This article is from the source 'washpo' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/malaysian-authorities-examine-pilots-flight-simulator/2014/03/16/27b0d4ae-acea-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html?wprss=rss_world

The article has changed 13 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
Malaysian authorities examine pilot’s flight simulator Malaysian authorities examine pilot’s flight simulator
(about 2 hours later)
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The operation to locate a missing passenger jet, once just a regional search through shallow waters, has expanded into the most sprawling in aviation history, while also including a criminal investigation examining the passengers and pilots. KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The operation to locate a missing passenger jet, once just a regional search through shallow waters, has expanded into the most sprawling in aviation history, while including a criminal investigation examining the passengers and pilots.
Malaysian authorities said Sunday that they were examining a flight simulator that they’d removed from the home of a pilot who’d captained the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet. Authorities here have two ways to determine the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: find the plane or hone in on a theory about who steered it astray and why.
The captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, a tech enthusiast, had shown off that simulator in YouTube videos and Facebook photos. Investigators said they’d also talked to Zaharie’s family and searched the home of the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27. Both of those options are fraught, air crash investigators say. The physical search now spans much of Asia and extends deep into the Indian Ocean, toward areas where debris could remain unnoticed for years. Meantime, no signs have yet surfaced indicating a perpetrator or motive.
“We appeal to the public not to jump to conclusions regarding the police investigation,” Malaysia’s acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said on Twitter. Malaysian officials said Sunday that they were examining a flight simulator that they’d removed from the home of the captain of the missing jet. Investigators also interviewed his family, removed other items from his house and searched the nearby home of the co-pilot.
Investigators are exploring the backgrounds and recent behavior of the crew and passengers in hopes of establishing a motive that would explain the plane’s mysterious disappearance. Still, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein cautioned against jumping to conclusions. The captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, had not requested to be on MH370 together. They also did not request any extra fuel.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak had said one day earlier that the plane was deliberately steered off course, its communications systems disabled. The investigation, he said, had “refocused” to look at the crew and passengers, though no motive has yet been established. Zaharie had flown for the airline for more than 30 years and showed no recent signs of trouble, said Peter Chong, a friend who saw Zaharie last week.
Shah, 53, has been a Malaysia Airlines pilot for more than three decades, logging 18,000 hours in the air. There was no indication Saturday that he or his co-pilot had been targeted by investigators. This week, Zaharie had planned to attend a community event where he chaperoned needy children on a mall shopping trip, Chong said.
The search came the same day that Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said the plane’s disappearance was “deliberate” and evidence emerged that it appeared to have flown for seven hours after its radar transponder and satellite uplink went dead, apparently turned off by someone in the cockpit. Malaysia’s investigation was given a new degree of focus this weekend after experts determined the plane had been deliberately flown off course, its various communications systems severed. After dropping off civilian radar, the plane tacked to the west, then remained in the air for as many as seven additional hours. Experts have suggested the plane could have only been guided by a skilled aviator — either willingly or under duress.
Hishammuddin said that the search for the Boeing 777 was now focused on two massive areas — arcs where the plane last potentially made contact with a satellite. One area, toward the north, crosses 11 countries from northern Thailand to Kazakhstan. The other extends south, into a little-trafficked are of the Indian Ocean. Khalid Abu Bakar, inspector general of Malaysia’s police, said Sunday that investigators hadn’t yet found any passengers with aviation expertise, although some governments with passengers on board had yet to submit detailed profile information to Kuala Lumpur. He added that “a few foreign intelligence agencies” working with the Malaysians had “cleared all the passengers” — meaning, they’d determined no citizen of theirs could have physically operated the plane.
The search now involves 25 countries, Hishammuddin said, compared with 14 before. Zaharie’s flight simulator is a three-panel console that he built and proudly showed off on social media networks. Friends have described him to local media as a tech geek who spent his free time fiddling with devices. On his YouTube page, he demonstrated a series of handy do-it-yourself home maintenance tips. He also was a social activist, a skilled cook, a husband and a father of three adult children.
“This is a significant recalibration of the search,” he said. “If you look at him, suicide — it just doesn’t add up,” said Chong, an aide to a Malaysian parliament member who has known Zaharie for two years. “As far as I know he had no financial problems. It just doesn’t add up. There are so many unanswered questions.”
Those countries have been asked to share satellite and radar data that may give clues about the plane’s whereabouts. Malaysia’s foreign ministry on Sunday held a briefing for countries involved in the search. On Saturday a white unmarked police minivan visited Zaharie’s home in a gated community, then traveled on to Fariq’s, a two-story house that he shared with his parents. Police left Fariq’s house soon after carrying several brown bags, according to reporters who observed the scene.
