Malaysia leader: Plane's disappearance was deliberate

BEIJING -- Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday that missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was diverted due to 'deliberate action' by either a passenger or crew member.

Najib said investigators are focusing their search now on two air traffic corridors -- a southern one heading from Indonesia to the south Indian Ocean, and a northern one that would have taken the flight toward Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

In his statements, the prime minister belatedly confirmed what U.S. intelligence has been suggesting for days -- that the flight fell victim to foul play -- a theory that Malaysia has been dismissing for much of the past week. The prime minister, however, declined to characterize the incident as a hijacking.

The conclusion that the flight was intentionally commandeered was based on data showing that somebody with knowledge of the Boeing 777 disabled first the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System shortly after takeover and then the transponder.

Satellites, however, picked up signals from the plane as late as 8:11 a.m., almost eight hours after takeoff, and about the time the plane would have run out of the fuel it had been supplied for the 2,700-mile journey to Beijing.

'Due to the type of satellite data, we are unable to confirm the precise location of the plane when it last made contact with the satellite,' said the prime minister.

Investigators say that the flight not only deviated from its planned route, but zigzagged in a way that might have been designed to evade detection. Initially headed northeast toward Beijing, it then turned west over the Malacca Strait, before turning again toward the Indian Ocean.

Some experts suggest the flight path through known air corridors indicates that whoever was in control of the plane was a pilot or expert in aviation.

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