It could be, we are told, anywhere from Kazakhstan, just below central Russia, to the southern Indian Ocean, somewhere west of Perth.

New photos of some of the youngest passengers, five kids aged between two and four, heading from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on Flight MH370, add new poignancy to an already terrible tale.

A person or persons have taken the controls of the jet. They are not amateurs. They know enough to be able to turn the plane’s transponder – which broadcasts the jet’s position to ground radar – off.

Maybe they did it with guns or knives to a pilot’s head. Maybe a pilot was the terrorist.

It was first reported that the plane had vanished off civilian radar at around 1.21am, last Saturday, as it tracked en route to Beijing in the South China Sea, over the Gulf of Thailand.

Now it is believed that instead of going down near that spot, where initial searches were concentrated, the plane fell into nefarious hands.

It ascended, sharply, to 45,000ft, well above the 777-200ER’s recommended altitude limit, possibly in a deliberate attempt to mislead civilian radar of the plane’s location.

It then veered sharply west, back towards Malaysia over the top of the Strait of Malacca, dropping to around 23,000ft, then apparently regaining altitude and soaring in a north-westerly direction, possibly over the Andaman Sea, and then beyond Bangladesh, Nepal and Kyrgyzstan, to as far north as Kazakhstan.

Or perhaps, according to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who provided this astounding information to the world on Saturday afternoon, it took a different direction – south west, somewhere between Indonesian and the great emptiness of the Indian Ocean.

Someone, said Razak, had taken control of MH370.

There was a “high degree of certainty that the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) was disabled just before the aircraft reached the east coast of peninsular Malaysia,” said Razak, making his first statement on the missing plane.

“Shortly afterwards, near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control, the aircraft’s transponder was switched off."

The last “ping” emanating from the jet’s satellite system was at 8.11am, seven hours after civilian radar lost sight of it in the South China Sea.

The 8.11am ping – a pre-programmed signal from the jet’s satellite-sending systems, not made by human hands – did not give a location for the plane.

It did not even indicate whether it was in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere; whether it had crashed or landed safely. It merely suggested it was potentially in one of two enormous corridors.

The Suspects

ATTENTION has now focused on the men in the cockpit. One of them is MH370’s co-pilot, Fariq Ab Hamid, who seemed to fancy himself a playboy.

Fariq had invited two pretty South African girls into the cockpit of a Malaysian Airlines flight in 2011, strictly forbidden by universal protocols after September 11, 2001.

Fariq, 27, smoked in the cockpit and laid on the charm. Though such a breach did not provide much of a clue, he will be considered again -- though the head pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 52, who had 33 years’ experience, was described as sober and professional.

But he is now also subject to intense scrutiny as reports – unconfirmed – emerge that Captain Zaharie was a fervent supporter of Malaysian opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, who only hours before the flight was sentenced by the Malaysian appeal court to five years in prison over his long-running sodomy case, after having been acquitted in 2012.

The Wall Street Journal reported Zaharie was a member of the People’s Justice Party, which opposes the Malaysian government. But this group has never been associated with terror, let alone violence.

Malaysia, which presents outwardly as a settled, open, modern and sophisticated nation, is a tyranny that controls its press and courts. Elections are not free and the country, though so stifled it rarely breaks into open dissent, is deeply and bitterly divided.

There were claims from unnamed colleagues that Zaharie had planned to attend Anwar’s sentencing on the day before the Beijing flight, but there was no confirmation he had showed.

CCTV images emerged of Fariq and Zaharie being subjected to standard body frisks before they took the controls of MH370. These are last-known pictures pictures of the pilots. 

Razak said Malaysia had “refocused their investigation on crew and passengers aboard”, though the statement was so broad as to mean little. He also refused to confirm a hijack, raising suspicions that plane’s takeover may not have come from the passengers.

Zaharie was said to have been an aviation nerd who kept a flight simulator at home. Now, investigators are assessing whether any of his simulation programs matched the course of the wayward 777. Police swarmed Zaharie’s home shortly after Razak’s media conference on Saturday afternoon.

Unnamed US intelligence officials told CNN they favoured the theory that “those in the cockpit” were behind the jet’s disappearance. This was supported by other views from the US that only a highly skilled pilot could have made the apparent “tactical evasion manoeuvres” that took the plane out of civilian radar view.

