The Malaysian authorities are enlisting international expertise in resolving the mystery of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and some 26 nations are assisting Malaysia to try to find the missing plane. Nevertheless, many nations including the United States and China disapprove of the manner in which Malaysia conducted the investigation. Nevertheless, the Malaysian authorities expressed gratitude for the probing of foreign nations into the mystery of the missing airliner. Who was the person who bid fellow passengers goodnight? It was the co-pilot, or so they say. Those were the last words heard from the cockpit. But investigations discount the possibility of the pilots playing foul games. Both the pilot and co-pilot have an impeccable record of flying the Boeing 777-200ER passenger jet Personally, the unfortunate incident is reminiscent of Egypt Air Flight 990, which plunged in the Atlantic in 1999, killing everybody aboard. Nevertheless in that particular tragedy, the debris was soon found and it was clear that the pilot had personal problems and deliberately committed suicide and the plane went down with him and the innocent passengers and unsuspecting crew. Egypt Air Flight 990 was a case of premeditated murder and madness. Perhaps pilot or co-pilot suicide? This was almost certainly the fate of the doomed Egyptian airliner, but the Malaysian authorities refute this hypothesis. Why? The reluctance of the Malaysian authorities to enlist the assistance of the FBI, in particular, and other foreign intelligence agencies is not clear and this is one of the issues that the FBI is curious about. Within what sort of physical setting did the crystallization of the mystery unfold? Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak dropped a bombshell on Monday when he declared that "deliberate" action was to blame for the missing plane. He stopped short of explaining what exactly this deliberate act was. "The investigations team is making further calculations which will indicate how far the aircraft may have flown after this last point of contact," Najib pondered. Pure conjecture? Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein disclosed that the plane's communication systems were systematically disabled after take-off, insinuating sabotage. With its 239 passengers and crew, there are serious political implications as most passengers were Chinese. "In view of this latest development, the Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation into the crew and passengers on board," Najib extrapolated. Where is the debris if Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 did indeed crash? The 8 March flight literally dissipated, spirited away as it were, on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The Malaysian authorities indicate that someone on board then switched off the aircraft's transponder, which communicates with civilian air traffic controllers. And, whoever disabled the plane's communication systems and then took control of the cabin must have had a high degree of technical knowledge and flying experience. There are scores of unanswered questions. Yet, the jet changed course and altitude. It went 45,000 feet beyond what the Boeing 777 is supposed to endure. Then it abruptly went as low as 25,000 feet. That much we now know. The Malaysian authorities revealed that ground staff and engineers are being investigated. They are analyzing what is on the recorders. But, certain questions remain unanswered. The last signal from the plane came almost seven hours after it supposedly lost contact with the traffic controllers. Certainly, this is a case of criminal or terrorist act. So why are certain critics and pundits expressing their suspicion that there was an alleged cover up by the Malaysian authorities and initial reluctance to share information? Perhaps the paucity of the intelligence sources is what hindered the hesitancy and irresolution of officials in Malaysia in making public statements. Where was the Malaysian air force? Why did they not act immediately? Why didn't the Malaysian military radar identify the missing airliner? There was much speculation that instead of flying northeast, the plane flew northwest. However, both India and Pakistan denied that the Malaysia Airlines plane were spotted by their respective civilian and military radars. The airliner could have slipped under Pakistani radars and landed in a Taliban base close to the Afghan border, but Taliban vociferously denies this hypothesis and so do the Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. The reality is that solving the mystery is bound to be a painstaking process. Undoubtedly, one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history, ten days after the disappearance of the jet we do not know why it changed altitude and it changed course. Electronic signals between the plane and satellites continued to be exchanged for seven hours after the airliner flew out of range of Malaysian military radar off the northwest coast of the Malay Peninsula, even though the plane was supposed to fly on the northeast coast of Malaysia heading for China. The Chinese authorities are particularly miffed as about two-thirds of the passengers aboard were Chinese. Moreover, most of the Malaysians aboard the plane were ethnic Chinese. Political history provides the central thread of the mystery. Sectarian politics have a long history in Malaysia. Will the world ever find the the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370? Malaysian police said they were still investigating a flight simulator seized from pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah's home. However, the Malaysian authorities do not believe the 53-year-old pilot captain and his 27-year-old co-pilot. Zaharie, a pilot with 18,365 flight hours under his belt, is reportedly also a flight instructor. First Officer Fariq Ab Hamid has 2,763 flying hours behind him and was transitioning to the Boeing 777-200 after finishing training in a flight simulator. Fariq joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007. Both pilot and co-pilot are ethnic Malay Muslims. Nevertheless, ethnic, racial and sectarian sensitivities have precluded foreign intelligence agencies intervention into the unfortunate incident. There were, after all, 14 nationalities aboard, among them Australians, Americans and French citizens. Two Iranian men who boarded Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 using stolen passports, which adds yet another spin to the sordid story. The two Iranians since have been identified as 19-year-old Pouria Nour Mohammed Mehrdad and 29-year-old Delavar Seyed Mohammed Reza. They were apparently acquaintances. They both had fake passports. Thai police are investigating a passport-trafficking operation in Phuket, a popular resort island, where both passports were stolen from an Austrian and an Italian, both EU nationals. Incidentally, about 2,475 passports were reported stolen in Thailand last year, and passport theft is a brisk business in Malaysia's northern neighbour, Thailand. Militant Islamist and separatist groups inhabit southern Thailand bordering Malaysia. And, the Iranian passengers were reported to have purchased their passports in Thailand. Southeast papers are speculating about the repercussions, yet nobody wants to read too much into this prickly matter. Moreover, catastrophic mechanical failure, or pilot error, are now ruled out. And, what about the 12 crew members on board? Khalid Abu Bakar, inspector general of Malaysia's police, said that they had “cleared” most of the passengers on the plane. There is inevitable tension between a multiplicity of questions that need scrupulous scrutiny.
