Missing Malaysia plane may have run out of fuel over Indian Ocean: Source

Missing Malaysia plane may have run out of fuel over Indian Ocean: Source

KUALA LUMPUR/WASHINGTON - Faint electronic signals sent to satellites from a missing Malaysian jetliner show it may have been flown thousands of miles off course before running out of fuel over the Indian Ocean, a source familiar with official US assessments said.

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Analysis in Malaysia and the United States of military radar tracking and pulses detected by satellites are starting to piece together an extraordinary picture of what may have happened to the plane after it lost contact with civilian air traffic.

The fate of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, and the 239 passengers and crew aboard, has been shrouded in mystery since it vanished off Malaysia's east coast less than an hour into a March 8 scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Investigators are focusing increasingly on foul play, as evidence suggests the plane turned sharply west after its disappearance and - with its communications systems deliberately switched off - continued to fly for perhaps several hours. "What we can say is we are looking at sabotage, with hijack still on the cards," said the source, a senior Malaysian police official.

A US source familiar with the investigation said there was also discussion within the US government that the plane's disappearance might have involved an act of piracy.

SATELLITE PULSES

A source familiar with data the US government is receiving from the investigation said the pulses sent to satellites were ambiguous and had been interpreted to provide two different analyses.

The electronic signals were believed to have been transmitted for several hours after the plane flew out of radar range, said the source familiar with the data.

The most likely possibility is that, after travelling northwest, the Boeing 777-200ER made a sharp turn to the south, over the Indian Ocean where officials think, based on the available data, it flew until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea, added the source.

The other interpretation is that Flight MH370 continued to fly to the northwest and headed over Indian territory.

The source added that it was believed unlikely the plane flew for any length of time over India because that country has strong air defence and radar coverage and that should have allowed authorities there to see the plane and intercept it.

NEXT >> "NOT A NORMAL INVESTIGATION"

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Either way, the analysis of satellite data appears to support the radar evidence outlined by sources familiar with the investigation in Malaysia.

Two sources told Reuters that military radar data showed an unidentified aircraft that investigators suspect was Flight MH370 following a commonly used commercial, navigational route towards the Middle East and Europe.

That course - headed into the Andaman Sea and towards the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean - could only have been set deliberately, either by flying the Boeing 777-200ER jet manually or by programming the auto-pilot.

"NOT A NORMAL INVESTIGATION"

The disappearance of the Boeing 777 - one of the safest commercial jets in service - is shaping into one of the most baffling mysteries in aviation history.

It is extremely rare for a modern passenger aircraft to disappear once it has reached cruising altitude, as MH370 had. When that does happen, the debris from a crash is usually found close to its last known position relatively quickly.

In this case, there has been no trace of the plane, nor any sign of wreckage, as the navies and military aircraft of more than a dozen countries scour the seas on both sides of peninsular Malaysia.

"A normal investigation becomes narrower with time ... as new information focuses the search, but this is not a normal investigation," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference on Friday.

"In this case, the information has forced us to look further and further afield."

India has deployed ships, planes and helicopters from the remote, forested and mostly uninhabited Andaman and Nicobar Islands, at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. "This operation is like finding a needle in a haystack,"said Harmeet Singh, spokesman for the armed forces in the islands.

NEXT >> VAST INDIAN OCEAN

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VAST INDIAN OCEAN

Britain's Inmarsat said "routine, automated signals"from MH370 were seen on its satellite network during the plane's flight from Kuala Lumpur and had been shared with authorities, but gave no other details.

If the jetliner did fly into the Indian Ocean, a vast expanse with depths of more than 7,000 metres (23,000 feet), the task faced by searchers would become dramatically more difficult. Winds and currents could shift any surface debris tens of nautical miles within hours.

"Ships alone are not going to get you that coverage, helicopters are barely going to make a dent in it and only a few countries fly P-3s (long-range search aircraft)," William Marks, spokesman for the US Seventh Fleet, told Reuters.

The US Navy was sending an advanced P-8A Poseidon plane to help search the Strait of Malacca, a busy sealane separating the Malay peninsula from the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It had already deployed a Navy P-3 Orion aircraft to those waters.

The last sighting of the aircraft on civilian radar screens came shortly before 1:30 a.m. last Saturday, less than an hour after take-off. It was flying across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand on the eastern side of Malaysia towards Vietnam.

Malaysia's air force chief said on Wednesday that an aircraft that could have been the missing plane was plotted on military radar at 2:15 a.m., 200 miles (320 km) northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia's west coast.

This position marks the limit of Malaysia's military radar in that part of the country, another source familiar with the investigation told Reuters.

