Malaysia backtracks on jet's communication shutdown time

The authorities on Monday identifies the plane's first officer as the last person in the cockpit to speak to ground control

A signalling system was disabled on the missing Malaysia Airlines jet before a pilot spoke to air traffic control without mentioning any trouble, a senior Malaysian official said on Sunday, reinforcing theories that one or both of the pilots might have been involved in diverting the plane and adding urgency to the investigation of their pasts and possible motivations.

With the increasing likelihood that Flight 370 was purposefully diverted and flown thousands of miles from its planned route, Malaysian officials faced more questions about an investigation, marked by days of contradictory government statements, that has ballooned into a global goose chase for information.

Prime Minister Najib Razak acknowledged on Saturday that military radar and satellite data raised the possibility that the plane could have ended up somewhere in Indonesia, the southern Indian Ocean or along a vast arc of territory from northern Laos across western China to Central Asia. Malaysian officials said they were scrambling to coordinate a 25-nation effort to find the plane.

On Sunday, Malaysia’s defence minister added a critical detail about investigators’ understanding of what had transpired in the cockpit in the 40 minutes of flight time before ground controllers lost contact with the jet. The determination that the last verbal message to the control tower — “all right, good night” — came after a crucial signalling system had stopped transmitting, perhaps after being shut off, was likely to refocus scrutiny on the plane’s veteran pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and his young first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27.

Commercial passenger planes use radio or satellite signals to send data through Acars (the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System). The system can monitor engines and other equipment for problems that  might need attention when a plane lands.

Though officials have already said Acars was disabled on the missing plane, it had been unclear whether the system stopped functioning before or after the last, brief words were radioed to the control tower, in which the pilot did not indicate that anything was wrong with the signalling system or the plane as a whole.

During a news conference on Sunday, the defence minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, who is also acting minister of transportation, gave a terse answer: “Yes, it was disabled before.”

The fate of the plane and the people it carried has become a formidable riddle, raising questions about possible terrorism, the identities of passengers and crew members, aviation technology and searching an enormous area that includes both the Indian Ocean and rugged, remote terrain in Asia.

“It’s something of the scope I’ve never seen before,” William Marks, the spokesman for the US Navy Seventh Fleet, which sent two guided-missile destroyers to join the search, said in a telephone interview. Of the size of the Indian Ocean, he added: “Essentially, it’s like looking for a person somewhere between New York and California. It’s that big.”

Malaysian officials on Sunday briefed representatives from 22 countries that could help search along the two corridors where satellite data indicate the plane might have wound up, having flown up to six hours after its disappearance beyond the range of military radar in western Malaysia. Hishammuddin said Malaysia would also ask China, France, the US and other countries to provide satellite data.

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