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 The head of Malaysia's Civil Aviation Authority, Azharuddin Abdul
Rahman, said a hijacking attempt could not be ruled out as
investigators explore all theories for the loss of Malaysia Airlines
flight MH370 en route to Beijing.
"Unfortunately we have not found anything that appears to be objects
from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft," he told a news
conference.
"As far as we are concerned, we have to find the aircraft, we have
to find a piece of the aircraft if possible."
As dozens of ships and aircraft from seven countries scour the seas
around Malaysia and south of Vietnam, questions mounted over
possible security lapses and whether a bomb or hijacking attempt
could have brought down the Boeing 777-200ER airliner.
Hopes for a breakthrough rose briefly when Vietnam scrambled
helicopters to investigate a floating yellow object it was thought
could have been a life raft. But the country's Civil Aviation
Authority said on its website that the object turned out to be a
"moss-covered cap of a cable reel".
Interpol confirmed on Sunday at least two passengers used stolen
passports and said it was checking whether others aboard had used
false identity documents.
Flight MH370 disappeared from radar screens in the early hours of
Saturday, about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur, after
climbing to a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.
Underlining the lack of hard information about the plane's fate, a
U.S. Navy P-3 aircraft capable of covering 1,500 square miles every hour
was sweeping the northern part of the Strait of Malacca, on the
other side of the Malaysian peninsula from where the last contact
with MH370 was made.
"Our aircraft are able to clearly detect small debris in the water,
but so far it has all been trash or wood," said U.S. 7th Fleet
spokesman Commander William Marks in an emailed statement.
Shares in Malaysia Airlines fell as much as 18 percent to a record
low on Monday morning and were down 4 percent near the close.
NO DISTRESS SIGNAL
No distress signal was sent from the lost plane, which experts said
suggested a sudden catastrophic failure or explosion, but Malaysia's
air force chief said radar tracking showed it may have turned back
from its scheduled route before it disappeared.
A senior source involved in preliminary investigations in Malaysia
said the failure to quickly find any debris indicated the plane may
have broken up mid-flight, which could disperse wreckage over a very
wide area.
"The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to
indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around
35,000 feet," said the source.
Asked about the possibility of an explosion, such as a bomb, the
source said there was no evidence yet of foul play and that the
aircraft could have broken up due to mechanical causes.
Still, the source said the closest parallels were the explosion on
board an Air India jetliner in 1985 when it was over the Atlantic
Ocean and the Lockerbie air disaster in 1988. Both planes were
cruising at around 31,000 feet when bombs exploded on board.
The United States extensively reviewed imagery taken by American spy
satellites for evidence of a midair explosion, but saw none, a U.S.
government source said. The source described U.S. satellite coverage
of the region as thorough.
Boeing declined to comment and referred to its brief earlier
statement that said it was monitoring the situation.
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The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial
aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6
last year when Asiana Airlines flight 214 struck a seawall on
landing in San Francisco, killing three people. MASSIVE SEARCH
About two-thirds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew now presumed to
have died aboard the plane were Chinese. The airline said other
nationalities included 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six
Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.
The passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of
two Europeans — Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi — who were not on the plane. Their passports had been stolen in
Thailand during the past two years.
An Interpol spokeswoman said a check of all documents used to board
the plane had revealed more "suspect passports", which were being
investigated.
"Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between
these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great
concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight
using a stolen passport listed in Interpol's databases," Interpol
Secretary General Ronald Noble said.
Malaysia's state news agency quoted Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi
as saying the two passengers using the stolen European passports
were of Asian appearance, and criticized the border officials who
let them through.
"I am still perturbed. Can't these immigration officials think?
Italian and Austrian but with Asian faces," he was quoted as saying
late on Sunday.
A European diplomat in Kuala Lumpur cautioned that the Malaysian
capital was an Asian hub for illegal migrants, many of whom used
false documents and complex routes including via Beijing or West
Africa to reach a final destination in Europe.
"You shouldn't automatically think that the fact there were two
people on the plane with false passports had anything to do with the
disappearance of the plane," the diplomat said.
"The more you know about the role of Kuala Lumpur in this chain, the
more doubtful you are of the chances of a linkage."
(Additional reporting by Siva Govindasamy, Niluksi Koswanage, Stuart
Grudgings, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Yantoultra Ngui in Kuala Lumpur,
Ben Blanchard, Megha Rajagopalan and Adam Rose in Beijing, Martin
Petty in Hanoi, Alwyn Scott in New York, Naomi O'Leary in Rome, Tim Hepher in Paris, Brian Leonal in Singapore and Mark Hosenball and
Ian Simpson in Washington; writing by Alex Richardson; editing by
Nick Macfie)
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