Data deleted from pilot’s home flight simulator, Malaysian authorities say
Data deleted from Malaysian pilot’s home flight simulator intensifies focus of probe
(about 9 hours later)
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Forensic experts are trying to recover deleted data from a flight simulator belonging to the pilot of a missing airliner, Malaysia’s police chief said Wednesday, as investigators search for clues into who might have steered the aircraft from its course.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — A U.S. Navy plane that can search under water was shifted to remote waters 1,800 miles west of Australia and the FBI stepped in to retrieve files deleted from a pilot’s flight simulator Wednesday, as the U.S. role expanded in the effort to find a missing Malaysian airliner.
A U.S. law enforcement official said the FBI had been asked to provide technical help in examining the flight simulator, as Malaysia begins to accept more assistance from foreign governments and law enforcement agencies.
The focus of a search that covers 2.24 million square miles of ocean turned to an empty expanse far off the Australian coast, based on a projection provided by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which dispatched a team to Kuala Lumpur 48 hours after the plane’s March 8 disappearance.
The disclosure about deleted data from the captain’s home-built flight simulator increases scrutiny of the plane’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, though Malaysian authorities have emphasized that both he and the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, should be considered innocent unless proven otherwise.
“The sheer size of the search area poses a huge challenge,” said John Young of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. He said it covered more than 372,000 square miles of the southern Indian Ocean and would take “at least a few weeks to search the area thoroughly.’’
The disclosure also underscores the delicate job facing Malaysian authorities, who have selectively disclosed details of their investigation to a public hungry for any hints of guilt or innocence. Several aviation experts said Wednesday that those who use computer-based flight simulators often delete old logs when installing new software.
Malaysian investigators worked to recover data erased from a flight simulator that the plane’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, used in his home. A U.S. law enforcement official said the FBI had been asked to provide technical help in examining the flight simulator.
“It’s common,” said Amin Said, a pilot who runs a flight simulator business in Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysian authorities have emphasized that both Zaharie and the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, should be considered innocent unless proven otherwise. Police visits to their homes have caused suspicion that one or both of them might have had a hand in the plane’s disappearance.
So far, investigators have not publicly suggested that either Zaharie or Fariq Abdul Hamid had a motive or mind-set to sabotage a plane with 227 passengers aboard. But they have said that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was almost surely diverted by somebody with aviation experience.
Shortly after the simulator was taken by police from the family home, it was discovered that some material had been deleted.
Scrutiny has fallen on Zaharie and Fariq amid a report that the plane’s westward turn from Beijing, the intended final destination, was programmed by computer even while other communications systems remained working — and before the co-pilot’s last radio contact with the ground.
Forensic experts want to recover that information to determine whether it has any relevance to the investigation. FBI specialists often can retrieve data from computers that has been damaged or erased.
CNN, citing an unidentified law enforcement official, reported that the change in direction was entered into a cockpit console at least 12 minutes before Fariq, the co-pilot, said “good night” to Malaysian air traffic control. Two minutes later, the plane’s transponder was switched off, and it disappeared from civilian radar.
“The goal is to find any indication that the flight simulator had been used to reproduce flight conditions or circumstances that are now the subject of potential theories,” said Weysan Dunn, a retired senior FBI agent who has dealt with many sophisticated cyber-investigations.
The sequence of events seems to indicate that the westward turn was not a spur-of-the-moment decision, the network reported. Some experts said, in a note of caution, that the path could have been preprogrammed as an alternative in case of emergency.
People familiar with flight simulators said it was common practice to erase data.
Determining what happened in the plane’s cockpit in the 40 minutes between its takeoff and disappearance is crucial for investigators as they try to narrow a continent-sized search field and ease grief for despondent relatives.
The disclosure about deleted data underscores the delicate job facing Malaysian authorities, who have selectively disclosed details of their investigation to a public hungry for any hint of guilt or innocence.
It’s possible that Zaharie or Fariq, separately or together, cut off the plane’s multiple communications systems and steered it away from Beijing. It’s also possible that one or both were acting under duress. Officials here also have not categorically ruled out mechanical failure, though they say it’s unlikely.
Frustration over the trickle of information boiled over Wednesday when relatives of Chinese passengers on the missing plane burst into the news media auditorium in the Malaysian capital, wailing with grief and anger, and unfurled a banner demanding that the government “tell the truth.”
