KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - A missing Malaysian jetliner may have attempted to turn back before it vanished from radar, but there is no evidence it reached the Strait of Malacca, the country’s air force chief said today, denying reports that he had said otherwise.
The statement suggested continued confusion over where the Boeing 777 might have ended up, more than four days after it disappeared en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board.
Air force chief Gen. Rodzali Daud was quoted as saying in a Malaysian media report Tuesday that the military had radar data showing the plane had turned back from its original course, crossed the country and made it to the Strait of Malacca to the west of Malaysia.
The Associated Press contacted a high-level military official, who confirmed the remarks.
But in a statement later, the air force chief denied saying that and referred to a statement he made Sunday in which he said the air force has “not ruled out the possibility of an air turn back” and said search-and-rescue efforts had been expanded in that regard.
Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12:41 a.m. Saturday, bound for Beijing. Authorities initially said its last contact with ground controllers was less than an hour into the flight at a height of 35,000 feet, when the plane was somewhere between the east coast of Malaysia and Vietnam.
But the newspaper Berita Harian quoted the air force chief as saying radar at a military base had tracked the jet as it changed its course, with the final signal at 2:40 a.m. showing the plane to be near Pulau Perak at the northern approach to the Strait of Malacca, a busy waterway that separates the western coast of Malaysia and Indonesia’s Sumatra island. It was flying slightly lower, about 29,528 feet, he said.
“After that, the signal from the plane was lost,” he was quoted as saying.
Authorities had said earlier that the plane may have tried to turn back to Kuala Lumpur, but they expressed surprise it would do so without informing ground control.
The search was initially focused hundreds of miles to the east, in waters off Vietnam, with more than 40 planes and ships from at least 10 nations searching the area without finding a trace of the missing aircraft.
Earlier on Tuesday, Malaysia Airlines said in a statement that search-and-rescue teams had expanded their scope to the Strait of Malacca. An earlier statement said the western coast of Malaysia was “now the focus,” but the airline subsequently said that phrase was an oversight. It didn’t elaborate.
Civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said the search remained “on both sides” of Malaysia.
Attention now likely will focus on the condition of the Boeing 777’s electronic systems as it charted its new course back toward and then across Malaysia.
While black spots can exist, where airport radar stations aren’t able to track planes, experts said the plane’s transponders normally would have been emitting signals that would have been picked up by civilian radar. The fact that it apparently wasn’t detected suggests they were disabled or switched off. Planes with no transponders can still be tracked by radar.
Low-flying planes can sometimes avoid radar detection. There is no set height they must be under, but the farther away they are from a radar station, the higher they can be because of the angle of the radar antenna and the curvature of the Earth.
Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar, who has been ordered to look at possible criminal aspects in the disappearance of Flight MH370, said hijacking, sabotage and issues related to the pilots’ psychological health were all being considered.
An Australian TV station reported that the first officer on the missing plane, Fariq Abdul Hamid, had invited two women into the cockpit during a flight two years ago. One of the women, Jonti Roos, described the encounter on Australia’s A Current Affair.
Roos said she and a friend were allowed to stay in the cockpit during the entire one-hour flight on Dec. 14, 2011, from Phuket, Thailand, to Kuala Lumpur. She said the arrangement did not seem unusual to the plane’s crew.
“Throughout the entire flight, they were talking to us and they were actually smoking throughout the flight,” said Roos, who didn’t immediately reply to a message sent to her via Facebook. The second pilot on the 2011 flight was not identified.
Malaysia Airlines said it took the allegations very seriously, but it said it was not able to confirm them, adding: “We are in the midst of a crisis, and we do not want our attention to be diverted.”
Also on Tuesday, Malaysian and international police authorities said the two people who boarded Flight MH370 with stolen passports were Iranians who had bought tickets to Europe,where they planned to migrate. Their presence on the flight had raised speculation of a possible terrorist link.
Khalid said investigators had determined one was Pouria Nourmohammadi Mehrdad, 19. “We believe he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group,” he said.
Interpol identified the second Iranian as Seyed Mohammed Reza Delavar, 29, and released an image of the two boarding at the same time. Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble said the two men traveled to Malaysia on their Iranian passports, then apparently switched to their stolen Austrian and Italian documents.
CIA Director John Brennan said in Washington that Malaysian authorities “are looking very carefully at what went wrong; you know, if these individuals got onto the plane with these stolen passports, why they were not aware of it.”
He also said there has been “a lot of speculation right now - some claims of responsibility that have not been, you know, confirmed or corroborated at all. We are looking at it very carefully.”
Asked if terrorism could be ruled out, Brennan replied, “No, I wouldn’t rule it out. Not at all.” Information for this article was contributed by Tran Van Minh, Jim Gomez, Chris Brummitt, Christopher Bodeen, Eileen Sullivan and Scott Mayerowitz of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/12/2014