It would’ve taken at least two hijackers to seize control of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 — and they would’ve needed aviation know-how to shut off the jet’s navigation equipment, experts told The Post.
US investigators are probing whether one hijacker shut down a satellite-communication system on the missing jet’s lower deck, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
That means one hijacker would have had to fly the plane while another climbed through a hatch to disable the electronic tracking equipment on the lower level.
“It was likely more than one person. It would be difficult to control the plane alone, considering the size of the aircraft and number of flight crew and passengers,” said James Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Hijackers may have been helped by sloppy security practices common at Asian airlines, said George Bibel, author of “Beyond the Black Box,” a book on the engineering involved in studying plane crashes.
“It’s likely that the cockpit was unlocked. They tend to be with foreign airlines in that part of the world,” Bibel said.
US pilots became more vigilant about locking cockpit doors after 9/11.
Exactly what happened aboard the jet is even more of a mystery than its location — which officials believe could be anyplace on an arc stretching from Kazakhstan to the southeast part of the Indian Ocean.
However many hijackers might have been involved, Bibel believes the Boeing 777’s diversion indicates whoever was in the cockpit acted deliberately.
“The plane changed course,” he said. “That screams some kind of evil activity.”
Spotty radar coverage over the Indian Ocean may have helped any hijackers.
If the plane turned northwest, they might not have been seen by Indian military radar. One senior Indian official told Reuters that many of the country’s military radars are turned off at night.
“Too expensive,” the source explained.
“It’s possible that the military radars were switched off as we operate on an ‘as required’ basis,” said Rear Adm. Sudhir Pillai, chief of India’s Andamans and Nicobar command, which includes some of the search area for Flight 370.
Hall said the hijackers may have counted on poor air defenses in the region, as well.
“They could have been looking for the weakest link and found it in Malaysia,” said Hall.
“They may have been trying to hijack the plane for financial reasons or something similar to 9/11.”