马航飞机失联后可能继续飞行4小时

 

Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. BA -0.99% 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program.

 

That raises a host of new questions and possibilities about what happened aboard the widebody jet carrying 239 people, which vanished from civilian³ air-traffic control radar⁴ over the weekend, about one hour into a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

 

Six days after the mysterious disappearance⁵ prompted a massive international air and water search that so far hasn't produced any results, the investigation⁶ appears to be broadening in scope.

 

U.S. counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally⁷ turning off the jetliner's transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe.

 

The investigation remains⁸ fluid, and it isn't clear whether investigators have evidence indicating possible terrorism or espionage⁹. So far, U.S. national security officials have said that nothing specifically points toward terrorism, though they haven't ruled it out.

 

But the huge uncertainty¹⁰ about where the plane was headed, and why it apparently¹¹ continued flying so long without working transponders, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered（征用，霸占） for a reason that appears unclear to U.S. authorities. Some of those theories have been laid out to national security officials and senior personnel from various U.S. agencies, according to one person familiar with the matter.

 

At one briefing, according to this person, officials were told investigators are actively¹² pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted "with the intention of using it later for another purpose."

 

As of Wednesday it remained unclear whether the plane reached an alternate destination or if it ultimately crashed, potentially hundreds of miles from where an international search effort has been focused.

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