Malaysian Officials Open to More Help in Finding Flight 370
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MOHD RASFAN/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — With hope rapidly fading that Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 will ever be found, Malaysian officials seem to be ready to accept help that they have spurned up to now, according to a report in The Washington Post.
Even so, the assistance might be too little, too late with the trail growing increasingly colder 11 days after the plane with 239 on board vanished on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Although more than two dozen counties have helped in the search for the missing aircraft, the Malaysian government has been resistant to offers from the FBI, Interpol and a U.S. oceanographic institute that was instrumental in finding an Air France plane that similarly disappeared in 2009.
However, with criticism mounting, Malaysian officials are starting to cooperate with international law enforcement authorities, since the assumption now is that Flight 370 was deliberately steered off course. What happened after that remains a mystery.
Currently, the search area encompasses 2.24 million square miles — ten times the size of Texas — extending in the north from China and Kazakhstan south to Australia.
In other developments, Thailand’s military said on Tuesday that its radar detected a plane heading west that may have been the missing jetliner shortly after it stopped broadcasting signals. The unidentified plane was detected about the same time and place that Malaysia’s military radar picked up a blip that they suspect was the Malaysia Airlines plane.
Sources had earlier told ABC News that the plane was pre-programmed to turn west, away from its designated flight path to Beijing. It was about that point that the plane lost contact with radar and air traffic controllers.
Yet, there seemed to be waffling on that point Tuesday when Malaysian Airlines’ CEO said, “As far as we are concerned, the aircraft was programmed to fly to Beijing.” He added, however, “Once you are in the aircraft, anything is possible.”
Despite the confusion, Malaysian authorities remain convinced that the plane was diverted manually and it didn’t disappear from radar because of a mechanical catastrophe.
Copyright 2014 ABC News Radio