Search focus turns to pilots Investigators look into backgrounds of MH370 crew and ground staff
KEY IDEAS : 1. The backgrounds of people linked to flight MH370 are being investigated. 2. The current search involves 25 countries. 3. Satellite and radar data from the US and China will be used in the investigation. INVESTIGATORS are trawling through the backgrounds of the pilots, crew and ground staff who worked on the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner for clues as to why someone on board flew it perhaps thousands of kilometres off course, the country's police chief said. The number of countries searching for flight MH370 has risen from 14 to 25, with the search now focusing on two vastly contrasting land and ocean transport corridors. The dramatic "recalibration" will bring "new challenges of coordination and diplomacy", Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said. Police searched the homes of both pilots and examined the captain's home flightsimulatorafter it became increasingly clear that the Boeing 777 that vanished on 8 March had been deliberately diverted by someone on board. Hishammuddin cautioned people against "jumping to conclusions" about the thrust of the investigation, which police chief Khalid Abu Bakar stressed was covering "all" the 239 passengers and crew. Engineers who had contact with the plane before take-off are also being looked at. That follows Saturday's startling revelations that the communications systems had been manually switched off before the jet veered west and flew for hours. Background checks of passengers on flight MH370 have drawn a blank, but not every country whose nationals were on board has responded to requests for information, Khalid said. Hishammuddin refused to use the word hijack, saying only that the pattern of events was consistent with "deliberateaction" by someone on the plane. The new search parameters involve two possible flight corridors – a northern one stretching from Thailand (泰國) to Kazakhstan (哈薩克) in Central Asia, and a southern one from Indonesia (印尼) towards the southern Indian Ocean (南印度洋). The Malaysian foreign ministry briefed representatives from 22 countries, including the central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan (烏茲別克), Kyrgyzstan (吉爾吉斯) and Turkmenistan (土庫曼), and requested support in the form of satellite and radar data from countries including the US (美國) and China. Experts said it would take specialist knowledge to disable the communications system, intensifying scrutiny of captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27. (Agencies, 16 March, 2014)
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