Tuesday, 11 March 2014 20:14
Published on
KUALA
LUMPUR : The Malaysian military believes an airliner missing for almost
four days with 239 people on board flew for more than an hour after
vanishing from air traffic control screens, changing course and
travelling west over the Strait of Malacca, a senior military source
said.
Malaysian authorities have previously
said flight MH370 disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala
Lumpur for the Chinese capital Beijing.
At the time it was roughly midway
between Malaysia's east coast town of Kota Bharu and the southern tip of
Vietnam, flying at 35,000 ft (10,670 metres).
"It changed course after Kota Bharu and
took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait," the military
official, who has been briefed on investigations, told Reuters.
The Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping channels, runs along Malaysia's west coast.
Earlier on Tuesday, Malaysia's Berita
Harian newspaper quoted air force chief Rodzali Daud as saying the
Malaysia Airlines plane was last detected by military radar at 2:40 a.m.
on Saturday, near the island of Pulau Perak at the northern end of the
Strait of Malacca.
It was flying at a height of about 9,000 metres (29,500 ft), he was quoted as saying.
"The last time the flight was detected
close to Pulau Perak, in the Melaka Straits, at 2.40 a.m. by the control
tower before the signal was lost," the paper quoted Rodzali as saying.
A non-military source familiar with the investigations said the report was being checked.
"This report is being investigated by
the DCA (Department of Civil Aviation) and the search and rescue team,"
the source said. "There are a lot of such reports."
The time given by Rodzali was an hour
and 10 minutes after the plane vanished from air traffic control screens
over Igari waypoint, midway between Malaysia and Vietnam.
There was no word on what happened to the plane thereafter.
If the reports from the military are
verified, it would mean the plane was able to maintain a cruising
altitude and flew for about 500 km (350 miles) with its transponder and
other tracking systems apparently switched off.
Malaysia has extended the massive search
operation for the plane to the Malacca Strait after initially focusing
on the South China Sea.
-NST
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