March 13, 2014 -- Updated 1350 GMT (2150 HKT)
(CNN) -- Yet another conflicting storyline emerged
overnight in the perplexing disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight
370 nearly six days ago.
Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
After search crews failed to find any trace of debris suggested by Chinese satellite photographs, Malaysian
officials on Thursday denied a newspaper report that suggested the
plane may have kept flying for four hours after its last reported
contact.
The officials acknowledged the search for the jetliner, which disappeared early Saturday, is becoming harder and harder.
The report from The Wall Street Journal
said U.S. aviation investigators and national security officials were
basing their belief that the missing plane kept flying on data
automatically transmitted to the ground from the passenger jet's
engines.
The account has raised
questions among some U.S. officials about whether the plane had been
steered off course "with the intention of using it later for another
purpose," the newspaper reported, citing a "person familiar with the
matter."
The newspaper said it was unclear whether the aircraft had landed somewhere or had crashed.
But Malaysia's acting
Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Hussein denied the Wall Street
Journal report at a news conference Thursday, reiterating that all
contact had been lost with the plane at 1:07 a.m. Saturday.
The news came after
Vietnamese and Chinese search crews found nothing where Chinese
satellite photographs released Wednesday showed large floating objects
in the South China Sea.
The spot is between Malaysia and Vietnam and not far from the plane's expected flight path.
China's State
Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense
described the images as showing "a suspected crash site."
But Chinese authorities
later said the release of the satellite images was a mistake and that
they didn't show any debris relating to the plane, Hishammuddin said.
Engine data controversy
The Malaysian denial of
the Wall Street Journal piece is the latest in a series of conflicting
accounts involving crucial details such as the plane's route, when it
vanished and other issues.
The Wall Street Journal
report said the plane's engines have an onboard monitoring system
supplied by their manufacturer, Rolls-Royce PLC. The system
"periodically sends bursts of data about engine health, operations and
aircraft movements to facilities on the ground," the newspaper said.
Malaysia Airlines sends
its engine data live to Rolls-Royce for analysis, the report said, and
that data is now being analyzed to figure out the flight path of the
missing plane after contact was lost with its transponder, a radio
transmitter in the cockpit that communicates with ground radar.
But Malaysia Airlines
Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said Thursday that Rolls-Royce and
Boeing have reported that they didn't receive transmissions of any kind
after 1:07 a.m. Saturday. Air traffic controllers lost contact with the
plane shortly afterward, around 1:30 a.m.
Erin Atan, a spokeswoman
for Rolls-Royce in Asia, declined to comment on the matter, telling CNN
it was "an official air accident investigation."
Malaysian officials said
they had consulted with the makers of the plane and its engines, who
told them that no transmissions of any kind were received from the plane
after air traffic controllers lost contact with it.
Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
The report threatened to
open the door to a fresh round of theories about what has become of the
plane, which vanished while flying over Southeast Asia on its way from
Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Four more hours in the air could have put the plane many hundreds of miles beyond the area currently being searched.
But one aviation industry observer expressed skepticism about the report even before the denials by officials.
"I find this very, very
difficult to believe," Tom Ballantyne, chief correspondent for the
magazine Orient Aviation, told CNN. "That this aircraft could have flown
on for four hours after it disappeared and not have been picked up by
someone's radar and not have been seen by anyone, it's almost
unbelievable."
Search getting harder
The mystery over the
fate of the passenger jet, a Boeing 777-200, and the 239 people it was
carrying has so far left government officials and aviation experts
flummoxed.
"With every passing day the task becomes more difficult," Hishammuddin said Thursday.
Searchers have already
been combing a vast area of sea and land for traces of the plane. But so
far, with the search well into its sixth day, their efforts have been
fruitless.
Malaysian officials say
they are still trying to determine if a radar blip detected heading west
soon after the plane lost contact was in fact the missing jet.
If it was, the plane
would have been hundreds of miles off its original flight path and
headed in the wrong direction. Malaysian officials say they have asked
U.S. experts to help them analyze the radar data.
Meanwhile, India is
joining the multinational search, dispatching two of its naval ships off
the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, a military spokesman told CNN
on Thursday.
Last known words
Also on Thursday, a
Malaysian aviation official told CNN that the last known words from the
flight crew of the missing plane were "All right, good night."
Malaysian civil aviation
officer Zulazri Mohd Ahnuar said he couldn't confirm which member of
the flight crew sent the message, which was transmitted from the plane
back to Malaysian flight controllers as the aircraft transferred into
Vietnamese airspace early Saturday.
For the families of those on board the missing plane, the wait for news is tortuous.
Danica Weeks is trying
to keep it together for her two young sons, though the possibility of
life without husband Paul, who was on the plane, is sometimes
overwhelming. She's clinging to hope even though, as Weeks told CNN's Piers Morgan, it's "not looking good."
"Every day, it just
seems like it's an eternity, it's an absolute eternity," Weeks said from
Australia. "We can only go minute by minute ... and hope something
comes soon."
CNN's Elizabeth Joseph, Brian Walker, Simon Harrison, Greg Botelho and Harmeet Shah Singh contributed to this report.
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