We’re wrapping up the blog now. Here’s a rundown of what we learned today.
More than 20 countries have now been briefed after the search area for the plane was widened to two corridors in the last few days. These include countries as far apart as Kazakhstan and Indonesia. Malaysia has requested international help, including satellite and primary radar data.
One of the plane’s transponder systems was switched off before the last communication from the cockpit - a message saying, “All right, good night”.
The investigation is refocusing on the backgrounds of the passengers, pilots and even ground staff. The families of the pilot and co-pilot have been interviewed.
Police are examining a flight simulator belonging to one of the pilots.
Kate Hodal, the Guardian’s southeast Asia correspondent, has just filed this take on today’s events. Here’s a taste of it:
The person in control of missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 issued their last communication to air traffic control after the first set of aircraft communications was disabled, Malaysian authorities have confirmed, adding further weight to suspicion that the plane was hijacked.
The latest revelation suggests that the person who delivered the “All right, good night” message to Kuala Lumpur air traffic controllers just before the Boeing-777 disappeared from their radar at 1.22am and diverted from its scheduled flightpath to Beijing was also aware that the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (Acars) had been manually shut down.
Investigations still do not appear to know who was at the helm and what their intentions were when the aircraft disappeared from civilian radar more than a week ago.
Experts on aircraft maintenance have explained that the plane’s communications system can only be disabled manually – a process that requires switching a number of cockpit controls in sequence until a computer screen necessitates a keyboard input ...
My colleague Shiv Malik has been looking into the Twitter history of Rupert Murdoch, who has used the microblogging site to suggest that the disappearance of the jetliner is the work of jihadists trying to make trouble for China ...
777crash confirms jihadists turning to make trouble for China. Chance for US to make common cause, befriend China while Russia bullies.
India has suspended its naval and aerial search for the jetliner while it awaits word on fresh search areas from the Malaysian authorities, AP reports.
Colonel Harmit Singh, a spokesman for India’s tri-services command, said coastguard ships have reverted to routine surveillance in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal.
“Air and sea operations for today have been put on hold,” Singh said.
There was no indication of when the search efforts would resume. A government official said earlier in the day that Indian and Malaysian officials were scheduled to meet in Kuala Lumpur later on Sunday to refine search coordinates.
The Indian navy and air force’s coordinated search for the last three days has covered more than 250,000 square kilometers (100,579 square miles) in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal without any sighting of the Boeing 777.
In a statement on Sunday, India’s defence ministry said:
So far no sighting or detection has been reported by the units deployed for searches in various designated areas. The Malaysian authorities have now indicated that based on investigation, the search operations have entered a new phase and a strategy for further searches is being formulated. Accordingly, search operations have been suspended and all Indian assets earmarked for search operations have been placed on standby.
Nearly a dozen Indian ships, patrol vessels, surveillance aircraft and helicopters have scoured the region. India intensified the search on Saturday by deploying two recently acquired P8i long-range maritime patrol and one C-130J Hercules aircraft. A short-range maritime reconnaissance Dornier aircraft was also deployed.
Given the intense scrutiny of the pilots, it’s worth pointing up these quotes from Reuters:
Malaysia Airlines has said it did not believe Zaharie would have sabotaged the plane, and colleagues were incredulous. A Malaysia Airlines pilot who is close to Zaharie said:
Please, let them find the aircraft first. Zaharie is not suicidal, not a political fanatic as some foreign media are saying … Is it wrong for anyone to have an opinion about politics?”
Co-pilot Fariq was religious and serious about his career, family and friends said.
This is what we’ve learnt today - most of it from the press conference given by Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s transport and defence minister:
More than 20 countries have now been briefed after the search area for the plane was widened to two corridors in the last few days. These include countries as far apart as Kazakhstan and Indonesia.
One of the plane’s transponder systems was switched off before the last communication from the cockpit - a message saying, “All right, good night”.
Malaysian authorities have requested support from those countries. This includes satellite and primary radar data and requesting deployment of sea search assets.
