– Pilots under scrutiny –
Pilots Fariq and Zaharie have come under intense scrutiny since the plane vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board on March 8, with still no clue as to the cause of the disappearance.
Investigators last month indicated that the flight was deliberately diverted and its communication systems manually switched off as it was leaving Malaysian airspace, triggering a criminal investigation by police which has revealed little so far.
A number of theories have been put forward, including hijacking, a terrorist plot or a pilot gone rogue, with authorities grasping at straws as to the fate of the plane without crucial data from the jet’s “black box”, which has yet to be located, and no wreckage found.
Several sonic ‘pings’ which authorities have said are consistent with a black box have been detected by ships in the search area in the remote southern Indian Ocean, off the west coast of Australia.
But Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is leading the search for the plane, said Sunday that another 24 hours had passed without a confirmed signal, increasing fears that batteries in the beacons attached to the plane’s two black boxes may now have run flat.
The last pings were detected on Tuesday.
There were 12 aircraft and 14 ships combing a 57,506 square kilometre region of the Indian Ocean on Sunday, 2,200 kilometres northwest of Perth, including Australia’s Ocean Shield which is using a US Navy towed pinger locator to pick up the hoped for black box signals.
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