Search for Missing Jet Shifts to Indian Ocean Amid Confusion Over Radar

SEPANG, Malaysia - The focus of the search for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner shifted westward on Thursday, toward the vastness of the Indian Ocean, as Malaysian authorities denied a variety of reports related to the jet's disappearance and experts pored over military radar data that seemed to indicate that the flight had turned west and remained airborne long after its last contact with ground controllers.

Yet in a measure of the continued caution and bafflement among the authorities here, Malaysia's defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said the main search effort continued to be east of the Malaysian peninsula, in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea.

Even so, American naval aircraft were redeployed to the Strait of Malacca, west of Malaysia, one of several indications that the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was turning away from the eastern waters that have been combed by dozens of ships and airplanes for days, and toward the Andaman Sea and the wider Indian Ocean.

In a news briefing that was more structured and organized than those of earlier days, the Malaysian authorities denied a widely circulated report that the jetliner, a Boeing 777, had transmitted technical data after contact with the cockpit was lost around 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning, when the airplane was on course toward Beijing, its scheduled destination.

The report, by The Wall Street Journal, asserted that Rolls-Royce, the maker of the aircraft's engines, had received routine data transmissions from those engines on schedule after contact with the cockpit was lost, suggesting that the plane remained aloft for several more hours.

But the chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, said that the last technical data received from Flight 370 came at 1:07 a.m. Saturday, when the aircraft was still in touch with ground controllers, and that it indicated no trouble with the plane.

Primary radar

Sends out radio signals and listens for echoes that bounce back from objects in the sky.

Secondary radar

Sends signals that request information from the plane's transponder. The plane sends back information including its identification and altitude. The radar repeatedly sweeps the sky and interrogates the transponder. Other planes in flight can also receive the transponder signals.

'That was the last transmission,' Mr. Ahmad Jauhari said at a news conference in Sepang, the location of the international airport serving Kuala Lumpur. 'It did not run beyond that.'

Kuala Lumpur

International Airport

Military radar detection Military radar detected blips 200 miles northwest of Penang that might have been from the missing aircraft. The last signal came at 2:15 a.m. Saturday, at 29,500 feet.

Known path The plane stopped communicating with controllers at around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, at 35,000 feet.

Kuala Lumpur

International Airport

Military radar detection Military radar detected blips 200 miles northwest of Penang that might have been from the missing aircraft. The last signal came at 2:15 a.m. Saturday, at 29,500 feet.

Known path The plane stopped communicating with controllers at around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, at 35,000 feet.

Malaysian authorities said that both Rolls-Royce and Boeing had told them they did not receive any further data from the airplane after the transmission at 1:07 a.m.

The authorities said separately that nothing had come of images recorded by Chinese satellites on Sunday and posted online on Wednesday, which appeared to show large objects floating in the South China Sea. Vessels dispatched to the area found nothing, they said, and Mr. Hishammuddin said he was told by Chinese officials that 'the images were released by mistake and did not show any debris.'

The government also denied Malaysian news reports that the police had searched the house of the missing flight's pilot.

There were increasing indications that the aircraft did turn radically off course after contact was lost. Malaysian authorities said they were setting aside national security considerations and sharing military radar readings with the United States and China to help determine whether they show the missing jet. They said the data appear to show an unidentified plane flying westward across the Malaysian peninsula and toward the Andaman Sea, with the last reading placing it 200 miles northwest of the island of Penang, cruising at 29,500 feet. The military took no immediate action on Saturday to investigate the unidentified blips, whose path appeared to take the aircraft near Penang, and only later realized the significance of the readings.

Mr. Hishammuddin, who is also the country's acting transport minister, told reporters on Thursday that Malaysia had asked neighboring countries, including India, for any radar data they might have that could help establish what became of the aircraft seen on Malaysian military screens.

Gen. Rodzali Daud, the Malaysian air force chief, said on Wednesday that the military was still not certain that the aircraft its radar had detected was the missing jetliner.

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