KUALA LUMPUR, March 12 — With radar evidence revealing that MH370 had made a mid-air turnaround, investigators and experts are now scrambling to understand why this happened, and if it did, where is the Boeing B777-200 carrying 239 people now?
Numerous conflicting reports are now surfacing, with one gaining the most attention in the media since last night - that the plane was last spotted over or near the Straits of Malacca, hundreds of miles off course.
This could mean that the 10 nations, 42 ships, 35 aircraft and the hundreds of pairs of eyes onboard have been searching the wrong places in the four days they were scouring the waters off Malaysia and Vietnam.
Early this morning, Day Five of the search operations, Vietnam rescuers were ordered to abort the mission due to conflicting reports on MH370’s last-known location and an alleged lack of co-operation from their Malaysian counterparts.
“We are temporarily suspending search and rescue activities, although there will still be a few planes going out,” Vietnam’s deputy transport minister Pham Quy Tieu told a press conference at Phu Quoc Island this morning.
But Malaysia’s air force has already denied reports that its military radar last tracked the missing jetliner over the Straits of Malacca, the busy shipping channel that runs along the country’s west coast.
“I wish to state that I did not make any such statements,” Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) chief General Tan Sri Rodzali Daud reportedly said in a statement today, according to Reuters.
Rodzali had announced in a Sunday press conference that military radar had picked up indications that MH370 attempted a turn-back in mid-flight — possibly towards the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), which it had departed from just 40 minutes earlier — before it disappeared.
The jumbo jetliner departed KLIA at 12.41am on Saturday for Beijing but lost contact with the Subang Air Traffic Control at around 1.30am when it was approximately 120 nautical miles off the coast of Kota Baru, Kelantan, in the east coast of the peninsula.
The odd behaviour of the jetliner, coupled by its failure to send out distress signals to ground control, has experts, investigators and intelligence personnel worldwide baffled.
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal this morning, the current consensus among aviation experts is that searchers have not been looking at the right areas.
They have covered a vast expanse of sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, over both the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. After reports of the turn-back, search efforts expanded to the west coast of Malaysia, along the northernmost areas of the Malacca straits.
But luck has not been on the side of rescue operators. Not a single piece of debris or sign of wreckage from the missing plane was found despite over 100 hours of searching.
The complete lack of debris is frustrating efforts, as some should have been found by search teams even if the plane had broken up mid-air or crashed into waters, choppy or otherwise.
Quoting Boeing Co’s former top accident investigator John Purvis, WSJ reported that previous jet accidents in the sea have seen items like life preservers, seat cushions and life rafts being shed into the waters.
According to US Navy’s Seventh Fleet Commander William Marks, the areas over the Gulf of Thailand have been well-searched.
“In my best assessment we have saturated that area in the Gulf of Thailand. We flew 9,000 square nautical miles of water space, but we did not find any signs of wreckage or debris,” he was quoted as saying by WSJ.
So, where is MH370 and why did it turn back?
Yesterday, Malaysian police said at least one of the men who boarded MH370 with a stolen passport had been identified. A cross-check on 19-year-old Pouri Nour Mohamad Mehrdad’s identity showed he was an Iranian who had hopes to migrate to Germany. The youth, who was expected in Germany by his mother, has no links to terror groups, police said.
Interpol confirmed this. The international police agency also revealed the identity of the second man with a stolen passport - Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza - also an Iranian.
“The more information we get, the more we are inclined to conclude it (MH370) was not a terrorist incident,” Ronald K. Noble, head of Interpol, told reporters in Paris yesterday.
But not ready to rule out any possibility, Malaysia’s Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar revealed yesterday that investigators are studying the plane’s manifest closely to identify any psychological or personal problems among those on board.
He said the probe is focussing on four main areas - hijacking, sabotage, psychological problems of the crew or passengers, and personal problems of the crew and passengers.
He said, however, that despite the lack of evidence to suggest terrorism, each angle of investigation still has “equal weightage”.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also cautioned yesterday against ruling out foul play in the disappearance of MH370.
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