Malaysian police examine pilot’s flight simulator

Malaysian authorities on Sunday were examining an elaborate flight simulator taken from the home of the pilots of the missing jetliner, after it was established that whoever flew off with the Boeing 777 had intimate knowledge of the cockpit and knew how to avoid detection when navigating around Asia. Satellite data suggested the plane flew for at least 7 ½ hours — more than six hours after the last radio contact — and that it could have reached north into Central Asia or deep into the southern Indian Ocean, posing awesome challenges for efforts to recover the plane and flight data recorders vital to solving the mystery of what happened on board. Given that the northern route would take the plane over countries with busy airspace, a southern path is seen as much more likely. The southern Indian Ocean is one of the most remote stretches of water in the world, the third deepest and has little radar coverage. The wreckage might take months — or longer — to find, or might never be located. There appeared to be some confusion Sunday as India, one of 12 countries contributing planes and vessels to the search, said it had stopped looking while waiting for confirmation from Malaysia on where to look. Malaysia’s acting transport minister tweeted he was in meetings to decide the “next course of action” after Saturday’s revelations. In the first detailed findings on what happened to the plane, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday someone severed communications with the ground and deliberately diverted Flight 370 back over the Malay Peninsula after it departed Kuala Lumpur for Beijing early on March 8 with 239 people on board, according to a news agency.