MH370: Pilots `planned` the journey into an information black hole?

Zee Media Bureau/Ajith Vijay Kumar

Kuala Lumpur: Ten days after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished on its way to Beijing, investigators are still battling in the dark about its fate. Among the theories doing the rounds is the possibility of the jetliner having been flown to somewhere in Taliban controlled area of Afghanistan.

With the area of search now stretching from Kazakhstan in the north to the Indian Ocean down south below Indonesia, more than 20 countries are now working in tandem to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of the plane with 239 people on board.

News agency Reuters has quoted Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan, saying that the missing plane had nothing to do with them.

"It happened outside Afghanistan and you can see that even countries with very advanced equipment and facilities cannot figure out where it went," he said. "So we also do not have any information as it is an external issue." A commander with the Pakistani Taliban, a separate entity fighting the Pakistani government, said the fragmented group could only dream about such an operation.

"We wish we had an opportunity to hijack such a plane," he told Reuters by telephone from the lawless North Waziristan region.

The Taliban theory is bizarre to say the least as the plane would have had to be flown undetected over several countries – including India – for it to reach the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

However, reports now claim that the plane was flown at a low altitude – 5000 feet – and through known commercial airline routes to avoid detection by radars, thereby keeping the possibility of it reaching Afghanistan. Even if the pilots – their role is under suspicion – managed to fly the aircraft undetected, the Boeing 777 would have needed a runway of at least 5000 feet to land safely, thereby limiting the number of possible sites where it could have landed within range.

Importantly, aviation officials in India, Pakistan and in central Asian countries, have claimed that they had not detected the plane on their radars and are unaware of the whereabouts of the plane.

India had even taken part in the extended sea search for the plane in the area around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Meanwhile, Malaysian authorities are probing the role of the crew of MH370, especially that of 53-year-old captain Zaharie Ahmed Shah and 27-year-old co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid.

Their homes were searched with the probe now centering around their backgrounds. A flight stimulator kept by captain Shah at is home is also being examined by experts.

The role of the pilots is under scanner as investigators now believe that transponders that relay signals about the location of the plane were switched off intentionally before MH370 proceeded on its 6-7 hour long journey to an unknown destination.

What has reinforced suspicion on the role of the pilots is the facts that the transponders were switched off in the buffer zone between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control to capitalise on the possibility of both the sides assuming that MH370 is being tracked by the other.

The fact that the transponder was switched off at 1.19 am on March 8 (1719 GMT March 7), two minutes after a casual "all right, good night," indicates that a great detail of planing was involved in steering the plane away.

Also the switching off of another system called the ACARS that transmits technical data to the maintenance base on the ground raises suspicion that the plane was deliberately veered away towards an unknown black hole.