PETALING JAYA, April 15 – A US official has revealed that the mobile phone of MH370′s first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, made contact with a telecommunication tower in Penang just before the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft disappeared in the wee hours of March 8, CNN reported today.
The cable news network however said that there was no evidence to verify if Fariq had indeed tried to make a call just before the plane went missing with 239 passengers on a seemingly routine flight from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport to Beijing, China.
Quoting an unnamed US official, CNN said that a cell-phone tower in Penang, Malaysia — about 250 miles from where the flight’s transponder last sent a signal — detected the first officer’s phone searching for service roughly 30 minutes after authorities believe the plane made a sharp turn westward.
The details do appear to reaffirm suggestions based on radar and satellite data that the plane was off course and was probably flying low enough to obtain a signal from a cell tower, the US official was reported to have said.
The revelation follows a reporting over the weekend in a Malaysian newspaper that the first officer had tried to make a telephone call while the plane was in flight.
Asked Sunday by CNN about the newspaper report about a purported effort to make a call by the first officer, Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said: “As far as I know, no, but as I said that would be in the realm of the police and the other international (authorities) and when the time comes that will be revealed. But I do not want to speculate on that at the moment.”
US officials familiar with the investigation told CNN they have been told that no other cell phones were picked up by the Penang tower.
Pilots are supposed to turn off their cell phones before pushing back from the gate.
“It would be very rare in my opinion to have someone with a cell phone on in the cockpit,” safety analyst David Soucie was quoted by CNN. “It’s never supposed to be on at all. It’s part of every check list of every airline I am familiar with,” he added.
When the plane first went missing, authorities said millions of cell phone records were searched, looking for evidence that calls had been made from the plane after it took off, but the search turned up nothing.
MH370 disappeared from the civilian radar while flying towards Vietnam over the South China Sea. It is believed to have made a turn and was spotted on military radar western side of peninsula Malaysia heading for the Andaman Sea.
Satellite pings from the plane revealed that it diverted from its flight path and headed towards the southern Indian Ocean before ending its flight in the wild, deep blue ocean.
Searchers are still looking for the plane in southern Indian Ocean.
– FREE MALAYSIA TODAY
