Kuala Lumpur: Not ruling out a hijack, Malaysia today said the movement of the missing Flight MH370 with 239 people on board was “consistent with deliberate action by someone on plane”.
Prime Minister Najib Razak said authorities are now trying to trace the plane across two possible corridors - in the north to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and a southern corridor from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.
“Based on new satellite communication we can say with a high degree of certainty that the aircraft communication addressing system was disabled just before the aircraft reached the east coast of Malaysia,” Najib told reporters here at a press conference.
He said the aircraft's transponder was switched off shortly afterwards when the plane was between the border of Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control.
“Radar data showed that from this point onwards a plane believed to be MH370 did turn back and turned back in a westerly direction before turning north west. “These were deliberate actions of someone on plane,” he said, but stopped short of saying the aircraft had been hijacked.
“The last satellite communication was at 8.11 am (local time) on March 8,” he said, suggesting that the plane was in the air for 7.5 hours after it lost the control.
The plane had left Kuala lumpur for Beijing at 12:41 am and lost contact with civilian radar and hour later.
“Despite the media of reports hijacking, I am very clear we are still looking into all possibilities,” he said.
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