Discussions are underway as to how to best deploy those assets and interestingly, the northern search corridor - from Malaysia towards central Asia - and the southern corridor - from Malaysia towards the Indian Ocean - are being given equal importance in terms of search capabilities. Currently more ships are needed for the southern corridor.
The government is also asking China, US and France to provide further satellite data.
The investigation is refocusing on the backgrounds of the passengers, pilots and even ground staff. The families of the pilot and co-pilot have been interviewed. We were told that they did not ask to fly together on this flight.
The news that Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister of Malaysia and now the leader of its opposition, has been sentenced to five years of imprisonment was profoundly disappointing but also sadly predictable. It does Malaysia no favors, in any possible respect … Despite his imprisonment, Anwar is not a Mandela figure: he was a senior member of a government he later rebelled against and he cannot be completely without blame for whatever transgressions occurred in that administration.
It may be that, given office, he would struggle in the role of having to get things done rather than disagree with what is there already. But the point is he has brought discussion to Malaysia, often around difficult issues, and Malaysia is enhanced for it.
Why does the media have to gather footage of people in emotional turmoil? Principally, because it is part of the tragedy, just as much as what happened to the plane or the authorities’ responses. There is a need to record the whole story and to resist sanitizing the news by avoiding human suffering. Portraying grief can be done with sensitivity and care. For example, some coverage has used humanising factors in a respectful manner. Shots at the airport say much without commentary; the young Malaysian woman with the baby at her hip; older women sitting in silence; a small child being comforted as she cries. Our research indicates that for families bereaved by trauma, the idea that something positive has come out of their suffering is at least some comfort for their loss.
Equally, there is a public interest justification for the full story to be recorded as it happens to bring those in authority to account later, to provide explanations for the grieving during the tragedy and afterwards and to help communities globally understand and share what has happened …
Most intriguingly, there are indications the plane’s transponder and data-reporting system were switched off at different times, which, if true, provide solid evidence that a human hand was involved in silencing the aircraft.
With the hijacking theory growing more plausible by the hour, it’s time to wonder how such an epic crime might have occurred – and how it might have ended far more tragically than its perpetrator envisioned.
The Associated Press has a bit on the reaction from China, where there is growing anger over the Malaysian government’s handling of the investigation:
The search for the jetliner with Chinese travellers aboard has revealed the limits of Beijing’s influence in its own backyard and left communist leaders facing outrage from their public.
Beijing has demanded Malaysia do more to find the plane, but despite sending nine ships to help in the search, China appears to have little leverage over its far smaller Southeast Asian neighbour. The situation is especially uncomfortable for Chinese leaders because part of the ruling Communist party’s claim to a monopoly on power is that it is best qualified to look after the public’s interests.
The rise of social media and the increased willingness of China’s public to assert its rights adds to the pressure to find the 154 Chinese among the 227 missing passengers.
There is “very likely a lot more pressure from the domestic community in China on Beijing to make sure that Chinese nationals are being protected,” said Marc Lanteigne, research director at the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington.
Beijing has resorted to taking the unusual step of publicly haranguing Malaysia’s government - a sign that whatever pressure it is applying in private is failing to produce results.
After Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Saturday that the Boeing 777 might have flown beyond the current search area, Beijing reacted with fury, a sign that the announcement took it by surprise.
A deputy Chinese foreign minister demanded “more thorough and accurate information” about the new search area.
A stinging commentary by China’s official Xinhua News Agency accused Malaysia and the United States of dragging their feet, adding that the former “bears inescapable responsibility”. It went on:
Given today’s technology, the delay smacks of either dereliction of duty or reluctance to share information in a full and timely manner.
The last statement in the conference is revealing. The acting transport minister parties asks other countries to “come forward” with other information - most likely intelligence satellite and radar data - to help ”narrow the search area” which is far too massive for any kind of detailed search.
There is more information coming in from the press conference during the Q&A: one of the transponder systems was switched off before the last communication from the pilot and his message , “All right, good night”.
