The Malaysian Prime Minister stopped short of calling the mysterious disappearance of Flight 370 a hijacking, but said Saturday the jet veered off course due to apparent deliberate action taken by someone aboard, the Associated Press reported.
Military radar showed the jetliner flew in a westerly direction back over the Malaysian peninsula before turning northwest toward the Bay of Bengal or southwest into the Indian Ocean, said Prime Minister Najib Razak, according to the AP.
"Evidence is consistent with someone acting deliberately from inside the plane," Razak said, officially confirming the plane's disappearance was not caused by an accident, the AP reported.
With new clues indicating the Malaysia Airlines jet may have flown for more than seven hours after last contact with the pilots, the search entered a second agonizing week, according to the AP.
Authorities refocused their investigation on the crew and passengers and widened their targeted area to a large swath of Asian geography, the AP reported. The arc of possible places the plane could have flown bends as far north as Kazakhstan and south to the vast, empty waters of the Indian Ocean.
The Boeing 777-200ER passenger jetliner disappeared March 8, en route from the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China, according to the AP.
Military radar showed that the plane flew in a westerly direction back over the Malaysian peninsula before turning northwest toward the Bay of Bengal or southwest into the Indian Ocean, Najib said, the AP reported.
The new satellite information, Najib said, leads authorities to be fairly certain that someone disabled the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, just before the aircraft reached the east coast of peninsular Malaysia, according to the AP.
"Shortly afterward, near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control, the aircraft's transponder was switched off," Najib said, the AP reported.
ACARS is the system that routinely transmits information like turbulence and fuel load back to the airline and the transponder is a radio transmitter in the cockpit used to communicate with air traffic controllers, according to the AP.
The last voice communication from the cockpit a week ago were these words: "All right, good night," the AP reported.
Shortly after Najib delivered his remarks, China demanded Malaysia provide more information on the investigation, according to the AP.
"Today is the 8th day of the missing MH370, and the plane is still yet to be found," said a statement from the foreign ministry, the AP reported. "Time is life."
