The Transport Ministry said in a statement today that the police are interviewing engineers who may have had contact with the Boeing 777.200ER before it took off on March 8, as well as those who interacted with the crew and passengers aboard the plane.
“Police searched the home of the pilot on Saturday 15 March. Officers spoke to family members of the pilot and experts are examining the pilot’s flight simulator,” it said in the statement.
But it also urged the public not to prejudge the individuals who are now the subject of investigations into the plane that disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board.
The ministry added that the police also search the home of Zaharie’s co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, yesterday.
Local daily New Sunday Times (NST) reported today that Zaharie, a 53-year-old veteran pilot who has been with MAS for over three decades, has a Boeing 777 flight simulator at home.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak told a news conference yesterday that MH370 was diverted deliberately after someone on board switched off the Boeing 777’s communications systems.
He said investigations were now being refocused at the crew and passengers aboard the plane.
After it disappeared from civilian radar in the early hours of March 8, the plane was then flown westward from its intended path to Beijing, turning around at Checkpoint Igari in the South China Sea.
From there, it flew on to Checkpoint Vampi, northeast of Indonesia’s Aceh province and a navigational point used for planes following route N571 to the Middle East.
Subsequent plots indicate the plane flew towards Checkpoint Gival, south of the Thai island of Phuket, and was last plotted heading northwest towards another checkpoint, Igrex, used for route P628 that would take it over the Andaman Islands and which carriers use to fly towards Europe.
The complexity involved led aviation experts to set their sights on the pilots and crew.
Najib said yesterday that search and rescue efforts in the South China Sea would be called off and pointed to two corridors where the plane could possibly be located: a northern arc from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in central Asia, or a southern one from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.
The transport ministry said today that Putrajaya is contacting countries along the northern and southern corridors for assistance, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and France.
“Both the northern and southern corridors are being treated with equal importance,” said the transport ministry.
“Malaysian officials are currently discussing with all partners how best to deploy assets along the two corridors. Malaysian officials are also asking countries to provide further assistance in the search for the aircraft, including: satellite data and analysis; ground-search capabilities; radar data; and maritime and air assets,” it added.
Investigators were quoted by international media as saying that MH370 had likely flown to the south than to the north as the plane would have been detected by the heavily-bolstered air defence networks in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
International newswire Reuters reported today that searching the southern Indian Ocean is incredibly complex as the third-largest body of water in the world is one of the deepest at more than two miles, even deeper than the Atlantic where it took two years to find the wreckage of an Air France plane that had disappeared in 2009.
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