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| False Leads Set Back Hunt for Missing Malaysian Jet | False Leads Set Back Hunt for Missing Malaysian Jet |
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| SEPANG, Malaysia — The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner was set back on Monday by a number of false leads that seemed to underline how little investigators knew about the whereabouts of the plane, which vanished on Saturday. | SEPANG, Malaysia — The search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner was set back on Monday by a number of false leads that seemed to underline how little investigators knew about the whereabouts of the plane, which vanished on Saturday. |
| A suspected life raft bobbing in the Gulf of Thailand turned out to be the lid of a large box, Vietnamese authorities said. An oil slick in Malaysian waters was found not to contain jet fuel. And what was initially thought to be an aircraft tail floating in the Gulf of Thailand was actually “logs tied together,” according to a Malaysian official. | A suspected life raft bobbing in the Gulf of Thailand turned out to be the lid of a large box, Vietnamese authorities said. An oil slick in Malaysian waters was found not to contain jet fuel. And what was initially thought to be an aircraft tail floating in the Gulf of Thailand was actually “logs tied together,” according to a Malaysian official. |
| The failure so far to locate any trace of the aircraft raised questions about whether the ships, planes and helicopters searching the waters south of Vietnam, some of them using highly sophisticated equipment, were looking in the right place. | The failure so far to locate any trace of the aircraft raised questions about whether the ships, planes and helicopters searching the waters south of Vietnam, some of them using highly sophisticated equipment, were looking in the right place. |
| Malaysian officials said late on Monday that they were expanding the search to a much wider area, including waters north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, hundreds of miles from the aircraft’s last reported position. | Malaysian officials said late on Monday that they were expanding the search to a much wider area, including waters north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, hundreds of miles from the aircraft’s last reported position. |
| The aircraft, a Boeing 777 operating as Flight MH370, took off from Kuala Lumpur in the early hours of Saturday bound for Beijing. It lost contact with ground controllers less than an hour into the flight, when the aircraft was over the Gulf of Thailand on its way to Vietnamese airspace. Boeing officials and investigators from the United States National Transportation Safety Board began conferring with Malaysian officials Monday, American and Malaysian officials said. | The aircraft, a Boeing 777 operating as Flight MH370, took off from Kuala Lumpur in the early hours of Saturday bound for Beijing. It lost contact with ground controllers less than an hour into the flight, when the aircraft was over the Gulf of Thailand on its way to Vietnamese airspace. Boeing officials and investigators from the United States National Transportation Safety Board began conferring with Malaysian officials Monday, American and Malaysian officials said. |
| The Malaysian government distributed photos to foreign intelligence agencies showing two men who boarded the plane using one-way tickets and stolen passports from Italy and Austria. It was not clear whether the two men, whom Malaysian officials described only as “not Asian,” had anything to do with the plane’s disappearance. | The Malaysian government distributed photos to foreign intelligence agencies showing two men who boarded the plane using one-way tickets and stolen passports from Italy and Austria. It was not clear whether the two men, whom Malaysian officials described only as “not Asian,” had anything to do with the plane’s disappearance. |
| The men were scheduled to connect in Beijing for flights to Europe. The police in the Thai resort city of Pattaya, where the men’s tickets were issued, said they were bought not by the passengers themselves but by an Iranian man known to the police only as Mr. Ali. | |
| Supachai Phuikaewkhum, the chief of police in Pattaya, said in an interview late on Monday that Mr. Ali, who formerly lived in Pattaya and operated a restaurant there but now appears to have moved back to Iran, was a regular customer of the travel agency. Mr. Supachai said Mr. Ali called the agency from an Iranian telephone number and asked for the cheapest fares available from Kuala Lumpur to two separate destinations in Europe. | |
| “The staff suggested that a flight with several stops would be cheaper, so he picked that route,” Mr. Supachai said. | |
| He said the tickets were paid for in cash by another Iranian man whose name Mr. Supachai pronounced as “Asay.” That man was questioned on Monday by the police, he said. | |
| Malaysian officials said a parallel investigation had been opened into a possible passport smuggling ring. | Malaysian officials said a parallel investigation had been opened into a possible passport smuggling ring. |
| The Malaysia Airlines plane is not the first modern jet to vanish mysteriously. Searchers sometimes take months to locate crash debris in remote areas with difficult weather conditions. But in the case of MH370, the weather has been good since the aircraft disappeared, and the waters near the aircraft’s last reported position are fairly shallow. | The Malaysia Airlines plane is not the first modern jet to vanish mysteriously. Searchers sometimes take months to locate crash debris in remote areas with difficult weather conditions. But in the case of MH370, the weather has been good since the aircraft disappeared, and the waters near the aircraft’s last reported position are fairly shallow. |