Others say the focus on the pilots is a distraction led by velvet-gloved Malaysian despot, Razak, in an attempt to hang further suspicion on anyone who dares offer an alternate political view.

UK’s Telegraph reported that an al Qaeda supergrass gave evidence last week in the New York trial of Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, that four or five Malaysian men had been planning to take controls of a jet using a small shoe bomb to blast open the cockpit door.

The US had, in recent weeks, posted new alerts about the dangers of shoe bombs getting through airport security.

The British-born witness, former jihadist Saajid Bada, appearing by video-link from the secret location in the UK, said he had met this group of Malaysians in Afghanistan and given them a show bomb.

One of the group, he said, was a pilot, who could have taken control of the jet once the commercial pilots were disabled or killed.

A likely target? The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the giant Twin Towers of Asia, which stood as the world’s tallest buildings until overtaken in 2004.

Curious that one of the two Iranian men who boarded MH370 in Kuala Lumpur – later said to be not a suspect, merely an asylum seeker trying to get to Europe – posted Facebook photos of himself sitting beneath the Petronas Towers in the days before he took the flight.

But everyone who goes to KL takes photos of themselves at the towers.

Also coming under suspicion are members of China’s Uighur separatist movement, who claimed the first responsibility for the jet’s disappearance but were not taken seriously.

A Malay newspaper claimed that a 35-year-old Uighur man from the troubled autonomous Muslim province was on Flight MH370 – and had taken flight-simulator training in Sweden in 2005.

Others said he was member of a group of harmless Chinese artists who were returning home from a painting and calligraphy exhibition. But Razak’s mention of Kazakhstan has attracted renewed interest, given the Uighur heartland stretches from western China to Kyrgyzstan, directly beneath the “Kazakhstan‎ corridor” to which the Malaysian Prime Minister referred.

China has blamed Uighur separatist for the two bloodthirsty mass knife attacks on innocent Chinese citizens within the last fortnight. Uighur rebel Abdullah Mansour told Reuters from an undisclosed location Pakistan in recent days that the intent was to bring the Holy Fight to China.

“The fight against China is our Islamic responsibility and we have to fulfil it," he said. Pakistan is also along Mr Razak’s so-called Kazakhstan‎ corridor.

During the week, the Chinese released their satellite photo of what appeared to be a cluster of three large floating items, the largest estimated to be as big as 22m x 24m.

What was odd, in an already weird saga, was that news of this wreckage was first posted to the world by China’s state-owned Xinhua news agency. Why hadn’t they told Malaysia, and the other searching nations, days earlier?

At the same time, as it was to be hoped the search area would be narrowed, it was decided by Malaysia that the search be vastly expanded to take in 27,000 square nautical miles. For reasons not disclosed by Malaysia, a special effort would be concentrated in the Andaman Sea, more 1000km west of MH370’s flight path.

The Andaman Sea was directly along Razak’s Kazakhstan corridor.
 

A plane, and hope, go missing

SET to one side, for a moment, the notion that the two Iranians using false passport on Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 had anything to do with the plane’s disappearance.

Then ask how they got on the plane in the first place, using stolen documents.

Somewhere in the answer to that question might be the reason Malaysia had spent a week misleading the world on what it really knew about the act of piracy that saw the Boeing 777 sent on a hellish journey.

Malaysia is, along with China – according to survey of leading business people taken last year – the most corrupted country in the world; where bribes speak louder than public security or national (and international) interest.

Now Malaysia – arrogant, feisty and certainly, as Paul Keating once said, recalcitrant – must explain itself. It will have difficulty.

For almost two decades, the country has permitted a huge number of refugees and asylum seekers to enter and disperse through its country.

The reason for this is that it has created a huge underclass of low-paid workers, which has in turn created a rich Malaysian elite, who benefit from their labours. But Malaysia has in this time lost complete track of who resides in its country, which has become the natural address in the region for terrorists.

In the wider south-east Asian region, Malaysia, more than any other country, has created the right climate for jihadists to breed and foment.

The country’s media is controlled totally by the government; investigations and free comment are not permitted. Malaysia does not recognize Israel, and therefore permits the view that anti-Semitism – which often mirrors anti-Western sentiment – has a home to flourish.

It is clear now that Malaysia had known for five or six days that the plane was unlikely in the South China Sea where most of the searching, by numerous planes and ships from 14 countries, was concentrated.

