Disappearance of Malaysian jet appears 'deliberate': PM Najib

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia's leader Saturday said communications aboard a missing jet were switched off and its course deliberately changed by someone on board before the aircraft disappeared a week ago, but stopped short of saying it had been hijacked.

Final satellite communication with the Boeing 777 flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing came more than six-and-a-half hours after it vanished from civilian radar at 1:30am on March 8, Prime Minister Najib Razak told a nationally televised press conference.

The movement of the plane in the interim period, during which it changed direction and passed back over the Malaysian peninsula towards the Indian Ocean, was "consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane," Najib said.

"Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, I wish to be very clear: we are still investigating all possibilities as to what caused MH370 to deviate from its original flight path," he added.

Najib said his announcement was based on new information from satellite contact with the plane and military radar data.

The combined data suggested "with a high degree of certainty" that the plane's two automated communications systems - Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) and its transponder - were "switched off" one after the other before it reached the point over the South China Sea where it dropped out of civilian radar contact.

It then turned back and flew in a westerly direction back over peninsular Malaysia before turning northwest.

The last confirmed communication between the plane and satellite was at 8:11 am, Najib said, adding that investigators were calculating how far the aircraft may have flown afterwards.

So far, experts had located the last point of communication as being inside one of two large geographical corridors: a northern corridor stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, and a southern corridor stretching from Indonesia to the southern Indian ocean.

"This new satellite information has a significant impact on the nature and scope of the search operation," the prime minister said.

"We are ending our operations in the South China Sea and reassessing the redeployment of our assets. We are working with the relevant countries to request all information relevant to the search, including radar data," he added.

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Data suggests 'skilled' flyer turned jet

Malaysian officials believe that missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 may have been deliberately turned towards the Indian Ocean by someone with up-to-date knowledge of flying and radar positions, a senior military official told AFP Saturday.

The comments lend credence to growing suspicions that the plane, which disappeared a week ago with 239 passengers and crew, might have been commandeered.

"It has to be a skilled, competent and a current pilot," said the official, who is involved in a vast international search and rescue operation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

He said that theory was based on still undisclosed data from military radar.

The radar continued to plot the jet's course for hours after it vanished from air-traffic control screens and civilian radar, he said.

The plane flew in the direction of the Indian Ocean far west of its intended flight path "for four to five hours," the official said.

"He knew how to avoid the civilian radar. He appears to have studied how to avoid it."

Malaysia's air force has previously said that it was investigating an unidentified object spotted by military radar data heading toward the Andaman Sea in the hours after the passenger plane went missing around 1:30 am.

The official would not divulge details of the military data, citing an ongoing investigation.

The Boeing 777 vanished early Saturday on an overnight flight over the South China Sea with no indication of distress, on a clear night.

The plane has one of the best safety records of any jet, and the airline also has a solid record.

The mystery and lack of conclusive evidence so far has spawned a range of theories over what happened, including a mid-air explosion, hijacking, a technical or structural problem, or pilot suicide.

But reports citing various US and other officials involved in the investigation into the plane's mysterious disappearance have increasingly pointed to the possibility that someone with expert flying knowledge diverted the aircraft for unknown reasons.

An international search effort that now involves more than a dozen countries and dozens of ships and aircraft focused initially on waters between Malaysia and Vietnam over which contact with the airliner was lost.

But the failure to find any trace of the plane has seen the search radius continually expanded, now taking Malaysia's west coast and further into the Indian Ocean.

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