Missing Malaysian airlines
Kuala Lumpur: The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet on Friday expanded to the Indian Ocean, US news reports said, amid new information gathered by US investigators that the aircraft may have flown for hours after it dropped off the radar.
Broadcaster CNN reported that the USS Kidd was steaming from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean to conduct a search for the aircraft carrying 239 people.
The Beijing-bound flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur International Airport early Saturday and disappeared from the radar about an hour later.
Late Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said that based on "new information" investigators had received, Washington would discuss the deployment of assets with its partners.
Search for missing jet spreads across South East Asia
KUALA LUMPUR/PHU QUOC, Vietnam: The search for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner expanded on Wednesday to cover a swathe of Southeast Asia, from the South China Sea to India's territorial waters, with authorities no closer to explaining what happened to the plane or the 239 people on board.
Vietnam briefly scaled down search operations in waters off its southern coast, saying it was receiving scanty and confusing information from Malaysia over where the aircraft may have headed after it lost contact with air traffic control.
Hanoi later said the search - now in its fifth day - was back on in full force and was even extending on to land. China also said its air force would sweep areas in the sea, clarifying however that no searches over land were planned.
The seas off India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands are also being combed for traces of the lost jet.
"We are expanding to the east of the expected route of the flight and on land," Lieutenant General Vo Van Tuan, Vietnam's deputy army chief of staff and spokesman for its search and rescue committee, told reporters.
The confusion over where to look is adding to one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation history, and prolonging the agonising wait for hundreds of relatives of the missing.
Flight MH370 dropped out of sight an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early on Saturday, under clear night skies and with no suspicion of any mechanical problems.
Dozens of planes and ships have already searched tens of thousands of square miles of Malaysia and off both its coasts without finding a trace of the Boeing 777.
Adding to the frustration and uncertainty, Malaysia's military has said the plane could have turned around from its planned flight path, but there were conflicting statements and reports about how far and in which direction it could have flown after communication was lost.
OFF COURSE? Malaysia's air force chief, Rodzali Daud, denied saying military radar had tracked MH370 flying over the Strait of Malacca off the country's west coast, about 500 km (310 miles) from the point ,roughly midway between the east coast town of Kota Bharu and Vietnam, where it was last seen by air traffic control.
Malaysia's Berita Harian newspaper on Tuesday quoted Rodzali as saying the plane was last detected at the northern end of the Strait of Malacca at 2.40 a.m. on Saturday, more than an hour after it lost contact.
"It would not be appropriate for the Royal Malaysian Air Force to issue any official conclusions as to the aircraft's flight path until a high amount of certainty and verification is achieved," Rodzali said in a statement on Wednesday.
"However all ongoing search operations are at the moment being conducted to cover all possible areas where the aircraft could have gone down in order to ensure no possibility is overlooked." Indonesia and Thailand, which lie on either side of the northern part of the Malacca Strait, have said their militaries detected no sign of any unusual aircraft in their airspace.
The massive search operation involving ships and aircraft from 10 countries is spread out over the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, which lie between Malaysia and Vietnam, and in the Strait of Malacca extending into the Andaman Sea.
An Indian foreign ministry official said Malaysia has sought its help in the search. India has a large military command in its Andaman and Nicobar islands and its navy patrols in the Malacca Strait.
Malaysia Airlines says no reason to think crew caused jet's disappearance
Beijing: A senior Malaysia Airlines' executive said on Wednesday that the airline has "no reason to believe" that any actions by the crew caused the disappearance of a jetliner over the weekend.
The search for the jetliner, which vanished on a flight between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, expanded further into the Andaman and South China Seas on Wednesday, with authorities no closer to explaining what happened to the plane or the 239 people on board. With no concrete evidence to explain the plane's disappearance, authorities have not ruled out anything.
Police have said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.
Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director of Malaysia Airlines, said the captain in charge of the flight was a very seasoned pilot with an excellent record.
"There have been absolutely no implications that we are aware of that there was anything untoward in either his behaviour or attitude," Dunleavy told Reuters in an interview.
"We have no reason to believe that there was anything, any actions, internally by the crew that caused the disappearance of this aircraft." Dunleavy said he was sceptical of a report by a South African woman who said the co-pilot of the missing plane, Farid Ab Hamid, had invited her and a female travelling companion to sit in the cockpit during a flight two years ago, in an apparent breach of security.
"Because just getting into that area requires you to go through the secure doors that we have in the cabin all the time," he said. "And not only would that have been unusual, but it also would have meant you'd have to walk by our cabin crew as well, and have the code to get through. So I'm dubious, but I'm going to let the authorities investigate and tell us what happened."
The airline earlier said it was taking seriously the report by the woman, Jonti Roos, who said in an interview with Australia's Channel Nine TV that she and her friend were invited to fly in the cockpit by Fariq and the pilot of a flight between Phuket, Thailand, and Kuala Lumpur in December 2011. The TV channel showed pictures of the four apparently in a plane's cockpit.
The airline will give $5,000 per passenger to cover hotel expenses of relatives awaiting news, Dunleavy added. The relatives, who have been staying at hotels near a Beijing airport since the plane went missing on Saturday, have angrily accused the airline of keeping them in the dark.
Malaysia Airlines said at least 152 of the 227 passengers on flight MH370 were Chinese.
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