Flight MH370: Malaysians convinced missing airliner was hijacked

People with extensive flight experience switched off controls and diverted plane, anonymous official says, as hunt goes on

Investigators are now convinced the missing Malaysia Airlines plane was hijacked by one or more people with significant flying experience, who switched off communications and diverted the flight, an official involved in the investigation said on Saturday.
But they do not know the motive or where the plane was taken, the unnamed source told Associated Press.

“It is conclusive,” said the Malaysian official, who spoke anonymously because he is not authorised to brief media.
The huge multinational search was focused on the Bay of Bengal early on Saturday, one week after flight MH370 vanished, as US officials confirmed they had directed surveillance aircraft to patrol the area for debris.

There were reports that Malaysian military radar indicated the plane made at least two distinct changes of course after apparently turning back from its route towards Beijing. US officials indicated that they believed the plane had crashed in the Indian Ocean and said that an aerial search of the area would begin on Saturday.

The Malaysian official said it had been established with a “more than 50 percent” degree of certainty that military radar had picked up the missing plane after it dropped off civilian radar.
But a new report has claimed the Malaysian Airlines plane could have been flown off the coast of Australia - still over the Indian Ocean, but thousands of kilometres south of the focus of the search.
Bloomberg cited a person familiar with the analysis, who said the last contact with a satellite showed MH370 around 1,000 miles west of Perth, but added that might not indicate where the plane ended up.

If the missing airliner crashed in the Indian Ocean, which plunges to depths of 7,000m (23,000ft), it would mean a significant escalation in scale of the challenge facing investigators. Any debris could have been swept far from the original crash site.

The last communication with the crew was made at around 1.20am, 40 minutes into the flight, as it headed east over the South China Sea towards Vietnam. The plane had enough fuel to fly for another five hours – meaning its potential range was enormous.

Investigators believe that one or more people switched off communications devices and steered the plane off course, according to the AP source.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/15/flight-mh370-malaysians-convinced-missing-airliner-was-hijacked