Missing Malaysian Plane Could It Have Landed

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 http://edition. cnn.com/2014/03/ 14/world/asia/malay sia-airlines-plane/index .html Page 1 of 4 Mar 14, 2014 12:57:17PM MDT   Andaman Island editor: 'No plane here' Flight 370 search expands to Indian Ocean Missing Malaysian plane: Could it have landed? From Michael Pearson and Jethro Mullen , CNN March 14, 2014 -- Updated 1843 GMT (0243 HKT) CNN.com Missing Malaysian plane: Could it have landed? (CNN) -- [Breaking news update, 2:43 p.m ET] Investigators are looking into concerns that lithium batteries in the cargo hold, which have been blamed in previous crashes, could have played a role in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, according to U.S. officials briefed on the latest intelligence and law enforcement developments in the investigation. [Original story published 2:19 pm ET] Missing Malaysian plane: Could it have landed? Yet another theory is taking shape about what might have happened to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Maybe it landed in a remote Indian Ocean island chain. The suggestion -- and it's only that at this point -- is based on analysis of radar data revealed Friday by Reuters suggesting that the plane wasn't just blindly flying northwest from Malaysia. And it's just one of untold theories floating around about what might have happened to the airliner, which disappeared a week ago Friday without leaving much of a trace of where it had gone or why. Reuters, citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, reported that whoever was piloting the vanished jet was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands. The radar data don't show the plane over the Andaman Islands but only on a known route that would take it there, Reuters cited its sources as saying. The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. U.S. investigators concluded that the pings didn't come from other planes, leading some investigators to think the plane flew on for hours before truly disappearing. Taken together, the data point toward speculation in a dark scenario in which someone took the plane for some unknown

Transcript of Missing Malaysian Plane Could It Have Landed

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    Page 1 of 4 Mar 14, 2014 12:57:17PM MDT

    Andaman Island editor: 'No plane here'Flight 370 search expands to Indian Ocean

    Missing Malaysian plane: Could it have landed?From Michael Pearson and Jethro Mullen , CNNMarch 14, 2014 -- Updated 1843 GMT (0243 HKT) CNN.com

    Missing Malaysian plane: Could it have landed?

    (CNN) -- [Breaking news update, 2:43 p.m ET]

    Investigators are looking into concerns that lithium batteries in the cargo hold, which have been blamed inprevious crashes, could have played a role in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, accordingto U.S. officials briefed on the latest intelligence and law enforcement developments in the investigation.

    [Original story published 2:19 pm ET]

    Missing Malaysian plane: Could it have landed?

    Yet another theory is taking shape about what might have happened to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight370: Maybe it landed in a remote Indian Ocean island chain.

    The suggestion -- and it's only that at this point -- is based on analysis of radar data revealed Friday byReuters suggesting that the plane wasn't just blindly flying northwest from Malaysia. And it's just one ofuntold theories floating around about what might have happened to the airliner, which disappeared a weekago Friday without leaving much of a trace of where it had gone or why.

    Reuters, citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, reported that whoever was piloting thevanished jet was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the AndamanIslands.

    The radar data don't show the plane over the Andaman Islands but only on a known route that would takeit there, Reuters cited its sources as saying.

    The theory buildson earlierrevelations byU.S. officials thatan automatedreporting systemon the airliner waspinging satellites

    for hours after its last reported contact with air trafficcontrollers. U.S. investigators concluded that the pings didn'tcome from other planes, leading some investigators to thinkthe plane flew on for hours before truly disappearing.

    Taken together, the data point toward speculation in a darkscenario in which someone took the plane for some unknown

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    'Significant likelihood' plane in ocean

    purpose, perhaps terrorism.

    The movie-plot theory seems more complicated and unlikelythan one in which the plane -- its flight crew perhapsincapacitated -- simply flew on until it ran out of fuel or facedsome other problem. But it's one that law enforcement has tocheck out, former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstromsaid.

    "You draw that arc, and you look at countries like Pakistan, you know, and you get into your 'Superman'novels, and you see the plane landing somewhere and (people) repurposing it for some dastardly deeddown the road," he told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday.

    Aviation experts say it's possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have hijacked and landed the giantBoeing 777 undetected.

