Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Update: Search Becomes Wider; Two Men Provide Clues about Missing Boeing 777- Details
Search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 continues. The mystery behind the vanished Boeing 777 has reportedly intensified as two men from different places in Malaysia provided almost similar eyewitness account. This could possibly be one of the first positive and crucial clues in investigation of the missing Malaysian jet.
29-year-old Alif Fathi Abdul Hadi reported seeing "a bright light descending at high speed," according to New Straits Times. Bussinessman Abdul Hadi from Kampung Kodak in North-East Malaysia reported spotting lights of low-flying airplane at 1.45 AM on Saturday, March 8, 2014 on the day plane was last seen. This is said to have occurred just four minutes after the plane made its last contact with radar.
Abdul Hadi lodged a report with Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency detailing what he saw that night when MH370 disappeared from somewhere above South China Sea. According to Abdul Hadi's eyewitness account to New Straits Times, these lights that he witnessed looked like lights used by airplanes "during take-off and landing during night flights."
"I was walking towards the rear of my house when I saw the light, and wondered where it was heading to," told Abdul Hadi. He reported that flights follow routine patterns while travelling there and airspace there is "like a highway." But according to what he witnessed, light that he saw was "moving towards a completely different direction."
"It was going towards the sea, near Bachok," he explained.
He reckoned that the lights he saw were on a different path than usual path of flights because he saw it disappearing behind a line of coconut trees.
He admitted he did not think much about it and went to sleep. It was only when he heard about missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 he decided to lodge a report.
Meanwhile, another eyewitness account with similar details make Abdul Hadi's account more believable. A 55-year-old fisherman Azid Ibrahim told that he was on his boat fishing off Kuala Besar, when he saw a bright light overhead at 1.30 AM on Saturday. He was reportedly accompanied by five other fishermen when he witnessed bright light which could possibly be the light coming from missing Malaysian aircraft, Boeing 777. He reported that while other fishermen were fast asleep it was only him and one another fisherman who saw the light streaking overhead.
"Usually, lights from an airplane look like distant stars at night but the one that I saw was big as the aircraft was flying below the clouds," told Azid Ibrahim to New Straits Ibrahim. He said he followed the bright light for five minutes before it vanished.
Meanwhile, dozens of ships and aircrafts from several countries and 10 hi-resolution satellites by China have been deployed to assist in search and rescue mission of the missing MH370. The Malaysian Airlines flight was carrying 239 people and was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. According to Yahoo AU, authorities declared that they were increasing the search radius to 100 nautical miles (185 Kilometers). This is the point where the flight vanished and lost contact from the radar. The search domain now includes land on the Malaysian peninsula, the waters off its west coast and area to the north of Indonesian island of Sumatra.