US Investigators Suspect That Missing Flight Kept Flying For Hours Beyond Its Last Communication

Andy Pasztor of The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. investigators suspect that missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours after it reached its last confirmed location.

From WSJ:

"Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program."

Malaysian authorities immediately rebutted the report.

"Those reports are inaccurate," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference. "As far as both Rolls-Royce and Boeing are concerned, those reports are inaccurate. The last (data) transmission from the aircraft was at 01:07 a.m. [local time on March 8] which indicated that everything was normal."

Malaysia's denial is odd, however, given that earlier this week Malaysia's military said that it believed the the passenger plane turned and flew 350 miles to the west after it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country's east coast.

Patrick Smith, an airline pilot and author who has been writing about the case, told Business Insider that some of the confusion can be attributed to language issues among the various investigators from all over the world and complications of vernacular in regard to technical aviation terms.

Nevertheless, the tragic mystery remains.

"The million dollar is question is what happened, but before we there we really need to establish whether or not ... the plane flew around after the last transmission and in which directions," Smith said. "Before that is known and what the details are, it's hard to speculate further."

He noted that in any case, the general scenarios for what happened seem to fall in the categories of some sort of hijacking, rogue action by crew, or some sort of catastrophic malfunction.

One person tracking the probe told WSJ that U.S. counterterrorism officials are actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted "with the intention of using it later for another purpose."

"That's been a possibility right form the start," Smith said. "It's very unlikely, but I supposed it's conceivable."

At 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, the flight carrying 239 people dropped off air traffic control screens, less than an hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. No one knows where it went after that.

Five days later, the search for clues about the plane's path have become one of the most baffling mysteries in the history of modern aviation. There has been no trace of the plan and no confirmed signs of wreckage.

Malaysia's credibility is already being challenged after days of confusing statements, misinformation, and delays.

"The Malaysians deserve to be criticized - their handling of this has been atrocious," Ernest Bower, a Southeast Asia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Reuters.

On the other hand, the incident is profoundly bizarre:

Last commercial airliner loaded w passengers to actually go missing was in 1962. Had propellers. No modern tracking. I'll leave that there.

- John Schindler (@20committee) March 13, 2014