KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — The missing Malaysia Airlines plane crashed into a remote corner of the Indian Ocean, the nation's prime minister said Monday night, citing a new analysis of satellite data. The statement was the first major step toward resolving a 2-week-old mystery that has consumed the world.
But with the location of Flight
370 itself still unknown — most likely somewhere at the bottom of the
sea — profound questions remain about what brought down the aircraft and
why.
Dressed in a black suit,
Prime Minister Najib Razak announced the news in a brief statement to
reporters, saying the information was based on an unprecedented study of
data from a satellite that had received the final known signals from
the plane.
He said the data indicated that
the Boeing 777, which took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8
with 239 passengers and crew, flew "to a remote location, far from any
possible landing sites."
"It
is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that,
according to this new data, Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian
Ocean."
The family members in Beijing had
been called to a hotel near the airport to hear the announcement.
Afterward, they filed out of a conference room in heart-wrenching grief.
One woman collapsed and fell on her knees, crying "My son! My son!"
Medical
teams arrived with several stretchers and at least one elderly man was
carried out of the conference room on one of them, his faced covered by a
jacket. Minutes later a middle-aged woman was taken out on another, her
face ashen and her eyes blank and expressionless.
Nan
Jinyan, whose brother-in-law Yan Ling was aboard the flight, said she
was prepared for the worst. "This is a blow to us, and it is beyond
description," Nan said.
In
Kuala Lumpur, Selamat Omar, the father of a 29-year-old aviation
engineer who was on the flight, said some family members there broke
down in tears at the news.
"We accept the news of the tragedy. It is fate," Selamat told The Associated Press.
"We
know there are no words that we or anyone else can say which can ease
your pain," Malaysia Airlines said in a statement. "The ongoing
multinational search operation will continue, as we seek answers to the
questions which remain."
An airline official, who declined to be identified citing company
policy, said there are no plans to fly the families to the Australian
city of Perth, where the search is centered, until wreckage is found.
The plane's disappearance shortly after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur on a
routine flight to Beijing has baffled investigators, who have yet to
rule out mechanical or electrical failure, hijacking, sabotage,
terrorism or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or
someone else on board.
Malaysian authorities have said that evidence so far suggests the plane
was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca,
with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened
next.
Officials have said the plane automatically sent a brief signal — a
"ping" — every hour to a satellite belonging to Inmarsat, a British
company, even after other communication systems on the jetliner shut
down.
The pings did not include any location information, but an initial
analysis showed that the location of the last ping was probably along
one of two vast arcs running north and south.
Najib said Inmarsat had done further calculations "using a type of
analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort," and had
concluded that the plane's last position was "in the middle of the
Indian Ocean, west of Perth."
He gave no indication of exactly where in the Indian Ocean the plane was
last heard from, or what the next step in finding it would be. The
grueling hunt could take years, or the plane's main fuselage may never
be found at all.
Search teams from 26 nations have pored over radar data and scoured a
wide swath of Asia for weeks with advanced aircraft and ships in a
deeply frustrating attempt find the plane.
On Monday, planes and ships from Australia to China were crisscrossing
the southern part of the ocean after multiple satellites had detected
objects that could have been possible remains of the lost airliner.
The search is now considered a race against time because of the battery
life of the "pinger" in the black box, which may run out in the next two
weeks.
On Monday, an Australian navy support vessel, the Ocean Shield, was
headed toward the search zone and was expected to arrive in three or
four days, a defense official said. The ship is equipped with acoustic
detection equipment that can search for the black box.
The U.S. Pacific Command said it is also sending a black box locator in case a debris field is located.
The
Towed Pinger Locator, which is pulled behind a vessel at slow speeds,
has highly sensitive listening capability that can hear the black box
pinger down to a depth of about 20,000 feet (6,100 meters), Cmdr. Chris
Budde, a U.S. 7th Fleet operations officer, said in a statement. He
called it "a prudent effort to pre-position equipment and trained
personnel closer to the search area."
The ocean depth in the current search area ranges between 1,150 meters (3,770 feet) and 7,000 meters (23,000 feet).
U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes on Monday stopped short
of saying the U.S. had independent confirmation of the status of the
missing airliner. He noted the conclusion of Malaysian authorities that
the Boeing 777 had plunged into the Indian Ocean and said the U.S.,
which has been assisting the search effort, was focused on that southern
corridor of the ocean.
Earlier Monday, Malaysia's police
chief, Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar, reiterated that all the
passengers had been cleared of suspicion.
But
he said the pilots and crew were still being investigated. He would not
comment on whether officials had recovered the files that were deleted a
month earlier from the home flight simulator of the chief pilot.
Associated Press writers Scott McDonald in Kuala Lumpur and Ian Mader
and Christopher Bodeen in Beijing contributed to this report.