The possibility of an act of piracy was revealed on Thursday, not by Malaysia but in a stunning report from the Wall Street Journal, with unnamed US officials said they believed the plane had flown on a full four hours off-course in a westerly direction after the last definitive 1.30am civilian radar sighting.

This was said to be based on systems data transmitted to Boeing and the engine-maker, Rolls Royce. US investigators also thought it possible someone in the cockpit had deliberately shut off MH370’s transponder to avoid detection.

By Friday, it appeared certain that Malaysia had withheld vital information from the loved ones of the passengers, the public and even the nations joining the search – though Razak insisted information had been shared freely in “real time” with others capable of understanding the data.

US security officials have said Malaysia did not share information freely, but had hoarded it, likely due to its reluctance to reveal too much of its security knowhow, which it regards as vital to its self-interest in this crowded and testy part of the world.

In the face of Malaysia’s refusal to make available information, it appears that well-placed US government security and aviation experts were leaking information in order to provide the world with what Malaysia would not.

Malaysian authorities initially hinted the plane may have tracked momentarily to the west, before disappeared from radar.

This was then dramatically expanded on in remarks to a Malay newspaper by Royal Malaysian Air Force general, Rodzali Daud, who said the plane had been tracked for more than an hour after 1.21am, on military radar, over the Strait of Malacca.

In other words, the plane was not headed north-east for China, but crossing back over northern Malaysia.

General Daud said, on Tuesday, that the plane had been tracked on Malaysian military radar not only turning back to the west, but slightly dropping altitude from around 35,000ft to 29,000ft, where it was last observed at 2.40am over the Strait of Malacca, at the top of Malaysia.

By this account, it had almost arrived back at home before vanishing.

This contradicted earlier statements from Malaysian authorities that they had lost the plane’s signal at 1.21am, after it entered Vietnamese airspace over the Gulf of Thailand. (It would later be revealed that the cockpit said farewell to Malaysian air traffic control with the words: “All right, good night.”) It was not known who said these words, whether Zaharie, Farig or someone else who may have taken over the plane.

General Daud, in his comment, had given the plane another 70 minutes of life. In context, this was a huge variation that opened up all sorts of possibilities.

Daud was quickly overruled and then recanted his story or, by some accounts, denied ever saying it.

What had happened amid these stories was something particularly upsetting for the families, including those of the six Australians aboard, hoping and praying for news: Daud had given them some hope.

But the story of plane heading west, rather than disappearing on its north-east tracking to Beijing, would not go away.

It seemed clear that if Daud was correct (as later supported by the Wall Street Journal story), but had been silenced, the plane had almost certainly not crashed at the top of the Strait of Malacca, where military radar had last sighted it. It would have been found almost immediately. The strait is one of the world’s busiest sea lanes; it is heavily populated by shipping traffic, 24/7.

One uncomfortable hope, therefore, was the plane had been hijacked and taken somewhere in to enemy territory. But where? Burma? North Korea? Not likely.

Air France Flight 447 from Rio to Paris, which in 2009 crashed in the mid-Atlantic, killing all 228 passengers and crew, offered no analogy to MH370. Though it had also reached cruising altitude, this was an Airbus A330 that hit heavy weather, causing the plane’s external instruments to freeze over, confusing the pilots.

MH370 was flying in clear night skies.

It had taken the Brazilian navy five days to find signs of the Air France wreckage in an area with far less sea traffic than the MH370 search area.

The pilots may have been dead at the moment of this massive deviation, possibly due to loss of cabin pressure. But there were many possibilities.

Mike Glynn, a committee member of the Australian and International Pilots Association, said pilot suicide was suspected in the SilkAir crash on a flight from Jakarta in 1997 and in the 1999 EgyptAir flight to Cairo.

“A pilot rather than a hijacker is more likely to be able to switch off the communications equipment,” Glynn told AP. "The last thing that I, as a pilot, want is suspicion to fall on the crew, but it's happened twice before.”

There was also speculation there was a faint possibility the jet could have flown undetected and landed on a remote island in the Indian Ocean.

On Saturday, CNN cited authorities who thought the plane may have gone in one of two directions after it passed through the Straits of Malacca: either northwest, towards the Bay of Bengal and the coast of India, or southwest, out into the expanse of the ocean.

America sent the USS Kidd to the Indian Ocean to begin searching, as the families of the missing passengers were being pulled in every direction.

