Evidence in missing Malaysia Airlines jet points to 'criminal event'

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Investigators have concluded that one or more people with significant flying experience hijacked the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, switched off communication devices and steered it off-course, a Malaysian government official involved in the investigation said Saturday.

No motive has been established and no demands have been made known, and it is not yet clear where the plane was taken, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media. The official said that hijacking was no longer a theory.

"It is conclusive," he said.

The Boeing 777's communication with the ground was severed just under one hour into a flight March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian officials have said radar data suggest it may have turned back toward and crossed over the Malaysian peninsula after setting out on a northeastern path toward the Chinese capital.

Earlier, an American official told The Associated Press that investigators are examining the possibility of "human intervention" in the plane's disappearance, adding it may have been "an act of piracy."

While other theories were still being examined, including pilot suicide, the U.S. official said key evidence suggesting human intervention is that contact with the Boeing 777's transponder stopped about a dozen minutes before a messaging system on the jet quit. Such a gap would be unlikely in the case of an in-flight catastrophe.

"It's looking less and less like an accident. It's looking more like a criminal event," a U.S. official who asked not to be identified told The Washington Post Friday.

Adding to the speculation that someone was flying the jet with 239 people aboard, The New York Times quoted sources familiar with the investigation as saying that the plane's altitude changed significantly after it lost contact with ground control, and its course was altered more than once.

A U.S. official told The Associated Press earlier that it was also possible that the plane may have landed somewhere. The official later said there was no solid information on who might have been involved.

A Malaysian official, who also declined to be identified because he is not authorized to brief the media, said Friday that only a skilled aviator could navigate the plane the way it was flown after its last confirmed location over the South China Sea.

The official said it had been established with a "more than 50 percent" degree of certainty that military radar had picked up the missing plane after it dropped off civilian radar.

Malaysia's acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said investigators were still trying to establish that military radar records of a blip moving west across the Malay Peninsula into the Strait of Malacca showed Flight MH370.

"I will be the most happiest person if we can actually confirm that it is the MH370, then we can move all [search] assets from the South China Sea to the Strait of Malacca," he told reporters.

Scores of aircraft and ships from 12 countries are involved in the search, which now reaches into the eastern stretches of the South China Sea and on the western side of the Malay Peninsula, northwest into the Andaman Sea and the Indian Ocean.

The New York Times, quoting American officials and others familiar with the investigation, said radar signals recorded by the Malaysian military appear to show the airliner climbing to 45,000 feet, higher than a Boeing 777's approved limit, soon after it disappeared from civilian radar, and making a sharp turn to the west.