Investigators are now eyeing the possibility that missing Malaysian Airlines MH370 flew under radar, at just 5,000 feet, to avoid detection after turning off tracking devices and changing course.
This revelation, reported Monday by The New Straits Times of Malaysia, could cement the lead theory that the mysterious flight was deliberately taken off course by the pilots or someone else who might have seized control of the craft.
The flight set out on March 8 from Kuala Lumpur and headed northeast toward its Beijing destination.
The Boeing 777 signed off with air traffic controllers as it left Malaysian airspace for Vietnamese tracking and was believed to have made a hard left west toward the Indian Ocean. It hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
Officials are now investigating whether one or both pilots embarked on a low-flying “terrain masking” journey over the northeast Malaysian state of Kelantan to avoid detection, the Malaysian newspaper reported.
“The person who had control over the aircraft has a solid knowledge of avionics and navigation, and left a clean track. It passed low over Kelantan, that was true,” an unnamed official told the paper.
“It’s possible that the aircraft had hugged the terrain in some areas, that are mountainous to avoid radar detection.”
If this under-radar revelation is true, it’d back up early reports from villagers in northeast Malaysia, who claimed to see low-flying bright lights in the sky at about the time Flight 370 went incommunicado.
Just before vanishing, the last words from inside the plane came from co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, Malysian Airlines officials said Monday, noting he routinely signed off with air traffic controllers “all right, good night.”
Malaysian officials have said those final words came after Flight 370’s tracking devices were turned off. But authorities did their own U-turn on Monday, now saying they’re not sure if that “good night” came before or after tracking devices were deactivated.
Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his co-pilot have become a primary focus of this international mystery probe.
Also coming under increased scrutiny is 29-year-old passenger Mohd Khairul Amri Selamat, an aviation engineer.
“Yes, we are looking into Mohd Khairul as well as the other passengers and crew,” a senior police official told Reuters. “The focus is on anyone else who might have had aviation skills on that plane.”
US authorities are leaning strongly toward blaming the pilots or hijackers for commandeering the jumbo jet for a suicide run into the ocean.
“There is a growing consensus that this was a suicide by the pilot or co-pilot and that they wanted to get as far away and land in the farthest and deepest part of the ocean,” Rep. Peter King (R-LI), chair of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, told The Post Sunday.
Loved ones of the missing pilots insisted they couldn’t have done anything to intentionally harm passengers.
Shah’s 27-year-old daughter, who was living in Melbourne, Australia, has returned to her family in Malaysia.
“They [are] waiting to blame the pilot,” a friend of the daughter said Monday. “Speculation like this is killing the family.”
The unprecedented, multi-national search for Flight 370 has pushed deep into both northern and southern hemispheres, from the Indian Ocean to Kazakhstan — more than 6,000 miles to the northwest.
French aviation investigators, who worked on the probe of Air France Flight 447, are in Kuala Lumpur to assist in this search.
Flight 447 vanished after leaving Rio de Janeiro on June 1, 2009, and wasn’t found for two years.
That hunt was almost easy, compared to the monumental search going on in Asia now, said Jean Paul Troadec, a special adviser to France’s aviation accident investigation bureau.
“It’s very different from the Air France case,” Troadec said. “The Malaysian situation is much more difficult.”
Malaysian officials are still clinging to hope the plane could be found intact.
“The fact that there was no distress signal, no ransom notes, no parties claiming responsibility, there is always hope,” said Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.
With Post Wire Services