Missing plane 'changed route, flew to west coast'
Malaysia's military believes a jetliner missing for almost four days turned and flew hundreds of kilometres to the west after it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country's east coast, a senior officer told Reuters yesterday.
In one of the most baffling mysteries in recent aviation history, a massive search operation for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER has so far found no trace of the aircraft or the 239 passengers and crew.
Malaysian authorities have previously said flight MH370 disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for the Chinese capital Beijing.
"It changed course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait," the senior military officer, who has been briefed on investigations, told Reuters.
That would appear to rule out sudden catastrophic mechanical failure, as it would mean the plane flew around 500 km (350 miles) at least after its last contact with air traffic control, although its transponder and other tracking systems were off.
As the search for the missing aircraft completed its fourth day, officials revealed the identities of the two passengers as 29-year-old Delavar Seyed Mohammadreza and Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad, who was aged either 18 or 19.
Officials yesterday said the two mystery passengers now appear to be young Iranian migrants seeking a new life overseas, reports AFP.
Interpol said yesterday the two men were believed to have travelled to Kuala Lumpur via Doha using Iranian passports.
They then switched to stolen Austrian and Italian passports to board Beijing-bound flight MH370.
Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said it appeared increasingly certain "these two individuals were probably not terrorists".
"The interest seems to be dying down because they might just be people who were being smuggled or trafficked," he told a news conference in France.
"And from Interpol's perspective the fear or the concern we should all have is that more than a billion times each year there are people that either cross borders or board planes without having passports screened against Interpol's database," he added.
However, the head of the US Central Intelligence Agency said that terrorism could not be ruled out in the disappearance of a Malaysian airliner, describing the plane's fate as a "mystery."
Thai police said a suspected Iranian people smuggler had booked the tickets for the two men on flight MH370 through travel agencies in Pattaya, a seedy seaside city renowned for its flourishing sex industry.
The man, named as "Mr Ali", reserved the seats under the names of two Europeans whose passports were stolen in the kingdom.
Police Lieutenant General Panya Maman said "Mr Ali" was believed to live in Malaysia and has links to a gang that specialises in smuggling Middle Eastern people to Europe via third countries. The ring has connections in Pattaya and the Thai resort island of Phuket.
Iran offered its assistance with the Malaysian investigation into two of its nationals.
"Mr Ali" made the bookings by phone through Pattaya-based Grand Horizon Travel on March 1, asking for the two cheapest tickets to Europe, Pattaya police chief Colonel Supachai Phuykaeokam told AFP.
A few days later, Grand Horizon -- a sub-agent -- asked another travel agency, Six Star, to issue e-tickets at his request.
A friend of Ali's paid for the tickets in cash at the office of Grand Horizon in Pattaya, Supachai said.
The flights were booked under the names of Luigi Maraldi, an Italian, and Austrian Christian Kozel -- but neither European ever boarded the Malaysia Airlines plane which vanished without a trace over the South China Sea early Saturday.
The flight booked in Kozel's name was from Kuala Lumpur to Frankfurt via Beijing and Amsterdam, while the final destination for the Maraldi ticket was Copenhagen.
Both Maraldi and Kozel had their passports stolen in Thailand in the past two years.
Travel documents seen by AFP confirm that the one-way tickets were issued in Pattaya on March 6 and cost 20,215 baht ($625) each.
Maraldi has said his passport was stolen when he rented a motorbike in Phuket in July 2013.
He told police he left the passport with a Thai woman looking after the shop, but when he returned she had given it to somebody else.
Kozel also reported his passport missing in Phuket, on March 14, 2012, according to police.
According to one diplomatic source in Bangkok, tourists often lose their passports after leaving them as deposits for rental scooters.
LOST CONTACT
At the time it lost contact with civilian air traffic control, the plane was roughly midway between Malaysia's east coast town of Kota Bharu and the southern tip of Vietnam, flying at 35,000 ft.
The Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping channels, runs along Malaysia's west coast.
Malaysia's Berita Harian newspaper quoted air force chief Rodzali Daud as saying the plane was last detected at 2:40am by military radar near the island of Pulau Perak at the northern end of the Strait of Malacca. It was flying about 1,000 meters lower than its previous altitude, he was quoted as saying.
There was no word on what happened to the plane thereafter.
The effect of turning off the transponder is to make the aircraft inert to secondary radar, so civil controllers cannot identify it. Secondary radar interrogates the transponder and gets information about the plane's identity, speed and height.
It would however still be visible to primary radar, which is used by militaries.
Police had earlier said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might explain its disappearance, along with the possibility of a hijack, sabotage or mechanical failure.
There was no distress signal or radio contact indicating a problem and, in the absence of any wreckage or flight data, police have been left trawling through passenger and crew lists for potential leads.
A huge search operation for the plane 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, coastguard and civilian vessels from 10 nations have criss-crossed the seas off both coasts of Malaysia without success.
Comments