The most
baffling mystery in aviation history continues as search for the missing
Malaysian Airliner moves into the 11th day on Tuesday. This even as independent
reports have said that the plane was flown towards Taliban controlled areas
deliberately.
These
reports come a day after Malaysian Newspaper New Straits Times quoted
investigators saying that the plane dropped to a height as low as 5,000 feet to
avoid radar detection and also kept to commercial paths to avoid raising
suspicion. Investigators believe the plane might have flown over three
countries.
The
unprecedented hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet expanded northwest to
Kazakhstan and south into the desolate reaches of the Indian Ocean after
Malaysian authorities concluded the plane was deliberately diverted.
However,
according to Reuters reports, aviation officials in Pakistan, India and Central
Asia as well as Taliban terrorists said they knew nothing about the whereabouts
of a missing Malaysian jetliner after the search for Flight MH370 extended into
their territory. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished on March 8 about an
hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard and
investigators are now increasingly convinced it was diverted thousands of miles
off course.
Malaysia
said it had sent diplomatic notes to all countries along an arc of northern and
southern search corridors including India and Pakistan, requesting radar and
satellite information as well as land, sea and air search operations.
Indian
defence officials rejected the possibility of a plane flying for hours above
the country undetected. "The idea that the plane flew through Indian
airspace for several hours without anyone noticing is bizarre," a defence
ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"These
are wild reports, without any basis," he said, adding a pilot would have
to know the precise location of all Indian radars and surveillance systems to
be able to get around them. Explaining why this was unlikely, he said surveillance
was so tight on India's border facing its nuclear arch-rival Pakistan that the
air force scrambled a pair of Sukhoi fighters last month after an unidentified
object showed up on the radar.
It turned
out to be a weather balloon drifting towards the Pakistan border. Pakistani
officials said they had detected nothing suspicious in the skies after the
plane vanished. "We have checked the radar recording for the period but
found no clue about the ill-fated flight," the Civil Aviation Authority
said in a statement.
Central
Asian countries Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, at the northern end of the search
arc, said no unidentified planes had entered their air space on March 8.
"Even if all on-board equipment is switched off, it is impossible to fly
through in a silent mode," the Kazakh Civil Aviation Committee said in a
statement sent to Reuters. "There are also military bodies monitoring the
country's air space."
As the
search widened, some observers suggested the plane might have flown to remote
mountainous areas abutting Pakistan's border with Afghanistan where Taliban
terrorists are holed up. Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban in
Afghanistan, who are seeking to oust foreign troops and set up an Islamic
state, said the missing plane had nothing to do with them.
"It
happened outside Afghanistan and you can see that even countries with very
advanced equipment and facilities cannot figure out where it went," he
said. "So we also do not have any information as it is an external
issue." A commander with the Pakistani Taliban, a separate entity fighting
the Pakistani government, said the fragmented group could only dream about such
an operation. "We wish we had an opportunity to hijack such a plane,"
he told Reuters by telephone from the lawless North Waziristan region.
In Delhi,
the defence official said that theoretically the aircraft could have flown a
path hugging close to the Himalayas where radar is less effective because of
the mountains. But again for that sort of "terrain masking", you'd
need intelligence and the skills of a military pilot, he said.
In Port
Blair, capital of the remote, forested Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Indian
Navy Ship Kesari returned to its base after being recalled following a two-day
search scanning the Andaman Sea. A senior defence source there said that if the
plane had crashed in the area light debris could have drifted a vast distance.
"I would estimate that debris would be travelling at least 15 nautical
miles an hour, so you can imagine how far it would be after more than a
week," he said.
Suicide theory
Meanwhile,
authorities have increased their scrutiny of the two pilots - confirming
reports that a pilot spoke to air traffic control after a signalling system was
disabled on the jet, without referring to any trouble.
The CEO of
Malaysian Airlines said earlier on Monday that the last radio message from the
plane was an informal "all right, good night" and it was spoken after
the system on board communication system was shutdown. This was a sign-off to
air traffic controllers as the plane left Malaysian airspace.
Investigators
are now considering suicide by the captain or first officer as one possible
explanations for the disappearance.
