Confusion clouds search for missing plane

The families of the passengers and crew
members on board the Malaysian airliner that
disappeared more than four days ago are
desperately waiting for answers about what
happened.
But so far, most of the scraps of information that
have come to light have only created confusion
and bafflement.
The latest twist in the mystery of Malaysia
Airlines Flight 370, which vanished early Saturday
over Southeast Asia, involves the path the plane
may have taken after it lost contact with air
traffic control.
A senior Malaysian air force official on Tuesday
told CNN that after the plane lost all
communications around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, it
still showed up on radar for more than an hour
longer. Before it vanished altogether, the plane
apparently turned away from the direction of its
intended destination, Beijing, and traveled
hundreds of miles off course, the official said.
It was last detected, according to the official, near
Pulau Perak, a very small island in the Straits of
Malacca, the body of water between the Malay
Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Those assertions have fueled surprise among
aviation analysts and a fresh burst of theories
about what might have happened to the plane.
They also appear to have created tensions
between some of the different countries involved
in the search efforts.
Uncertainty over exact path
But some Malaysian officials have reportedly cast
doubt on the details of the change in direction.
The New York Times cited Tengku Sariffuddin
Tengku Ahmad, spokesman for the Prime
Minister's office, as saying that he had checked
with senior military officials, who told him there
was no evidence that the plane had flown back
over the Malay Peninsula to the Straits of
Malacca, only that it may have attempted to turn
back.
The Prime Minister's office didn't immediately
return calls from CNN seeking comment
Wednesday.
But the air force chief Gen. Rodzali Daud didn't go
as far as denying that the plane had traveled
hundreds of miles off course.
The air force is still "examining and analyzing all
possibilities as regards to the airliner's flight
paths subsequent to its disappearance," he said
in a statement Wednesday.
Daud said it "would not be appropriate" for the air
force to "issue any official conclusions as to the
aircraft's flight path until a high amount of
certainty and verification is achieved."
He denied, though, that he had made statements
to a Malaysian newspaper similar to those that
the senior air force official made to CNN.
Searchers find no trace
The reported change of course would fit in with
some of the areas that search and rescue teams
have been combing over the past several days.
Dozens of ships and planes from various
countries have been searching the sea between
the northeast coast of Malaysia and southwest
Vietnam, the area where the plane lost contact
with air traffic controllers.
But they have also been looking off the west
coast of the Malay Peninsula, in the Straits of
Malacca, and north into the Andaman Sea --
areas that would tally with a change of direction
by the plane.
So far, though, searchers have found no
confirmed trace of the plane anywhere.
Vietnam scales back searches
And Vietnamese authorities, who have been
heavily involved in the search, appeared to be
showing increasing frustration with the
information coming from the Malaysian side.
"We have scaled down the searches for today
and are still waiting for the response from
Malaysian authorities," Phan Quy Tieu, Vietnam's
vice minister of transportation, told reporters
Wednesday.
Vietnam informed Malaysian authorities that the
plane was turning westward at the time it
disappeared, he said.
"Up until now we only had one meeting with a
Malaysian military attache," Phan said.
"However, the information they have provided is
insufficient."
For the moment, Vietnamese teams will stop
searching the sea south of Ca Mau province, the
southern tip of Vietnam, and shift the focus to
areas east of Ca Mau, said Doan Luu, the director
of international affairs at the Vietnamese Civil
Aviation Authority.
Doan also told CNN that Vietnam has asked
Malaysian authorities to clarify which location is
the focus of their search, but that it has yet to
hear back.
Families of those on board the plane also want to
know more.
"Time is passing by," a middle-aged man shouted
at an airline agent in Beijing on Tuesday. His son,
he said, was one of the passengers aboard the
plane.
Most of those on the flight were Chinese. And for
their family members, the wait has been long and
anguished.
Analysts puzzled
The possibility that the plane changed direction
and flew over the Straits of Malacca has
perplexed aviation experts.
Peter Goelz, former managing director of the
National Transportation Safety Board, said he
thinks the information, if correct, ominously
suggests that someone purposefully cut off the
transponder -- which sends data on altitude,
direction and speed -- and steered the plane
from its intended destination.
"This kind of deviation in course is simply
inexplicable," Goelz said.
Other experts aren't convinced that there was
necessarily foul play involved. They say there
could have been some sort of sudden
catastrophic electronic failure that spurred the
crew to try to turn around, with no luck.
"Perhaps there was a power problem," said
veteran pilot Kit Darby, former president of
Aviation Information Resources, adding that
backup power systems would only last about an
hour. "(It is) natural for the pilot, in my view, to
return to where he knows the airports."
Still, while they have theories, even those who
have piloted massive commercial airliners like
this one admit that they can't conclude anything
until the plane is found. For now, the massive
multinational search has yielded no breakthrough
-- which has only added to the heartache for the
friends and family of the 239 passengers and
crew on board.
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