Data suggests missing Malaysian flight may have turned back
Posted March 9, 2014 7:37 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA (NEWS1130) – Up to 40 ships and 22 aircraft are scouring the waters off southern Vietnam searching for that missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner.
Search teams have not found any wreckage, despite spotting a large oil slick in the waters off southern Vietnam.
Military radar data suggests the plane carrying 239 people, including two Canadians, may have turned back, although no distress call was sent.
Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director for Malaysia Airlines, says the airline has 15 of the same model planes and they are all “very well maintained.”
Meantime, police are looking into as many as four passengers who had suspicious ID’s and may have been on board. “It went through its A-check. Nothing untoward was found with the aircraft and of course it’s been operating 14 or 15 hours a day since that time without any issues.”
Dunleavy says they believe everybody on board had a visa to go to China. “Those passports were in the possession of the Chinese embassy before those visas were issued. That doesn’t mean they weren’t false passports, but it means it’s probably lower down on the probability scale.”
An Obama adviser says that it is too early to tell whether foul play was a factor in the disappearance of the flight.
White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken says the US is looking into reports that two passengers were using stolen passports, but investigators had reached no conclusions. He says it is premature to speculate whether the passengers had a role in the Boeing 7-77’s disappearance.
Blinken also says US investigators from the FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are heading to Asia to assist in the investigation.
