Jet engine on for 4 hrs, says US

Washington, March 13: US investigators suspect a missing Malaysian airliner was in the air for four hours after its last confirmed contact, and may have been diverted to an unknown location, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

It said US aviation investigators and national security officials are basing their theory on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing 777’s RollsRoyce engines, which suggested the plane flew for a total of five hours.

The WSJ attributed the information to two unidentified sources “familiar with the details”.

Contacted by AFP, RollsRoyce in Singapore said it could not comment on an ongoing investigation.

“We continue to monitor the situation and offer our support to Malaysia Airlines,” the British engine maker said in a statement from Singapore.

The report could mean that the Malaysia Airlines flight, which had 239 people on board, travelled for hundreds of miles after its last contact with air traffic control at around 1.30 am on Saturday — about an hour after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.

Search teams are already covering a huge area comprising 27,000 nautical miles, from the South China Sea to the waters west of Malaysia.

Meanwhile, Beijing was unusually open in revealing its satellite capabilities when it released photographs of possible debris from a missing airplane, despite taking four days to make the images public, analysts said on Thursday.

China published three pictures of what it said were suspected large floating objects in the South China Sea. — AFP