Missing Malaysian Airlines: ‘Communications systems on MH370 DELIBERATELY shut down’

Kuala Lumpur: According to media reports, US officials believe that the two communications systems have been shut down deliberately at a gap of 14 minutes - which indicates the plane did not come down because of a sudden catastrophic failure. ABC news said that according to US investigators, the aircraft's data reporting system and its transponder - which reports its position in flight to ground-based radar - shut down separately. The fact that the devices appear to have been shut off at a 14-minute interval from one another suggests that they may have been deliberately disabled or at any rate did not fail as a result of a catastrophic airframe incident, the US network said. The transponder was switched off 30 minutes after the final voice communication from the cockpit, around the same time that Malaysia believes the plane may have inexplicably started to turn back, the Washington Post said. Taken together, that "suggests that someone unauthorised took control of that airplane, like an intruder or one of the pilots", the Post quoted one US flight crash expert as saying. According to data obtained, the reporting system was shut down at 1.07am (Malaysia time) and the transponder at 1.21 am. The plane lost radar contact at around 1.30am, less than an hour after take-off, according to Malaysian officials. They have confirmed that the last words heard from the cockpit were a relaxed "Alright, good night" as the plane was due to pass from Malaysian to Vietnamese air traffic control. The night was clear and the weather was fine. "The last (data) transmission from the aircraft was at 0107 hours which indicated that everything was normal," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters on Thursday. Meanwhile, military radar-tracking evidence suggested that the jetliner was deliberately flown across the Malay Peninsula towards the Andaman Islands. Sources said an unidentified aircraft that is believed to be Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints when it was last plotted on military radar off the country's northwest coast. The last plot on the military radar's tracking suggested the plane was flying toward India's Andaman Islands. A third source said inquiries were focusing on the theory that someone who knew how to fly a plane deliberately diverted the flight. (With AFP inputs)

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, did a report on How India was putting in less amount of efforts as far as the search operation is concerned. According to the report, India on Thursday announced it had deployed two of its navy’s ships, patrol vessel, INS Saryu, and amphibious warship, INS Khumbir, in the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines3786. The Navy has also lent its Boeing-made P-8I long-range maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine plane to the effort. This graphic shows how India’s contribution to the hunt for the 227 passengers, including five Indians, and 12 crew members, matches up compared to the help offered by the 11 other nations involved in the operation to find the plane that disappeared in the early hours of Saturday.”