Malaysia Officials Now Say Missing Airline Flight 370 Was Deliberately Diverted … Missing Plane May Have Flown on for 7 Hours

Malaysia officials are now saying that Malaysia Flight 370 was ‘deliberately diverted’ and then flown for as long as seven hours toward an unknown destination. Satellites tracked the flight for over 7 hours after the plane lost contact. The planes communications and data systems were intentionally and purposely turned off. However, part of the data system could not be turned off and continued to send pinging to satellites.  But for what purpose and who was involved in this hijacking is still unknown. The search continues, now toward the Indian Ocean … Indian aircraft and ships began fanning out a day ago around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a distant Indian territory toward the coast of Myanmar, and across more than 13,000 square miles of open sea.

The mystery of missing Malaysia flight 370 continues.

The search for Flight 370 turned into a criminal investigation on Saturday, after Malaysia declared that the plane had been deliberately diverted and then flown for as long as seven hours toward an unknown point far from its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia said on Saturday afternoon that he would seek the help of governments across a large swath of Asia in the search for the plane, which has been missing for a week and had 239 people on board. The Malaysian authorities released a map showing that the last satellite signal received from the plane had been sent from a point somewhere along one of two arcs spanning large distances across Asia.

Missing airliner may have flown on for 7 hours.

In the most comprehensive account to date of the plane’s fate, Najib drew an ominous picture of what happened aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, saying investigators had determined there was “deliberate action by someone on the plane.”

Najib said the investigation had “refocused” to look at the crew and passengers. A Malaysia Airlines representative, speaking to relatives of passengers in Beijing, said the Malaysian government had opened a criminal investigation into the plane’s disappearance.

The plane’s whereabouts remain unknown one week after it disappeared from civilian radar shortly after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur. But Najib, citing newly analyzed satellite data, said the plane could have last made contact anywhere along one of two corridors: one stretching from northern Thailand toward the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan border, the other, more southern path stretching from Indonesia to the remote Indian Ocean.