Just a few hours after a stunning report from The Wall Street Journal — headlined "U.S. Investigators Suspect Missing Airplane Flew On For Hours" — the officials in charge of the investigation say that story's central premise isn't true.
The last data received from devices installed in the Rolls-Royce engines of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared on Saturday were transmitted at 1:07 a.m. local time, Malaysia's acting defense minister told reporters Thursday. That would be a little more than 30 minutes after Beijing-bound Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur. The minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, appeared at a news conference with the airline's CEO.
If the Malaysian official's account is correct, then the underpinnings of the Journal's story are knocked away. The newspaper reported early Thursday that:
"U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.
"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. 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program."