The sense of urgency to find the missing 777 had become acute, with 57 ships and 48 planes scouring the seas hoping to site wreckage or to hear signals from the plane’s two black boxes and emergency locater transmitters, which have a 30-day life before their batteries fail.

As Malaysia finally called off the search in the South China Sea, it was now asking for more help from countries near and far, to help.

It particularly hoped that China, the US and France would review all their satellite and radar data from the time of the plane’s disappearance amid speculation the plane could have been flown to al Qaeda heartland, in the North-West Frontier Provinces, where Pakistan borders Afghanistan.

 

Secrets and Lies

EVEN after the generally substantiated WSJ report on Thursday, that the plane had carried on and had sent systems signals to Boeing and Rolls Royce, Malaysia was still not prepared to concede what it already believed to be true.

Malaysian Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said on Thursday, hours after the report was published, that Boeing and Rolls Royce were on the scene in Malaysia, assisting with the search. They denied received any signals from MH370.

Defence and acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein also dismissed it, saying the crisis was testing not only Malaysia, but the best aeronautical minds in the world. “There is no real precedent for a situation like this,” he said.

Some reports suggested the plane could have flown as far as 1,600km west of Perth. Why had the Malaysia led the world on a week of misinformation, including raising the fears of passengers around the world that the 777 was unsafe?

The 777 is strong and silent plane, which since it first came into service in 1995 developed a reputation as one of the strongest and most reliable in the skies. It is a comfortable and comforting plane, which ascends serenely.

The 227 passengers aboard MH370, departing Kuala Lumpur last Saturday at 12.41am for a six-hour flight to Beijing might have felt they had a good chance of getting some sleep. The 12 crew probably thought they were in for an easy night.

Less than an hour later, Flight MH370 was in trouble, having sharply changed course, flying many hours to the west, with dead or terrified passengers heading into the enormity of the Indian Ocean or the Arabian Sea, or potentially colliding into some of the world’s highest peaks over Nepal.

The story fascinated and appalled the world as Malaysian authorities prevaricated, ducked questions (and water bottles flung by infuriated and distraught family members), changed stories and confused everyone.

A passenger manifest was quickly published and questions were asked about two men who were travelling on stolen passports.

As ships and planes from multiple nations, including Australia, who’d lost six people, descended on the area to work painstaking grid searches, confusion was total.

Vietnam, frustrated by mixed signals from Malaysia, wound back its search on Wednesday.

China had 153 people aboard and felt there was no steady hand in Malaysia. “So right now there is a lot of information, and it's pretty chaotic, so up to this point we too have had difficulty confirming whether it is accurate or not,” said foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

By Wednesday night, the world wanted to know: was Malaysia hiding something? Were we witnessing the petty disputes of uneasy regional neighbours, failing to share information when they ought to have been working together? 

The reports out of the US, which were consistent with that of the Malaysian general, seemed to suggest that terror – or pilot meltdown -- was a real consideration.

As for the China satellite photo, civil aviation chief Rahman said: “There is nothing. We went there, there is nothing.’’

False leads and fading hope

TERROR, in the form of a bomb or a hijacking, is the first thought. Next comes catastrophic engine or systems failure, then pilot error.

The news that two passengers had boarded MH370 on false passports raised sickening fears that airlines were under attack once again, though a plane carrying mostly Chinese passengers seemed an unusual target for usual-suspect Islamic terrorists.

Rahman had responded to a question as to whether these men were Asian-looking by saying skin colour did not denote nationality. “Do you know a footballer by the name of (Mario) Balotelli (a dark-skinned Ghanaian-born striker)? He's an Italian. Do you know what he looks like? Balotelli.”

Thoughts turned to Horn of Africa terrorists – Yemeni, or Somali. But neither of the two suspects did look anything like Balotelli. They were light-skinned Iranians.

It was revealed an Iranian man known as “Mr Ali” had bought airline tickets to Europe (via Beijing) from a travel agent in Thailand on behalf of the two young Iranians, Pouria Nour Mohammad and Seyed Mohammed Reza Delavar.

Mr Ali’s customers had flown direct from Iran to KL where they were given stolen Austrian and Italian passports, and their air tickets.

Mr Ali had tried to book flights on Qatar and Etihad but found them too expensive, switching to the cheaper Malaysian option. It suggested the airline had not been targeted.

