(CNN) -- Investigators looking at the flight
simulator taken from the home of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Captain Zaharie
Ahmad Shah have discovered that some data had been erased from it, Malaysia's
acting transportation minister said Wednesday.
Hishammuddin Hussein didn't say what had been deleted, but
simulation programs typically store data from previous sessions for later
playback. He also did not say who might have deleted the data.
The deletions are not necessarily evidence of ill intent:
Removing files from a computer is usually an innocent act repeated millions of
times a day around the world.
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U.S. Navy crew members assist in search-and-rescue
operations Sunday, March 16, in the Indian Ocean.
A member of the Malaysian navy makes a call as his ship approaches a
Chinese Coast Guard ship in the South China Sea on March 15.
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But experts consulted by CNN said it's relatively unusual to
delete such data from a simulator: The files are extremely small and are often
kept by desktop pilots to gauge their progress, said Jay Leboff, owner of
HotSeat, a simulator manufacturer.
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U.S. Navy crew members assist in search-and-rescue
operations Sunday, March 16, in the Indian Ocean.
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"It would be suspicious to me, because there's no need
to do it," he said.
Experts are examining the simulator in hopes of recovering
the deleted data, Hishammuddin said.
The revelation came as the search for the missing airliner
neared its 13th day.
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A distraught relative of a passenger on the missing Malaysia
Airlines jet breaks down while talking to reporters at Kuala Lumpur
International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia, on Wednesday, March 19. The Boeing
777-200ER disappeared during a March 8 flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Searchers from 26 countries are trying to pinpoint Flight 370's location
somewhere along two vast arcs, one stretching deep into the Asian landmass, the
other far out into the Indian Ocean.
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Although the search area spans a vast area of nearly 3
million square miles, a U.S. government official familiar with the
investigation said the plane is most likely somewhere on the southern end of
the search area.
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A relative of Chinese passengers aboard the missing plane
waits for a news briefing by officials in Beijing on Tuesday, March 18.
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"This is an area out of normal shipping lanes, out of
any commercial flight patterns, with few fishing boats, and there are no
islands," the official said, warning that the search could well last
"weeks and not days."
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A member of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency
joins in a search for the missing plane in the Andaman Sea area around the
northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra on Monday, March 17.
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The official's comments echo earlier analysis by U.S.
officials saying the most likely location for the missing aircraft is on the
bottom of the Indian Ocean.
Australia said Wednesday that the area of the southern
Indian Ocean where it is searching for the plane has been "significantly
refined."
The new area is based on work done by the U.S. National
Transportation Safety Board on "the fuel reserves of the aircraft and how
far it could have flown," said John Young of the Australian Maritime
Safety Authority.
But Australian ships and aircraft have so far seen nothing
connected to the missing plane, Australian authorities said.
Angry Families
The lack of progress has angered and frustrated families, who
have accused Malaysian officials of withholding information.
Some family members staged a protest at the hotel where
media covering the search are staying.
"We have been here for 10 days, no single piece of
information," one woman said. "We need media from the entire world
(to) help us find our lost families, and find the MH370 plane."
Malaysian authorities appeared to hustle the women away.
In a statement, Hishammuddin said Malaysian authorities
"regret the scenes at this afternoon's press conference."
"One can only imagine the anguish they are going through," he said of the families. "Malaysia is doing everything in its power to find MH370 and hopefully bring some degree of closure for those whose family members are missing."
An abrupt change in direction
The plane's disappearance continues to intrigue the public
and frustrate officials, who have turned up no sign of the plane despite the
involvement of teams from 26 nations.
On Tuesday, a law enforcement official told CNN that the
aircraft's first major change of course -- an abrupt westward turn that took
the plane off its route to China and back across the Malay Peninsula -- was
almost certainly programmed by somebody in the cockpit.
The change was entered into the plane's system at least 12
minutes before a person in the cockpit, believed to be the co-pilot, signed off
to air traffic controllers.
Some experts said the change in direction could have been
part of an alternate flight plan programmed in advance in case of emergency;
others suggested it could show something more nefarious was afoot.
But Hishammuddin said Wednesday that "there is no
additional waypoint on MH370's documented flight plan, which depicts normal
routing all the way to Beijing."
The Thai military, meanwhile, said it had spotted the plane
turning west toward the Strait of Malacca early on March 8. That supports the
analysis of Malaysian military radar that has the plane flying out over the
Strait of Malacca and into the Indian Ocean.
But it didn't make it any clearer where the plane went next.
Authorities say information from satellites suggests the plane kept flying for
about six hours after it was last detected by Malaysian military radar.
Malaysian authorities, who are coordinating the search, say
the available evidence suggests the missing plane flew off course in a
deliberate act by someone who knew what they were
Background checks
Investigators are looking into the background of all 239
passengers and crew members on board the plane, as well as its ground crew,
Malaysian officials have said. They've received background checks on all
nations with passengers on board with the exception of Russia and Ukraine,
Hussein said.
So far, no information of significance has been found about any passengers, Hishammuddin said.
China says it has found nothing suspicious during background
checks on its citizens on the flight -- a large majority of the plane's
passengers.
Particular attention has focused on the pilot and first
officer on Flight 370, but authorities are yet to come up with any evidence
explaining why either of them would have taken the jetliner off course.
And some experts have warned against hastily jumping to
conclusions about the role of the pilots.
"I've worked on many cases were the pilots were
suspect, and it turned out to be a mechanical and horrible problem," said
Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S.
Department of Transportation. "And I have a saying myself: Sometimes, an
erratic flight path is heroism, not terrorism."
Ticking clock
Searchers are racing the clock in their efforts to find the
plane and its flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders. The devices have
batteries designed to send out pings for 30 days. That leaves 18 days until the
batteries are expected to run out.
Investigators hope the recorders may reveal vital information
about why the passenger jet disappeared.
"The odds of finding the pinger are very slim,"
said Rob McCallum, an ocean search specialist. "Even when you know roughly
where the target is, it can be very tricky to find the pinger. They have a very
limited range."
Searchers face deep ocean
Hishammuddin, Malaysia's public face of the search efforts,
has repeatedly said that little is likely to be established about the
mysterious flight until the plane is found.
But in the Indian Ocean, where Australia and Indonesia have
taken the lead in the hunt, some of the depths that searchers are dealing with
are significant.
The Bay of Bengal, for example, which lies between Myanmar
and India, has depths of between about 4,000 and 7,000 meters (13,000 feet and
23,000 feet), according to McCallum.
Wreckage and bodies of passengers from Air France Flight
447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, were found at depths of
around 12,000 feet by unmanned submarines.
It took four searches over the course of nearly two years to
locate the bulk of the wreckage and the majority of the bodies of the 228
people on board Flight 447. It took even longer to establish the cause of the
disaster.
Right now, authorities don't even know for sure if the
missing Malaysian plane crashed or landed -- or where.
CNN has talked to more than half a dozen U.S. military and
intelligence officials who emphasize that while no one knows what happened to
the plane, it is more logical to conclude it crashed into the Indian Ocean.
