Mystery Malaysia flight may have been hundreds of miles off course
(CNN) -- Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was hundreds of miles off course, traveling in the opposite direction from its original destination and had stopped sending identifying transponder codes before it disappeared, a senior Malaysian air force official told CNN Tuesday.
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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 Peter 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, he said.
CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes said the news "still leaves mechanical, terrorism (and) other issues as much in the air as they were before."
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. A transponder is an electrical instrument in commercial airline cockpits that continuously transmits information such as altitude, location, direction and speed.
The Malaysian Air Force lost track of the plane over Pulau Perak, a tiny island in the Strait of Malacca -- many hundreds of miles from the usual flight path for aircraft traveling between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, the official said.
If the data cited by the source is correct, the aircraft was flying away from Beijing and on the opposite side of the Malay Peninsula from its scheduled route.
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Earlier, the head of the international police organization, Interpol said that his agency increasingly believed the incident was not related to terrorism.
"The more information we get, the more we're inclined to conclude that it was not a terrorist incident," Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said at a news conference in Lyon, France.
Terrorism or not?
Among the evidence pointing in that direction, Noble said: news from Malaysian authorities that one of two people said to be traveling on stolen passports, an Iranian, was trying to travel to his mother in Germany.
Further, there's no evidence to suggest either person traveling with a stolen passport was connected to any terrorist organizations, according to Malaysian investigators.
However, CIA Director John Brennan said his agency is not yet willing to discount the possibility of a terror link in what he called a "very disturbing" mystery.
"No, we're not ruling it out. Not at all," he said
The two passengers who have dominated headlines the last two days entered Malaysia using valid Iranian passports, Noble said at a news conference. But they used stolen Austrian and Italian passports to board the missing Malaysian plane, he said.
Noble gave their names and ages as Pouri Nourmohammadi, 18, and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, 29.
Malaysian police had earlier identified Nourmohammadi, using a slightly different name and age, and said they believed he was trying to migrate to Germany.
Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar of the Royal Malaysian Police said it doesn't appear the younger Iranian posed a threat.
"We have been checking his background," Khalid said, noting "other police organizations" have been consulted. "And we believe that he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group," Khalid said.
After he failed to arrive in Frankfurt, the final destination of his ticket, his mother contacted authorities, Khalid said. According to ticketing records, the ticket to Frankfurt was booked under the stolen Austrian passport.
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Retracing Flight 370's final moments
The identifications help peel away a thin layer of the mystery surrounding the passenger jet, which disappeared about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
But the bigger puzzle as to what happened to Flight 370 remains a mystery.
Credit: CNN.com