Missing Malaysian plane: Cops find data on Indian Ocean runways in pilot’s simulator

KUALA LUMPUR: An international land and sea search for a missing Malaysian jetliner is covering an area the size of Australia, authorities said on Tuesday, but police and intelligence agencies have yet to establish a clear motive to explain its disappearance.

Investigators are convinced that someone with deep knowledge of the Boeing 777-200ER and commercial navigation diverted Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, carrying 12 crew and 227 mainly Chinese passengers, perhaps thousands of miles off its scheduled course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The New York Times cited senior US officials as saying that the first turn back to the west was likely programmed into the aircraft’s flight computer, rather than being executed manually, by someone knowledgeable about aircraft systems.

Malaysia Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told Tuesday’s daily news conference that that was “speculation.”

Malaysian officials said on Monday that suicide by the pilot or co-pilot was a line of inquiry, although they stressed that it was only one of the possibilities under investigation. Police have searched their homes in middle-class suburbs of Kuala Lumpur close to the airport….