News update on missing Malaysian plane: Likely crashed into the Indian Ocean- CNN

A classified analysis of electronic and satellite data, conducted by the United States and Malaysian governments, calculates Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 likely crashed into the Indian Ocean on one of two possible flight paths, CNN has learned.

One flight path suggests the plane crashed into the Bay of Bengal off the coast of India, and the other has it traveling southeast and crashing in the Indian Ocean, according to the analysis.

Missing Malaysian plane: Could it have landed?

Yet another theory is taking shape about what might have happened to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Maybe it landed in a remote Indian Ocean island chain.

The suggestion -- and it's only that at this point -- is based on analysis of radar data revealed Friday by Reuters suggesting that the plane wasn't just blindly flying northwest from Malaysia. And it's just one of untold theories floating around about what might have happened to the airliner, which disappeared a week ago without leaving much of a trace of where it had gone or why.

Reuters, citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, reported that whoever was piloting the vanished jet was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands.

The radar data don't show the plane over the Andaman Islands but only on a known route that would take it there, Reuters cited its sources as saying.

The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. Inmarsat, a satellite communications company, confirmed to CNN that automated signals were registered on its network.

An aviation industry source tells CNN that the flight's automated communications system appeared to be intact for up to five hours, because pings from the system were received after the transponder last emitted a signal.

Taken together, the data point toward speculation in a dark scenario in which someone took the plane for some unknown purpose, perhaps terrorism.

The movie-plot theory seems more complicated and unlikely than one in which the plane -- its flight crew perhaps incapacitated -- simply flew on until it ran out of fuel or faced some other problem. But it's one that law enforcement has to check out, former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom said.

"You draw that arc, and you look at countries like Pakistan, you know, and you get into your 'Superman' novels, and you see the plane landing somewhere and (people) repurposing it for some dastardly deed down the road," he told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday.

Aviation experts say it's possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have hijacked and landed the giant Boeing 777 undetected.

The international airport in Port Blair, the regional capital of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, has a runway that is long enough to accommodate a 777, according to publicly available data.

But the region is highly militarized because of its strategic importance to India, Indian officials with knowledge of the operation tell CNN, making it an unlikely target for pirates trying to sneak in an enormous airplane with a wingspan of more than 200 feet.

Denis Giles, editor of the Andaman Chronicle newspaper, says there's just nowhere to land such a big plane in his archipelago without attracting notice.

"There is no chance, no such chance, that any aircraft of this size can come towards Andaman and Nicobar Islands and land," he said.

The Malaysian government said Friday that it can't confirm the report.

And a senior U.S. official offered a conflicting account Thursday, telling CNN that "there is probably a significant likelihood" the plane is on the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

The jetliner, with 239 people on board, disappeared a week ago as it flew between Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Beijing. The flight has turned into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history, befuddling industry experts and government officials. Authorities still don't know where the plane is or what caused it to vanish.

Suggestions of what happened have ranged from a catastrophic explosion to hijacking to pilot suicide.

Details of the search

Malaysian officials, who are coordinating the search, said Friday Mar.14 that the hunt for the plane was spreading deeper into both the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

India has deployed assets from its navy, coast guard and air force to the south Andaman Sea to take part the search, the country's Ministry of Defense said Friday.

Indian search teams are combing large areas of the archipelago. Two aircraft are searching land and coastal areas of the island chain from north to south, an Indian military spokesman said Friday, and two coast guard ships have been diverted to search along the islands' east coast. Indian officials are also including part of the Bay of Bengal in their search, officials said.

As of Friday, 57 ships and 48 aircraft from 13 countries were involved in the search, Hussein said.

China, which said it would be extending its search, said crews have searched more than 27,000 square miles (about 70,000 square kilometers) of the South China Sea without finding anything.

On Friday, the United States sent the destroyer USS Kidd to scout the Indian Ocean as the search expands into that body of water.

"I, like most of the world, really have never seen anything like this," Cmdr. William Marks of the U.S. 7th Fleet said of the scale of the search. "It's pretty incredible."

"It's a completely new game now," he said. "We went from a chess board to a football field."

Culled from CNN.

Another report:
The missing Malaysia Airline flight MH370 could have flown for an extra four hours after it lost contact with air traffic controllers and could had been hijacked and landed in Pakistan, according to American media reports. In another dramatic twist, aviation experts believe the plane flew for a total of five hours under radar.
The possibility means the plane could have travelled for another 2,200 miles to Pakistan or Mongolia, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

The plane could had been hijacked and taken to an unknown location – one of many theories as to what may have happened to the disappearing plane.
The Wall Street Journal said it isn’t clear whether investigators have evidence of a hijacking – but they haven’t ruled the possibility out.

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