The new leads about the plane’s endpoint, although ambiguous, have drastically changed the search operation.On Sunday, India put its search for the plane on hold at the request of the government in Kuala Lumpur. India had been searching around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and in the Bay of Bengal. Defense officials said both the searches have been suspended but may resume. Khalid said Sunday the investigators were also looking at airport staff on the ground that might have serviced the plane before it departed on its red-eye flight, bound for Beijing. Although investigators have not detailed what they are looking for, experts familiar with airplane accidents say they are likely to look for recent changes in personality, financial problems, signs of depression, or any unusual contacts.
“There is a very high level coordination meeting take place taking place in Malaysia, so it is too premature to say that everything has been stopped. There is a temporary pause in operation waiting the joint coordination meeting in Malaysia. Beyond this I have no inputs,” said Capt. D.K. Sharma, Navy spokesman. “The first thing I’d be looking for is to see whether the captain flew a flight profile like the one we’ve been talking about for the last eight days,” said Greg Feith, a former National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigator involved in the 1996 ValuJet Flight 592 crash and the 1997 SilkAir Flight 185 disaster — a suspected case of pilot suicide. “Did he normally simulate flights to places he wouldn’t normally go?”
Malaysia said Saturday that efforts would be terminated in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, where the plane first disappeared from civilian radar. In the case of SilkAir, the pilot placed the Boeing 737 into a high-speed dive, according to the NTSB. The plane broke the sound barrier on the way down, then disintegrated into an Indonesian river. Before the incident the pilot, Tsu Way Ming, had reportedly suffered heavy stock losses and arranged an insurance policy to protect his family in the event of his death.
The plane, based on one potential endpoint, could have spent nearly all its flight time over the Indian Ocean as it headed toward an area west of Australia. But if the plane traveled in the direction of Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan, it would present a more perplexing scenario in which the aircraft would have evaded detection for hours while flying through a volatile region where airspace is heavily monitored: Burma, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and western China are all in the neighborhood of that path, as is the United States’ Bagram air base in Afghanistan. Even if search teams do find the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, they may never be able to figure out what happened in the cockpit as the jet veered off course. A cockpit voice recorder, which would have recorded any activity or commotion, captures only two hours of sound, constantly overwriting the oldest material. Because the plane flew on for many more hours, the key events have already been wiped away. If searchers do find the “black box,” they’ll instead have to rely on a flight-data recorder, which provides technical information about the plane’s behavior.
Malaysia has confirmed that a previously unknown radar trail picked up by its military was indeed MH370. That blip suggests the plane had cut west, across the Malaysian Peninsula, after severing contact with the ground. Malaysia received help in analyzing that radar data from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration and Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch. Based on analysis of satellite contact the plane made in its final hours, investigators believe it could have ended up anywhere along a massive arc extending north into Asia and south into the Indian Ocean.
U.S. officials have said that the plane, shortly after being diverted, reached an altitude of 45,000 feet and “jumped around a lot.” But the airplane otherwise appeared to operate normally. Significantly, the transponder and a satellite-based communication system did not stop at the same time, as they would if the plane had exploded, disintegrated or crashed into the ocean. The northern and southern corridors are being treated with “equal importance,” Hishammuddin said.
Najib said the plane’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, was disabled just as MH370 reached the eastern coast of Malaysia. The transponder was then switched off, Najib said, as the aircraft neared the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace. The northern corridor crosses 11 countries from Thailand to Kazakhstan. The southern is far more remote, and stretches through areas that are uncovered by radar. To help with the northern area, Malaysia’s government has requested help from nearly a dozen Asian countries, including Burma, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Australia. The Malaysian Foreign Ministry on Sunday held a briefing for 22 countries and asked them to share satellite and radar data that may give clues into the plane’s whereabouts.
Malaysia has already burned the resources of more than a dozen countries by focusing the first week of the search on nearby waters — areas that now appear far from MH370’s endpoint.
With the latest information from satellite data, the search has expanded to include 25 countries, up from 14.
“This is a significant re-calibration of the search,” Hishammuddin said.
Halsey reported from Washington, and Gowen reported from New Delhi. Liu Liu in Beijing; Tim Craig in Islamabad, Pakistan; Rama Lakshmi in New Delhi; and Joel Achenbach, Adam Goldman and Sari Horwitz in Washington contributed to this report.Halsey reported from Washington, and Gowen reported from New Delhi. Liu Liu in Beijing; Tim Craig in Islamabad, Pakistan; Rama Lakshmi in New Delhi; and Joel Achenbach, Adam Goldman and Sari Horwitz in Washington contributed to this report.