A woman uses her mobile phone as she stands against a chalkboard with messages for family members of passengers onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, at an event to express solidarity in Subang Jaya March 16, 2014. Photograph: SAMSUL SAID/REUTERS Photograph: SAMSUL SAID/REUTERS
The formal statement by the transport minister is over let’s have a summary of what was said:
More than 20 countries have now been briefed after the search area for the plane was widened to two corridors in the last few days. These include countries as far apart as Kazakhstan and Indonesia.
Malaysian authorities have requested support from those countries. This includes satellite and primary radar data and requesting deployment of sea search assets.
Discussions are underway as to how to best deploy those assets and interestingly, the northern search corridor - from Malaysia towards central Asia - and the southern corridor - from Malaysia towards the Indian Ocean - are being given equal importance in terms of search capabilities. Currently more ships are needed for the southern corridor.
The government is also asking China, US and France to provide further satellite data.
The investigation is refocusing on the backgrounds of the passengers, pilots and even ground staff. The families of the pilot and co-pilot have been interviewed. We were told that they did not ask to fly together on this flight.
At the press conference in Kuala Lumpur, Hussein said that the police were looking at the pilot’s home flight simulator and had just searched the home of the co-pilot. He said that the pilot and co-pilot did not request to fly together.
Reuters report that Malaysian officials briefed envoys from about 20 countries on progress in the investigation after calling off a search in the South China Sea for the jet that vanished from radar screens more than a week ago, with 239 people on board.
Although countries have been coordinating individually, the broad formal request marks a new diplomatic phase in an operation expanding across two hemispheres and overshadowed by mounting Chinese criticism of Malaysian-led search efforts. “The meeting was for us to know exactly what is happening and what sort of help they need. It is more for them to tell us, ‘please put in all your resources’,” T.S. Tirumurti, India’s high commissioner to Malaysia, told Reuters. The diplomatic initiative could become significant as nations ponder whether to share any military data on the Boeing 777’s fate and fills a void left by the failure of Southeast Asian nations to work as a bloc on the crisis, one diplomat said. “There are clearly limits to military data but there is an awareness this is a commercial matter,” the diplomat added.
We’ve had quite a lot of analysis over the past week, but earlier today AP posted a good summary of the key pieces of evidence pointing to on-board sabotage.
1. The transponder
The transponder – a signal system that identifies the plane to radar – was shut off about an hour into the flight.
That’s not a straightforward thing to do. Someone in the cockpit would have to turn a knob with multiple selections to the off position while pressing down at the same time, said John Goglia, a former member of the US National Transportation Safety Board.
However, it could also be learned by someone who researched the plane on the internet, Goglia said.
2. Acars
The Boeing 777’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (Acars) – used to send short messages via a satellite or VHF radio – was shut off.
In most planes, the information part of the system can be shut down by hitting cockpit switches in sequence in order to get to a computer screen where an option must be selected using a keypad, said Goglia, an expert on aircraft maintenance.
Again, that could be done by the pilot or someone who had researched the system.
But to turn off the other part of the Acars, it would be necessary to go to an electronics bay beneath the cockpit. That’s something a pilot wouldn’t normally know how to do, Goglia said, and it wasn’t done in the case of the Malaysia plane. Thus, the ACARS transmitter continued to send out blips that were recorded by the satellite once an hour for four to five hours after the transponder was turned off.
3. Guided flight
After the transponder was turned off and civilian radar lost track of the plane, Malaysian military radar was able to continue to track the plane as it turned west.
The plane was then tracked along a known flight route across the peninsula until it was several hundred kilometres offshore and beyond the range of military radar.
Airliners normally fly from waypoint to waypoint where they can be seen by air traffic controllers who space them out so they don’t collide. These lanes in the sky aren’t straight lines. In order to follow that course, someone had to be guiding the plane, Goglia said.
Hishammuddin seems to be flagging up on Twitter some of the stuff we think we might be getting details on at the press conference later.
This includes the news that police have spoken to captain Zaharie’s friends and family about the flight simulator he kept in his houseand that police are investigating crew, passengers and engineers who may have had contact with MH370 before it took off.
He lists the countries now involved as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia & France. Among others.
It says the re-enactment was aimed at determining whether the radar and satellite data that it generated matches up with data on MH370’s flight.