    The international airport in Port Blair, the regional capital of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, has arunway that is long enough to accommodate a 777, according to publicly available data.

    But the region is highly militarized because of its strategic importance to India, Indian officials withknowledge of the operation tell CNN, making it an unlikely target for pirates trying to sneak in anenormous airplane with a wingspan of more than 200 feet.

    Denis Giles, editor of the Andaman Chronicle newspaper, says there's just nowhere to land such a bigplane in his archipelago without attracting notice.

    "There is no chance, no such chance, that any aircraft of this size can come towards Andaman andNicobar Islands and land," he said.

    The Malaysian government said Friday that it can't confirm the report.

    And a senior U.S. official offered a conflicting account Thursday, telling CNN that "there is probably asignificant likelihood" the plane is on the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

    The jetliner, with 239 people on board, disappeared nearly a week ago as it flew between Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia, and Beijing. The flight has turned into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history, befuddlingindustry experts and government officials. Authorities still don't know where the plane is or what caused itto vanish.

    Suggestions of what happened have ranged from a catastrophic explosion to hijacking to pilot suicide.

    Details of the search

    Malaysian officials, who are coordinating the search, said Friday that the hunt for the plane was spreadingdeeper into both the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

    India has deployed assets from its navy, coast guard and air force to the south Andaman Sea to take partthe search, the country's Ministry of Defense said Friday.

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    Page 3 of 4 Mar 14, 2014 12:57:17PM MDT

    Indian search teams are combing large areas of the archipelago. Two aircraft are searching land andcoastal areas of the island chain from north to south, an Indian military spokesman said Friday, and twocoast guard ships have been diverted to search along the islands' east coast. Indian officials are alsoincluding part of the Bay of Bengal in their search, officials said.

    As of Friday, 57 ships and 48 aircraft from 13 countries were involved in the search, Hussein said.

    China, which said it would be extending its search, said crews have searched more than 27,000 squaremiles (about 70,000 square kilometers) of the South China Sea without finding anything.

    On Friday, the United States sent the destroyer USS Kidd to scout the Indian Ocean as the searchexpands into that body of water.

    "I, like most of the world, really have never seen anything like this," Cmdr. William Marks of the U.S. 7thFleet said of the scale of the search. "It's pretty incredible."

    "It's a completely new game now," he said. "We went from a chess board to a football field."

    Other developments

    "Seafloor event": Chinese researchers say they recorded a "seafloor event" in waters around Malaysiaand Vietnam about an hour and a half after the missing plane's last known contact. The event wasrecorded in a non-seismic region about 116 kilometers (72 miles) northeast of the plane's last confirmedlocation, the University of Science and Technology of China said.

    "Judging from the time and location of the two events, the seafloor event may have been caused byMH370 crashing into the sea," said a statement posted on the university's website.

    However, U.S. Geological Survey earthquake scientist Harley Benz said Friday that the event appeared tobe consistent with a naturally occurring 2.7-magnitude earthquake.

    Malaysian response: Authorities continued to defend their response to the crash. "A normalinvestigation becomes narrower with time, I understand, as new information focuses the search,"Hishammuddin Hussein, the minister in charge of defense and transportation, said at a news briefing. "Butthis is not a normal investigation. In this case, the information we have forces us to look further and furtherafield."

    However, Bob Francis, a former National Transportation Safety Board official, is one of several expertswho have questioned how Malaysian authorities have handled the situation.

    "The Malaysians are not doing a superb job of running this investigation," he said. "And they apparentlygive you some information, and then they withhold information. How much are they relying on andlistening to the Europeans and the NTSB who are there with more expertise? I don't know, but I think youknow we've got a mixture of a very strange situation that happens to be in an environment, a regulatoryenvironment, that really isn't capable or isn't running an investigation the way it should be run."

    Malaysia Airlines: The pilots of the missing plane

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    Timeline of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

    How you can help find the plane

    Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: What we know and don't know

    What is a transponder?

    Michael Pearson wrote from Atlanta, and Jethro Mullen wrote from Hong Kong. CNN's Barbara Starr, JimSciutto, Catherine E. Shoichet, Mike M. Ahlers, Pamela Brown, Aaron Cooper, Elizabeth Joseph, BrianWalker, Harmeet Shah Singh and Karen Chiu contributed to this report.

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