| The Gulf of Thailand is busy with fishing boats, commercial vessels and natural gas platforms, and is no deeper than about 260 feet. By contrast, an Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 was recovered at a depth of about 13,000 feet. | The Gulf of Thailand is busy with fishing boats, commercial vessels and natural gas platforms, and is no deeper than about 260 feet. By contrast, an Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 was recovered at a depth of about 13,000 feet. |
| Aircraft and surface vessels from several countries have joined the search, among them P-3C Orion military planes whose radar systems are capable of locating floating objects as small as a basketball. In a sign of how uncertain officials are of the plane’s whereabouts, an American Orion spent part of Monday searching off the western coast of the peninsula shared by Thailand and Malaysia, several hundred miles from the flight’s last reported location east of the peninsula. | Aircraft and surface vessels from several countries have joined the search, among them P-3C Orion military planes whose radar systems are capable of locating floating objects as small as a basketball. In a sign of how uncertain officials are of the plane’s whereabouts, an American Orion spent part of Monday searching off the western coast of the peninsula shared by Thailand and Malaysia, several hundred miles from the flight’s last reported location east of the peninsula. |
| Malaysian authorities said they had ruled nothing out, including terrorism, hijacking, pilot suicide or mechanical failure. | Malaysian authorities said they had ruled nothing out, including terrorism, hijacking, pilot suicide or mechanical failure. |
| After more than 60 hours without news about the fate of the plane, relatives of passengers in Beijing were furious at Malaysia Airlines staff on Monday, and one man threw water bottles at an airline executive. | After more than 60 hours without news about the fate of the plane, relatives of passengers in Beijing were furious at Malaysia Airlines staff on Monday, and one man threw water bottles at an airline executive. |
| “All Malaysians are liars!” another man shouted in Chinese. “Do you know what ‘liars’ means?” | “All Malaysians are liars!” another man shouted in Chinese. “Do you know what ‘liars’ means?” |
| There were conflicting views of how well the crisis was being handled by Malaysia. Chinese media reports have been critical and somewhat dismissive; The Beijing Times newspaper said on Monday that “Malaysia and Vietnam are relatively backward countries, without professional search and rescue teams.” | There were conflicting views of how well the crisis was being handled by Malaysia. Chinese media reports have been critical and somewhat dismissive; The Beijing Times newspaper said on Monday that “Malaysia and Vietnam are relatively backward countries, without professional search and rescue teams.” |
| But a spokesman for the United States Seventh Fleet, which has sent two warships to assist in the search, said the Malaysian rescue team was doing a “terrific job of organizing” the effort. Cmdr. William Marks, the spokesman, said the Malaysian rescuers were “very efficient, very professional.” | But a spokesman for the United States Seventh Fleet, which has sent two warships to assist in the search, said the Malaysian rescue team was doing a “terrific job of organizing” the effort. Cmdr. William Marks, the spokesman, said the Malaysian rescuers were “very efficient, very professional.” |
| Malaysian authorities and an independent flight-tracking organization offer roughly the same coordinates of the aircraft’s last known location, less than halfway between the Malaysian coast and the southernmost tip of Vietnam. The Malaysian calculation is based on military and civilian radar; Flightradar24, a Stockholm-based aircraft tracking service, uses a separate network of radio receivers. | Malaysian authorities and an independent flight-tracking organization offer roughly the same coordinates of the aircraft’s last known location, less than halfway between the Malaysian coast and the southernmost tip of Vietnam. The Malaysian calculation is based on military and civilian radar; Flightradar24, a Stockholm-based aircraft tracking service, uses a separate network of radio receivers. |
| Mikael Robertsson, co-founder of Flightradar24, said that the company’s computers had not recorded any altitude data for the last two reported positions of the aircraft, which were received about 30 seconds apart. He said there were two possible explanations. One was radio interference from a transmission by another aircraft using the same frequency, which he said was a relatively common occurrence. The other was that the aircraft’s transponder stopped receiving altitude data because of some unknown event on the aircraft a minute before it vanished. | Mikael Robertsson, co-founder of Flightradar24, said that the company’s computers had not recorded any altitude data for the last two reported positions of the aircraft, which were received about 30 seconds apart. He said there were two possible explanations. One was radio interference from a transmission by another aircraft using the same frequency, which he said was a relatively common occurrence. The other was that the aircraft’s transponder stopped receiving altitude data because of some unknown event on the aircraft a minute before it vanished. |