Australia takes the lead in ocean search for missing Malaysian jet

The move came as Malaysia appealed for radar data and search planes to help in the unprecedented hunt through a vast swathe of Asia stretching north-west into Kazakhstan.

Investigators say Malaysia
Airlines Flight 370 was deliberately diverted and its communications equipment switched off shortly after take-off during an overnight flight from
Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.

Suspicion has fallen on anyone on board the plane with aviation experience, in particular the pilot and co-pilot.

Malaysian police confiscated a flight simulator from the home of the pilot on Saturday and also visited the home of the co-pilot, in what Malaysia’s police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said was the first visit to their homes.

The government issued a statement yesterday contradicting that account by saying that
police first visited the pilots’ homes on March 9, the day after the flight.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told parliament that he agreed to take the lead in scouring the southern Indian Ocean for the “ill-fated aircraft” during a conversation yesterday with Malaysia’s leader Najib Razak. Australia already had two AP-3C Orion aircraft involved in the search, one of them looking north and west of the remote Cocos Islands.

Malaysian authorities have said the satellite signal or “ping” received from the jet carrying 239 people more than seven hours after it took off shows that it also may have entered a northern corridor stretching over land from south-east Asia north-west into central Asia.

Twenty-six countries are involved in the search, the government said in a statement yesterday.