According to an asylum source in Indonesia, trafficking rings pay off Malaysian immigration to get them through customs.

The anguish of not knowing

IN PERTH, Danica, the wife of WA-based New Zealander Paul Weeks, was beyond anxious and becoming angry.

She told Melbourne’s Fox FM that she was getting one text message from Malaysian Airlines each day, informing her that they were increasing the search area.

“As one reporter said, and pointed out rightly: ‘You can find your phone in the back of the taxi with an app, so how do you lose a plane?’” said Ms Weeks, who has two young sons with her husband, who was heading to Mongolia on a new job as a FI-FO.

 “Are they actually telling us everything? I'm starting get angry about the whole process and I can't imagine those poor families in Beijing. They’re now on unfamiliar territory and getting nothing.”

Citizens using Google Earth were claiming to find plane-like objects in the search area, though did not seem to realize they were looking at images that had been shot prior to the disappearance of MH370.

To make matters more vexing, every major news organisation in the world was riding the story hard, yet some stories that claimed to have been just posted minutes before contained news of 12 or 24 hours earlier. It was not always possible to know what you were reading.

For the loved ones, however, it was quite simple: there was none of the news that mattered most.

Queensland couples Robert and Catherine Lawton and Rodney and Mary Burrows were friends and who had been travelling together on an adventure through Malaysia and were now headed for China.

The Lawtons had three daughters and two grandchildren – Cathy’s last comment on Facebook was: “Off to China.” Cathy’s eyesight was failing and her husband wanted to let her see the world one last time.

Robert’s brother, David, told News Corp: “Dad phoned this morning and said ‘Bobby’s plane’s missing’. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it. We just want to know where it is, where the plane’s come down, if there’s anything left.”

The family released a statement through Queensland police, saying their hearts went out to all families who were on MH370.

"Although best efforts from all the family members are trying to remain positive for any hope of survivors, we are bracing ourselves for the worse possible outcome. Cathy and Bob are very much loved by their family, extended families and friends."

The Burrows were expecting the arrival of their first grandchild in April.

Rodney had taken a redundancy last year and wanted to enjoy life with his wife. His mother, 84-year-old Irene, told The Morning Bulletin: “It is just amazing that a plane could disappear off the face of the Earth."

“If we could just find the plane... we would have some satisfaction. There is always hope - but it is fading very fast.” Mr Burrows Sr said he saw little point in going to Malaysia.

News Corp reported the sad story of Sydney couple Gu Naijun, 31, and husband Li Yuan, 32, who had been forced to sell their home and liquidate their petrol station business to return to China.

“It has been horrible, we don’t know if there is a chance or not. We are trying to keep our last hopes up,” said a friend who did not wish to be named. The couple was known to their friends by their adopted names Carlos and Carrie, and had met and fell in love while studying in Sydney.

They had two young daughters who had flown ahead to China and were living with relatives, awaiting their parent’s arrival.

In Beijing, where family and friends of the 153 Chinese passengers gathered first in at the airport and then at the Lido hotel, to wait news and comfort each other, all they got was scraps.

“I hope it is a hijacking, then there will be some hope that my young cousin has survived,” a man named Su was reported as saying. “My uncle and aunt had an emotional breakdown, they are not eating, drinking and sleeping and could not face coming here,” he said.

It was natural that loved ones would turn to the web for information. This would mean navigating offensive lists of conspiracies, proposing alien abduction or an Asian Bermuda Triangle.

Other theories were presented by the Malaysian authorities themselves, with police chief Khalid Abu Bakar suggesting there was a chance someone had brought the plane down in order to help his family out of financial straits.

Such things were better left unsaid, but the Malaysians – whose government controls its media absolutely and is not familiar with being challenged -- were probably unused to facing hundreds of reporters demanding answers.

Further suggestions were of pilot suicide; a meteor strike; a secret landing in a different country; or of a shoot-down by an unspecified aggressor.

Now this seems like a conspiracy beyond anything that anyone could invent.

The dragging of time has not lessened the hope against hope that it might have been hijacked and taken somewhere. But the 777 needs a 1.6km strip to land; and you don’t hijack a passenger jet without making some demands.

CIA Director John Brennan said terror was still very much on his mind. “No, I wouldn’t rule it out,” he said. “Not at all.”It still seems most likely the sea holds the answer.