Missing Plane: Radar Data Shows Flight MH370 Was Heading Towards Andaman Islands

Military radar data suggests a Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown hundreds of miles off course, it has been claimed.

As the search for the missing Boeing 777 continues nearly a week after it vanished with 239 people on board, sources familiar with the investigation have said analysis of the Malaysian data suggests the plane was deliberately flown towards the Andaman Islands.

Two sources told Reuters an unidentified aircraft that investigators believe was Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints when it was last plotted on military radar off the country's northwest coast.

This indicates that it was either being flown by the pilots or someone with knowledge of those waypoints, the sources said. It has been suggested the plane could have theoretically reached north-western India and the border with Pakistan.

The last plot on the military radar's tracking suggested the plane was flying toward India's Andaman Islands, a chain of isles between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, they said.

Waypoints are geographic locations, worked out by calculating longitude and latitude, that help pilots navigate along established air corridors.

A third source familiar with the investigation said inquiries were focusing increasingly on the theory that someone who knew how to fly a plane deliberately diverted the flight.

'What we can say is we are looking at sabotage, with hijack still on the cards,' said that source, a senior Malaysian police official.

All three sources declined to be identified because they were not authorised to speak to the media and due to the sensitivity of the investigation.

Officials at Malaysia's Ministry of Transport, the official point of contact for information on the investigation, did not return calls seeking comment.

Malaysian police have previously said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.

As a result of the new evidence, the sources said, multinational search efforts were being stepped up in the Andaman Sea and also the Indian Ocean.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that 'pings' sent from missing flight 370 provided the plane's location, speed and altitude for at least five hours after it vanished from radar.

If the plane did carry on flying for that time it could have travelled 2,200 nautical miles, possibly reaching north-western India and the border with Pakistan.

As one of the most baffling mysteries in the history of modern aviation remains unsolved after nearly a week, the latest radar evidence is consistent with the expansion of the search for the aircraft to the west of Malaysia.

There has been no trace of the plane nor any sign of wreckage as the navies and military aircraft of more than a dozen countries scour the seas across Southeast Asia.

Indian ships and planes have been searching northwest of Malaysia in the eastern Andaman Sea, and on Friday expanded their search to areas west of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands chain Friday, said V.S.R. Murty, an Indian Coast Guard inspector-general. 

The White House said the U.S. may be drawn into a new phase of the search in the vast Indian Ocean but did not offer details. The U.S. Navy 7th Fleet said it was moving one of its ships, the USS Kidd, into the Strait of Malacca.

'It's my understanding that based on some new information that's not necessarily conclusive - but new information - an additional search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean,' White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters in Washington.

Carney did not specify the nature of the new information.

A statement from Malaysia's ministry of transport said it was following all leads that might help locate the aircraft.

Satellites picked up faint electronic pulses from the aircraft after it went missing on Saturday, but the signals gave no immediate information about where the jet was heading and little else about its fate, two sources close to the investigation said on Thursday.

U.S. experts are still examining the data to see if any information about its last location could be extracted, a source close to the investigation told Reuters.

The 'pings' indicated its maintenance troubleshooting systems were switched on and ready to communicate with satellites, showing the aircraft was at least capable of communicating after losing touch with air traffic controllers.

The system transmits such pings about once an hour, according to the sources, who said five or six were heard. However, the pings alone are not proof that the plane was in the air or on the ground, they said.

In one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation, no trace of the plane nor any sign of wreckage has been found despite a search by the navies and military aircraft of more than a dozen countries.

The last sighting of the aircraft on civilian radar screens came shortly before 1.30am Malaysian time last Saturday, less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur, as the plane flew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand. That put the plane on Malaysia's east coast.

Malaysia's air force chief said on Wednesday an aircraft that could have been the missing plane was plotted on military radar at 2.15am, 200 miles (320 km) northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia's west coast.

This position marks the limit of Malaysia's military radar in that part of the country, a fourth source familiar with the investigation told Reuters.

When asked about the range of military radar at a news conference on Thursday, Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said it was 'a sensitive issue' that he was not going to reveal.

'Even if it doesn't extend beyond that, we can get the co-operation of the neighbouring countries,' he said.

The fact that the aircraft - if it was MH370 - had lost contact with air traffic control and was invisible to civilian radar suggested someone on board had turned off its communication systems, the first two sources said.