Malaysia’s inspector general of police, Khalid Abu Bakar, said that experts would try to recover the files that had been deleted from Zaharie’s flight simulator, which Zaharie had built and shown off on social media networks. Khalid did not say whether he believed the deletions were unusual or suspicious. Zaharie’s flight simulator was removed from his home Saturday during a police search.
Investigators have not publicly suggested that either Zaharie or Fariq had a motive or mind-set to sabotage a plane with 227 passengers and 12 crew members aboard. But they have said that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was almost surely diverted by somebody with aviation experience.
The hunt for the missing Boeing 777 now involves 26 countries looking across a vast section of the Indian Ocean and huge tracts of central and southeast Asia, amounting to 2.24 million square nautical miles. That search area is split into curving northern and southern corridors — the best guess for where the plane might have ended up.
Scrutiny has fallen on Zaharie and Fariq amid reports that the plane’s westward turn from Beijing, the intended destination, was programmed into the flight computer even while other communications systems remained working and before the co-pilot’s last radio contact with the ground.
Investigators now believe that the missing plane most likely flew into the southern corridor, in the remoteness of the Indian Ocean west of Australia, the Reuters news agency reported Wednesday, citing a source close to the investigation.
The change in direction was entered into the system before the final burst of automatic data sent from the plane via satellite at 1:07 a.m. and several minutes before Fariq, the co-pilot, said “good night” to Malaysian air-traffic control. Two minutes after that, the plane’s transponder went dark and the airliner disappeared from civilian radar.
“The working assumption is that it went south, and furthermore that it went to the southern end of that corridor,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The sequence of events seemed to indicate that the westward turn was not a spur-of-the-moment decision, but some experts said that path could have been pre-programmed as an alternative in case of emergency.
The view is based on the lack of any evidence from countries along the northern corridor that the plane crossed their airspace, and the failure to find any trace of wreckage in searches in the upper part of the southern corridor. Australia, New Zealand and the United States are involved in the search of the far southern area, in an effort that could take weeks.
Determining what happened in the plane’s cockpit in the 40 minutes between its takeoff and disappearance is crucial for investigators as they try to narrow a continent-sized search field and ease the grief of despondent relatives.
China said Wednesday it had not found any sign of the aircraft crossing into its territory.
It’s possible that Zaharie or Fariq, separately or together, cut off the plane’s multiple communications systems and steered it away from Beijing. It’s also possible that one or both were acting under duress. Officials in Malaysia also have not ruled out mechanical failure, although they say it’s unlikely.
On Tuesday, Malaysian officials, faced with mounting frustration over the progress of their investigation of an airliner that disappeared March 8, made an international appeal for help in finding it.
The hunt for the missing Boeing 777 now involves 26 countries looking across a vast section of the Indian Ocean and huge tracts of central and southeastern Asia. That search area is split into curving northern and southern corridors — the best guess where the plane might have ended up.
The search has been bedeviled by scant information and contradictory reports, prompting Chinese Ambassador Huang Huikang on Tuesday to say the Malaysians were “inexperienced and lacking the capacity” to carry out the investigation properly. The 239 passengers and crew included 150 Chinese.
Investigators now believe that the missing plane most likely flew far into the southern corridor, over the remote waters of the Indian Ocean west of Australia, the Reuters news agency reported Wednesday, citing a source close to the investigation.
Malaysia also has been slow to line up help from other countries, including the United States, that have expertise or information that could speed up the search. Although a group of U.S. crash investigators has been in Kuala Lumpur for more than a week, the nation has not accepted assistance from a team at the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office waiting to depart for Malaysia.
The view is based on the lack of any evidence from countries along the northern corridor that the plane crossed their airspace and the failure to find any trace of wreckage in searches in the northern part of the southern corridor.
Nor has Malaysia responded to an offer of assistance from a U.S. oceanographic institute, whose expertise in underwater searches helped locate the last major airliner to crash into the sea: Air France Flight 447, which disappeared over the Atlantic in 2009.
The Navy sent a P-8 Poseidon aircraft that had been searching off India in the Bay of Bengal to aid in the effort west of Australia. The plane can stay aloft for up to nine hours and can drop and monitor buoys that listen for sounds beneath the ocean surface. Even if the plane crashed into the sea, its emergency beacon will send audible signals for about a month before the battery dies.