An official told AFP on condition of anonymity:
The idea of the flight was to find out the possible direction the missing plane could have gone.
The plane was flown exactly how the missing plane flew based on military radar data. It did a turn-around, flew across the Malaysian peninsula and up north.
That is why we can conclusively say which two possible directions the plane flew and we have now refocused our search and rescue operations to these two new areas.
The extedned search area was likely to pose serious problems.
It is like going to the moon. The operation is going to be more challenging.
The whole world seems gripped by the evolving drama in Asia. Here is a photograph of eight-year-old Syira Nazia Hutabarat, from Medan in Sumatra, Indonesia, working on a picture praying for the flight’s safe return – one of many posted on news wires and social media.
Australia is another country that is likely to be drawn further into the search effort thanks to Razak’s alternative theory that the plane was flown in a south-easterly direction towards the southern Indian ocean.
There was no indication of immediate talks or briefings but prime minister Tony Abbott said today:
Well I spoke to [Malaysian] prime minister Najib Razak last Sunday and I offered him two Orion search aircraft and they’ve been hard at work over the last week in various areas and they’ll be appropriately re-tasked given the changing search patterns.
We haven’t at this stage, to my understanding, been asked for additional resources, but we want to be a good friend to Malaysia. We want to be a good contributor to our neighbourhood. We want to be a good neighbour to all of the regional friends and partners we have and so if the Malaysians want additional help, we certainly stand ready to supply it.
India said earlier today that it was pausing its search effort at the request of the Malaysian authorities and an anonymous official said that Indian and malaysian authorities would meet on Sunday to work out how the search effort would proceed from here.
Colonel Harmit Singh, spokesman for India’s tri-services command, said coast guard ships have reverted to routine surveillance in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, Associated Press reported.
The Indian navy and air force’s coordinated search for the last three days has so far covered more than 250,000 square kilometers (100,579 square miles) in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal without any sighting of the Boeing 777 and 239 people aboard.
In his press conference on Saturday, Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak said that one theory about the whereabouts of the plane is that it was flown from the Malay peninsula towards India in north-westerly air corridor, possibly as far as Kazakhstan.
Among the many questions this startling revelation raised was how the plane would have been able to evade India’s air defence systems and radars.
However, retired Indian air force officer Vinod Patney told AP it was unlikely but not impossible for an aircraft to intrude a country’s airspace undetected.
Kate Hodal, our correspondent in south-east Asia, says that Malaysia’s chief of police, Khalid Abu Bakar, is expected to speak at today’s press conference at 5.30pm Kuala Lumpur time – that’s 9.30am GMT. And that’s 8.30pm AEST.
It is believed he will be giving an update on the searches of the two pilots homes.
PKR communications director Fahmi Fadzil said the Daily Mail report was “wild allegations” and the paper “is a sensationalist tabloid known for cooking up stories.”
“We do not want this to be used by unscrupulous parties as an avenue to attack PKR or Pakatan Rakyat component parties,” he told The Star Online.
Fahmi hoped that the federal government would not use the opportunity to “label” Pakatan Rakyat leaders.
Asked if Zaharie was often seen at functions organised by PKR or Pakatan Rakyat, he said he does not know Zaharie personally.
“I was in court during the two days but I can’t remember seeing him. After all, it was a public hearing and anyone could attend.”
Police are searching the home of Zaharie Ahmad Shah, one of the two pilots on board the missing plane. Photograph: PR
As well as the pilots, police are once more examining the backgrounds of the passengers on MH370 as they search for clues as who might have sabotaged the airliner.
An interesting info-graphic from the Straits Times in Singapore shows pictures of some of the passengers.
It claims that he was an “obsessive” supporter of Malaysia’s opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, whose trial for sodomy had upset the pilot. Ibrahim’s supporters believe the charges are trumped up and an attempt to keep him out of power.
The mystery over the role of the pilots seems to be the key focus for the Malaysian police today.
After the home of 53-year-old captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was searched on Saturday, a senior police officer told Reuters that they have raided the home of 27-year-old co-pilot first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid.
“We are not ruling out any sort of motivation at the moment,” the police official said.
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