The last words from the cockpit of the missing Malaysian airline were spoken after its main data-communication system was disabled — suggesting that whoever was in charge was misleading ground control, officials revealed Sunday.
No one mentioned any trouble on board the Boeing 777 when someone told Malaysian air-traffic controllers, “All right, good night,” as the plane headed into Vietnamese airspace, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters.
“This will tell you something…because this is something not normal that the pilot would do,” air force Maj. General Affendi Buang added.
Affendi also said he didn’t know if the pilot or co-pilot was speaking, which raised the possibility that it may have been someone else entirely at the microphone.
Meanwhile, Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said not every country whose nationals were on the plane had responded to requests for information as investigators scrutinized the 239 passengers and crew, as well as ground staff, for clues as to how it disappeared without a trace early more than a week ago.
Authorities have said that someone on board deliberately disabled the plane’s Aircraft and Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, at 1:07 a.m. March 8, with the transponder — which identifies it to commercial radar systems — getting shut down about 14 minutes later.
On Saturday, Malaysia’s government confirmed reports that the Beijing-bound plane was steered off course and flown for almost seven hours after disappearing from civilian radar over the Gulf of Thailand around 1:30 a.m.
Data from a satellite stationed above the Indian Ocean put its last possible position along two broad arcs: one stretching from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and another from Indonesia south into the vast Indian Ocean.