Search for Malaysia Flight 370 Enters Daunting New Phase

At the Wall Street Journal, "Search for Flight 370 Enters Daunting New Phase: Search Moves to Two Huge New Areas Spanning Bay of Bengal":

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia—The search for Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU -4.17%  Flight 370 expanded by thousands of miles in an operation of unprecedented scale, marked by a series of twists that have made the least likely scenarios the most credible.

The number of countries searching for the flight, which fell off radar March 8 en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, doubled to roughly two dozen over the weekend. Searchers are now looking for debris more than 3,200 miles away from the point at which they believe the plane's transponders and another signaling system were deliberately turned off about an hour into the flight.

Malaysian authorities now say they believe foul play was behind the plane's vanishing, and police are investigating all crew and passengers on the flight as well as engineers who may have had contact with the aircraft before takeoff. Police searched the pilots' homes over the weekend, but Malaysia's transport ministry said there was no evidence so far linking the pilots to the plane's disappearance.

However, on Sunday, Malaysia's transport minister said key communication equipment that keeps the ground updated about the health of a flying aircraft and its engines was disabled on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 before the last recorded conversation with the cockpit.

"Yes, it was before," Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference Sunday in response to a reporter's question about whether the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, of Flight 370 was disabled before someone said, "All right, good night" from the cockpit.

The ACARS system being disabled before the last voice message from the cockpit backs up thinking by experts that somebody with intricate understanding of the Boeing 777-200 jet and its systems tampered with communication equipment on board. The system apparently could only have been disabled by someone in the cockpit, according to an executive of Rockwell Collins, which bought ARINC, the firm that invented the ACARS system. The executive spoke to The Wall Street Journal on condition of anonymity.

On Thursday, Mr. Hishammuddin said the last automated message was sent out by the ACARS system at 1:07 a.m. Malaysia time. But he didn't say then whether the system was disabled before or after the last comment from the cockpit.

The identity of the person making the last statement— " All right, good night"—hasn't been confirmed. Pilots are expected to read back important information, such as frequency change instructions, given to them by air-traffic controllers to ensure they've received the correct message, though these rules aren't always strictly followed.

The transponder signal from Flight 370 was lost at 1:21 a.m. All radar contact with the aircraft was lost a few minutes afterwards, according to Malaysian investigators. Transponders are another set of communication devices on aircraft that help identify individual flights to controllers on the ground.

Also at Telegraph UK, "Co-pilot spoke final words - 'All right, good night'."