The expansion came after leaked reports from US officials,
suggestions of terrorism and the revelation from Malaysia's Prime Minister that
investigators believed new satellite data showed "deliberate action by someone
on the plane" had flown the aircraft and its 239 passengers and crew of course
for up to seven hours.
Speaking at a press conference in the Malaysian capital, Najib Razak
said: "Clearly, the search for MH370 has entered a new phase. Over the last
seven days, we have followed every lead and looked into every possibility ... we
hope this new information brings us one step closer to finding the
plane."
He added that, based on the data, investigators were now pursuing the
belief that the plane's last location was along one of two possible corridors or
arcs - a northern route stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, or a southern one stretching from Indonesia
to the vast emptiness of the Indian ocean.
And as police raided homes of the pilot and co-pilot, the Prime
Minister said that, while investigators were still exploring "all
possibilities", attention was increasingly being focused on the possible role of
the passengers or crew of the plane.
This weekend Malaysian officials, along with experts from the US
National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration, and
Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch, continue to refine the new data,
which originated from signals sent by the plane via the British company
Inmarsat's satellite network over the Indian Ocean.
The
Independent on Sunday understands that these signals came
from a "failsafe" function of an Inmarsat Swift 64 communications system fitted
to the ill-fated aircraft.
The announcement by Mr Najib was the most definitive suggestion that
investigators were exploring a possible hijacking or terrorism.
Aviation consultant Chris Yates said: "It's increasingly clear that
the hand of some form of terrorism is at play here, whether from a group or one
skilled individual. The levels of specialist aviation knowledge on display here
cause me to cast my mind back to 9/11 when hijackers had acquired a level of
technical and flight training."
David Gleave, a former air crash investigator, added that any
terrorist seizure of the plane "would have required one hell of a piece of
planning".
Police drove to the residential
compound in Kuala Lumpur where the missing plane's pilot Fariq Abdul Hami lives,
according a guard and local reporters
Phil Giles, a former air safety investigator who worked on the
Lockerbie Bombing, said: "taking over a Boeing 777 without experience or skill
is akin to some Somalian bloke in a tiny boat trying to take over a super tanker
and captain it. Unless the hijacker has a fair amount of technical and aviation
knowledge he would have to rely on putting a gun to the pilot's
head."
In Malaysia this new information meant an end to the search in the
South China Sea and a renewed focus on the Indian Ocean. At the same time
officials were continuing to get radar data and other relevant information from
the countries whose air space the two routes being examined pass through. The
northern corridor would trace a busy route, passing northern Thailand and Burma
and entering into China on the way towards central Asia.
The southern route, meanwhile, would pass over Indonesia and then the
open waters of the southern Indian Ocean. The New
York Times reported that officials believed the southern corridor to be the
most likely to have been taken by the plane. "The US Navy would not be heading
toward Kazakhstan," a person briefed on the investigation told the
paper.
Other have suggested the complexity of the search and sensitivity of
military radar and satellite information may have been a cause of delay,
pointing to the fact that American newspapers have been briefed by the Pentagon
and that the destroyer USS Kidd and a P-8 Poseidon search plane moved into the
Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal prior the Malaysian government's announcement on
Saturday.
Tony Cable, an investigator who worked for the UK Air Accidents
Investigation Branch for 32 years, said: "The sensitivity of some of the
military radar and satellite information here is clearly posing a problem for
the investigation ... I suspect there is an awful lot more information that is
known that is not being released."
The last confirmed location of MH370 on civilian radar off Malaysia
was at 1.31am last Saturday, about 40 minutes after it took off from Kuala
Lumpur International Airport. At that point it was heading north-east across the
mouth of the Gulf of Thailand on what should have been a six-hour flight to
Beijing.
After that it seemed the plane disappeared from civilian radar but
showed up - as a blip - on radar used by the Malaysian military. The latest
revelation shows that the Boeing 777 continued to leave the faintest traces, in
a series of "pings" from its Inmarsat Swift 64 system.
This 20-year-old communications device
is
fitted to 90 per cent of
the world's wide body jet aircraft and in the case of MH370 enhanced the
operation of the aircraft's flight transponder and Aircraft Communications
Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), both of which were deliberately
deactivated early in the flight.
The
IoS understands that the
disabling of the ACARS system enabled a failsafe "ping" mode in the Swift 64
system, which has been compared to an "I'm here" announcement. The last of these
messages came at 8.11am local time last Saturday, more than
seven-and-a-half hours after it took off.
When fully operational Flight MH370's ACARS and Swift 64 only offer
very basic altitude and location information and The
IoS understands the aircraft wasn't fitted with more sophisticated
equipment on sale, which would have allowed investigators to gain a full GPS
fix.
Communication between the aircraft and satellites is only possible
when the plane is airborne and the final transmission however would have come
towards the very end of flight MH370's endurance - officials in Kuala Lumpur
said the plane was carrying sufficient fuel for 8 hours.
However through analysis of the position and view of the receiving
geostationary Inmarsat satellite over the Indian Ocean has allowed officials to
plot a "rough calculation" of the two "arcs" the plane may have taken, which has
led to increased search emphasis on the Indian Ocean and wild speculation the
aircraft may have travelled as far as Kazakhstan.
The revelations were reportedly welcomed by relatives of the
passengers in China, who believe the development keeps alive the hope they may
somehow be reunited with their loved ones. However the government in
Beijing -
which has 153 citizens on board the flight - urged Malaysia to continue
providing it with "thorough and exact information" on the search, state news
agency Xinhua said.