CHINA : Chinese relatives of passengers from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 leave a meeting with officials at the Metro Park Lido Hotel in Beijing Sunday. — AFP KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 16 (AFP): Malaysia said Sunday the number of countries searching for a missing airliner had nearly doubled to 25 as a full-scale criminal probe into its disappearance got under way, with particular scrutiny of the pilots.
Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the number of participating countries had jumped from 14 to 25 as the search for the aircraft focused on two vast, and vastly contrasting, land and ocean transport corridors.
The dramatic "re-calibration" would inevitably bring "new challenges of coordination and diplomacy", the minister said.
Police said they had searched the homes of both pilots and examined the captain's home flight simulator after it became increasingly clear that the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that vanished March 8 had been deliberately diverted by someone on board.
Hishammuddin cautioned people against "jumping to conclusions" about the thrust of the investigation, which national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar stressed was covering "all" the 239 passengers and crew.
Engineers who may have had contact with the aircraft before take-off were also being looked at, Khalid said.
The police action followed Saturday's startling revelations that the plane's communications systems had been manually switched off before the jet veered westward and flew on for hours.
Like Prime Minister Najib Razak the previous day, Hishammuddin refused to use the word hijack, saying only that the pattern of events was consistent with "deliberate action" by someone on the plane.
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