Search For Missing Jet Widens

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Malaysia’s prime minister said the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had widened to two large corridors as far north as the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan border, based on more satellite data about the plane's movements. Those corridors are from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and from Indonesia to the Southern Indian Ocean, Prime Minister Najib Razak said at a press conference. “The investigation team is making further calculations which will indicate how far the aircraft may have flown after the last point of contact," he said. "This will help us to refine the search.” The last confirmed communication between the plane and a satellite was at 8:11 a.m. Malaysian time on Saturday, March 8 (8:11 p.m. EDT Friday, March 7). The plane, originally headed to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, did turn back as it approached Vietnamese waters. Prior to that, the aircraft’s computer-assisted reporting system was disabled and then its transponder was turned off. “These movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane,” said Razak, who stopped short of calling it a hijacking. Military radar picked up the aircraft as it crossed Malaysia heading west and then turned northwest up the Strait of Malacca, Razak said. Military radar coverage ended then, but raw satellite data obtained from the provider revealed the aircraft continued to make contact.

This type of raw data, however, couldn't provide the precise location of the jet when it last made contact with a satellite, leaving authorities with the two large corridors. “This new satellite information has significant impact on the nature and the scope of the search operation,” Razak said, noting search operations would end in the South China Sea, which lies east of the Malaysian peninsula and was in the original path of the aircraft. To date, 14 countries, 43 ships and 58 aircraft have been involved in the search. Razak said investigators will seek radar data from countries in the new corridors. "With this new information we hope this brings us one step closer to finding the plane," he said. His disclosures represented the first big break in the investigation since the plane disappeared a week ago, with 239 people on board, on an overnight flight to Beijing. In Beijing, relatives of people who were on board the plane gathered to watch the prime minister speak and gasped at what he had to say. One woman whose husband was on the plane said that a hijacking might even be encouraging news, “because they could still be alive.” But the prime minister’s remarks also underscored the challenge ahead — two enormous “corridors” of land and sea that must yet be searched. As described by Razak, a northern search corridor stretches from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand. That zone covers practically all of south Asia and includes Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. A southern search corridor stretches from Indonesia into the vast southern reaches of the Indian Ocean. Razak said that satellite information, confirmed only hours earlier, corroborated what was picked up on Malaysian military radar: After it lost contact with ground control, Flight 370 turned sharply to the west, back over land, and then northwest, toward the Indian Ocean. The prime minister also revealed that the last communication between the plane and satellites was at 8:11 a.m. local time Saturday — almost seven hours after the plane lost touch with controllers on the ground. That would have given it time to fly thousands of miles farther. Razak said other countries in the two new search corridors will be asked to help. The search will be called off, he said, in the South China Sea — the water between Malaysia and Vietnam where Flight 370 was lost. It remained unclear at what altitude the aircraft was traveling when it made the suspicious turns. U.S. government investigators discounted a report that the jet, a Boeing 777, climbed to 45,000 feet and then dived suddenly. The investigators said the data for altitude were unreliable. Authorities said they would brief reporters later in the day. The prime minister did not take questions.

His appearance at the daily press briefing on the investigation, his first, underscored both the agony of the long wait for the families and the significance of his revelations. And he went out of his way to say that he understood it had been an excruciating time. “No words can describe the pain they must be going through,” he said. In the week since the jet vanished, hopes have been dashed again and again. Oil slicks turned out to contain no jet fuel, suspected debris was nothing more than floating trash, and theories were floated and discredited. But the prime minister said that finding the plane was so important that Malaysia was willing to put its own national security second to the search. Thirteen countries, including the United States, are helping Malaysia, and a total of 43 ships and 58 aircraft are looking for the jet, a Boeing 777. Razak described the investigation as having entered “a new phase.” “We hope this new information brings us one step closer to finding the plane,” he said. Based on the satellite information, Razak said, investigators can say “with a high degree of certainty” that the plane’s ACARS system, which transmits short messages to ground control, was turned off just before the plane crossed from the Malaysian peninsula into the South China Sea. Shortly after that, he said, near the point where the plane would have been handed off from Malaysian to Vietnamese air traffic control, the plane’s transponder was turned off.

The prime minister did not go into detail about the satellite information. But on Friday, the satellite communications company Inmarsat said that its satellites picked up “routine, automated signals” from Flight 370 during its journey from Kuala Lumpur. By default, the company’s satellites send a “ping” once an hour to devices registered with Inmarsat, and active devices send back a “ping” to the nearest satellite. Most wide-body jets carry Inmarsat equipment. That information can be used to determine speed and altitude, and could be crunched to at least narrow the geographic range where a plane might be. Inmarsat said its information had been shared with Malaysian investigators. [NBC NEWS]