Radar showed missing plane may have turned back: Malaysia military

Radar showed missing plane may have turned back: Malaysia military

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Radar tracking a missing Malaysia Airlines flight indicated that it may have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing before disappearing, and Malaysian rescue teams have expanded their search to the country's western coast, Malaysian military officials said on Sunday.

"What we have done is actually look into the recording on the radar that we have and we realised there is a possibility the aircraft did make a turnback," Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told reporters at a news conference.

The flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew was presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast on Saturday, after losing contact with air traffic controllers off the eastern Malaysia coast.

Malaysia says jet may have turned back, search expanded

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Malaysian authorities were looking into the "possibility" that an airliner which vanished with 239 people on board had attempted to turn back, the country's air force chief said Sunday.

Authorities also said they were expanding their search for wreckage to the west coast of Malaysia. Searches so far had concentrated on waters to the country's east, in the South China Sea.

"There is a distinct possibility the airplane did a turn-back, deviating from the course," said General Rodzali Daud, citing radar data.

"One of the possibilities is that it was returning to Kuala Lumpur."

Malaysian Airlines flight 370 vanished early Saturday, with the last known location of the Boeing 777-200 recorded over waters somewhere between Malaysia and southern Vietnam.

No debris has yet been found though Vietnam has said its search planes spotted oil slicks near where contact with the plane was lost.

Rodzali said a turn-back was "corroborated by civil radar", giving no further details.

But Malaysian Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said the plane's systems would have set off alarm bells.

"When there is an air turn-bac the pilot would be unable to proceed as planned," he said, adding authorities were "quite puzzled" over the situation.

Officials also said authorities were expanding a search operation to Malaysia's western coast, facing the huge Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Rodzali, the air force chief, said Malaysia had "requested our Indonesian friends to assist us in that matter".

[[nid:90825]]
This website is best viewed using the latest versions of web browsers.