Air safety experts are investigating whether an airliner that mysteriously vanished in the Far East could have been the target of a terrorist attack.
More than twenty-four hours after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared over the South China Sea, the only clue to the fate of its 239 passengers and crew was the revelation that the identities of four people on board, including two using stolen passports, were being investigated.
The disclosure raised fears that terrorists could have used false passports to board the craft, which vanished with no prior signals of trouble to air traffic controllers.
Those fears increased when Malaysian authorities later confirmed that they were liaising with the FBI over the suspect identities. The four under suspicion had all bought their flight tickets through China Southern Airlines, said a security official.
The plane was heading from the Malaysia to China, where last week 33 people were killed and 143 injured in a terrorist attack in the south-western city of Kunming. The attack, in which a gang of men ran amok in a Chinese railway station, was blamed on pro-separatist ethnic Uigurs, who come from the mainly Muslim areas of the Xinjiang region that borders Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some Chinese media have branded it the country’s own “9-11”.
Officials stressed that it was too early to say whether terrorism was a likely cause of the Malaysia airlines crash. But US officials said the FBI was checking passenger manifests and going back through intelligence.
“We are aware of the reporting on the two stolen passports,” one senior official told NBC news. “We have not determined a nexus to terrorism yet, although it’s still very early, and that’s by no means definitive.”
A leading aviation safety expert also said that it was “extraordinary” that the pilots of the jetliner did not have time to make a distress call.
David Learmount, of the specialist aviation magazine Flight Global, said that as the plane was cruising at about 35,000 feet when it lost contact over the South China sea, the pilots would normally have had “plenty of time” to radio in any technical problems before the plane hit the water.
Chris Yates, another aviation expert, said: “There will be two areas for the investigation: the maintenance of the aircraft and also possible terrorism.”
As darkness fell over the South China Sea last night, rescuers using boats, helicopters and planes had spotted two long oil slicks in the area where the Boeing 777 lost contact with air traffic control.
No wreckage, or survivors, were spotted during a rescue mission that involved five countries and lasted roughly seven hours before the night closed in.
When dawn broke, rescuers widened the search area to Malaysia's western coast after the country's military said its radar indicated that the missing aircraft may have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing before vanishing.
"What we have done is actually look into the recording on the radar that we have and we realised there is a possibility the aircraft did make a turnback," Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told a news conference.
The wide-bodied jet's sudden disappearance was followed by another ominous surprise when Malaysia Airlines released the passenger list for Flight MH370, a red-eye between Kuala Lumpur and the Chinese capital.
After checking the names of passengers 63 and 101, Christian Kozel and Luigi Maraldi, the Austrian and Italian governments said that neither man was on board.
Both had their passports stolen in Thailand over the last two years, and Mr Maraldi had been issued a new one according to the Italian media.
China Southern, which operated a codeshare on the flight, said the passengers using stolen passports had booked through its ticketing office.
Asked in the wake of the revelations whether terrorists had seized the plane, Najib Razak, the Malaysian prime minister said: “We are looking at all possibilities, but it is too early to make any conclusive remarks.”
An unnamed senior American intelligence official told the New York Times that “at this time, we have not identified this as an act of terrorism. While the stolen passports are interesting, they don’t necessarily say to us that this was a terrorism act”.
Malaysia's Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said authorities were looking at four possible cases of suspect identities. He said Malaysian intelligence was liaising with their international counterparts, including the FBI.
"All the four names are with me and have been given to our intelligence agencies," he said. "We do not want to target only the four; we are investigating the whole passenger manifest. We are looking at all possibilities."
It was 1.20am on Saturday morning when Flight MH370 simply vanished, in clear weather and with no distress signal, over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam.
Two thirds of the 227 passengers were Chinese including one infant, travelling on what has become one of the most popular tourist routes in Asia. There were no British passengers on board.
The pilot, 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had more than 18,000 flying hours under his belt and had been flying for Malaysia Airlines for more than three decades.
Data from the plane showed no cause for panic. After a steady climb to 35,000ft, the Boeing 777 jet levelled off and then abruptly stopped sending its location, speed, and altitude. There was no sign of any sudden descent.
The absence of any signal from the plane particularly troubled experts; even if both engines on the jet had failed, there should have been time to issue a distress call as the plane descended.
It was five hours before Malaysia Airlines issued its first statement, simply saying they had lost contact with their plane and had begun a rescue operation.
In Beijing, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi broke off a press conference to deal with the crisis. “We are extremely worried,” he said. Shortly afterwards, Xi Jinping, the president, ordered “all-out efforts” on a rescue operation.
An efficient police operation at Beijing airport shuttled relatives away from a scrum of Chinese and foreign journalists and to a conference room in a downtown hotel, where they sat and waited.
It was six more hours before the search began focusing on the last point of contact from the plane, roughly 120 nautical miles south west of Vietnam.
At 12.15pm, an emergency message was broadcast to all ships in the area asking them to “keep a sharp look out and assist immediately”.
China dispatched two ships from its naval base on Hainan island, while the Vietnamese and Malaysia navies both sent helicopters and ships. Singapore sent C-130 Hercules planes to search from overhead.
A Vietnamese journalist aboard a search and rescue helicopter said they had spotted oil slicks on the waters.
But the Malaysian transport minister, Hishamuddin Hussein, said it was too early to confirm a crash and that there were no signs of wreckage.
“We are doing everything in our power to locate the plane. We are doing everything we can to ensure every possible angle has been addressed,” he said.
Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record; it last lost a plane in 1977. The Boeing 777, equipped with twin Rolls-Royce Trent 892 engines, is also one of the world’s safest planes. Its only fatal crash in a 19-year history came last July when an Asiana Airlines jet missed the runway in San Francisco and three died.
Experts said that investigators would concentrate not only on whether the plane had suffered some catastrophic structural or engine failure, but also on sudden and unforeseen turbulence, some sort of attack on the plane, or even the suicide of the pilot, which has caused previous crashes over water.
But, a full day after the tragedy, the only news that Malaysia Airlines could issue was that “at this stage, our search and rescue teams from Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam have failed to find evidence of any wreckage”.
“The sea mission will continue while the air mission will recommence at daylight,” it added.
By then, the relatives of the passengers in Beijing were furious, having been held throughout the day in the hotel with minimal information.
The only information the relatives had gleaned, complained another man named Mr Jia, was from the internet.
At the end of the day, the relatives retired to rooms in the hotel, still without any news, their hopes fading.
Additional reporting by Adam Wu
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