Co-pilot of missing MH370 made mid-air phone call: Report

The co-pilot of missing Malaysia Airlines plane made a desperate call from his mobile phone moments before the jet went off the radar with 239 people on board under mysterious circumstances on March 8.

The call from co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's phone, however, ended abruptly, but not before contact was established with a telecommunications sub-station in Penang state, the New Straits Times reported today.

The call was made as the jet was flying low near Penang island on Malaysia's west coast, the morning it went missing.

"The telco's (telecommunications company's) tower established the call that he was trying to make. On why the call was cut off, it was likely because the aircraft was fast moving away from the tower and had not come under the coverage of the next one," the paper said, citing unnamed sources.

The paper said it was unable to ascertain who Fariq was trying to call as sources chose not to divulge details of the investigation. The links that police are trying to establish are also unclear, said the report.

Investigators are poring over this discovery as they try to piece together what had happened moments before the Boeing 777 Flight MH370 went off the radar, some 200 nautical miles northwest of Penang, the paper said.

Fariq's last communication through the WhatsApp Messenger application was about 11.30pm on March 7, just before he boarded the jet for his six-hour flight to Beijing.

The Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 - carrying 239 people, including five Indians, an Indo-Canadian and 154 Chinese nationals - had mysteriously vanished on March 8 after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.

The paper said checks on Fariq's phone history showed the last person he spoke to was "one of his regular contacts (a number that frequently appears on his outgoing phone logs)".

This call was made no more than two hours before the flight took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.