Mystery Malaysia flight may have been hundreds of miles off course

And with that, we appear to be heading back towards the terrorism angle again..

CNN goes on to report this in its latest dispatch:





If correct, these are ominous signs that could call into question whether someone in the cockpit might have deliberately steered the plane away from its intended destination, a former U.S. aviation investigator said.

“This kind of deviation in course is simply inexplicable,” said Paul Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board.

However, veteran pilot Kit Darby, president of Aviation Information Resources, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that mechanical problems could still explain everything: A power failure would have turned off the main transponder and its backup, and the plane could have flown for more than an hour, he said.

According to the Malaysian Air Force official, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media, the plane’s transponder apparently stopped working at about the time flight controllers lost contact with it, near the coast of Vietnam.

Mystery Malaysia flight may have been hundreds of miles off course