the early hours of Saturday, off Con Dao island March 12, 2014. The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 jetliner expanded on Wednesday to cover an area stretching from China to the Andaman Sea, with authorities no closer to explaining what happened to the plane or the 239 people on board. Vietnam briefly scaled down search operations in waters off its southern coast, saying it was receiving scanty and confusing information from Malaysia over where the aircraft may have headed after it lost contact with air traffic control. REUTERS/Kham A map on an iPad showing the path of the Vietnam Air Force search and rescue AN-26 aircraft, during a mission to find Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that disappeared from radar screens in the early hours of Saturday, off Con Dao island March 12, 2014. The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 jetliner expanded on Wednesday to cover an area stretching from China to the Andaman Sea, with authorities no closer to explaining what happened to the plane or the 239 people on board. Vietnam briefly scaled down search operations in waters off its southern coast, saying it was receiving scanty and confusing information from Malaysia over where the aircraft may have headed after it lost contact with air traffic control. REUTERS/Kham

Malaysia has sought India's help to locate a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner, India's foreign ministry said on Wednesday, as the search expanded to cover an area stretching from China to the Andaman Sea.

"Malaysia and India are in contact on this since yesterday and contact points are being discussed. These contact points will ascertain what assistance is required and what India can offer," a spokesman at the ministry said.

The spokesman said it had not yet been decided what area India would search in. India has a large military command in its Andaman and Nicobar islands and its navy patrols in the straits of Malacca.

Malaysia Airlines: "No Reason To Believe" Crew Caused Disappearance Of Aircraft

A senior Malaysia Airlines' executive said on Wednesday that the airline has "no reason to believe" that any actions by the crew caused the disappearance of a jetliner over the weekend.

Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director of Malaysia Airlines, told Reuters in an interview that "we have no reason to believe that there was anything, any actions, internally by the crew that caused the disappearance of this aircraft."





A Vietnamese officer stands next to a TV screen showing a flight route during a news conference about their mission to find missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 at Phu Quoc Airport in Phu Quoc Island on March 11, 2014. Reuters A Vietnamese officer stands next to a TV screen showing a flight route during a news conference about their mission to find missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 at Phu Quoc Airport in Phu Quoc Island on March 11, 2014. Reuters

Authorities today said a missing Malaysian plane with 239 people aboard may have changed course before losing contact, as multinational search operations were widened to hundreds of kilometres from the original radius to cover the Andaman Sea.

"The RMAF does not rule out the possibility that the aircraft made turn-back before it disappeared from the radar and this is why the search and rescue operation had been widened to a larger area to include waters off Penang," Malaysia's Air Force (RMAF) chief General Rodzali Daud said.

"This resulted in the search and rescue operations being widened to the vicinity of the waters (off the west coast of Malaysia)," he said.

The Beijing-bound Boeing 777-200 plane had 227 passengers on board, including five Indians and one Indian-origin Canadian, and 12 crew members.

The search for the missing plane entered the fifth day, as 34 planes, 40 ships and teams from ten countries are scouring the waters on the plane's flight path and beyond to find it.

Meanwhile, Vietnam has said it is scaling back search operations in its waters. "We've decided to temporarily suspend some search and rescue activities, pending information from Malaysia," deputy minister of transport Pham Quy Tieu said, adding that boats were still searching the area.

Confusion over plane's path



Malaysia's air force chief has denied saying military radar tracked a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner over the Strait of Malacca, adding to the mystery surrounding the fate of flight MH370, which vanished on Saturday with 239 people aboard.

A massive air and sea search now in its fifth day has failed to find any trace of the Boeing 777, and the last 24 hours have seen conflicting statements and reports over what may have happened after it lost contact with air traffic controllers.

Malaysia's Berita Harian newspaper on Tuesday quoted Air Force chief Rodzali Daud as saying the plane was last detected by military radar at the northern end of the Strait of Malacca at 2.40 a.m. on Saturday, hundreds of kilometres off course.

"I wish to state that I did not make any such statements," Rodzali said in a statement on Wednesday. The air force chief said he had merely repeated that military radar tracking suggested the plane might have turned back.

A senior military officer who had been briefed on the investigation told Reuters on Tuesday that the aircraft had made a detour to the west after communications with civilian authorities ended.

"It changed course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait," the officer said.

Malaysian authorities have said previously that flight MH370 disappeared around 1.30 a.m., roughly midway between Malaysia's east coast town of Kota Bharu and southern Vietnam, about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.

Read: Missing Malaysian plane: Why are cellphones of passengers ringing?



The Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping channels, runs along Malaysia's west coast, while Kota Bharu is on the northeast coast.

After the comments from the officer, a non-military source familiar with the investigations said the reported detour was one of several theories and was being checked.

If the plane had made such a detour it would undermine the theory that it suffered a sudden, catastrophic mechanical failure, as it would mean it flew at least 500 km (350 miles) after its last contact with air traffic control.

A spokesman for the Malaysian prime minister's office said on Wednesday he had not been informed by the military of evidence showing the plane had recrossed the Malay Peninsula to reach the Malacca Strait.

"The people I checked with were not aware of that," spokesman Tengku Sariffuddin Tengku Ahmad told Reuters.

A huge international search operation has been mostly focused on the shallow waters of the Gulf of Thailand off Malaysia's east coast, although the Strait of Malacca has been included since Sunday.

Navy ships, military aircraft, helicopters, coast guard and civilian vessels from 10 nations have criss-crossed the seas off both coasts of Malaysia without success.

In the absence of any concrete evidence to explain the plane's disappearance, authorities have not ruled out anything. Police have said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.

"Maybe somebody on the flight has bought a huge sum of insurance, who wants family to gain from it or somebody who has owed somebody so much money, you know, we are looking at all possibilities," Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Read: Malaysia military tracked missing plane to west coast over Strait of Malacca A policeman holds up photos of the two men whom they believe were travelling onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 on stolen passports after a news conference in Kuala Lumpur International Airport March 11, 2014. Reuters A policeman holds up photos of the two men whom they believe were travelling onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 on stolen passports after a news conference in Kuala Lumpur International Airport March 11, 2014. Reuters

The airline said it was taking seriously a report by a South African woman who said the co-pilot of the missing plane had invited her and a female travelling companion to sit in the cockpit during a flight two years ago, in an apparent breach of security.

"Malaysia Airlines has become aware of the allegations being made against First Officer Fariq Ab Hamid which we take very seriously. We are shocked by these allegations. We have not been able to confirm the validity of the pictures and videos of the alleged incident," the airline said in a statement.

The woman, Jonti Roos, said in an interview with Australia's Channel Nine TV that she and her friend were invited to fly in the cockpit by Fariq and the pilot between Phuket, Thailand, and Kuala Lumpur in December 2011. The TV channel showed pictures of the four apparently in a plane's cockpit.

The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 struck a seawall on landing in San Francisco, killing three people.

U.S. planemaker Boeing has declined to comment beyond a brief statement saying it was monitoring the situation.