They also gave new details on the direction in which the unidentified aircraft was heading - following aviation corridors identified on maps used by pilots as N571 and P628. These routes are taken by commercial planes flying from Southeast Asia to the Middle East or Europe and can be found in public documents issued by regional aviation authorities.

In a far more detailed description of the military radar plotting than has been publicly revealed, the first two sources said the last confirmed position of MH370 was at 35,000 feet about 90 miles (144 km) off the east coast of Malaysia, heading towards Vietnam, near a navigational waypoint called 'Igari'. The time was 1.21am.

The military track suggests it then turned sharply westwards, heading towards a waypoint called 'Vampi', northeast of Indonesia's Aceh province and a navigational point used for planes following route N571 to the Middle East.

From there, the plot indicates the plane flew towards a waypoint called 'Gival', south of the Thai island of Phuket, and was last plotted heading northwest towards another waypoint called "Igrex", on route P628 that would take it over the Andaman Islands and which carriers use to fly towards Europe.

The time was then 2.15am. That is the same time given by the air force chief on Wednesday, who gave no information on that plane's possible direction.

The sources said Malaysia was requesting raw radar data from neighbours Thailand, Indonesia and India, which has a naval base in the Andaman Islands.

A senior government official has today said Malaysia is working with U.S. investigators to establish if there is any satellite information that could help locate the airliner.

'They indicated they were studying the possibility of satellite communication. Whatever they have and will share with us,' Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the head of Malaysia's Civil Aviation Authority, told a news conference.

Airline executives have also admitted that an investigation into the pilot's background was ongoing, but police had not gone into his home, where he had a flight simulator.

They said it was part of their ongoing investigation into whether the Malaysian aircraft had run into trouble intentionally, through the crew being under duress or because of an explosion.

The investigation is also into the psychological and family backgrounds of family and crew. said Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Tua Hussein.

British investigators from the accident investigation board are helping to examine satellite information.

The U.S. Navy was sending an advanced P-8A Poseidon plane to help search the Strait of Malacca, a busy sealane separating the Malay Peninsula from the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It had already deployed a Navy P-3 Orion aircraft to those waters.

U.S. defence officials told Reuters that the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer, USS Kidd, was heading to the Strait of Malacca, answering a request from the Malaysian government. The Kidd had been searching the areas south of the Gulf of Thailand, along with the destroyer USS Pinckney.

India had deployed ships, planes and helicopters from the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands, at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, an Indian military spokesman Harmeet Singh said on Friday.

Two Dornier aircraft were searching the land mass of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, a total area of 720 km by 52 km, Singh said.

China, which had more than 150 citizens on board the missing plane, has deployed four warships, four coastguard vessels, eight aircraft and trained 10 satellites on a wide search area. Chinese media have described the ship deployment as the largest Chinese rescue fleet ever assembled.

The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 struck a seawall with its undercarriage on landing in San Francisco. Three people died in the incident.

China meanwhile has urged Malaysia's government to release any information it has regarding the missing jet to help narrow the search area.

The Foreign Ministry's appeal reflected growing frustration among Chinese officials over conflicting information about the plane.

The Beijing-bound aircraft last communicated with air traffic base stations east of Malaysia over the South China Sea. The search expanded to the Strait of Malacca, west of Malaysia, after the Malaysian air force said radar showed it might have turned in that direction.

'China urgently appeals to Malaysia for all information they have regarding the search,' said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei. 'That will not only help China with its search, but also help all sides in the search to make their search more effective and accurately targeted.'

Eight Chinese vessels are taking part in the international search effort. They covered 21,000sq miles of ocean by Thursday evening and were expanding their search area, according to China's official Xinhua News Agency.

According to reports, Chinese state news agency Xinhua meanwhile has said an 'earthquake wave' had been detectedin waters between Malaysia and Vietnam at about at 2.55am.

The Chinese seismology and research group told Xinhua that the 'sea floor event could have been caused by the plane possibly plunging into the sea,' news.com.au has reported.

The area, which is considered to be non-seismic, is reportedly 116km northeast from where the last contact was made with MH370.

Also today, frustrated relatives of missing passengers met in Beijing with Malaysia Airlines' commercial director and pressed for clarification of reports about how long the plane emitted signals while flying.

A US official told The Associated Press that the plane sent signals to a satellite for four hours after it went missing, raising the possibility it could have flown far from the current search areas.

'We don't simply want to get our information from the news media,' one man told the executive, Hugh Dunleavy.

Mr Dunleavy said he could not provide any new information, but that he would work on obtaining updates from search officials.

-Daily Mail