The first mysterious turn that steered missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 off its intended path was made by an automatic computer program in the cockpit, according to a report.
The westward turn that diverted the jet’s path was programmed by several keystrokes into a device on a pedestal between the captain and co-pilot, said a senior US official interviewed by The New York Times.
The sophisticated system is most likely programmed inside the plane and was probably utilized by someone familiar with the aircraft and well-versed in its complex computer systems, the paper reported Monday night.
The new information reinforced investigators’ theory that the airplane was deliberately steered in the wrong direction, and increased scrutiny on the pilots who might have commandeered it.
Malaysian authorities said over the weekend they suspected that the pilots may have been involved in the plane’s disappearance because the aircraft’s radars were turned off to avoid detection.
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 — Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid — embarked on a low-flying, “terrain- masking” journey over the northeast Malaysian state of Kelantan. 
“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 senior Malaysian official told The New Strait Times of Malaysia.
If this under-radar claim is true, it would back up early reports from villagers in northeast Malaysia, who claimed to have seen low-flying bright lights in the sky at about the time Flight MH370 went incommunicado.
Early Wednesday, Chinese officials said a background check of all 154 Chinese nationals on the flight showed that they had no links to terrorism.
With Post Wire Services