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The data obtained from pulses the plane sent to satellites had been interpreted to provide two different analyses because it was ambiguous, said the source, who declined to be identified because of the ongoing investigation.

But it offers the first real clues as to the fate of Flight MH370, which officials increasingly believe was deliberately diverted off its scheduled course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

NEXT >> OTHER THEORIES

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A few theories on what happened to MH370

Conflicting information, false alarms over debris and confusion over the focus of the search have produced more questions than answers.

Here, we take a look at the possible scenarios being weighed up by industry experts as the world waits for clues as to the fate of the Boeing 777, which has one of the best safety records of any jet.

Theory: Explosion on board

Why: According to Malaysian authorities, the plane was cruising at 35,000 feet (11km) above sea level when it last made contact and vanished without making a distress call, pointing to the possibility of a sudden catastrophic event.

The presence on board of two suspect passengers travelling on stolen passports fuelled fears of a terrorist attack. It was revealed Tuesday they were probably just Iranian migrants, but CIA Director John Brennan said a terror link had not been ruled out.

Other possibilities include a strike by a missile or military aircraft.

Expert View: "I don't believe it is anything to do with the serviceability or the design of the aircraft," Neil Hansford, chairman of leading Australian airline consultancy Strategic Aviation Solutions, told AFP.

"The way I see it there are three scenarios. There was a bomb on board... the aircraft was hit by a military aircraft or a rogue missile; or...the captain is locked out of the cockpit and the plane is put in a dive," he said.

NEXT >> TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES?

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Theory: Technical difficulties

Why: The sudden disappearance could also point to a technical problem that could have led to a rapid descent. Reports from the Malaysian authorities that the jet may have made a sharp turn west before it lost contact, possibly pointing to the pilots struggling to rectify a problem, have bolstered this theory.

Expert View: "To me that (the veer) suggests there was a stall," says former Inspector-General of the US Department of Transportation and aviation lawyer, Mary Schiavo.

"That doesn't mean you lose your engines. It means that you're losing your air flow over your wings, sufficient speed to keep the plane in the air...it would lose altitude really dramatically."

She compared the possible scenario to the fate of Air France 447 - which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 after its speed sensors malfunctioned - in an interview with Australia's ABC television.

If the plane did crash, a combination of technical difficulties and pilot error would be a likely scenario, Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific aerospace consultant Ravi Madavaram said.

"There is no single factor which generally leads to an airplane crash, but a combination of technical glitches and pilot decisions. Each of these glitches and decisions taken independently are harmless and often happens. It is the combination of these factors that lead to a catastrophe."

Theory: Structural disintegration

Why: The lack of wreckage or black box transmission has led to speculation that the plane may have disintegrated mid-air.

Expert View: While structural disintegration has been behind some previous aircraft disappearances, new planes use "better materials, technology and maintenance schedules", Madavaram says.

"This last happened to China Airlines flight 611, during its cruise at 35,000 feet in 2002. Flight 611 was a Boeing 747 aircraft and the reason for that crash was faulty repair."

He added that the technology on a Boeing 747 was 20 years older than on a 777.

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Theory: Hijacking

Why: The absence of debris around the intended flight path, the possibility that the flight turned back, and conflicting reports over whether the plane was spotted by Malaysian military way off course have added to speculation of a hijack, which has still not been ruled out by investigators.

Malaysia Airlines says that all its aircraft are equipped with the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) system - which puts out information about location and airspeed - but has so far declined to release whatever data it got from flight MH370.

Expert View: The reports of a "turn back" raised yet more questions, says Scott Hamilton, managing director of US-based aviation consultancy Leeham Co.

"If it were near the Vietnam coast, why turn back when there probably would have been a closer airport in the event of an emergency?" he wrote on his company website. The larger question was whether the turn was intentional "under the command of the pilots (or hijackers)," or due to other causes such as engine problems or an explosion.

But Frost & Sullivan's Madavaram believes several factors rule out a hijack, including a lack of a credible claim of responsibility and the difficulty in evading radars and witnesses.

Theory: Pilot suicide

Why: While rare, there have been cases in the past of pilots crashing planes to take their own lives. According to the US Federal Aviation Administration, pilot suicides account for less than 0.5 per cent of all fatal general aviation accidents.

Expery View: A suicide bid "is possible and if that's the case there might not be a lot of debris because the plane would have come down in relatively structural integrity," said Terence Fan, aviation expert at Singapore Management University.

"The airplane is not meant to float and if the airplane sinks in the water, water will go inside because the door seals are not meant to seal water."

The following cover some of the scenarios being mulled over by the regional authorities, investigators and industry experts.

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