Last words from missing Malaysian jet spoken by co-pilot

KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 17 (AFP): The last words from a Malaysian passenger jet missing for 10 days were spoken by the co-pilot, the airline said Monday, providing a new glimpse into the crucial period when the plane was deliberately diverted.

Confirmation that the voice was First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid's came during a press conference at which Malaysian officials hit back at "irresponsible" suggestions that they had misled the public-and passenger's relatives-over what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

China has led some harsh criticism of the Malaysian authorities, suggesting they withheld important information and were slow to act, hampering the search for the Boeing 777 in its crucial early days.

Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid have become a primary focus of the investigation, with one of the key questions being who was in control of the aircraft when it was deliberately taken off course about an hour into its flight to Beijing.

The last message from the cockpit-"All right, good night"-came around the time that two of the plane's crucial signalling systems were manually disabled.

"Initial investigations indicate it was the co-pilot who basically spoke," Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told reporters.

The last signal from the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) was received 12 minutes before the co-pilot's seemingly nonchalant final words.

ACARS transmits key information on a plane's condition.

The plane's transponder-which relays the plane's location-was switched off just two minutes after the voice message.

US intelligence efforts have also focused on the cockpit crew, according to a senior US lawmaker.

"I think this all leads towards the cockpit, with the pilot himself, and co-pilot," said Michael McCaul, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, citing information he had received in intelligence briefings.

The plane went missing early on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew aboard, spawning a massive international search across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean that has turned up no trace of wreckage.

 "The contradictory and piecemeal information Malaysia Airlines and its government have provided has made search efforts difficult and the entire incident even more mysterious," the state-controlled China Daily newspaper wrote in an editorial.

At Monday's press briefing, Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein reacted angrily when a foreign journalist suggested Malaysia should apologise for its handling of the crisis.

"That's purely erroneous. I've also got a lot of feedback that, in the circumstances we have been facing, that we have been very responsible in our actions," he said.

"I think it is very irresponsible of you to say that."

Twenty-six countries were now involved in searching for the jet after satellite and military radar data projected two dauntingly large corridors the plane might have flown through.

The northern corridor stretches in an arc over south and central Asia, while the other swoops deep into the southern Indian Ocean towards Australia.

Malaysia announced that it was deploying its navy and air force to the southern corridor, where Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said his country would take the lead in searching a vast area off its west coast.

Three officials from France's civil aviation accident investigation agency arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Monday to share their experiences of the search for Air France Flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.

The "black boxes" from that crash were eventually recovered nearly two years later from a depth of more than 3,800 meters (12,500 feet).

Malaysian police have searched both pilots' residences and are examining a flight simulator that Captain Zaharie, 53, had assembled at his home.

Associates say Zaharie was an active supporter of Malaysia's political opposition headed by veteran politician Anwar Ibrahim.

In a highly controversial case, Anwar was convicted of sodomy-illegal in Muslim Malaysia-just hours before MH370 took off.

Meanwhile: Malaysia drew more scathing criticism from China Monday over conflicting information on missing jet MH370, with state media and social media users voicing increasing scepticism as the search enters its 10th day.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Saturday announced that the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight may have been "deliberate" and that the plane flew for several hours after leaving its intended flight path.

In an editorial, the China Daily newspaper questioned why the announcement came more than a week after the flight vanished and wondered whether Malaysia was sharing all of the information it had gathered.

Two-thirds of the passengers on board the flight were Chinese, and Beijing has been critical of Malaysia's sharing of information-a concern reiterated Monday as fears mounted that the plane might have been hijacked.

Yao Shujie, the head of the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham, wrote in an op-ed in China's state-run Global Times newspaper that Malaysia "has lost authority and credibility" due to its chaotic response.