But Malaysia is warming to some of these offers, U.S. officials said. A senior law enforcement official said Tuesday that the Malaysian government is starting to cooperate with the FBI and American intelligence agents in the field after a week of rebuffing help.
The protracted and painfully inconclusive investigation has taken its toll on the families of passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight.
“Initially, there was a little bit of fog of war. That has cleared,” the official said. “They had a hard time pulling this together. Every intelligence agency in the world was beating their door down. I think they were overwhelmed, and that has settled a little bit.”
Chaos ensued in the Malaysian media center as the passengers’ relatives were surrounded by dozens of television camera operators, photographers and correspondents jostling for position in a narrow space at the back of the hall. A Malaysian government official appealed in vain for the relatives to leave before they were finally bundled out the door by police in an unseemly melee.
There are also fewer than a dozen FBI agents, including the agency’s assistant legal attaché and legal attaché, on the ground in Kuala Lumpur, the official said.
One woman collapsed to the floor and had to be virtually carried out as she cried, “Where are they? Where are they?”
In Bangkok, a Thai air force spokesman said that Thai military radar may have spotted Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 just as it steered away from its intended path and after its transponder was cut off. But Air Vice Marshal Montol Suchookorn said officials did not share the information because Malaysia did not specifically request it, the Associated Press reported.
After the family members were removed, only their banner was left behind on the floor. A government spokesman ordered it to be rolled up, saying it was not “appropriate.”
Had Thailand’s disclosure come earlier, it might have directed the search away from the Gulf of Thailand, which crews combed for seven days on the theory that the airliner, with 239 passengers and crew members on board, had perhaps crashed at the same time that it disappeared from civilian radar. The focus of the search now is farther to the west, in particular the Indian Ocean.
More than 150 Chinese were listed among the passengers aboard the missing plane. Some relatives, angry almost from the outset with the scant information, have been flown to Malaysia to wait for news, while most have elected to stay behind in China.
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, at a news conference Tuesday, brushed off criticism that his government has held back information or been slow to follow possible leads. He said Malaysia is cooperating with the FBI and other international law enforcement authorities.
Many grieving families in Beijing are staying at the Lido Hotel, their lives spent watching television, talking to counselors and waiting for updates from Malaysian officials. Daily sessions with representatives from Malaysia Airlines often turn into shouting matches during which the airline officials explain again that they have no information.
“Our priority has always been to find the aircraft,” he said. “We would not withhold any information that could help. But we also have a responsibility not to release information until it has been verified by the international investigation team.”
The spirits of some relatives had perked up a bit last weekend when Malaysia seemed to raise the possibility of a hijacking, a scenario that would increase the odds of the passengers’ survival.
He added, “Over the last two days, we have been recalibrating the search for MH370. It remains a significant diplomatic, technical and logistical challenge.”
“That night, many finally got out for once and got a good night’s sleep,” said Lu Kaisheng, a volunteer from Shenzhen, who is part of group providing counseling for families at the hotel. “But since then, you can feel anger start to rise again.”
He asked the United States on Tuesday to scrutinize data from defense satellites and airborne radar. He also requested more U.S. vessels in the Indian Ocean.
Halsey reported from Washington. Tim Craig in Islamabad, Pakistan; Annie Gowen in New Delhi; William Wan in Beijing; and Ernesto Londoño, Adam M. Goldman, Scott Higham and David Nakamura in Washington contributed to this report.
“The entire search area is now 2.24 million square nautical miles,” Hishammuddin said. “This is an enormous search area. And it is something Malaysia cannot possibly search on its own.”
Search grid defined
Unless floating debris from the aircraft is discovered somewhere in that vast area, it becomes increasing unlikely that the plane will be found, U.S. experts said.
In what has become the largest search on record for an aircraft, Malaysia acknowledged for the first time that other countries needed to take leading roles in scouring a grid about the size of Australia. Malaysia said it has divided that grid into 14 sections and negotiated for Australia, China, Indonesia and Kazakhstan to coordinate efforts in some of those areas.
