The international hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 expanded to cover 27,000sq nautical miles yesterday as a third potential last sighting added to the confusion over its movements.
India became the 12th country to say it would join the search, indicating how far north the operation had been extended.
The jet was heading northeast to Beijing when it took off from Malaysia in the early hours of Saturday morning. Officials have said it may have turned and headed back to Kuala Lumpur when it was lost.
In a new twist to the mystery, officials suggested the aircraft may have been detected on military radar at 2.15am on Saturday, 200 miles northwest of Penang – a point not only west of the Malay peninsula, but so far north that it would be beyond the coast of Thailand. It was the third possible final time and location officials have given.
Mounting criticism
"We are not saying this is MH370. It's an unidentified plot," said air force chief Rodzali Daud at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysian authorities are facing growing criticism about muddled and sometimes contradictory briefings.
China’s foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said: “Right now there is a lot of information, and it’s pretty chaotic, so . . . we too have had difficulty confirming whether [detection over the strait of Malacca] is accurate or not.”
Vietnamese officials had said they were calling off their air search and scaling back their sea search pending further information from Malaysia, but have since announced they will resume a full-scale search.
Malaysia’s transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, told reporters: “With each day that passes, I fear search and rescue becomes just search, but we will never give up hope.”
He insisted that authorities had been consistent and transparent, adding: “It is only confusion if you want it to be seen to be confusion . . . We have nothing to hide.”
Five days after Beijing-bound MH370 disappeared not long after taking off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am on Saturday, questions regarding its final moments have if anything multiplied.
Cross-checked readings
The last certain contact with the
jet was at about 1.30am over the South China Sea, between Malaysia and Vietnam. Subsequent readings come from military radars which can detect civilian aircraft but cannot identify a particular flight.
It is not clear if these radar readings were cross-checked with other information.
Experts stress it is far too early to be certain what happened. If the military radar spots are correct, then they could be consistent with the jet turning and attempting to navigate back to Kuala Lumpur along the west coast of the peninsula.
Earlier on Wednesday, pressed on what information the military had given civil officials, the Malaysian government's envoy to China said now was "not the time" to reveal it, reported Singapore's Straits Times .
He did disclose that the last words heard from the flight were: "All right, good night", the crew's response to Malaysian air traffic controllers telling them the flight was entering Vietnamese airspace.
– (
Guardian
service)