MH370 flown 'like fighter jet'

The missing Malaysia Airlines jet was "thrown around like a jet fighter" in a bid to dodge radar after it lost contact with authorities, Malaysian military investigators believe.

Flight MH370 is thought to have climbed to 45,000ft – 10,000ft above its normal altitude – before dropping to 5000ft and continuing to fly low at high speed, a source close to the investigation told Britain's Sunday Times.

The drastic manoeuvres required to perform such a sudden drop in altitude suggest the Boeing 777 was deliberately trying to avoid radar signals and vanish, the source said.

The new lead adds weight to the theory Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own plane after tricking his co-pilot into leaving the cockpit and then locking the door.

The plane was carrying 239 people en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur when it disappeared on March 8.

Officials believe the plane flew off course for an unknown reason and went down in the southern Indian Ocean.

The painstaking search for signs of wreckage is ongoing.

But there are fears the plane's two black boxes may have run out of battery power, with no new underwater electronic pings heard since April 8.

The underwater search zone is currently a 1300sq km patch of the seabed. Once officials are confident no more pings will be heard, a robotic submersible will be sent down to slowly scour for wreckage.

Source: Daily Mail

Author: Erin Tennant, Approving editor: Matthew Henry