If the plane or wreckage is located, the senior U.S. law enforcement official said, the FBI is ready to dispatch additional teams of agents. They could help with forensic analysis of bodies, debris and other material to help determine what happened. The official said the FBI also is prepared to look into the backgrounds of all the passengers and crew members but has not been asked by the Malaysian National Police, which is leading the investigation.
“The Malaysians have the lead on this, and we stand ready to assist in any way we can,” the official said.
At the White House, one senior administration official said cooperation with the Malaysian government is proceeding as smoothly as can be expected given the “unusual” nature of the mystery.
“This is very difficult for any country,” the official said, referring to the Malaysian response. “We’ve provided a lot of technical assistance in particular, and we helped with the new search area.”
At the National Security Council, officials are monitoring the response from the Defense and State departments, the National Transportation Safety Board and the FBI, and the staff has had “working level” meetings with various agencies. But the effort has been based out of the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, the official said. The United States has added a few staff members to assist at the embassy.
Citing U.S. officials, the New York Times reported Monday that Flight MH370’s westward turn away from its route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was programmed into the plane’s computer system, suggesting that whoever steered the Boeing 777 had technical expertise.
“If this turn point was loaded in on the ground before takeoff, then both pilots would have to agree on that being part of the flight plan, which is unlikely,” said Ron Carr, a retired airline pilot who teaches at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona. “It would be easier and less likely to call attention to a ‘not authorized waypoint’ for it to be loaded [after takeoff] when the course change is to be conducted.”
Finding Air France Flight 447
Although Malaysian authorities have appealed for help with the underwater search, they have not responded to offers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, which found Air France Flight 447.
“We’ve tried every way we can at Woods Hole just to have a conversation with someone in Malaysia,” said Dave Gallo of Woods Hole. “We offered through our State Department, and then we tried to go directly to the Malaysians and to Boeing. Nothing.”
Gallo said that if the plane is underwater, searchers first must find evidence of its location by spotting debris on the surface.
“It’s similar to finding a needle in a haystack, which is doable these days if you have the right tools,” he said. “So knowing that we’re at least looking in the right haystack is important. We don’t want to be looking in the Gulf of Thailand in shallow water and then they say it’s off the coast of Perth [Australia] in deep water.”
Five days after the Air France crash, floating debris was located. Using water currents and the final communications from the aircraft, investigators narrowed the search area to 40 square miles. Brought in after the plane’s locator box stopped sending underwater signals, the Woods Hole team found the Airbus A330 more than 11,000 feet below the surface, almost two years after it went down.
The longer it takes to find floating evidence of Flight MH370, the more problematic the search becomes. Narrowing the area to scour would allow ships towing sonar sleds on long tethers to focus on that section before the 30-day battery life runs out on an underwater beacon emitting homing signals every second.
As time passes, floating debris drifts and disperses. Experts can evaluate those patterns based on the time the material has been in the water and pinpoint where to search. If the search narrows from millions of square miles to just a few dozen, it becomes a matter of bringing in the right equipment.
Ships towing sonar sleds must move at less than two miles an hour or risk breaking the miles-long line that lets their equipment sink thousands of feet below the surface. The better choice is autonomous underwater vehicles — unmanned mini-submarines.
“They have the ability of running very precise lines on the sea floor, just like plowing a field or mowing the lawn,” said Gallo, whose team also mapped the remains of the Titanic ocean liner on the bottom of the Atlantic.
Gallo said assembling a fleet of AUVs, if a search area can be narrowed, is a challenge.
“They are scattered all over the Earth,” he said. “There are a couple of companies that can respond. There are a couple of oceanographic institutes like ourselves that can respond, but no one’s got dozens of vehicles. Everyone’s got one or two, and who knows where they are?” If that focus comes down to the waters off Perth, he said, that is “one of the most incredibly complicated underwater terrains on the planet.”
“This place is not only rugged, but it’s unpredictable,” he added. “It can be a high plateau, a deep valley, a mountain slope, so it’s difficult.”
Australia said Tuesday that it will take several weeks to search its area, with help coming Wednesday from New Zealand and the United States. That search area — the southernmost potential crash spot for the aircraft — is 230,000 square miles, about the size of Wyoming.
Halsey reported from Washington. Tim Craig in Islamabad, Pakistan; Annie Gowen in New Delhi; and Ernesto Londoño, Adam M. Goldman, Scott Higham and David Nakamura in Washington contributed to this report.
