The probe into the missing flight MH370 is increasingly focused on the possibility of sabotage, aviation officials have been reported saying.
According to Wall Street Journal today, the number of clues suggesting a deliberate change in the Beijing-bound plane's course and suspected efforts to mask the plane's location point to foul play.
Among these, it reported, were the mysterious termination of the flight transponders at the time the plane disappeared off radar.
"In the ensuing minutes, a second system sent a routine aircraft-monitoring message to a satellite indicating that someone made a manual change in the plane's heading, veering sharply to the west.
"Such a turn wouldn't have been part of the original authorised route programmed in the flight-management computer that controls the autopilot," said the US daily.
The report cited unnamed "aviation and industry officials" suspecting that system-monitoring messages were deliberately and manually disabled shortly after.
Latest clues over the past days have begun to favour foul play over plane malfunction and natural causes, and this has complicated the search for the plane as its disappearance enters a week after going missing at 2.41am last Saturday.
Flight behaviour deliberate
According to a New York Times report, the changing direction and altitudes of the flight after its disappearance further confirms suspicions of a deliberate attempt to divert the plane.
It reported "significant changes in altitude" after the plane went off the radar, and altered its course "more than once as if still under the command of a pilot" it reported, citing American officials and others familiar with the investigation.
It said according to Malaysian military radar, soon after its disappearance from air control radars, the plane climbed to 45,000 feet, above the approved altitude limit, made a sharp turn to the west, and descended unevenly to 23,000 feet, below normal cruising levels.
It flew close to the southern tip of Thailand back across Malaysia approaching Penang, then climbed to a higher altitude and flew northwest over the Straits of Malacca toward the Indian Ocean.
Malaysia reportedly held back the military radar data from the public but provided the information US and China.
Another clue from the plane’s Rolls-Royce engine transmissions showed at one point the plane descended 40,000 feet in the space of a minute, a move that experts said could only be done deliberately.
It quoted a London senior lecturer in aeronautical engineering saying, “It is extremely difficult for an aircraft to physically, however heavy it might be, to free fall.”
Military radar's last record of MH370 was at 29,500 feet, well below normal cruising altitudes, about 200 miles northwest of Penang and headed toward the Andaman Islands.
Possible explanations for these include hijacking and the absence of control by the pilot and crew after its disappearance, the report said.
'Could have been birds'
New York Times also reported Malaysian officials saying the military did not respond immediately to detecting the unknown object on their radar as "it did not appear hostile", saying weather conditions and "even flocks of birds can occasionally cause radar blips that may be mistaken for aircraft".
The radar data came from two Royal Malaysian Air Force radar stations at the Butterworth and Kota Bharu bases.
Today the government finally confirmed the blip detected on their radar is the missing plane.
Suspicions of a hijacking have also been confirmed although at a press conference today, Prime Minister Najib Razak did not specifically mention it.
The PM however took action consistent with such a finding, halting search operations in the South China Sea and redeploying efforts to the west and northwest.
