No Longer a Theory, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was Hajacked: Communications Were Disabled

As the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stretched into a 10th day, the Malaysian authorities on Monday identified the plane’s first officer as the last person in the cockpit to speak to ground control. But the government added to the confusion about what happened during those key minutes by withdrawing its assertion that the radio signoff came after a crucial communications system was disabled.

Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, who is also Malaysia’s acting minister of transportation, appeared to give a crucial clue pointing to the possible complicity of the pilots when he said at a news conference on Sunday that the communications system had been “disabled” at 1:07 a.m. on March 8, before someone in the cockpit gave a verbal signoff to air traffic controllers here on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.

But Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, the chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, clarified at a news conference early Monday evening that the communications system, known as an Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, had worked normally at 1:07 but then failed to send its next, regularly scheduled update at 1:37 a.m.

“We don’t know when the Acars system was switched off,” he said.

It was between the two scheduled transmission times for the Acars system, he said, that the verbal signoff was given by radio at 1:19 a.m. A second communications system, a transponder that communicates with ground-based radar, then ceased working at 1:21 a.m.

The new description of what happened to the Acars system appeared to reopen the possibility that the aircraft was operating normally until the transponder ceased sending signals two minutes after the last radio message. The new uncertainty could also raise additional questions about whether the plane was deliberately diverted or whether it suffered mechanical or electrical difficulties that crippled its communications and resulted in its flying an aberrant course that involved turning around, heading back over peninsular Malaysia while rising and falling rapidly again, and finally flying out over the Strait of Malacca to an unknown location.

Standing next to Mr. Ahmad Jauhari, Mr. Hishammuddin waved off numerous questions about why he had said a day earlier that Acars had been disabled at 1:07 a.m. “What I said yesterday was based on fact, corroborated and verified,” he said. In response to another question, he said that uncertainty about the chronology underlined the importance of finding the aircraft and its data recorders.